If you're dreaming of downsizing to a tiny home

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First of all, if you're new here, my name is Sophie. I’m on a journey to slow down, reconnect with nature, and live more intentionally. After moving off-grid, I’m sharing lessons on rewilding, simplicity, and finding balance in a busy world, without any of the fluff.

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I dreamed of tiny houses long before we ever lived in one. I had Pinterest boards filled with tiny house pictures, tiny kitchens, tiny bathrooms and cozy nooks with colourful books. I couldn’t wait to design our own little home. I couldn’t wait to downsize. Less stuff, less stress. Downsizing would make everything simpler. Life would be better once we downsized.

When I tell people I live in a tiny house (an off the grid one even!) I get so many questions. Do I love it? I do! Do you miss having more space? Never! Do you go crazy living in such a small space together with your husband? Well, I guess, depends what you mean by ‘crazy’…

For me, life is better since we downsized. But I’m also realistic that this may not be the case for everyone. Tiny living can be the solution to some of life’s problems, but you have to be realistic going into it.

So if you’re considering making the jump, here are a few things worth thinking about.

Remember you’re still living your everyday life

I love looking at photos and videos of tiny house designs. Most of them look so cute and beautiful, but remember you’ll be living your everyday life in this house. Climbing a tiny ladder to get to your bed sounds great, until you’re not feeling well, or you just had knee surgery. Folding up your dining table every single evening loses its charm very quickly. It’s only a matter of days until that dining table no longer gets folded up and becomes a permanent feature you have to navigate in your already narrow space. You’ll walk into it, often.

And all those little secret hiding places for your things just make it slightly more difficult to find your stuff. Storing things under the bed is great, but if you’re an out-of-sight, out-of-mind person like me, prepare to lose things often. I’ll admit I sometimes forget I have things because they’ve been too well hidden, like those winter boots that I just cannot find right now.

You will have less storage

Even with all the clever ways of hiding items in every nook and cranny, there will always be limited storage in a tiny house. You will have to declutter and downsize before moving in. If you’re a hoarder or a prepper or someone who gets emotionally attached to every little thing they’ve ever owned, this may not be the right lifestyle for you.

One place where I really notice the storage issue is in the kitchen. We don’t have a lot of kitchen items, there’s no room to display your coffee maker, toaster and blender on the kitchen counter. To be fair, we also don’t have enough electricity to run a toaster or blender. But more importantly, there’s not a lot of room for food storage in our cabinets and fridge either, and we certainly don’t have a big freezer to do meal prepping. I have to go to the supermarket twice a week - yes, we’re not self-sufficient in terms of food, unfortunately.

When you’re living tiny, decluttering is not a one-time thing - it’s an ongoing process. Every time you’re thinking of buying something, you have to ask yourself whether you really have space in the house. It’s amazing how much stuff we accumulate over a short period of time. I try to use the “one in - one out” rule as much as possible when purchasing new items to make sure we’re not gathering too many things.

How do we dry our laundry?

For some reason, this is our most frequently asked question: how do we dry our laundry when it’s raining outside? As I’m sure you can imagine, we don’t have enough electricity to run a dryer, especially in winter with shorter days. So, we turn the tiny house into a walk-in dryer, i.e. we light up the fire really warm and hang the laundry all throughout the house. Croky’s cage gets a laundry rack on top, and socks and underwear hang from the ceiling. This is the best way to dry things relatively quickly. It’s a very effective, and slightly awkward when you have visitors.

The toileting situation

This is the second most frequently asked question. Every tiny house needs some kind of solution for the toilet. I’ve spoken about this in previous articles, we have an outhouse - or as it is called in New Zealand, a long drop. This was probably the thing that caused me the most anxiety before moving in, but now I wouldn’t want it any other way. We are currently building another tiny house, or an extension to our current tiny house, which will contain a bedroom and bathroom. We’ve had many discussions about whether or not to include a toilet in our new bathroom. There are many options, such as composting toilets, which I’m sure are a really good option. However, mentally, I don’t think I could go back to having a toilet indoors, in the same room where I brush my teeth. A separate toilet in a separate room would of course be a perfect scenario, but this is tricky in a tiny home. So for me, outdoor toilet is where it’s at.

The cost of building

People often think building tiny comes with a tiny price. But there are many hidden costs. One of those hidden costs is the trailers that these houses are often on. They come at a very steep price. For this reason, our tiny house isn’t on wheels. We figured the cost of arranging transport would still be cheaper, provided you don’t plan on moving the tiny house around every week.

A tiny house still needs plumbing, electricity, a bathroom, a kitchen. If you’re using high quality materials, the price still adds up. Of course there is always the option to use second hand materials or recycled/upcycled materials and this definitely keeps the cost down quite a bit. But it’s important to always ensure you use good quality materials, if you don’t want to live in a damp and mouldy cardboard box.

There’s also the matter of needing a plot of land to park your tiny house on. This can be tricky depending on the area you’re in. Some city councils are favourable towards tiny homes, others make it quite difficult. Finding a piece of land is often the most difficult part of living tiny.

Having everything in one place

The last thing to get used to is that everything happens in one big space. You cook where you sleep for example, so when you’re experimenting in the kitchen with a nice new curry recipe, you’ll still be enjoying that smell when you go to sleep.

And when you and your partner live on different schedules, this becomes a thing to navigate. I’m an early riser and go to bed early, but my husband is a night owl - so in the hours that the other is asleep, we have to be mindful not to wake the other up. Lucky we don’t have a TV, but my sleep would be very disrupted if the hubby decided to bingewatch the latest Netflix series while I’m trying to sleep in the same room.

Before moving in, really think about how you would be sharing a tiny space with the one you love. There’s no such thing as “having a bit of space”, there’s only patience, good communication and really good headphones.

Would I go back to ‘normal-sized’ living? Not a chance.

But would I recommend tiny living to everyone? Also not a chance. If you’re seriously considering this, I would recommend trying out a tiny home for a vacation and see how you find it - try before you buy is always good advice.

There are also many unexpected joys to tiny living, like spending more time outside for example. Next time, I’ll write about why I really love our tiny home and why I would never want to live “big” ever again.

Something that inspired me this week:

This four part documentary explores the idea of making New Zealand predatorfree by 2050 and what it would take to achieve this audacious goal. It gives a lot of insight into why it’s so important to protect NZ’s native species and why currently NZ has more than 4000 natives on the threatened species list. Below is the intro, but if you’re interested all four episodes can be found on YouTube.

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