I knew that I wanted to move into that round cabin in a field from the moment I saw the ad on Craigslist.

At 500 square feet, it was the smallest place I had ever lived in. It was round, like a yurt, but built like a house, with windows all around and two sets of doors to the outside. A big skylight dominated the ceiling. The cabin had a colorful past, having been used not only for housing, but also as a recording studio and at one point, for professionally-run seances. I hadn’t a clue how to furnish this round room so I went on the web and researched “yurts.”

I decided that I liked the way the Mongolians handled the situation. In those yurts, the middle of the room was taken up by a big stove and all the furniture was pushed against the edges of the room with the beds doubling as seating during the day. I didn’t have a big stove in the middle of the room, but I liked the idea of being efficient with whatever I did bring to the yurt, so I immediately sold my sofa and arranged the rest of my furniture around the perimeter, Mongolian-style, leaving an open space in the middle. That area under the skylight ended up doubling as a personal yoga studio, a guest room where I could put the blow up mattress, a larger space to move the dining table out when I had people over to eat or as a place to put extra chairs when friends were hanging out. The middle space with nothing in it became the most used and most useful area in the cabin.

The tiny bathroom was the only private room. It looked out on a field and had a Lilliputian shower tucked into one corner. The kitchen was built against one of the walls and consisted of several cabinets, a miniature counter top and refrigerator and stove. I did my laundry in a shed across a small field where an ancient washer and dryer were located. My bike and a couple of extra plastic containers were stashed in a barn at the back of the property. The electricity, plumbing and internet access came with the property and was included in the rent. Heating for the yurt, the cook stove, and the water were my responsibility and came from propane tanks.

My one job on the property was to pull the garbage and recycling bins down the long driveway to the road once a week. My first time was a Monday night, a few days after I moved in. It was a moonless night in January and by the time I got home from work, it was very, very dark. I grabbed my camera and took some spooky shots with my flash and posted them on Facebook. The very next morning, a friend of mine arrived at my office with the flashlight and strict instructions to use it for future night-time garbage runs!

The view to the barn

A week after moving in, I was unexpectedly diagnosed with 4th stage cancer. As I stumbled through months of diagnosis, of chemo and of recovery, I ended up wandering the fields daily and ultimately taking almost 2,000 photos of the land, the flowers, the birds and animals, the sky. Most of the photos are not much good. I was on drugs, after all! But the act of photography kept me sane.

Sunrise from my window

The round cabin in the field was a beautiful, remarkable place to live during that time of my life. I spent a fair amount of time in bed and from the window by my head I could see the sun rise and from the window across the room I could see the sun set. On full moon nights, the moonbeams would shine onto my face and wake me up when it passed over the skylight. During the day, I could watch birds fly overhead and chase acorns around the skylight’s edge. When it stormed, the rain, the wind, and the flying tree branches would crash against the walls, the windows and roof, but I was safe inside this little pod. Where else but in that round house in the field could all those miracles be possible?

At one point during chemo, I became so ill that I had to leave the country for two months and be taken care of in the city. I tried not to think about my round cabin too much during that time. When I was finally able to come back – cured for now – I decided to return alone. I walked back into the cabin and immediately opened all the doors and windows. I turned off my phone and spent that first night back listening only to the wind in the trees.

Long driveway to the road

Even then, I knew that this new, post-cancer life of mine would probably require leaving the cabin in the field. During my last few months of recovery, I memorized the views outside of every window, especially the one by the head of my bed, where I would watch the sunrise, the wild turkeys, the deer, the squirrels, the birds, and the branch of the oak tree that overhung the roof. I wanted to make sure that every time I closed my eyes, I would be able to re-create that view for the rest of my life. At the end of my lease in December of 2011, I did move out and came back to live in town. On the rare occasions that I return to visit, my feet navigate the fields with more confidence than my eyes. Will I ever come back there to live? Probably not to that place, but most likely to a place much like it.

My wife, Christy, and I took a 1994 Blue Bird school bus and turned it into a home for us and our little boy.

We spent the summer of 2011 doing most of the conversion. I worked days as a carpenter and put in long nights and weekends on the bus and was rewarded with a comfortable, warm, and unique space for our family, free from rent and mortgage.

We spent the winter months traveling from Georgia to Washington state, spending most of the time around the south-west.

Along our journey we found out that we were pregnant with our second child so, though our time in our new home has been short, we are now in the prossess of selling the bus in order to fund a move to Alaska. We hope to get enough money from the sale to be able to start a life there and begin plans for another small, simple yet beautiful and unique home, this time though on a soil foundation!

