The Joy of Tiny House Living. Chris Schapdick
the plan for how you’re going to finance and where you’re going to put your tiny house, you’ll need to consider the material aspects of your endeavor. Tiny house living is an expression of what’s important to you, and when you only have a small space, you can’t have everything. This is a vital question: What is essential for you in a home? You will have to make tradeoffs; you will have to think very carefully about what the house has to have. If you can’t live without a dishwasher, then your tiny house should have a dishwasher; but you must realize that for every item you consider essential, there’s going to be a cost, either financially or spatially or both. There will be things that you will initially feel like you need, but think about whether they are even feasible in a tiny house. If you truly need four bedrooms or a huge walk-in closet to hold your hundreds of articles of clothing, then tiny living is probably not for you. This brings us to another vital question: Are you able to part with most of your stuff? However you’re currently living, it most likely affords you the ability to own many more possessions than you can if you live in a tiny house.
The final question to consider when deciding whether tiny is right for you brings us back full circle to the beginning. Imagine yourself in your tiny house. What do you look forward to the most about living tiny? Think about this and take a minute to jot down your answers. Is it the ability to move your house to another location if you choose to? Is it the fact that you’re going to feel more comfortable in a smaller space with fewer things and fewer burdens? Is it the financial freedom that many people enjoy in the tiny house community? Whatever the case may be, whatever your personal answer is, make sure that you have a good understanding of where you are and how you fit into the tiny house equation. “Well, I like tiny houses, and that’s why I want one,” is not a good enough answer.
I hope all the questions we’ve raised here have given you plenty of food for thought and some things to work out for yourself. Getting them straight in your head will allow you to plan for your tiny house effectively.
EXPERIENCES VERSUS STUFF: MINIMALISM
The American Dream has always emphasized going big and doing better: go to college, buy a car, get married, buy a house, have kids, retire, and so on. There are certain elements of this philosophy that we’ve all adopted; our parents likely bought into this idea as well. But in the modern day, some people are concluding that this exact vision is not necessarily what they want out of life.
Part of the American Dream in the last century has been focused on consumerism and consumption. As a result, most of us have acquired way too much stuff for our own good. We have houses that are too big and filled with too many things. We have garages that aren’t used for parking cars but for housing our overflow of stuff. And when there simply isn’t enough space in the house, well, off-site self-storage is a booming industry in the United States. There are over 50,000 self-storage facilities in the U.S. that bring in over $30 billion in annual revenue. Many people end up living to work instead of working to live because they have big mortgages and other financial commitments. After acquiring more and more possessions and tying themselves down financially, many people have started to wonder whether this is indeed what they want to be doing. They ask, “How do I break this cycle? How do I lower my bills? How do I decouple from this never-ending rat race? Is it making me happy?”
Less is very often more.
Going tiny is a process of self-discovery; it’s about figuring out what’s fulfilling in life to you, other than possessions. I’m sure you’ve already heard of the notion of experiences being more valuable than stuff. We all have stuff, but when you spend your money and time on more experiences instead of more stuff, you enhance your life. This trading of things for experiences is quite rewarding. And the side effect of prioritizing experiences over stuff, living clutter-free, for many people equates to living worry-free. There’s been a great deal of interest recently in books that help you downsize your possessions. Letting go of things and assessing what’s truly important to you is a process that you have to take on personally, figuring out where you fit into the minimalism spectrum.
As we discussed in the previous section, tiny houses are a lot smaller, and therefore the things that you put into your tiny house have to, by their very nature, be important to you. Otherwise, there’s simply no room for them. As you go through this process of deciding what experiences you value, what it is you’re trading your possessions for, you will learn what’s important to you, find out who you are, define what you want from your life, and take steps toward that.
Living Clutter Free: Downsizing
How do you start down the path of living without clutter? Based on my experience, I advise you to do it slowly and take it one step at a time. One good way to start is to take just ten minutes each day to look around the space you’re currently occupying and find things that you don’t need. Sometimes these things are tucked away in a closet; sometimes they are shoved under a bed. Think about things that you haven’t used in a while (for weeks, months, or even years). We all have those items. If you haven’t used (or seen) something in months, do you need it? Seek out these unnecessary items and dispose of them, either by recycling them, selling them, donating them, or throwing them away.
Here are a few focus areas you can tackle in your quest to downsize.
Kitchen: Are there utensils and appliances that you don’t use anymore? Kitchenware is infamous for one-use tools; if it only serves one specific purpose, can you do without it? How do you, personally, cook? Think about how you prepare meals—and I’m not talking about meals that you make once a year on a special occasion. I’m talking about your everyday life. How many cups and mugs and plates and spoons and bowls and pots and spatulas do you have? Count them; the number may shock you. Do you need them all?
Wardrobe: Clothing is another excellent place to purge. We all have those items that don’t fit us anymore, or that have gone out of style, but we still like holding onto them; they continue to hang in our closet year after year, untouched. Some of us have too many shoes, and we likely don’t need or wear all of them. We also have highly seasonal clothing only suitable for certain times of the year, instead of pieces that are versatile. Considering all of this, what can you get rid of?
Media: Media takes up a ton of room in many people’s homes. If you have an extensive CD or DVD collection, could you switch to virtual copies or subscription services instead? This potential for space savings also holds true for books. I know many people like to have a book collection, and I’m no different in that regard; I certainly have more books than I need. More and more, though, I find myself either reading a book and then passing it on to someone else, or reading an electronic version of a book. Give it a try.
We all have something like this clutter at home—and for some of us, it’s our entire home. Are you prepared to cut down on your worldly possessions to live tiny? Are you prepared to prioritize only what matters most to you?
You may be proud of your music collection, and rightfully so. But consider going digital—media is one of the easiest categories in which you can reduce your possessions in order to fit into a tiny house.
INTERVIEW WITH
ALEX EAVES
Alex: I am Alex Eaves, and I am the Reuse brand owner, filmmaker, and 98-square-foot (9-square-meter) tiny house dweller living inside a used box truck.
Chris: What made you choose a box truck versus any of the many other options that tiny living enthusiasts