Tiny House Worries Aren’t So Tiny

I’m very much a cross-off-the-to-do-list sort of person, but living in this house is an ongoing project, and I know I need to live with loose ends.

I suppose this is also the case for living in a normal home, but the normal home we own and have lived in is a loft in a condo complex in San Francisco, and that has generally maintained itself.

In this 131-square-foot house (that we’re close to paying off, yay!), you’d think there would be less to worry about. We want to live simply and sustainably, we want to free up more time and money to do the things we truly enjoy… I recall the idealistic vision on our About page when we first created this site, which I’ve since changed because, well, it was silly.

What I’ve realized is this cute tiny house is also a big heavy thing.

I think in time, we’ll settle in as much as we can, but what I’ve realized is this cute tiny house is also a big heavy thing. We’d spent over a year purging and giving away so much stuff, only to accumulate a new set of stuff (propane tank, buckets, solar panels, batteries, a generator, an inverter, and soon a utility trailer).

So, yeah. We shed our normal house belongings, only to gain new tiny house belongings. And while we don’t have to worry about some things right now (drowning in mortgage payments), we’ve introduced new uncertainties:

• Insuring the house
• Insuring our belongings inside the house
• Protecting the house from the forces of nature (earthquakes, mudslides (hello, El Nino?))
• Having a Plan B (securing our next parking spot, pinpointing a safe and suitable storage facility if necessary)

These are only a few worries, but they’re big ones. I sense that some tiny house owners go with the flow and deal with issues as they come up — or just move their house. I feel a little helpless not having our own truck, which makes a few things easier, but we never intended to buy a truck to tow the house, as we didn’t want to move much anyway. But not having that immediate mobility is a disadvantage.

Ultimately, we have a home on wheels. We’re leasing land. That’s the beauty of this whole thing — I was attracted to the flexibility and impermanence from the very beginning. And yet now, it’s also the source of anxiety.

We’re researching and working on the above, primarily the insurance, but I also realize that we need to have a general emergency plan for various scenarios.

Over-preparation isn’t a bad idea.