35 Acres of Freedom: Tiny House Tour & Homestead Costs

People thought we were crazy downsizing with five kids from 2400 square feet to less than a thousand but what they don't know is we upsized. We now have 35 acres and we're closer than we've ever been before. Let's talk about the layout of the house. When you walk in I really want it to have all the dirt drop in the mudroom and when you step right into the next room the laundry's there so anything muddy that needs to be washed immediately can go into the laundry room. If you keep walking further into that room that's the bunk room where the kids sleep and you can come back to this side of the house. Behind me here is the living room and dining room and then further this way we have our kitchen. It's a galley kitchen and then we have our bedroom and bathroom and I have a little spot for an office for me. Welcome to my kitchen. This is my favorite room in the entire house. As a mom of five I spend my entire day in here so the kitchen really is the heart of my home. When my kids grow up and they leave the house I want them to remember the smells and the taste of everything that I made and I hope one day that they can see how much hard work I put into growing the food and making the food for them and I hope to see them doing the same thing for their kids. So this is the first room I insisted on getting done in this house because I use it so much. I spent six months cooking on a one burner stove outside, washing dishes with a hose. I was over it. I needed a kitchen like ASAP. I wanted all this awesome cabinet space. I cook everything from scratch. We make bread, we make tortillas, soups. I mean you name it I'm making it. So it's very important for me to house all my tools. So when I was designing this space I really didn't know how much storage I would need or how much I would get from it so I made a deal with my husband. Whatever fits in the cabinets that's all we're gonna keep. Everything else is gonna have to go and now that I'm in this space it is so interesting how little you actually need especially if you keep up with cleaning the dishes and rotating through things. You need one cutting board. You need one good knife. I mean I have seven people I'm feeding and I really can do it with one big bowl, one glass and it all works out. You just have to practice it. So this was a totally like raw shell and it was important to me to make sure everything had like symmetry. So if you notice the lights in the center it centers the faucet, it centers the window. I'm able to watch the kids play outside, tinker out there while I'm washing dishes. This is actually not the original fridge we had installed. When we moved from the suburbs we had this massive fridge. It had like handlebars that came out. We quickly had to remove those to even get them into the house but thankfully when that one went out we were able to buy something with a smaller footprint. It's much narrower but it still fits like everything that we need. We go grocery shopping once a month so we have to be able to fit everything inside. I did not put a dishwasher in so I want you to notice that there is no dishwasher. I wanted a giant sink so I could put all of our pots and stuff in here. I cook big foods at a time. We batch cook. I needed a place also to where I could move the water around and fill up lots of different pots and rinse things. It's just a really great area to have a giant basin in versus the divided one because I have to be able to fit all those things inside of here. This is our inside pantry. Later on I'm going to show you how we actually can stay home for a whole month and not have to hit the grocery store. This is where we keep all the food that we need to use like right now. One of the most fun things about having a smaller home is that you can put a little bit more money into the nicer things because you have smaller spaces to fill. So we were able to upgrade to these beautiful butcher block countertops. Adding the butcher block countertop really pulled in all the different woods in the house and I feel like it fits really well with the open shelving. I really love it for making breads and doing things because it's so smooth and at any point we need to update it or change the color it's so easy to do. So I like that versatility in it and if you notice in my entire kitchen we went with open shelving. Only bad thing is it gets dusty but outside of that you're really able to see everything that you have in your home. I love to cook and when it's out and available it reminds me, hey use that, make that dish. When you see them out you're able to access them a lot easier. When we first moved out here it was very raw land. We had no propane or anything. We had electric put in so we had to do electric appliances on everything. It is really growing on me and it helps when I'm doing all my pressure canning and stuff to regulate the temperature a lot better. So I'm actually really happy and it cleans really well. So in my old kitchen before we downsized I had a huge island and that was a really hard loss for me because I love bringing all the kids into the kitchen and cooking. One thing that we've done differently is we actually bring them into the dining room and we do all our cooking out here. It was a bit of a change but I'm willing to make some