We "finished" building our house a year ago and moved in. Yes, we still had the deck and stairs to finish, the gutters to put up, the siding to complete, the wall to face with boards, the floor trim to put in...but we had walls and a roof, a bed to sleep on, a working kitchen and bath. We had a home. A home that just needed a few more projects completed. We'd done all the hard work of constructing a house, how long could a few projects take?

More than a year, as it turns out. Last week, we finally got gutters up on the house. We spent all week admiring them—and deciding the rain barrels they're supposed to be filling can happen later. Just yesterday, we put the last boards up on the wall behind the sofa. I hadn't cleaned and sanded enough old barn wood when we started the project; so, we just slid the sofa in front of the wall and forgot about the bottom boards for months. But even now, there are still the trim boards to prepare and put up.

Another tiny houser once told us that she wasn't going to move into her house until it was 100% complete, because she'd been warned that, "Once you move in, all progress stops." I would amend that assertion to say, "All progress slows." 

But I can't say it was a mistake to move in a year ago. We've had a full year of living in this house, and, really who cares if it takes another year to put in the rest of the floor trim? The lack of a couple feet of floor trim, a few boards on the wall, a section of railing or a downspout doesn't make this space measurably less wonderful.

I've never had the opportunity before to live in a space designed precisely for the way I want to live. This house fits us. And taking time off from hammering and sanding and hauling and staining is the point. Yes, we feel good about everything we've constructed, but we feel better about the way we live now. We consume less resources and energy, we spend a good part of each day appreciating nature, we read more and we have time for long walks. Plus, as we plan out less of our time, we let serendipity work its magic. If a new project appears before us, we feel free to follow it.

That said, our Muses spoke to us this week to gently remind us that there can be satisfaction, too, in tying up a few loose ends. 

One of the questions I'm often asked about our tiny house journey is:  "How hard has it been to get rid of all your things?" 

My immediate answer: Look around our house, and you'll see an awful lot of things. Our old sofa. Bill's parents' old magazine rack. The rug we bought in Turkey. My grandmother's set of Blue Onion china. My great-aunt's baby mug and my grandfather's old coronet. The vintage boxes we bought at auction. The books I love the most. The rooster and heron prints by my sister. I could go on and on and on. 

How can we have this many things in a tiny house? Shelves play a big part. The shelf that runs along the top of our kitchen windows holds a lot of the china we don't need every day. The shelf along the top of one bedroom window holds old books, family pictures and a plate and bowl we bought in Tuscany. Shelves over the TV hold that coronet, more books, my grandmother's silver and Waterford pieces we bought in Ireland.

Building in as much storage as possible into our design gives us room for things. One of our ottoman/coffee table/seats serves as our linen closet; the other houses our printer, plus office and art supplies. Under our bed, four giant drawers have room for many of our clothes, with enough extra space for backpacks and a small vacuum cleaner. Our pantry makes good use of space with full-slide-out drawers that hold food, everyday dishes and cleaning supplies. Even the space behind the oven gives us more storage for cutting boards, a pizza peel and stone, sink inserts, cooling racks and pans.

That said, we have "gotten rid of" a lot of things we used to own when we had a big home. Most of it wasn't too hard to part with. Generic furniture, unworn clothes, boxes of Christmas decor I no longer put out for the holidays, CDs, crates of pictures. The CDs and pictures we digitized. The things we didn't use or care much about, we "shared," as my husband calls it. Some of it we gave to family or friends, some we donated, some we sold. 

What helped me sell some of our items of value was knowing that the money earned was going to help us change our lives. Yes, we liked the grandfather clock we'd bought. But we didn't need to keep it, and the $750 someone paid us for it added to the $700 we got for our farm table and the $400 for the bedroom furniture joined the profits from selling our house. It all became part of being able to leave our jobs and build this house. And this has been an experience worth infinitely more than all the things we've parted with.

Sorting through what we keep and what we "share" has made me value even more what I choose to keep. It's helped me recognize what's important to me and allowed me to focus on that. I've kept things from our travels, artwork that speaks to me, silver handed down to me. And I'm much more intentional about what I bring into my home now that space is limited. A new acqusition has to be extremely useful and/or remarkably beautiful to me--ideally both.

In this process, "things" have become less important to me. Sharing what I have has become easier and even pleasurable. I am more focused on how I live now, rather than what I possess. That's quite a gift.

Please click on the pictures below for more details.

