Marae living on a tiny scale
Auckland mother-of-five Nicole Marsh realised the homeowner-with-mortgage treadmill left her overwhelmed and overworked, so she came up with a novel solution, writes Joanna Davis.
Nearly three years ago, Auckland motherof-five Nicole Marsh undertook a radical reassessment of her own values, and decided to get off the home-owner-withmortgage treadmill.
In the first Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020, Marsh (Ngā ti Kahungunu, Rangitā ne) was working full time, paying the home loan on her hard-won, three-bedroom Dannevirke home and parenting her children, now aged 12 to 21.
‘‘I was living a normal life, paying a mortgage, doing all those things we’re told we’re supposed to do to be valued,’’ she says.
‘‘And then I looked at my life, my priorities and values and I thought, ‘you know what? My life is not aligned to that.’’’
In the exercise, Marsh identified her top values as motherhood, time, kindness, creativity and spirituality.
The Manawatū home, Marsh’s first, had been a huge achievement, bought in 2017 years after she left her relationship in Brisbane, Australia, and moved back to Aotearoa with the children.
‘‘I worked and worked and worked and wanted to buy a house,’’ she says, adding she believed hard work was a good example to her children.
But by 2020 she felt her house was ‘‘deteriorating’’ and she became unwell, ‘‘overwhelmed and overworked’’.
So she decided to sell up and go tiny.
She, and her three daughters who are still at home – Quinn, 12, Bo, 14, and Lili, 16 – are now living in the 3m by 10m tiny home in rural north Auckland, on Marsh’s brother and sister-in-law’s lifestyle block.
The home, called Whare Mā rama, took out the ‘‘most creative design’’ award at the NZ Tiny House Awards last month.
The judges described it as ‘‘stunning, especially all of the materials, and all of that beautiful glass’’.
‘‘I feel like this home has a really lovely flow, and I like the idea of only having a few walls so that you’re drawn to go outside to retreat and re-centre.
‘‘The marae-style sleeping and really thinking about how your family moves through the space was really clever too,’’ wrote judge Kate van den Bergh.
Marsh says she intentionally went with an open sleeping platform on the mezzanine for her three daughters after thinking about the way they lived.
‘‘I observed how my family moved through space. We were always together. We would always sleep in the lounge together in the normal-size house. Not every night, but most nights, especially weekends.’’
The girls not having their own rooms was also intentional.
‘‘In terms of having no walls and no privacy, my intention was: If you need space, go outside. If you need your own time, go outside rather than withdraw into your room and onto your phone.’’
She says that, while the marae-style sleeping ‘‘is a cultural thing, but it’s definitely just how my family are: We’re so close and it doesn’t bother us that we’re always together.’’
Stefan Bennett, from The Little Big Tiny House Co, which built Marsh’s home, says he was stoked with the win for his bespoke tiny home company as well as for Marsh ‘‘because it was her design’’.
Bennett’s Rotorua-based company, which has been in business for four years, does not have standard designs but typically builds single-storey tiny homes only, and Marsh’s design with the mezzanine floor was a challenge.
‘‘Our gantry wasn’t high enough,’’ Bennett says. ‘‘It was hard work during the process, but it’s a huge amount of satisfaction seeing it finished.’’
Marsh says she is now debt-free and able to take on a lower-stress, part-time role as a receptionist. The company she has signed on with has been sold, so her position is not guaranteed to continue, but because of the choices she has made, she feels relaxed about that.
She has no mortgage payments, and maintenance and living costs are lower.
She says there’s one more benefit to tiny house living: less cleaning.
‘‘When I was thinking what was really important to me was how the kids remember me as a mum. I don’t want to be that nagging person who tells them to clean up all the time.’’
Living tiny is Marsh’s long-term plan. ‘‘It’s opened up so much freedom, so much more choice.’’