Perks of Tiny Home Living

• You’ll save money: Downsizing means less upkeep, fewer repairs, fewer utilities, less cleaning, and no mortgage payments. Big houses cost big money, and when you say goodbye to the square footage, you also say goodbye to the costs of filling and maintaining that space. A tiny home has a price tag of anywhere from $20,000 to $80,000, depending on if you go DIY or purchase one outright. (The median home price in the U.S. is $412,000.)
• Kinder to the environment: Beyond money, a tiny home can give you a tiny carbon footprint. The average American consumes an average of 889 kWh of electricity per month. Compare that to a tiny home, which consumes 85.2 kWh monthly. The average home releases about 28,000 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere yearly, while a tiny home releases just 2,000 pounds annually.

Be Prepared to Make Sacrifices

However, there are downfalls to extreme downsizing. As the name implies, tiny homes are incredibly small and not always feasible for families or people who require a lot of space or storage.

• You can’t have it all. Realize that you’ll have to make serious sacrifices. You may not be able to have a dishwasher or a clothes dryer. You can’t have a king-sized bed or a walk-in closet. You may not have indoor plumbing or personal space. Entertaining will likely be a challenge.
• Local zoning regulations can throw a wrench in your plans. Zoning regulations have not necessarily caught up with the movement. Many communities are not yet tiny-home friendly, and you are at the whim of local laws.
• Tiny homes don’t have as much bang for your buck as you think. According to Forbes, tiny living can cost between $200 to $400 per square foot. Depending on where you live, that can be hefty. Sometimes, micro apartments, carriage houses, RVs, and tiny homes are not a lifestyle choice. They are all that people can afford, especially in expensive communities.

You’re Ready to Downsize to a Tiny Home, Now What?

“The tiny life doesn’t involve packing 2,000 square feet of stuff into a 200 square foot structure. It is about downsizing your material so you can downsize your requirements,” says Andrew Odom, a writer who adopted the tiny living lifestyle.

According to Alex Lehr, a top-five agent in Redwood City, CA, the most challenging part about downsizing is that it’s an emotional process.

“The majority of it is sorting, physically and emotionally,” he explains. You’re not just tossing out random stuff but objects with memories attached to them.

“That’s what slows down the process,” he says. “Reliving memories.”

Take stock of what you have. Create an inventory so you can see redundancies and inefficiencies. You can also start making notes on what you currently don’t use and things that can be replaced with smaller or multi-use items.

Learning how to declutter effectively is essential.

Fitting your wardrobe into a tiny home is a big challenge for many who have made this transition. If you want to decrease the size of your closet, try Project 333, a minimalist fashion challenge that asks people to wear just 33 items over three months. The stuff you don’t wear? Donate it.

Or give yourself a capsule wardrobe, 20 to 40 flexible and timeless items that can be mixed and matched.