She Retired & Downsized Into a 399 SqFt Tiny Home in Texas.mp4

Hi, I'm Brandy Beverley. Welcome to my tiny house. I've been here since January. I'm still fitting myself into this house and getting used to the lifestyle. Working name for my house is Tiny Tumble. It's a tumbleweed model and from Platinum Cottages. And I don't know, I fell in love with it as soon as I looked inside the windows. So come on in. Let's take a look. Welcome inside to the tiny tumble. I love this space. I've got 13 foot ceilings. Curtains that go all the way up to the ceiling make it feel really open and bright to me. The original model came with a fireplace. So over here where I have built the shelves would have been a fireplace but I needed books. I've gone from a whole library room in my old house to just a few particular books. One of the things about tinies is you don't have much wall space. And I am the daughter and sister of artists who work in large formats. So I don't have any place to hang paintings which is a challenge and a bit of a loss. But I do have one wall that represents some of the work. They're smaller pieces. My favorite part of this room despite its size is my orange recliner. Never had a recliner. Said I would never have one. Sat in it and fell in love with it. So it angles me up to the television that's up here. So that's nice. And I'm able to do work from my laptop. Spend a lot of time in here. And I like the light. Just love the light. All right. Welcome to my kitchen. This has been a labor of love. I bought the tiny without countertops because they didn't offer the silestone that I wanted. So the house came in and I had six more weeks to get countertops in. This island came with no countertop either. So I bought butcher block, stained it, added a drop leaf and it's become a really functional piece for me. It's large. Has a lot of storage inside. Great drawers. But the main thing is when I bring up that leaf I can cut out patterns for sewing. I can serve dinner. It's just a really nice workable space. I also went through and made some changes to the cabinets. I took out the stiles and cut the stiles out and attached them to the doors so I could do pull out shelves. And I'm a person who loves to cook and I'm not quite yet ready to make the adjustment to just buying only for what's going to be cooked this week. I like to know that I can cook anything at any time. So that's that's a little bit more of my processing that has to be done. I love the tile. When I first looked at it in this house it's since become a bit busy. So I've been working to simplify what goes on the shelves just to to keep that noise down a little bit. I did go for full size oven and stove top, microwave. I went without a dishwasher but I really needed the cabinet space. These cabinets are fairly well made. They're nice drawers that are very ample but this space would be better served if it was a cabinet in my mind. There's just a lot of stuff out here but that's cool. I have a farm sink which has all sorts of amazing gadgets that go along with it. We have community gardens here and this time of year we have a lot of greens. So I'm harvesting mustard and greens and collards and kale and filling the sink up a couple times a week and it's it's really nice to work with. It's the first time I've had just a single sink and great if you're having to hand wash things all the time. A full-size refrigerator is important to me. It still feels small but making it work and it does have the indoor ice and water which is really I like that. The refrigerator is full size supposedly but the shelves don't adjust. I did discover after purchasing that all of the appliances that were in the house were discontinued models. So they were warranted but there was probably a reason they were discontinued. Just some very subtle design flaws. So I was living in Houston. I had my 1,700 square foot house that I had already downsized into and had gutted and renovated and it was fabulous and COVID hit and I stopped working and just got crazy and decided to act on my gut and my gut told me to come buy a tiny house. My tiny house is not on a piece of land. It's in a community and that was very appealing to me. Another reason to go tiny for me was that I knew I'd be traveling a lot and I needed to not have a place that was that required a lot of maintenance. I needed to be able to just get up and go. I also liked the idea of saving money. This is a much more affordable lifestyle. The utilities are much lower. Obviously they're less expensive than your standard house brick and mortar kind of house but it was for me something I've just wanted to do for so long and I wanted while I was young enough to do the tiny house and have the multiple floors. I wanted to be able to do that and it's just a very peaceful place. Washer dryer combo here. Must have. I wish it was a little bigger but I've gotten used to it. I no longer have a laundry hamper. I just throw things straight into the wash and I mix things that I never thought I would mix before and it it's all okay. I did have some dead space up here with no shelves so I just did my best with my little curtain and hide that stuff. Someday there'll be more elegant solution for that. But