How my dream of a tiny house started

This will be a slightly personal post, but here we go!

At the beginning of 2019, I lived in Kristiansand, had a large house of 230 square meters (2500 square feet), a partner of five years and her two children, a steady job and quite a lot of money. But by May 1, everything had turned upside down and I was suddenly without a job, without a girlfriend and without the possibility of financially living with the house after I had bought her out.

Things were really super crap!

As we had bought the house only a couple of years ago and the housing market was bad, it wouldn’t make sense to sell it. I quickly got a new job, but with only one income, I couldn’t live like before. The choice landed on renting out the house while I found myself a cheap place to rent. But the moving process did not go quite as expected.

Like a switch!

I walked through this large house and looked at the abundance of full dressers and wardrobes, a fully crammed giant kitchen, six bedrooms, three living rooms full of sofas, TVs, floor speakers and subwoofers. A room full of guitars, piano, drums and recording studio, a storage room full of tools from floor to ceiling and equipment for summer and winter and a courtyard full of outdoor furniture:

Simply the sum of having lived as a maximalist and materialist for many years, but now it was ENOUGH!

A mild panic spread and I suddenly wanted to throw away everything I saw. Get rid of everything and keep only the most necessary, and most preferably everything could fit in a small suitcase that I could take with me everywhere. At the same time, I wanted a home where there was only room for my suitcase and me, and which could be moved if needed and which I wouldn’t lose – even if I ended up on welfare with 60% salary! House prices today are ridiculously high and with the requirements that are placed on the buyer where you have to dig up 15% equity, I could just forget about buying anything new for many years!

Breathe...

Tiny house on wheels.. Was something I’d heard about a few years ago – and not been particularly positive about it. Because who wants to live in a cramped house on wheels in someone’s garden, make a thousand compromises and not have their own room for training, a separate room for musical instruments, a movie room, a dance floor, a billiards room and, in general, plenty of space to romp around?
But now I started to understand a bit, because yes, it is smaller and yes, you are probably “parked” in someone’s garden (unless you buy a plot of land), but hello:

• A full-fledged house with all facilities (only on a smaller scale!)
• Drawn entirely to your liking down to every last detail (how many people do you know who have drawn 100% of their own house?)
• Full of personality
• The opportunity to take it with you if you wish
• Low monthly cost
• BONUS: Clean the whole house in half an hour which gives you more time for other things!

I’M SOLD!

Then I started searching online and reading up on tiny houses and minimalism and felt a euphoria in my body! This is me!! All the pictures I saw of the tiny houses and of how minimalists live made me bubble up inside! I remember particularly well that this was during the Christmas holidays, because I had a week off and didn’t sleep the first night – I devoured the internet for hours, I emptied drawers and cupboards, followed Marie Kondo’s decluttering series on Netflix “Tidying Up” and ransacked the house for things I could get rid of.

I think I have been a closet-minimalist all my life! But now I’m out!

The whole downsizing process from 230 sqm (2500 sq ft) to 30 sqm (322 sq ft) will have to be in another post, because it was a heavy month where I got rid of over 80% of all my possessions and never felt so rich! And I had become completely hooked on getting rid of stuff! I looked around constantly to see if there was anything else I could donate.

And that was simply the start of it all.

Hoooooours of “Tinyhouse on wheels” on YouTube, joining THOW (Tiny House On Wheels) communities, learn about all the rules and things to think about.

And the drawing part of the tiny..

Oh my god, I’ve spent tens of hours with that pencil and ruler! “Let’s see, if the bathroom is here and the shower is like that, then there can be a sliding door, and then I have to have a kitchen and a living room.. And a bedroom somewhere up in a loft or downstairs.. Oh, how cozy it will be to have a loft, wondering if I should have books and a duffle bag up there, and maybe a TV? Or should it be in the living room? Or maybe rather have a projector and turn the living room into a cinema when it’s movie night?” So.. These thoughts swirled (and still swirl) constantly! And everything must be drawn from all angles and measured up, down and sideways.

But after over three years of drawing all kinds of layouts and all kinds of sizes and with clever ideas and less clever ideas, all the pieces have finally fallen into place and means that the seed that was sown in 2019 is now beginning to bear fruit in 2022 and which is ready for “picking” in spring next year. OMG!

Another thing is that as I have lived in over 30 different addresses which include Kristiansand, Austria, Spain and Oslo, I know that it will be good to have a home that joins the moving load next time! Almost every time I have moved it’s been because I’ve had to. Pack and unpack, pack and unpack. Give me a break. And with every move I’ve lost things, and maybe especially when I was a child and sometimes couldn’t find my favorite toys, and I think that might be a reason why I became a materialist/hoarder in adulthood and struggle to get rid of things. Everything has sentimental value to me!

And there’s something else that has occurred to me in this process; why do I find it so difficult to get rid of my things? Others can throw away without a care in the world, while I almost have to be “separated” from the thing before finally “divorcing” the thing. And then I end up with a lot of stuff! And that must actually be one of the nicest things about the whole downsizing process I’ve been through: Precisely the fact that I now know what actually matters to me and see the difference between something valuable and something that is just a thing.

This is how it all started for me.