Our tiny house story

For a while now my family and I have been living in a gorgeous, but tiny, railway carriage which is over 100 years old. That’s it pictured – 2.3 metres wide and around 20 metres long so roughly 46 square metres of living space on the inside. Fortunately there is lots of outside space too with a wraparound protected veranda and large undercover patio and acres of land.

We first moved here a few weeks before Christmas in 2016, blissfully unaware about the experiences we were about to have and excited at the opportunity to live on 10 acres by the river. On a good day, this place makes me feel like I have arrived in a world of peace and tranquillity, high on life and nothing can rattle me. On a bad day though it’s like standing in a small room piled high with boxes and papers with an overwhelming feeling that all of those things are about to fall in and suffocate you.

We have lived here in two separate blocks of time. The first stint was for 7 months, before I cracked it and we moved out for more space. That was the bad old days after the Christmas holiday novelty wore off and we were back into normal life of work and school. Several moves later and we came back here again late last year – 7 months again into our final stint. But this time has been totally different, and we are getting so much better at living tiny!

The reason for living here in the first place is that we are building a normal sized family home on the property, and this tiny home is “short-term” accommodation. The amenities are great – we have all that we need in terms of functioning kitchen, bathroom, laundry, some living/dining space in the middle and two teeny bedrooms either end. The views of the river and surrounding farmland are stunning and so much better than staring at a neighbours fence a metre from your window. That is why we bought the place.

If you were thinking of doing some tiny house living (country or city) something like this, I have put together a list of pros and cons for you to consider, so here they are:

The Cons

• Kids sharing a room can be great sometimes, but a lot of the time it’s hard work getting them to sleep. Our three kids shared the smallest room with a triple bunk bed. However, they are absolute troopers and have really never complained about sharing and having less of their precious things.
• Possessions – you have to be extremely selective about what you allow into the tiny space. If you have too many things it is suffocating and stress creeps in. Just keep the bare essentials to allow you to enjoy it.
• Cooking – my kitchen is small so I can only cook certain meals otherwise there is literally nowhere to place pots and pans. If you are a gourmet chef this would do your head in. Fortunately I am not.
• Cleaning – this is a pro and a con. The con is that when you live tiny, you have to use any spare inch for storage so that includes underneath the beds. We travel a bit so we always need suitcases that are easy to get to. They end up under the bed along with other lost belongings like kids toys, undies, snotty tissues, and the giant dust balls. When it comes time to vacuum sometimes it is a 10 minute job removing the things you’ve stored under furniture just to whip the vac around, so my dust balls are often left for another day.
• Family time is different – normally we love sitting on the lounge together watching a movie on the weekend or sitting together at the dining table to eat dinner. In the carriage we have a tiny table that seats 2-3 people and a 3 seater lounge. Not really ideal for a family of 5. So we find ourselves spending a lot more time in separate rooms rather than all together.
• Shared bathroom – this is no different to my childhood and you do adapt to it after a while. We have gone from two bathrooms and toilets down to 1 of each, in the same room. And what makes it even more terrific is that the laundry is also in the bathroom and this is the room that separates the living from my bedroom. Fun times! There is no luxurious shower time here, it is purely a necessity room now and we all have learned how to juggle that time so it’s no longer an issue. But trust me it can be an issue if you have a shower hog or someone who likes to sit on the toilet for 10 minutes in the morning!

The Pros

• Cleaning takes me about 10% of the time it used to. That is an absolute godsend. I have so much more time to do other things because of the hours saved on cleaning each week. Not sure how I’m going to revert back to cleaning a big house.
• Less is more – not having much storage space means you are inclined to buy less, and when you think about it you don’t really need that much to live comfortably. This has saved us money because when you literally have nowhere to put anything, you are better off not buying it in the first place.
• We really appreciate it when we do have space. If you’ve been camping for a week you’ll know the feeling. When you go camping and spend a week in a tent or camper trailer you manage to live in that small space. When you come home to your normal sized house you feel like you have just stepped foot in a mansion (anyone else feel that or is it just me?). We have become so used to this 46 square metres that I really do see the benefits of small living space, however I think having outdoor space is equally important. You can’t live your whole life indoors.
• Discovering what is important – For us personally we would rather live in a tiny house on a few acres of land than a large house that takes up the entire block in suburbia. This experience has highlighted that preference even more in our own minds. For a time in between our tiny house living, we moved into a rental house on a small block around 500 square metres with a tiny patch of lawn in the backyard. We thought it would be great to have space. But actually we didn’t love it at all. We only stayed there for 6 months. We would rather spend our property budget on the land.
• Time outdoors – they say spending time in nature reduces stress, it certainly does for me anyway. Having tiny living space encourages you to get outdoors. Even if your tiny house was in a city, if there is a park nearby I think you would have similar benefits.

So that’s my recount in a nutshell of this tiny adventure. Despite the bad days we’ve certainly had living tiny in the beginning, there have been so many good ones and I will fondly remember this time.

Shonel x