More pictures and information at my website… http://deorwoodworking.wordpress.com/green-cedar-pictures/

Contact Josiah via this email: Nemo8484 (at) gmail.com he did not give me a price…

When I consider all of the hurdles and hassles associated with building a tiny house in this modern time of high land prices and restrictive zoning, I find myself extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to buy a small cottage. My cottage has remained essentially unchanged since the 1940s when smaller houses were the norm.

I have always had an idea of just what kind of house I wanted to live in. For years I had been keeping an eye on the market for the perfect house. Finally, in 2006, I saw an ad in a real estate flyer: ‘Brookside cottage with claw foot tub.’ This I had to check out, even though I was in a perfectly comfortable living situation at the time. When I visited the house, I felt a sense of recognition. It was as if I were returning to a home I had built for myself in a previous lifetime. In a flurry of negotiations I got the price down to what I could afford, and with the help and advice of a Tarot reader, I overcame some legal hurdles and I became a homeowner.

Although I think it would be closer to the truth to say that this house owns me. Even as I have chosen this house to be my home, I feel that in some sense I have been chosen by this house, and by the woodland spirits that live here, to be its caretaker.

Since then, I have been redecorating/remodeling the house one room at a time. The claw foot tub is still there, although the rest of the bathroom has been completely redone.

[View with PicLens]

Deb Durham, here. I am a 6 foot tall woman. Ironically, I have always been attracted to small spaces. And I drive a 2 seater roadster.

Since I left home, I have never lived in more than 1,350 square feet. Blame it on the half dozen ubiquitous 2–story and split-level suburban tract homes I lived in growing up around the country. Ever since I was a small child (well, I was never really a small child) my escape was the Swiss Family Robinson style tree houses I built or the family linen closet hide-away I turned into the perfect little nest.

Certainly, years of living in Manhattan apartments demanded I meet the challenges of small spaces. But I liked the coziness of them. To the shock of friends, I once entertained 80+ guests in the 350 square feet of my New York City abode.

So what is it about a smaller home that is so appealing? They typically have more charm and soul than McMansions. They are about human scale vs. trophy housing. Besides the emotional appeal, you can allocate more budget in finer materials, unique accessories. Practically speaking, there’s less to maintain. And how does one live large in a small house? Here are some tips taken from my 900 square foot cottage a/k/a The Topanga Tree House:

1. Expand your inside-outside living by choosing colors that blend with nature’s surroundings To blend with the rustic feel of the environment, I used stained pine boards for the walls and painted the house exterior and well as interior trim a soothing green. Lines blur between indoor living and outdoor space. Antique beveled glass French doors form walls of windows softened by sheer linen drapes not shown (IKEA). Imagine waking up to this every day!

2. Large art and furniture vs. puny pieces Be bold with your small space! Choose large artwork (Mark Hobley-Venice, CA) and oversized mirrors that make a statement. Instead of a traditional sofa or sectional, select a chaise lounge style which is practical for extra party seating and doubles as a twin bed for overnight guests. This one is from Crate and Barrel and costs about $1,000. Add a couple bold pillows with personality instead of the predictable slew of non-descript ones.

3. Kitchen sink in corner vs. in front of a window Expand your usable counter space by placing the sink in the corner of an L-shaped kitchen. This one by Franke is quite compact and has 2 regular basins plus a vegetable strainer and a built-in drain board. Then bump out a bay window for even more room. Most efficient, you have 2 large prep areas on either side of the sink. Note antique drawer pulls add charm to new hickory cabinets. And instead of an island made of the same material, find a great free-standing sideboard to delineate between kitchen and living area and provide extra storage and serving surface.

Full Bathroom

Guest Bedroom

[View with PicLens]

If you like this and want to see more features on homes 900-1,200 square feet, let me know at deb@spokespersons.com.

Deb Durham

In summer 2011, Carla, a gypsy engineer, found an unusual property at an online auction: a drainage ditch. Downtown Boise, none the less! Dimensions: 270 feet long – but only 15 feet wide. City Hall told her that she could build a shed, as long as the sides touching her neighbor’s property line would not exceed 7 feet and the overall size be under 200 square feet.

No problem. Well, one problem: a 15 foot wide property with a drainage canal running through it for half a year does not have much dry land to build on.

The solution: build a bridge and put a small building on that. Two days and $500 later, this small house was built. It’s 7 feet wide, 7 feet high and 14.5 feet long.

