There is no easy way to put this. Are you sitting down? No? Have a seat then. You may find the residue of your own romantic notions spraying your direction as I carefully, yet accurately burst a bubble. What bubble you ask? The bubble that suggests living in a tiny house is a painless, simple, carefree, existence. It simply is not. Living in a tiny house (no matter how subtly you think you are making the transition) is and adjustment. It requires a little finesse and a lot of bourbon
SHOWER STALLS ARE SMALL I am not a big man. At just 6′ tall and weighing about *garble garble garble* or so, I don’t need to take a shower in a Scandanavian bath chamber. In fact, several years back I remember thinking how ingenious tiny houses bathrooms were and how beautiful the showers could be with their massage heads and stainless steel accents. We would go to an RV show and I would marvel at how I could pretend to wash my hair without hitting my elbows. Truth is, I wanted the shower stalls to work, so I would tuck my wings a bit more and I never practiced dropping the loofah or having to stand at the back while waiting for the water to get warm!
WINDOWS ARE TO THE WORLD…AND BACK Those very same oversized windows that allow in natural light and give you a picturesque view during the daytime, are also the ones that stare back at you at night while you gaze cautiously out into the world. Your neighbors (or lurkers) peer into your life as if watching their favorite soap opera on a large screen TV. No matter if you have shades or blinds as the shadows of your silhouette framed by the task light LEDs gives an even more curious picture show! And never-your-mind the rainy days. Oh to stand in front of those windows and look out at the saturation and seemingly un-passable deluge happening just feet away.
NOT ALL SINKS DO DOUBLE DUTY AS DOG BOWLS I have long been skeptical of those miniature sinks that adorn tiny houses. How does one do anything in them? To wash a plate do you have to understand advanced geometry and topology? What about a mixing bowl? Does a mixing bowl require a trip to the outside spigot or the shower stall? Images from the past 5 years would lead one to believe that a tiny house must have a less than standard size sink so as to keep tiny in proportion.
SENSE AMPLIFIED Like a good superhero, tiny houses – sans capes – have the unique ability of heightened sense. Rather they allow for your senses to be heightened. If it smells in real life, it smells twice as strong in a small enclosure. If it is loud in 1,000 square feet, it is twice as loud in 200 sq. ft. If you can see a brown recluse climbing your kitchen wall from where you sit in your favorite suburban sectional sofa, you can see him extremely well across a room roughly 8.5′ wide!
FOLDING CLOTHES IS AN OLYMPIC SPORT When space is minimal and every nook and cranny has some form of organization, even folding clothes can become cumbersome. Trying to fold your tshirts in perfect thirds so that they rest in a cubbie at just 3.5″ wide by 6.2″ tall can be a feat. Even more difficult can be the arrangement of just a 4-piece silverware setting for 4 people. The big spoons must all lay at the same angle which, of course, is upside down from the other perfectly aligned little spoons, etc.
What do you think? Do you think tiny house living comes with its own unique set of obstacles? How do they compare to the benefits? Have you gone tiny and found out your own truths to living small? Tell us in the comment section below.