sacrifices and honestly they know no different and it's worked out great. Welcome to the living room and dining room. We have like a joint space here. It was not always here. We actually used to live only in that side. Now this is where we hang out during the day when it's raining, if it's super hot out. We love to come in here and relax. So where we lived before was only 240 square feet and as a family at the time of six we knew that we would need to kind of expand more. We home school, we cook all of our food, we store all of our food. We knew we were going to need more space and I think we also just wanted slightly more space from each other. It's still really small but it also gives us room to kind of pick a room if we want to have our own time. One of the hardest things when you downsize or live tiny is finding things that fit into your space. So for me I knew with a big family we wanted a couch that was huge, that would fit us all. We have family that stays with us as well so we knew we needed a place for them to sleep. I kept running into issues with the couch coming across the door or having like extra legs sticking out and that just wasn't going to work. It was going to stop the flow of the whole house. So when I came across this couch it has a queen fold out in it. It was the perfect couch. The colors matched and I love it. So if you notice behind the couch we have this massive window. I really want it to bring as much light into the space. It makes things feel so much bigger and when you have a view like that you want to see it. So we have windows on this whole side. We can see the kids playing out front. We can see all the activity of the birds and the animals and it's just a great place to sit, drink your coffee, and look outside. I decided to leave this wall blank because I wanted to add pictures to it. This is where we started. I did it in black and white. I thought it would really draw in on all the colors in here and it kind of gives it that feeling like that documentary style of where we were and where we are now. You can compare it and it just has a really good feeling for me. When we first talked about downsizing I had a lot of really big sentimental pieces that I wasn't so sure I wanted to part with and I'm sure if you look around your house you will see things that you just can't imagine not taking with you and for me that was this dining room set. It was one of the first things my husband and I bought when we got married and I always imagined like little hands and feet eating here and just all the stories that would be told and I just couldn't, I couldn't part with it. And another cool piece on this table is this bench back here. My dad actually made it for me from a tree that fell at his place. He welded it together. He sealed it in for us and it's just something that holds a lot of value for me. There's just lots of little things around here that had to come. My grandfather left me this. I think when you're living small you don't have to just shove yourself into a little like shoebox. You can make room for things that are important and get rid of things that just aren't so important to you. Here in Texas you don't normally need a wood stove or a fireplace because it's hot enough on its own but we do get some really cold days that drop into the 20s and this wood stove is a lifesaver. We start this baby and it heats the entire house. Originally we had plans of making this an off-grid house so the installation of the wood stove would be our heat. We can harvest as much wood as we need. We live on 10 acres so that would not be a problem. As of now we're fully on grid but it definitely opens up the door for going off grid. Overall I'm really glad we put our extra space into the living area. We spend a ton of time here as a family and it gives everyone room to stretch out. I really love it and I think they do too. When we were looking for land we went to land.com and we plugged in all the filters. We knew our budget. We knew we wanted at least 10 acres of land and we knew we wanted to be an hour and a half away from our current home. Only two places popped up within that range. It was a little bit depressing at first but we came out here first and it was so remote and so quiet and we saw so many animals and birds we knew that this was the right home for us. We immediately made an offer and within a month we closed on it. So we bought this land. It has to have been now like 11 years ago. We were still living in a suburban home and it took us an entire five years to move out here. The week before we had moved out here we at the time had no running water into the house, not a flushing toilet. The goal was to get it a lot more done before we moved out here but it just wasn't happening. It wasn't possible. To hype ourselves up we were talking about we'll just shower outside in the hose. It'll be a great adventure at summertime. It'll be warm, fun. You know, it was just this great challenge that we were going to face. So we ended up doing a lot of projects while we lived here. After living here for a few years we got to know our neighbors who had been out here for 40 years. They owned the 24 acres across from us. They had no family. We invited them to Thanksgiving, to Christmas. They were really part of our family and when they passed away we found