During my five year college career, I must have moved no less than 14 times. New experiences, new environments. The key to that kind of lifestyle is only having enough stuff that can be easily packed up and moved by yourself or a couple of friends you bribe with beer and pizza. Only those things that were most valuable to you were allowed along on your life journey. Where your spirit took you was where you went.
Fast forward almost 20 years. Still moving around? Probably not so much anymore. Whether it’s kids, a spouse, a career, or all of the above, that rolling stone of your youth is completely covered in a thick jacket of moss now. Somewhere along the way we made choices and those choices came with the detritus of a culture of commercialism. See stuff, want stuff, get stuff. This collection of stuff outpaced the purging of stuff and before you know it your house is full of stuff and so is the garage…and the outbuildings…and maybe a storage locker. Here is where our story starts.
For years I have felt burdened by stuff. The things that I kept because there was value to them or I placed value upon them. Being the only child of a borderline hoarding father and a curator/collector mother , there was always a lot of stuff around. Both of them have since passed away and the burden of their stuff added to the burden of our own stuff has finally made me see that less is so much more.
In the last few years I have become intrigued with the tiny house movement because of the simplicity of it all. Using modern technology and a svelte structure to force simplicity on the burgeoning collection of things that will largely be underused, but yet continue to steal a piece of our spirits while we continue to carry their burden of possession. Will we ever pare down our possessions to live in it? Not probably while we have kids living with us, but the experience will help us to evaluate what truly is necessary and needed in our lives to be happy and free.
This series of articles is intended to chronicle our journey into building our first tiny home. As we have a number of friends also interested in this process, we are going to treat this a little organically through social media. Check out our Facebook page and get involved in the dialog on this and subsequent posts because your insight and ideas could very well influence our decisions.
We are waiting until mid-April to start building it, but so far we have this 7×10 single axle trailer which we only spent $300 on.