What is it like living in under 150 sq ft you might ask?

Many of us have seen the tiny home ~ CRAZE ~ and some of you reading may even aspire to it, but what is it really like for people who do it?

After Discovery Channel’s Homestead Rescue built an octagonal cedar log cabin on top of our already small existing footprint (that used to house a 15 ft yurt), our footprint shrunk from 175 sq ft to under 150 (didn’t do the math to figure out the exact footage of our 12 x 12 octagon, if you did feel free to leave it below!).

We had set up the yurt as a first way to get on the land, an easy, quick (and incredibly tiny) structure. Not planning on living in it for long, now we have an even smaller building to call home. This one does have a loft though, so props there!

First, I will say that we may be sort of cheating as we have a 200 sq ft storage building holding our off-season clothes, farm equipment and feed, beekeeping supplies, herbal medicines, freezer, and random other things. True Radical Simplicity and Tiny House Living may not afford any extra storage than what is available in the home.

So What’s It Like Living in Under 150 sq ft?

It’s definitely close quarters.

How close? Well if we both stretch our arms out we can touch from wall to wall.

Sometimes we literally bump into each other getting to and fro in the morning (which requires a compassionate attitude we don’t always muster as we’re getting ready). It requires patience, intentional space usage, and creativity in making small spaces work. For example, using space above the stove to cure our sweet potatoes, or using our gravity water tank as a table.

It’s like a play house…

Where we get to design and build the interior and make finishing touches. By living with the bare minimum, we are better acquainted with our needs. The stakes are lower as we’re not making this our permanent home, so we’re having fun experimenting with building cabinets from reclaimed barn wood. We have put in large cabinet doors to cover stored food and to hide hanging clothes.

We have a 30 gallon tank for storing water that gravity feeds to a sink. We light the cabin using 12v batteries to power DC LEDs, recharging it at our solar shed every few days. We heat it with wood from our land’s gracious standing dead and thinnings.

Everything is small, which can be frustrating in a kitchen if, like us, you like to live large. We make messes and experiment, and there isn’t really much room for that. In warmer months we almost exclusively cook outdoors, which allows us the space to process large amounts of produce easily.

We’ve had fun finding creative ways to store bulky items like clothes by building a shelf above the door. We have a boudoir that uses floor to ceiling space to hold clothes, extra linens and our dirty clothes hamper. We’ve had to dramatically downsize the book collection, although being voracious readers, it seems books end up all over the place despite our best intentions!

We never had a tiny home dream…

But now that we’re living in one we’re grateful for the experience. We have a safe space to cozy up in during the colder months and a cedar sanctuary to recharge in. It is perpetually cozy, as the walls and ceiling are never far off, somewhat womb like. During the warmer months, we spend nearly all waking hours outdoors, so we have room to stretch out and be creative.

It will house us for a couple of years until we further establish our homestead and have the space, time, desire, drive and skills to build a more epic and spacious home. After that, the cabin will serve as a pleasant and secluded space to house guests and interns. Until then we are happily inhabiting a very small space and getting to know more acutely what we really need in a home.

Thanks for reading!! Please resteem and/or upvote if ya feel it :D