Why Tiny Living?

"What made you want to do that?" That is the question John and I get from 90% of people when we tell them we are building a tiny house. I think most have good intentions; they are just completely caught off guard by the uniqueness and non-uniform decision to transition to tiny living.

Tiny living has been around for a very long time, but it has never been very popular because of obvious reasons. Who would want to live in a house less than 500 square feet, downsize and give away most of their things, and be confined to such tight quarters? Recently, it has become more widely-known and done (I think due to the show Tiny House Nation).

In the fall of 2021, I had the random thought that it would be so cool to live in a tiny house. I have no idea where it came from. I didn't see anything on Instagram, I hadn't been watching Tiny House Nation; it was a completely random thing that popped into my mind. I mentioned to my husband that it would be a really different and interesting experience, and he agreed that it would be pretty cool. A couple of months went by, and I asked him, "wait, would you really want to live in a tiny house?" He responded with, "Sure." It was a very long, thought-out, precise decision, lol.

Of course we did weigh out the pros and cons because that is the only way to make such a large life decision (we probably could've just cast lots and called it good). Here were the major factors in our decision:

• Very small to NO mortgage

• Ability to save money to buy/build somewhere else someday

• Less stuff

• FREEDOM

The weight of our decision came from a financial standpoint. We wanted the financial freedom to be able to buy/build someday, and we knew we wouldn't get that with the mortgage we have currently. Having no mortgage would give us the ability to save more money for a future down payment. We also (ahem, I mean myself) have a lot of student loans - thank you Thomas College. We wanted the freedom to be able to pay extra on these loans.

Materialism was also a big factor in our decision as well. We live in a world today that is very focused on the "more is more" point of view, and John and I have always gone right along with it. However, as we started digging into the Word more and had a true revival of our faith in the past two years, we realized this is not the way God calls us to live, and having more "things" is actually more suffocating than having less. Here are a few things the Bible says about materialism:

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” -Hebrews 13:5

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. -Matthew 6:19-21

"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?" -Matthew 16:26

For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. -1st John 2:16

As we started preparing for downsizing and going through our possessions, we couldn't believe how much stuff (junk) we had acquired in only two years that served no purpose or that we just didn't use. And I couldn't begin to describe how freeing it felt to sort through everything (OK, the sorting part was a little tedious) and get rid of easily over half of everything. We were left with so little, and this small amount of stuff made us realize how little we need to actually survive and to even survive comfortably. It was a very humbling experience, and we are so excited to be apart of the #TinyHouseNation!