What It's Like To...

What It's Like To Embrace Tiny Living

• Laura Lynch • Season 6 • Episode 15

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Interest in "tiny living" is getting bigger.  But what is it, really--what are the benefits, and what do you sacrifice by "going small"?  Tiny house enthusiast Laura Lynch shares what inspired her to trade in her 2300-square-foot house for a home about one-fifth that size; the process of downsizing  ("do you own your stuff,  or does your stuff own you?"); and the wonderfully supportive "tiny" community (of people living in not just small homes, but also vans, schoolies, RVs, and more).  Laura also is a financial planner and helps others with the practical matters involved in transitioning their lifestyles.  Going tiny gave Laura the freedom and opportunities to follow her passions--which she never would have had if she'd been locked in to paying off her big house for years and years. Laura is the host of a podcast called "Less House, More Moola."

In this episode:

02:06--What is tiny living?
05:21--The benefits of having less space
07:46--The process of downsizing: why do I get value out of these things?
11:55--Reasons why people "go tiny": finances, sustainability, simplicity, lifestyle, the housing shortage
14:43--Luxury elements included some tiny homes
15:36--Legalization of building tiny homes
18:50--People of all ages are going tiny
21:12--Focus on your values: what is really important to you?
25:03--Traits common to most tiny living enthusiasts
26:41--What Laura misses from her big house; comparing living in her big house to her tiny house

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I call it concentric circles of change. When you are going tiny, it's probably not just your house. You're probably not moving into a tiny house across town. You're probably doing it to do some travel or to live in a different place. And so you've got to figure out what you're doing with your career. What you're doing with your family, like all of those layers are involved. Hello, and welcome to"What It's Like To...," the podcast that lets you walk in someone else's shoes and live vicariously through their unique experiences. I'm your host, journalist Elizabeth Pearson Garr, and each episode, I'll be asking a new interviewee all the what, why, when, and where's of how they do what they do. If they can do it, so can you. A lot of us have heard this cliche of the American dream: Get a good education so you can get a good job. Make enough money so you can buy a house and afford everything you want to buy. Work hard and eventually buy a bigger house. Buy more things. On and on and on. But not everyone finds this scenario so dreamy. Some people actually choose to go the other way. My guest today, Laura Lynch, left a six figure salary and a 2300 square foot house on ten acres for a tiny house, and now runs a firm that helps other people seek financial freedom through downsizing. Laura welcome to my podcast. Hey, it's so good to be here, Elizabeth. I'm super thrilled. Thanks for having me. Oh, I'm so excited to talk to you. And I'd like to just start out getting your definition of what a tiny house is. I mean, I lived in New York City for a couple of years and I had a tiny apartment, a studio apartment, but that wasn't necessarily by choice. That was by what I could afford. is a tiny house? How big are we talking? I think that's a great question. And I think it really depends on who you ask or who you're talking to. In my mind, tiny is more mindset really than square footage. And it's really just thinking about your space in a way that suits your needs and your values rather than kind of defaulting to that American dream that you just were talking about. And so I think a good definition is generally somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 square feet. But I really think about tiny houses as being those people that are in van life--that are living as digital nomads, from their converted vans, people that are living in schoolies, which are bus conversions. There are people doing the digital nomad lifestyle through Airbnb or even house sitting. So there's just a lot of ways to sort of think about your home in a whole different manner these days. And so I really think of all of that as kind of a tiny house. So it's not just literally living in small quarters. More of a lifestyle? Yeah I think that most people would define it as 400 square feet or less, but I think of it more as the way people are approaching their roof. Okay. And what is it that appealed to you about changing up your lifestyle and downsizing everything? So my tiny house actually just started as sort of a recreational thing. My husband and I bought some land out west. I had lived in Nevada when I was attached with the Air Force. And I fell in love with the open spaces of the West. And so at one point I got very, sort of itchy to have a little bit of wide open skies. And so my husband and I bought some land out West and then we were like, well, what are we going to do with it? Because we don't have time to come here on our two weeks of vacation a year and build a house. So we decided to build our tiny house. And to take it out to our land, that way we could hang out there a couple of times a year, maybe on our vacations. Cause where were you living? Were you living on the East Coast? In Florida. Okay. And so then what happened was that we had this epiphany through the pandemic as so many people did about why are we spending so much of our lives and our energy focused on paying for this big house that we have when we have a space that's perfectly comfortable for us in a place where we would rather live, frankly. And so how do we kind of put the steps in place to get to that tiny house full time? So the tiny house really started out, not as a, Hey, we're going to go tiny, but really just a place to stay. And then it turned into a dream to downsize out of our larger space in order to have the lifestyle freedom. So I imagine a lot of people hear this and think part of it sounds appealing and part of it sounds, really constricting. You know, my stuff feels comforting or my space feels, almost freeing