Minimalist Families Series

Minimalist-ish Family Series: Alex and Family Try out 280 sq ft

by theminimalistmom |

What an adventurous family! Alex shares her radical downsizing plans and the big year off her family is taking (along with what they are living in) in today’s Minimalist-ish Family Series post. Thanks Alex!

Living in a Tiny Home for a Year with Kids

We are a family of four (plus one very big dog) from the Denver, Colorado Metro area.  Our family includes myself (Alex) and my husband (Nate), both 34, our two boys Rockwell, 5, Hunter, 3 and our 8 year old dog (Tacoma).  My husband and I are originally from the Chicago suburbs.  Living in Colorado, we love all the opportunities it offers to explore the great outdoors, enjoy good food and experience wonderful music and entertainment.  Having spent the last five and a half years in the thick of parenting little kids, it has definitely been more of a challenge to do the things we enjoy outside of the home as often as we would like.  As a result, we have committed the next year to going back to our roots and enjoying the great outdoors, traveling and spending more quality time as a family.  We are currently building a tiny house that we will live in for the next year as we travel the United States and visit National Parks.

Nate is an avid outdoorsman, having heli boarded in Alaska, hiked a majority of Colorado’s tallest peaks, the “14ers”, and white water rafted in Colorado and Utah.  For hobbies these days, he enjoys PC gaming and managing his associated Youtube channel. Before pursuing this dream of living tiny and traveling the country, Nate accrued over a decade of experience working in residential construction and is using these skills to build our tiny home.

I am a college athlete turned high school counselor.  Working with many amazing students, I’ve learned the importance of creating strong family bonds. Nate and I are each taking a year long leave of absence from our jobs for this adventure.  We are hoping this experience will help provide Rockwell and Hunter with a healthy, supportive and experientially rich childhood.  I have been a fan of the tiny house and minimalist movements for the past several years, having watched basically every youtube video on the subjects as well as documentaries and dabbled in lifestyles. We look forward to committing to these socially, economically and ecologically worthwhile endeavors on a bigger scale.  And, while my hammer skills are subpar, I am lending a hand where I can and enjoying the creative and design aspects of the build.

I’ve been learning about minimalism for several years through websites, videos and blogs.  I have been talking about moving into a tiny house for almost as long.  As someone who can get easily stressed and overwhelmed when my physical environment is chaotic, the idea of simplifying both our material possessions and responsibilities was liberating.  While I did have a feeling of skepticism that going tiny and becoming our own versions of minimalists would be possible, the freedom of having, and thus, caring for, less stuff was beyond intriguing.  Currently living in a house of over 3000 sq ft with two young boys, physical goods seem to pile up everywhere.  So much of our precious free time seems to be spent cleaning, sorting and trying to find the things we truly need among the things we just seem to have. The idea of decluttering, reducing, and truly learning to live with only what we need seemed overwhelming but it also feels incredibly freeing.  
We are currently building our tiny house and in the process of paring down in preparation to move into it.  It will be only about 280 square feet or less than 10% of the space of our current house.  So, while we haven’t yet faced the challenge of living with less, we are currently working through the challenges of determining what we should keep as a part of that less.  From curating a capsule wardrobe for each member of the family, to deciding which toys will be brought along, the idea of getting rid of the things we own is a challenge.  It is requiring us to embrace a minimalist mindset in a world where it feels like too many people equate more material things with greater success and happiness.  Though I know internally that our success and happiness is in fact more closely correlated with less things (and thus less stress), it is requiring a huge shift from the cultural norms of the world in which my husband and I grew up.  I can imagine there will be days when the boys will want that certain toy that they used to have at the big house (and likely rarely played with there).  There will be days where Nate will realize a certain activity or project would be so much easier if he only had a certain tool we used to own.  And days I will wish I had more counter space for meal prep (full disclosure: I am a messy cook).  But, in the end, we are pursing this journey specifically because right now we have things and space and they do not fulfill us.  They are only things.
Just the thought of soon having less feels like a weight lifting off of our shoulders.  In our current house, it seems as though our free time is consumed with never-ending chores, laundry and house projects.  With two boys about to start school, looking back it feels as though we haven’t done enough as a family – enough exploration of our beautiful surroundings, enough being together without being consumed by the work and worry associated with financial burden of trying to keep a house in the booming Denver Metro area.  Knowing we will be moving into a tiny house that will be paid off means the financial worry will be less.  Our year of travel will allow us to spend quality time together as a family both inside the tiny house and outside exploring the vast, incredible world around us.  Even if the tiny house is a mess, with less stuff and less space it will take much less time to clean.  Not only is living with less a better environmental and financial option, it will allow us to focus on those things that are truly important, our relationships with each other and with the world around us.

Our current timeline for living in the tiny house is only through next summer as at that point we will conclude our year of travel.   In my ideal world, we would stay tiny for the foreseeable future on a nice plot of land that would allow us to live in community with nature and off the land. In that situation, I could see us continuing this lifestyle until the boys hit their early teens and need more personal space and privacy. However, at this time, building codes and land costs in our area do not allow our tiny house to be a long term option in our community.  As the tiny house and minimalist movement continues to grow, our hope is more and more communities in our area will create building codes and housing options that embrace and support this amazing way of life so we can continue it here in our tiny house.  If that is not possible, we may use the tiny house as a permanent rental property in an area that will allow us to do so or explore the option of having the tiny house continue its mission of travel, minimalism and tiny living with another family.  Whatever may come, with a successful year on the road under our belts, I believe we will look for other ways to stay tiny and keep those things that are important in the forefront by keeping our belongings minimal, environmental footprint small, and our experiences vast.
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Interested in reading more minimalist-ish family stories? Here are a few from the series:

  • This is SO cool! We only have a 1,500 square foot house (which many consider “tiny” in our area 😉 but I’d love to go smaller! I asked my husband if he thought we could ever make it in a tiny house he said WE could (gesturing to him and I) but I don’t know that WE all could (then including our four kids ages 8 and under)…but I’d still like to try 😉 Best wishes on your adventure!!!

  • I think this sounds awesome, but I would like to see an acknowledgement of the massive amount of privilege that allows both people to take a year long sabbatical while having enough money to travel and presumably some back to a well paid job. This may be minimalist, but it far out of the reach of most of us! Not a criticism, just a comment.

    • Thanks for bringing attention the reality of these choices for most families. I’ll try to call attention to the privilege of this lifestyle more, particularly in the early retirement series I’m working on.

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