Spur(ring) The Tiny(House)ness, Texas



Last week, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal ran another story on our local tiny-house-friendly town, Spur, Texas. [Blogger note: For those of you not familiar with Spur, they are the first town in the US to actively embrace and encourage the tiny house lifestyle.

 

 

They built it and the people are thundering in like a small herd of box turtles.] It was good to get caught up. I am sneaking in some photos garnered from the website.

Bright sun and a pumpjack, must be home.

Loving the skylights.

To be honest, I have been slacking in keeping up with goings-on in Spur; not from a lack of interest as much as a presence of way too many interests. After reading the AJ article, I popped over to spurfreedom.org and poked around for a while. My favorite part of that site is always the blog, and again it did not disappoint.
 

 

As life gets busier, more complicated, and more stressful here in the city, I see a great appeal in finding a way to live low-cost and low-profile in a place like Spur. I recommend reading the How to make friends and get along in Spur, TX blog post. They have a library, a community garden, and they are near hiking trails and a reservoir. Pretty tempting stuff.

 



Avalanche Journal: Follow-Up on Spur Tiny Houses

 

May you find the place that is just right for you, be it Spur or Bangladesh. Happy Monday, friends!

Tiny House Articles: A Year of Tiny and USA Today heads to Spur, Texas

A young married couple with the run-down on tiny house living after their first year.

Take special note of the bathroom fan advice and the importance of planning for ice cream!

Favorite line: we have found that our friends now introduce us as “these are the tiny house people we were telling you about”

A Year of Tiny

Back in August, USA Today reported on the phenomena of tiny houses and started the piece with info about Jeremy Hensley, the first person to accept Spur, Texas' invitation to move to town to live the tiny house lifestyle.

Favorite line: Owners of tiny homes "aren't people who are going to be spending money on their mortgage." Jeremy Hensley

Building communities one tiny house at a time

And here is the Spur tiny house blog: Small Footprint, Big Freedom

May you dream big and live tiny, or something like that.

Texas in Eco-News this Week

Just bringing together a few things I have run across this week for you locals and semi-locals.

Texas messes with Texas, pits landowners against pipeline-builders (Keystone XL)

Joel Kotkin thinks you want to live in Houston. Here’s why you don’t. (Suburban vs. Urban)

Spur Coming Up! (Spur Tiny House Pessimism)

Texas couple builds 100 sq. ft. tiny home for $7,000 (Snagit! That thing is tiny!)

Code 3 Hillbilly Emergency (From SmallTownTexas) (Aquaponics and herpetology!)

May you have plenty to talk about around the coffee maker this week!

PS. Here is another tiny house website  with an article about Spur: http://tinyhousebuild.com/tiny-house-friendly-town/

Tiny Houses Closer to Home - Spur, Texas

As a West Texas green guy, it's often discouraging to see how little our area embraces the idea of conservation and modest living, but I keep seeing little points of hope.

In the Lubbock paper this morning, there is a story about Spur, a small town about an hour east of here, that has apparently just become the first American town to embrace the tiny house movement by modifying their building codes to accept and encourage building houses that are under 1000 square feet.

And I just want to say, "Way to go Spur!!!"

For you tiny housers out there looking for a place to land, you should definitely check it out. Spur has a very cool Main Street with old-school buildings. The place is laid back, and the surrounding country is rugged and beautiful - more interesting than a lot of our area.

To learn more, or just to find some interesting local reading, visit spurfreedom.com

May you find abundance in less and love where you live.