too. I mean, I have two teenagers and it's sometimes nice to have a little more space. Like everyone needs their room in the house sometimes to have a little quiet or space from one another. Can you talk about what is appealing about having less space? So less space in and of itself comes with a couple of benefits. Obviously, it's a little bit easier to take care of and maintain. And that's why we see a lot of women that are past the age where their kids have flown the coop and moved on with their lives, and so women kind of in their late fifties, the average tiny home owner is a 55 year old woman, and she is using this sort of downsizing to have less upkeep, and less maintenance costs and perhaps if she's moving her tiny house around having flexibility of geography. So maybe instead of having to buy a condo in the town where your kids are having grandchildren, maybe you have that opportunity to travel with your tiny living arrangement. There is a lot to the sort of mental health aspects too, of having less stuff because all the stuff that we acquire has to have some level of attention paid to it, even if it's just dusting, but for a lot of our tech stuff or our hobby stuff or whatever, there's a lot of maybe standing in line at the Apple store, you know, whatever it is. And so sometimes I like to say, do you own the stuff or does the stuff own you? And so I think there is for a lot of people who choose this lifestyle, really a simplicity benefit to just having less stuff to have to keep track of and maintain. What was the process like for you when you were going through your bigger house and getting rid of things? Was there some emotional tug of, Oh, I have to get rid of, I don't know, my high school yearbooks or this shirt that had a logo on it that meant something from that concert, or I don't know, these things that people hang on to for emotional, sentimental reasons. Sure. And you know, I think it's important to say that tiny living isn't for everybody. So let's just point that out. There are people that derive a lot of value from their stuff and it's really important to them. I was in the Air Force. So I think I learned through that process about not getting too attached to things as you move around more frequently. And I just want to clarify because I talk about my transition in the past tense and we're literally still in it right now because I have to wait for my stepson to finish high school this year. So I am in an iterative downsizing process because it's really difficult to do it just all in one fell swoop. So I think that's why if you go tiny, to do it in phases and give yourself time to go through things is really helpful because maybe you go through all the pictures you've collected over the decades at one time and you say, Oh, I've got this big box of stuff that I have to keep. And then maybe you come back to'em a few months later and say, maybe I only need these. And so it's really an iterative process. But I think that it's important too, to understand that some things do actually generate important value. And my husband is not so much of a minimalist as I am. And so we are actually having kind of a long process getting moved across the country because we're having to move a lot of his things that are going to be useful for his business. Heavy equipment basically is what we're having to get across the country. So where maybe it's a little bit easier for me to downsize all my inherited sets of China to like two pieces of each thing. For him, he gets a lot of value out of his tools and his ability to make money with those things. And so those things are going. It really is interesting. I think it's a valuable process to go through and think about why do I get value out of these things? And is this thing truly important to me? Or is it just sort of a reflexive, I've just always had it, so therefore, it must be important to me. Sometimes I think, well, you inherited that entire set of China, therefore, I have to have it. But maybe just having a few pieces, is fine. And that's what will remind you of your grandma or something, or maybe taking a photo of the set of China. I remember when my husband and I got married and then we moved the first time. He had like 300 t-shirts or something and all these trophies from high school. And someone gave us that advice. If you're not displaying the trophies somewhere, if they're sitting in an attic, maybe they aren't really that valuable to you. You could take photos of them and still have that memory to look at. And so sometimes I think we need just that exercise of going through things and processing it ourselves to think about how valuable is this thing truly to me. Yeah. And I think you make a good point that things do trigger memories, but so do scents and so do songs, and those things we don't carry around in physical form. We hear them on the radio and we go back to that moment in high school where we were victorious in that game or whatever. And so remembering that the memories live within us actually, and they don't actually live within the objects I think is maybe a different perspective. So you said you're doing it little by little. Do you think that that's kind of a common process or do people in the tiny house community do this in all different ways? Do some people just do it in one fell swoop? Like kind of say, I'm done with my larger house. I'm just downsizing. You have a podcast. I'm sure you've talked to people of all different experiences? Yes. I would say that there are some people who maybe just haven't inherited any stuff that has any real significance to them yet. Younger people maybe. And so, for them kind of going from their starter home or, their attempt at a starter home and straight into like a schoolie conversion and traveling around the country is maybe less of a process from a downsizing perspective. I'm of course, middle aged, right? So I've acquired some stuff over the years. And so it's been a little bit of a process for me, but it's also been pacing our ability to make all the things happen because I call it concentric circles of change. When you are going tiny, it's probably not just your house. You're probably not moving