Fixed Income, No Problem: Retiree's Dream Tiny House

I most enjoy that I can live minimally, that I don't have to have a lot of stuff. I think it's funny, it's kind of like if something new is going to come in, something has to go out. This has just worked out perfectly financially. I don't need a lot of things. I'm not a big consumer. I probably spend more on food than anything. I think living alone, it's very manageable. And I think it's important, you know, if you live alone, if you're an older woman, that you are able to live in a place that you feel like is safe. And it's been the places, I've had my tiny home, and then it's my tiny home itself. It feels very stable. Yeah, I really like cozy spaces. Hi, I'm Lois, and this is my tiny home here in Central Oregon. I've been living in my tiny home for six years. It was built by Escape. It's a Traveler XL, and it's eight and a half by 30 feet. I haven't been in this spot too long. It's in a residential area. It's part of someone's property, of which they've told me I have a third of it to use as I see fit. So, so far, I have planted a tiny garden. And I pay $850 a month to live here, plus electricity. What I started out with was the idea of having a catio built for my two cats. And then the dimensions ended up being that it would be more conducive to having a screen room. And so now the cats and I have an outdoor porch. And it's just wonderful. It's really increased my living space tremendously. It was dismantled, as well as the skirting. Then it was all put back together again once I moved down here. Okay, so why don't you come inside with me? Welcome to my home. It's about 250 square feet. It's an Escape Traveler XL, and what I love about it is all of the wood, plus all of the windows. It's just been a wonderful place to live. Sometimes, actually, with all of the windows, it can be too bright. And since I've added the screen room, it's really tempered the lighting in a great way. There's a little bit more privacy, and there's a little bit more shade in the mornings, which is really nice. So here I am in my entryway. I have this full glass front door, which is awesome. And then I have the loft up above me. It's about five feet wide by eight and a half feet. The loft is great for overnight guests. Also, the cats like to go up there. The ladder is very strong and very stable. I pull it out and just am able to go up and down without feeling like it's a problem at all. In the entryway, I have two sets of ladders. The ladders help me water my plants and also to clean my mini split, which I try to do monthly. One of the things that comes with Escape are their famous pegs. So I have a peg here where I'm able to hang things I use a lot, and then I put some hooks for my keys. I also have this great basket for my shoes when I come in and out, and it's just worked out. I never thought I'd use it for that, but it's ended up being a perfect place to keep my slippers and keep my indoor-outdoor shoes. Behind me is the bathroom. The bathroom is just a great space for me. It's plenty of room. I've got lots of storage. I have my washer-dryer all-in-one here. It is not my favorite appliance, mainly because it just takes a really long time. Had I had my decision-making hat on, I probably would have gotten an up-and-down washer-dryer. The dryer cycle just takes hours and hours. The last place I lived, I had a laundry line outside. I anticipate doing that here. I've only been here a few months, but I will probably put up a laundry line. And being here in Central Oregon, things tend to dry very quickly outside. I have cabinets on either side of the sink, which are great spaces. I have a full bathtub in here with a shower. I thought that having a bathtub was really important to me. I've discovered it really isn't, that the space is more important to me. If I had a choice now, I would have a shower stall and then put my washer-dryer next to it. What I've discovered is that I can't heat enough hot water for a bath. And that's a problem, so I choose not to take baths. And I have my flush toilet. It also has a plug-in with a heated seat, which did not come with my house. I bought that separately. On the back of my door, I have clips that clip in my broom and my mop and the dustpan. It's very efficient, and it's a space saver. So this is my kitchen. It's very user-friendly, and I like the galley style that is in the center of the house. Over here, I have a pantry. I wanted a pantry. It's really important to me to have places to put things. And then above it, I have another storage area. I have a place for cookbooks up here and my Crock-Pot. I have a full-size refrigerator. And I have a full-size range that includes a convection oven and a dehydrator, which is lots of fun. I have a microwave here and plenty of room for my toaster and my coffee maker and my filtered water. I find that it's really easy to work here with the fridge right here and cooking. I love to make soups and stews, and I probably cook two-thirds of the week. I think that there is just enough storage, that I have room for everything I need. I don't need any more, and it's enough. I also have a great deep sink here with a window that looks out. There's a train that goes by, not right now, but at 5 in the morning usually. The sink is kind of a good size for me. I can wash things in it. I dry things over here. It works really well. I did have a dishwasher in the ADU that I built, and I found that I didn't really use it that often. So having a nice deep sink like this just seems to work really well. And I have under the sink lots of cabinet space as well. So there's some place for everything. I listened to a radio broadcast years ago of a guy by the name of Jay Schaefer. I was just intrigued with how he described building and living tiny. Then just started to kind of follow the whole idea of tiny living. I'm going to be 75 next month. I have three kids, three grandkids, and three grandsons. I'm a retired social worker, and I worked for years for the state of Vermont and then in California. I think because I was a social worker, I loved doing service work. So I do a lot of different community service things through Neighbor Impact, at the library once a week. Right now I'm doing some stuff with the Central Oregon Veterans Ranch. So I really like kind of being out there in the community and being helpful when I can. I'm kind of an introvert, so I like gardening and I like reading. In California, I lived in a converted water tower that was very vertical. It was three stories high, and it was on an heirloom tomato farm. So it was a really cool spot. I was living outside of Portland, Oregon, and I went to this. It was kind of a symposium of ADUs and tiny homes up at Portland State University campus. They had a escape traveler on the grounds to be able to go out and look at it, and I walked in. It was smaller than this. This is the XL. I walked inside, and I just fell in love with it. You