Living in a tiny house has become an increasingly popular lifestyle choice for people seeking sustainability, affordability, and freedom. The tiny house movement encourages living simply with a smaller environmental footprint. Downsizing to a tiny home under 500 square feet allows you to reduce your living expenses, free up time and energy, and tread more lightly on the planet.
While the concept sounds idyllic, making the transition to tiny house living also comes with challenges. Designing and building a well-functioning compact home requires careful planning and problem-solving skills. Once you move in, you’ll need to master the art of living in small spaces and adjusting your habits and possessions to fit this new lifestyle.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore how to successfully master sustainable living in a tiny house. We’ll cover everything from initial planning and building to optimizing your new living space and maintaining an eco-friendly lifestyle. With 14 years of experience living in a tiny house, I’ll share the methods and hacks that have worked for me. Let’s dive in!
Crafting Your Tiny House Floor Plan
The first step when going tiny is mapping out how you’ll use your limited square footage. Consider the must-have features and rooms for your lifestyle and priorities. Most tiny houses include a sleeping loft, kitchen, bathroom, living space, and storage. To maximize function, every inch must be intentional.
Focus on creating multifunctional spaces suited to you. For example, build stairs leading to the loft that double as drawers for hidden storage. Select furniture that folds up or serves multiple purposes, like a couch that converts to a guest bed. Install a movable island with seating that can be positioned to expand your living or cooking area.
I recommend starting with pencil sketches and furniture cutouts on graph paper to play with different layouts. This will help you identify what’s feasible before creating final architectural plans. Pay attention to how rooms connect and consider where doors or walls may impede furniture placement or restrict openness.
Example of a tiny house floor plan sketch
Choosing Sustainable Tiny House Building Materials
A core tenet of the tiny house ethos is environmental sustainability. When selecting building materials, prioritize options that are energy-efficient, non-toxic, durable, and responsibly sourced. Using green materials reduces your home’s lifetime carbon footprint.
For the structural framing, opt for recycled steel, sustainable lumber or bamboo. Make walls, ceilings and floors from formaldehyde-free plywood, denim insulation and natural plaster. Choose toxin-free finishes like zero-VOC paints and plant-based sealants.
Install eco-friendly windows with insulated glass and low-E coatings to prevent heat loss. Outfit your house with a small solar PV system to generate your own electricity. Equip kitchens and baths with water-saving fixtures and composting toilets. These measures will help minimize your energy and resource consumption.
Downsizing Your Possessions to Fit Your Tiny Lifestyle
To comfortably live in a tiny home, you’ll need to dramatically downsize your belongings. This liberation from excess stuff is a core benefit of the lifestyle. Be ruthless in reducing your possessions to just essential, useful items that spark joy. Here are some tips:
- Archive or digitize documents and photos. Shred paperwork you don’t need.
- Purge clothes you haven’t worn in over a year. Stick to basics in neutral colors.
- Avoid holding onto items for hypothetical future uses.
- Limit kitchen gadgets and dishes. Ditch items with single uses.
- Have multipurpose furniture and decor that serves several functions.
- Use vertical space with shelves, racks and wall storage.
- Store off-season clothes or items under beds in vacuum bags.
Aim to reduce belongings to around 50-75 items per person. Living with less clutter and cleaning out excess stuff is refreshing. Each item in your tiny home should be meticulously evaluated.
Optimizing Storage In Your Tiny House
Lack of storage often tops the list of tiny house challenges. With no basement or attic to stash stuff, carefully planning built-in storage is essential. Follow these tips to maximize every inch:
Use Every Nook and Cranny
Take advantage of the tiniest gaps between wall studs to install narrow shelves or cubbies. Under-mount cabinets and toe-kicks provide hidden storage.
Multifunctional Furniture
Choose furniture like beds with drawers underneath, fold-down desks, and couches with hidden compartments. Coffee tables and ottomans with lift-tops offer bonus space.