these are great. They are interesting in that they're not vented. The dryer is not vented so you have water collects in here and you have to take that out and remove it pretty often. But other than that it they work fine and they're just tiny. So this is my bathroom. This room is probably one of the better designed rooms in the house. There is completely adequate storage with these upper cabinets, three drawers and then all the towels can go under under the sink. This too was custom. I put in an extra large sink just because I spent a lot of time here and I added a medicine cabinet. I do have a little wall space in here for some artwork which is nice. Nobody gets to see it but me. Tile shower, ceramic tile, good size. Again the tile is a bit busy so were I to do it again I might change that. But it has a part of the ceiling that goes up so you don't feel quite so cramped because the ceilings I'm under a loft here so the ceiling is I believe 79 inches and a little bit lower than than average. I didn't get the laminate countertops. Had I gotten the laminate they would have had something called a banjo shelf which I really didn't like and that was going all the way over in one curved piece so I told them just to cut the cabinets off here and we put in matching shelves that coordinate with the rest of the house. There are two doors for the bathroom. The one that heads straight out to the living room and then there's a door that heads out into my bedroom slash craft room and in retrospect and if I'd known that it was a possibility to eliminate one of those doors I probably would have because that's valuable wall space and someplace I could have hung a painting or had a closet. Welcome to the bedroom slash craft room. I am not using it as a bedroom right now. Someday I probably will but it easily fits a queen-size bed and I've been told a king-size bed. I have still not skinnied down my clothes and my shoes near as much as I need to so there's a lot of space in here dedicated to those items and I also like to craft and paint so I have quite a bit of storage room for all those items that are needed. I have too many splits in the house. One in this room and then one up on the second floor so this room could be completely closed off and just use one which would would be nice eventually. This model came with a closet that had a barn door on it but having a barn door here that closes over here and not being able to reach into a closet it was just not workable so I asked them to eliminate the closet and just did a wall system myself and so that works pretty well for me. I have the control to my water heater over here. I have a tankless water heater and that is really nice. Pretty much hot water on demand. Doesn't get very hot but it's just fine. Again get used to things. I have room for a desk. When people come to visit this desk pushes against the wall and there in my closet is a bed that just magically opens up on legs and it's a full-size bed for my guests so that is a good thing to have. One thing about a tiny is you don't have near as many people over. Can't entertain quite as much as I used to. You'd like to have friends come up for the weekend and but there's really not a lot of place for people to stay so that's one of the little downsides. Over here I made myself another shoe area. So just a matching shelf to that that was in the craft room and just made some curtains to go over and I can shove a bunch of shoes in there which is great. This is a pretty good multifunction room. It also leads out on to the back deck which is one of my favorite places to be. When I first bought this place I had already purchased another place in Houston and had packed according to the size of that place so moving was a big mess. There's been a lot of purging on the fly and I still do have a storeroom but that is coming along nicely. I can now walk into it and access things so my goal is to get rid of that. I never wanted to have a storeroom in my life. It's a real process and it's one that you need to be gentle with yourself and forgiving that it's not where you want it to be as quickly as you want it to be. It's hard to just see yourself giving away things monetarily that you're like that was a hundred dollars that was a hundred dollars and so you're kind of a little nauseated by that but on the other hand you're learning that you don't need to be spending that money. You're just living more simply. If something comes in something has to go out. In this community I don't have to worry about dressing to go out to dinner all the time. It's just very casual really laid back so that's that's helpful but it is certainly a process to right size your house for a tiny house. I want to live in this house in this tiny as long as possible but this is not very ADA friendly. I have a progressive I have Parkinson's disease so there will come a point where stairs may be an issue wheelchair may be needed things like that so I'm hopeful that I'll have many years here but we'll see. Just like many of the newer tiny homes the stairs have storage built into them which is really handy. Nice to have it close at hand. I have my kitchen stuff all here and in order of how often I need them. We are now up in