What constitutes a tiny home?

I’ve been obsessed with the tiny home movement for years and now I think I actually live in one – or close to it.  I really don’t know the actual maximum square footage to be considered a tiny home, but on the shows, I watch constantly, those homes are around 300 or 400 square feet total.  My home is close – coming in at a whopping 528 square feet, but it’s not on wheels, it’s not going anywhere.

I bring up this point because, like everyone involved in the tiny home movement, going tiny, or in my case small, means a lifestyle change.  It means less stuff and less of a mortgage – both good things.  I grew up in a huge house on a big lot of land and never thought about living any other way – until I was out on my own and realized that I couldn’t afford huge – lol.  My first home was a one bedroom condo, and at the time I was quite happy with the space, because it was mine.  My next home was a 2 bedroom, one story Stucco with a great yard in Monterey and years later I bought a 3 story, 3 bedrooms two car garage Victorian in Portland – and then I stopped.  Even though I loved those homes, I had to have roommates in order to afford the mortgages and they also required a lot of upkeep on the homes themselves and in the landscaping.  I did a lot of the work myself and really enjoyed it – especially the landscape part, but it was very time consuming, and I had other things I wanted to do with my “free time”.

Fast forward to the present and I have recently purchased my small home in a very small town, and now I’m slowing down my pace and simplifying my life – hence the name of my Blog.  My mother always wanted bigger and better – more is more, and she had a “hold onto everything” mentality –  I used to be like that when I was younger but somewhere along the way, things changed.  It might have started when I helped my mother clear out the attic in preparation for her move from the East Coast to the West, about 15 years ago.  I just couldn’t believe some of the things that she still had in boxes – and I don’t mean things people should keep, either.  She still had my ski pants from when I was 8 – thinking that someone, someday might need them – really??  She kept old appliances that she had long since replaced, hating to let go of anything.  Her love of boxes and bags still baffles me – there were thousands when I helped in her last move.  I think the final push for me was when I spent a few months going through my mother’s entire townhouse after we moved her into assisted living, just 2 years ago, that really made me want to go TINY.  I started out with the 3 main piles that you see on the tv shows about hoarders – one for throwing out, one for donating and one for keeping – by month three, I wanted to throw out everything that was left – I had hit the wall.  How could one person want to keep so much stuff and why??

Before I moved my things from Colorado to Washington, I got rid of a few things, and then when I bought this home – I got rid of more.  I might have been a bit aggressive, realizing that I now miss, or need, some of the things I got rid of, but that’s ok – it felt good to let go at the time.  I used to feel so attached to everything that I owned and now I really only care about a few things – my mothers and grandmothers wedding rings, that I always wear, my photos – that are usually with me, on my phone or downloaded to the cloud and my 2 dogs and my cat, also usually with me – everything else is “extra”.  I have friends that are currently adding an 800 square foot deck onto their house and another friend said that she will be adding  1000 sq ft to their already existing 2000 sq ft home – I say go for it.  It makes me laugh – both of their additions are bigger than my home – HA – but do what makes you happy – and living SMALL and SIMPLE makes me happy now.