My Tiny House Saved Me_ A Solo Mom’s Story of Strength.

Hi, I'm Chayko, and I chose to live in a tiny home because I left a relationship with my child's father of 13 years. I needed somewhere to live, and this I could afford. And I chose Clever because the design really was so stunning, and it was made in just eight weeks. The bathroom is this way, along with the washer-dryer. We've got kitchen area and dishwasher. And then over here is the that the Murphy bed comes down. And my favorite place and thing to do is I think around four, the sun comes in, and I like to lay on the bed and sun myself. Here I'm in the kitchen. So I love the really long countertop. On one side, I can prep vegetables. On the other side, I can do meat. And there's enough space for my kid to also cook with me. So everything feels streamlined. Here is the induction stovetop. It works really well, except that I can only cook one thing at a time. I use cast iron pots, and one pot kind of covers up both. But me and my kid cook a lot of things here. We have an oven, and it's a convection oven, and I love it. I cannot imagine not having an oven living in a tiny space. It makes it feel more like home if I can, like my kid and I are about to bake cupcakes. It's great, and it's efficient, and it works really well. So here's the dishwasher. I like having a dishwasher when you have a kid and a dog and little beings you have to take care of. I actually still do hand washing, but I also will use the dishwasher. Here's the sink, and I love that it's just one long deep sink because you can prep stuff in here. And then there's also this deep, I don't know what you call it, like a basket that you can either wash stuff, dry stuff, or prep vegetables. And then the Clever comes with this cutting board, and it also fits really nicely here. I like that this comes down, and you can switch from steady stream to spray. And I like that there's light. I mean, the greatest thing about this Clever S is how much light there is, because it makes the space feel more spacious. And eventually, at some point, I'll plant things on the outside so I can see greenery and not just my neighbor's fence. Here's the fridge. It's a cute fridge. I did wish it was bigger because me and my kid like to go to the farmer's market and bring back lots of fresh fruit, and I like to do meal prep. But it's great. You know, overall, I'm happy. So under the sink is where the trash and the recycling is. I have a pull-out trash thing from Ikea, and then I just use a paper bag for recycling. In between the dishwasher and the sink, we have storage. Above here is, I guess it's like a pantry. You know, the layout is okay for when I'm cooking. I think I'm still just trying to get used to having things super high up. I'm 5'1", and so I wish my kid could reach more things, and right now he can't. Yeah, that's the only thing. I mean, it makes sense that things are high up because then that's how you have, it feels spacious with the ceiling being high. Maybe I need to, I don't know, someone can recommend a really stylish like step ladder that's high because there's a lot of space I haven't utilized that's high up. But yeah, I'm still trying to figure out more tricks for storage. The home doesn't come with the blackout blinds, but I felt like the design is so well done that instead of trying to figure out how to cover up windows, I just paid extra and it was worth it. And so all the windows have these blackout blinds. We're at the opposite end of the home across from the bathroom, and this is the living nook, I call it. I don't spend as much time here, but my kid does. He decorated this area. He put the books on the window, so he'll come and he'll read or he'll get out his toys and make lots of noise with things like this. The storage is a little hard. All of these things open up and then I have clothes here that I've kind of like rolled up because I've got to push them and there's still not enough space. I had to get them made into drawers because they were just cabinets that open, so I wasn't able to use the full space. There is space back here, but I'd have to take this off to get to the space back here. And I think when I get the cushions, that's where I'll store them. But I did wish that there was more space for clothes. I do like being on the Murphy bed. When it's down, it feels like a super comfy nook. The bed is pretty heavy, so my arm muscles look really good, but it's hard to make it up because you've got to like crawl on the bed, tuck the sheet in, and so that's difficult. But that would be any bed that's like up against a wall. I think that's what's more difficult is that I can't get to both sides easily. But putting it up and down doesn't bother me so much and the kid likes to help. This is also the area where my dog sleeps. When the bed comes down, it becomes like a little cave for her, so she sleeps right under the bed. We don't have a TV. I suppose some people might mount a TV over the counter like where my altar is, but I like not having a TV. I want my life to be screen-free and I'm a filmmaker, so there's a lot of screen in my life and I'm happy when there isn't one. In the bedroom area, this is where we store our clothes and then I have some storage area under the bench, so I can't get to my clothes if the bed is down. So I try to keep the things that me and my kid need whether the bed is down or not right here. Everything is so high up. I can't really use up there for regular clothes, so I kind of use it to store like jackets and things. There's storage above the Murphy bed, but I am a big believer in feng shui, so the only thing that I'm storing up there are like extra pillows and blankets. I don't want to put like books and dusty things there. And then there's this cute little nook right here and there's like a plug where you can plug your phone in and I have my affirmation cards there and my reading glasses, but the clothes thing has been a major adjustment. Thankfully haven't had to go out to any like red carpet events, but like those clothes are just like rolled up and stuffed somewhere and I'm mostly in t-shirts and pants or dresses right now. When the house came, it didn't have a table. We were actually eating off the ottoman that I'm sitting on. I would sit on a stool or sit on the floor and I really wanted to get a table, but I needed something that could fold away and it took, let's see, we moved in in October and I think I got the table in March. So it was a while before we had a table and it was a game changer. So I work here and we eat here. I still need to get a nicer chair for it that could tuck under the counter. Like I think I might want to get a chair that also doubles as a stepladder. In small spaces you need things that double. So I do love that there's this big beautiful window here when the sun is shining in. I just love being able to have the sunshine on my face. It's definitely inspired me to make sure my backyard area is decorated. I would like to have some plants there and do some decorative stuff outside. I decided to go tiny for practical reasons. I left my child's father last summer and I was bouncing around trying to find a place to live, subletting places, Airbnb, which is