Why a "Tiny House"?

You may be wondering why we chose to build a "tiny house". If you have known me for any length of time you might be questions what Oklahoma is doing to me. I mean hand washing dishes and even attempting hand washing laundry. And then there is the whole farming thing. I mean I'm a city girl that is afraid of chickens and now we plan to have them plus many more animals. And if you have ever saw my brown thumb in action you might even question my gardening skills. But then you add in a tiny house! You know that I want to keep growing my family. I want at least 2 more kids. More if I can convince Hubby and get moving on that whole process. And I love my stuff! I really love having lots of things. And I love spoiling my boys. My sister in law use to run a daycare and she's always said that my kids have more toys than her daycare.

So why tiny?

Money. 

We currently are still not paying rent here in Oklahoma. Hubby built the inside of his sister's house in exchange for living expenses for the first year we lived here. We have until August to move from her house or we will have to start paying rent. So we need to have somewhere to live by then. We currently have property that we could live on but we have to build something on it, get a well, septic, electricity, clear land, etc to make it livable. Of course we have to do most of this before we can move our tiny house out there but building a tiny house on a free trailer is much more cost effective than trying to build an actual house on our property over an hour away. Building here on the back acre allows Hubby to put in a few hours each day into the building. He can get home at 3 pm and work until 6 pm without commuting the hour drive to the property and back home again. We can also use free or cheaper materials that will last a long time in our tiny house that we wouldn't use on our forever home. And Hubby can do it all himself. He wants to build our forever home too. But trying to do that now just isn't going to happen.

Money.

Yes I know I already said this but it's true again. We want to grow our family, build our land and enjoy life. Today it's all about the larger house, the nicer cars, the fancy vacations. But that is causing debt, long working hours, and lots of stress. We know that we can comfortably live in this tiny house for at least 5 years without it becoming to cramped (because of all the extra babies that I want). During this time we can take family vacations. Get the animals we want on our land and lower our cost for groceries. It will be cheaper to heat and cool. And with all they money we are saving we will pay off our cars, our property plus hopefully buy the land next to ours. We will also be paying for our next house we build in cash as well. An actual on the ground house on our new property. But we will have our barn, shop, animals, etc already so it won't be starting from scratch.

Location.

So we know where we are going to put our forever home. We have a beautiful hill that will be perfect for our forever home. With a wrap around deck to sit out on and enjoy the view. Of course that's just not in our budget at the moment. We could build a shop and live it in temporarily. We could build our barn and live it in temporarily. We could build a garage and live in it temporarily. But that means that again we have to build on our property and have the extra cost and the extra drive time to work on it. But we also need to know where we want a permanent building at. Currently we don't know. We have an idea but with how many trees there are we might decide differently as we get more cleared out. So we aren't willing to make any decisions for where are building are going to go. And then there is the fact that if we are living in the shop or barn we'd have to have rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom so when we turned it into the shop/barn it's suppose to be we'd have to tear out all our hard work we put into it. 

Relationships.

When you live in a small space you have to connect with each other. You have to be willing to put others needs above your own. And you have to work together to stay in a loving relationship. Our boys have always shared a room and we actually think that's not such a bad thing. Them sharing a room allows them to be closer and work things out because they don't have extra space they can disappear too. Also as parents we have to accept that kids are loud, make messes, and want to be around us. There isn't going to be any "sending the boys to their room" because they are being loud or making a mess. We have to be together and we have to spend time together. I know this new situation will bring us together as a family. It will push us out of our comfort zones and be a family more. 

Life Experiences.

We want our family to experience as many things as possible. Getting a large loan to build a house and get everything we need done on the property sounds quite enticing but so do vacations and water parks and camping trips and time off from work because we have family and friends out to visit. I would much rather make a few sacrifices to have Hubby have to work less so we can enjoy all the things mentioned above with him included. When we were living in Colorado he was having to work almost 7 days a week consistently and we had only one family vacation together after Monkey was born. That's not enjoying and experiencing life. The kids and I got to do a lot of fun things. Zoo trips, summer passes to Water World, lots of fun free or cheap activities on the weekends with my parents but Hubby was hardly ever able to attend. He was always working or so tired from working that he physically couldn't come and enjoy life with us. Building this tiny house is going to create an atmosphere that will allow Hubby to not work as many hours all the time. We can plan vacations and enjoy spending time together seeking out fun things to do in Oklahoma City. Currently we are talking about taking one family trip each year to places like, Yellowstone, the Four Corners, and Mt. Rushmore. These are fun things that we could do without spending a lot of money and we can also meet my parents there to enjoy a vacation together. All these activities sound way more fun than having a larger house. 

Downsizing.

As I mentioned above...we have A LOT of stuff. I have actually been downsizing since 2008, our first move to Oklahoma. Then our move back to Colorado I downsized again. Then with each move after that. We have slowly moved down in square footage homes. (not on purpose). And each time we have gotten rid of quite a bit of stuff but we still always have way more stuff to move than we want to have and we always have boxes that never get unpacked. Moving into the tiny house means that everything must have a place. There will be no room to store those boxes that seem to never get unpacked. This is going to be hard on me. Most things hold some sentimental value and I can always find a reason to hold on to something we might need someday. It's time to stop all that and start getting rid of things we don't need. I'm sure this will make my life easier. I will have less to clean, less to organize, less to stress about, and a much cleaner home. Just thinking about that makes me want to just move into it right now and leave all our stuff behind. I'm really excited about downsizing and it's taken me a LONG time to get here. I mean before our move to Oklahoma City I had a garage sale to get rid of most of our baby stuff and I cried when someone tired to buy all our baby clothes. I say tried because I could't bring myself to let them buy it. I sold piece by piece through out the weekend and then ended up donating the rest. I was ready by the end of the weekend for it to go to others that were in need. 

All these are reasons we are choosing to build a tiny house. It's not because we want to live off grid. It's not to lower our carbon footprint and be more green. It's not because we wouldn't enjoy a larger house. It's because we have some priorities, family connection, getting out of debt, working less and playing more, living with less stress, etc that make this the best option for our family. And like I told Hubby, if any family could do this it would be ours. We have been through a lot of stuff together and each time we come out stronger. We know that we are strong enough to handle whatever tiny house living throws our way.