into a tiny house across town. You're probably doing it to do some travel or to live in a different place. And so you've got to figure out what you're doing with your career what you're doing with your family, all of those layers are involved. And so getting all of that sort of smoothed out so you can get to that transition successfully is a little bit more complicated than just selling my house over here and buying a house across town. Yeah. There are many reasons that people do this. It's not like you say just: I want less space. If I just wanted less space, you'd mentioned earlier, you might just go from your house to a condo across town. This is a lifestyle. This is often a financial decision or sometimes people want less of an environmental footprint. What are the contributing factors that somebody will become a tiny house enthusiast, I guess we would call it? I think you mentioned a number of important ones. Sustainability is something on folks' mind. The simplicity that I mentioned earlier, the travel opportunity, the lifestyle shift, the financial benefits. I think in this moment of this really critical housing situation that we have with housing being so expensive and interest rates being what they are, and there's just too little supply for demand. It's creating an opportunity for people to reconsider what home looks like. And so that gives them an opportunity to reconsider whether or not they want to have, you know, a 30-year mortgage lease. To control the flexibility that they want to have in their lives. And so I think a lot of it is about the affordability crisis and a lot of it is about the desire to travel or to be less tied down in some way. So definitely just a shift that we're seeing, largely created by just what's going on in housing at the moment. And of course, HGTV has had a huge impact too. Is that true? Just the exposure from television. And there's a number of really fantastic tiny house festivals that go on. And so people get the opportunity to see them and walk through them and get the sense of, hey, could I live like this? So it's definitely been a growing movement, but the media exposure and sort of the idealistic tiny homes that we see on YouTube hasn't hurt. That's so interesting. We were talking before about downsizing. What are some of the essential elements you need, though? We don't need so many things, but certainly there are a few things that we always need. What are those? I'm sure that this is a little bit different for every person. But obviously you have to have clothes that fit the climate where you're going to be and if you're going to be traveling with your tiny house, whether that's a van or a tow-behind tiny house or what have you, you have to be prepared for where you're going to be going. So there's that piece. I have a lot of focus around cooking healthy food. So my kitchen was really important to me when we were building our tiny house. And so making sure that I'm keeping the important tools in my kitchen has been really important to me. Different tiny homes have different luxury elements. Custom tiny home builders are doing a great job of focusing on the goals and the lifestyle of their clients when they're building their homes. So for example, I really enjoy my jetted tub in my tiny house as well as my heated floors because my tiny house is out in New Mexico and it does get snowy out there. And so the radiant floor heat is the best. So that's unexpected. I love it. But you put in your priorities. That's great. Yes. So typically, do people just buy a property and build a tiny house on it? I'm just trying to think of how this actually works in the real world. Sure. So, when we talk about tiny houses specifically, as opposed to like the van life, the schoolie or the other ideas there, tiny homes are in the midst of a really grassroots legalization effort. I volunteer with the Tiny Home Industry Association that is doing a great job of helping different municipalities write in the legislation or the county code or what have you to allow tiny houses. And very often what we're seeing happening in more urban areas is tiny houses being added as ADUs or accessory dwelling units. So allowing a homeowner to put a tiny house on their property in their backyard to allow for affordable housing. So going back to that housing crisis again. There are lots of tiny home dwellers though that do want land and they want their own privacy and space. And so they do go buy property and oftentimes it's easier to do tiny in a more rural, just from a legalization standpoint, but it really varies by every municipality. So it's important to do your research. And when it comes to challenges, this is the hardest part, figuring out the legalization piece. When I refer to the tiny home community, I'm really talking about the nationwide and maybe even global circle of people who are choosing this lifestyle because it's been really interesting to interact with people in different sets within the tiny living community and hear their stories about how helpful and mutually supportive other people are. So those folks in the buses, the schoolies, they have schoolie swarm where they go and if you show up and you're in the middle of your bus build out and you haven't got your plumbing in yet, people come in and they help you do that stuff. And within this sort of new way of thinking people are just so excited when other people are doing it and they're just so helpful to each other and so supportive and so I've really enjoyed getting to know everybody because everyone is so friendly and excited. I think that's probably the case anytime something is kind of new and on the edge. Everybody in that sort of niche is kind of all excited about everybody else that's in there. Yeah, I interviewed a woman who sold her house and lives in her RV and travels constantly and finds that community as well. And she organizes meetups and trips and finds that everybody is so helpful. If someone has a flat tire or same thing, it's just this wonderful community of people. Yeah, I think that the single family home has become in some ways, and not everywhere, but for people that live in places where there's a lot of movement