This Woman Wanted to Quit her Job and Become a Stay-at-Home Mom… So She Did This

Have you ever stared longingly at the gorgeous tiny houses on Pinterest and dreamed of building your own?

Me, too.

But this couple’s decision to cut their square footage in half — as explained on Yahoo!’s Parenting channel — is perhaps more extreme than tiny living.

They also have three children.

Tiny House, Big Savings

Tiny living has recently become known as a smart way to decrease cost — and increase quality — of living.

Tiny livers build their own sub-800-square-foot homes and get to customize them from the bottom up. Plus, no monthly rent checks.

They also spend less on utilities — sometimes even nothing, after the overhead costs of installing solar panels and composting toilets.

Being limited to such a small space also requires organization scaling back on possessions — and purchases. It’s like spring cleaning on steroids, and spells serious savings.

This Mom’s Big (Little) Move

Many have made the massive shift to tiny living in order to get debt free, retire early, pay for college or quit their jobs. And that’s exactly what Talya Salzarulo decided to do after the birth of her son, Yahoo! reports.

Looking around her office wishing she were at home with her kids instead, she realized she could be — if she didn’t need to pay a $1,800 monthly mortgage payment.

So she and her husband sold a ton of the stuff in their 1,700-square-foot property, packed up what was left and moved into a house half the size.

Her husband, Luke, kept his high school English teaching job, but Talya was able to quit her position as a college administrator and is now a full-time stay-at-home mom.

Salzarulo doesn’t pretend it’s always easy to share such small quarters.

She and her husband sometimes lock themselves in the family’s single bathroom for alone time to check email or make phone calls.

But at the end of the day, their one-bedroom home’s limited space allows Talya to spend the time she was missing with her family — and to create a better sense of community in the home.

“I love every inch of this house,” she told Yahoo, “because it allows me to spend more time with my kids.”

Still curious about how they make it work? Check out the full story at Yahoo Parenting.

Your Turn: Would you downsize to a smaller house in order to stay at home with your family?

Jamie Cattanach is a junior writer at The Penny Hoarder. She also writes other stuff, like wine reviews and poems — you can read along at www.jamiecattanach.com.