CHAPTER
3

Preparing for the Paring Down

In This Chapter

• Knowing what size to build your tiny house
• Finding freedom by decluttering
• Dealing with emotional attachment to stuff
• Lightening your load through digitization

The majority of future tiny housers must go through a significant downsizing process. For many, it’s a rite of passage into the minimalist lifestyle and something they eagerly jump into. For others though, it’s the part of the process they dread the most. Fortunately, there are some great strategies to make the process not only painless, but also fun.

In this chapter, we help you determine your ideal tiny house size. We show you how to deal with emotional attachments to personal belongings such as heirlooms, and we also discuss the joys and freedom of living a clutter-free life.

Nothing will better help you find your ideal home size than actually staying in a tiny house; fortunately, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of tiny houses just waiting for your visit. They can be found in every state, and range from tiny houses on wheels, to backyard cottages, to tricked out Airstreams, to lofty tree houses. There’s even larger scale tiny house lodging available, such as The Caravan Tiny House Hotel in Portland, Oregon; WeeCasa Tiny Home Hotel in Lyons, Colorado; and Mt. Hood Tiny House Village outside of Bend, Oregon.

Online resources, such as airbnb.com and vrbo.com, are excellent tools for finding tiny houses to rent. Because many owners are listing their tiny houses on these sites, a web search should yield numerous results. If renting a place isn’t an option, look for a tiny house jamboree, fair, or festival in your area. There are now several of these events happening in all regions of the United States.

There are other tools for discovering your ideal tiny house size. One of our favorites is the use of colored tape to layout a full-scale tiny house floor plan on a driveway, garage floor, living room floor, or any other large area. For as long as practically possible, move basic furniture into that space (including your mattress) and occupy only that area to get a sense of scale and space functionality.

The tape system is not practical for day-to-day kitchen and bathroom use, so in those areas, sort through your belongings, pick out only the vital items and tape off access to the drawers and cabinets with nonessentials. Experiment with adding and taking items away. What’s vital? What can you live without? This exercise is a great opportunity to start getting into the tiny house mind-set even while living in a large house.

Recreate your proposed floor plan on a large surface of your current home/garage/driveway to get a sense of what your tiny house layout will feel like. (Photo credit by Alek Lisefski, tiny-project.com)

Living with Just the Basics

We remember lying awake many sleepless nights during our tiny house design process, worrying that we would invest all this time and money into building a space that wasn’t properly sized for us. After all, how were we to know what we really needed when we had spent most of our lives in conventionally sized homes? In order to answer that question, we decided to move with our (at the time) 10-year-old daughter to the beaches of Baja, Mexico for five months while living in a used 16' pop-up tent trailer.

We each went down with nothing but the absolute basics:

• One set of cutlery—one plate, bowl, and cup
• Basic spices
• Two pairs of shorts
• Three t-shirts
• One sweatshirt
• Two pairs of pants
• Seven sets of undergarments
• One bathing suit
• One jacket
• Two books
• Some board games and cards
• One guitar
• One laptop computer for us all to share
• Basic provisions, such as a flashlight, toiletries, one hairbrush, and other things of that nature

We turned off our social media accounts and kept our phone lines open only for talking with our son who was attending school in Colorado.

Through that experience, we learned that in living with the least, we had the opportunity to experience the most. We enjoyed a sense of calm and joy that we had not felt before. As our attachments to material possessions, electronics, and always being busy peeled away, our love for life increased. We came back from that adventure with a clear understanding of which material possessions were necessary (very few) and which ones were just frivolous (everything else).

TINY TIP

Establishing what’s vital in your life can pose an interesting challenge, especially when living in a conventionally sized house. Select only the items that you believe to be essential and put them somewhere accessible. Over the next 7-30 days, use only those items and see if you miss any of the other ones. If you miss an object more than a few times, consider moving it back into your essentials. Play around with thinning out those items and see what you actually use and what you can live without.

When envisioning your ideal tiny house life, really take stock of the things that you value, and even more importantly, the things you can leave behind. Take notes on how often you cook at home, how much space you use in your refrigerator (without letting food items spoil), how many clothing items you actually wear, how many books you read, how much athletic equipment you use, how often you actually need all of the space in your full-size oven, and so on. All of this information will help you whittle away the items and spaces that are frivolous and thus, taking up unnecessary space in your life.