We have loved building this tiny house. Let me start with that before saying this: Some evenings we are so bone-tired it's all we can do to climb the stairs to our third-floor abode and plop on the sofa.

It's not just the work on the house. We've been cutting down invasives, chainsawing fallen trees, leveling ground, digging postholes, building raised beds, hauling stones, building a retaining wall....On those days it feels as though we aren't making enough progress. Why isn't the house built? Why isn't the garden planted? 

Right around that time is when the universe invariably sends us some new enthusiasm. We get a call or an email or a FaceBook message: Can I come to see the tiny house? Yes! Yes, please! 

Visitors are our elixir. This weekend it was cousin Tom, sister Jill and friends Giselle and Katie (not to mention Giselle and Katie's dogs). In taking them on (tiny) tours of the house and garden plot, the path to the stream and the screen house, I suddenly see all that we've done--instead of focusing on all we haven't done. We sit in the screen house to talk; it didn't exist a year ago. We walk through the tiny house; last August it was just a black equipment trailer. Now, it has ceiling and walls, electricity and lights--and even the first of three ceiling fans in operation.

Building a tiny house from scratch isn't easy. But it's wonderfully challenging, creative, stimulating and satisfying work. Sometimes you just need a few friends to remind you of that.

These last few months, I've been obsessing over the issue of consumption. Reading about the energy requirements of refrigerators and lightbulbs and hot water heaters. Watching videos about installing solar panels and setting up battery banks. Vowing to cut back on the energy we consume—needlessly and thoughtlessly—every day. 

And then there's my consumer consumption. Did I need to buy a new pair of boots last month? No. But I bought them anyway. I saw them; I liked them; I bought them. Ditto for a couple new shirts. Had I looked thoughtfully through my closet before my impulse buys I wouldn't have brought them home. Now, I'm giving more thought to what I wear and what I already have hanging in my closet. I plan to be more intentional about the clothes—and boots—I purchase. I don't want to spend our financial resources on clothing I don't need and I don't want to contribute to the over-consumption of natural resources required to make them.

Looking at the clothes I wear and don't wear has also called my attention to another "consumption" with even greater, more immediate consequences. I have a pair of black jeans I used to love that now sit idly on a shelf. I would love them still—and wear them—if only they weren't so tight that walking is painful. I've been eating and drinking my way through this winter. Literally over-consuming to the point I'm facing a choice: either change my ways or head back to the store for a new wardrobe. It's gotten me thinking about ethical eating in a new light.

I already don't eat meat, and I've made baby steps toward eating more organic and locally sourced food. We have plans to get a vegetable garden going this spring. But I haven't given much thought up to this point about the ethics of over-eating. When I consume more calories than my body requires, I'm not only wasting money (more groceries; bigger-sized clothes; additional trips to the store), I'm wasting away my health. I strain my already-arthritic joints and damaged disks. I nudge myself in the direction of Type 2 diabetes, certain cancers, hypertension, high cholesterol...

So, I'm trying to be more intentional about what I put in mouth. I've gone back to an app I used when I decided to lose weight a couple years ago: MyFitnessPal. I'm walking every day and tracking my miles using another app: MapMyFitness. The apps "talk" to eat other, so the miles I walk get converted into calories I can responsibly consume. Knowing how many calories I need each day and trying to stay within that count isn't terribly fun, but it's good to know how much is enough. 

As I pay more attention to the food we're buying and eating, I've also become more aware of the food we waste. Not knowing what's in the fridge and on the pantry shelf makes it likely I'll buy things we already have on hand. Yesterday, I threw a package of 4 cucumbers on the compost pile because I'd forgotten we'd bought them. I'm not alone when it comes to wasting food: I just read it's estimated that 40 percent of the food available in the United States gets thrown away each year.

I want to stop consuming more than I need--and stop buying more than I consume. 

I'm something of a latecomer to the sustainability party. I didn't start questioning my footprint, evaluating my consumption or looking critically at my possessions until I was in my 40s. It took the shock of my children going off to college for me to stop and look around. 

Every other week, I handed out bags of food to families in need just a few miles away from the 3,500-square-foot house I lived in. Ours was a four-bedroom house with rooms for everything (an office, a family room, a living room, a laundry room) and not one, but two spacious basement levels to store all that we'd accumulated over the years. Handing out jugs of milk, cans of soup and loaves of bread to mothers and fathers—the invisible poor who lived in the shadow of wealthy neighborhoods like ours—started me thinking. Why did I have more than I needed when they were struggling to feed their families? Did I sell everything I owned and give them the proceeds? Did I invite them home? No. But I did "let them in" my life.

