Are you familiar with tiny homes? Have you ever fantasized about living in one and finally making the move to a more minimalist lifestyle?
Bryce Langston from Living Big In A Tiny House explores one family’s tiny home in Sydney, Australia in a video uploaded to YouTube.
What he finds is truly gorgeous, and a perfect example of what a tiny home can be!
The home is owned by Dan and Marnie, a young Australian couple with two kids!
Not only do they own the tiny house, but they actually designed it and had it built themselves!
They completely shifted their lifestyle before making the move to a tiny house –
they dropped consumerism and materialism and instead opted to start living a minimalist lifestyle!
The whole journey was one of evolution! Dan and Marnie initially lived in a regular home with a wide backyard when they decided to build a pool into it. They decided they would need a cabana too!
The cabana turned into extra room for their parents to stay in if it was needed and eventually they decided they would simply live there themselves!
Now this family of four is living in a tiny home built perfectly for them!
Marnie really goes into detail about how this was more than a place to live.
It was a life changing decision.
“Before our journey to living a simpler life, I was working full time in a very demanding and stressful career. Our first child was in day care as soon as the doors opened.”
“I was a perfectionist. If people needed my time, I couldn’t say no. Yet, I had this nagging feeling that I wasn’t good enough.
“Trying to be the perfect mum, wife, friend, daughter and working as well eventually took a toll on my health.”
“Looking back now,
“I was trying to keep up with the Jones’s and it wasn’t making me happy.
“I was trying to be there for everyone, but I was stretching myself too thin. I was feeling exhausted, guilty, sad so we decided to change our lives. I researched how we could live a simpler life. It meant letting go of my perfectionist ways to find what matters most to our family.”
The natural answer to Marnie’s dilemma is evident in the design of their home:
“We designed a beautiful space that was calm, peaceful and free of distractions.
“Our family can entertain, rest, work and play in a functional space that we love.”
Then came the idea of “slowing down.”
The house was a place of fun and calm, but that had to be reflected in their lives outside the home as well!
They reoriented their thinking to be in the here and now with their loved ones, rather than thinking about what other people would think or what other people were doing!
This meant letting go of a kind of social perfection for Marnie!
It meant she wouldn’t keep up with the latest fashions or trends anymore, and she realised these things were really never important or making her happy to begin with!
It also meant learning to say “no” more often.
As a people pleaser, Marnie found herself insanely busy at all times, and driving all over Sydney for all sorts of activities with friends, family and colleagues.
By learning to say “no” she learned that
it was okay to not be busy 24/7
and that you don’t need to be a people pleaser to have people like you. Indeed, people usually respect when you can firmly hold your boundaries and their respect for you grows as well!
It also leads to a more sustainable lifestyle! You seriously reduce your carbon footprint when you stop driving across a city every day, stop buying new clothes every year and start
growing fresh vegetables in your garden.
So it seems almost too easy adopting this lifestyle, right?
But what do you do with everything you already have?
“We decided to declutter our lives. It was the constant distractions we filled our lives with that we needed to let go.
“We challenged each other on what truly made us happy.
“We sat down and thought about how to manage all the ‘stuff’ we had accumulated over the years in a sustainable way.”
Now, Marnie is working as a sort of life coach for people learning to live more like Marnie and Dan:
more happy, more sustainable.
And she gets to live “the simple life” with her beautiful family in their beautiful tiny home!
For a more in-depth tour of Dan and Marnie’s home, you can check out the video below! It gives you a nice picture of what it took to design and build this space, as well as how feasible it is for people to do themselves!
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