Creative Solutions to Your Housing Crisis According to Children’s Literature
A boxcar with no bathroom might be just the thing for your meager budget
If you are like one of the millions of people lacking affordable housing, it isn’t time to move back into your childhood bedroom and embrace defeat. We know you’re there already. But it is time to get inspired by your favorite childhood bedtime stories for a little housing inspiration.
There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe
Move over tiny houses and van life, this woman is living in a shoe. A Shoe! Now that’s a creative solution if I’ve ever heard one. Have you considered procuring yourself a shoe to live in? Um, move over Zillow, we’re all about Zappos now. Worried about not having enough space in a shoe? Perhaps you could ask Shaq for one of his? Those are pretty big — I bet you could fit in one if you got really flexible. Housing and upping your yoga practice? Double cha-ching, am I right?
This is just the type of creativity that we need in this modern society. And with declining birth rates, you wouldn’t have the crowding problem this old woman had with too many children. That’s more tongue and sole for you, baby! Plus if you get a pair of shoes, you can rent out the other one for some of that sweet passive income. Did the landlord just become the landloafer? We think yes!
James and the Giant Peach
This solution is perhaps a bit seasonal but very eco-friendly. Plus, just think of all the money you’ll save when you stop buying produce! You know what they say — you are what you eat and you eat what you live in. So, just get an abnormally large peach that you can hollow out — um, yum! Peach jam, anyone? And then move into your peach pit paradise.
This is a great solution for a summer home but don’t you worry! Once the temperatures dip and your home rots to the ground, you can replace it with a giant pumpkin — carriage version optional. (#VeganVanLife!) A Fairy Godmother will help in securing one of those giant pumpkins but not totally required. A farmer will do in a pinch.
The Borrowers
This is a brilliant answer — own nothing, borrow everything. Also shrink yourself down to be two inches tall. Sure, you will be deathly afraid of house cats for the rest of your life but the ability to sleep in a modified sardine can will be well worth the risk.
Plus, since technically you are living secretly inside the walls of a hundred year old mansion, you will save thousands on rent. Which is awesome because you are no longer big enough to handle legal tender, even a dime will be too much for you. Not like you have a dime to your name anyway. Survive 30 days and you can claim squatter’s rights. Which definitely holds up in itty bitty tenant court.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Ditch that IKEA furniture and replace it with all antiques so that you can hope to eventually stumble upon a magical land inside your wardrobe. A wardrobe that you currently have to own because your most recent quasi-legal rental doesn’t have closets or outlets or a working bathroom.
And, sure, the magical land has some weird stuff happening in it and maybe the entire land is descending into evil but hello, have you seen America lately? Just stay away from Turkish delight and then you have all the ability in the world to build yourself a dream house in Narnia — the zoning laws are very favorable from what I hear.
The Boxcar Children
Take a chapter from this chapter book and live in an abandoned boxcar! The charm of it will follow you for the rest of your life, we promise. This is especially an excellent option if you later discover you have an extremely wealthy relative who will take you in and let you live rent free in his mansion. But don’t you forget your time riding the imaginary rails in your boxcar! The charm of brief and easily escaped poverty will unite your family for the rest of time. For whatever reason, they never discuss how the children went to the bathroom. We assume a bucket of some sort?
These are the details you can reminisce about once you are in the comfort of that random childless wealthy relative who is totally ok becoming a legal guardian of you, a grown adult. If you don’t have a mysterious wealthy relative, you’ll probably have to figure out a more permanent bucket solution. But that’s a problem for you and your overly educated mind to solve!
There you have it. If you want an affordable place to live, you just need to hack the system and get inspired by your favorite middle grade reading requirement. Too bad you don’t have any space for books in the utility closet you are renting for sixty percent of your take home pay. Luckily libraries still exist — at least for now.
