Tiny Homes - Do you know of anyone who lives in one?

[Hannah]

I've been watching programs on Tiny Houses on HGTV.  Do you know of anyone who lives in a Tiny Home for real?  How is that working out for them?

[HomeAgain]

I do.  Family of 4, living in what can be described as the size of a vacation cabin, the kind at like National parks to rent for the weekend.  There's a loft, small kitchen area, living area, bathroom, and tiny bedroom.  It is tight, but for them, doable.  It's on the grandparents' property and they live in the main house.  They're willing to have their home act as an extension as the kids get older.  There is more privacy there to escape to, more room to store the kids' sports equipment and toys.  I think it only works for them because they have that flexibility.

I knew another who stuffed 5 into about 700sq ft.  No loft, two small bedrooms.  The kids had no escape and nowhere to store things, so they just didn't.  You can only cut down so much, and even trying to be minimalist there's just too much that five separate people need to fit in a small location.

[Hannah]

10 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

It's on the grandparents' property and they live in the main house.  They're willing to have their home act as an extension as the kids get older.  There is more privacy there to escape to, more room to store the kids' sports equipment and toys. 

I could see that working. This sounds like the opposite of what we term a Granny Flat.

[freesia]

I know a couple who did when they first got married. They liked it, but did end up buying a regular house after a few years. It can be confining and you have to stay very organized. I can really only see it working long term for a single person. 

[Faith-manor]

I don't know anyone who lived long term. But I know several folks who did it for a year or two in order to accomplish a greater goal. Locally, what is kind of common is for folks to buy land, immediately sink a well and get the septic tank and field done, and then put up a 1-2 car pole barn garage with loft. They plumb a bathroom with shower, and add a tiny kitchen and a heat source, and this is where they live for two years while the build the house which usually is attached to this garage. They sleep upstairs which stays warmer in winter, and have the tools and supplies for the build downstairs. Pole barn type structures cost about 30% less, sometimes even a little bit more savings depending on the bells and whistles, of a standard stick built structure. At least with local companies, that is the savings. I am sure it varies by state.

 

[Harriet Vane]

A dear friend and her dh lived in a van for a couple years and really loved it. She’s always been a neatnik and very minimalist so they did quite well. They loved the travel and the vanlife community. They didn’t like the Walmart parking lots as much. When the pandemic shut down a lot of the fun travel stuff they didn’t like the tiny van nearly so much—it felt like a lot of work and inconvenience without the reward.

Another person who is dear to me tried living in an RV and hated it. She just couldn’t adjust to its being small and it felt temporary to her. When she started babysitting her grandson it felt way too small. She’s currently trying to rent it out through AirBnb. 

[Miss Tick]

I've rented a few on travel for short stays. It was enjoyable but I could see that it would difficult long term, especially with another person. Room for hobbies and exercise were my first concerns.

[wintermom]

I think an important element would be how much outdoor living space is there available, and for how many months of the year. Also, what portion of the day are the house dwellers inside. Are they working outside the home for most of the day, only home for a meal or 2 and sleep.

I do love the concept of smaller homes which maximize the useable living space for those living there. The "tiny homes" I've seen on TV seem to be exagerrations of the concept, built for very specific locations and purposes. The "tiny homes" that seem to really work well over time are sailboats. There's a lot of creative solutions for maximizing use of available space below deck, knowing that more time is typically spent on deck.

Edited March 4 by wintermom

[historically accurate]

My mom lived in a 32 foot RV for about 4 years after she retired. She loved it, but it became a lot since she was unable/unwilling to work on motors. When the RV broke down, she had to rent a hotel room and move herself and her 4 cats, and that got to be a lot at the end. 

[KungFuPanda]

I think “tiny houses” are what you get when trailer homes hire a really good PR team. It’s the yuppie version of an airstream. 

[Carrie12345]

I thought about it as a way to work toward building our dream house. Then I added up all of the outbuildings I “needed” for large cooking, entertaining, storing decorations and mementos, homeschooling supplies, seasonal items, and a place to get peace.

So that didn’t happen.

As a kid, my family of 5 lived in a camper all summer. It was amazing! But we still had a real house to store all our crap, and a campground with many amenities. 