out that they had left their 24 acres to us and we are just honored to have that and we will keep building the home set out in honor of their memory. So we got the 10.5 acres for just under $60,000. We did take a loan out on that. With the sale of our suburban home we were able to use the proceeds of that to pay off the land and finish building out the sheds. I would estimate the well at about $10,000. We opted to go a lot deeper than the traditional wells around us. The septic system was about $7,000. So I would estimate that adding the water well, the septic system, having the sheds built out here and furnishing them cost us anywhere between $100,000 to $125,000. We saved a lot of money doing the projects on our own and not having to hire someone to come out and do them. So not only did we downsize our home and change our lives completely by moving out to this rural, remote location, but we also quit our jobs in town. We quit the 9 to 5. We decided we were all in on this. We were going to make it happen on our own and I think that's what having the smaller home allowed us, the flexibility to leave those everyday jobs that grind and open up the door for more opportunities. So now you're probably wondering how do we make money? And really the answer is lots of income streams. So one of our main income streams is that we have a homestead and we sell chickens, we sell vegetables, all kinds of things. My husband does farm bills, he contracts out. It is literally you are hustling every day and we actually really love it. Just recently I was able to quit my full-time job and take my YouTube channel Tiny Shed Life full-time and it's given me more time with the kids and more time to focus on growing my channel there. As I said before, this is how you get into the house. This is our mud room. This catches all the dirt. What is best about this area is a quick grab of everyone's stuff. Everybody has their own spot, a place for their shoes. Literally you leave it here or you grab it here and you go out the door. We self-designed these for this space. We sourced the tin from an old barn on our property and it gives us this really nice rustic vibe in here, but also keeps it easy to clean. So this is really a multi-purpose room for us. I added some storage above our freezer. It's easy to get to the food, but these are things that we need on an everyday basis. Pots, games. We love playing board games. It's just a catch-all. When you live small, you need places to put things and this is where it happens to be. Lastly, this space joins both wings of our house. So let's go check out the kids room. Welcome to the kids space. In our previous home, we had four bedrooms. So the kids had three bedrooms for their toys, for their beds, all the things. But what I found is that they were always underfoot. They were always with me. They always wanted to be with us. They wanted to be with the family unit. So when we made the change to smaller living, I really wasn't that worried about the amount of space we were losing. This is a kid's room. It is a bunk room. We've got Casey's bed, Axel's bed, Dash's bed, Eloise's bed, and Zuzu's bed. What I love is that they can each personalize everything that they want. This has become just their space. I think it's a space where they can express themselves and I want them to feel comfortable and know that that's their own. The bunk room also shares the space with the laundry room. And so I'm frequently in and out of there folding clothes and doing things. And one of my favorite things is when I'm in there folding, I can hear them reading to each other, sharing spaces. The nice thing about these small spaces is you can build forts very easily. So they fort this whole thing out and you hear the giggles and you hear the stories and I just know they're having the ultimate childhood. Being in Texas, it gets really hot. It is already breaching 100 degrees. We keep this room cool with our Mr. Cool DIY mini split system. When we were deciding what system to put in our home, we were looking for something affordable and something that we could do ourselves. We really didn't want to hire a and when we found this online, we knew that we had to install it in our home. We could put it across different rooms, which saves money. If you're not using a space, you can turn it off. The thing I love about this unit is you don't need a contractor to come out and install it. My husband and I have no prior HVAC experience, but they sent us a detailed instruction manual on how to install it and we were able to do it ourselves in one weekend. The Mr. Cool DIY mini split system has these line sets that you can install and they can reach all the way across the house. We didn't have to hire anyone to come out and put Freon in. We were able to sit down one weekend, plug it all in, get it going. It was so easy. It comes with a remote and I also have the app so when we leave town, if I need to adjust anything at home, I can easily access all of our units from my phone. Mr. Cool is a longtime sponsor of tiny home tours and if you want to check out a system like mine, go to the link in the description below. Thanks Mr. Cool for sponsoring this video. Over here we have the kids bathroom. It was important to me to have a space with five kids that everyone could use at the same time so I kept