If you follow me on Instagram you would’ve probably noticed my family have gone through some big changes in the past few months. My husband and I made the big decision last year to move to his home town onto a property. As if that wasn’t a big enough change, we also decided to minimalize our life by selling many of our possessions, only keeping what we needed and the few things we just couldn’t part with. The reason we had to get rid of so many of your things? We’ve moved out of our four bedroom, two living area home, into two 3 x 6m demountable buildings.

But why???

Why would we make such a drastic change in not only our lives but our children’s?

Moving to a property is something that’s been on the cards ever since my husband and I had our first conversation about what we saw in our future fourteen years ago, before kids and mortgages.

My husband grew up on a property in Central Queensland, Australia, and always loved living out on a farm where he was free to get dirty, go on adventure and just be a kid. I however, grew up in an industrial, coastal town in Central Queensland, with an average sized backyard. But as a kid I was always drawn to the nearby bush land making cubby houses, swimming in creeks and climbing trees.  So, when we got together we decided that one day we would live on a property so our future children could roam as he did.

Then real life started, marriage, our first child, and we bought our first home in town because that was what you were supposed to do right? When our second child came along we decided we needed more room, because, you know, babies take up so much room, and so we moved into a bigger house with a bigger mortgage. Part of us always knew we were moving further and further away from the life we’d always dreamed of for ourselves but we kept moving forward feeling the pressure of doing what we were ‘supposed’ to do.

Most of you who have a mortgage (and some of those of you who don’t) will understand the struggle of living week to week and your life seeming to be about paying off your home instead of living and enjoying life. My husband was stressed by the pressure of having to pay our bills. I was stressed trying to help my husband in any way I could while still being a stay at home mother. And cleaning our big house consumed so much of my time.

One night we sat down and realised that our dream of raising our kids on a property was slowly slipping away. Our son is now aged 9, our daughter 7 and if we kept letting the years pass us by as we had we would lose the opportunity.

So we took it. We bit the bullet and decided we would move to my husband’s hometown and give the kids the upbringing we always wanted them to have. But to do it, we needed to downsize. Thanks to my passion for living simply without all of the ‘stuff’ we seem to accumulate but don’t need and my obsession with Tiny House Nation on Netflix we decided the only affordable way to do it was to move into two 3m x 6m demountable buildings.

It’s been a lot of work, and I’m incredibly thankful my husband and brother-in-law are both handy on the tools, but now we are settled into our new home living the life we’ve always dreamt of.

It’s blown my mind how easily the kids and I have settled into tiny living. My son barely touches technology, instead opting to ride his bike, scooter, or the quad bike. My daughter sits out on the grass to do her colouring in and has come home a number of times covered head to toe in mud. We spend so much more time outdoors together, and I feel less stressed and more energised than I have in a very long time.

Its early days, and I’m sure there’ll be some bumps along the way. But I truly feel like going tiny was the greatest thing my family has ever done.

Do you think you could go tiny? Or have you? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!

Here’s a few photos of our new home.

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