my loft. This is a very peaceful place for me. I love the windows on either side east west. I wake up with the sunrise in the morning and it's just right on the same level as my bed which is great. It's a little challenging changing sheets and moving around but for now I can do it. This is a queen size bed. The room is actually set up more for two twin beds the way they have the lamps affixed to the wall the sconces but I really like being back in this little nook. I have space to do my yoga in the morning. I stay up here for about 30-40 minutes after I've woken up every morning and just it's a peaceful time. I usually wake up with sunrise so this is a great spot for me and I'm hoping that I can continue to live up in the loft for a long time. So I do have some more storage up here. I would love to get rid of some of it but it's the bedding. It's some extra purses and these white Ikea scubs in the corner hidden back in here and I also I just added this shelf so I could stuff some more things under here. So each one has a job. One's bathroom overages. One is kitchen stuff. So they all have a have a job. One thing I would change would be the position of the fire alarm which is right over my bed. I like to stretch in bed and kick that thing a little too often but it's nice to have it blinking right over my head so I know it's working all times. So we're out on my back porch now. This is a southern exposure and it's actually where I access my parking. Many people think it's the front but the way our homes are oriented the farm side is considered the front door. So for all my feng shui this is the back door. I had mentioned that I need a lot of storage. These cabinets are very handy for all my kitchen stuff and gardening and toolboxes. I'm a handy person. I could not give up all my tools. I've donated many but I still have all the clamps and the this and that that I may need to do projects and it does come in handy. I still do a lot. I like to mess with things. On this side I have my couch. I spend a lot of time out here reading. This was my old patio furniture. I've given away two chairs to neighbors because it was a bit much back here. It's the most comfortable. I bought the nice fancy stuff for the front porch. It's not near as comfortable. So this is where I come and it's interesting in our community. Back door there's a lot of activity here but people treat this as private space. If you're on the front porch people feel free to say hi, stop by, chat. So this is my more private space even though it's open. So this is the front porch. It's 10 feet deep and 15 feet wide so I have a lot of room for furniture here. Plenty of room for plants. I did add the curtains for a little bit of privacy and wind block. It's very gusty here. So on this side of the porch I have a table that seats eight pretty comfortably. So during the times of year when it's comfortable outside I get folks out here. I did buy the IKEA really inexpensive little stools that I can stack. They've come in handy. I use one as a shower stool. This is my 1950s tilt-a-wheel panel that has gone with me through several houses and it just fits the tiny perfectly. I come out here and read most mornings and serve food out here for my neighbors. I like to cook for folks and let them just come by and pick up food and take home. They bring their own bowls and so it's all served out here and it's just really a nice welcoming space. We have a lot of fun out here. So this is the view from my porch and from my orange recliner. I love it. This is an organic farm just over this fence line and they recently had tomatoes and peppers. It was just lovely and we volunteer at the farm so that's very nice. During snowmageddon this was just beautiful snow. Six inches of snow out here. It was really lovely. This is the whole reason for the season the farm. It just has brought together a group of people who are like-minded when it comes to the way we grow our food, the way we eat, the way we live. So a tight-knit community. We have our own community gardens and we grow our own food together separate and apart from the working farm and it's just a really nice way to live. So I retired early in COVID. January, the year COVID hit and so I'm trying to figure out what to do with my time. I enjoy crafting but I mostly love to travel and traveling gives you an excuse not to get involved in a hobby. So I have a lot of interests and the more I'm home, the more I make this place my home, the more the creative juices flow. I'm building up an inventory of necklaces right now to sell at a craft fair. I never would have thought I would have done that but it's really fun and it's a nice outlet and it's a good thing to do with a tiny. I do a lot of cooking. I love to cook. Nothing makes me happier than feeding people so I feed my neighbors. I regularly have folks come and grab food and it makes me happy. I do want to thank you for coming. It's been nice to go through the process of reflecting on what I like and what I don't like about tiny living, what makes me happy about it, the things that I mourn you know like losing artwork or space for artwork things like that but it's been a great experience. It feels like I'm official now so that's great.