When people talk about simplifying their lives, the conversation typically turns to automated payments, task management apps, and clutter-free desktops. But for Christopher Smith, co-director of , “simplifying”聽meant shrinking his living quarters to just 124 square feet鈥攕maller than a McMansion鈥檚 tool shed鈥攁nd jettisoning most of his belongings.

With no prior construction experience and co-director/girlfriend Merete Mueller behind the camera, Smith set off to build a diminutive, eco-friendly abode near Hartsel, Colorado. Their outsized documentary is screening now and .

OUTSIDE: House sizes in America have doubled since the 1970s, even though family sizes have shrunk. What鈥檚 driving our appetite for square footage?
Smith: During the past few decades, people didn鈥檛 generally question the need to own a large home. It signified a better life and a better future for their kids. Striving toward a huge house is just what you did.

Mueller: It also has to do with building codes that date back to the 1950s. People were still reacting to the shanty towns that were common during the 1930s and it was an era when space and resources for new development seemed unlimited. So they established minimum sizes for structures considered “houses.”聽There was never any maximum, so we just kept building鈥攁nd filling the extra space with stuff.

Why do you think the small house movement has attracted so much attention?
Smith: The definition of聽“quality of life”聽seems to be shifting a bit, and some people鈥攑articularly millennials鈥攁re warming to the idea that you can live smaller to simplify your life. For me, it was buying some land in Colorado and trying to realize my dream of building my own home. I kept running into roadblocks. Going small started to make more and more sense.

Mueller: When we talk to other small house owners, we usually find that it came down to a financial equation: they wanted to start a business or get out of debt or open up some money to pursue a passion. The environmental benefit of living small is a bonus, but for us鈥攚e both have backgrounds in sustainability鈥攊t was one of the key drivers. We liked the idea of consuming less.

Christopher, you had no prior construction experience going into the project. Where did you start?
Smith: A lot people start out just like me鈥攚ith no experience. First, I spent hours researching small houses online and looking for inspiration. There are guides and plans out there, but nothing like the resources for regular construction, so in a way it isn鈥檛 as overwhelming. I ended up breaking the project into about 15 stages and learning what I needed to know for each individual stage. From start to finish, the house took about a year to build.

Granted, you guys are working on opposite coasts right now on a few different projects. But when you come home, what鈥檚 the biggest challenge living together in your tiny house?
Smith: It鈥檚 actually very livable. We don鈥檛 feel cramped and we end up using a lot more of our outdoor space and the resources in our community. It just forces you to create your own personal space, whether it鈥檚 putting on headphones or going out for a walk.

Mueller: To me, it鈥檚 a lot like New York City where you use your apartment as a home base but spend more time in caf茅s, parks, and other public places. It鈥檚 kind of a suburban phenomenon that we spend so much time behind closed doors in these big houses with tons of rooms.

Any advice for readers who might be thinking about building a small house of their own?
Smith: If you鈥檙e just starting to think about building a small house, you could get creative and tape an outline on your floor to get a sense of the footprint. This won鈥檛 give you the same feeling of being inside but it can give you a rough idea, and that鈥檚 a start.

If you鈥檙e thinking about it seriously, visit a small house and spend time there before you commit to anything. Sleep there, wake up there. Make sure you can see yourself living in that kind of space.

More than anything, though, keep in mind that you don鈥檛 have to build a small house to downsize. You try on a more simplified life today, starting from right where you are. Get rid of a few things you don鈥檛 use and just see how far it takes you.

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By now, you’ve likely seen the photos. On the afternoon of July 3, a train paralleling Montana鈥檚 Clark Fork River derailed at Atherton Gorge, sending payloads of soybeans, denatured alcohol (not for drinking, this is the stuff ), and Boeing plane parts into the water鈥攁nd into view of stunned outdoor enthusiasts.

While photographs of the failure made waves in international news, the accident was actually more spectacle than disaster. 鈥淪ince the denatured alcohol and soybeans were contained, the damage is very temporary,鈥� , fisheries manager of Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks told 国产吃瓜黑料. 鈥淭here was really no impact.鈥�

The , aren鈥檛 as conspicuous or visible as fuselages鈥攖hey tend to be subtler, come on more gradually, and cause long term damage. Of the more-than 500,000 miles of rivers analyzed in the 2004 National Water Quality Inventory, the USEPA found that .

For the most part, the biggest threats to rivers are results of our attempts to control them. , constructed to retain water and create energy, damage downstream ecosystems, disrupt the flow of nutrient-rich silt, are aging, and have little water to hold back. As a result of damming and diversion鈥攆or agricultural, municipal, and residential use鈥攕ome of the , requiring intensive cooperation between countries to maintain any flow at all.

We can damage waterways when we put them to use, but rivers get caught in the crossfire when we forget to include them in our plans, too. Fertilizer runoff is . The way watersheds are graded, this pollution, as well as stormwater runoff from cities, inevitably ends up in rivers and streams.

Groups like , , and 鈥攁long with other watershed groups and the USEPA鈥攕pend lots of time and money restoring (or at least improving) rivers, but all it takes is one spill to send them right back to bad places.聽

鈥淔rom our perspective, this is a wake up call,鈥� said Karen Knudsen, executive director of the . 鈥淎s disturbing as this is, imagine if it鈥檇 been tankers full of crude oil, which are increasingly shipped through Missoula. We we lucky in this case that it was just airplane parts.鈥�

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