POWER AND GRACE
A WORLD-CLASS SPRINGBOARD DIVER IS NOT ONLY RELISHING A SECOND CHANCE AT HER ATHLETIC CAREER BUT ALSO HOPING HER TINY-HOMES BUSINESS WILL HAVE A BIG IMPACT ON THE PLANET
A world- class athlete dives deep into the world of perfectly formed tiny homes
INDOOR JUNGLE
The living wall in Shaye's lounge has many species of indoor plants including begonias, bromeliads, strawberries, podophyllum, and maidenhair ferns. She designed the wall herself; water flows in a piping system between galvanized steel gutters. The plants sit in felt pockets, which wick the water from the troughs. The hardest part was sewing the felt pockets, Shaye says.
THERE’S AN EXACT moment after diver Shaye Boddington springs from the diving board when she feels pure bliss. Gone are the wriggling nerves that preceded her dive. Even before the 2018 Commonwealth Games rep begins her climb up the slippery metal ladder to the springboard, she’s had to mentally make the butterfly nerves retreat. She visualizes folding herself into a tight ball for a tuck, unfurling into the three and a half somersaults to follow, and then the delicate entry into the water. She explodes off the board into her dive; a beautiful whirl of athleticism that’s over in less than three seconds.
“I feel very present, and I enjoy the sensation of spinning. When I enter the water, it’s an amazing feeling of power and grace,” she says.
The judges give high scores to divers who are graceful, powerful and make small splashes as they enter the water. In her tiny home in Oratia, West Auckland, Shaye is also trying to land lightly on the planet. The five-metre-by-2.8-metre house (plus porch) in which she and fiveyear-old daughter Hazel live is teeny-weeny, “unsplashy” and all they need to live comfortably. The home, built by Shaye’s company, Shaye’s Tiny Homes, is so new it smells of freshly sawn timber.
Shaye, a veteran of New Zealand’s tiny-house movement, has been living in tiny homes for six years and building them commercially (with a team of builders) for the past five. Living small has made her aware of “stuff” coming into her home.
She has rules around gifts for Christmas and birthdays: “Nothing plastic-y” for Hazel (whose nickname is Hazie) and nothing large. Gifts of experiences, such as outdoor adventures, get two thumbsup. “Christmas gives me anxiety; it’s as though I can feel the landfills piling up with stuff. I’m not perfect; Santa bought a dancing unicorn for Hazel, and it broke on Christmas Day. Toys can be so fleeting. The fewer toys Hazie has in her room, the more value she places on the ones she has.
“I am quite excited to find out how growing up in a tiny house might shape her personality. I hope it helps her have gratitude and to be creative, and I want to teach her how to make a positive impact.”
Shaye’s tiny houses sell, ready-built and including a trailer, for $110,000 to $150,000, depending on the fit-out and design. “I’m not making a killing from it, building tiny houses makes me feel like I’m making a significant difference.”
Tiny houses not only reduce consumerism, but they also offer people some financial freedom, she says.
“When you aren’t living paycheque-to-paycheque you can stop to think, ‘What do I want to do with my life?’ When people aren’t struggling, that’s when they start helping others and the community.
“I used to be a bit judgemental about people who didn’t look after the environment. Then I was sick during my pregnancy with hyperemesis gravidarum (severe nausea). I was so sick for nine months I didn’t care, and I stopped recycling. I realized it’s hard to care about bigger issues when you are simply surviving.”
Shaye has had her fair share of struggles. Her family fled Zimbabwe in 2002 (when she was 15) during civil unrest in the wake of Robert Mugabe’s land seizures. They arrived in Aotearoa with just five suitcases.
She had been a champion diver in Zimbabwe and quickly made the New Zealand team. But in 2004, three months out from the Athens Olympics, she quit. An eating disorder she had been keeping secret from friends and family had left her body ravaged. The bulimia meant she would binge eat and then throw up, sometimes more than 30 times a day.
The pressure of high-performance sport was making her behaviour worse. “I knew I couldn’t go on. I remember one night having a panic attack, not at the thought of diving but at the thought of just existing and carrying on as I was. I knew I needed to cut back on anything that was triggering my eating disorder, and getting into togs every day wasn’t helping.”