the sink outside of the bathroom which is nice so someone can brush their teeth, wash their hands while someone is using the shower space. The second thing is when I call them in from being outside playing, they're normally so dirty and messy and I'm like, hey wash your hands before dinner. They're able to beeline right in without tracking any mud. I also love that we were able to get a tub in here with the shower so it keeps it for the little ones and the big ones, everyone is happy. Off the kids room we have the laundry room and it's really a great place for it because most of the laundry belongs to the kids so I can quickly get it done and put it away. I also like that it's really close to the outside so when things do get dirty, they can immediately go into the laundry and I can get them clean. This is a piece we took from our suburban home and it actually was two shelves. My husband made it one weekend. I saw a very expensive shelf online and I said can you make this and he did and when we moved out here, I realized it took up a lot of floor space and I said let's go up. When you live in a tiny home, you're going to find yourself using all the different space in your home from floor to ceiling, all around and going up with this really made this a beautiful piece. It's an eye-catcher when you face your books forward. The kids and just really anyone can really see what they want and I love it. Overall, we love this space. I always keep an open mind to the kids needs. I'm checking in with them constantly. How do you like your space and they love it. They love being close together and they love making forts. They do puppet shows. They read books in their beds. They read to each other. I mean there are some magical moments here that I just didn't expect. This is our bedroom. We were able to get a king-size bed in here. This is a smaller bedroom compared to what we had at our old house. It's probably half the size so I had to get rid of a lot of things but keeping the big bed was a priority for me. I love snuggling the kids, the cat and the dog and my husband. Behind me here is my desk area. It was really important for me to have a quiet space to work in so I can get my job done. The funny thing is when we were setting this up this was the only spot in the house where we could get internet so we had to put it here. So one of the first things we did in this space is we cut these holes out for the windows. We wanted to make it fun and we got a chainsaw out and we literally chainsawed out the windows. It added so much more light and when I wake up in the morning I love looking outside and seeing all the animals and birds. It just brings nature inside. This room is where we installed our first Mr. Cool DIY set. It went in really easily and it cools this room down so fast it even reaches out into the kitchen and when we combine it with the living room it keeps the entire 640 square feet cool. Over on this side of the room is our dressers. Several years before we moved out here I read a book about organizing and it said to keep only the things that you love. So after reading that I went through all of our clothes and I was able to fit everything that we own and wear into these drawers. We no longer hang clothes and it saves so much space in our closet for other things. Leave your guess in the comments below on what book I'm referring to. We are here in our bathroom. We have the double sinks. I'm really loving the vintage like rustic style. I tried to keep everything cohesive through the whole house but I did like certain pieces and they're just all the wood is drawn together here. I think it was important for us to have our heaters here. It gets cold in the winter it really does and so being able to keep this little space up makes showers so much more enjoyable. The land we bought here was raw land. It did have an electric pole but outside of that we had no water we had no sewer or anything so we had the water well installed and then we also had them install a septic system. We did have to hire people for this because there are permits and things that need to be pulled and honestly I don't really want to dig a 20 foot hole so we hired somebody for that. So one of the reasons we did the tin ceiling was because we did not want to deal with mold. There's a lot of moisture in the bathrooms and at the time we weren't sure how we would handle that with the wood and different things so we went ahead and did this tin ceiling. Later on we discovered that we could water seal a lot of the things and we ended up doing that above in the shower and it makes it really pretty. It complements the white of the stone in there and then the shower head is a waterfall shower head which is something that I've always wanted and so when we were DIYing all of this that was my number one request in this room. So in the shower we went with these prefabricated panels. One of the reasons for that is we're pier and beam so when you install tile it's more likely to crack if the foundation is shifting so I wanted to avoid that. We were very new with home building and the idea of doing the grout and tiles and trying to keep them level and even and have all these little children underfoot was overwhelming for me. Installing this was so easy plus it cleans way better than grout so it's just a total win