Vertical is Your Friend
Floor space is prime real estate in a tiny home. Make use of vertical areas with tall shelving units, wall-mounted cabinets, and racks that go to ceilings.
Hidden in Plain Sight
Get creative by disguising storage as something else. Build stair drawers and box-in space under steps. Turn a bench with a hinged lid into seating plus storage.
Think Mobile
Use wheeled under-bed drawers, rolling carts and furniture on casters. This allows you to easily move storage around your home.
With some Pinterest searches and trips to IKEA, you’ll discover loads of great small-space storage solutions to implement in your tiny abode. The key is clever designs tailored specifically to your needs and style.
Creative tiny house storage solutions.
Enjoying the Financial Benefits of Tiny House Living
A significant motivation for many tiny house dwellers is dramatically reducing living costs. By downsizing your home, you’ll cut expenses in several key areas:
Mortgage or rent: Tiny houses can range from $10,000-$60,000 to build. Even an expensive custom tiny home costs far less than a traditional house. If financing, your mortgage payments will be very low. Or you can buy outright and avoid a mortgage. Renting tiny houses is also economical, around $200-$1200 per month.
Utility bills: The compact square footage and energy-efficient appliances in tiny homes cut way down on electricity, water and heating bills. Installing solar panels to generate your own power helps even more. Expect to see your monthly utilities drop by 50% or more.
Taxes: Property taxes are based on a home’s assessed market value. So taxes on a tiny house will be a fraction of a standard home’s. Tiny houses on wheels may be exempt from property tax altogether.
Insurance: Because tiny homes are low value, it costs less to insure them. Average annual homeowners insurance for a tiny is only $200-$800 per year.
Maintenance and repairs: With less space and fewer systems, tiny homes require significantly less upkeep than big residences. You don’t have to maintain a roof, foundation or yard either if your tiny house is on wheels.
The bottom line? Living tiny leads to BIG cost savings. It provides freedom from the financial pressures of a large mortgage. By lowering overhead costs, you can work less and pursue more meaningful activities.
Finding The Right Location For Your Tiny Home
A question that often stresses tiny house hopefuls is where they will ultimately live in their small home. Zoning restrictions in many areas limit where tiny houses can be located. However, there are several options to consider:
Backyard dwelling: If your city allows backyard cottages or accessory dwelling units, this may be the simplest route. You can save money by tapping into the main house’s utilities. Downsides are lack of independence and no mobility.
Land you own: The ideal for many is to place their tiny on acreage they own, often in pastoral settings outside city centers. This provides privacy and flexibility but requires buying suitable rural land.
RV parks: Some RV parks welcome tiny houses on wheels. You’ll have access to hookups and community amenities. But you’ll still be surrounded closely by RVs.Policies vary widely between parks.
Tiny house communities: For a thriving tiny village vibe, tiny home subdivisions and communities are sprouting up. Residents own or rent a lot and share amenities. But choices are still limited.
Rural tiny homesteads: Those seeking off-grid seclusion often buy bare land in rural locales to setup their compact homestead. This requires being comfortable living remotely and self-sufficiently.
Finding a spot to legally park your tiny house will remain a challenge in the near term. Hopefully zoning laws will evolve to be more welcoming of tiny homes in coming years.
If you’re interested in building your own tiny house from scratch, check out our in-depth tiny house construction guide here.
Adopting an Eco-Friendly Tiny House Lifestyle
While occupancy is the biggest way a tiny house reduces environmental impact, you can take additional steps to make your lifestyle greener:
- Grow some of your own food in container gardens or raised beds.
- Compost food waste and use it to fertilize plants.
- Limit plastic consumption and disposable products.
- Conserve water with low-flow fixtures and by reusing greywater.
- Use non-toxic cleaners and toiletries made from natural ingredients.
- Air dry clothing and linens to limit electric dryer use.
- Bike, walk, carpool or take public transit to reduce driving.
- Purchase renewable energy credits to offset utility use.
- Support local businesses to reduce transportation impacts.
- Eat mostly plant-based whole foods.
