A new season of Tiny House Hunters is on Hulu. The first season was only two episodes, so I was excited to see that a bunch more were available.
I watch shows like Tiny House Hunters when I’m grading papers or working on my computer. I don’t think I could just sit and watch a show like that, but I enjoy it being on in the background.
I will admit, a part of me is taken with the idea of tiny houses. I find the stories of why people choose to live in 100-400 square feet interesting. I also admit that the idea of buying my home, and living without a mortgage, is enticing, especially when you can hitch that home to a truck and take it with you wherever the road may wander.
Then I remember how challenging it is to live in our 1,200 square feet, and I wonder how people really feel about tiny house living, months and especially years later.
There isn’t a lot written by people who have lived in a tiny house for long. What you do find presents the option as a panacea, a way to forgo the ills of the modern world and live in frugal luxury for the rest of your life. If those pieces mention the challenges, they only step over them vaguely, en route to the Amazing Things They Learned About Life.
I wonder though, if it really feels like that to them. I find living in 1,200 square feet pretty difficult sometimes, especially with two small kids. How can these people love sharing 400 square feet with three or more other people?
Because it’s hard. For us at least. Our kids aren’t great sleepers and our small house means that space can’t be utilized at certain times. I can’t exercise before everyone’s awake because the elliptical is in our bedroom and the TV room shares an open wall with our bedroom. I can’t even work quietly on my computer because the minute I walk down the hall (to go ANYWHERE else in my house) my son wakes up and calls for me. When I read about people waking up early to steal a few quiet minutes to themselves with a coffee I feel real envy. The only “me” time I can steal in the morning is lying still in my bed, squinting at my phone without my glasses.
We only have one bathroom, and it’s insanely small, which means it’s basically impossible for two people to be in there at the same time. I can’t count the number of time I’ve been in the shower when my daughter announced she had to… add an olfactory aspect to the experience I would rather have avoided. We still have our son’s training potty in the hallway, even though he’s four, because there are constantly moments when they both have to go and neither can wait and what would we do if we only had one toilet?
{And yes, the training potty is in the hall because the bathroom is so small it doesn’t fit.}
When your house is 1,200 square feet (and ours is really 1,000 square feet because 200 of the total is our entryway, which is downstairs from the rest of the house–nice for storing the bike and hanging sweatshirts and jackets, but not for actual living) every part of the house is connected, in some way to every other part. There is no “getting away” from anyone, especially if your bedroom is only separated from the living room by a Japanese shade.
We sleep in what is supposed to be the living room (and “live” in what is supposed to be the dining room) so our kids can have their own rooms, a decision I still stand behind 100%. As I said before, neither of our kids are great sleepers, and we’re constantly interrupting each other sleep with the few walls that do exist between us, I can only imagine how little sleep we’d get if the kids were waking each other up constantly. It’s also nice for the kids to have their own spaces, since the space we all share is so small. (It should be mentioned that neither of their rooms is very big either).
We don’t have adequate space to entertain–we can’t invite people over for dinner (we can only sit four at the small table in our “dining room,” which is actually an non-insulated “sun room” off the kitchen that gets VERY cold in the winter), and we can barely sit four other adults for drinks in our living room. We can’t really host people when they come from out of town, even though our son has a bunk-bed; we’ve tried and no one ever wants to stay for long because there just isn’t space for many more people.
There are definitely benefits to having a small house–we have almost no storage space so we’re forced to par down our belongings instead of storing them. There is less to clean, which is good because I am horrible at cleaning.
But it also means that when things get cluttered, they are REALLY cluttered, and there is no way to escape the fray. Yes this means we have to purge pretty regularly to keep things manageable, but when we’re too busy to do that kind of hard work, the house gets really overwhelming really fast.
I know 1,000 square feet is by no means a tiny house for a family of four, but it’s smaller than most family’s houses in this country, and there are many moments when it feels small for us. I dream regularly of incorporating our tenant’s unit into the house, which would give us a “master suite,” and MOST importantly, a second bathroom, and would also free up our current bedroom to create a living / dining room area that is connected by an open double doorway. We would be able to entertain that way, and simply have more “shared space” to be together as a family. The idea is so seductive, but I doubt we’ll ever be able to afford it. Still, a girl can dream.
In the meantime, we just have to make do with our 1,200 square feet. And keep watching Tiny House Hunters to remind ourselves that some people live in much smaller spaces.
How big is your house? Is it a good fit for your family?
