She Manifested her Affordable Tiny House DREAM come True

I am so grateful that I got to follow this dream. It feels right for me. I have created this beautiful life that I can live on on my social security check and trust me when I tell you that is not easy. I get $1,700 on my social security check. To minimize your life to the extent that you can live on that is mastery. You have to be very intentional about how you live to be able to do that and I am beyond comfortable. I feel like I'm on vacation. This feels like camp for grown-ups. It's fun. It's just a very interesting and always changing and joyous way to live. Hi, I'm Elsie. This is my tiny house, Smoky, and we are in Van Alstine, Texas at Namaste Hideaway. I am 71 years old, kind of semi-retired. I do have a part-time job in the afternoons that I do from home. The builder is Decathlon Tiny Homes and the dimensions are 8 1⁄2 by 24. The lot rent here is $550 and it includes everything. I love the colors that I chose, the navy blue and the magenta. I am, though, thinking about painting my door apple green next, so I'm looking forward to that. I'm in the process of building a deck all by myself, thank you very much. Went online to figure out how and I'm doing it. For me, a deck is really important. I spend a lot of time outside because the inside space is limited, say what you will, 192 feet isn't that much. Having some place outside, I get to sip coffee at the beginning of the day or have a glass of wine at the end of the day or maybe have a sandwich in the middle of the day. I use my deck a lot and it makes a big difference in the feel of how I live. All right, let's go take a look inside. Hi, welcome to Moki. Moki says hi too. Moki is 192 square feet. This is Decathlon's Athena model. I did make some adjustments that I will show you later during the tour that just worked for me and that's one of the great parts about working with a builder that you get to tweet some things. So I was looking at an article the other day on simplifying your life and it gave this list of 10 things. I don't remember exactly what they were but as I looked down the list, I realized, okay, I did that, I did that, I did that, I did that. I had a real sense of pride and accomplishment that I had gone in a direction because it supported the way I wanted to live. Just living simply in a way that I could maintain over time. Doesn't matter how old I get. You know, I'm 71. I don't know what's going to happen in the next 10 years but I feel like this is a life that I can manage regardless of age. And behind me here is the kitchen. Granite countertops were important to me. I don't like woodblock because you have to be careful of water. I'm not a careful person, period. And I'll explain about another design change because of that. I wanted the subway tiles kind of for the same reason. They're so easy to keep clean. Deep sink. Obviously I don't have a lot of space so the sink isn't huge but it's fine for me and I found a little dish rack that was just narrow enough to fit in that little space. It's an induction cooktop. That took me a while to figure out. It's just new and different but it's very effective now that I know how to use it. It's cool and I don't have a traditional oven. However, this is a microwave convection oven. Who knew? I can bake a cake in this. I can bake cookies. I can bake chicken. It's just the right size. There's a pantry here that holds tons of stuff and I use one of my wardrobe drawers for a little more like cereals and stuff like that. I will admit that I don't cook as much anymore. After 40, 50 years of cooking breakfast, lunch or dinner for any number of people, you know, the luster kind of wore off for me. So I probably cook once or twice a week and I have everything I need to do so. So above me is a loft. I just use it for storage. My granddaughter has slept up there I will say because heat rises. It's a little warm up there. Having clean clothes is great, right? But do you wish there was a less wasteful, more space-efficient detergent option? We've been trying to cut back on our plastic consumption and we try to recycle what we do use. But did you know 500 million huge laundry detergent bottles end up in landfills and oceans every single year? And to make things worse, most traditional detergents are full of harsh chemicals including optical brighteners that aren't great for the planet or your skin. That's why we made the switch to EarthBreeze laundry sheets. They come in plastic-free packaging and don't rely on unnecessary chemicals. With my sensitive skin, I appreciate that EarthBreeze is dermatologist tested and hypoallergenic. I'm absolutely loving how little space they take up and how well they fight stains. It's an easy way to get clean clothes while helping the planet. Ready to give it a try? Get 40% off with your EarthBreeze subscription by using our link or scanning the QR code on the screen. Try EarthBreeze today! Use our link in the description below or scan the QR code. Behind