I can still remember the looks of shock and disbelief on many of the faces of our friends and family when we told them we were going to build a 1000 square foot home at the farm.
Although it is only 1054 square feet, our “Simple House” has what we need to live.
Where will put all of your stuff? You have no basement for storage? 1000 square feet – that sounds so small!
These were just a few of the hundreds of questions and statements that flew our way when folks first saw our plans.
But downsizing and living smaller doesn’t mean having to live in a 150 square foot tiny home on wheels. Nor does it mean having to live without the comforts of life.
To us, it means freedom. Freedom to have time to do more of the things we want to do. We realized that we lived over 95% our life in 4 rooms – the kitchen, family room, bathroom and bedroom.
So we started there, keeping those rooms spacious, and focused on eliminating the rooms that quite honestly are not necessary. The result is a 1054 square foot home that meets all of our needs, and doesn’t break the bank.
The Freedom of Living Smaller
Less To Maintain – More Time To Enjoy Life
Hands down, this is at the top of the list! We realized in our prior house we had rooms that we rarely, if ever used.
We ate in our dining room twice a year for holiday dinners – and yet we had a table, chairs, and two hutches filled with extra plates, cups and more to fill it up.
The same can be said for our basement, spare bedrooms, office space and living room.
Eliminating the extra things we never used, like a mountain of coffee cups, freed up a lot of space
Those rooms don’t exist in our new house, and neither does the clutter that filled them.
And with it gone – so is all of the time it took to clean and maintain. I can’t begin to tell you how incredible that feels.
It quite simply allows for the freedom to spend more time doing what we want, and not spending it all on upkeep.
Better Organization
When you have less “stuff” in your life, you are by default better organized. It becomes much easier to find things when you don’t have to search through a mountain of possessions to find them.
It sounds amazing, but we have learned we can live perfectly fine without 20 extra coffee cups, 15 extra bath towels, and 3 pairs of work boots. Once we started de-cluttering, every single day became a better day.
See : The One A Day Decluttering Experiment
Quality, Not Quantity – Living Smaller Makes Cents
When you live in a large space – it takes a lot of “things” to fill it up.
Eliminating Unneeded rooms. The floor plan for the Simple House.
There is a huge cost to furnishing all of those extra rooms, and filling them with all kinds of pictures, trinkets, and “stuff.” When you eliminate the extra rooms and possessions it takes to fill them, it is amazing how much it saves on the budget!
For us, having less rooms to fill and furnish in the new home meant we could afford to spend a little more on the things we did want in our home. It also meant there was a little more in the budget to do the things we love, like travel.
As we get set to finally move into the new “Simple House” in the next few weeks, I think we both wonder why we didn’t begin living smaller years ago.
Happy Simple Living! – Jim and Mary.
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