[HomeAgain]

8 hours ago, freesia said:

 I can really only see it working long term for a single person. 

Same. I think about the vloggers like American Road Trip Family that has something like 8 kids in an RV.  They have no real home and the only personal space the children have is their bunk.  It's just not sustainable as toddlers become teens and need more room just for their bodies, let alone any sense of privacy.

We lived in what I used to call The Shoebox due to its size and lay out.  It worked because it was never meant to be long term.  We lived in it for a little over a year, and then moved on.  It was well laid out and functional, but we didn't have many personal things with us when we lived there.  It would not have worked nearly as well if we were there for 5 years or so.

[Faith-manor]

A 12 x30 structure would be 360 sq ft. A studio apartment in the building where my bachelor sons are is 400 sq ft, and many married couples live into those. Comparable. Not fun with kids. I could see people doing it for a few years to save money. Well, back in the day. Now rent is so expensive there is hardly any saving for anything better.

If Mark and I were to do a tiny home while we build a place, we would then use it as a guest house since we would likely have our adult kids coming and going especially during the summer. 

[Lori D.]

A single woman I know has lived in a tiny house for a number of years, and it seems to work for her. It is the type of tiny house that can be relocated, which she has done twice, in order to first be on her married daughter's property, and now on her married son's property. I don't know the size, but I would guess no larger than 250-sq.ft. if it was easily moved.

Another single woman I know, with 2 medium-to-large sized dogs,lives in a 660-sq.ft. home that has a tiny tiny yard. It is not the moveable kind of home, but instead looks like a house that has been sub-divided into a sort of duplex. It has 2 bedrooms, so she has a room that can be her office / craft room / guest room. She just purchased it a few months ago and seems very happy.

It certainly greatly reduces the amount of time required for house cleaning and yard work. 😄 

Edited March 4 by Lori D.

[DawnM]

My son lives in a 33' travel trailer on our property.   He would probably prefer a tiny house but with city ordinances, we opted for this.   We may build something that is a "pool house" down the road, but right now he lives there.

[-----]

nm

Edited August 30 by kathyl

[Catwoman]

I don't know anyone who lives in a tiny house, and I definitely wouldn't want to live in one. It's kind of fun to watch TV shows and videos about them, though!

[Wheres Toto]

I've seen houses described as "tiny houses" that are bigger than my house.  We live in 750 square feet, an old summer bungalow from when my area with a ton of lakes used to be the summer homes for people from the cities.    It works mostly.   We've had 5 of us here when older dd was home, now we have 4.  Each of the teenagers has their own bedrooms - 9 x 9 1/2 and 9 x 12, while our bedroom is about 6 x 8 (literally just fits our bed with a small space to walk to the door).   Biggest issue is no storage since our garage is not chipmunk tight and we have no basement and only two small closets.   But we are in a quiet community, on a river, yet still very close to jobs.   Rare to find around here.   It's worked for 20 years and the kids are happy.  We have no plans to change anything since it's perfect to age in place.  Probably biggest problem is only one bathroom, but we're all on fairly different schedules so it tends to not be an issue too often.  

Edited March 7 by Wheres Toto

[Ditto]

1 hour ago, Wheres Toto said:

I've seen houses described as "tiny houses" that are bigger than my house.  We live in 750 square feet, an old summer bungalow from when my area with a ton of lakes used to be the summer homes for people from the cities.    It works mostly.   We've had 5 of us here when older dd was home, now we have 4.  Each of the teenagers has their own bedrooms - 9 x 9 1/2 and 9 x 12, while our bedroom is about 6 x 8 (literally just fits our bed with a small space to walk to the door).   Biggest issue is no storage since our garage is not chipmunk tight and we have to basement and only two small closets.   But we are in a quiet community, on a river, yet still very close to jobs.   Rare to find around here.   It's worked for 20 years and the kids are happy.  We have no plans to change anything since it's perfect to age in place.  Probably biggest problem is only one bathroom, but we're all on fairly different schedules so it tends to not be an issue too often.  

Gosh, I think this sounds really nice.   I do not like big homes and very much prefer old small homes with character and history.  Being in a quiet community, on a river, and close to jobs on top of that would be heaven.  You are very lucky.