overall. We really wanted this to feel beautiful like a really peaceful space. It's somewhere I can kind of get away from all the noise and the chaos and just relax. So we did some cedar panels here. My husband hand sanded them and stained them with a water seal and then he added this beautiful light here and it just makes it feel like this very peaceful space. We have a rain shower and we have a handheld wand so it adds that versatility if you need to like wash your hair out a little better. So last but not least we decided to install these doors. They're super heavy duty but they're so beautiful and they function really well keeping the water inside. This is our front porch. If you're in Texas you've got to have a front porch. We do all of our family time outside on the porch. We love to read our books, do our schoolwork. I love to get up early, drink coffee on the front steps and just take it all in. One of the last things we installed out here is our front landscaping. I really wanted a butterfly garden. I wanted it to be beautiful and I wanted to attract all the pollinators. We went to one of our small ponds and got some lily pads and added them to this trough. It's so pretty when they bloom. Over here we have an oversized trough and we use it as a pool. It is a great way to cool down in the summer and the kids love splashing and playing it and I feel like they're safe in there because it's not too deep. So one of the main things once we get out here that I wanted to do is I wanted to start our own garden. I wanted to grow as much food as we could on our own and I also wanted to grow enough to where we could sell and maybe cover the cost of what we needed to live out here. So you know like here we have our cucumbers. I do my best to let them sometimes go to seed so we can harvest those and plant next year. It's just a circle of life thing that I really wanted to feel for myself and I really wanted to teach the kids about it. So one of our favorite things in the spring is to go and pick out seeds at the store. The kids all get a turn at picking out what they want and they have full responsibility on planting those things. My daughters just love to nurture the things. They are on top of watering and they really kind of keep me going in the garden. Welcome to our cold pantry. We added this space a few years ago. Our homestead business was growing. Our need to have more food was growing so we needed somewhere to keep it. Since we are in Texas we do not have root cellars. We don't have basements so this was our solution to being able to store food like other people up north do. Plus when it gets really hot I like to sneak in here and chill out a little bit. I also grow a lot of our own food and can it and it stores so much longer when you have it in this space. This space is 8 by 15 feet. We had it insulated with three inch closed cell spray foam. We did have to hire someone to come out and do that. We did not have the tools for that and then we decided to line it with cedar to keep it more bug resistant and all of that since we had all the food in here. Pretty early on in our marriage we knew that we wanted more space so after buying our suburban home we were on the hunt for some new land. I was really looking for something raw because it's much more affordable than something that's been developed. One of the things I wanted to do is have a place we could go and just get away from the busy, the hustle and bustle of town. I knew I would want to add a garden eventually. I love the idea of being off-grid. Just all these really big dreams but they had to start somewhere so finding the land was really the big part of that. So some realistic expectations if you're looking for raw land is be ready to be remote. It is really hard to find something raw that is close to town. What we were looking for is something that we could get away from but still be able to reach town if we needed to. So when we first moved out here the grass was probably this tall. We picked the big tree in front of our house and we started mowing. Living out here remotely is really hard because nature takes over but the beauty of raw land is you can make it what you want. We could put the house where we want it. We could we could grow the house as big as we want it to be or as small. So it's just really nice to have that flexibility. Raising five kids in a small home is a lot of work sometimes. One of the things about having both parents at home is that we're just so close. We are very engaged in each other's lives. I'm constantly checking in asking them do you still love it here? Do you want to go back to the city? Like what do you want? And they really can't imagine not having a place to go play in their playhouse. Go swimming in their pool or fishing in the pond. It's really a kid's dreamland and I really hope they cherish these moments forever. Something in my heart was telling me that this was right for me. So if you are feeling that call to do something different I encourage you reach out to people like me or other people on this channel because we will tell you that you can do it. We will be your support system. It was the best change I could have ever made. It has brought my family closer. It's brought so much peace and stability to us. You can follow us on YouTube or Instagram at Tiny Shed Live.