Creating a tiny house life means so much more than just moving into a small space. It’s about becoming mindful of your day-to-day habits and perhaps making some new choices. It’s also an opportunity to surround yourself with the items that you truly love and that haven’t had a chance to be appreciated amidst the clutter that surrounds them.

Declutter Your Life

Space is a vacuum and if you have it, it begs to be filled. This is why drawers are so rarely empty, and why garages fill up with who-knows-what. It’s easy to accumulate clutter when we’ve been steeped in the values of consumerism from a young age.

Many people feel that tiny house living is unattainable because they’re shackled by their relationship to material possessions. Committing to the decluttering process isn’t for the faint of heart and requires a lot of honest introspection. You might be surprised (we were!) at how deeply your upbringing has patterned your relationship to stuff.

Though decluttering might seem overwhelming at first, the great news is the process gets easier with time, and the more you do it, the better you’ll feel. Soon you’ll be so fueled by how liberated you feel that the last legs of the journey will fly by with ease. Let’s get you going with some great decluttering strategies that you can start applying today!

365-Day Rule

When we started our downsizing process in earnest, we felt completely overwhelmed. We were clueless as to where to begin and the prospect of going through thousands of possessions nearly paralyzed us. We knew we would need a systematic approach so we created the 365-Day Rule.

The 365-Day Rule is incredibly simple to apply. It involves going through every item you own and asking one simple question: “Have I used this in the last year?” If not, it must go into a potential-discard pile no matter how cheaply you bought it for, how much emotional attachment you have to it, or how valuable you perceive it to be.

This exercise will reveal your underlying attachments to material possessions. We learned more about our relationships to stuff here than at any other point. The key to success for the 365-Day Rule is that you must be merciless while sorting through everything. And when we say everything, we mean it, even down to the paperclips. Don’t shortchange yourself by getting lazy in this process. The following figure shows just some of the items we identified as being unnecessary using the 365-Day Rule.

This photo shows just a portion of the useless stuff we got rid of once we applied the 365-Day Rule in our own house.

The process might seem exhausting at first and, depending on how much you own, you could feel drained. The average American household is filled to the gills with 300,000 items, so this process might take some time. Stick with it though. As you continue your decluttering journey, you’ll start feeling better and better.

It took us about four weeks of decluttering for three hours per day to get through our house. By the time we were done, our two-car garage was covered two feet deep in a sea of stuff we hadn’t used in the last year. We were shocked. We weren’t even living in a huge house and we certainly weren’t shopaholics.

Our discard pile consisted of kitchen gadgets, books, sports equipment, knickknacks, toiletries, clothing, toys, CDs/DVDs, office supplies, instruments, camping equipment, and the like. We experienced quite a pang of sadness when we considered how much money, time, and environmental resources had been sacrificed to purchase those items. We felt embarrassed when we saw that a lot of them hadn’t even been used.

The next step in the 365-Day Rule involves living day to day without all those possessions. We highly recommend at least two weeks (we did it for about eight). If your experience is anything like ours, you won’t miss any of the items in the potential discard pile. You might even forget what’s in that stash within a couple of weeks.

The final step involves sorting through the discard pile and deciding what to keep and what to get rid of. This part will likely be easy and fun because you’ll already have gone through the emotional detachment process. With the 365-Day Rule alone, we eliminated about 75 percent of our worldly belongings.

TINY QUOTE

“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.”
–Will Rogers, 1879

You can sell, give away, recycle, and/or trash the stuff you decide to discard. We ran garage sales over two weekends and made enough money to pay for our entire five months in Baja, Mexico. Not bad for a bunch of stuff we didn’t need anyway!

Managing Your Emotional Attachment to Stuff

Getting rid of stuff we didn’t have an emotional attachment to was easy, but we sure were stumped when it came to things like heirlooms. Our collection of keepsakes had included the majority of our kids’ early artwork, about 15,000 printed photos, large boxes filled to the brim with letters, clothes from our infancy, and a petting zoo worth of stuffed animals. Needless to say, we had accumulated way more than we wanted to bring into our tiny house.

