She Secured Her Tiny House with a Credit Card.

I started saving money right away. It's not just the economy of it. It's the mindset and the lifestyle. You know how little kids go, that's how I felt. I mean, I was home. Hi, I'm Elsie. Come take a tour of my home. Welcome to my living room. My tiny house is eight and a half feet wide by 24 feet long. That's about 192 square feet. With tiny living, everything has to go down. The amount of stuff and the size of stuff so that you feel comfortable. It's a little bit of an adjustment. My son-in-law bought me a big TV and I had to say, I'm only five feet away from the TV. I'm sorry. Can you use this somewhere? Because I can't. You have to totally change your mindset. You have to literally get rid of everything. But the great part about it is when you go through your little collections, whatever they are, you're surrounding yourself then with things that mean something to you and things that you love. And that energy is palpable. When I walk in here, I know I'm home and these are my little bit of stuff that means something to me. I have a tendency to move furniture a lot, which is really kind of challenging when you go tiny because there is really not as many options. So I have actually flipped how I have things. Sometimes I have the chair over there and the TV over there. The reason why I like it this way best is because of what my view is. So when I'm sitting in my chair and relaxing, it's important to me that I'm looking out at the trees. After living tiny for a year, I still love living tiny. That's the most important thing. I wholeheartedly back my decision to go tiny and I encourage anyone that's thinking about tiny to talk to other tiny dwellers and see how they feel about it, what they gave up. Do they miss what they gave up? I don't miss anything. I follow a lot of people. And Christine Kane says you should break issues down to doable, dreamable chunks. That's what I did. I said, what's important to me and how am I going to get there? And I felt excited that I pulled it off, that I did whatever I had to do to get in here. You know how little kids go? That's how I felt. I mean, I was home. This is where I work. I do accounts receivable and I only have to do it part time. I'm on Social Security, so that helps supplement my revenue. And that's all I need. It's a very easy, comfortable way for me to make a living. No stress of commuting or any of that. And I'm comfortable right here in my tiny house. As we leave my office slash dining room, you make that long commute over here to the bedroom. The way this home was originally designed and I worked with a builder to change the design, there was a wall right here and queen size bed was behind the wall and the closet, which you'll see later, was over in the corner. And then there was a door and all of this space was used up, which basically meant you would get six feet left as your living room. And it was just a waste of space. By taking out that wall, I actually get 10 feet, not six feet. In a tiny house, four feet's a lot of feet. It allows me to use this space for both day and night, and it feels like great economy. I chose a daybed so that when I have company, we can just kind of hang out. I have had four or five people in here and we just drink coffee, drink wine, have dinner, whatever. And my granddaughter, she doesn't like sleeping in the loft. So I bought this because it's a trundle and you pull this out and it's another single bed and she can have her own single bed and I can have my single bed and we can sit and have a little slumber party and it's awesome. It's fun. It's so fun. The affordability of living tiny is real, but you have to get there. Some people have savings and some people have equity in their homes. I did not have either. Not that it's the best choice, but I want to be honest. So I got a cash advance on a credit card. Oops. And that enabled me to go tiny and automatically decrease the monthly nut of what I was responsible for. So I started saving money right away. All told, at the end, because I did do some upgrades, it came to $67,000. There are only certain people that will do mortgages on tiny houses and you just have to do your research and find them. It's $625 a month. The lot rent here is $550, which is really reasonable. Tiny house living is as much outside as it is inside. We have a community garden that I can't wait for spring. We've also got another garden down the street. There's such a sense of community when you get like minded people together. And that's one of the things that draws me to tiny house living. It's not just the economy of it, but it's the mindset and the lifestyle. For me, it feels like camp for grownups. And I like that because that's the point in my life where I'm at where I just I want to have fun. Welcome to my kitchen. I know it looks small, right? But it does everything that a kitchen needs to do. Being a typical American woman, I've had my share of cooking responsibilities. I've cooked for 50 years. Now I can still cook, but I have simplified things a lot. I avoid cooking whenever I can because, you know, after all those meals, you know, 50 plus thousand meals, some of the luster of cooking has worn off. So I just do my favorites. And this kitchen accommodates anything I want to do. I have an induction cooktop. Takes a little getting used to. But now that I'm used to it, it's very efficient. I use an air fryer a lot. And some of that is so that I don't make a mess. And then this is not only a microwave, but it's a convection oven. I actually made a meatloaf in it last night, followed up by some Toll House cookies. So definitely works. It's an apartment sized fridge. It's a smaller fridge, but it's not like, you know, those little dorm fridges. It's not like that. It's it's got a full freezer, full fridge, especially. It's snowing out, so I'm not going to be going anywhere for a couple of days. Packs out with food just fine. It is a relatively small sink, but it's a deep sink. If I make a bowl of cereal, guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to walk over here. I'm going to wash out my bowl, dry it off and put it away. Why not? I don't need a dishwasher. I have one bowl. I have a little bit of counter space on both sides, so it's perfect. There's a reasonable amount of storage here, but yes, I had to pare down. I had to buy new cookware anyway because the induction cooktop takes a special kind of pan. These drawers are self-closing. Yay. Look at that. Instead of a pantry out in a room somewhere, I've got a pullout pantry. I don't keep a lot of stuff up here because I need a footstool to get to it and I'm lazy and I don't want to do that. This is my closet. It's only 24 inches wide. I dress very simply. I work from home. I only do casual things these days, so I don't need a lot. I've got half dozen pairs of pants and 10 or 20 shirts and I'm done. Because I've pared down my wardrobe as much as I have, I use one of my dresser drawers for food storage as well. Before we go into the bathroom, I should mention that, yes, there is a loft. I use it for storage and I don't have that much. I'm not a believer in, oh, I have all the storage I want because I want to cram stuff in it. The whole point for me of going tiny is let it go. This bar here, not for exercise. There's a ladder that I can place there and use that for whatever I want or put something away. Now let's go in the bathroom. I think you're always wondering, like, how small is this going to be and how small is that going to be? Is the bedroom big enough? Is the bathroom, if it's everything, is it too small? From the very beginning, everything felt super comfortable for me. I'm not a small person. I should think that almost anyone would be comfortable in this space. I mean, maybe if you're a linebacker, you might have issues, but I found it very comfortable for me. The shower is super comfortable. It's about three feet by three feet, which is plenty of room for me. I feel comfortable in it. I can move, I can turn, I can wash my hair. It's just like a regular shower in a regular house. This is a combination washer-dryer. I've never used a washer-dryer combo. It takes a little getting used to, but having my own washer and dryer here inside in the property, it just makes it more convenient and easy. You know, it washes and it dries. Overall, this bathroom works great for me. I had a choice of the sink and got the one that I wanted. I have a regular flush toilet. I had often thought about a composting toilet, but I opted to go flush because I'd be in a regular community and I like the size of the shower. So all in all, it works really well for me. Living tiny overall was just the best economic choice for me. I think it is for a lot of people that make this choice. If I'm being honest, which is the whole point of this, I do feel like I could have done better, but I feel like I've taken the presence that is mine right now, what's true in the present moment for me and done the best I could with it. One reason why I bought a tiny house was so that if I ever wanted to move someplace else, I could do so. So for me, it was definitely tiny house on wheels. That was important to me. I may never move it, but having that flexibility and having that choice is what was important to me. I like being able to do whatever it is that I want to do. And nobody knows the future. Some opportunity could come along and I'll go grab it. You don't know. Thank you for stopping by. If you'd like to keep up with me, you can find me on Facebook. The link will be in the description below. Have a great day. Bye.