No Loft, No Ladder, No Problem: Ground-Floor Tiny Home Living

Prior to coming into the tiny home living situation, I was in a two-story townhouse, three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a lot of square footage that I wasn't really using. Also, I was about to retire, so I was looking to do something that would allow me a lot more free time and not really spending a lot of my extra time taking care of a large house and a yard. The experience of downsizing and just liberating yourself of things you've been probably dragging around with you for 20 years is very freeing. Purging and getting rid of things and starting new and starting over is probably one of the most uplifting things that I've done for myself. This is the kitchen. It's not a huge space, but it's very functional. I like to do a lot of entertaining, so the counter space that I have here allows me and maybe someone else to do a little chopping and slicing and dicing if we need to. The black countertops are actually what they call leather. The finish on this instead of the high-gloss marble that you normally have, this has more of a matte finish. I opted to just have a regular sink. The option was for your sinks to have like what they call the farm sink, which is a lot deeper, but it actually takes up a little bit more of your counter space, so I opted for just a normal regular size. I do have a very small dishwasher. That was one of the options that was offered. I think for me, at least a dishwasher serves as extra storage space, and you're not always constantly worried about dirty dishes in your sink. I have plenty of cabinet space, even though if you were someone who did an extreme amount of cooking, it probably would not have a lot of room for cooking utensils and mixers and beaters and those kind of things, but I don't really do a lot of cooking. I just do more entertainment. I think a lot of us are very guilty of we feel like we have to have every spatula, every appliance, 14 sets of dishes, and six different sets of stemware. Giving those items away and donating them, I think when you're looking to downsize in your kitchen, one of the biggest things is just to go through and throw out duplicates, triplicates, so once you find that one works perfectly, that's usually what you should end up with anyway. Everything with your microwave and your oven are stainless steel, and this actually has a five-top stove, and it's got, you know, here in the center is actually a warmer eye. That's something I've never had before, so that's been kind of cool. Full-size refrigerator, freezer in the top, fridge in the bottom. It's actually bigger than the refrigerator that I had in my previous kitchen. This was not part of the original tiny home. I actually had a design closet company come in and do this for me as well as some things in another bedroom, but I needed some additional storage, and so these shelves are holding some stemware and some decorative things, and then it gave me two more drawers and cabinetry down there, so I actually did not have a drawer in the kitchen that would accommodate silverware, so got that, and down there are my pots and pans, and this also serves really well as like a coffee bar or a wine bar when you've got company in it. Up above the refrigerator is also some additional storage, and then up above that is the massive storage area. Right now that is still open. It is my intention to run a rod across there with a nice decorative curtain so you don't actually see all my storage. Storage is going to be your biggest challenge in trying to make the transition to tiny home living, and I think probably everybody that lives in tiny home community always has a nice available stair step or ladder, if you will, because in using your storage, you're going to have to be getting up and down the ladder. In the home where I was before, I really still had what I would call a galley kitchen. It wasn't a massive kitchen. It did have a ton of storage space, but actually what I'm finding with the size of this kitchen and the layout of this kitchen, it's very functional. So whatever you're grabbing, whatever you need is at hand. You're not running across the kitchen to get a bowl, to get another utensil, to use something else. It's really very functional. My favorite part about this kitchen is actually the ability to have some decor and some decorations. Now, yeah, you're going to have to get your ladder out when you decide to dust and change things out a little bit, but in my previous kitchen, I did not have, and I think this is about a 20-foot ceiling, so you really feel like that the space that you have is actually bigger and brighter just because of the fact that the ceilings are so high. This is the entry, the only entry into my house. This is where I am trying my indoor gardening. We can see we've got some great sunlights coming in here. This is now my dining room, and most of the tiny homes that are here, this is actually what would serve as living room area, but due to some construction things that I've changed, I actually officially have, if you will, a dining room area. This is on the other side of the kitchen where you come in and you're facing the bar. Two more windows looking out onto my back porch, so there's just some great sunlight in here and great space, feels very open. I think a lot of people have done away with the formal dining room because, you know, I think a lot of people just spend a lot of their time going into the kitchen. That seems to be the hub of almost everybody's homes now, but when I entertain, I like to have a table for people to sit and dine. The only way to get the extra space to have an official dining room, if you will, versus using it as your living room area, would be if you did the extra construction for the space, because initially this would have been the wall where the home would have ended. So for me, I opted to have a dining room, extend my house, and use my living room area on the extra construction and extra space that's there. So I think it's very different than what most tiny homes offer. I wouldn't say that I use the the dining room space that often, but what it does feel like to me is it just opens up the house and it really does not, to me, feel at all claustrophobic. Again, with so much of the sunlight and the ceilings being as high as they are, I really just feel like I'm not in a tiny home. We are now in my favorite part of the house. This is my living room, and truly this is where I live. This was an addition that we had built