The Big Tiny {Book Review}

The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir {Review}

My first apartment was 450 square feet and I thought I had made the big time..living on my own. Our first house was 900 square feet and woohoo the room we had because we now had two bedrooms!

To bring this home for me was thinking that my office is 240 square feet and I am stacked up chest high on all four walls. I can’t imagine trying to live in 84 square feet. My closet is bigger than that!

So once I tried to get a grip on trying to live in a 84 square foot Tiny House, the thought of it was intriguing….until I walked around and thought of what I would have to leave behind…such as my husband and children because we would each have to have our own Tiny House if this was a possible option. LOL…

Here is the background on this book which will explain better than I can the reasons and thoughts Dee William had for making this life changing move:

Dee Williams’s life changed in an instant, with a near-death experience in the aisle of her local grocery store. Diagnosed with a heart condition at age forty-one, she was all too suddenly reminded that life is short, time is precious, and she wanted to be spending hers with the people and things she truly loved. That included the beautiful sprawling house in the Pacific Northwest she had painstakingly restored—but, increasingly, it did not include the mortgage payments, constant repairs, and general time-suck of home ownership. A new sense of clarity began to take hold: Just what was all this stuff for? Multiple extra rooms, a kitchen stocked with rarely used appliances, were things that couldn’t compare with the financial freedom and the ultimate luxury—time—that would come with downsizing.

Deciding to build an eighty-four-square-foot house—on her own, from the ground up—was just the beginning of building a new life. Williams can now list everything she owns on one sheet of paper, her monthly housekeeping bills amount to about eight dollars, and it takes her approximately ten minutes to clean the entire house. It’s left her with more time to spend with family and friends, and given her freedom to head out for adventure at a moment’s notice, or watch the clouds and sunset while drinking a beer on her (yes, tiny) front porch.

The lessons Williams learned from her “aha” moment post-trauma apply to all of us, every day, regardless of whether or not we decide to discard all our worldly belongings. Part how-to, part personal memoir, The Big Tiny is an utterly seductive meditation on the benefits of slowing down, scaling back, and appreciating the truly important things in life.

My take away was not that I would be moving into a Tiny House any time soon, but that I did need to stop and enjoy the scenery more often. I do tend to get tunnel vision and hyper focused on the daily concerns of life. Knowing that we have no promise of tomorrow, I know that I should unplug and just step away from the rat race a little more than I do.

You can purchase The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir on Amazon in Kindle format.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  Some of the links in the article may be “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive compensation. Regardless, I will only recommend products or services I use personally or believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”