We have lived two very different lives in our tiny house. Our first year, we learned how to make the best use of the space with just my wife and I. They were simpler times! This past year, we were forced to re-learn how to make tiny house living work with the addition of our little girl! It has definitely been challenging at times, but certainly not a deal-breaker for us.
But one thing is for sure…
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1. You Never Sleep Living With a Baby in a Tiny House
We knew it was going to be challenging and most parents will struggle to get their sleep during their child’s first few years anyway. Obviously, things become a bit more difficult in a tiny house. Especially when one of us works night shift and needs to sleep during the day while she is awake.
We’ve learned to carefully monitor our noise while our daughter is sleeping and use some tricks to allow us to enjoy some quiet to ourselves in a confined space. I often use these noise-canceling headphones (https://amzn.to/2GOaCQe) to listen to music or watch tv while she sleeps.
We also utilize a noise machine (https://amzn.to/2BVyCwL) when Lucy takes her midday naps, so we can continue working around the house without disturbing her.
This noise machine also helps me when I’m sleeping during the day before work. It doesn’t cancel out a crying baby, but it certainly helps promote a soothing environment to help you fall asleep.
2. You Can’t Trust Anyone More Than Yourself
A huge part of our tiny house journey included the process of demolishing a dilapidated mobile home on our own, which we discuss in more detail in our first post, “It’s Never Too Late to Rewrite Your Story.” It took one day to knock it down, followed by months of vigorous, grueling late nights of clean up to finish and prepare our site for our new tiny home. It was so incredibly rewarding when we finally finished and know we did it all on our own. To this day, it’s probably our greatest accomplishment (other than having our daughter of course!).
After we demolished and disposed of the mobile home, the one remaining task was to remove the 40-foot trailer. To do this, we hired someone from a local scrapyard to remove it. We paid him $100 because he told us the metal wouldn’t be worth much and the labor involved cutting the trailer into several smaller pieces to be able to haul it away in his truck. We figured it was reasonable since the guy was doing us a huge favor.
What ended up happening during the process of cutting the trailer, however, was a piece of the trailer fell and cracked our existing water connecting pipes in half. So, we ended up paying $100 to have the guy destroy our water connections, which forced us to call a plumber to fix it.
The plumber did not cut back far enough when they put new fixtures on the water pipes, which we found out very quickly once our home was finally connected. We received a concerning voicemail from the borough water supervisor saying they were concerned we had a leak, as we had apparently used 5000 gallons of water in just the first few days of having our water turned on.
This time, we did our research and hired the best local plumbing company we could find, who came and searched where our leak was coming from, which of course was right next to our house where the break occurred. They did a great job, but it still cost us $4200 just to have this break fully repaired.
We’re happy to have running water, but unfortunately, we are still paying for all of these expensive repairs to this day.
Moving forward, we are motivated more than ever to do as many things ourselves as we possibly can.
3. It’s Important to Challenge Yourself
This is something I’ve learned from going through our building process and life in general as I’ve matured.
It’s easy to sit around and blame others when things don’t go your way.
It’s easy to become lazy and complacent in today’s world when everything can be done with a few clicks online and any questions you have can be answered instantly with your smartphone.
It’s not easy, however, to face your problems and tackle them head-on. Specifically, things you’ve never done before.
If there’s one thing this experience has taught us, it’s that there is nothing you cannot do.
Throughout this process, we’ve been challenged many times and were forced to do hard things. But the thing is, doing hard things is contagious. Once you discover you can do one difficult thing out of your comfort zone, naturally, you want to do more. We’ve learned new things quicker out of necessity. We can’t allow ourselves to become complacent or lazy because we have to stay on top of things in the house and around the property constantly. This keeps us sharp and challenges us daily and helps us grow and improve.
4. We Don’t Want Items That Create Too Much Friction
There are many multifunctional items you can buy for your tiny house. While they may save you space, what we really want are items that are simple and functional.
We tried 3 different couches before finally settling on our fourth and current couch set-up. The first iteration was a Murphy bed that folded down on top of a couch when pulled down.
It didn’t work because it was too heavy to lift up and down. It was also too heavy to lift when it was resting on top of the couch that stored all of our clothes! The purpose of tiny house living is to simplify your life. There’s nothing simple about having to have the chore of lifting a heavy bed or taking all the pillows off of your couch to retrieve clothing stored inside. We’d prefer to keep our clothes in an easily retrievable closet.
When you’re tired and want to go to sleep, you may not want the chore of pulling down a murphy bed or always having to make the bed to put the bed back up in the morning. You might just want a small, simple bedroom space! That’s what we’ve discovered, and we wish we could go back in time and add an additional 6 feet onto our home to add a small bedroom with nothing but a simple bed.
We tore down that couch and bought an Ikea day bed that pulled out into a queen size bed.
But this couch was a bit too small and also too large when the bed was pulled out. It just didn’t fit our space right, and it didn’t have enough storage space.
The next version was a DIY couch that I built myself. It was two 6 foot benches that we added cushions too and made a fairly comfortable couch set up. We arranged them in an L shape to add more seating for guests. There was also full storage inside both of them. I also added wheels on the bottom so the two benches could be pushed together to form a full sized bed. It worked, but it was a lot of work. It made sense in theory but just created too much friction to actually use it as a bed as we hoped.
