Starting the Tiny Life

I grew up in California. Until the age of sixteen, I lived in a single-wide mobile home on ten acres. Unlike many of the other kids I rode the bus with every day, I loved being out in the country, being able to climb up the hill and lose sight of all civilization. I loved climbing under the spreading branches of the trees on our land, making small forts for myself, pretending I was Laura Ingalls Wilder, or the main character from My Side of the Mountain.

These days I live in Springfield, Missouri, in a 1500 square foot three bedroom house I share with two roommates. I'm on a pleasant residential street, with a large backyard, a large front yard, and a single car garage stuffed with unpacked boxes from when I moved here six years ago.

I first heard of Tiny Houses years ago. A friend at the time linked me to Tumbleweed, back when it was practically just Jay Schafer. I examined the website, but the idea of living in such a small house didn't match with my 24-year-old certainty that I'd soon be married, working on having four kids, and building myself a modern log cabin, with five bedrooms, a den, a family room, and everything I could've dreamed.

Ten years later I am still un-married, still kidless, and much, much more aware of who I am and what I want out of life. In the last few years I've gotten a steady job for a company I like, I've gotten out of debt, and I've spent quite a bit of time figuring out what's important to me.

These days, it's definitely not the piles of things bought to combat a childhood of being poor. It's not the hours spent cleaning this house that is so much bigger than my needs. It's not the masses of clothes, more than I can wear in a month, or the multiple set of dishes and silverware, enough to fill the sink three times over. It's not the clutter that surrounds me with every moment.

So when a co-worker showed me pictures of her recently completed tiny house, when she let me come visit it...I remembered what that friend had shown me so long ago. And in the past few months I've devoured everything that's come since, the companies and blogs and movement that was in its bare infancy when I last looked.

And now I'm going to do this. I'm going to create a house that is just for me, that fulfills my needs. I'm going to create a space that is mine, that holds only things I love and things that serve me. I'm going to recommit to what's important to me...and to myself.

I'm going to build a tiny house.


I have very little construction experience. I took a wood working class in college, I helped build sets for theater, I've put together tons of Ikea furniture. I can follow instructions, but this is going to be a heck of a project.

But I'm excited, I'm hopeful, and I'm determined.

And I'll be writing about it here, both the thoughts behind it and the process itself. Fingers crossed this will soon be full of pictures of a house being built! Until then, plenty of musings to follow.