We started looking for a smaller house, something that would require less commuting miles and something in a walkable neighborhood with public transportation, something without a big, green lawn to maintain. The house we found was a little smaller (2,000 square feet), and the lawn was almost nonexistent—no more watering, fertilizing, cutting. Still, we both worked long hours to support the mortgage and the constant "improvements" we felt compelled to make. The house owned us. It took us four years to realize the house, as much as we loved it, was still more than we needed or wanted. 

Next we lived in a condo before moving into a house with our daughter's family. They moved cross country, and we rented a two-bedroom apartment, only to downsize a year later to a one-bedroom apartment. With each move, we sold or gave away a lot of what we'd accumulated over the years. Things stored in boxes in the basement, things stuffed in kitchen cabinets, things filling rooms we rarely walked into. In the same way cutting unnecessary words sharpens prose, "editing" our possessions heightened our appreciation of what we chose to keep. 

Though we'd gone from 3,500 to 800 square feet of living space, we found we still didn't use all the space we were heating, cleaning, maintaining and financing. Now we're living in a 400-square-foot studio as we build a house that will be smaller still. I don't remember when we began talking about building a tiny house; in hindsight, it seems a natural progression in the journey we started more than ten years ago. As we spend most of our days building, we have less paid work...but we can live on a lot less money in this right-sized life. 

When we lived in Philadelphia, our favorite library didn't have any books; it was the University City Tool Library. The theory behind the non-profit was more people would likely keep up their homes if they didn't have to invest in tools. At the library, we checked out saws, shovels and rakes, drills and a post-hole digger, a hammer drill—all used as we renovated our 100-year-old "twin" (semi-attached row house) and completely overhauled the back yard. 

Since leaving Philly we wax nostalgically about the Tool Library, wishing we could check out a paint tray and drop cloth when working on my mother's condo or shovels and rakes when putting in landscaping to get Bill's mother's house ready for market. 

While we haven't found a Tool Library here in Loudoun County, Virginia, a friend volunteered to be our own personal power tool library. Borrowing—not buying—a mitre saw, table saw, portable work bench and saw horses has saved us hundreds of dollars. (Thanks, Tom.)

Since then, we've borrowed an extension ladder from our mountain neighbors. Buying it for a one-week roofing job would have cost upwards of $150; borrowing it means returning it  gratefully with a six-pack of Coors. (Thanks, Angela and Mark.)

What we haven't been able to borrow, we have bought. Our first tool investment: an electric chainsaw. We looked on Craigslist, but people were asking almost what they cost new. Bill picked out a 16" electric model (lighter weight and easier to maintain than gas, I learned) with good reviews. He started by cutting up fallen limbs to clear the tiny house site—but within an hour took on felling a 100-foot tree that was leaning precipitously over our building site.

Our goal with this chainsaw is to be able to loan it out to other people with a little clearing to do. Sharing tools doesn't just save money; it can build community.

This is my third birthday...my parents cheerfully presenting me with gifts, my big sisters looking on. 

But moments like the one captured here would inevitably be infected by my father's insatiable need for "more." His piece of cake might not be cut large enough. He might remember that his adopted sister got more presents at birthdays than him. He might get angry that my mother's mother wasn't generous enough with us.

It wasn't just my father. I was raised by two parents who believed they always needed more: more money, more things, more love, more recognition. When a relative died and left money to charity, my father was furious that it hadn't gone to him. My father didn't get paid enough; his furniture wasn't nice enough, his car new enough. When the bank gave away free umbrellas, my father had to figure out how to get two dozen of them. My mother echoed the theme: when she saw something free at a festival, she stuffed her pockets with as many hot pink shoelaces or plastic key chains as she could carry. Living in a house filled with so much china, silver and other trappings that much of it was boxed in the basement, she was still convinced she should have gotten more of her mother's things.The concept of ever having enough was alien to them.

I have found what peace I have from turning away from the culture of "more." It took me years to see that I already had more than enough of everything I needed, and everything I really wanted: my husband, my children, my friends, my extended family, my health, my home.  I have come—slowly!— to recognize the liberation, the beauty, the inherent fairness of "enough." My journey has been one of shrinking expectations, letting go of things, seeing more in less. Simply enough.