This week's video is brought to you by Humless, solar power on the go.
Over consumption can be a disease for a lot of people.
If we crowd our lives with our belongings.
We simply don't leave space in our lives for anything else.
That's exactly what happened to Jen.
A self proclaimed hoarder who has now downsized into a tiny house,
specifically designed for her home business and her two cats.
Hi, my name is Jen. This is my tiny house, tiny dreamer.
I went tiny for a couple of different reasons.
The first reason was because all of my stuff was controlling me,
so I would come home from flea markets and garage sales and estate sales and I
would have all this stuff, everyone else's stuff,
and I would have no place to put it in my home.
So I started to get aggravated and I'm like, something has to give,
like something has to give. So I did. I said,
if I just sold all this stuff and went tiny, this stuff wouldn't control me.
Number two is because it's easier financially.
My house was built by incredible tiny homes.
I paid 58,300
this is my living area. It's kind of small. Um, I only have this,
uh, couch bed storage for guests and you know,
whoever wants to stay on it.
So if you come over here to my kitchen,
I've got the butcher block countertop and I had it stained the same as all of
the other cabinets. They have non slam drawers,
which is very cool to me. Um, I love it.
And then I decided to keep this, uh,
cooktop burner out instead of putting it away because I cook on it all the time.
I heard that when living in a tiny house you actually have to vent,
like ventilate it a lot because your fire alarm will go off all the time.
Mine does all the time. So I use, I use this, this fan, so,
and it works very well.
I'm trying to eat healthy.
So with eating healthy you need storage for fruits and vegetables,
fresh stuff all the time. So my refrigerator was important to me,
so I needed a bigger one rather than one of those smaller ones.
Like I see some people have,
I have two cats
this is their letter box area.
I wanted a swinging door so that they can freely go in and out.
And then if I open this,
then there's a hole in the wall and this other side that they go through,
use the litter box and then come back out. So the dust on their feet,
on their paws, uh,
go on the mat rather than on my carpets and rugs and stuff.
I also have a cat vent up there.
It's a computer fan and it vents out um, odors and dust.
When this door is closed, I don't smell anything at all.
In the beginning I wanted like nine feet of storage staircase and the builder
was like, no, my gosh, you only have so much house.
So I had to consolidate it to a smaller staircase.
All of those have storage in them except for this one where I can clean inside
the, the cat area box.
and I just installed these handrails yesterday.
I thought that was pretty cool because I hand did them and I did it myself.
So nice. Going into my bathroom.
This is my barn door and they notched it out of the counter here so that it can
close. Here's my shower.
I have a 72 by 36 inch shower. Plenty big.
Oh yeah, it's really big. And then I um,
put some storage here above the washer dryer combo.
I actually found that owning a washer dryer combo,
it actually shakes the whole house. Um,
I was sitting upstairs on my bed and when the spin cycle was on
I mean I was holding onto the walls because it was like shaking so bad and I'm
like, I didn't know this was going to happen. Tiny house problems.
That's one right there that you don't get in a normal house. Right.
I do have a composting toilet. I do have the separate,
it's working well for me so far.
Then I have some storage back there with the towels and stuff.
So this is my office.
My company is Goddess of herbs and what I do is I make and sell herbal
medicine and then I sell out of my house and online I have 183 different
products.
There's tons of different tinctures and capsules and beard balm,
beard oil, toothpaste, and then I have herbs over here,
Himalayan salt stuff.
It's elevated because I take the stuff to craft shows.
So underneath there there's four plastic bins that I put all of this stuff in,
fill up my car and take to the craft shows,
half of it on the outside there's tables and tents for the craft shows,
so I wanted to utilize this whole space for storage underneath the office right
here and then an extra room up there for the cats.
I did roll out the yoga mat once and it did just go down the kitchen and there's
not a lot of room at all.
So either outside yoga or right here do it in your kitchen,
but make sure you have arm room.
I decided to put a TV up on the wall.
It actually moves so I can put it that way and I can see it from my bedroom and
then I can also put it this way so that when a guest stays on this couch,
bed storage, they can see it that way.
Then when the guest stays in here or I sit in the living area,
I can tilt it this way and then I have a Mitsubishi mini split,
so it's half air, half heat. When I turn the fan on,
which is mostly on all the time,
it'll take whatever's coming out of there and circulate it throughout the whole
house.
It's a lot less than I had in my other bedroom.
But you're never going to hit your head,
you have a lot of space. I love it.
It's comfortable. And the cats like laying there,
it is not easy to get dressed up here, but I do. Folding clothes,
so shirts and shorts and jeans and then underwear, socks and the nice,
the nicer clothes that don't want to get wrinkled.
I keep up here and then winter clothes I keep in bins down here.
So my builder said that this catwalk can hold at least 200 pounds.
So I could walk on here and it's pretty easy for me.
I'm in love with the catwalk railing.
I wanted real sticks or woods so that it was more of a rustic feel.
It's my favorite part of the house. The cats ever,
try to chew on it or scratch it or anything.
They use it as a scratching post. Rocky will try to eat the wood.
He walks across the top of it.
So this loft I had made just for the cats, um,
except for my books. I put their beds up here.
I put a comfortable rug up here.
The horizontal hopper windows I did on purpose also because the cats can look
out there. He goes up and down the ladder.
I was scared at first because I thought that he was going to fall.
He's legs are up in the air and I'm like, Oh my gosh, please just don't fall.
Well, a lot of people just told me he's a cat, he'll be fine. So I'm like,
he's fine and he totally is fine. So now I trust him. Rocky. Hey,
don't you fuss.
This is my water reclamation system. Um,
I collect the rain through rain catchment water system there and that's the
first flush.
All the water gathers up and collects in 150 gallon water tank.
If too much water comes up here, since it's up here,
there's a drain that lets the rest of the water go down.
So this is all the pumps and the filters that make it happen.
This is the hot water heater. Um, then I have filters in there,
four filters up there that I have to change.
There's power switches in there,
just like a whole unique little system that makes this whole system run.
I don't have a Water bill, I don't have an electric bill.
I don't have a sewer bill. I have no cable anymore.
So I've gotten rid of maybe four or five different bills that I had in my
apartment. My rent is low. It's,
I'm saving $600 just by going tiny.
Thanks for tuning into this week's video. I hope you guys enjoyed it.
Check back in two weeks for another tiny house or travel video