- Engage in zero-waste practices like recycling and avoiding excess packaging.
The eco-conscious practices above align with tiny house living principles. When you reduce your consumption and shrink your environmental footprint, you can tread more lightly wherever your tiny house is parked.
Joining the Tiny House Community
Connect with the growing movement of tiny house enthusiasts for tips, ideas and support. Here are some great ways to engage:
- Attend tiny house festivals and workshops to get inspired and meet builders.
- Take a tour of local tiny homes to get design and layout ideas.
- Join Facebook groups and online forums like r/TinyHouses to ask questions.
- Follow tiny house blogs and YouTube channels for the latest insights.
- Check out resources from groups like The Tiny Life and Tiny House Society.
- Volunteer with organizations like Project Tiny Home that house the homeless.
- Consider cohousing in a tiny house community or village for built-in community.
Having a network of fellow tiny house aficionados to lean on will make your transition smoother. Learning from those further into the lifestyle will help you on your tiny house journey.
Enjoying the Tiny House Lifestyle
While mastering the logistics of moving into and living in a tiny home takes effort and adjusting, the rewards are immense. Tiny house living promotes:
- Financial freedom through dramatically lowered living costs
- Happiness from pursuing passions freed up by less work
- Health through stress reduction and active lifestyles
- Creativity in designing highly-functional small spaces
- Sustainability by consuming less energy, water and resources
- Community when connecting with others who share your values
- Adventure from mobility if your tiny home is on wheels
The minimalist, eco-conscious tiny house lifestyle isn’t for everyone. But for those drawn to living simply with less stuff in a smaller footprint, it can be profoundly fulfilling.
Are you eager to start building your tiny house future? What aspect of the lifestyle resonates with you most? I hope the tips in this guide help establish a solid foundation as you start your exciting tiny house journey. Let me know if you have any other questions! I’m always happy to chat about life in a tiny home.
Frequently Asked Questions About Tiny House Living
If you’re considering joining the tiny house movement, you probably have many questions about making such a dramatic lifestyle change. Here are answers to some of the most common tiny house FAQs:
How much does it cost to build or buy a tiny house?
Tiny houses can range from $10,000 for simpler DIY builds to $60,000+ for higher-end customized houses. The average cost is around $23,000. Buying a premade tiny home generally costs $40,000-$100,000.
What are the different types of tiny houses?
There are stationary tiny houses, tiny houses on wheels (THOWs), floating tiny houses, articulated tiny houses, and pop-up tiny houses. THOWs are most common.
How small is a tiny house?
While definitions vary, a “tiny house” is typically 100 – 400 sq ft. The average tiny house size is 186 sq ft. Some are as small as 80 sq ft!
Can you put a tiny house anywhere?
Usually not. Zoning laws in many areas restrict where you can place a tiny home. Common options are RV parks, private land, tiny home communities, or your own backyard.
How do you stay warm in winter in a tiny house?
Well-insulated walls, energy-efficient mini-split heating and air units, propane/gas/wood heaters, heated floors, and strategically-placed thermal curtains and rugs help keep tiny houses cozy.
What appliances can you have in a tiny house?
Most tiny houses have RV-style appliances designed for small spaces like combo washer/dryers, mini-fridges, cooktops, and microwaves. Some splurge on full-sized appliances.
Can you get a mortgage for a tiny house?
It’s possible, but tricky. Tiny houses don’t usually meet minimum sq footage requirements for mortgages. Specialty lenders like United Tiny House Loans provide tiny home loans.
How do you shower or use the bathroom in a tiny house?
Most tiny houses have a small bathroom with a shower stall, composting toilet, and sliding barn doors. Some have combo toilet/showers. Shared bathhouses are common in communities.
Can you raise a family in a tiny house?
While challenging, many families happily raise kids in tiny homes. Loft sleeping areas provide semi-private space. Some families join/build tiny home communities with shared amenities.
Hopefully these answers help give you a better idea of what’s involved with tiny house living. Let me know if you have any other questions!