Since Carla only uses it infrequently, going there to paint a few times per year, some of its features had to be unusual, like a wide but high window that could be flipped up while nobody was there, securing the cabin – as it would be near impossible to enter when locked from within, due to its height over the water.

And yes, there is nothing better on a hot dry Boise summer day than sitting on your own front porch with your feet in the water.

Due to negative and mean comments I have decided to remove all comments  and not allow them on this post.

I bought my property in early May 2011. One third of an acre in a town in Pend Oreille County https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pend_Oreille_County, Washington for $13,000. I am only about 500 yards away from the beautiful Pend Oreille River, but do not have a view of the river.

I had my cabin bulit in May/June of 2011 while I was clearing the property which had an old and dirty shed on it. My builder was Joseph Birky of Birky’s Better Built Barns LLC based in Clayton, WA. Here his website: http://local.yahoo.com/info-63959343-birky-s-better-built-barns-llc-clayton I highly recommed him and his work.

The cabin is 10ft wide and 20ft long, has a 6ft porch, a 10 X 14 ft living space and two 10 X 6 ft sleeping lofts reached by custom built wood ladder. The cabin is a 2 X 6 construction, is R-21 insulated in the walls and ceilings, and is finished with cedar inside with a 3/4 inch redwood laminate flooring. The floor is insulated as well.

The little green shed next to the cabin is an 8 X 10 ft storage shed with a 8 X 4 ft lofted storage space that houses mainly my Loveable Loo compost toilet, miscellaneous supplies, and garden tools. The shed was also built by Joseph Birky. Both buildings turn key with delivery and set up costs at approximately $12,000. The cabin about $10,500 and the little green shed about $1,100.

So in total my two building tiny house project, including land, clearing the land, and gravel foundations for both buildings had a price tag of about $27,000.

The cabin is my holiday and meditation retreat about 25 miles north of my home in Eastern Washington State, North of Spokane, WA.

I am off the grid, collect rain water, have a compost toilet, and have a kerosene heater if I visit my cabin in the winter to stay warm.

I use candles and wind up LED flash lights for light and reading and a wind up radio for entertainment.

In the summer, I use a camping shower to shower or I take my car or bike, which I keep in my storage shed, to go to a very nice nearby community center which has showers, a swimming pool, saunas, and steam rooms. It is called the Camas Center for Community Wellness and is run by the Kalispel Tribe of Indians, here the link to their facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/kalispelwellness

I would love to connect with other Tiny House Lovers from the area and show and share my place with them and visit at their places if they have tiny houses themselves.

I love tiny cozy houses and I love this blog. I have been a follower and reader for many years and you inspired me to finally go tiny myself after many years of just day dreaming about it

The following song “You” by Gold Panda represents the energy that I personally associate with my tiny house and tiny living.

Thanks!

Max

[View with PicLens]

12►

Williams lives in a teepee and a floating teepee at that. Will says “It’s deliciously hippyish.”

Will decided to leave campus life after accidentally setting off a fire alarm and then being fined $350. At first, Will lived in the back of his car, he than decided to build a raft and looked at what options he would have for shelter. He looked at cabin-type tents and finally his uncle suggested a teepee.

Will says he found out that a teepee design and ergonomics allow for it to stay quite warm. With its cone shape it is very stable even when the wind gets quite strong. He says that storms have not been a problems with the teepee.

Unfortunately Will says the ACT Government has been in contact with him and wants him to move along. He may have to move out by the end of this week. Will seems completely calm with this grim fact, but knows he will have to do something soon.

I hope all goes well for William and I appreciate his inspiration for living tiny and self-sufficiently.

Photographs by John Griffiths

In 2004, my wife and I decided to purchase 20 acres in rural Kansas about 45 minutes away from our suburban home in Overland Park, Kansas. With a daughter close to graduating from high school, we thought the best way to transition to the country might be to build a small cottage that would serve as my home office. I sat down and made a list of requirements for the office and decided it might be wise to add a small kitchenette and second floor sleeping loft just in case we wanted to spend the weekends at the farm.

Exterior of the cottage after roofing

After a good deal of research, I settled on a set of plans called the “Weekend Warrior” by Robinson Residential. Using those plans as a guide, I expanded the footprint of the cottage by three feet and added a full second floor sleeping loft.