me is the bathroom. It feels to me like a regular size bathroom. I do have windows that I can open. That's kind of nice. It's a regular flush toilet because I have all those connections available for me here. Big shower. I mean you can see the size of it. Very comfortable. I'm a shower person so it's perfect. I've got my washer dryer combo. So handy to be able to not have to leave the house to do laundry but it doesn't take up any space per se. I mean it just sits there and does its thing. I love the sink. You get to pick out all your fixtures. I got to pick out which sink I wanted. When you get to work on the design side, it's fun to make it your own. I think having adequate space for everything is amazing that it fits in a small space. It's easy to heat. It's easy to cool. You know that's part of the economy of it as well. These tiny homes are built 16 on center just like your house is and it's a solid built home. It just happens to be on a trailer with wheels and you can take it with you when you leave. I kind of have an aversion to normal. I don't particularly care for just being normal. I want to do different things. I want to push the boundaries. When I was young I lived in a community. We shared a house. There were married people and single people and we ate together. I was married at the time so it was a different way of living and I like that. A tiny house was a way that I could own something that wouldn't break the bank and that I could afford. Now the other aspect of it is that for the most part there are a lot of things on a tiny house that I can take care of. It just felt more manageable to me. I used to have a three-story house. I'm not going to paint a three-story house right but I could get out and paint this house right. I'm in the process of building my own deck. There are things that I can do. It feels at my age and stage in life I can do these things and I'm more involved and it helps me feel capable and competent. Yes I work you know and I'm good at that but this has a feeling of it bolsters my strength and my belief in myself. The other part of tiny living that I absolutely adore is community. You can live in a neighborhood of houses and have community but there's something about living with like-minded people that's just different. You have a bond. It goes a little deeper than just you're my neighbor. You hold the same ideals on some level. You hold those same ideals of life and living as I do. When I was young my family traveled a lot for work and so I got used to that just moving around a lot. There were years that I would begin school in one state and end school in another state. I've lived all over you know New York, Colorado, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia. When I got older I stayed in Atlanta the longest but when I decided to go tiny whether or not I ever move it I don't know whether I will. I've only moved it once but I decided to do a tiny house on wheels so that I could feel like you can go anywhere you know if you want to go to Colorado. I love the west so you know Idaho, Montana, whatever you can just take it and go. So I'm used to physically moving. I'm used to moving career-wise you know by freelancing but now I actually have a part-time job that's a job like I'm on the payroll but I can do my job remotely so I can still travel when I work if I want just as long as I'm hooked up at one o'clock I'm good to go. So here in the middle of the house is my desk and my closet. This area I actually kind of call my office because this is where I work. It's also my kitchen because it's where I eat so this is the table that I do. I put together puzzles here you know in tiny spaces everything is multi-functional. One of the design changes was to move the closet from where it was by the bed area to up here by the kitchen and it's only 24 inches wide but I have a shoe rack and hanging space and then I put my clothes in the bottom drawer. This drawer has food in it so in a design that you may see at a later date this model had a wall right here a queen-size bed right here and a closet that closet was over there. I moved the closet to the kitchen area because I wanted to do this with the bed area. A double bed will fit here this is a twin it's wide open space that I can do anything with. There are a lot of tiny houses that have built-ins. I wanted furniture so this is just a blank slate. I bought the furniture that is sized right because even though you have furniture you might not realize how big it is. Everything has to be small and used in multiple ways so I think the only piece of furniture that I brought with me is the chair and the little end table. The rest of all the pieces that look like this they were all bought for the tiny house as was my bed. So this is the living room area for me. It's got books, movies, music, it's got my tv, my comfy chair and this bed actually is a trundle bed. If I move this table and scritch this down a little bit I can pull out the trundle if my granddaughter comes