She ditched her Tiny Home for something better...

Hi there. Welcome to my channel, where I take you on tours of unique homes and showcase stories of people living alternatively. In today's episode, we're going to visit a tiny house community that's actually located in one couple's backyard. When Chuck first met Molly, it was obvious that the tiny house movement was a big part of her life and he did not want to take that away from her. Even though when it came time for them to move in together, her tiny house wasn't a good fit for him and his kids. They decided to do something absolutely radical and buy a home with a huge backyard that they would turn into a tiny house village. We're going to take a tour of this village and a few of the tiny homes on the property and learn why Molly and Chuck believe the tiny house movement is an important piece of their love story. But before we jump right in, if you like videos like this one, make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you know every single time we publish a new episode. Oh. Hi, we're Chuck and Molly. This is Namaste Hideaway, a tiny living community. I went tiny in about 2017. Didn't ever feel like I wanted to buy something on foundation, but I was tired of renting and I lived tiny for three years. I loved it. I built it from scratch with just what I needed. However, I had intentions on a piece of paper and one of those was to actually attract my soulmate to me. Well, that's what happened. And you loved my loft in the sky. Her loft had a big sky window and we could sleep with the window open. It was in October when we met. So it was like, okay, I can do this. But I had two kids. How am I supposed to do it? We made a decision that tiny for all four of us wasn't the thing to do. We do live on site in our community. We live in a traditional 2000 square foot house. Molly and I figured a way to still be in a community with like-minded people. I have this heart for this and I thought if I can't do it, I still want to be able to provide and be a part of the tiny home movement. So that's why we built our community. When we sat down and we pictured the idea of community, we definitely wanted trees. Your outdoor space is so important when you live in a tiny. And so we really incorporated that. When building out there are several challenges like how many lots you want, how much space you want in between each lot. And we live in the country. So there is not a city sewage. So we did have to do a septic system basically. We did a lot of research though, seeing how electricity was put in or the water was put in before we stepped forward. But we did learn a lot of lessons and, you know, nothing that we would not do again. And it just is really rewarding and special. You know, when we can sit on the porch at night and be like, look at all the work we've done and all the greatness that we're being able to provide for our residents. Namaste Hideaway is located in Van Alstine, Texas. 3.5 acres, 20 lots. We wanted to build a community of accepting like-minded people that wanted to feel safe and live tiny. It's a very open culture. So age-wise, gender-wise, sexual orientation, everything is really open. We just ask for two things. We ask for that you respect how anybody else wants to live as long as they're living in a way that is not harmful to us, the world. And we just really ask that you be authentic. You be you and you expect other people around you. That's really our most important kind of boiled down culture here at Namaste. And we hope that the name and some of the lot names, peace and, you know, chi and tranquility really sort of help promote that. Our leases are one year long. We pay $550 a month for the lease that includes water and sewer and trash. Electric is on top of that. And then wifi is also on top of that. This is the kitchen. I have a basically a regular size microwave. It is a little shorter just because this is a tiny house. And then I have an induction, a cooktop. Farmhouse sink was super important to me. That's just my aesthetic taste. And I have plenty of storage. And then I have my pantry over here. So opposite from the kitchen, we have our dining area, which is two pop-up bars. The reason that they are two separate bars is because if it was one full bar and it's popped up, then I cannot walk up the stairs. So the builder split them in two. So it's more convenient, works better, to have the main one popped up. I can still have stuff on it and still get up and down my stairs. All right. So the bathroom is a full size bathroom. So it actually has a full size tub. This is a washer dryer in one. It does vent to the outside. Full size toilet sink. It's all connected to sewer water grid. So it's just a regular bathroom. All right. So we're going to leave the bathroom and we're going to go upstairs to the main bedroom. This is my bedroom. It is stand up. I'm six feet tall. So it is super important to me that I can stand up throughout my home. Queen size mattress. While I can't walk around all four sides, I can walk around too. Now we're going to go into the office. My office is technically a third bedroom. This is a three bedroom home. It's stand up throughout the home, but I don't need a third bedroom. So it is my office when I'm working from home. All right. Last room of the house is upstairs guest bedroom. It's not the regular stairs that we have on the other side. So it takes a little bit more mobility to come up here, but it is a full queen size bed. It does have a TV up here. This is new. Nobody in this family watches TV except for Clover, who is the kitten that's running around. So she just watches cat TV all day. So I have a brand new big flat screen TV for the cat. I have a lot of favorite features of Dama state hideaway. So I love the