A Year In: Living and Loving the Tiny Life
We're still here!
It's been a long time since we posted an update.
2016 was a busy year for us as we settled into the tiny house and experienced a full cycle of the seasons in our wee blue cabin. Truth be told, after spending the previous year building, we were exhausted and enjoyed having some down time to get on with life and BE in our space. And now our tiny house is just where we live, sometimes we even forget that it's outside of the norm.
Full disclosure: we haven't completed every single finishing detail yet. I've learned though that this is typical for self-builds and it's okay. We're comfortable and frankly, it's nice to be able to see how things work and change them if you find a better way as you go along, like shelving in the kitchen.
We've now been living in our tiny house for about a year and three months, which is a good time to do a bit of a stock take and let you know what living in these things is really like. These types of post were always the most helpful for me when we were researching and building, following others' blogs to see what we could learn from their experiences and if tiny living was really all it was cracked up to be. There's a fair bit to say so we'll do it in a couple posts. Here goes!
What is living tiny really like?
Living tiny has been for the most part just what we thought it would be, which is great because you never really know how you'll adapt to a space that is so drastically different from any you've been in before. It's compact and cozy, you really have to like the person you live with, privacy is minimal, anything you're working on must be put away to make the space usable for other tasks. It's also bright, very well organized and easy to clean.
We LIVE in this thing, meaning we pretty much do everything we could do when we
lived in a basement suite, like cooking and baking, seeding the plants for our garden, making yogurt, practicing yoga. But it all has to be done in a way that harmonizes with everything else in the house or it's chaos. So we've learned to be tidier, a little more disciplined and relaxed.
It's not for everyone and life circumstances can change; some of the articles floating around in the media in 2016 about tiny house viability highlighted these points.
We're stoked that we've been so happy in it and that we seem to have done a good enough job with the construction and design to be safe, dry and comfortable. It's still satisfying to live in this structure we built, that novelty has not worn off. There's no way we could afford to live so close to downtown Vancouver otherwise. It's been challenging, cool and educational all at the same time.
We love it.
I'll tell you a secret though: it really doesn't feel that small to us.
Most of the time it's just the two of us, and let me tell you, 20 feet of length turned out to be just right. We're glad we didn't go smaller. The layout we have lends itself nicely to the feeling that there are multiple rooms, even though it's all open but for the bathroom. It seems to mostly be the height that makes it feel bigger. We built almost to the max height, and the Gambrel style with the highest point in the center gives the place a spacious open feel. We highly recommend this style. It also makes for nice headroom in the loft.
But let's get to the goods. Yes, we had to get rid of a lot of stuff to fit comfortably in the space. We both feel that this was liberating. Sometimes it's frustrating when we're both in the kitchen and we're constantly in each others' way. We've had to learn to pick our battles. You can't talk on the phone anywhere in the house without the other person hearing. Privacy is really non-existent.
Life is not a party in here all of the time.
Like any space, there are challenges and a lot of them are particular to tiny living. But it's been really good for our relationship. It probably helps that we were very comfortable with each other beforehand, having lived in a suite that was spacious but very open and without many doors. It has forced us to be the adults we are, to communicate with respect and be sensitive to each other. It just won't work otherwise, which really should be the case for all relationships.
We wouldn't say there are so many pros and cons so much as there are learning curves, compromises and wins, all specific to the way that we've done things.
I'm framing it this way because tiny living is (for us) a choice and it's important to own our responsibility in the realities of that choice. There are the harder things you have to make work, choices to prioritise some things over others in design and conveniences, and the unexpected joyful surprises and things you hoped would work and do!
We'll do this over a couple of posts to keep this from being the longest blog post ever.
First up:
Learning Curves
Potable Water Hose: we don't live on a permanent site or at a site with a hook-up right at our spot, so we use a potable water hose (or two connected hoses) that links to the bib at the main house. There is no issue with this most of the year, Vancouver is pretty temperate and the winters are mild. But we seem to live in a bit of a micro-climate and our hose can freeze solid even in +3 degree weather. Christmas Day is not awesome when we've got a frozen hose because this means we have to haul all 100 feet of it into the shower to slowly thaw. We picked up a little space heater that we direct into the shower to hasten the process but it still sucks.
Now we watch the weather (particularly right now with the cold snap) and leave the water trickling so it won't freeze up but this does not always work in the night, so sometimes we unplug it, drain it and reattach it in the morning. Not what you want to be doing in pyjamas.
Laundry: we don't have a dryer and we knew from the start this would be challenging in the winter but we got used to it. In the summer we have a clothes line that takes our clothes and sheets and dries everything very quickly. It's so lovely and fresh.
But in the winter, and on rainy or freezing days (like now), we have to hang everything in the house. I'll admit, I put off doing laundry as frequently as I otherwise would in the winter because I don't love moist clothes hanging everywhere, and the washer is smaller than standard so we have to do more loads for the same pile. Also, hanging a duvet cover in the house is just not practical, so washing sheets in the winter needs to happen elsewhere.
Ultimately, our system works as planned, it's just more labour and planning that we needed to get used to. Despite appearances, we're perfectly happy not having a dryer but these are the limitations to tiny laundry.
Ins and Outs: we've become keenly aware of what comes into our house as we only have so much space and by default we've learned just how much comes out of the house as waste. This is great for being more mindful of our footprint but we've had to change some habits. Packaging is a biggie: we now bring our groceries home in a box we keep in the truck, remove packaging from products before we come into the house and avoid acquiring things with more packaging than less. We thought we were doing most of that already but clearly not enough. And guess what we use for wrapping paper now...
Composting toilet: speaking of waste streams, holy crap! A big takeaway for us was that either tiny house bloggers weren't owning up to how much poo they were actually producing or we're just abnormally voluminous in our deposits. Either way, our compost pile has grown a lot faster than we'd expected. Not a big deal, but just worthy of note. Also, it took us a while to get the appropriate sawdust/wood chip mix. FYI: don't use cedar! It doesn't contribute to decomposition like other woods. Now the toilet is a bit of an afterthought, we've gotten so used to it, but it's still a big deal to visitors and dudes who have to sit to pee in the urine separator.
Cleaning: this HAS to happen regularly as quite honestly, if it was messy all the time we couldn't live in it and maintain any modicum of sanity. We've had a few people ask: why are tiny houses so tidy in all of the pictures? Show us what your house is really like!
Fine, here's a wee treat for you: a messy tiny house.
Seriously could you do much in here?
Most of the time it's relatively tidy because it has to be! The more mess there is, the less usable space you have, so if you're not an obsessively tidy person already you have to learn to step that up. Also, dust gathers way faster in small spaces. The saving grace here is that cleaning takes almost no time at all, so even though you have to do it more often, it's far less time consuming than in an average house.
This is truly what it's like most of the time!
Just say no: one of the greatest things about tiny living is that we've let go of so much stuff and we are very mindful of anything new that we buy or receive. Unfortunately, this means having to say no when people want to give you things. Like, when your thoughtful generous family gets you a beautiful poinsettia at Christmas and you have absolutely no room for it. Saying no has been an issue for me (historical people pleaser) so it's a good exercise: I had to say no and put my foot down. Stand your ground! People who really know you will understand (thanks mom!). Sometimes a photograph will just have to suffice.
Next post: Compromises!
