Tiny House, Big Living

I love hearing the stories of people on this show. Tiny House Big Living screens Sundays at 9.30pm on Channel 94 (in Australia). Each week there's two half-hour episodes.

While it's fun seeing (and critiquing) the various designs, I really get inspired when someone is making a big positive life change. Recently we got two good stories in one night.

Paul and Bekah Dreisbach

Paul and Bekah each grew up overseas. Their families were in the Philippines and Africa. Paul shares how this changed them.

"Our backgrounds of growing up in a third-world culture and country have affected why we're going to go tiny. People living in shacks or the smallest little places are just as happy and we've realised that it's not necessarily the place you live in or how many things you have but it's the people you're around."

Bekah reflects on the moving back to the USA:

"Here it's just a struggle to have more and buy more things and you surround yourself with so much stuff and yet you miss out on a lot of great experiences because of that."

Their destination of Oregon is more expensive than their home state, so "going tiny was a great financial choice for us. We'll be able to live tiny, save some money and do all the things we want to do."

Rich and Sonda Moriarty

Showing that it's not just for young couples, Rich and Sonya also talk about their reasons for downsizing and simplifying their life, now their five adult children have all left home.

"We're empty-nesters. We want more time; and the way to have more time is to live more simply. Less things to take care of."

They'd been thinking about this for couple of years before taking the plunge.

"I'm so glad that we took that leap and we decided to go for it, because it's just so liberating I guess - having just a few things now instead of all of this stuff. It's really made us think about what's important to us."

"I didn't think we'd be able to do this but I'm so so happy that we made this move."

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