The Joy of Living “Tiny”

Source: 2000 holmes/pixabay

Earlier this year, my husband and I were presented with the opportunity to make our home in an urban “micro” space. As we initially considered it, it seemed crazy. Would we even make it a week without going mad? No man cave, not even a second bedroom to escape to. Living room, kitchen, office, dining room, all in one small four-walled space.

There were a number of other potential options. We could choose to do the “normal” thing for two professional adults and a dog and simply choose a larger, sanity-preserving space. We could move out into the suburbs, like most people do in our extraordinarily expensive city, and have a small yard, maybe even a basement (aka man cave).

But there was something about this neat “tiny” home that intrigued us, that challenged us. We like to live differently from the crowd, to question any knee-jerk life choices, to avoid doing what everyone else is “just because” everyone else is.

“Let’s try it for six months,” my husband said. “If it makes us crazy, we’ll move. We can do anything for 6 months.”

It was challenging squeezing into the space at first, but then something caught us by surprise. We started having a ton of fun with our teeny space.

My husband is quite artistically gifted, and is fascinated by how aesthetics impact humans. He started imagining creative design possibilities, inspired by our extremely limited space.

This apparently is a trend all over, as people are increasingly attracted to (or forced into) smaller and smaller spaces. Families, particularly in expensive cities, are foregoing upsizing, and instead figuring out how to turn closets or storage spaces into marvelous, whimsical rooms for their growing family. Small “laneway houses” are going up all over our city, making use of former dead space. Documentaries and blogs on tiny home living and minimalism abound.

In the past, sometimes we had quite different ideas about which art or decorating style we found appealing. But here, in this tiny space, we found ourselves having a ton of fun exploring possible options. We haven’t even done that much yet, other than a few clever additions of shelving and cabinets/closets in various corners, and a few cool items that do double duty (both functional and beautiful).

Gone is his fancy professional stereo system; in a space this small, all we need is a comparatively inexpensive Bluetooth speaker that happens to have a really clever, appealing design. Everything we add here isn’t just functional. It has to be visually appealing because the space is so small. This presents a fun challenge for us to tackle together. There’s no room for clutter, either. This is a gift!

It’s been 8 months, and we’re staying. Perhaps forever. When a space is this small, you don’t need to spend much to furnish it, and you can’t keep endlessly buying stuff. There’s nowhere to put it! It also takes just minutes to clean.

This leaves us with more financial resources – and more time - to go out into the much bigger world and enjoy life. For us, living “small” has filled us with a feeling of abundance. It feels like our own world, ironically, has gotten bigger. It’s so much better than feeling weighed down, paying for (and maintaining) a big space and more and more stuff. I highly recommend it.

Copyright Dr. Susan Biali Haas 2017