Shows "stock" one story plan that we modified

Having just built a small pond on the front side of our property, we decided to set the cottage about fifteen feet from its edge. This would provide an excellent view of the wildlife while maximizing passive solar gain as well. The final grade for the cottage would be about three feet higher than the surrounding grade to allow for proper drainage. We then poured a 16ft x 28ft concrete slab as the foundation for our little building.

Ductwork in second floor loft

We chose to frame the cottage using 2 x 6 wooden studs as this would allow for additional insulation in the exterior walls. We caulked and sealed the base plates and any exterior openings and then had wet-sprayed cellulose insulation blown into the wall and attic cavities. Cellulose insulation is made from recycled newspaper, cardboard, and cotton which has been treated with boric acid as a fire retardant. The exterior of the cottage was finished using lap siding by SmartSide which is warranted against rot for 25 years.

Wet-blown Cellulose Insulation

We had been purchasing high quality Pella windows from our local home improvement stores “returned window” section several months before construction started. These were windows that had been custom ordered and for whatever reason either not picked up or were the wrong size. This saved us a huge amount of money and allowed us to have the highest quality windows for a fraction of the normal retail price. To increase energy efficiency, we minimized the glass on the west and north sides of the cottage. Small awning windows set high on the north wall of the cottage allowed for cross ventilation and natural lighting while at the same time conserving valuable interior wall space. The large twin patio doors on the east side of the cottage made for easy access to the covered deck and opened the small footprint to the outdoors.

Kitchen and stairway

The first floor of the cottage contains the dining area, kitchenette, pantry closest, bathroom, and bedroom. Accessed by a set of ladder stairs, the second floor loft is one large open area with nine foot ceilings. Two skylights help keep the area filled with light and provide excellent summertime ventilation. A small utility closet on the second floor contains the hot water tank and HVAC system.

Dining area

We chose to keep the interior finish of the cottage very simple. We painted the concrete floor and used cedar boards to trim the windows and doors. The doors are all painted a cinnamon red which adds to the playful nature of the design. We even built a treehouse-like windup bucket that the kids use to haul up snacks and drinks. The kitchenette has a full size sink, and several maple kitchen cabinets. A cabinet mounted microwave, large toaster oven, full size refrigerator and chest freezer, all allow us to easily store and prepare meals. The use of an electric fry pan replaces what dishes would normally be cooked on a stove top. In addition to the small number of kitchen cabinets, a small pantry closet, roll around stainless steel cabinets provide loads of storage.

Bathroom pedestal sink

The bathroom includes a corner style shower with full size pedestal sink and toilet.

The downstairs bedroom measures approximately 12ft x 12ft and has a small closet.

Cedar bunk beds I built for the kids

As it turned out, we had to delay building our permanent house, so we decided to move our family of four into the cottage. At approximately 800 square feet, it’s less than 2,000 square feet smaller than our city home, but we were amazed how well it functioned. Since we never intended to live in this little house for extended periods of time, we didn’t include a laundry room. In hindsight, I should have added a small closet that could have been used for a stackable washer/dryer unit. Other than that however, the cottage functions very well and I can’t think of anything else I would change.

Shows the detail of the front deck

People are always shocked when we tell them where we live. Such a small home set on 20 acres does resemble a kid’s playhouse but we assure them we do in fact live quite comfortably in our “Little House on the Prairie”.

Statistics:

Year built: 2006
Land: 20 acres
Construction: Wood framing on concrete slab foundation
Size: 16 ft x 28 ft, approximately 800 square feet of living area including second floor loft
Utilities: All electric (with whole-house backup generator), rural water, septic system
Cost: Owner built for approximately $50,000 not including the land

Resources:

Robinson Residential: http://www.robinsonplans.com
Pella Windows & Doors: http://www.pella.com
SmartSide: http://lpcorp.com
Sherwin Willams: http://www.sherwin-williams.com
Cellulose Insulation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose_insulation
Generac Power Systems: http://www.generac.com

Contact Information:

Jerry Hambley
Website: http://www.lemonscorner.com
Email: letters@lemonscorner.com

[View with PicLens]

12►

I built my 10 x 20 house in 2005 for about $10,000 in materials, including all furnishings. It is built on six poles set two feet into the ground, that support the floor and roof. There is no framing in the walls except at the door and the large window. The walls are rigid foam insulation, R21, covered with ½ inch sheetrock and all glued together. The ceiling has R38 fiberglass insulation, and the floor has R19 fiberglass insulation. I spend about $100 a year on propane for heating, cooking, and water heating.