know, the light walls, the wood, the light, so many windows. I just love this. I would love to live in this. At the time, I had just finished building, or was building, an ADU on my kid's property. But that ended up changing, and we ended up selling the property eventually. I actually went out to see Tiny Tranquility out on the Oregon coast. The guy who owned it, Josh Palmer, said to me, Before you buy a tiny, you should come and stay here for a while during the winter. And so I did. I went and stayed for a month and still just loved it. I loved living in one of their tinies, and so I put in my order for the Traveler XL because I knew that's the one I wanted and never looked back. On this side of the house is the table, which I happened to find in an antique store, and it fit perfectly into this space. It was actually Oregon hemlock that was built for the Presidio in San Francisco and then brought back to Oregon, and then I found it. I use it for when I use my laptop sometimes, or if I have to do some kind of a meeting, a Zoom meeting, or any particular paperwork that I have to spread out. Other than that, the cats like to sit on it and look out the window. And above me, you'll see that they're shelving all the way around. They actually call this narrow shelf a catwalk. I've never seen the cats walk on it. I love the fact that I can put plants up here, and they get an ample amount of light. I also have my mini split up here, which has been fabulous. I usually keep it on an auto setting, so in the winter it puts heat out, and in the summer it puts the air conditioning on. I can also manually change everything with the remote control that's here on the wall. I really like my ceiling fans. I had the option of having a closed loft in the bedroom that you'll see, but no fan, or have it open with a second fan. So I have one here in the living space, and I have one, again, in the bedroom. And they are great for circulating air. And behind me is the living space, where I have two comfortable chairs for company, and where I sit to watch TV and to enjoy my fireplace. That was something I really wanted to have. What this unit usually comes with is shelving on either side in here. And I didn't want the knick-knack shelves, because I didn't want to clean knick-knacks. I opted for having the fireplace put in here, and then having it closed off, which has just worked out beautifully. It's particularly nice first thing in the morning when I'm having coffee. It's just a cozy thing to have in my living space. There's also a really efficient use of the wheel well in this unit, that it's a shelf. I try not to put too much on it, but it often is a place where a lot of catch-all will go there. Behind me is the bedroom, but first I'll show you that there is this lovely barn door that I never use. Probably I would use it if I had more people staying over. But since that's not usually the case, it's just something nice to look at. So come inside my bedroom, where I have two cats. One you can see, the other is hidden as this lump under the comforter. I have pegs here and here for hanging stuff. I have a closet, let's see what it looks like, for hanging, and a bottom shelf underneath for shoes or whatever. And then a second cabinet up here. There's also a drawer under here for other clothing. There's also a shelf here for putting things. Now this was, oh you came out, this was what could have been a second loft, but I chose to have as an open area because I wanted the light and the fan and just the openness of a bedroom like this. I have a queen-size bed in here, and it's the bed that came with it six years ago, it's really comfortable. I love sleeping in here, the cats love sleeping in here with me. The only drawback to this bed is changing the sheets and making the bed, because you have to climb around and do that and lift up the corners of the mattress. The one reason I thought about getting a wider unit recently, but I won't be, is because there was a walk-around bed. One thing that does come with this unit is the darkened shades. So when I'm sleeping in here, I put the shades down and it's nice and cozy in here. My tiny house was $87,000. I did not get any financing. I had had an ADU on my daughter and son-in-law's property, and I had put money into that. And so when we sold the property, I took the money from there, then ended up being able to pay for my tiny home all at once. Financially, I would not be able to afford paying rent for my tiny home and a mortgage on my tiny home at the same time. I am on a fixed income, yes. I live on Social Security and a small pension from the state of Vermont when I was a social worker. It's about $2,100 a month. If I had wanted to live in Central Oregon and rent an apartment, I couldn't have done it. We're talking over $1,500 at least to start with, and not including utility. I couldn't have done it. This path has been kind of perfect in that way. Or the only other option would have been to live on the property with my children. And been there, done that. I like having a little bit more space and a little more privacy. And I think they do too. I started at Tiny Tranquility, which is a tiny home park. As much as I loved it, they had a huge greenhouse, and I really enjoyed working in that. Really nice people. A lot of people my demographic, my age. It was a really great place to start. Over time, my kids ended up from California moving to Central Oregon. And I thought I'd like to get closer to my grandchildren. Late at night, I was looking online and found one spot on a ranch in my price range in Central Oregon. And I thought, this just sounds perfect. I always joke about my landlady because it was like being vetted for the FBI because she was very particular about who was going to live on her property. And it ended up being a great match. A beautiful spot in the junipers. She had goats, and it was lovely. So I moved my tiny house. I got someone to move it for me over the mountains to the ranch. And I was there for like three and a half years. And then this March, I moved closer to where my kids live to now I'm in a neighborhood. And I'm loving that. It's great. I'm really close to resources, stores, and senior centers. It is just six blocks away from my daughter and son-in-law and three grandsons, which is just great. The grandkids, they've just gotten old enough where they can ride their bikes over. Well, the two older ones. It's the best of all worlds in that I'm close by with my family. I'm close by with resources. It's affordable, and I feel like I have some privacy. I love my life. What can I say? It's a good one. Thanks for stopping by Tiny House Expedition. I'm Alexis. And I'm Christian. And this is our DIY tiny house on our homestead in Oregon. Looking for more tiny inspiration? Watch these videos. But if you're looking for something specific, visit our channel homepage to browse tiny homes by category. And don't forget to subscribe. Hope to see you soon.