location. I love that it is a quiet area kind of in the country. We have an incredible community here of really wonderful people. Chuck and Molly are very intentional about how they're building the community. We can very much trust and rely on each other. It's pleasant and peaceful. What we're doing is we're going to take our dog over to our dog park, which we actually have named the human and hound Haven. So the reason we did that is because we ended up having right now more residents with cats. So we thought, Hey, this is really cool. Humans can also hang out in the dog park. So we have like a little table and chairs. We have a little glider slider. So it's become multifaceted. So it doesn't have to just be for dogs. We actually built this because we have dogs and we love dogs. And so a different kind of outdoor space, it extends your living area. It was just like, this is the really cool, ideal place under the trees to be able to have our residents and hang out with, uh, with their doggies off leash. Now we're going to leave the dog park and walk to our storm shelters that are built for our residents for tornado seasons. We have during the year. So we have three and we decided to name them safe, secure and calm because that's the kind of energy that we wanted to bring. If somebody is needing to use these. So, uh, these can hold up to 14, 15 people. Everybody when you come to Namaste Hideaway gets assigned a particular shelter. So four or five residents here, four or five residents there, four or five residents there. But if it's an emergency situation, you just need to get to a shelter, just get wherever. These are really something that people didn't know they needed. A lot of our residents find value in like, I am so glad you have storm shelters because just in 2024, we've had two or three times where we had to be in the storm shelters for, you know, 45 minutes to an hour. Hi, I'm Michelle and welcome to my tiny home. As you come into this 200 square foot tiny home, you start in my little kitchen. The nice thing is it has everything I need in this small little space over here. Obviously we have the induction stove, which I had never used before having this tiny home. So that was a learning curve, but I have a nice little induction stove there. And the nice thing about the microwave as well as it is a convection oven and it's an air fryer. So I can do all of that in there. I actually store food in this middle drawer, canned goods, my coffee, tea, stuff like that. And the bottom is my dishes. So I have all my dishes kind of down here, which is nice. If you move this, we will walk into the bathroom. I love this shower. It's a big shower for this 200 square foot tiny home. Absolutely love it. And I have the washer and dryer here that is the dual. So it's a washer and a dryer in one. If you walk this way past the kitchen, then we get into my little living room area. This doubles as a living room as well as my desk. This is my office chair. And then I just sit here. I pop this up, put my little computer and everything right here. And when I don't need it anymore, I just put it down. I can also eat there if I want to. And then if you see here, this wood burning stove January and February can be very cold. So it's very nice to have this. I have a mini split that I'll show you, but if I were to lose power in the winter time, this is great because I can still heat in here. And this is such a small space. So it's going to be really easy to heat. Let's move into the bedroom. Love this little door. Love this little bedroom. It's also nice and cool in here because the mini split is here. So in the summertime, it's nice when you're sleeping that you actually have the air conditioner right over your bed, which is perfect. So it's very comfy back here. I have a nice little light in the corner so I can read in bed. And they did a pretty good job too on the cabinets. I have a big closet there on the end that has all my hung up clothes. And then I have two drawers underneath it and then two big drawers underneath here. So they did a good job of, of the space. You know how sometimes you just know when you, when you meet people and you come to a property, you just know it's the right place for you. It just feels good. That's what it feels like here for me at Namaste Hideaway. I met Chuck and Molly and I just knew right away that this was where I was supposed to be. It's definitely a community where we all support each other and have everything we need. It feels like it's where I was meant to be in my tiny home. So I just love it here. Let's head over to the community garden now. The community garden is literally the community garden. It's the residents have really started it. It's all organic. They have a text group that really takes care of the garden, what's going to grow there. And we had garlic and lettuce and carrots. And then we added a composter as well. So this was important. And the community members really are the ones that are in charge of the garden. Everybody is able to pull from it, but there's a select few that are really interested in this. And they're the ones that kind of make it what it is. That one's good. That's sweet. We're going to leave the garden, head over to our community fire pit. We have a grill attachment. It's really nice. They can come out here and grill and hang out. At night. It's really pretty. We have solar lights that are on here. And so it's really nice place when it gets a little cooler in the summers. Thanks for watching this week's video. I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you'd like to see more tiny house community tours or more detailed tours of the tiny homes we featured at this tiny house community, make sure you check out the links we have in the description.