expensive. I was looking for prefab because I knew just environmentally the time it would take to have a home was where I wanted to go and I chose Clever because, well, I had made a whole spreadsheet and I literally still have a spreadsheet of all these different prefab builders of different tiny home builders. I called people and Clever got chosen because they could make the home in eight weeks and so literally I was saving money on an Airbnb by knowing that I could like move into my own place in eight weeks. I'm a filmmaker and I get into producer mode and things move really fast when I need something to get done so it was a pretty quick turnaround. I got a business loan, home reno loan. I like pulled everything I could together to be able to get this house and looked at it like I was making a film. So let's talk about the money. It was about $90,000 all-in for the home. I got add-ons. The off-grid package was an add-on. The blackout blinds, that was an add-on and I have a glass shower door, that was also an add-on as well as the washer dryer hookup and I think, I can't remember if it was the dishwasher or the oven, one of them was also an add-on that I got. I could have just had the house and that be it but I had to crane it over. Look at this thing. It's coming down. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I'm just like I have a house. I'm so excited. It's so beautiful. This is it. It's coming down, settling down. So the craning cost $5,000 to crane it over and then about $35,000 for the rest of the additional charges. I had to trench for a new sewer line and electrical hookup and a concrete slab. We don't need a concrete slab for the tiny home but if you want to get it permitted in LA, it does have to be on a concrete slab and for me, it's important that this get permitted so that it adds to the value of the property and my equity. Here I am in single mom brain just thinking about how to make my future more stable and steady for me and my kid and so I'm getting this house permitted. So monthly costs, water and sanitation charges are about $110 a month and I don't pay electrical because of solar. I have to get propane for the tankless water heater. They last about two months and that's $30 every time I get two propane tanks. One of the really sweet things about living in this tiny home is watching my kid participate in making it a home. So he was the one that chose to display the books on the window like right by the window and he loves like organizing it and being like mama you didn't tell me thank you for making the books all pretty and he has like an area where he keeps his treasures. His like marbles are his treasures and so it's been cute to see him in real time participate in making the new home. So I love the bathroom. That and the murphy bed is the best thing in the house but it is so comforting to be in a tiny home but know that the bathroom feels normal. It's really well designed. I love that there's a bathtub I can soak in. I love the sink and the really long counter space is great as well and there's storage under here where I keep the some cleaning supplies and this medicine cabinet is amazing. It stores so much in there so that you don't have to have a bunch of things on the counter. I'm really phobic when it comes to clutter so storage space is important. I would say the best thing about the house is the bathroom. It doesn't feel like you're having to adjust for a tiny home. It feels like a regular bathroom like if you lived in New York or Japan or somewhere where they're used to small spaces and it's yeah really well designed. So this is a laundry nook. I have a washer and a dryer. I'm really glad I have a washer and dryer inside. When you have a kid you have to do a lot of laundry and I would hate to have to go outside in bad weather to do laundry in a shed. I have used these baskets from Ikea to kind of store my laundry stuff and I use I'm really big into like environmentally safe products and so these are laundry sheets so that also saves space. I keep post-it notes to kind of give me ideas of what I should get. It says basket for cleaning so I want to put a basket up there to have keep more cleaning supplies that I don't use often instead of just having stuff stacked on top of the the laundry. There is an air purifier that's in the back of the laundry. I have a separate one but it's just nice that that was a thought that they had. The only thing I'm not sure of is if it's all the way tucked inside of a nook. I just wonder how I'm not sure how productive it is since it's all the way back in the nook. I would love to be able to use the space above the washer and dryer for storage but I don't want to block the air purifier so I don't I don't go too high. So this is the entryway where I put the coats and hang my bag and my kids lunch bag. It's been a little challenging but I'm glad that I've been able to use vertical space for storage with this pegboard. There's some stuff my kid can get to, some of his artwork and his school stuff that I can hang so he can see that we're proud of him. But yeah the coats and where we put shoes is one of the challenging things of the tiny home. I don't wear shoes in the home and so we take off all our shoes and we store them in a little box by the door. One word that describes tiny living for me is future and it's the first thing that came to my mind because there's just so much possibility of people having housing. When we're thinking about space and just how fast this tiny home was able to be made, how beautiful it is, there's a housing shortage and a housing crisis all over this country. I think environmentally construction does quite a lot of damage and uses up a lot of energy and so prefab tiny homes seems like a really beautiful way that everybody can have a home to live in without much extraction from the environment, without much money. I think also if people get excited about tiny homes then we start thinking about we don't need to consume so much. We don't need to have things so much. It becomes more about experiences. It becomes hopefully more about being outdoors. I would always say when I was raising money, and I still do when I'm raising money for my films, there's opportunity in lack, right? Like jazz musicians, Black people, historically we haven't had things and we've made culture that the entire world loves, made jazz, like all that came from not having. There's something where creativity blossoms when you don't have things and even if you think about childhood, child development, when you put a child in a place where there's a ton of toys, they're not using their imagination. When you put a child outdoors and there's just trees and flowers, just watch how their mind just like explodes with creating things and we really need creative ideas about how to deal with the problems that we are having right now in the world and I really just think there's so much opportunity there. Thank you for touring my tiny home. Again, my name is Chyco and you can find me on Instagram at chyco at t-c-h-a-i-k-o and if you click the link in my bio, you can also download a workbook of how I bought my tiny home because if you're interested, you can learn how to buy one.