The house is located in the hills of Northern California. I live in it full time. The house is set up for one person, but you could easily put a double bed by the door where the tall bookcase stands. If you did this you might want to move the window.

I have a three way RV under counter refrigerator, that I run on electricity. For hot water I have a heat before use RV water heater, turn on for 15 – 20 minutes then turn off, it generates enough hot water for a shower and runs on propane. The hot water heater is located under the bathroom sink.

I would have liked an on demand water heater, but I have no place for the flue as an oak tree entirely covers the roof. However, the tree shades the roof from the sun in the summer. The winter sun comes directly into the 4 x 7 window. If there is any sun at all I don’t need heating no matter how cold it is outside.

I had a composting toilet, but it didn’t compost well and was a gigantic hassle. I replaced it with a portable toilet that I empty into the septic system and clean out at my sister’s (who lives nearby) once a week.

There are two things I would change: First, I would install triple pane rather than double pane windows. When it gets below 40 degrees at night I put 1.5 inch rigid insulation panels over the window on the inside after dark. It helps. The second change would be to add rigid foam insulation to the roof, R38 is not enough.

Thank you Paul for sharing your unique little home with us.

My wife and I have now been living tiny for several months. For those who don’t know, tiny homes (living units under roughly 200sq’) have become increasingly popular in the past couple of years. When we researched many options for different types of tiny homes, we found a lot of information — but very few first-person accounts of the experience.

And, after all, that’s what tiny living actually involves — a fundamental shift in thinking about consumption and space utilization — the rest (what type of tiny home, whether its mobile, how its built, etc) is all just details.

Our Shipping Container from LEED Cabins, in Place, with the Completed Porch and Privacy Fence

Given the increasing popularity of tiny homes I thought it might be valuable to someone out there considering the same to read some of my thoughts on what this experience has been like for us.

In our case, this isn’t a tiny home, so much as a my home-office. But we decided to place this small office structure on the land first, before building our home. Our land is 30 miles away from the nearest town (where ‘town’ is quite loosely defined; we’re literally 20 miles away from the nearest service at all, which is our post office), which makes development quite challenging. So we started small, so we could establish a base of operations without too much trouble (that it took us a year to even get this far, is an entirely separate story).

We invested a good deal of effort in learning about the various options for tiny housing (you’ll be amazed at the variety that’s available). We purchased Jay Shafer’s book on Small Homes, and even went so far as to get the plans for his tiny Tumbleweed Popomo, before we decided to go with a pre-fab option to simplify our initial move.

Our Solution

After considering our goals, we opted for a tiny structure built from a used cargo shipping container. The benefits of a shipping container, in the context of the remote Oregon forest, include that it is rust-proof, water-proof, highly wind-resistant, bear-proof, fire-proof, and resistant to damage from downed trees — all of which promised to make our initial setup easier, and expedite the process of building our full home.

The Semi-Raw Container

We located a firm named LEED Cabins, and Dan Sokol created a pre-fab office structure for us, converted from a 20’ used cargo shipping container. We had it shipped up to our land, placed into position, and secured by high-tension cable to concrete blocks in the ground (laid during the excavation of our driveway and homesite).

The Container Being Delivered to Site

This structure is 160sq’ total, with about 135sq’ of internal usable space. In other words, it’s very, very small for two people. Not to mention our pair of dogs and the cockatiel. But again, this is temporary, so we figured we’d give it a whirl and see how we do.

(For those wondering, our full home will not be tiny; though, at approximately 1,000sq’, it will be quite small by contemporary American standards.)

We have a fair bit of external storage space. We placed another used shipping container on the land, to function as our garage. We rented a PODS to help hold our excess furniture, and we have some Suncast outdoor storage cabinets and chairs in the yard. Not all of the storage is so conveniently located (our garage is 200’ away, up a steep driveway, where our full home is to be built), but it means we are able to safely store all of our possessions, even while we temporarily occupy a tiny structure.

Our "Garage" Being Delivered

Before too long, we also extended the living space of the office, by adding a deck, and then placing a lean-to greenhouse on the deck to form a (more-or-less all-weather) porch. At 98sq’, the porch represents approximately a 72% increase in living space (as well as an effective source of passive solar heating most days) — and, more importantly, provides a second room (so that it is possible for my wife and I to both be in the structure, but be in separate rooms — a luxury that everyone really takes for granted). As soon as weather permits, we’ll build a second deck, add a second, smaller (24sq’) porch, adjacent to our other door.