once they moved the model in. It was supposed to be a big porch, and it's got eight windows, nothing but sunlight. All the furniture in here would be regular size furniture for any living room. This actually was my dresser that was in my bedroom, and because it's got all the drawers in it, I was like, oh yeah, I'm keeping that. It's like tons of storage, but it fits in here perfectly, and this is exactly what I said. This is where I do the majority of my living. I don't have a television in my bedroom. This is the only television that's in the house, so if I'm in the mood for something on Netflix or whatever, this is where I sit and and watch TV. When I have people over to visit, pretty much everybody's got a seat, or you can bring a few chairs in from the dining room, but this is by far my favorite room in the house, and I can't imagine tiny home living without this extra space. One of the things that you do need to consider when you do some additional permanent construction to your house is you would not be able to take this house, put it back on its wheels, and roll it out of here. You then have to know if you have a desire in the future that you're going to relocate, it's going to involve a resale. One of the things that I found so intriguing and so wonderful about dealing with people here at Simple Life was when we were talking and discussing about what I wanted as far as additional square footage, and them allowing me to close in the porch was extremely important in my decision making. Making the decision to come to Simple Life was really simple. I guess hence the name. This is really like living on a resort. You've got all types of community amenities. You've got so much included in your monthly fee. Those are just things that you don't really have to think about that are in your personal budget anymore. Certainly the camaraderie that you're going to get in living in a community is most often you're not going to be meeting people or encountering people who are looking to be hermits or are isolated or introverts. You're aware that your neighbors are going to be close to you. You're aware that there's going to be a lot of people in a close area, so that's something that you have to consider whether or not you're comfortable with being that close-knit. But I'm just fine with the activities and the clubhouses and the swimming pools, the dog parks, the gardens, all the things that they offer here in this community that you can take advantage of every single one of them and be doing five things five days a week, or you can pick and choose what it is that, you know, appeals to you, and you can still be isolated and introverted as you want to be. I would not necessarily say that tiny home living equates to tiny budget. It is certainly affordable with the square footage that you end up with and the amenities that are in this particular neighborhood, but where your cost savings comes into play is your utilities and the costs that you don't have to incur with landscaping. And then when you think about all that you have to pay for just for lawn equipment and sodding and those kind of things and the maintenance and upkeep of a lawn, that your cutting and edging and blowing is all included in your monthly fee, so that's a huge savings. Your utilities, I certainly can say, are for me a good deal less than what it was again in, you know, almost 2,000 square feet. Your lot rent and your homeowners association dues are actually rolled into one, so I would say if, again, you're trying to set yourself with a budget and have some idea of what your monthly outlay would be, I'd say you probably need to estimate somewhere around a thousand dollars. Your property taxes, again, you don't own the property here, so you're not going to be paying property taxes, but you will certainly pay, you know, your annual taxes for your homeowner owning the home. You're not spending money keeping up with the house, so to say. I actually took the time and talked to people who were living here to try to get an idea of, you know, why they're here, how long they've been here, if they're enjoying it, and I'm finding that you would think that the majority of the people who are in tiny home communities are retired, and not everybody is retired. There are a lot of people who work part-time. There's people that live here that work full-time, but the majority of the people, I would say, are over the age of 55. Their lifestyle of having to go to work, you know, 40, 60 hours a week is not really what you're going to find here, but you are going to find people who garden, serve on the different committees, take our time to, you know, there's a lot of events that happen here, and we take our time to volunteer to set up and take down. There's just a variety of age groups here. There are people who do have small children. There are couples here, young startup, first-time home buyers, but the majority of the people that are here are retired, are over the age of 55, and just enjoy the leisure lifestyle that tiny home living provides. Well, we're moving past the kitchen down to the hallway. These are the regular size washers and dryers I have seen in some other folks' homes where they have that new wave of the washer and the dryer are all one unit. That was something that I did consider, but I'm just not comfortable with that new technology yet, so again, just a regular size washer and dryer, so you can take your comforter off and do two sets of sheets. This is in the hallway, so it's really not in my way one way or another, and I really appreciate having a regular size. We're now coming into what is supposed to be the original one and only bedroom in this house. It looks a little smaller only because I had a closet company come in and make it into my living closet, dressing room, makeup room. Again, extra storage. In my case, I had two walk-in closets in my previous home, so storage again for clothes and just extras is definitely a challenge. But now that I'm retired and don't have to dress for a full day of work or a week's packing when you're leaving for the airport, trying to shrink your closet and your clothes down to just your favorite things or the things that you know that you'll use again was hard at first, but then I took a lot of things to a place called Safe Harbor, which is a home for women and also sometimes children who have left a bad situation. And so these women get taught how to interview for jobs and how to dress for interviews, how to open a check-in account. So a lot of my really good