The Tiny house Blog

Why DIY Is The Cornerstone Of Tiny Home Living

By
Jason Francis
Designed and built over 100 custom tiny homes, lived on a sailboat for 9 months, and loves to live life to the fullest with his wife and their 4 kids.
Updated on:
June 9, 2023
Two men DIY building a tiny home

Many people like the idea of living in a tiny home. They see it as a means of affordable housing that comes with the low fuss of a minimalist lifestyle. However, all successful tiny home owners understand that it is precisely because of the small size of the house that it requires a lot of work.

DIY is the cornerstone of tiny home living. Even designing your space requires a deep-dive into the tips and tricks to maximize small rooms. And it takes more than planning to achieve tiny home living. Here’s why.

Create your own space

Tiny house living is all about playing by your own rules. Instead of going the traditional route with an expensive apartment or home, you're setting up a different life to what most people know. As such, finding stock designs is not just difficult, but unwise.

Since you're choosing your own trail, your space should be designed according to the lifestyle you envision. When designing your own home, there may be aspects you can get readymade. However, your home for the most part will be built by you.

Regular-sized stuff doesn’t fit

When you've got the bare bones of your tiny home, you're going to need to do the interior decorating and furnishing. Going To The store in the hopes of finding items that will perfectly fit in your tiny home will lead to disappointment. For better or worse, you're going to have to make a lot of the contents of your home.

There will be some pieces that are perfect. With the increasing popularity of the tiny home movement, it is also becoming easier to find people and businesses who design things specifically for tiny homes. However, as with the space itself, your dream tiny home will require a lot of custom input.

Sustainability

There are a few reasons to choose a tiny home, but one of the big ones is sustainability. Living in a tiny home minimizes the space you take up. It ensures you don’t waste money and resources on contents for a home much larger than you realistically need. It should also significantly lower your carbon footprint.

But your carbon footprint won’t lower itself. While tiny home living is in itself a more sustainable option, it is the way you approach your life that truly leads to increased sustainability. In a tiny home, you can and should consider making the most of the resources at your disposal. For this, you will need to put in the legwork.

Some people are put off by the thought of having to take care of their own plumbing, electricity, and everything else. The people who are truly cut out for tiny home living understand that they will need to do this kind of work. Those who are not ready to do so are probably not ready to live in a tiny home.

Tiny homes constantly evolve

Another reason DIY is at the heart of tiny home living is that tiny homes are not meant to be one-and-done projects. Unlike a big home which sticks to the same basic foundations for decades, a tiny home is supposed to evolve according to your changing needs. In the first place, you cannot know exactly how your home will feel until you live in it, and so you may have to make changes early on.

As you continue to live in your tiny home, your life will change in many ways. You will start to have different priorities and needs, especially if you have kids. Tiny homes do not have the space to reflect all eras of your life so far. You may need to regularly redesign and rebuild parts of your home.

DIY is the cornerstone of tiny home living. If you're not ready to put in the work, a tiny house is probably not for you. That may not always be the case, but until you fall in love with the idea of living in a space of your own making, you might need to put off your big move.

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