Small Takes with Jeff Waldman
How a couple living in 850 square feet in San Francisco make it work
What a wild time it is right now. Before we dive into this month’s Small Takes, I wanted to share a few newsletters helping me navigate it all. of the newsletter Chop Wood, Carry Water makes taking action easy. from Letters from an American is doing an excellent job of contextualizing this political insanity within American history. And I’m hanging on every word from longtime activist and journalist Sammy Roth, who writes Boiling Point.
In Small Takes, I ask people who are living small how they make it work. This month, I’m introducing you to
of Elevated Spaces. Jeff is a builder and maker in San Francisco. I first became interested in Jeff’s work when a cabin he and his wife Molly built (with the help of friends) was featured in Dwell magazine. Not long after, the couple lost the house in a 2020 wildfire.Watching from afar as they’ve rebuilt on their land after fire has been a lesson in resilience. Faced with their loss, they first rebuilt an outhouse and constructed a small A-frame while they figured out what was next. They ended up building a cabin much simpler than the first one using lumber they milled themselves from trees that were killed in the fire.
Jeff sells plans for these do-it-yourself structures and two years ago he began writing a bi-weekly newsletter Elevated Spaces, which swiftly became one of my must-reads. To my delight, Jeff’s ideas about building friendship through regularly scheduled calls and having “a thing” are just as interesting as his musings about the power of measurements and how to build stuff in trees. You can read and see more of Jeff and Molly’s cabin here, but today we’re visiting their 850-square-foot home in the Sunset neighborhood in San Francisco.
Here’s how Jeff and Molly make their small space work:
What is your definition of living small?
[With 850 square feet and a garage] I’m not sure that I’d identify as living small. But to me it means being mindful about our possessions and space and how it’s organized. It’s all relative, of course, as “small” is subjective and most modern American living (and consumption) is quite large by historical measure.
What is the real reason you live small?
Excess space just means more stuff: More things to care for and maintain, more space to fill. It’s work. Being mindful about how much space is truly necessary and using it in an efficient way, paired with a thoughtfulness about the objects we own, seems like a more efficient way to live.
Both Molly and I have hobbies and a (practical, we think) need for a certain amount of gear/tools in our life, but giving consideration to exactly what we need means likely we’re more likely to be buying quality goods from manufacturers we want to support and ultimately reducing clutter in our relatively small home, which it turn imbues it with positive vibes.
What has living small given you?
Coziness. Tidiness. A feeling of things being “ship shape.” A more intimate relationship with the objects we own because they’re carefully considered and fill a very specific need.
What is a small change you made to your home that made a big difference?
Having things organized and labeled in an obvious way that's immediately accessible, which Adam Savage refers to as “first order retrievability.” Having a well-organized, external storage space (a garage) has made it a lot easier to curate a more comfortable home.
And plants. More plants. I can’t take any credit for them. It’s all Molly. But I benefit from her efforts there. Each room feels warmer with plants.
What is your greatest home extravagance?
We have a small wood-fired sauna in the backyard. Our friends who lived in this house before us constructed it before we moved in. Every Wednesday we heat it with scrap from my woodshop for a standing, open-invitation, sauna night with friends. You never know who will pop in: It might be one person, or last week we had over a dozen. That uncertainty of who will walk through the door is exciting and having a standing activity on the calendar, that friends (or friends of friends) can opt into, has proven to be a significant social tool in our lives.
What’s something you’re obsessed with right now?
Making my own furniture. I dabbled a little before moving into this home, but recently have dived in deeper. Largely it’s a response to this house. It’s got some quirky proportions and the ability to design furniture to exactly fill those spaces—even if it’s not very good furniture—feels like a sort of super power.
What’s a home design lesson you learned the hard way?
That things cost a lot—and that they probably should cost a lot! Molly and I have built cabins, milled wood, and laid rock, tile, and flooring. It’s all So. Much. Work. Likewise, having made some furniture, I’m surprised that anyone can afford even one chair. It takes a monumental amount of labor and expertise to produce our homes and the things we fill them with. We’ve both gained so much respect for that over the past eight or so years of our own construction efforts.
Putting these costs into perspective has helped me realize I’d rather buy a quality item from a trusted maker–and am comfortable paying them quite a bit for their labor–but it’s been a learning process and one that’s ongoing.
What’s one way that your home is sustainable?
Some amount of mindful purchasing I suppose, but “sustainable” is not a word that I’d tend to identify with. Human existence means a lot of resources being consumed. Full stop. For example, we had solar panels on our old cabin, which folks tend to think of as “sustainable.” But the production of those panels and the subsequent destruction of them via a wildfire that hit our property probably negates whatever meager amount of energy we “saved.”
Is there a home design book you’d like to recommend?
A Pattern Language, always A Pattern Language. And then maybe to better contextualize our home: How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand, At Home by Bill Bryson, and A Place of My Own by Michael Pollan.
Plus, a full list of books recommended on Living Small right this way.
Can you share a favorite newsletter for living small?
. Lloyd’s books and his blogging have been a cornerstone of the small living and hand-crafted home movement for decades. His enduring curiosity, excitement, and vigor–as he crests 90 years of living–is a beacon to me.Ed note: I could not agree more:
is such an inspiration in so many ways. I asked him to do Small Takes, but he politely declined–but maybe someday?What helps you stay organized in your small home?
Living with a partner and having friends come by frequently. I would likely keep a fairly organized home, but it does seem easier to let organization (and aesthetics and vibes) slip when there’s no one else around. Having another person to consider or entertain pushes me to make a little more effort in setting the mood, tidying up, and creating a comfortable space. Our home benefits greatly from the accountability.
Thank you so much for being a part of Small Takes, Jeff. You can follow along with Jeff’s work @elevatedspaces and by subscribing to his excellent newsletter Elevated Spaces.
Read past editions of Small Takes:
3 More Things
The best small space I saw this week was the Austin home of the founders of the firm Side Angle Side in Domino. Interiors are not quite my style, but I love an H-shaped ranch and appreciate the architectural changes they made to the house (additional photos on their site here).
Reading: Two articles lifted my spirits this week: The New Yorker’s story about Civic Standard, an unconventional community center and arts organization in small-town Vermont. A reader pointed me to this one from the New York Times about an inspiring mending and clothing repair shop in the West Village (gift link).
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’s newsletter this week about voluntary simplicity really hit home for me.Listening: Music is such a balm. I’ve been listening to Hurray for the Riff Raff’s album The Past Is Still Alive on repeat. What new-ish music are you listening to?
One last thing: Save the date.
THE SAUNA NIGHT, be still my sauna/community heart!!!!
My husband and I have just started Sunday Soup Night with an open invitation to our dear friends in the neighborhood. The simple rules are: house is open from 5-8 every week, contributions are welcome but not expected, RSVPs are helpful but not required. As we find our feet for hosting larger groups each week we're working to widen the invite list to neighbors we don't know well but hope to know better. While this is something we've talked about doing for years, the darkness of this political moment definitely kicked our butts into gear this winter to make this happen and I've been inspired by the wide writing on building community from folks like Rosie Spinks and Ann Helen Petersen. I agree with Jeff, weekly gatherings are helping us keep the house tidy! Doing the work to build community lightens my heart.
And Laura, thanks for the recommendation about Chop Wood, Carry Water. I'd previously come across it but now is definitely the time to subscribe!