A few years ago I talked in depth about our big move into a tiny house, the struggles, the disappointments, the fears, the unknowns, and the excitement. We didn’t know where life was leading us at the time, but we knew we needed to take a stand. Being an independent musician, I personally, have learned a lot about creating your own opportunities, entrepreneurship, and taking risks. I’m a very thinking person. I’m always thinking and comparing accepted thoughts and conventional belief systems to my core logic or what makes sense to me. To be honest, a lot of times, I wind up creating my own systems because some things just don’t make sense to me.
What do I mean by this? Well, I don’t believe that we’re all supposed to follow the traditional patterns…graduate from grade school, go to college, get a job, start a family, work a 9-5 job your entire life, and then retire. Honestly, I think our minds and bodies benefit more from daily activity, movement, sunlight, fresh air, more freedom in our daily routine, and dedicating ourselves to a particular passion. This doesn’t equate to a 9-5 for me. However, so many of us are in the unfortunate circumstance where we have to work a 9-5 job that we dread. We trade our time to people we disdain for pieces of paper we use to buy our way through life. I think there’s a place for 9-5 jobs, but I don’t like this idea that you must have one to survive. There are alternatives to this thinking. Yet, when people try to pursue these alternatives, they’re often met with objections and opposition at every turn. This opposition comes from the various systems we have built in society, religion and authority figures. Ironically, it also comes from the unlikeliest of sources - friends and family. I’m a witness to this as Rob and I have faced opposition that caught us by surprise when we quit our jobs and decided to build a tiny house opting for a more minimalist lifestyle.
We’re now three years in and we have absolutely no regrets. The only regret we have is not doing it sooner! When we took on this endeavor, our goal was to reduce our costs of living, have more freedom and mobility, decrease our carbon footprint by living a more green-lifestyle and basically have more control over our time and lives. Being able to look back on our decision after three years have gone by, I can say that we’ve accomplished most of our goals. Being able to reduce our overall cost of living has afforded us our time back and the freedom to pursue our greatest passions. Music. Family. Consulting. Mentoring. Blogging. Traveling. The list goes on and on. We do way more recycling than we ever have. We compost. We installed high-efficiency appliances. We’ve even gotten into making our own skincare products and household cleaning products. We’re having a lot of fun updating and upgrading the house. For example we installed a railing for the stairs to the master loft. Built shoe racks to organize our shoes and created more shelves for storage space. There’s a lot we still want to do like install a door for the bathroom (there’s a curtain there now), create a launder ‘closet’, add a rail for the guest loft, etc.
All in all, I’m so glad we made this decision. It was right for us. We’re happy and have no regrets. Here are some answers to a few questions we typically get from people…
How did you pay for it?
You have a couple options when it comes to getting a tiny house. You can buy one that’s already been built from a previous owner or from a factory. You can build it yourself, or you can do a combination of both. Some places let you purchase a frame and you build it in yourself. We chose to build it all from scratch. We used savings for the most part. Toward the end we went quite a bit over budget, so we accumulated some credit card debt to finish the build. It was a risk we were willing to take and I’m happy to say we’re debt free now. Some people choose build as the money comes in to avoid debt entirely. That works too. We wish we could have done that, but time was not on our side.
What’s your biggest challenge?
Storage space is an issue. We’re constantly having to move things around, throw things away, and re-organize in order to make room. The Tiny House has forced us to re-think what it means to have things. Weighing between what is a necessity versus what is a want is a revolving door.
What’s your fave room in the house?
I love the upstairs guest loft. It’s quite, serene, and fluffy! I go there to decompress and relax. I go there to read my book, write in my journal and take naps.
If you’re hesitant about following your dreams and stepping outside of conventional norms, I implore you to dig deep and figure it out. You don’t want to go through life with ‘what ifs’ haunting you. You can do anything you put your mind to. I’m a witness.
