Why We Chose a Tiny House

The choice to go tiny was pretty easy for Maddy and I. The seed had been planted before we even met, Maddy had been toying with the idea of living full time in her 2002 Westfalia Eurovan, while I had been looking into getting an old airstream. So when it came time in our relationship to Start talking about our living situation the conversation very quickly strayed from the normal choices of renting or buying a home. We both cringed at the idea of renting a place in greater Seattle area with just us two. We wanted our own place because we were going to be married soon. The prospect of paying 2,400 dollars a month to someone else’s mortgage for a run down home ended that conversation very fast.Especially when we considered that we try and get out and go places every weekend. Maddy works full time for a tech company in Seattle, and trying to find affordable housing without other roommates is rare in this area. We work hard to make a living, but we don't want to sacrifice our passions to have a roof over our head and food on the table. Another reason we went tiny is we sometimes play with the idea of moving to a new state for some time.The thought of buying a house to live in for a couple years before we decide we want to move out of the area was not ever really an option either. Moving to experience a new place is a thought that we often talk about as we both love exploring new areas, meeting new people, and spending time in the outdoors.

We started to toss around the idea of buying something that would allow us to be mobile. The flexibility and freedom of an RV's is what we wanted. The more we talked about it the more it made sense to go with a tiny home vs an Airstream, or renovate an RV. This is because to make it financially smart to us we need to make it a long term endeavor and we figured the best way to do this was to make it feel open. When we talked about what makes a house feel like a home to us we both expressed the need for lots of natural light and a separation of living space and sleeping space by having lofts. To get huge windows like we wanted along with loft space that wasn't really an option with an RV or Airstream (though we're still obsessed with renovated RVs and Airstreams). Airstreams are very expensive as well, even a project to gut was a bit more than we were looking to invest in that specific project. With these things in mind we started to talk about tiny homes, as we believe it's something we see ourselves and potentially start a family in long term.

Once we started to play with the idea of going tiny we started to discover the many benefits of going tiny. One of the biggest was the financial freedom it will give us. When we finish paying off the tiny home we will have the ability to move to some of the places we talk about that don’t necessarily have the high paying corporate jobs that are available is Seattle because we won't need that to live in the ways we prefer. Another huge draw for us is how tiny living is a more simple way of living. You don’t have the ability to live a very materialistic life as you have a limited amount of space that can really only be used for the essentials. Every time either of us have moved we find ourselves packing more clothes that we think "oh I forgot I have this, or when was the last time I wore this". But we continued to pack these clothes and items around to the next home, all while getting new stuff that became the new favorite and completely forgetting about the old stuff all over again. With living tiny we realized that you have to be able to account for every item or piece of clothing in your house as space is at a premium. By downsizing into a tiny home we knew we would be required to look at everything we owned and place a value of these items and ask ourselves does this value of the item fit into our tiny home equation. This thought of everything I own in the home being easily accountable was a freeing idea to both of us. We'll talk about downsizing more later, but that's the background decision of us choosing our tiny home!

-Maddy & Alec