So, while in many ways this is tiny living, we’re using much more space and many more resources than you’d find with other tiny home dwellers.

Lessons Learned

If it’s not already clear, my wife and I took on multiple, separate challenges: living tiny, settling remote land, trying to develop on that land, all while continuing to run my company in Los Angeles — and taking this all on in our first year of marriage! As a result, we’ve been forced to learn many lessons, across many different aspects of life. I will try to focus this post specifically on those aspects that relate to living tiny, but there may well be some spillover.

And with all that by way of introduction, we have some top-level lessons-learned for anyone else who may be considering a similar lifestyle:

First, one of the key benefits is the low level of power and utility consumption. This is in part due to our efforts to go off-grid. We have only electrical service to the property, with a generator back-up for when storms or downed-trees take out the power lines. We have no gas service, and we provide our own water from a gravity-powered, spring-fed system on the land.

Utility Consumption

The Power Box

That said, all of our life runs on electricity. In addition to standard electronic equipment that you’d find in any home, all of our kitchen appliances are electric (with an electric convection oven, an electric range, an electric hot-pot, and an electric rice cooker), we heat the structure with electricity (shipping container homes are too tiny and air-tight to safely use indoor wood or propane heating), and we use halogen for most of our interior lighting. And, all told, our power bill (which is, you’ll recall, our only utility bill) is under $50/month.

It might be obvious, but it is still nonetheless striking: living tiny is just much, much cheaper.

Consider What You Really Need and Want to Use Regularly

As I explained above, we have a good amount of external storage. But most of it is not so conveniently located — especially given the precipitation in Oregon. When living tiny, you just don’t have that much interior storage space — almost none, when compared to what you’d find in a standard studio apartment, much less a home. In fact, a tiny home is approximately the size of some walk-in closets that I have seen in houses in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

So, living tiny means really considering what it is you need to function on a regular basis. Which clothes do you want to wear regularly? Which pots, pans and dishes will you need frequently? Which parts of your medicine cabinet do you really need on-hand?

Beyond the basics, you’ll also want to ensure that you have some comforts (which have to be tightly budgeted, given space and storage constraints). In my case (especially given our remote setup) that includes ensuring I can make a nice fresh cup of coffee every morning, which requires a grinder and coffee maker. Which books do you really want to read (as opposed to those you have around just for show)? My wife and I have taken to playing the Wii quite a bit, so that made the cut. We chose which of our board games we would want to play regularly. And, given our remote location and frequency of bears and cougars, we needed to ensure space for our gun safe. The weather here requires that we have a dehumidifier running.

And so on, and so on. You’ll make your list, realize it’s too big, and then you’ll be forced to really make decisions about those objects and items you really wish to use regularly — even more so, if (like many tiny home dwellers), you don’t have 200sq’+ of external storage.

Smart Design

It may be difficult to understand (though many residents of Manhattan will immediately recognize this as true) how a functional interior design becomes more important, the smaller the quarters.

In a standard house or apartment, you can buy a chair and put it somewhere. If you need a cutting surface, there’s one around. You can place a nice, large bed in a bedroom and forget about it all day long. You generally have a single, large water heater, that’s easily placed somewhere on the premises.

Container Interior, Immediately After Move

Instead, when living tiny, you need to spend a great deal of time reflecting on how your interior space functions, down to minute details. Your bed needs to be a loft, or to fold-away. In general, folding furniture is great. As are multi-purpose items (such as our Suncast patio seats that are also all-weather storage; our bed, which is a couch during the day; our IKEA PAX wardrobe, that has full-length mirrors for the doors; and our printer, which quadruples as a copier, scanner and fax).

Some people (like Jay Shafer) believe in sculpting the interior space, with walls and in-line storage. After serious consideration, we opted for a structure that was almost an empty box (with an IKEA kitchenette pre-installed), so that we could maintain flexibility with how we furnished and utilized the space over time. In either case, you really need to consider the design of your structure, and how you wish to utilize it to the greatest effect.

Interior Line-of-Sight

Many tiny homes (though not all) are under 8’6” wide. This is so that they can be easily transported across roads and highways, without special permits or traffic provisions. Once that structure is insulated and drywalled, you are left with an interior width of, at most, 7’. Interior storage space, furniture and appliances all subtract from that very low starting number.

If you are like us, open spaces are important. Being able to see 10’ in front of you, is much nicer than seeing only 4 or 5’ in front of you; being in a room that is 7’ wide is much more comfortable than being in a room that is only 4’ wide. And, if you are building tiny, there are many tempting opportunities to cut into the limited (and precious) amount of open space you have.

