I've found the tiny-house movement fascinating to watch from the outside. It's got a real appeal to me that's only increased as I've gradually transitioned from

I've found the tiny-house movement fascinating to watch from the outside. It's got a real appeal to me that's only increased as I've gradually transitioned from my youthful can't-wait-to-be-uploaded outlook to a much more reluctant relationship with tech and the always-on life. My concerns about trying it myself: 1) The country-living variety defeats any small-ecological-footprint appeal, unless you live like depression-era or earlier farmers (i.e. don't underestimate the ecological sensibility of a studio apartment in the city) 2) The urban/suburban variety is much harder to make work if you don't want to live illegally in someone's backyard, thanks to zoning, HOAs, et c., plus the cost of land very nearly ruins the money-saving angle. 3) Health care is really, really expensive. I doubt I could make enough money to cover that for my family, on top of other unavoidable expenses, while living a disconnected life in the sticks, as much as it might appeal to me otherwise, even with the savings from not having rent or a mortgage. That goes beyond "roughing it" to "irresponsible". 4) I've got a tickle in the back of my mind that a large part of this is a marketing ploy to sell mobile homes at a premium by appealing to "economy" and "eco-consciousness" when both of those would be better (or at least similarly-well) served by buying single-wide in an ordinary mobile home park, which for some reason[1] rarely comes up as an alternative. Incidentally, if you've ever been to poor rural areas along sleepy back-woods highways, you've undoubtably noticed that you can do the trailer thing and the dirt-cheap-land middle-of-nowhere thing, too. Of course, they're ugly and couldn't possibly be mistaken for Thoreau's cabin. Your pop-up camper approach seems sensible (though I, also with a family of four, can't imagine living quite that small full-time without going insane—a few weeks a year, sure) but it's not the kind of thing you see blog posts gushing about, covered by documentaries, or featured on magazine covers. [1] Class, almost certainly; trailer park = white trash redneck, "tiny house" = creative class, educated.