Tessa's Blog: Going tiny (?)

How crazy would you think I was if I told you I was plotting to sell every single thing I own (house, most of the stuff in the house, vehicle...etc) to move into a tiny house with my husband? Pretty crazy, yeah? But, come on, you have to hear me out first.

I don't really picture myself or my husband to be shallow/immature/irresponsible people. I think we've both got our heads on fairly straight. Cory is our financial nazi with his MoneyWell, spreadsheets, budgets, etc. And I'm the fun one. Nah, j/k. Sort of. We're both pretty budget smart. Basically I'm getting around to saying that we're pretty well taken care of because we know how to manage our income with our expenses and debt.

We're really good at planning out our long-term goals. We know the types of things that we want from life. And we have a pretty good sense of when we want them. I know that we're probably about 3 or so years away from wanting to start our family (i.e. build a house and have kids).

However, there is also a very adventurous part to the both of us. We've often spoke of a time - that seemed very unlikely and unrealistic - where we would get to travel a lot and for long periods. Maybe even live in entirely different locations for months at a time.

We spoke of this time as our 'retirement' time. However, when we're old I don't think we'll be as adventurous. Not to mention when we reach that age, it will also mean our parents will be at an older age. And possibly even mean we may not have much time left with them. I don't really see that being a time in my life when I'm ready to pack up and move all over the place.

So... it sort of hit us... why not now? We have nothing holding us back. We are child-free, we are young, we're both graduated from college. Why not now? When we didn't have a very good answer to the question we started casually talking about it. Then, it slowly started becoming a very detailed conversation and a frequent one.

We pondered the best way to make this a reality... and a tiny house seemed like the answer - especially since it's a current obsession of my husbands. It's a terrifying aspect really. It would be such a huge change for us and the change would need to start now. For efficient living in a tiny house you can't have and don't need a lot of stuff. It's really all about the adventure. The freedom, the 'no strings' attached, the reality of actually getting to go where ever you want whenever you want.

Our first steps to this seemingly possible reality is the selling of our *ahem* two houses. One of those houses will close within another week or so, dang it! And then, I really think we're going to list the other one fairly soon. Next comes the selling of all our crap. When the concept of... 'we're only taking our clothes, our computers, and our dog' really sets in, you start realizing just how much junk you have. And how much junk you have to get rid of. We'll probably rent some storage somewhere for the sentimentals (i.e. wedding stuff, some of my paintings, pictures, etc.).

Other than that, I really don't have emotional attachments to all of this... stuff. In fact, my OCD often causes me to freak out and want to throw most of it out anyway. I hate clutter. It's amazing how much crap you actually accumulate when you have just somewhere to put it. Perhaps I have an emotional attachment to some of our furniture, but... I'll get over it I'm sure.

[this post is going to get long, bear with me]

So... some of the ideas behind going tiny:

Exiting the Consumer Lifestyle: It's a way to decrease your consumption of stuff. Not partaking in the spoiled, 'American' lifestyles of needing 'shiny, big' things. Or a lot of things.
Saving Money: The estimated cost of a very high quality tiny house is about $25,000. That's about 2 1/2 years worth of house payments. Although, I'll note that we found a small company in Arkansas that is basically building copycats of the 'bigger' tiny house folks for like $10,000-$15,000. It is probably where ours will come from. Not to mention utility costs such as heating and cooling become next to nothing.
Freedom: "Our stuff doesn't own us anymore," is a direct quotes from the source I'm pulling most of these ideas from. And it's so fitting. I don't like being tied to stuff. I don't want to settle down to one place when I'm 23 years old... I haven't even traveled that much in my life. I want to see and experience new things while I can.
More free time: You can give more time to things that you really love. Like traveling. Or being outdoors, or hobbies, etc. Because you have more finances to support these things. Not to mention if family/friends have crisis or if there is a death in the family, etc. you can be there. And you could be there as long as they needed you to be. There is nothing keeping you from it.
Working less: if you have fewer expenses then you probably won't need to work as much. The idea of each individual only working part-time or even only one part-time employment (assuming it's the right kind of employment) would be enough to support all of your needs and most of your wants.
Less cleaning: Oh glory! I literally spend like a whole day... a full 8-hour day cleaning this house once a week. Not to mention the daily tasks of like dishes and laundry, etc. Can you imagine not having to that? Or not as much of it anyway. That is so appealing to me!
Economic/environmental: Some more direct quotes from my idea source: The average American house, which is about 2,200 square feet, emits more green house gases than the average American car; the average American house, produces 7 tons of construction waste and; the size of New Jersey is lost each decade as a result of urban sprawl.

Now the tiny houses are built on trailers of varying sizes. The size we will be going for is 8'x20'. Like I said, tiny house. It's like 130...140 square feet? Something like that. And the ceilings are like 11'. We want to keep the width under 10' so that we can pull it on the road.

I really think we may actually do this. And it's CRAZY. We feel confident that Cory's work would keep him on contract, because Cory plays an important role in the company. Seriously, he is. It would take him 6 months or longer to train someone to do everything that he does. I'm about 80% sure they'll keep Cory on contract at the same pay he is receiving now (Cory seems more certain than me on that, but I feel like they may cut it back some because he'll be working remotely). So... our finances are even secure.

Plus, once we sell the house that we currently live in. The only debt we will have will be my student loans. My car will be paid off possibly by this winter, or early next year. Then, with our houses gone... all we'll have are student loans.

We have a brother and sister-in-law moving to Arizona next June or July and I think that's where we'll start: Phoenix, Arizona. Then, I'd like to visit Alaska for a bit. Probably Texas at some point and Florida. Would love to go visit some stuff up near New York and D. C. and all that. And... who knows?

Now, the 'plumbing' and water and stuff is actually easier than you would think. Most of them have like RV hookups. Or like water/waste tanks. That sounded really tacky and uncool to me at first, but then I seen some of the "RV Parks" in like Phoenix. It's like a freaking paradise. Not trashy at all. Or like 'cluttered.' It was like a little neighborhood. Very nice and organized with indoor swimming pools and hot tubs and all kinds of things that you expect from like hotels. I was shocked. We'll have some solar panels for electric and have some small gas tanks for a water heater and the stove/burners and the little gas 'fireplace' heater thing. So cute.

Plus... it's a TINY HOUSE. I love things that are 'smaller' than their larger forms. Haha.

I'm being realistic about it too. I'm not just on some adventurous high. It's crossed my mind several times that I could quite possibly kill Cory being in such a small space for a long period of time. However, I also realize that we won't be in that space all of the time. Plus, when we're home do you know where we are always at? In the same room on our computers/keyboards. Always. We don't even really watch TV anymore, we watch all of our movies and shows on my computer.

So... I'm not sure what the next year holds for us, but I really think it might be the beginning of a few adventurous years and a tiny house.

Here is the plan/layout I think we've agreed on and at the end I'll include some links with other plans and information about tiny houses.