Our house is so big that Raffi gets lost sometimes. Sometimes he sits at the threshold between two rooms so he can keep an eye on both of his people! The transition to a bigger space has been strange for him, too!
Four weeks ago today, Isha and I moved into the 3-bedroom house we bought because we're Creating a New Tiny Cohousing Community. And since we were living in his and hers tiny houses previously, living in a house this big has taken some adjustment. It's kinda like when you travel to a new place and it takes a little getting used to but the reverse culture shock is the real doozy. Moving into a tiny house wasn't a difficult transition for either of us, but living in a big house again has been bizarre.
We're really excited to move into our new tiny house, T42, as soon as it's ready. Then we'll create shared space here in the big house. In the meantime, over the past four weeks Isha and I have been composing a list of all the reasons we know we're still in the tiny house phase of our lives. We've made a handy Top 11 reference list so that you can determine whether you're ready to transition from a big house to a tiny house (or know what to prepare yourself for if you ever need to make the transition from a tiny house to a "normal" American home!)
This is where Raffi sits when one of us is upstairs and one of us is downstairs. Poor lil guy! It's hard keeping track of people in a big house. I've lost Isha in this house myself!
- Too Many Bedrooms - Since there are three bedrooms in this house we've had a tricky time figuring out which bedroom to use as our space while we're here. We've decided to just try them all out.
- Getting Lost - Our sweet kitty, Raffi, has lived in small spaces so long that he seems lost here. He does enjoy running (and we've recently resumed our games of hide-and-seek, which was a favorite before living in The Lucky Penny), but he sometimes can't find us and will cry for us. He also sits on the floor in the middle of a room or at the transition between two rooms, staring at us with eyes that ask "where am I supposed to be right now?" For that matter, I've lost Isha, too, and had to go searching for him.
- More Yelling - We've started yelling at each other since moving into the big house, just because we can't hear each other anymore. One of us will ask a question and the other person, far away in another part of the house will say "Wait! I can't hear you!" and then we'll have to find each other so we can talk in inside voices again!
- Slow Hot Water - In both of the tiny houses we were living in before there was a 4-gallon Bosch Ariston point-of-use water heater and, since the houses were tiny, the runs were short. As soon as we turned on the tap we got hot water almost immediately. In this big house the water goes from the water heater down into the unconditioned crawl space and then up to the bathroom and kitchen fixtures. So when we turn on the hot water tap it's room temp for a few seconds then it's bloody cold for a minute or so and then it finally heats up. It just seems so backwards and wasteful! Fortunately, it finally occurred to me to keep pitchers near the fixtures so we can collect that cold water and reuse it.
- Echoes - Since we downsized to move into our tiny homes and we don't have "enough" furniture to furnish a house this size, the house is kinda echoey. I have to mute myself when I'm on a conference call and not speaking because anything I do is super loud. This will change as we create shared space here, but it is pretty funny. We really don't need more than we have so it's strange that having a big space makes it feel like we do. This is precisely why people usually acquire Stuff until their homes are full (or overly full). Stuff is like goldfish and it fills up the space available.
- Forgetting About Stuff on the Stove - Living in a tiny house where the kitchen is right next to the living room and within earshot of the sleeping space, we've gotten in the habit of popping into another part of the house to do something while waiting for the water to heat up for tea. Here in the big house we can't hear the stove from the other rooms, but it just feels weird to stand in the kitchen waiting around when we could be putting laundry away, so a couple times we've inadvertently left things on the stove too long. (Isha notes that part of the challenge here is that the induction cooktop we use in the tiny house is super quick so it's no big deal hanging around a couple minutes but the standard electric range takes so long he gets sick of waiting around and goes to another room to do something else.)
- A Box That Washes Dishes - Neither of us have lived with a dishwasher in a decade or so, so it's kinda strange having a large box in the house that cleans dishes when you put them inside it. We've run it an average of once a week when we've had a dinner party, organized the pantry, or done a big cook for the week. But since we don't have many dishes, hand washing is actually more practical for us.
- Too Many Light Switches - To get from the upstairs bedroom we're sleeping in these days to the bathroom, we need to flip on 5 different light switches along the path. And, of course, we have to remember to turn them all off again afterwards! (And I thought it was complicated crawling down a ladder when I needed to pee in the middle of the night in the tiny house Isha was renting...)
- No Compost Toilet - And yes, for those of you who can appreciate the joke about how tiny house people always end up talking about poop sooner or later (usually sooner), it has been strange not having a compost toilet in this house. Once you've lived without a flush toilet for a five years, it seems odd to poo in the drinking water!
- Too Many Options for Where Things Go - With so much space, so many rooms, so many cupboards, etc, it's been difficult to figure out where everything should go. We've reorganized a couple times to make things fit our lifestyle. Then we labeled everything until we develop some muscle memory around it!
- Procrastinating Putting Away - And finally, for me, the number one indicator our house is too big is that we have found ourselves slipping into lazy procrastination when it comes to putting things away. In our tiny houses there was a place for everything and everything went in its place. Anything out of place was pretty obvious and it was so easy to put things away because it was all within arm's reach or a couple of strides. Now we find ourselves putting little piles of things at the doorways to go to other rooms when we're ready to make the transition from one space to another!
We've labeled our kitchen so that we can remember where everything goes until we develop the muscle memory around it!
Like all cats (and some of us people), Raffi really prefers the cozy spots!