With the growing number of kids being diagnosed with suffering related to overexposure to screen time, the adverse idea of playing outside is almost becoming a thing of the past. However, those who are actively choosing to challenge the status-quo for everything from income margins to housing expense and environmental impact are turning the ideas of staying cooped up on its end.
As the number of full-time tiny house dwellers increases, this population is experiencing some pretty incredible results that come only from their spending more time outdoors and less time inside. Many say that when the inhabitable real estate of your house is so small, it encourages you to spend more time doing things outside and really remembering why you gleaned so much joy from outdoor play as a child.
Get Your Vitamins and Get Moving
Most doctors would recommend 20-30 minutes per day in direct sunlight about 3-4 times per week just to get your body’s needs for vitamin D. in addition to the health benefits from controlled sun exposure, children and adults alike are more likely to get exercise when playing outdoors since the expanse or space to move and run is so much greater, no matter the size of your house.
Educate Yourselves
Children and adults can both benefit to learning outdoors. It teaches us that learning is a lifelong process and not one confined within the walls of desks and a classroom. The additional benefit for children playing freely in nature outside is that it helps them to develop life skills and necessary social skills as they interact with the world around them, learning hard skills like walking on different surfaces as well as soft skills like how to treat living things.
The less overwhelming and crowded your outdoor space, the more encouraged children will be to run and play freely. This allows them the well-being and self-awareness to begin to develop their independence.
Put Your Toes in the Sand
Some people call this process ‘earthing’ but it is a legit practice, folks. Walking with our feet in the sand, dirt, soil, whatever helps us to relax as it is like a mini reflexology session. It allows us to focus our minds since we must think about each step to avoid any present danger. Some studies even support that walking barefoot outside can decrease depression and anxiety by 62% as your endorphins increase.
Tiny living promotes this idea of getting back to our roots—to simplify down to what truly brings us joy. Remember being a kid running barefoot in the summertime? Tiny house dwellers might argue that you should have that feeling all the time.
Be Intentional
When you live in less than 400 square feet by choice, the chances are good that you’ve already had to make some relatively difficult decisions leading up to your tiny live. What clothes do I keep? Which family heirlooms make the cut? Should I donate my old bedroom suit or save it ‘just in case’?
Tiny living helps to naturally guide it’s owners to a more intentional frame of mind. When you choose to keep such a small house, everything inside of it must be something meaningful enough for you to keep when you are sorting out what stays and what goes. Along with that comes what do you with the extra time you used to spend cleaning, doing yard work, or fixing things around your old place? Tiny house dwellers choose joy and are able to chase dreams, take adventures, and journey through outdoor play they haven’t done since college. It really has a way of balancing the important for you.
Make Memories
As you begin to live with less and become more intentional, tiny living helps you make more memories. As you venture outside your small place into the great wide open, you are afforded opportunities that you didn’t have before because you were tied down with work, schedules, long hours, and clean up. Now you are left with extra time to intentionally choose how you experience life and you can go from simply existing to truly living.
Brynn Burger lives tiny, loves big, and laughs always. Writing with honest hilarity and violent vulnerability about parenting, adulting, downsizing, living tiny, and raising an extreme child is her attempt to escape the painful isolation that comes from a life of hiding to instead connect with people who are raw and real. Check her out at www.themamaontherocks.com.