around new people coming in, people going, it's become kind of isolating. People don't know their neighbors and they're not engaging in neighborhoods in the way that they did decades ago. And so it's good to see that resurgence of a sense of community and neighborliness happening in the tiny living space. You mentioned that the number one demographic is women over 55, but does it also span? There's also young people who are doing this? You said young marrieds or something who don't have much stuff. So there's people of all ages who are doing this? For sure. Yes. So definitely this is of interest to the first-time home buyers who can't afford the average home, so the average home currently in the United States sits around 430,000. And so when you're first out of college, 430,000 is kind of a steep price tag, especially at you know, seven percent interest on a 30-year mortgage. So, lots of young people looking at this. Young people in particular are very used to this sort of sharing economy. So rather than own a car, you Uber. So the idea of having less space and more community space and that sort of thing, I think is pretty attractive. Then a lot of retirees like to downsize and minimize the maintenance that they have on their home and often retirement comes with those goals of travel and so tiny living can enable that too. And so I think probably the generation that maybe is a little stuck right now is my generation because they're kind of in prime career years, prime child raising years and prime years to be caring for parents. And so it's kind of a time of life where you get kind of stuck. Yeah. And I know that you also are a financial consultant and that seems like that would be a key element to all of this, because people would think, Oh, this sounds really great. And I would love to do this and that, but then so much comes down to money. And how is this all really going to work practically? And you've got taxes and, you think this is going to save money, but what about this? And what about that? Yeah, the money part, I think is a place where people get stuck, which is why I really want to continue to focus on this area. Cause you can watch all the YouTube videos and figure out how to build your tiny house. Or, you can do your research on builders and whatever. But when it comes down to the money part, how do I make the money part work? That's probably a place where some people get hung up. Also with work, I guess after the pandemic, so much more work is done remotely, but it does feel like, how are you going to actually put this life together? It sounds kind of romantic and wonderful, but realistically for some people, I wonder how it could work. I mean, it depends which of these aspects you're going to do. Are you going to be traveling around? Are you going to be sedentary in a place? And also what stage of life you're in. If you have kids and they need to be in school-- you know, there's so many different factors to this whole thing. Yeah. And I think what just brings everybody together is the notion of, Hey, maybe this stuff isn't the most important thing to me. So let me figure out what is the most important thing to me, which is why I talk so much about values and helping people figure out what their core values are and designing a life around that. Because the reality is that for most of us, you can't have everything. You can't have a lot of travel and a lot of freedom and a big house with a big mortgage. So just figuring out how you design your life around what is most important to you. And maybe the big house isn't what's most important to you. And if not, how do you design a life around what is. Yeah, I really appreciate that. And I feel like it kind of gets down to something that I end up talking a lot about in this podcast with people from all different stories, which is, what is your passion-- and how do you go about finding it and making it a part of your life? And it goes down to your values and implementing them in your life. And I think you need to reflect on those things, rather than just sort of robotically go through what you think people have told you or what you think is expected of you. You know, there's a lot of, especially younger kids, maybe teenagers, college kids, 20 somethings. I think this is what I should be doing for a job or a career or something and then feeling miserable about it. No, but what do you want to do? What makes you happy? What's your passion? What are your true values? And, you know, it doesn't have to be because this is what everyone is doing tech these days or something. We don't need more of that. We need how you were built that you're special. Those are the gifts we need in the world. And so I really appreciate this kind of thinking. It's out of the box thinking. There's not just one way to live in the world. That you have to do this. And then you have to find your town to live in and buy your house and... There's a lot of ways to be and a lot of ways to interact with the world. And also you can change, you can be doing something one way. And then at some stage of your life, you can say, actually, now I'd like to do something different. Now I'm going to buy a bus and travel around. That's pretty cool. And freeing. Yes, it is amazing. I sometimes say that I change directions to cover more ground and over a lifetime, I've pivoted numerous times trying to find that thing that really lights me up. And, having progressed my career through various different changes. Really it was that pandemic and that Brene Brown worksheet that helped me explore my values that helped me understand, Hey, independence and exploration are really important to me. And I don't feel independent in my career path right now. And so how do I get to be independent and how do I get to explore more things? And so that really helped me to solidify the idea of changing everything, again, in order to chase down those two things that I've always known were important, but didn't ever really put the framework around them. I need to build a life based on these two values and that will make me feel congruent with myself. So it has been a journey for me, and it's a journey for everybody, I