Last week, I was watching, with bemused fascination, a show about the new trend in tiny houses. I am amazed by how expensive they can be and how many people want to live together in one little house on wheels aka Travel Trailer (circa nineteen seventy something).

Let’s delve into my past. Picture a newly married couple with visitation every other weekend from my brand new step-daughter (oh man, was she adorable!) living in my husband’s parents’ home. I was straight out of college looking for work, and my husband was working in his father’s construction company. Now don’t get me wrong, I loved my in-laws. They were good to me. But more than one fully grown woman trying to run a household and not step on the others toes? Well that’s just plain hard! Then throw in son/husband and daughter/granddaughter? Let’s just say, after four months we jumped at the chance to take the gift of a seventies era 24-foot travel trailer from my parents.

We took our tiny family to a tiny RV Park and set up our tiny home. It was nice to have a place of our own. We had our stuff stuffed in every nook and cranny including the trunk of the cars. There was precious little privacy on daughter weekends. So we spent a lot of time out with friends and family. Otherwise, we were crammed into less than 200 square feet on Florida’s notoriously rainy afternoons.

Now this was the 90s, so when my husband went back to school to complete his degree. Therefore, the computer we needed was not a laptop. That meant the “dining room” table, which folded down into an uncomfortable bed, became the office/computer desk with a clunky (by today’s standards) desktop computer and printer.

We ate at the patio table outside under the awning or, if the weather didn’t cooperate, on the full size bed in the back of the trailer. My sweet stepdaughter slept in the bunk above the computer desk. The nice thing about a travel trailer is there are cabinets everywhere. The bathroom was so tiny we usually used the RV park bathrooms for showers and other needs. The tiny bathroom became a partial storage closet and emergency bathroom. No not very glamorous for day-to-day living. I hope I’m not popping anyone’s bubble because if you dream for it. I say go for it! There are good things about the tiny life.

First for us was financial. We were able to work, go to school, and dig out of some of our debt by lowering the cost of living. It helped us grow together. Between coming off of a two-year long distance engagement and living tiny for three years; well I can say we learned more about each other than we ever wanted to know.

Back to the present, my eldest prince walks in while I’m watching the show. He asks how I could possibly consider living tiny. I say “I’m not, I already lived it.”

“But the cabin you want will be tiny right?”

“No it’ll be small, not tiny. I’m think 800 to 1200 square feet. Kinda the size we live in now.”

Note: My house right now is 1000 square feet under air. There are three and half people living in it (1/2 if you count that eldest prince is only here half the time). It can seem pretty small but that ain’t tiny!

He breathed a sigh of relief. We discussed how this new idea of ‘Tiny Living’ isn’t new. It’s actually been around for a long time. After thinking a bit, he jokes, “I’m picturing a redneck dude watching that show, popping a beer in his travel trailer saying; Hey Joe! Dem hipsters are livin’ like us now. Maybe we should clean the junk out of that trailer back there and sell it to one o’ dem dudes.”

He cracks me up. Yes, they love to tease me about being a ‘redneck’ since I grew up in a rural area of Florida. I also have had a lot of redneck friends over the years. So we do love us a redneck joke along with the blond, Polish, Irish, Swedish, American jokes that make up our multi-cultural backgrounds. [Whew! Wipe the sweat from my brow]

Since my blog is partly about adventure, I can truly say I’ve lived the tiny adventure. Check that one off the list! √ My blog is also about my dreams and I can say I already lived that dream. √√

While my dream cabin will be small, it’ll be plenty big enough for my dreams! Keep on Dreamin’ Ya’ll!

Love Milly