Back when I first began the tiny house journey, I attended one of the very first tiny house festivals in Colorado Springs, Colorado. At the end of the festival, it was finally Jay Shafer’s turn to present. His speech captivated me at that point in my journey. He talked about how the design of each tiny house is its own creation, or form of art, an inner reflection of who we are within.
At the end of Jay’s presentation, I waited in line to meet the tiny home legend myself. When I finally got to Jay, he wrote in one of my first tiny house design notebooks, “Do not let design get in the way of necessity.”
Throughout my tiny house journey, this phrase has stuck with me since. At the time, I was almost unsure of what Jay Shafer meant by that. But now, at a crossroads in Design I can see what Jay meant. When designing a tiny home there are infinite possibilities of how to design the interior and exterior of your home. You want to maximize the space of your tiny house on wheels, yet want open and flowy space.
Overcoming details of design may be one of the hardest parts to building a tiny home. We have a vision of how we want our tiny home to look and feel, with every small detail that makes our lives feel complete integrated into each nook and cranny of our THOW. While it is still important to incorporate those core elements of what makes you happy, it is still important to remember Thoreau’s famous words of Simplify.