Whether you’re looking to retire or you’re just starting out in life, living the tiny house lifestyle has many wonderful things in store for you!
10. Save TONS of money
Living in a smaller home inherently leads to huge savings. You’ll spend less to heat and cool your home, as well as on general maintenance. You can have a beautiful house to call your own at a fraction of the price of a standard McMansion, whether it’s new construction or an existing home purchase, and your property taxes will be the envy of everyone you know.
Following the subprime home lending crisis in 2008, hundreds of thousands of former homeowners became renters – and they stayed that way. That means high rent prices all over the nation… Even a cardboard box in the worst neighborhood in town is going to cost you big.
But you can get around this problem by investing in a tiny home – for more details, check out this article on the costs of living in a tiny home. Remember, renting is like hitting the snooze button on homelessness.
9. Live a greener lifestyle
Small homes consume far fewer resources – they take less to construct, less to heat and cool, and they occupy less space.
Most of us at Dancing Rabbit Eco-village live in tiny houses, and we enjoy a tremendous quality of life as well, while we work towards a greener future for humanity. We produce more electricity than we use, and offer our surplus to the grid for our neighbors to enjoy. We share a mere four vehicles among about fifty people, as well as other shared infrastructure like kitchens, bathing facilities, swimming ponds, gardening areas and so much more.
If this sounds like your kind of thing, consider spending some time with us soon – check out our visitor page to learn more.
8. Save TONS of time
If you ask me, there’s nothing worse than spending a day off doing chores around the house like sweeping and dusting, fixing creaky floorboards, and taking that seventeenth load of laundry out of the washer. In a small home, you will cut your cleaning and maintenance down by a huge margin, so you can spend more time doing you!
7. Liberate yourself from the curse of too much stuff
How many boxes do you have in your garage that you haven’t even opened since the last time you moved? And when was the last time you used that electric cat-waxer your second cousin twice removed bought you as a wedding present?
By encumbering ourselves with so much stuff, we stress ourselves out, because we have to keep track of it, take it with us wherever we go, and buy a bigger house just so we can have a place to put it all. In a small home, you’ll necessarily have to pare down to the things you really need. That may sound like a burden, but it isn’t – its liberation.
6. Make room for nature
If you love to garden, nothing could be better than living in a tiny house because you’ll have more space for those delicious veggies and fragrant flowers. Maybe even a pond, or a meadow to have a picnic with the people you love.
5. Take your home on the road
Forget your grandpappy’s Winnebago – mobile homes have come a long way in the last decade. If the lifestyle of your dreams includes a new stretch of open road, clear blue skies and fresh scenery on the horizon, then a tiny house on wheels could be your ticket to happiness.
Even if you have a standard tiny home, remember that modern technology means that your structure can be relocated on the back of a trailer and plunked down with the help of a crane wherever your next adventure takes you. (Try that with a five-bedroom behemoth without breaking a window or two…)
4. Inspire your creativity
Living in a tiny home often means designing your space from the ground up, and that translates to complete control over your design and the layout of your belongings. Spend some time imagining what life would be like in a small house. Let your imagination run wild. You might be surprised by how keenly you can express yourself, if you take the opportunity to choose your ideal surroundings. For some cool ideas to get the brainstorming started, take a few minutes to read this excellent article.
3. Have it all your own way
Tiny homes often fall below the minimum size requirements specified in building code legislation around the country. This means that you can have your tiny home exactly the way you want it without a bunch of bureaucrats sticking their noses into your business and telling you what you can and cannot have.
This principal extends to the way in which you live your life as well. One of my best friends, Nathan Brown, was able to pursue his vision of lifestyle freedom by living in a tiny home. You can read about his story here.
2. Kiss the mortgage scam goodbye
For as long as I can remember, it’s always been my dream to trade my time for meager wages at a nine-to-five job for a minimum of thirty years so that I can hand all my money over to a mortgage lending company… They SO deserve it! And I totally trust them not to screw me over with a deceptive clause written into the contract in dense, complicated legalese that no one can comprehend without the help of an expensive lawyer. They wouldn’t do that…
Seriously though. If you’re an empty-nester looking to downsize from the family home and retire in something smaller, forget about the condo in Florida and consider a tiny house in a rural area that makes your soul sing. You’ll be glad you did. If you’re ready to begin your search for the tiny house of your dreams, take a peek at this article.
1. Connect with your loved ones
Living in a tiny home means that you and your loved ones will spend more time together, and even if you work each other’s nerves now and then, that will always be a good thing. Instead of barricading in separate rooms and burying your noses in a screen, you and your family will actually share your lives with one another.
You’ll get to hear about their day and what’s on their mind while you make dinner together. You’ll spend more time cuddling in the hammock, or tossing a ball around in the garden. You’ll play music, get wrapped up in a board game and lie outside at night gazing at the stars. Life is short, so spend as much of it as you can with the people you care about most.
Want to see more than a dozen tiny houses firsthand, all in one spot? You can, at Dancing Rabbit Eco-village. While you’re here, you can learn about natural building, organic gardening, renewable energy, personal growth work methods, feminine spirituality, and so much more. Make sure to mark some time on your calendar to come see us, we would love to show you how you too can live the tiny house lifestyle of your dreams.
This all sounds good. We’ve been in the “tiny home” mode for over 15 years now and I can assure you that most of this article is simply misguided to put it politely. Tiny homes are absolutely more expensive to maintain. That associated with the time required to do this added maintenance means less time for enjoying life. Access to loved ones is fine as long as they stay in a motel because there is not room for them at your house. Tiny homes are simply not practical for a “life on the road.” Letting nature in can be having a near neighbor that lives in a blue tarp tiny home. Regulations are not always bad. The only thing true here is that you will liberate yourself of tons of “stuff.”
My wife and I have really been considering getting rid of our home and going tiny. The concept seem so much better than paying all this money for a large house that we are never at.
Thanks for pointing out that having a tiny home will save you tons of time on household chores. My sister has been interesting in getting a tiny house. When I’ve talked to her about it, she seems mostly interested in the environmental and financial benefits. I hadn’t really thought about the personal benefits, so thanks for pointing them out here!