think. Yeah, that's a great way to put it because then when you have your sort of core values at the top, when you know you're making other sacrifices, then you realize, well, they're kind of worth it because they're for this purpose rather than just feel like you're kind of flip flopping around and thinking, well, this isn't quite working and that's not quite working and everything feels a little bit like it's being sacrificed, but no, there's a reason because these are the things I'm working for. Yes, for sure. Are there certain traits that you feel people who choose to live in a tiny house community have in common? Yes, I think that people that choose this lifestyle have to be independent thinkers. Because it's too easy to follow the expectations that we see on TV, that we hear from our family, that our friends tell us, it is so expected to follow the default American dream path. And so you have to be a little bit almost rebellious, and kind of independent in your mindset in order to make this choice or have someone who, you know, is in your life that can help make you think independently. There's some grit involved because as I mentioned, the legalization is still underway. There are lots of resources out there for figuring that out. I'm working with the Tiny Home Industry Association on a resource map where you click on your state and you can see what is going on with legislation in your state. But still lots of research may be involved because it's not as easy as selling your house and buying another or moving, you know, from your apartment into a house. The entire mortgage and home builder industry is designed to make the process easy, going into a tiny house is not as easy. So a little bit of grit is required. And I think there's a lot of intention. People that live in tiny living are thoughtful about how they're designing their life because it is a choice that is not kind of the standard run of the mill choice and so they've done it intentionally for specific reasons and so that would be another quality that I see. That must make it nice when you talk to people, you already have common values. You're of similar types. Yes, a hundred percent. Are there any things that you feel like you miss from your bigger house, that you think about on kind of a daily or weekly basis? Like, Oh, that would still be nice. So one of the things that's has been super enjoyable in my larger house has been my screened-in porch. We do get to spend a lot of time outside at our tiny house. And so I think we'll be adding some additional outdoor spaces, maybe, screened in porch element to just be able to spend more time outdoors. Cause this is really important to me. I don't know if this is an easy thing to do, but if there's a way that you could kind of compare a day in the life of your big house to your tiny house, what would be the biggest difference of living in the two houses? I will definitely answer that question. When you were starting to ask the question, it occurred to me that one thing that should be mentioned is that you can try this out, that there's lots of tiny houses on Airbnb and other rental communities. So you're curious about it, you can go try it out. Um, I think the biggest difference, for me is, the less walking, just doing the laundry and doing the normal routines in the kitchen and stuff, I feel like I just am walking all the time. And in the tiny house, everything is very compact. You know, the laundry is very close to the kitchen. And so it's, not kind of like I'm wandering. You know how you walk from room to room and you forget why you went in that other room sometimes? I don't have that happening as much because everything is a little bit more compact. But really the deep difference is the fact that moving to tiny living has enabled me to launch my podcast, to launch my firm. It is all tied together. Without doing the tiny living thing, I would have been paying for my big house for another 25 years. And I would not have had the courage to step out on my own and become my independent, self-employed person. And so I'm literally so grateful for this opportunity that we created without even knowing what we were doing at the time that I get to become my truest self, through this change. And so it is just hugely impactful for me. That is fantastic. It's so much more than just a change of an address. It sure is. Well, thank you, Laura. I've learned so much and I really appreciate all of your knowledge about this. You're truly such a well-versed spokesperson in this topic. So thank you. Well, thank you for having me, Elizabeth. It's been a great pleasure. It was inspiring to meet Laura, someone who's changing her life to align with her passions. Here are some of my takeaways from our conversation. Number one: Having less stuff doesn't just mean less to keep track of, clean, and maintain. It also means less mental strain. Do you own your stuff or does your stuff own you? Two: If you're having trouble getting rid of a certain item, you can ask yourself, is this thing truly important to me, or am I just attached to it, because have had it for a long time? Memories live within us, not within objects. Three: Rather than just doing what you think is expected of you, live with intention. Figure out your core values and design your life around them. Four: Don't try to fit yourself into some pre-designed mold. The world needs each of us with our unique talents and passions and gifts. And finally, number five: You can always change your mind about what you want to do. As Laura said, she changes directions to cover more ground. I'd like to thank Laura Lynch for teaching me so much about tiny living. If you'd like to learn more about it or get in touch with Laura, go to the show notes for this episode. We have links to Laura's website and lots of information there. If you want to listen to more conversations about living with less, check out episode 34 with Deanna Yates, a minimalist, and episode 70 with Jenell Jones, who traded in her house for an RV. If you haven't yet subscribed to this podcast, please do, and please tell a few friends about it too. I'm Elizabeth Pearson Garr. Thanks for being curious about what it's like.