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Update: Check out our interview on tiny home living in The New Pioneer magazine Winter 2020 edition!
We live in a tiny house. It’s not the smallest I’ve ever seen, but it’s pretty small for two adults and a growing baby. Including our storage-only loft, our house is still less than 300 sq ft (Tiny House Living, Amazon link). I think it’s a mansion compared to what we started without here, which was less than 100 sq ft. As much as I love our little cabin, it has always been a temporary space. There are lots of reasons to love it, and just as many reasons to be excited to start our larger forever cabin. Just like every aspect of life, tiny house living has its pros and cons.
Pros of living in a tiny house:
There is no room to collect junk when you live in a tiny house. This is a good thing for me, as I love a good junk collection!
It’s really hard not to be organized in a tiny home. This means almost always knowing where something is when you want it.
Tiny houses are super fast to clean when you do have the occasional mess.
Small spaces are easier to heat, which is especially nice if you are off grid and heating with a wood stove.
Smaller houses are cheaper to build and maintain than an average home.
Cons of tiny house living:
There isn’t much room to spread out in such small spaces. This means things like big baking projects and art projects don’t really happen.
More than one person in a tiny house means a lot of bumping into each other! It also means it’s hard to have friends over, so we usually end up visiting rather than having visitors.
Unfortunately, living in a tiny home means little to no privacy. There are no doors in our house, for example, just a wider than average doorway leading from the main living area to our bedroom.
At least with small log homes, there is no sound dampening. I can hear Kyle running the chainsaw outside, or the chickens singing the egg song, or the goats playing.
Coming home from grocery shopping is like playing Tetris (Amazon), sometimes more than one round. We will often bring in half of our goods, rearrange and put them away, then bring in the second half and do it again.
If you think you can handle the cons along with the pros, a tiny house might be right for you!
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We lived in a tiny house (a converted donkey stable) and loved it! It had very thick stone walls though, so the noise issue wasn’t such an issue 🙂
We were used to living small, as we lived in a tiny apartment in the city before.
I also loved the fact that everything had its place, and things without a place just had to go. Nice and simple.
I suppose living tiny in Spain is a lot easier than in Alaska though… between May and October, we’re only inside for siesta and sleeping anyway.
I think the ideal situation is to have a tiny house – and an extra building with a workshop and a kitchen / project room 🙂
We moved from a large 2 story in Washington. Then we lived in a tent for a bit, then less than 100 sq ft, to what we have now. Our daughter was born in September, so sometimes I feel like I didn’t really leave the house from then until May! We have plans to build a shop/garage that will include a wood stove so we will have more space this winter 😊