Moving from your full time home to your cabin

[grover]

We are planning our build for hopefully this spring.  We are thinking about a 23 x 26 with a loft.  We would like the option of moving there full time after retirement. (About 10 yrs)  My worry is moving from our "full time" house to a smaller space with limited storage.  We now have a 3 car garage and a 1300 sq ft basement.  I don't know how we would pull this off.  We are going to have to have a garage or storage building of some sort.

Have any of you experienced moving to your small home full time?  What have you found works best for storage?  I guess what one of my worries would be is to have the storage/garage look like it fits.  I had considered a 20 ft long trucking container but I know it would stick out like a sore thumb unless I did something to camouflage it.

Thanks,
Mitch   

[MountainDon]

Our cabin was not built with the intent of it ever being a full time primary residence. Not nearly enough indoor storage space. We have outdoor storage; 8x8 shed and 9x16 barn/shed but everything in those could be accessed by rodents too. Also those spaces are not weather conditioned so some items might be harmed by summer heat or winter freezing.  If I was building with full time use in mind, but wanted a small living space I'd probably design in a room specifically for storage indoors. 

[Bob S.]

Have you considered starting with a garage first? You could build it with attic storage. This would give you a starting build and you will need the garage later anyway.