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Comment by neighbour | Hacker News Reader

While I was still living with my parents, I romanticised the concept of a tiny house. It wasn't until I bought my own (normal) three bedroom house and went on my honeymoon, which was a stay in a tiny house, that I realised how valuable the extra space is.

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I find that many of the people who “fantasize” about a tiny house have trouble keeping any size house clutter-free, and assume that having a tiny house would fix it.

I think this is the case with a lot of "escapes" (tiny house, van life, moving across country/world, starting to work for yourself). Particularly when compromise is the name of the game, not having enough positive reasons to go into a situation is not going to fix the negatives.

I'm pretty clutter free these days. Then again, I've taken it a step further. everything I own fits in a luggage and I change airbnbs every month. can't buy what you can't fit in the bag!

I've had the opposite experience. I used to romanticise the idea of my own giant mansion, then I lived in a big apartment and realised how useless (and worse, you have to clean it) the extra space is.

I found exactly the opposite, every time I went up in size it was much better.

I also find that cleaning large apartments doesn't take much more effort than cleaning smaller ones - amount of cleaning that's needed is more related to the number of people living there than to the size.

I'm single, with 3 bedrooms. That's 2 bedrooms and a living room that I don't use except to accumulate junk that I also don't use.

Get two roommates?

Noise is my least favorite thing. I'll live in a tiny box so long as it's quiet.

Do it

Ha! I had the same experience, except I had a 2 bed 2 full bath unit. Totally unused extra rooms that only got use when I had guests staying with me for an extended period of time. I downsized, got rid of all that junk in the extra room which was extremely liberating, and moved to a 1 bed 1 bath unit across the country. Best decision I've made!

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