We managed to get rid of 75 percent of our things in about three months, but it took over three years to psyche ourselves up for the task of sorting through the heirlooms. We knew we had to come up with a game plan and some serious strategy to get through the job. We started by simply separating our keepsakes into three categories: photographs, letters, and personal effects (toys, clothing, medals, and so on).

In going through the letters, we realized that even though we had hundreds of them, they had all been written by a couple dozen people. We recognized that we didn’t need to keep every single one, and that a couple of the best letters did a better job of capturing the sentiment from each relationship.

In terms of what to do with the extra letters, we actually mailed a lot of them back to the authors. Most people don’t keep diaries, so those letters served as wonderful time capsules into their pasts.

With our kids’ artwork, we quickly realized we didn’t need to keep all of it, just the pieces that really tugged at our heartstrings. It became easier to sort through them once we laid them side by side. Removing the pieces that weren’t stellar allowed us to really appreciate the special ones. After this initial paring down, we decided which pieces to keep in hard copy and which ones to scan and digitize. By the end of this process, a large box of artwork had been whittled down to a small folder.

In terms of personal effects, we had saved everything from trophies, medals, and high school jackets to yearbooks, stuffed animals, and more. Combined, those items were taking up a lot of space. To solve the issue, we ended up snapping pictures of ourselves with several of them. Taking those photos actually brought the keepsakes to life and we had a ton of fun in the process. We realized we didn’t need to hang on to most of them anymore and were able to joyfully part with nearly all of them.

One of the best ways to encapsulate a memory with an heirloom is by taking a photo. In this image, Gabriella is posing with her silver trophy from the Karate Junior Olympics. Once she took the photo, she didn’t feel the need to hang on to it anymore.

Some people have the misconception that they must get rid of virtually all personal belongings and heirlooms to be a true tiny houser. This is simply not true. What’s important is that you’re clear and honest about what’s truly important to you. If something from your childhood brings you incredible joy and you really want it in your life, create space for it in your tiny house.

Of the thousands of items that we sold and gave away, we don’t have a single regret. Not even one! And if we’re really being honest here, we actually don’t remember 99 percent of what we used to own. It’s hard to imagine a time when we were surrounded by so much stuff.

Defining Your Own Life

The topic of housing can be contentious and some people have very strong opinions on what types of houses people should live in. As tiny houses have become increasingly popular, it’s less and less common to hear criticism, but you could still run into some well-meaning people disapproving of your tiny house vision.

We personally experienced this after announcing our move to tiny back in 2009. Since most people hadn’t heard of tiny houses back then, we had a lot of explaining to do. After a while, we felt disheartened, and eventually people’s doubts heightened our own.

Fortunately, our experience living in Baja with essentially nothing but the basics and a roof over our heads brought such clarity that any negative comments from that point on simply rolled off our backs. We knew without a shadow of a doubt that we were on the right track so other people’s judgments simply couldn’t hold a grip on us.

If you’re met with cynicism after sharing your tiny news, remember that only you can know what’s best for you. Though outside feedback can be helpful, no one can completely understand your needs and wants. And always remember that even if your friends and family think you’re nuts, there’s a community of hundreds of thousands of people interested in tiny houses that will warmly welcome you with open arms.

Finding Fun and Freedom Through Decluttering

Growing up in western society, we’ve been told that material possessions are the measure of success and that we’ll be more beautiful, joyful, and popular once we purchase the latest gadgets and gizmos. Fortunately, these myths are being debunked and studies are showing that an excess of material consumption and possessions actually creates emotional distress.

Knox College professor of psychology, Tim Kasser, conducted a series of experiments analyzing the correlations between material possessions and happiness. What he found was that as subjects became more materialistic, they also became emotionally unstable and unhappy. Conversely, those who prioritized a reduction in materialism, became more joyful and relaxed.

TINY TIP

A study conducted by The Checkout, an organization that analyzes the effects of shopping culture, found that the average American shopper spends $200 per month on impulse purchases that they later regret.

