Lockdown in a tiny house
They were meant to get married last weekend. Instead a New Plymouth couple are stuck in lockdown in a tiny house.
Glen Bennett, the Labour candidate for New Plymouth, and his partner, Jon O’Neill, are in lockdown at home, but in a bubble smaller than most. Since just before Christmas, the couple have been renting an 18-square metre house, about the size of a shipping container.
The couple had to postpone their wedding, scheduled for Saturday, because of the lockdown. They had planned to get married near the sea, by the Coastal Walkway at East End.
Instead, they spent the morning looking out at a clear blue sky thinking what a perfect day it would have been for a wedding. But Bennett said lockdown itself had not been so bad, despite the confined space.
‘‘Funnily enough we’re not falling over each other,’’ he said.
‘‘The beautiful thing about lockdown, so far, is the weather’s been so good. There’s a big ranch slider, basically half the tiny home, that opens right out and a little deck and a wee lawn. We look over the valley towards the Huatoki walkway. It’s lovely.’’
And if the weather turned feral in the next few weeks, forcing them inside, he doesn’t think there would be a problem.
‘‘I think it will be harder but it will be harder for everybody. Families are doing it far tougher than we are.
‘‘We’ve had a couple of months to kind of get used to the tiny house and how it works and how we work within that space.’’
The only problem he has had was when he hurt his back last week, which meant bending down to get into the laundry was ‘‘not ideal’’.
They liked the idea of a tiny house partly because it reduced their environmental footprint, he said.
‘‘It has solar panels so on a good day like today it will get us credits. It was a whole lifestyle change and seemed liked a really good option.’’
Before moving into a much smaller space, Bennett used to manage the 19-room Arcadia Lodge in New Plymouth. This meant parting with lots of their possessions.
‘‘You have to think of everything in the home; does it have more than one use? Obviously there’s not much space to put all your things.
‘‘It was hard, because I’ve always been a bit of a collector of trinkets and kitsch and retro. People said, ‘Are you going to put things in storage?’. We said, ‘No. If we’re going to downsize, we’re going to downsize.’’’