How Tiny is Too Tiny? What Made The Cut in Our Tiny House

When Troy and I first discussed tiny house living, I was quite apprehensive. We bounced around between ideas, considering a freestanding tiny house, tiny house on wheels, an RV or 5^th Wheel, a middle earth hobbit hole (just kidding, but boy would T be happy). My main concern was for our everyday creature comforts. How is a tiny house going to affect the way we live? Is it going to feel like a home? I had absolutely no interest in signing up for a living situation that would drastically change our current lifestyle. I was wrong to think this way, because our lifestyle desperately needed changing. But, more on that later.

When we landed on the idea of a tiny house, we knew we would be building it ourselves. This gives us flexibility with time, plans, and budget. We can build this tiny house exactly how we want it! Which is ….how? Neither of us knew, we still don’t I suppose. We have never lived tiny. Nevertheless, we came up with a list of must haves for our tiny house, and a list of things we could do without if needed.

Here is our pre-construction list of tiny house must-haves, which helped us develop our 480 square foot tiny house plan.

1.       No lofted master bedroom. Lofted bedrooms are probably the most common feature among tiny houses, but we opted against it. Almost every tiny house we have seen utilizes loft space for the main bedroom. But, I get claustrophobic and Troy is pretty tall. Climbing in and out each morning and night just wasn’t appealing. How one would make the bed in a room you can’t stand up in is still a mystery to me (I struggle with fitted sheets as it is.) All signs pointed to lofts becoming a disruption of our daily life, not worth the discomfort. Instead, we chose to raise our bedroom on a platform approximately 18 inches from the floor. We will have decent storage space underneath the platform, and Troy will be able to move about without hunching over.

2.       Full size refrigerator. We do a lot of cooking with fresh ingredients, and I didn’t see how I could manage a trip to the grocery store 2-3 times a week. A dorm-size fridge just doesn’t work for a family of three. Troy and P alone take down at least 2 gallons of milk a week! Full size, all the way.

3.       Indoor plumbing. This one may seem like a no brainer to most of our friends and family. It is 2015, sweet baby cakes - indoor plumbing is a given. But in the tiny house community, it actually isn’t. Many supporters of the tiny house movement focus largely on sustainability, low impact building and their ability to go off the grid. Compost toilets and black water tanks are common. I, however, am not there yet. I want a hot shower and a toilet that flushes. Period.

4.       A place for P, behind a door. I haven’t been able to find a lot of blogs about tiny house families with young children. Maybe because there aren’t any. Maybe that means we are crazy. Either way, it is very important that P has a door to shut, and her own private space. Finding privacy in 480 square feet is going to be difficult. We wanted our floor plan to be as open as possible, but being able to shut her door during naps & at bedtime is WAY more important. Don’t wake that sleeping baby. Also, safety. You know your drunk college roommate, who would come home in the middle of the night, rummaging through the fridge and stumbling around in the dark? That would be my toddler if we gave up the door.

5.       Closet space. Reading tiny house blogs and watching the video tours, it became very clear that closet space is not a priority among tiny house builders. Many tiny-housers end up finding alternative storage for their additional clothing/shoes. This seems like such a hassle to me. It is hard enough to get ready in the morning with all of us rushing around, and a toddler who never seems to own matching shoes. I don’t want to go through 3 or 4 different areas of my house to piece together an ensemble. One place, all of the clothes.

6.       A TV. One you can see from the main room and the bedroom. We are actually installing 2 TVs. Yes, 2 TVs in 480 square feet seems a little overkill. But, we like our TV time. We like our football, DVR, movies, work out videos, music channels, Full House reruns - we like it all. Troy and I both enjoy background noise while we cook, clean, and go about the house. Plus, movies in bed? How could we give that up? Feel free to question our priorities in the comments below….

These “must-haves” are outside of our general requirements for safety, efficiency, durability, etc. In order to make all of that happen, we made a list of things we were willing to compromise on, or remove altogether. Such as…

1.       The stove/range. A standard full size range is almost 3 feet wide. (¼ of the width of our house!) For the sake of cabinet space, we took a different approach. We will be purchasing a 2 burner cooktop. It will likely be electric and portable, so we can stow it away and utilize the additional counter space when needed. In place of a traditional oven, we will use a 10 in 1 style cooker with multiple functions. Items with multiple functions and dual purposes are basically a tiny-housers dream. These things are like crock-pot*frying pan*bread maker*veggie steamer*oven*roaster ninja hybrids.  This is going to be a big change for us, as a family that does a lot of cooking. Stay tuned.

2.       The dishwasher. So….we won’t have one. Whew, glad I got that off my chest. A lot of people will really judge you for that! I am going to scrape, scrub and disinfect our dishes by hand from now on. When we analyzed how much time we currently spend soaking, scrubbing, washing and scraping dishes, only to load them in the dishwasher for a quick disinfecting steam, we realized we wouldn’t spend much more time going this route. Plus: cabinet space. No dishwasher, more cabinet space. Storage space is king.

3.       A bath tub. This is something we went back and forth on. Both Troy and I agree that we could live without a bath tub, but the shower in our current home is one thing that will be hard to say goodbye to. Right up there with TV watching, we love to shower. We like to shower solo, as a family, with the dogs, with our clothes on if P ate ravioli for lunch and we are covered in sauce. We can all pile in our current shower like it’s a drive through carwash. We would like to pull off a smaller version of a walk-in shower in the tiny house. Don’t laugh at us, we aren’t just wishful thinkers. Maybe I’ll wash the dishes in there, too.

4.       A kitchen table. Maybe we are classless Neanderthals, but we rarely eat at our kitchen table. Like, maybe 5 times a year. When we bought ‘The Big House’ we talked about all of the fabulous dinner parties we would host for our friends, but our parties were rarely sit down dinner parties and we don’t see our friends as often as we would like. No kitchen table, no problem. I’ll have a makeup table instead.

5.       Traditional finishes. This was an easy one to ditch. Building the tiny house is going to be anything but traditional. If we are going to build something small, it shouldn’t be too hard to make it awesome. We plan on using reclaimed or non-traditional materials to come up with unique & interesting space that we love being in.

I get messages from so many of my friends on social media with questions about what the tiny house will and will not have. Hopefully this gives you guys a better idea of what we are trying to accomplish! What would be on your “Can’t Live Without” list? Leave me a comment below!!