I heard a quote not so long ago that said,
“I don’t look forward to more space, I look forward to needing less,” this
touched me. Currently my family and I are down sizing, we are converting our
shed up at our second property into a humble LITTLE home.
We currently live in a roughly 35 sq, tall
ceiling home with 4 bedrooms, 2 lounge rooms, formal dinning and rumpus room…
oh and did I forget a big pool… Your probably thinking “ is she crazy”… When my
husband and I brought this house we thought it was going to be the home that we
stayed in our whole lives, have a big family with lots of space and room to
move.
Don’t get me wrong, our house is lovely, it
has served us well and will serve a new owner well… It has brought us great
memories of living in a great street, we have shared our neibours children and
they have shared ours, the school is walking distance and the walls speak many of
stories of nerf wars in the big rooms, hide and seek in the dark and many pool
parties that were noisy and boozy…
We do intend on building a new house on our
block, but not for quite some time.
We don’t know if we are going to have another child or if we will wait
till we retire and build when kids leave home. But we know that it is where we want to be for quite some
time. But our needs for today will
be different to our need for tomorrow.
Our shed conversion is small, all council
approved and legit… but small… the 4 boys will share and room and play space
and we will only have 1 lounge room.
For us this will be a big change, but one I am yearning for… We are
joining the Tiny Home trend. We can’t
fit in a “genuine” tiny home but for us, it is tiny.
Our reason for this life style choice is
space. As my children grow, it would be easy
to grow further apart, so my hope is it will draw us closer together when we are
united by close walls, financially we estimate to cut our out goings by at least a 3rd
and finally at least ½ our house does not get used. It is a wasted space for
us, but another family who will use the space should and use it well.
4 Boys in one room, what am I thinking…I
have come up with a design that will share space but give each person their own
little nook, this I believe will teach my children the importance of boundaries
and how to live with others harmoniously, BAHAHAHA I laughed as I typed that,
so I thought I should let you know that I do genuinely hope this, but realize
there a strong possibility that it wont work. I hope it does not turn out a disaster, but if I don’t try I will never know.
My dream at this current time is to waste
less money on power and rates and have more money to go on family
holidays. We can rent a Mc Mansion
for a weekend if we like, or as my friend does, go on a holiday in a caravan
that will make our tiny home feel bigger when we return.
How much stuff do we really need to fill us
up, currently we are spread over such a massive space and use barely use any of it,
I have a utensil for everything, this makes a lot of washing up, I have a good lounge
and a play lounge, this makes for a lot of vacuuming, I have a spare guest
room, it gets slept in for about a week a year, so heating it is basically
pointless.
I am not saying life will be beer and
skittles with the 6 of us and perhaps 7 if we go for our little Ruby. But I feel good about the prospect of
living a greener life that is less wasteful and getting out side more with the
kids, rather than pushing them into the back room of the house thinking they need
more time on their own.
I will post again 6 months after we have
live in our shed, I will of either A.
Already have the plans for the Mc Mansion being built or will have
settled into our new little life.
The kids are all on board with the dream, my husband is eager and I am daily
orchestrating what it will take for the massive change.
We have planted our orchard, planning our
gardens and have a little hobby farm with goats, alpaca and sheep… with lambs
on the way, this is a far cry from the life style I ever thought I wanted, but
as I get older and life gets more complex, I seem to have a desire to find quieter things to softly fulfil my passage through life.
Our current lifestyle is one where children
are entertained by TV, X Box, psp
and phones, I want to teach my children that simplicity is an important virtue and
hope the hills they cart down and trees they climb in, on weekends now, will bring a new daily life that that brings them fond memories as an adult and also a bit of Vitamin D in their technology "off" time.
We have our critics don’t worry and I
really hope we prove them wrong.
We are not doing what the conventional big family do, by up sizing to fit
us all in, but I feel really good about it, like we are making a conscious
decision about our future and heading in a direction that will help us to
achieve it. I dream of holidays
that will give us experiences that our big house currently does not provide us,
only time will tell how it pans out “but
I am definitely loving my big family”.
