Tiny Homes

[Emerald]

I'm curious to know if anyone here lives in a tiny home, or has considered it. I don't think I could survive in a 100 sqft, but I'm sure I can be more than comfortable in about 500 sqft. I would love to buy a large piece of land off the beaten path and build a small home.

I would love to hear from folks who have done this.

[maat55]

I have looked into this myself. Unfortunately, my wife has no interest in doing so. I am considering buying a rural piece of land near a lake and building my own cabin.

IMO, people can acclimate themselves to about anything they want to.

[Emerald]

My current home is relatively small (under 1400 sq ft), but I still find I have more room than I need. I confess to sleeping on the couch most nights, so all my bedrooms go to waste. Maybe I'd feel differently if I were married, but it's just me and the dogs and they're always underfoot anyway.

I would love to have a nice piece of land somewhere, and have a chance to garden and maybe keep a few chickens.

The home kits seem really expensive though, I'm sure there's a cheaper way to build a home.

[disneysteve]

I could do it if I lived alone but not with my wife and daughter. My first apartment was pretty small, a one-room studio apartment with a tiny kitchen. I was perfectly happy. I had everything I needed at my fingertips. Yes, it was a bit cramped and kind of a pain to have to close up the sofa bed every morning if I wanted to have a sofa to sit on, but other than that, it was home for 2 years. My next apartment was the 2nd floor of a duplex. I lived there for 5 years. More spacious, 2 actual bedrooms, but still a fraction of the size of my current home which is not terribly big.

Americans are spoiled with their big homes. Most of us have far more space than we really need. And new homes today are more than double the size of new homes 50 or 60 years ago even though family sizes have gotten smaller. The house where I was raised (family of 4) is considerably smaller than the home I now own (family of 3) and we managed perfectly fine.

[EEinNJ]

There is a movement in architecture towards small houses, in the "pre-fab modern" genre. Look for Dwell magazine.

My first house was a 1-bedroom 1 bath cottage on 1 acre. It was just my wife and I, and we were moving from an apartment, so it was OK. But after a few years, it was cramped.

Having property to take care of will require "implements", so even with a small house you'll still probably need a shed.

[anna_chronistic]

OK, just a warning, this will be an epic-length post.
Yep, I have a small house -- not as tiny as you mentioned (100 square feet? Eep!). Mine is a freestanding house, 444 square feet (and that's after two additions! ) It was a garage until 1949, then turned into a mother-in-law abode. The first addition was a narrow bedroom -- less than 6 feet wide (too narrow to have my twin mattress -- even without head/footboard -- set up as a daybed against the width of the room) and about 13 feet long. The second "addition" was when the previous owners enclosed the front stoop, giving me an extra, say, 16 square feet (probably less). But at least I have a front closet of sorts in the corner of what was once the front stoop!

It's absolutely large enough for me. In fact, I feel like there's wasted space because of the poor space planning in the kitchen/dining room portions of the kitchen/living/dining room and in the bathroom. The bathroom is large enough that if it were completely rearranged, a tub/shower combo would fit, but it was planned in such a way that only a narrow shower is there. The kitchen is so poorly arranged that I have a patch of "workspace" countertop only a foot wide, and a single drawer.

Redoing the kitchen is in my 5-year plan, and I'm making some modifications to my tiny yard this spring/summer. I do have a shed built from scraps that is painted to match my house -- it's the size of shed called a "latrine shed" if I recall correctly! If I stood in it and stuck my elbows out, they'd touch both sides! I actually need suggestions for what to do with that -- a small tub with my gardening tools fits inside my house, and I have a lawn service, so no mower (except for a "reel" mower that I'll probably sell at my next yard sale). I'd love to use the shed as entertaining space somehow, but I can't find a single suggestion online for alternate uses for such a small shed. I figure there MUST be a way to turn it into a bar area or something! It does have a window on one side...

Any suggestions for my teeny-tiny shed? Other than painting a crescent moon on the door (my Dad's suggestion).

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

That shed is how big? 2.5 X 2.5 feet? How tall? Some of the Bosnian families around here have back yard smoke houses that are about that size. But I think they might be taller than what you have, and I presume they are built over a cement or cly coal pit.

The smallest place I've seen a you tubevideo of was a bit of a cheater, spacewise, as there was no bath or toilet facilities in the home. There was separate facilites. But then, if you did not separate in such a tiny place, to would be like living in your bathroom anyway.

DH and I lived in 152 sq feet for 7 years. We had a shared bath & kitchen elsewhere and also another place to store the bikes. Old timey style. We did not own much. It was a beautiful time in my life.--Oh wait, I just remembered there was also a dormer window which gave us another maybe 4 sq feet. Sometimes a hung laundry in that space where it could catch a breeze.

If you look forward to living in a small place, you probably are the type to do just fine.

[Emerald]

Any suggestions for my teeny-tiny shed? Other than painting a crescent moon on the door (my Dad's suggestion).

Oh, I totally think you should paint the crescent moon.

[riverwed070707]

I'm curious to know if anyone here lives in a tiny home, or has considered it. I don't think I could survive in a 100 sqft, but I'm sure I can be more than comfortable in about 500 sqft. I would love to buy a large piece of land off the beaten path and build a small home.

I would love to hear from folks who have done this.

There have been some others posts on this recently. You might try searching for them to see more responses.

We are a family of 3 happily inhabiting 625 sq ft but there are two essential components that make it doable for us. 1) we do have a basement. The ceilings are under 6 ft so it isn't liveable or finishable space but I do have my washer and dryer down there and it functions as kitchen overflow for my canned goods and small appliances as well as storage for my crafts, wrapping paper, files, etc.

2) We have a great sized backyard. This means that 3/4 of the year we use our yard as an extension of our home. While we can't entertain indoors, we have a large table outside that seats 8, a nice firepit, patio, grill, play area for kids, etc. We eat, cook and lounge outside whenever feasible. In the 3 cold months of the year when we can't be outside I get a little stir crazy and I'm certain that I couldn't stand living in this small of a space if we didn't have our yard (in otherwords, no way I could do a 600 sq ft apartment -- its not the same).

I agree that many people live in spaces far larger than they need and, having lived in a 2600 sq ft house, I wouldn't do it again. Our family was distant, spent more time in our own areas of the house than we did together and it was a lot to clean/upkeep. While I imagine someday we're going to move into something a little larger than where we are now, I think we'll only buy as much as we need and focus on expanding the areas that are important to us (living areas) and not on having a huge bedroom with a closet you could live in and more bedrooms than we could ever fill that will just aquire junk we don't need.

[heyaim]

We are a family of 4 (kids are 16 and 19). We live in a house with just over 1000 sq. ft. This is the home I was raised in. Hubby and I bought it when the kids were 2 and 5 years old. It gets crowded at times. We also have 2 acres of yard. We are outdoors people, so we aren't inside much during spring/summer/fall! The winter months gets kind of tight when all 4 of us are home a lot.

[AccountantSalary]

Two of us currently live in a 2,200 square foot house, which is much too much space. We only use about half of it. We'd love to move into a smaller place and have even looked at some of the tiny homes. Unfortunately, we are in a depressed market and can't really sell our home right now.

[Swimgirl]

We need more space. There are six of us and our house is just over 1400 square feet. When we bought the house, we had plans to remodel (and money saved). A couple of weeks after closing, the husband was laid off. He found another job right away, but the pay was terrible, and we had to supplement with the remodeling money. Small bedrooms are great, but we need more living space.