Small Home Family: Three Years Later

It's hard to fathom that three years have passed since we started this blog, and the whole dynamic of our family has changed as our former eighteen-month-old is now swiftly approaching five, and our former three-year-old is looking first grade in the eye.

How has life changed in the intervening years?

• We went from a crib to a toddler bed to a lower bunk for our younger daughter since this journey began. 
• We began our homeschooling journey in earnest with our older daughter (and boy am I glad we went with homeschooling when the whole world fell apart in 2020).
• We fell in love with electric vehicles, and hopefully we'll have an update on our first year with our little Fiat 500e soon.
• We learned how to survive months at home when the world-as-our-living-room wasn't really an option any more.
• We've grown and changed as people in the way we see ourselves and the world around us, and while this one might be more difficult to put into words, it's probably the biggest change we've experienced here. 

In addition to growing as people, our blog has also grown. We added 17 articles during the past twelve months and shared 170 tweets. We now have more than 460 twitter followers. Our Facebook page also gets regular attention.

Just like we did last year and the year before, we'd like to share with you some of the most popular posts we've written here at Small Home Family during the past year in case you missed them.

#4 (tie) Unicorn Quest Birthday Adventure

This post was all about the birthday party we threw for Sunshine last fall. Inspired by the escape rooms that were all the rage prior to this pandemic, we created a mystery adventure for Sunshine and her friends to solve, and it was a hit. Tiny-house related? Not really. But we had a lot of fun.

#4 (tie) Social Distancing in a Tiny Home with Kids

We wrote this entry in March right as our lives changed so drastically. I never would have imagined that we'd be in the very same place five months later. There's a lot of fear and uncertainty in that post, but we've adjusted, and while this is all still awful and scary, it's become our new normal, and we're doing just fine.

#3 Shift Work and the Tiny House Family

This one is pretty self-explanatory. If you need tips for surviving in a small space with kids while you work non-normative hours, this post is for you.

#2 When Siblings Share a Tiny Room

Trying to find that balance between what is possible and what is reality is what this post is all about. We want our girls to have privacy and autonomy even as we long for them to learn to get along and share and coexist peacefully. They have to share a room, but that doesn't mean they can't still have some room of their own. We share our solutions for giving them both the individual space they need.

#1 Affordable Ideas for Big Sleep in Tiny Houses

Surprise! Our most popular post this year was actually a guest post! Jane Moore from FitWellTraveler.com wrote an article for our blog all about ways to encourage sleep in a tiny house, and it's been well read.

I would be remiss if I didn't add one particularly noteworthy post to this list that far-and-away received the most love on our blog this past year. Our how-to post from 2019 on dissasembling the IKEA KURA loft bed received more hits than all of our other blog posts combined. Who knew there was such a need for this information out there in the real world?

Thank you for another great year, readers! Stay safe and God bless!