How Traveling Has Changed Since Living In A Tiny House
Sam and I would consider ourselves well-established world travelers at this point in our life. We have lived an extremely lucky life so far to be able to say that. We travel on a budget in order to make things work and experience as much as possible.
Now I know at some point I am supposed to tell you that since going tiny, traveling is about the experience and is what we live for. Yes, that is true. It's the most important part actually. But I'm not going to beat a broken record.
Recently, we got back from some pretty cool trips. I went to South Africa and Sam went to Cuba. Two trips of a lifetime. But for me it was my first trip out of the country in the past year+ of going tiny I think. I packed about half my closet in the small suitcase, grabbed my camera and messenger bag, and had a life-changing trip. In the states, Sam and I always try and grab a postcard from one of our travel adventures. It's cheap and we can stick them in a small photo album on the shelf, like this one. When we get home, we flip it over and write out favorite part of the trip was. A perfect way for us to remember our trip and bring something back that won't intrude our space. And did I mention how cheap it is?? 😁
Traveling out of the country was a little different, especially since we were apart. Before I was able to bring back large things or things that took up space on the wall (our now valuable wall space!). Australia, I brought back a boomerang and a didgeridoo that had designs that were burnt on by an indigenous tribe. Paris was a tapestry we ended up used to make the back of our projector screen. Things that just weren't the most practical.
Now it's still hard to not bring stuff back or else tiny living would be easy and everyone could just hop right into it and not skip a beat. So I looked for functional and/or small decor. I ended up ditching the messenger back as it always bothered me while traveling and kept thinking a backpack would be nice. 🤔 ( I can only have one computer/travel bag as having two feels impractical, plus storage for it is no Bueno). I found a great new backpack I can use while traveling and my day-to-day commute with work. Now it doesn't sound like a great "souvenir" but it's functional and every time I look at it I will always remember where I bought it with my dad in Cape Town, he is the travel bag expert after all. 🎒
Next, I found a small three-inch cheetah made out of wood from a local guy in the bush. Later on, in the trip, we went to this flea market to see what it was like and found a mother and her daughter making little mini clay items. They had so many items I was in tiny heaven. 😍 I ended up buying a small fairy door since it was so tiny and thought it was fun. And who knows maybe fairies are real? 🤷♂️ And that's it for bringing back items from my trip.
The items I brought back were small, cheap, and one was functional. I feel overall not much. Something I did notice in the group was that I kept seeing people walking out of almost every single store with a bag."Oh, I ended picking up xyz but it wasn't bad because of the exchange rate". Yeah, I guess... But what are you going to do with all this stuff?!! Lol I can't blame them because I get it, trust me, but it's crazy to live this tiny living lifestyle and see some people in the completely opposite mindset and not even be conscious of it. 😵
Now I know I can't do this for every trip I go on which is why we did the postcards for the States. But I never thought about out of the country traveling since there's so many different crafts/trades and interesting things in different cultures. 🌍🌎 I would be lying if I said it wasn't hard to not buy things. I know eventually, I will get rid of some of these things I brought back as everything breaks or takes up space for something else. But living tiny for a year+ I have just accepted that in a lot of aspects of life. From there, I can look forward to the new things life does bring us and embrace it.
-Tim