clothes that I used in war for work went to a really good, I thought, a really good cause. And the rest of it just went to goodwill, but it did take me about a month to whittle things down till I got to the point to where I could encompass and get them all in this room in the other closet that's in the other bedroom. And now we're finally in what I am using as the master bedroom. This was an additional add-on, and this is a 12 by 12 room with a full closet, and it accommodates very nicely. A queen-size bed and two nightstands, still plenty of walking around room. Again, windows behind the bed, windows facing out to the front of the neighborhood. So again, a lot of light, a lot of high ceilings, and not at all does it feel like it's a small or tiny bedroom. One of the options was to have a loft here in this model, but it didn't accommodate walking around room. So I didn't want to get up in the middle of the night, bump my head trying to go down the stairs in case, you know, needed a potty break in the middle of the night. So for me to be able to have everything living on one ground level was certainly a preference. Having a master bedroom that, again, can accommodate a regular size furniture and not feel like you're inching around in between the wall and the bed was important to me. You know, the storage in here is a pretty sizable closet. It's not per se a walk-in closet, but it does house all my winter gear. Having the other room that I can use for closet and storage, this closet is ample plenty for me. Now this room will accommodate a king-size bed because, again, it's a 12 by 12, but for me, I just didn't want the bed to dominate the room. One of the biggest sacrifices that I had to make, and leaving the bigger square footage where I was, was to be able to have like a full dresser in your bedroom as well as I had a seating area in my bedroom. But honestly, I didn't really find that I used the seating area that much. But having your storage for your clothes in your dresser versus what I have done now is take these nightstands and I have turned them into additional storage that you have for things that you usually keep in your bedroom. One of the nice things about waking up in a tiny bedroom in a tiny home is knowing that my day is not going to be spent worrying about cleaning or taking care of the house. It's you get up and you make your coffee and you try to figure out what you're going to do for the day, but it's not going to include cleaning your house or it taking all day to do so. We are now in the bathroom and it is a small bathroom, but certainly functional for one person. Just has the one sink, but there's plenty of space in here for when you are, you know, wanting to put your moisturizer on. Well, you've got plenty of space to put it all out. The storage is just one big cabinet here, another cabinet down here. Because I have the extra room that, again, has turned into a closet and storage. That is where I do my hair and my makeup. So, I don't have to have a lot of storage in here. On the other side of the bathroom is the shower. Again, just glass doors, but the really nice thing about this shower is this is like all one unit. It looks like it's individual tiles, but it's not. So, that's great for grout and cleaning. It does have like the rainfall waterhead on the shower. So, that's really nice as well. This is a bigger shower than what I had before. If I only had one option of what would be nicer in the shower, it's just to have a little more light in here, like this window that's over here. Be great if there was another matching window, just so you felt like you had a little more daylight in there. We are on my porch, front porch and back porch. I turned my house backwards on this particular lot, just so that I would have the opportunity to have this as my backyard, my front yard. There is a horse farm on the back side of here. And in that horse farm is also donkeys and peacocks and roosters. So, especially in the morning when you're out here and the sun does come up right back here, you get to hear a whole lot of racket and a whole lot of wildlife. And I find that very soothing. It has afforded me a tremendous amount of privacy. I feel like for the most part, when people are living in a tiny home community, you probably are aware that you are going to be in close proximity to your neighbors. So, what privacy that you can get is extremely important. And it is extremely private back here, but it's also beautiful. The sun sets on the backside of the house, so you don't have the afternoon heat in the summertime. And this is truly my favorite part about the house. This is where I come every morning, where I have my coffee, where I have most of my telephone conversations, probably where I spend more time other than the hours that I sleep. This is probably where I spend most of my time. This is my favorite spot because I'm an outdoor person. And I mean, one of the reasons that I moved to this area, we truly do have four seasons here. And for the most part, you can be outside about 10 months of the year. So, outdoor living is important to me. And I opted also not to have it screened in because, again, I like to do a lot of potting and planting. So, being able to have the hanging baskets, you can't have that if you've got it screened in. So, I spend the majority of my mornings and certainly my evenings out here. And I love it. The toughest part about making the decision to do tiny home living is getting rid of stuff. It's hard to do. It's hard to go through a lifetime of your treasures and the things that maybe, you know, were hand-me-downs from somebody else that you thought were special or, you know, the time period that we all go through growing up and becoming famous in our jobs, whatever we're doing, whether you just think, well, we just got to have, you got to have stuff, you got to have this, you got to have that car, you got to live here, you got to keep up with the Joneses. I think tiny home living takes keeping up with the Joneses completely off the slate. Thanks for stopping by today and let me show you my tiny home. Hopefully, if you're in the process of trying to make the decision if tiny home living might be right for you, just, I'd suggest go online, find as many things you can available that you can see in the privacy of where you are, drive to the closest tiny home community, see a few models, ask some questions. But tiny home living is not for everybody, but I will have to say that I think I have made a great decision and I'm really happy.