Mini Me (or “I Want to Be a Tiny Home Owner”)

Dear HGTV,

You make me lust over Tiny Houses. You dedicate no fewer than five shows to these treehouses and miniscule apartments and itty-bitty cabins in the forest, and you make this suburban hippie wanna-be drool over the idea of reducing my carbon, albeit wedge-heeled footprint.

tiny-house-in-the-trees-01 And I want one. Like 250-square-feet of luxurious TINY. Seriously, I do. Minimalist Me gets lost in the idea of simplicity. (“Minimalist Me” is not to be confused with “Minimal Me” who got lost in Lane Bryant years ago.)

ANYWAY… HAVING less makes me feel less…stressed, less distracted, less greedy, less overwhelmed.

The idea of utilizing every square inch makes me giddy. No empty space under the bed for dust bunnies or lost socks. No wasted 28-foot-long hallway to vacuum. eclectic-kitchen No room for superfluous baskets collecting laundry we don’t really even need for another 3 weeks. No spacious countertops serving as gathering places for dirty dishes and receipts and junk mail and “to do” lists that never get “to done”.

Oh, HGTV, you make it look like a tiny fairy tale. Organized, appealing, immaculate, idyllic.

But before I consider the plunge from excess to existential, I have a few questions:

Where is the best place in a tiny house to install the 80-gallon hot water heater for my jacuzzi tub? And will there be ample storage space for bath salts and essential oils?? (I mean, they aren’t called ESSENTIAL for nothing.)
If I attach a single speaker to an oscillating fan in the center of the dwelling, will it suffice as surround sound in such a small space?
Should Forest Whitaker and Jared Leto decide to break in during the middle of the night, is the apartment-sized refrigerator capable of doubling as a tiny Panic Room?
When one of our spawn stays for an overnight visit in our tiny house, can we have automatic airbags installed in the floor to serve as additional mattress space? Will this violate fire code?
I understand a retractable wall desk unfolds in front of the compost toilet so the tiny bathroom can also function as my tiny office, but is it possible for another space to double as a tiny workout room? On second thought, nix that. I’ll just post pictures of the exercise equipment so I can continue using it all exactly like I do now.
Where do I go when my significant other eats a not-so-tiny serving of baked beans? Normally, when the flatulent aftershocks hit, I can escape to the far end of the house. But if the far end of the house is only 7 ½ feet away, am I going to start thinking, “I’ve made a tiny mistake!”?
And my last question is, when I light a candle for ambiance, or to mask the effects of the aforementioned baked beans, how long can we survive in the enclosed tiny space before the candle flame reduces the oxygen level to a deadly 19.5%?