THE TINY HOUSE MOVEMENT

During my exchange semester in Sydney, I met a guy who was building his own ‘tiny house’. He had a big steel trailer on which he had built a platform and was now adding wooden walls. It looked like a fun project, but back then I had no idea that a ‘tiny house’ was a real term and part of a bigger movement, called the Tiny House Movement. The Tiny House Movement is a famous description for the architectural and social movement that advocates living simply in small homes and is a counter reaction to the ever increasing need for more in the United states. Its origin can be found in the context that the average size of a new single family house increased from 165m2 in 1978 to about 245 m2 in 2013, while the average sizes of families decreased over these years. But now a shift can be seen; more and more people choose to downsize the space they live in and with that, their whole lifestyle. But what motivates these people to change the course of their lives and move from an average of 120 m2 in the Netherlands to approximately 35-10 m2? There are many reasons for this change, but the most popular ones include environmental concerns, financial concerns, and the desire for more time and freedom.

By choosing to live a simpler lifestyle, it opens up possibilities and gives you more freedom and time to invest in the things you truly care about or always wanted to do. And by downsizing your living space, you also have to decrease your amount of belongings. Living with the things you actually use and liberate yourself from all the ‘stuff that is cluttering your life’ as tiny house owner Malissa Tack puts it. This
way you also become more conscious of the way you live, creating a more intentious lifestyle and connecting you with your direct environment. Another advantage, since you can not do everything in your tiny house, you engage more in your living environment. You spend more time outside of the house, and depending on where you live this results in a closer relationship with nature and/or society. But less space and less stuff also means less maintenance. And less usage
of resources, contributing to a smaller ecological footprint. Additionally, it is also a cheaper lifestyle, due to the reasons named above. It is cheaper to purchase, to maintain, to sustain and less place for new stuff to buy without true need for it.
This all means that in the end you have more time and more money to spend on yourself and the things you like. Most of the tiny house inhabitants say that the advantage of the tiny life for them is the financial and material freedom, while contributing to a better future. It relieves you from the pressure to work to be able to pay for your fixed expenses (rent, mortgage, utility costs etc), and instead enables you to feel free to enjoy your life.