to visit. She doesn't have to sleep in the loft anymore. She can have a space right beside me and we can have a little slumber party again camp for grown-ups. I used to be an artist. I guess once an artist always an artist but my medium was acrylic painting but after a while I kind of moved on from that we'll say but I didn't give up my creativity. Now I also do mandalas so you'll see on the walls instead of my artwork I've got my mandalas. I like to surround myself with things that are important to me or things that bring me joy. Changing my bedroom configuration and moving the closet to the other side it just makes everything feel big and open and airy to me. I have relatively tall ceilings so it just makes everything feel bigger to me but you know what tiny living is living how you want to live. If you prefer that wall and your bed in this little cubby hole because that's what makes you feel safe and warm and cozy then that's what you build. You know we can live any way we want and when you've got such a small tiny footprint you can do that. You can think about what's important to you and integrate it into your floor plan. A lot of people are fortunate that they had a bigger house a bigger life and when they downsized they took the equity from their home and bought the tiny house outright. I was not that fortunate but I bring this up because I don't want you to think well I can't do that because I don't have that. I didn't have that and so I did what you should not do. I borrowed my down payment on a credit card. What? Yeah because going tiny was important to me. I made back that money in the first year so it's not catastrophic but you'll find a way. You know the universe will open up a way if you want things in life go in the direction of that dream and it will unfold. I want to hike. I haven't hiked in my life but it's something that I want to do and so at some point in time maybe next year I'm gonna go hike a section of the Pacific Crest Trail because it's my dream. Silly dream though it may be. I have a picture of the Pacific Crest Trail up on my wall and I just look at it and I visualize myself walking on that trail. Living tiny is fun. Being part of this kind of community is fun. Dreaming about hiking it keeps me going. It's fun. It's just a lifestyle that fits me because it's more about experience than it is about what you own and I don't have to measure up to anyone. As a matter of fact I have a rule in my life and that is after 70 you can do whatever you want. Just whatever. You can say whatever you want. You can do whatever you want. All rules are off. You know you're free to be you and the world can like it and understand it or the world cannot like it and not understand it and that is not my problem. That's theirs. Just be kind and keep going. My tiny house cost $67,000. I put $14,000 down on it. I had $7,000 and like I said I put the other seven on a credit card so that I could get that down payment together. I financed it through Liberty. Being able to handle things myself is just really important to me. Everybody wants to be self-sufficient. You've never heard someone in my age range say oh I hope I'm a burden to my kids. You know everyone says the opposite. I just don't want to be a burden. Well that's kind of a survival mentality. I'd rather thrive than survive. I don't want to just get by. I want to create the most vibrant life regardless of what stage I'm at. If someday I can't drive then I'll be in a community where I know I can hitch a ride with someone to a grocery store. I know and it was true at the Bird's Nest and it's true here too. Anything that I needed I would get help from. I call them my tiny fam. They're my tiny fam and I don't even know them very well at all you know but I just feel like they're family. You have a dream and you start off in a certain direction. Pretend you're going on a road trip and you think you're going to go to Chicago and you drive and you drive and you drive and then halfway through a set of circumstances changes and you decide to go to LA. It doesn't matter where you start out. You'll end up where you're supposed to end up because you might have an idea that this is the road that I'm supposed to go on. There's only one thing worse than not knowing the road you're supposed to be on and that's being on the wrong road and not have the courage to change roads. You got to get off the wrong road and get on the right road and even if you're old or even if you don't have money it doesn't matter. You can do what you can do and the universe provides the rest. It's you don't have to worry about the details. It'll happen if it's supposed to happen and my tiny house happened. It's a lifestyle that I resonate with because tiny house people are kind of different and I like that. While fulfilling your tiny dream can take a lot of sweat equity, it sets you up for an incredibly freeing way of life like it did for Richard. Watch the tour of his creative DIY tiny house and homestead to learn how he did it.