As you do this, consider the importance that you ascribe to your interior line-of-sight. If you are like us, and maximizing that internal distance is important, this should be considered a design directive (this is one reason we opted for the open, rather than sculpted, interior design).

Multiple Entries

To build to code in most localities around the country, your structure requires two entries (in case one is blocked during a fire). Still, many floor plans and designs that we’ve seen for tiny homes incorporate only a single entry.

The Patio Doors

Because of code issues (and per Dan Sokol’s advice), without thinking much else about it, we opted for installing two entries in our tiny structure (a main door on one long side, and double patio glass doors on one of the shorter sides). It was only after experiencing life in this container (and a few months in which only one of our entries was actually usable), that we really appreciated the emotional impact of having two entries. Even now, as I write this, I find it difficult to express just how this improves quality of life, but it does. It gives you options on how you want to enter and exit. It allows you to establish two separate, easily-accessed outdoor areas. It allows for easier cross-ventilation of the structure. It makes it feel more like a ‘home’.

In short, having two separate entry-ways adds a lot of value to tiny living.

Outdoor Space

One significant factor in our decision to move to this remote area was to spend more time outdoors, in nature. Of course, this means hikes and fishing and similar activities. But if you plan properly, it can also just mean lounging in the yard, regardless of the time of year.

The Porch Deck, In Progress

Of course, having nice outdoor space, or a yard, adds value and comfort to any property. But, when living tiny, it becomes more important. Being able to step outside, and spend time comfortably, is just a lot more important, when your interior is very small. Even having a small covered entry-way helps in minimizing dirt and mud that can get tracked in. This is why we built the porch (and will be adding a 2nd smaller one later this year), have all-weather furniture in the yard, and have covered a portion of the yard (temporarily, with a tarp; we will replace that with a trussed roof that extends over the yard, later this year). The more outdoor space you claim as your own, for easy use, the happier you will be.

Installed Fixtures and Outlets

Of course, planning which fixtures (particularly lighting) should be installed is an important part of any home design process. But, in the context of tiny living, it is important to remember that installed lights take up no floor space (no space at all, in the case of recessed lighting), and do not consume any outlets. For this reason, you should plan to use built-in lighting as much as possible in your tiny structure. In ours, we have only installed fixtures for illumination — no floor or desk lamps.

Installed Fixtures and Outlets

Along the same lines, it is quite easy to underestimate how many outlets you will need. Tiny structures require a denser allocation of outlets than a standard structure — particularly if all of your appliances are electric. And don’t forget! You want outlets on the outside of the structure, as well, for your power tools, or for a light to enjoy your yard, or whatever the case may be.

In short: built-in lighting and electrical outlets are not areas in which you should seek to save money or be stingy. You’ll want a healthy amount of both.

Clean Immediately

One main benefit of tiny living is reduced maintenance — there’s less space and less stuff, so caring for it takes less time, effort and cost. And, by and large, this is true.

But, on an individual, case-by-case basis, cleaning can take much longer. Again, there’s just nowhere extra to put anything. Cleaning means moving and shifting around items, accomplishing one set of goals, then moving more items around, to accomplish your next set of goals. Just washing a normal amount of dishes can take much longer when living tiny.

As well, once you’ve decided how to design and furnish the interior, and actually move stuff into the tiny structure, everything will have its place. And I mean that very literally. Everything has a specific, allocated place. If you take something out and use it, you must immediately return it to its place when you are finished.

There is just no room for messes to accumulate — and, in a tiny home, any item outside of its place constitutes a mess. Once messes occur, they rapidly become overwhelming (a small mess in a tiny home is a big deal). And if we’re talking about, for example, dishes and utensils, you just don’t have enough of them for any to lay around dirty.

The solution is to clean immediately, as best as you can. Don’t let any dishes pile up. Wash them as soon as you are finished (which also means ensuring that you have space reserved for a drying rack that is always out). If you trek in dirt, clean it up instantly. And so on.

As well, the garbage has to go out immediately. There is just no place for it. This means having adequate (in security and capacity) outdoor containers for your garbage, recycling (and, in our case, composting). We do have a small indoor garbage can, and kitchen composter, but other than that, garbage goes out immediately (to a series of bear-proof trash containers, steel-bolted to trees in the driveway). There’s just nowhere for normal quantities of waste inside of a tiny home.