Once a person stops the habit of spending money on nonessentials, his financial resources have a chance of improving. We have traveled more than ever since making the move to tiny. Money that would have been spent on housing now goes toward fun adventures, educational opportunities, and health. Since our housing costs used to represent a large burden in our monthly budget, we felt an immediate and positive impact once we moved into hOMe.

As we thinned our possessions, we felt exponentially lighter and freer. It was wonderful, and this new sense of buoyancy fueled our downsizing process, making it easier each step of the way. It’s so easy that toward the end, we had to rein in our enthusiasm a tad and resist the urge to get rid of everything we owned.

Dare to radically declutter your life and see what the future has in store for you. Though the process is not without challenges, the rewards are extraordinary, and the implications potentially life altering. Even if you never move into a tiny house and you simply focus on decluttering, you might experience a remarkable expansion of your life’s horizons.

Thinning Out by Digitizing

Most people living in conventionally sized houses have amassed years of document clutter ranging from receipts to tax papers and everything in between. We were no exception as our document arsenal included more than 50,000 pieces of paper stored in large filing cabinets. There simply wasn’t room in our tiny house for this stash so we had to employ a solution: create a paperless office by digitizing all of our documents.

There is no shortage of scanning tools out there and they make easy work of digitizing a home office. The most well-suited combo we have come across is the ScanSnap scanner together with Evernote.com. The beauty of this marriage is that they create readable files from scanned documents, meaning that whenever you need to find something, all you have to do is enter the search term and voilà, your file magically appears. No more sorting through thousands of pieces of paper wondering where the receipt for that pipe wrench ended up.

In terms of storing that data, we recommend you save everything in three places on your computer, on a remote/exterior hard drive, and in a secure storage solution in the cloud. Having your documents in the cloud allows for remote searches when you’re not with your computer (and provides a vital backup in case your hard drive fails, your computer is stolen, or if your computer is lost in a fire or natural disaster).

Knowing what documents to shred after scanning can be confusing so make sure to do your due diligence when researching what to keep. Different industries have different expectations of what documents must be saved and for how long.

TINY WARNING

Though most documents don’t need to be kept in hard copy, some do. Be sure to keep the following in their original form (and preferably in a locked, fire-resistant location):

• Social Security card
• IDs
• Birth, death, marriage, divorce certificates
• Last Will and Testament
• Power of Attorney paperwork
• Insurance policies
• Loan paperwork (car, house, and so on)
• Pension and military documents
• Passport

Digitization was a saving grace for photo hoarders such as ourselves. We started out with about 15,000 prints, negatives, and slides. We organized the piles by sorting photos into separate events and then choosing our three or four favorite prints from each pile. We realized we didn’t need 43 photos from the camping trip at Lake of the Woods with the kids; instead, we just wanted a few that told the story and kept the memory alive.

Over the course of about five really fun sittings, we whittled our collection down to just 1,000 prints. Truly just the best of the best. We purchased a consumer grade photo scanner (ImageBox 9MP) rather than hiring out the digitization. We selected it because it accommodated slides, negatives, and prints.

The ImageBox 9MP does a reasonable job of scanning photographs without too much loss in quality. If you need them to be exceptionally high quality though, you might want to look more in the professional range instead. They cost quite a bit more but really produce excellent results for DIYers.

Scanning 1,000 images took about 12 hours in total. It was quick, easy, and something we could do while listening to the radio or talking on the phone. We backed up our images on CDs, an external hard drive, and in the cloud as well. The originals were either given away or thrown out. Years later, we still have no regrets about digitizing our photo collection.

Music and movie collections can also be digitized. Various options exist for transferring DVD and VHS files into digital formats. Which one you choose will be dictated by your computer’s operating system and your budget. One nice perk about digitizing your music and video collection is that if you have a laptop or smart phone, you can take them with you everywhere you go.

The Least You Need to Know

• Take the time to find out what the best tiny house size is for you because one that’s too big or too small will leave you frustrated soon after moving in.
• Most people have emotional attachments to material possessions, so downsizing can feel overwhelming. With the right tools and strategies this process can be really fun!
• Many households can pretty easily thin out their material possessions by 50 percent or more simply by getting rid of items that haven’t been used in 365 days.
• Digitizing documents, photos, and old letters is a fantastic way to not only save space in a tiny house but also safely archive those keepsakes.