Welcome to Tiny House. While it’s not an actual tiny home in the sense that it’s on wheels with a tiny sleeping loft, it is quite tiny at about 275 sq. ft. Tiny House (as we like to call it) is a two-story attached in-law unit with a separate entrance and no doors to the main house. Downstairs is the kitchen/dining room/living room/office and upstairs is our bedroom (with it’s own door and everything, major bonus for a space smaller than some studios) and the bathroom.

To be perfectly clear, this picture makes the house look smaller than it is. He’s standing slightly in front of the house, which is about 10 ft. long on this side.

Two People, Too Much Stuff

When my boyfriend and I first talked about moving in together, there was no question that we would move into his small place. The location is great, and this little home all to ourselves was the perfect fit.

Until we had to contend with all of our stuff. Neither one of us had much – my boyfriend traveled around the world for months before we met with a single backpack. He’s even less attached to stuff than I am. And since we’ve started dating I have completely infected him with my love of going through things and getting rid of them. We did the Mins Game together, and I had been doing my best to reduce to the essentials before moving.

We were starting with a pretty minimal collection of things, but even so it was not looking incredibly feasible. My previous bedroom was bigger than our downstairs, and I had a closet with enough room for two or three times the things I had in it.

After many sleepless nights worrying about where I was going to put each and every one of my things and dreaming about cleaning out long-gone closets, the move was much easier than I had anticipated.

I slowly moved in a box at a time until I only had about a quarter of my stuff left, which I did all at once. I started with the essentials and slowly found homes for (most of) the rest. For weeks it felt like we were drowning in stuff. I must have said “I just don’t know how we’re going to fit all of this” at least twice a day while we stepped over boxes of stuff. But it all miraculously fit.

While we still have more stuff than we need, we are slowly cutting down on the amount of stuff in our little place. Once we get things a little more settled, I plan on doing a little tour of the space so you can see what two people and all of their stuff in 275 sq. ft. really looks like. I’ll also be sharing some of the tips and small space tricks we’ve learned along the way.