The pros and the cons of living in a tiny home

I’m at peace with living in a tiny house on wheels, after decades of concrete-grounded living. But I’m not so starry-eyed that I can’t see the downsides.

I can list you the cons as well as the pros. Anyone thinking about living tiny has to know them.

So here’s my list of pros and cons, pluses and minuses.

Pro: No power bills. Our house’s solar panels, battery and other gear were a one-off expense that will pay off in a few more years.

Con: An end to endless electricity. We can no longer treat electricity as a bottomless resource. We save it; we time our tasks such as laundry; we watch the weather and the battery display.

Con: Not being able to have appliances. The dishwasher, the clothes drier, the 2000W toaster… I do miss them at times.

But in a solar-powered tiny house, there’s neither room nor enough electricity for them.

Pro: The pleasure of quiet chores. In place of a dishwasher, I wash things by hand. In place of a clothes dryer, I use an outdoor line.

In place of an automatic washing machine, I have a little twin-tub, which means a little extra time spent on chores, compared with life in a fully appointed big house.

But this is a plus. Chore time is also book time, when I listen to audiobooks (The Gulag Archipelago got me through many wash cycles), podcasts or lectures.

Pro: Cleaning up is fast. It’s impossible to clutter 23 square metres so badly that it would take more than half an hour to clear it up.

Con: Messing up is even faster. One load of shopping, or one dinner’s worth of dishes, takes up a big chunk of your space.

There’s so little surface space available, it fills up in no time. So it all means you really have to stay tidy as you go, just as my mum always advised. It’s constant, but as I said, it doesn’t take time.

Con: Tiny storage space. There’s no dishwasher to stack dishes in, little cupboard or drawer space for storage. So yes, that can sometimes cheese a person off.

Pro: You have less stuff. You don’t need as much storage space. You have downsized your life, divested yourself of clutter, brought clarity and economy into your domestic life.

You buy less stuff, and have more respect for what you own. It wasn’t an easy transition. But again, no regrets.

Pro: Lower outgoings and being able to afford things that are important to me. This is fundamental to me. It’s a big reason why we cashed up our house – to ease the control that money, or lack of it, had on our lives.

Joys like weekend brunch, courses of study, the odd show and the occasional holiday are now within, not beyond, our means.

Con: Not being able to buy and store in bulk. Back when I had a big kitchen and a freezer, I used to make stock a couple of times a week. I froze and stored veggies. I bought rice in big bags and tins of tomatoes by the armful (when they were discounted).

In a tiny house, I can’t practise those old habits of economy, and I miss them.

Pro: The new-found interest among my friends in my lifestyle. My friends and family have been hugely encouraging of our shift to a tiny life. And many of them are eager to investigate.

So I’ve been delighted and proud to host lots of friends here in the tiny house – though not too many at a time. I love the continuing interest they show in my irregular lifestyle.

Con: Not being able to host an indoor dinner party for more than three. Not that I was a frequent entertainer before, but it was good to be able to fit four extra people at the dinner table or 20 or so for a bigger get-together.

Not possible now. But we adjust, by borrowing a neighbour’s space, or using the front yard and asking visitors to bring a folding chair with them.

Pro: If you lose something, it won’t be far. This is the joyous upside to having no space to put anything – a search for a lost glasses case or phone will not take long.

Though it’s surprising how much stress can be packed into that short time.

Con: The impossibility of impulse-buying and hoarding. Face it, this can be a pleasure. Especially if you have the hoarding gene, which I do.

But there’s no space now for hoarding or collecting. I haven’t quite pacified the gene, but I’m working on it.

Pro: A new purity in shop browsing. I used to wander around stores looking for things I’d like to have. Now I wander looking at things I like the look of.

Just eyeing things, maybe picking them up and admiring their design. Occasionally I even reminisce about some similar thing I used to own, but without any pang of loss.

It’s a purer, more spiritual kind of “shopping”, one that doesn’t involve the act of, you know, buying things. Liberating, it is.

This article originally appeared on stuff.co.nz