Along the same lines, you have to finish jobs that are started, before moving on to anything else — there’s simply nowhere to store a work-in-progress on multiple projects. So you must pick your projects (and battles) wisely, and then get them done as rapidly as possible.

So, there’s less to clean, but cleaning can take longer, and requires more discipline.

Small Problems Can Get Big; Big Problems Can Be Simple

Exploded Sediment Filters, Part of Our Winter Plumbing Escapades When living tiny, small problems can get big — very quickly. As a case in point, earlier this winter one of our plumbing pipes exploded from the freeze, leading to a tiny rupture in the pipe leading to the sink.

Exploded Sediment Filters, Part of Our Winter Plumbing Escapades

Of course a tiny hole in a pipe, leads to a relatively tiny leak, which persisted for about 60 seconds before I could run out and cut-off water to the structure. And so our tiny leak — a leak that would be an inconvenience in a normal-sized dwelling — turned into a flood of the entire container. So that was no fun.

At the same time, it took only a few hours to clean up from a flood of our entire structure, using 1-gallon Wet-Dry Vac Micro — you can’t say that about any normal-sized home. Similarly, we can repaint the entire structure in under a day. We could rebuild all of the interior walls for just a few thousand dollars. We can execute projects on the structure — projects that would take significant lengths of time in a normal-sized dwelling — in a fraction of the time, for a fraction of the cost.

Got Friends? Visit Them, Instead.

With a very few number of exceptions, we have not hosted anyone at our container. We have a cute yard, so once summer kicks in, that will change. But for most of the year, outdoor hosting in Oregon is not possible, and so we forgo having visitors over. And when you do have visitors, you can really only have one or two at a time — there just isn’t space for more (again, unless you have outdoor appointments and nice weather).

It’s obvious once said, but it was one aspect of tiny life that we hadn’t really considered in advance: you won’t be hosting all that much. And, unless you tell your friends why, you risk offending them.

Love the Ones You’re With

Again, it’s obvious, but when you voluntarily occupy tiny quarters with someone else, you really need to love that person. You are continuously exposed to all of each other, all of the time. There is very little privacy of which to speak. When one of you is in a mood, the other knows it instantly. And when tensions increase, there’s not really room for either one of you to blow off steam.

In short, don’t go tiny with someone else, unless you are very confident in your relationship with that person. This includes those of you living tiny by yourself; you’d better be comfortable being with yourself, in small quarters, for extended periods.

Our Biggest Sacrifice

We’ve discussed this subject many times, and my wife and I both agree on what has been the biggest sacrifice accompanying our choice of living tiny: the kitchen.

Now, most Americans have kitchens that are far larger, and more capaciously appointed than we think is necessary for our needs; I’m not saying we need or want that. And, in creating kitchenette plans for a tiny container, not everything has been a sacrifice — for instance, we’ve adapted to living out of a ‘dorm’ fridge quite easily (we have a separate, all-weather freezer outside for meat and other frozen products).

Still, my wife and I both love to cook, and tiny living doesn’t make it easy to do the type of cooking we enjoy (it doesn’t preclude it, either; it just makes it much more challenging). Except for bar-b-q’s and other outdoor food-prep, there’s too little work space to comfortably create, say, a Thanksgiving meal — or any meal in which there are multiple hot courses. We only have one burner, and a small convection oven, which makes for a lot of swapping out of pots and pans during meal prep.

We still cook (we have no other options, living where we do) — but it’s just harder, and not as fun as it used to be.

Our Container Structure, Ready for Winter

Though, enjoying our meals — on our porch, which we built with our own two hands, in the middle of a national forest, with the creek running just across the neighbor’s field, in the shadows of a tree-covered forest mountainside — that’s a lot more fun now, than it used to be.

Again, living tiny is not a permanent state for us — it’s a temporary solution to the challenge of building a full home, out here, in the remote wilderness. As we hoped, it has been an invaluable process for us, learning what is important to us in home and interior design, as we begin the process of building our full home.

But, more than that, living tiny has proven to be a great (sometimes overwhelming) learning experience about ourselves, informing us about our relationship to the spaces we inhabit, the items we fill them with, and how we consume and utilize those items — not to mention, of course, how we relate to each other.

All in all, we’re quite comfortable these days, having acclimated to, and begun to enjoy many of the benefits found in, this life-style. Fortunately, though, we’re still just uncomfortable enough to ensure that we don’t slack too much on building our full home.

You can follow R Blank at his blog http://www.rblank.com/

Us On Our Land