Product Description

Put Your Life on a Diet: Lessons Learned Living in 140 Square Feet is the ultimate resource for living a simpler life as well as leaving behind a smaller environmental footprint and living a healthier life for you and the planet. In this book author Greg Johnson guides us in five significant areas-housing, food, technology, utilities, and transportation-teaching us how to create a simpler life, reducing stress in our own lives and harm to the environment. Due to the pressures and complexity of life today, the search for simplicity is being sought after like never before. Put Your Life on a Diet: Lessons Learned Living in 140 Square Feet offers the tools to escape the "cookie-cutter" existence so many are living today and find peace in a simpler lifestyle.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #239676 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

About the Author
Gregory Paul Johnson is the founder and Director of Resources for Life, an outreach and public interest organization based in Iowa City, Iowa.

Customer Reviews

Are you really living if you don't have a toilet?
I had high hopes for this book as a reflection on living in one of the Tumbleweed Tiny Houses. However, after a brief introduction summarizing some changes his life made after moving into the 150 sq ft dwelling, the rest of the book is mainly a series of guided reflections and questions on how you can pare down your life. I was hoping for more real life anectdotes rather than a self-help book. Anyway, my main criticism is that his 150 sq ft home is not really a home, since he admits he doesn't cook in it (barely ever used the sink, relies on eating out or instant foods) and there's no bathroom! That is called camping, not living. He does have some interesting ideas about using your neighborhood as your living space, but having to walk to your gym to use the bathroom every morning seems a bit unworkable for most. There is a chapter at the end where he discusses his lifestyle as not being amenable to having a spouse (no room for you, honey!) and a page where he briefly wonders how to live such a life with children (he doesn't have any that he mentions). So this book is perfect for an unmarried, unattached city dweller but probably of little use to anyone else.

FYI, all the other models of Tumbleweed Tiny houses do have toilets. Why he chose to live without one I don't know--other than maybe he couldn't get a permit or didn't want to deal with the hassle of emptying a tank.

There is still room out there for a personal memoir of actually living, not camping, in such a small space. I understand the author is trying to redefine what is necessary for living but this reader didn't find his vision completely realistic.

Nothing new
This book is just a collection of assorted musings and reflections that is probably better suited for a blog or magazine article than an actual book. The content is a lot of the same tips for "decluttering" or "going green" you see over and over again. I wouldn't recommend buying the book (it's pretty short and can be read in one sitting) just check out the author's website. He refers to his site several times anyway, and even recommends that the reader Google certain topics to learn more, which I find somewhat annoying. I usually pick up a book expecting to learn about a topic in greater detail than what I would find online, so when the book tells me to go back to the internet, why the heck am I wasting time with the book?

At first I was interested and inspired by the author's unique and simple lifestyle. Then I learned that his tiny home sits on the same lot as his father and step-mother's large traditional home. I imagine it's a lot easier to live without electricity, and to view water service and toilet facilities as "unnecessary expenses and hassles" when the family home is fifty feet away. Almost as disappointing as when I read that Thoreau's mom delivered baked goodies to him every weekend when he lived on Walden Pond. I suspect that to achieve simplicity, one must sacrifice some independence. Perhaps the author can share his thoughts on this trade-off in a future book.

where are the lessons learned and why is this a self help workbook?
I picked up this book hoping to learn from the experiences of someone who has lived in a tiny house. However, there is very little written about the actual experience of living in a tiny house. Instead, the book is formatted in a quasi-self help workbook complete with cheesy 'action plan' lists. I'm giving it two stars since it isn't valuable enough to sacrifice tiny house bookshelf space. It's not awful, but it's hardly what anyone looking for wisdom would hope for. Someone who lives in a tiny house could shed light into optimal room layout, house placement, how to live with pets, having guests over, house building/buying, etc. All of this actually useful information is of course not mentioned. The author instead talks about using public bathrooms, eating out all the time, and getting up at 5 am. The resources listed in the back were also a letdown. This book should be titled "how to put your life on a diet: an action plan workbook."