Champion of Enoughness

Meet Jane Hilliard. The building designer advocating to build less.

This is Jane, lutruwita/Tasmanian building designer, big thinker, veggie gardener, morning walker, feather and rock picker-upper, and great mate of mine.

Recently Jane was asked to be interviewed by Sarah Aitken for an article in Pip Magazine about the concept of enoughness. It’s a theme that cycles around her client work and personal life too. She asked me to take photos for the article, and I was thrilled to be involved.

Find the article here and the accompanying podcast here.

And Jane has just fired up her own Substack newsletter, you can follow along with her thoughts on enoughness here…

What's Enough?

Enoughness is a word that pops up regularly when Jane and I get together for a walk or a cuppa. We chew over its meaning and the way we both implement it in our lives.

Jane says that enoughness is about working out what you need to be happy and healthy, without taking more than you need.

Figuring that out though is an ever-morphing concept. It’s not a hard line in the sand. It’s different for everyone, and changes as life changes.

Enoughness is something to tuck into your quiver of values and pull out every now and then to use a lens for decision-making. Both big life decisions and all of those micro-decisions we make every day that add up over time, all benefit from an enoughness check-in.

Image: Jane standing in the verandah of her garden studio.

The thing about enoughness that I love is that when we tap into what enough looks like in our lives, then anything extra can overflow to other folks and places that might benefit from the resources we have.

Maybe it’s our time, money, a granny flat, our skills or our abundance of zucchinis.

For instance, if we’re talking about building or renovating, then deciding to build a smaller home means less mortgage, which means less work and less stress, which means more bandwidth to help others and/or the planet by volunteering or donating any overflowing resources in a direction that is meaningful to you.

Image: One of Jane’s curious chooks.

Enoughness is not the same as minimalism though (here are a few thoughts from Jane on that) nor is it about everyone living in tiny houses.

What you and your family need to be healthy and happy might be completely different from what your neighbour needs.

A beautiful thing about enoughness is that it looks and feels different to everyone. Enoughness isn’t a one-size-fits-all, Instagram-able, hashtag-able thing. It’s a personal adventure of analysis and action - a joyful way of expressing ourselves.

Image: Harvesting rainbow chard.

So getting back to Jane…

She founded her building design practice, Designful around 10 years ago, where she and her team design custom homes and renovations while carefully considering the impact of their designs socially, economically, and on the planet.

Designful launches every project by nutting out a values-led brief, which hones in on the client’s values, lifestyle, and what feels like enough for them, well before the pencil hits the paper.

A couple of years ago Jane launched Homeful, which is a series of affordable, planet-friendly, and very cool small pre-designed home plans, to kick-start your home building journey. Jane’s mission with Homeful is to make sustainable homes that ooze enoughness, accessible to more people.

In her own life, a beautiful example of enoughness is the affordable studio apartment in her garden that Jane rents out. It’s called Home Base. It has helped lots of people who find themselves in the midst of the Hobart rental crisis.

Image: Jane’s very cool garden studio with an outdoor kitchen.

Jane steps up in her industry to call out popular ideas like bigger-is-better, the overuse of native forest timbers, and the toxic culture of marketing and advertising where photos of ‘perfect’ homes are in the business of making us feel inadequate.

You should follow her here and here on Instagram. You’ll be punching the air along with me.

Jane and I are on a personal mission to take photos of her completed projects that feature the stuff of life, and people using the spaces as they were designed to be used. We’re having a hoot, bucking the trend of perfectly styled human-less architectural photos. This is a fun example.

I’ll stop here because this feels like enough.

Bravo Jane!

Image: Jane in her veggie patch in front of her garden studio.

Damn good links

Here are a few damn good links for you on the theme of enoughness and degrowth. Also, you can find an ongoing list of great things to listen to, read, and watch here.

PODCAST / Pip Podcast #40: Jane Hilliard “As overconsumption continues to drive the climate crisis, Tasmanian building designer, Jane Hilliard, is quietly trumpeting the idea that less is actually more.” 

ARTICLE / THE NEW PLENTY – Meet the house designer championing the notion of ‘enoughness’ written by Sarah Aitken, photo by me, for Pip Magazine.

PODCAST / JASON HICKEL: Degrowth economics! It’s wild, it could save us. From Sarah Wilson’s podcast Wild. “Economic anthropologist Jason Hickel is possibly the leading voice in the degrowth movement... Degrowth pivots around the wild idea that constant growth - and GDP - is the wrong goal. Instead, human, and planetary wellbeing should be our marker of progress. You know, if we want to survive.”