[Ginevra]

I did go to a demo at the fairgrounds where tiny house builders and sellers were. There were also several BTDT tiny house dwellers, some semi-famous with vlogs/Insta. But the very large majority did it for a period of time and then did not continue. The realities generally get to be too much. Anybody who did make it last for more than a year or two was young and unattached. The most successful vagabonds were not those in custom-built tinies. It was people who had converted their own bus or van into a “house”. 

[SKL]

My FOO lived in a house of about 700 sq ft until my mom was pregnant with her 4th kid.  My mom talks about it as if it was a fun project to make it work, but ultimately, 6+ people in that space was more challenge than she wanted.

The house still stands and last sold for $29,000.  It's vacant if anyone has any young adults looking for a fixer-upper.

Edited March 8 by SKL

[frogger]

Well 5 of us slept in a one room lean to at my parents gold mine in the bush in bunks stacked up when I was a kid. It only lasted a year before they managed to get a small camper back there and just slept separately from us kids.  I would too since it puts a damper on intimacy when all your kids sleep in the same room as you. 

The kitchen was small spruce poles covered by a tarp. No running water.

I don't know if this really counts as a small house since I suppose if you added the outhouse, tent kitchen, and lean to together it might be too big for a tiny house. Also that lack of electricity, indoor plumbing etc made it less sophisticated than modern tiny homes that fits everything in like a puzzle. 

 

Edited March 9 by frogger
Just fixing a spelling typo

[DawnM]

On 3/7/2024 at 7:56 AM, Wheres Toto said:

I've seen houses described as "tiny houses" that are bigger than my house.  We live in 750 square feet, an old summer bungalow from when my area with a ton of lakes used to be the summer homes for people from the cities.    It works mostly.   We've had 5 of us here when older dd was home, now we have 4.  Each of the teenagers has their own bedrooms - 9 x 9 1/2 and 9 x 12, while our bedroom is about 6 x 8 (literally just fits our bed with a small space to walk to the door).   Biggest issue is no storage since our garage is not chipmunk tight and we have no basement and only two small closets.   But we are in a quiet community, on a river, yet still very close to jobs.   Rare to find around here.   It's worked for 20 years and the kids are happy.  We have no plans to change anything since it's perfect to age in place.  Probably biggest problem is only one bathroom, but we're all on fairly different schedules so it tends to not be an issue too often.  

When we lived in CA our house only. had one bathroom.   Well, technically 1.5, but the .5 didn't even have a sink, we added one eventually, but it was weird.

Anyway, when we moved to NC we bought a house more than double the size of our CA house and it had 3.5 bathrooms.   But we were so used to sharing that for about a year or more we only used one of the bathrooms.   Not purposefully, we just gravitated towards it.  🤣  

Edited March 9 by DawnM

[Faith-manor]

Michigan has some ordinances for tiny homes such as must meet all building codes for homes, and be no smaller than 250 square feet for two people, 450 square feet for a family of four. They allow local zoning boards to govern whether or not and under what circumstances they are allowed. They are called ADU's, accessory dwelling units, and currently are allowed in Kalamazoo, Lansing. Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Dearborn, Traverse City, and Briley Township.

Our township does not specifically disallow them, but also has enough zoning in place as to what constitutes an allowed dwelling vs a shed, and where you can put them and what you can do with them, that it would be quite difficult to have one and let someone live in it. A lot of this is because they have had some very bad experiences with farmers using migrant workers and putting 10 people in small sheds for housing with one porta potty for 30 or more people leading to folks toileting in the fields and ditches. They had to tackle that issue big time which made the farmers mad, and so if they started letting people live in ADU's without meeting all the permanent dwelling building codes, there would be a pretty big backlash.

[Scarlett]

I started to say no then remembered my boss lives in 700 sf.  He intended it to be a very short term situation…but then the pandemic happened. He is minimalist but he has a dd who went from 5 when they moved in to 11 now and she is definitely NOT minimalist.  He built his dd’s mother a normal size house next door and there is a huge garage attached.  And it is on about 120 acres……so there is some flexibility but it is really getting difficult as his dd gets older. 
 

