We're celebrating a major milestone here at Small Home Family this week: our second "blogiversary!" I can't believe it's been two years since the idea for this website was born.
A few things have changed around here during that time. When we started, we had a one-year-old and a three-year-old, and now that former three-year-old is about to start kindergarten! We celebrated our fourteenth and fifteenth years of marriage. We bought an electric car!
The biggest change, though, is probably the way being part of the Tiny House Community has changed us. We've had the opportunity to really dive into what our lifestyle means to us and why we have made the choices that we've made. We've connected with other families living in small homes and tiny houses and RVs and skoolies. When we began this blog in 2017, we felt like we were the only ones doing what we're doing. We realize now that there is a whole community of people who are right there with us.
We've also become more cognizant of our place in this world:
- We've become more passionate about reducing our environmental footprint through small changes we make to our lifestyle. Even though we have a long way to go, we feel like we're making progress.
- We've learned to see housing as the burden it is for so many people and to try to raise awareness for the crisis that the lack of affordable housing is causing throughout or society.
- We've had the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of so many of our fellow sojourners in this life, and it's been amazing and eye-opening and such a phenomenal experience.
We set out to share our story and encourage others, and it seems that the people who have changed the most on this journey have been us. It's been quite the ride, folks, and we're eager to see where this next year takes us.
As this second year of blogging comes to a close, we want to take a look back at what's happened here at the site over the past year. We've published 50 articles, shared 379 tweets, and now have 250 twitter followers. We joined the Small Family Homes Blogging Community and added an Instagram account.
As a snapshot of what we've written about here at the blog on this journey around the sun, we want to share some of our most popular posts from the past year:
#5 We Gave Our Kids the Tiny House Bedroom
This post was written for the February 2019 edition of the Small Family Homes Blogging Community, and in it we tackle the idea that preconceived notions about what a home should look like limit our options for the way things could be. Society wonders how we make tiny living work as we've added kids. Instead of trading in our house, we traded in these limits that box people in and make them think they can't make their current situation work. Sometimes, if you get creative and step outside of the norm, you'll discover that you have more options than you realized.
#4 Tiny House Living with Kids: Sleeping Arrangements
This post was also written as part of the Small Family Homes Blogging Community, and it also addresses the question seemingly on everyone's minds: where do you all sleep in such a small home? One major thing has changed since I wrote this particular article: my kids now go to sleep in the same room at the same time! Can you hear the angels singing a glorious round of hallelujahs? Bedtime is so much better these days, though my firstborn still doesn't transition well to sleep. I have a feeling this will always be a struggle for her.
#3 IKEA Trundle Hack
I'm still really proud of this project, and we've been really happy with our trundle since we built it a year ago. I will say that the only real downside to our design is that a trundle will get walked on a lot more than a regular bed does, which the LONSET bed base isn't really designed for, so we have broken a few slats this year. We just wrapped them with duct tape and carried on with life, and it hasn't affected the utility or comfort of the trundle bed at all.
#2 Our Biggest Small House Regret
Also written for the Small Family Homes Blogging Community, this post addresses the fact that, yeah, it would be easier to have a second bedroom. We're not going to lie. At the time that it was published, we were still on the fence about having a third child. We've landed pretty firmly on the side of being done growing our family, so not having a second bedroom isn't as big of a deal as we thought it might be had our future taken a different turn. Were I to write this article again today, it would be about a different regret entirely: having our kitchen in the middle of the house. Once we turned the bedroom into an actual daytime destination in our home and took down the baby gate in the living room, the increased foot traffic in the kitchen has been almost enough to drive me insane. Almost.
#1 Disassembling the IKEA KURA in 10 Easy Steps
I wrote this how-to because a previous post that mentions the process we went through to bring this hand-me-down bed home kept getting an unexpected number of hits, and my best guess for why this was happening was that people must have been searching for instructions about how to actually take this bed apart. Oh. My. Goodness. I don't know if it's the instructions or the lovely decor in my cousins' daughters' room at her old house, but this article has completely blown away any other thing we've ever published on this site other than our IKEA KURA loft bed tutorial. So if you stumble upon this blog looking for instructions for taking apart this popular IKEA loft bed, I hope this post is helpful to you, and I hope that maybe you look around and decide to stay for a bit. We're glad you found us!
That's been our year in a nutshell! There are so many other things to read as well, including some of my favorites about raising girls in the Tiny House Movement and our Tiny House Manifesto.
To our loyal readers, thanks for going on this journey with us! I'd love to hear from you in the comments!
Related Post: Small Home Family: One Year Later
As this second year of blogging comes to a close, we want to take a look back at what's happened here at the site over the past year. We've published 50 articles, shared 379 tweets, and now have 250 twitter followers. We joined the Small Family Homes Blogging Community and added an Instagram account.
As a snapshot of what we've written about here at the blog on this journey around the sun, we want to share some of our most popular posts from the past year:
This post was written for the February 2019 edition of the Small Family Homes Blogging Community, and in it we tackle the idea that preconceived notions about what a home should look like limit our options for the way things could be. Society wonders how we make tiny living work as we've added kids. Instead of trading in our house, we traded in these limits that box people in and make them think they can't make their current situation work. Sometimes, if you get creative and step outside of the norm, you'll discover that you have more options than you realized.
This post was also written as part of the Small Family Homes Blogging Community, and it also addresses the question seemingly on everyone's minds: where do you all sleep in such a small home? One major thing has changed since I wrote this particular article: my kids now go to sleep in the same room at the same time! Can you hear the angels singing a glorious round of hallelujahs? Bedtime is so much better these days, though my firstborn still doesn't transition well to sleep. I have a feeling this will always be a struggle for her.
I'm still really proud of this project, and we've been really happy with our trundle since we built it a year ago. I will say that the only real downside to our design is that a trundle will get walked on a lot more than a regular bed does, which the LONSET bed base isn't really designed for, so we have broken a few slats this year. We just wrapped them with duct tape and carried on with life, and it hasn't affected the utility or comfort of the trundle bed at all.
Also written for the Small Family Homes Blogging Community, this post addresses the fact that, yeah, it would be easier to have a second bedroom. We're not going to lie. At the time that it was published, we were still on the fence about having a third child. We've landed pretty firmly on the side of being done growing our family, so not having a second bedroom isn't as big of a deal as we thought it might be had our future taken a different turn. Were I to write this article again today, it would be about a different regret entirely: having our kitchen in the middle of the house. Once we turned the bedroom into an actual daytime destination in our home and took down the baby gate in the living room, the increased foot traffic in the kitchen has been almost enough to drive me insane. Almost.
I wrote this how-to because a previous post that mentions the process we went through to bring this hand-me-down bed home kept getting an unexpected number of hits, and my best guess for why this was happening was that people must have been searching for instructions about how to actually take this bed apart. Oh. My. Goodness. I don't know if it's the instructions or the lovely decor in my cousins' daughters' room at her old house, but this article has completely blown away any other thing we've ever published on this site other than our IKEA KURA loft bed tutorial. So if you stumble upon this blog looking for instructions for taking apart this popular IKEA loft bed, I hope this post is helpful to you, and I hope that maybe you look around and decide to stay for a bit. We're glad you found us!
That's been our year in a nutshell! There are so many other things to read as well, including some of my favorites about raising girls in the Tiny House Movement and our Tiny House Manifesto.
To our loyal readers, thanks for going on this journey with us! I'd love to hear from you in the comments!
Related Post: Small Home Family: One Year Later
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