Living in Small Spaces....the multifunction necessity

For years now, I have been fascinated with people who for various reasons decide to get rid of most belongings and settle for a life living in a small space. There are many sites now on Internet that share people's lives of living in tiny cabins or RV's, making it their life motto to make a tinier footprint on the world, while being more frugal and less of a consumer. While I admire all of that, I still haven't achieved that type of mindset completely, but I do desire to live in a smaller space now that my children are grown and have homes of their own. But now, I am living in a tiny 400 square foot cabin, and am having to learn to live with a somewhat  normal daily routine. So here is one thing I have realized: you have to use spaces and items for more than one purpose:

For example, in the cabin Bill and I are living in, there are three rooms, but one is a shed, so the other two are living space. The first room, we will call the living area, has a woodstove, sink, a few shelves, a table, and two lawn chairs (our new lazy boys...lol). The next room has a table, a small closet, and a bunk bed...with the bottom bunk bed being a double (the bedroom). That is our house.....the toilet is by the green house....the good ole outhouse. So here is what we do: first, the table is used for many things: eating, cooking, used as a desk, a work table, etc...you name it, if you need a table, that table is your only source. Next, is our huge aluminum pot we purchased before going to live in the mountains. It is our refrigerator to store food, tub for heating water for bathing, and wash pot for cleaning clothes. Cleaning is a must, keeping things tidy because you don't have the space to be messy. After eating, dishes have to be washed and put away so that the cabinet counter space can be used for something else. It sounds a bit annoying, but it really isn't. Of course, there are only two of us and previously the cabin was inhabited by a woman and her children...not sure the number of children, but still that is hard to imagine.

I will tell you the benefits of a small home lifestyle: you don't have a lot of clutter because there is not space to keep it, it forces you to have a clean space for living, and because there is very little clothes space, you don't have a lot of laundry to do, even though you are washing by hand...which is proving to be somewhat therapeutic, in a weird sort of way.

So although I am not an organic granola making an impact in a natural way, I still like the idea of living a full life with few possessions. We will see how long Bill and I can have this mindset. It gives a sort of freedom that I didn't expect.