We simplified our living space with a simple couch from Wayfair. This is the couch we currently have and it has been a game changer. It’s got enough space for the three of us to sit comfortably and also pulls out easily into a full sized bed. There is also a huge storage chaise where we currently store the majority of our clothes.
If you live in a van or an extremely small space, you may have no choice but to have these multi-functional pieces, such as a bed that you need to transform into a couch every morning, in order to make the space as usable as possible. But for us, in a slightly larger tiny house, we prefer the simplicity of having things already put together for use whenever you feel the need to use them.
There is one main multi-functional piece that we use every single day and it is this gateleg table from Ikea (https://amzn.to/2Sqpw0A). It is so incredibly versatile, slim, space-saving, and easy to use!
5. Winter in a Tiny House Can be Brutal
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish we lived somewhere warm like California or Florida as this seemingly endless winter continues to torture us.
Don’t get me wrong, one of the greatest benefits of living in a tiny house is the ability to have uninterrupted time with our family. However, we all need to get out and enjoy the outdoors and sunlight.
Lucy gets upset when it is too cold to go outside. She loves to be outdoors! It’s not a fun feeling for any of us to feel trapped inside the house constantly. This winter, in particular, has felt seemingly endless and its frigid nights have worn out their welcome.
It’s also not fun to deal with your pipes freezing for two straight days (even with heat tape) from the polar vortex and it’s horrific wind chills!
Winter has taught us that we need to be better prepared. We need to add insulated skirting all around the house before next year. We learned what we will need to do in the future to prevent our pipes from freezing as well. Our Envi heaters work great, but when the temperatures drop into the teens and below they just can’t maintain a comfortable temperature inside the house. An additional heat source is needed when the temperatures drop that low.
It’s also very uninspiring to be stuck inside for such long periods. It’s hard to stay motivated. It’s been difficult to have the urge to write when I’m feeling so uninspired. The purpose of this blog has always been to inspire others, but you can’t do that when you’re feeling uninspired yourself.
But everything is fine and we have survived. It will only make us appreciate the coming seasons that much more! It has been important to remember even when things seem most bleak during these long, dark and dreary nights, eventually, things will get better. The days will slowly become longer, brighter, warmer, and all will once again feel right in the world.
6. You Need to be Extra Conscious of Your Mood
You’re forced to be honest with yourself and acknowledge the issues.
There are no rooms to hide from any issues you may have, which encourages you to address your problems as soon as possible so you don’t make life miserable for everyone else!
It’s only human to get upset, but life is too short to get caught up wasting too much time being upset or angry. Make peace with your issues and move on with your life.
The tiny house allows us to see things from a different perspective, allowing us to pay closer attention to the minute details in our lives, helping bring out the best in ourselves, reminding us to think of good things, always.
7. It’s Okay Not to Have Everything Perfect
Some days I wish everything looked perfect. Some days I walk into our house and see so many things I’d like to change, update, or finish. We’ve lived in our house for two years and still haven’t finished painting the walls and trim!
There’s a huge garden we want to put together, a deck we still need to finish and other projects waiting to be completed.
Not to mention, most of the time, our house is a mess!
But eventually, we will save enough money to get what we need for those projects. Eventually, hopefully, we will have the time to complete them!
Enjoy what you have and don’t constantly wish for everything you don’t. Isn’t that the point of minimalism?
You really don’t need nearly as much as you think to be happy.
8. Living Tiny Makes it Easy to Enjoy Our Time With the People we Love
All of our interactions are quality family time. There are no distractions. We’re always in the family room and enjoying each other’s company.
Living tiny helps us appreciate the little things more. Things we might often overlook perhaps in a different living situation. For instance, running water is something we once took for granted, until we had to deal with frozen water pipes this winter and broken pipes when we first moved in.
Living in a tiny house has made me appreciate all of the decisions I’ve ever made in my life to this point, both good and bad. That long and arduous road eventually led to this moment, where I’m able to wake up and drink coffee in my tiny house with my beautiful wife and daughter.
As a family, we’re all in on slowing down and spending more time enjoying the present moment.
9. It’s important to stay on top of the dishes!
It happens very quickly and before you realize it, your dirty dishes have piled up, cluttering the entire kitchen space. It’s not a pretty sight!
Doing the dishes is arguably more important than making the bed in a tiny space. While our bedroom is always out of sight being up in the loft, our kitchen is seen every second, as its part of our living space. It’s worth it to spend those extra minutes each day keeping the sink free of dishes to give that clean, uncluttered look throughout the house.
10. We need to get out and explore!
Remember in Moana how the people of the island forgot they were explorers? We’re guilty of that too!
One of the main reasons we chose to live in a tiny house was the ability to live cheaply so we can afford to travel more. I’ve realized we have a tendency to get overly comfortable in our cozy little home and forget to get out and see the world. But we are at our best as a family when we are out exploring!
Below is a photo I took on the worst day weather-wise from our trip to Maine. We pulled over to the side of the road and I quickly snapped this picture. Even in Maine’s worst day, it can still be gorgeous. Both of these trips have reminded us to continue to make these plans to explore more of this beautiful world!
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