Sep 3, 2015 4 min read

It’s apparently all the rage to live in a really small house – small as in teensy, like 180 square feet worth. There are currently no fewer than three TV shows about designing and building these mini-abodes – all with the words “tiny house” in the titles.

Although I’m claustrophobic, I like to watch the shows for the same reason I like to watch “Hoarders” – so I can feel better about my own house. In each show, there’s a couple or, more courageously, a couple with several children, who want to downsize and simplify their lives by moving into a house the size of a Home Depot shed. In fact, the tiny home featured on the most recent show I watched looked exactly like a Home Depot shed.

The remarkable part comes when the designers work on the insides, turning miniscule pockets of space into storage and family-living wonders. Murphy beds figure heavily into the decorating schemes, as do bunk beds with desks tucked under them, sofas that convert to kitchen tables, and all manner of sly cubbies for stashing things.

It is impressive. One house had a double bed that pulled out of the wall like a silverware drawer. And somehow, the places always have vaulted ceilings that “give the feel of open space.”

Oh, but we haven’t gotten to the bathroom yet. Sigh. When your entire house is only slightly more spacious than a three-man outhouse, just how large can your bathroom be?

One tiny house featured a bathroom in which the shower was directly over the toilet, bringing new meaning to the term “multitasking.” Another house featured a round, sunken bathtub the size of a laundry bucket. This family had three small children. Three. The kids found the bathtub very charming, but give them time. They will grow.

And the house won’t grow with them, and that’s where the charm ends. I’m all for conserving space and energy, and nothing’s quite as delicious as a paid-off mortgage, but let’s think about this for a minute.

In a house whose master bedroom also serves as the family room, living room, playroom and den, where exactly does the mother of three go to escape? In a house with literally no hallways, how does one storm off in a righteous huff? And are they kidding about that dorm room-sized refrigerator?

Oh, and these places don’t usually have laundry rooms. Someday when the Church canonizes the tiny-house wives, it will be mostly because of the many loads of laundry they washed in a bucket out in the side yard.

These TV shows are pretty new, and I can see why they’re popular. It’s charming to imagine oneself living in a doll house. I think a tiny house might be perfect for a confirmed bachelorette of petite frame with no interest in entertaining and maybe one small cat.

When the families finally see their new tiny houses, everyone’s always running around with glee (actually, they’re jumping in place). But I wonder what we would see if the shows were to follow up. Let’s say, go back and visit the family of five after about six months of this. After all those days of sleeping in a drawer, cleaning food stains off the kitchen table-slash-sofa and bathing in a birdbath, we might see a family that’s ready to be featured in an episode of “Divorce Court.”

Or at least “Desperate Tiny Housewives.”

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.