Simplifying your life through tiny living (Part 8)...Unintended Consequence

Posted on June 23, 2020 by Ben Brown, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

There are a few unintended consequences that I would have NEVER suspected would occur
or would have known to think about. When you walk into a cozy space this small, you get a
sensation of a warm hug from the house when you walk in. The door closes and you don’t
feel cramped as you suspect you might after looking at it from the outside. You feel warm,
welcomed, embraced, and safe. Its an environment that inspires a child-like youthful
experience. Its like an “adult tree house or club house.” Like all magical childhood places,
tree houses and such, living tiny inspires a magical creativity that allows for some of your
wildest ideas to come to the surface and in some cases, be put into action! Perhaps this is
coming from a place of love. I had a friend mention to me the other day how inspired she was
that I gave “old trees new life and a new purpose.” This is just so true! I would have never
thought of it quite the way. But I can tell you without hesitation, that I have an absolute
relationship with this home! There is a very intimate relationship with every last notch, every
impression, every difference in texture, in color, and waves. I could be blindfolded, place my
hand on a certain plank in this house, and I could tell you where it is in the house and what it
looks like. I’m still working on the floor. But the loft in particular, I have dialed! So living tiny,
will force you over time to truly know the details in your beautiful space. I
I never thought before I moved in here that it would teach me a whole different definition of
what it means to live with intention. I’ve discussed this a little bit earlier in this blog, but I want
to take this opportunity to discuss the degree to which this actually occurs. It’s one thing to
figure out what’s important to you. Its entirely another thing to LEARN what’s important to you.
In other words, figuring out what is important to you is approached from a place of question.
Learning what is important to you comes from a place of passion and understanding. For
example, I’ve figured out that its important for me to keep an eye on the weather so that I
don’t leave the skylight open, less it rains in my bed. But I have LEARNED just how important
it is for me to have daily “zerotasking” time. This means sitting, quietly, eyes open, with no
other task involved (no meditation, no napping, no texting, no talking, no tv on, no music
playing). No, pooping doesn’t count. You’re very much “tasking” at that point. We don’t do this
enough as a culture and we would be a lot less stressed if every single day, we just took
some time to zerotask, to just “be”, to just exist, not trying to impress or accomplish. I have
figured out that its important for me to watch the water tank closely when filling it so that it
doesn’t overflow. I have LEARNED that the language hanging on my walls speaks a lot
louder to me living in a tiny space than it does when I’ve lived in a other larger environment.
This is because there’s limited wall space. So, you get really particular about what makes it
on the walls. The other thing to consider is that when you’re living a “standard size home”
there are pictures of language hanging around all over the place. But because you’re typically
just “passing by” them walking through the halls, or its hanging in a random corner in the
room that you visit maybe once a year. When you’re in a space this small, you see all things
on the wall up close every day! So make sure the language speaks to your soul, inspires your
creativity and feeds your spirit!
One of my favorite things about living tiny, is that its takes away the need for the encroaching
machine in our lives to be in my home! Have you looked around recently and looked at just
how lazy we’ve become?! When you stop and notice, we are becoming more and more like
our machines. The computer is rapidly increasing not just its role in our lives, but it is just
mere steps away from being integrated into our biology. For the last five years, at the
International Technology Trade Show and Convention, they gathered what they believed to
be the top ten most influential minds (the people that are actually in the midst of ramping up
the new ways that technology is in our lives), and they asked those ten people to make their
predictions in the next 20 years. One of the predictions that has consistently been at the top
of the list that every one of them shared was that in the next 20 years or so, we will look back
and think of how childish and archaic it was that we ever “held our devices.” Its already just
around the corner. Have a look at a short bit of history shall we? In 1988, my parents bought
a Honda accord from a very rich gentleman at the time. This car came with a car phone. This
was staggering to me! Phones in cars now?! Fast forward to 1998 or so, and now many
“middle class” teenagers were starting to have cell phones. Then we wake up one day and
now everyone has a “smart phone.” So lets put this in perspective. Just 30 years ago, if you
lived in the United State and you had a friend in Australia, you had to either call them on the
phone and pay massive fees for long distance international calling rates. Or you could write a
letter and have it take a week or so before they could read it. Fast forward a little bit and now
there’s no longer crazy fees for long distance calling, but then we have texting. Now you can
type that same “letter” and hit a button, and in a few seconds, that friend in Australia can now
read your letter in no more than a few seconds after you typed it. But wait, its getting more
ridiculous! Along came Siri! Now, we don’t even have to type using our fingers. We can now
simply talk to our phone, say whatever it is we need to say, tell our phone to send it and its
done! We have taken out even needing to “hold our device” to use it! And now we have Alexa
introduced to us. We now talk to a device that turns music and lights on and off. It tells us the
weather (god forbid you walk outside to figure out the weather). While this all sounds
incredibly convenient, we are rapidly giving over our power and freedom to THINK for or ACT
for ourselves. All the rage right now is car companies advertising commercials in which
somebody can text while driving, drink coffee or otherwise be completely focused on anything
BUT navigating the 2000 pound missile, and not care. Why? Because the car is going to
“break for them.” We are literally giving up our freedom or responsibility or love of free
thought and personal accountability in the most astonishing areas of our lives. But I digress.
Living tiny prevents as much of this from happening as you so desire. If I want to turn on my
lights, I get up, walk over a foot, and turn on my lights. There’s no need for Alexa to turn on
my TV. And while I confess that I use talk to text all the time, there are still some old
fashioned “do it yourself” “elbow grease” methodology that living tiny keeps alive and well.
Need for a smart vacuum, (Rumba), forget it. I sweep in five seconds! Poof! Done! I know
friends that spent 500 dollars on a robot vacuum because they’re too lazy to mop the floor.
And the kicker is, it breaks every few months. That stupid gadget has cost them well over
1,000 dollars in the first year. I’ll take my broom thank you very much! In short, living tiny
keeps the “old school/technology-free” way of living very much alive and well!