The Rustic "Temporary" Microhouse

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If built with natural healthy-house materials (removable metal screw fasteners and wooden boards rather than epoxy adhesives and 4 x 8 foot sheets of plywood impregnated with formaldehyde), using traditional hand building methods (built-up posts and beams) and modern portable or cordless electric tools, a microhouse can be sturdy, yet quickly built. It can also be easily disassembled or moved, so it can he erected and used for relatively short periods in areas that are too ecologically fragile or scenic to build on permanently. Such a temporary structure will often be exempt from budding codes and zoning restrictions affecting permanent dwellings, as it will leave no more of a footprint when gone than a family-sized tent makes over a week or two of camping.

You don't have to purchase 100 acres of remote wilderness. Public parks aside, most of America's most attractive property is owned by farmers and ranchers, absentee landowners, trusts, universities, mining and timber companies. It is not for sale, but often can be rented or leased for a pittance, or can be squatted on with the owner's tacit approval. You won't find such opportunities advertised in the real estate brochures. It takes on site research and some personal persuasion with a country landowner or big city lawyer or trustee. You'll need a proposal to build a microhouse that can be taken apart, loaded on a truck, and taken with you when you move on. Take a copy of Walden when you make your pitch.

You can also look for the little buiding plots that are available for $500 to $2,000 per acre throughout the country. Seek out a few acres abutting public lands: national, state, or local parks and preserves. Or find small plots that tax-harried large landowners are willing to sell off. You'll have to scout out such plots yourself or find a local realtor to locate them. The big national real estate chains that specialize in helping relocate highly paid executives can't be bothered.

How large? What Shape?

The hobby microhouses designed by architects that you see in books have flush toilets, projection TVs. microwave ovens, two or three stories, dome-topped towers with slate or soldered copper sheet roofs, gingerbread ornamented porches and alcoves, multi-level decks— a few are even built in trees. Such micropalaces must be neat fun as play houses for grownups with time and money to spare. But an honest working microhouse for a long-term minimalist lifestyle should be as small and simple in design and construction as possible.

Thoreau's 10 by 15 foot, 150 square foot cabin at Walden was simply built, and typical of real-world designs. It featured used brick flues at the midpoint of one end-wall. Thoreau's high shallow Rumford-design fireplace and stove were flanked by simple cooking facilities on one side and a combined work and dining table and chairs on the other. At the far wall was the bed and a nightstand or two for the water pitcher, washbowl, and chamber pot-an essential nighttime utility when the outhouse is a long cold walk back into the woods.

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