I am there with her often and it has opened my eyes to what I would be able to realistically live with (if I had the choice) in terms of size and storage.  

[freesia]

This has made me remember that we lived in 600 square feet when ds was born. Dh was in grad school. It was completely doable at that point. It had a covered porch, which helped. We moved when I was pregnant with my second and that was good. It would have been a challenge to have added another child. I don’t need a ton of space, but don’t like to have no ability to be by myself. 

[frogger]

This has been mentioned upthread but I am curious what sq footage people think is a "tiny home".  I guess that would make an interesting poll.

It did not even cross my mind to think of our 550 sq foot apartment that we had as a family of 3 when we were young as a "tiny home". It was just a normal apartment that we happened to have 3 people living in. 

[Scarlett]

9 minutes ago, frogger said:

This has been mentioned upthread but I am curious what sq footage people think is a "tiny home".  I guess that would make an interesting poll.

It did not even cross my mind to think of our 550 sq foot apartment that we had as a family of 3 when we were young as a "tiny home". It was just a normal apartment that we happened to have 3 people living in. 

Well that is a good point. I guess 700 sf is not that small but my boss moved out of a 6000 ft home, so it seemed tiny. lol 

[SKL]

20 minutes ago, frogger said:

This has been mentioned upthread but I am curious what sq footage people think is a "tiny home".  I guess that would make an interesting poll.

It did not even cross my mind to think of our 550 sq foot apartment that we had as a family of 3 when we were young as a "tiny home". It was just a normal apartment that we happened to have 3 people living in. 

 

I googled it, and they had different definitions, with the largest being "600sf not including lofts."  So I figured that 700 ft without a loft was not way out of the range.  😛

I think most people are thinking of one or maybe two people living in a tiny home.

I think the concept is cute, but I'm not sure how reasonable it is to have a large number of tiny dwellings, each needing its own plumbing etc.  Also, since I live where there's a lot of weather, I don't know that it would be efficient to insulate those dwellings.  And how likely are they to blow away in a tornado / hurricane?

Then again, we have trailer parks.  How different is the "tiny home" concept from trailer parks?  (Even trailers are at high risk during tornadoes though.)

[frogger]

1 hour ago, SKL said:

  

😛

I think the concept is cute, but I'm not sure how reasonable it is to have a large number of tiny dwellings, each needing its own plumbing etc.  Also, since I live where there's a lot of weather, I don't know that it would be efficient to insulate those dwellings.  And how likely are they to blow away in a tornado / hurricane?

 

My phone didn't want to delete your emoji. Just mentioning that so you don't wonder why I left that in. Lol

 

I think wind problems have more to do with foundation than size. Small simply means less surface area to resist wind. Small also takes less energy to heat. The only way to pay less is to turn to condos or apartment buildings. Of course, if you have a cheap trailer to heat without insulated walls then use you will lose a ton of heat but that has to do with quality of build and not the size, just as wind problems are affected more by foundation. 

 

My grandparent's home in a wind tunnel in Alaska survived and is still standing (though it now has additions). It survived many 100+ mph winds over the decades. It also survived a 9.2 earthquake though so Grandpa built them strong. Lol It was a 400 sq foot simple box because they had to build it themselves by winter but it was over a celler and footers went down quite a ways.  Obviously a big tornado will take out a home whatever its size so that isn't relevant. 6 kids slept in attic under the sloped roof. I guess it would count as a tiny home but it was pretty standard for the time and place.

 

I realize you are probably thinking cities with fixed cost of hook ups to city utilities though and that fixed cost will be more expensive per square foot than a larger home where you might just rent out extra rooms. There are certainly a lot of variables to consider. 

 

Edited March 9 by frogger
Added earthquake info

[alisoncooks]

On 3/4/2024 at 5:46 PM, DawnM said:

My son lives in a 33' travel trailer on our property.   He would probably prefer a tiny house but with city ordinances, we opted for this.   We may build something that is a "pool house" down the road, but right now he lives there.

Do you have it hooked up to sewer/water/power?  Did it require permits?  I’m weighing future options, in which my oldest might want to launch, but probably won’t be able to afford to live elsewhere for a while.