As I shared earlier, my husband and I live in a tiny house. Quite a few of you seemed interested in how we do that with three kids so I plan to write more posts with some tips but I thought I’d start with explaining how we got here in the first place.
My husband likes to call this his ⅓ life crisis. I’d say it wasn’t so much a crisis but more of a reset and refresh. We bought our “forever” house in the fall of 2011. My husband loved the space it had. Coming from a condo in Chicago, it felt humongous! The house had 4 bedrooms, 3 full baths, and a large basement where our kids could play baseball and ride bikes in the winter. And even though the house wasn’t exactly my style, we worked together to make it into a home that felt like us. Chris was always willing to take on my newest Pinterest idea because he wanted to make me love the house as much as he did.
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Much more functional than a closet 
Playroom 
Easy closet upgrade
Everything changed on a dime one evening while we were out to dinner. I won’t forget the night. It was the Saturday before Easter, 2016. Chris and I had a date night because his aunt was in town and willing to watch the boys. If you’re a parent you know you never turn down a free babysitter.
We started talking about the future a bit. Chris mentioned his concerns about wanting to be able to save more money and that he had been looking into buying a 4-unit building, a couple towns over. At first I assumed he wanted to buy the building as an income property but his plan was different. He wanted us to sell our house and live in one of the units while we rented out the other three units. My initial reaction was “no way, not going to happen” but he explained that our tenants could basically pay our mortgage so it didn’t take long for him to convince me to go see it.
After viewing the house twice, we decided to put in an offer and it was accepted. Now we were on the clock to sell our current house. While we had done a lot of work previously, we still had projects that were on the 2-year plan that now had to be done in the next 10 days so we could get it on the market!
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My husband and I worked hard freshening things up – We updated bathrooms, did some painting, and got rid of a lot of stuff. We got our house listed on a Tuesday and had a full-price offer by Friday. This was really happening!
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We’ve been in our new home for three years. We call it our “tiny house” but it’s not your typical tiny house. It’s a 4-unit building that looks like a raised ranch from the street. We live in one of the units and rent out the other three. Our portion of the tiny house is a 2 bed,1 bath unit. It’s small, that’s for sure but we actually like living here.
Before we moved in, I assumed I’d feel almost depressed leaving our “big” house and moving into such a modest space but I actually had completely different feelings.
From the very first night in our new house, I felt completely at peace and content. I think it’s partly because when every room is filled (with people and things), your home feels instantly homey.
People are always shocked when I tell them that moving into our tiny house has in no way taken away any joy in my life but it’s true. How could that be? It’s because stuff doesn’t bring joy, at least not lasting joy. It’s just things. Really, who cares if you have a 6 bedroom mansion or a one bedroom apartment? Life’s about so much more than the stuff we own.
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