What's up guys.
Jenna here and I'm back with another tiny house story for you this week.
Are you ready?
This week I'm sharing the story of how one family downsized and cut their
monthly expenses into 20% of what they're paying in a normal sized home.
Wouldn't we all like to do that?
So keep watching to hear the story of this family. They're awesome.
Tiny house and how living alternatively has changed their lives.
So we're a family of four, two kids living in about 440 square feet.
It's a decent size for a first small family. So yeah,
it's about a fifth of what we were paying living expenses before.
Yeah.
I fell in love with the idea of living more sustainably.
We want to be better stewards of what we have and kind of not get sucked into
the materialism aspect of the world and have more time for family,
for our faith, for neighbors, for ministry, all that stuff.
Probably a five year plan for us just because of the kids and probably
outgrowing their bedroom space. Now that we've been in here,
I'm the one who most often says, Oh,
I want to be in here longer than five years.
After we built ours.
I started kind of investing time and planning into, okay,
let's build them for other people too, and so I've done that a time or two now.
I really enjoy it.
Kind of helping people figure out what is right for them,
what's enough for them, what's,
what's their ideal space and just kind of helping them live their dream life,
but in a smaller space.
Let's show you around, huh? I had to have the double basin sink.
We'd like to get one of those tops people can put on the sink to have a little
more counter space eventually.
A dishwasher that my wife found on Facebook,
six plate settings, so we run it once a day
that we've got our propane stove, three burners.
Then the little oven underneath, it's supposedly like an RV or a boat stove.
So it's, it's smaller. But
We'res able to cook full four meals on at a time. Three burners is all I need. I'm not,
I'm not a great cook. I don't enjoy cooking a lot.
So I just kind of do the basics and that's all I need for that.
Things like this Brandon built specifically because this is where we wanted the
spices. This is how we wanted them. Um,
and then he also made cans cause I do,
I need a fair bit of pantry space for cans.
So he did that for me and it's perfect. It's just right here.
The canister is right above it.
Just little tiny details like that are what I love about it cause it's exactly
what we wanted.
So this is a three quarter size fridge. It's apartment size,
so it's a little smaller than what we're used to and we go grocery shopping more
often because of that. But it's working.
It's working better than I thought it would.
So this is a table kind of locks on both sides that doesn't just fall open but
then kind of hinges down here,
the legs and then we have a dining table cause eating together is very important
for our family and especially, especially for dinners.
So our son will sit here, I'll sit here,
my daughter will sit there and she'll sit there and we'll kind of just all have
a nice meal together.
It's all the plate settings really well we have company every once in a while
you can fit another person here pretty well.
The chair is just in a closet behind the door here.
And then we wanted the shelves.
I wanted the shelves because I didn't want to have to be always going and
finding the salt and pepper or the sugar or whatever it is that we used all the
time.
Eventually we're hoping our daughter will also sit on the stairs and I'll get to
sit on a wheelchair. But for now this works out.
This is just kind of general storage, um,
diaper bag tucks in there and my broom tucks in there.
We have our growth charts in there.
and I have a little bit extra shoe storage cause mine didn't fit.
So we wanted the loft space for the kids to be underneath and because they're
still pretty young and I didn't want to have to worry about them falling out,
especially our daughter,
I didn't want to have to worry about her up in a high spot.
So there are eight of these and they each have four and Malik can get his up
and down all by himself.
So he loves that this bed does fold up into a chair or it just stacks
completely. All three sections. It's three sections. It'll stack over there.
And then we got this for alley's bed cause she still needs to be in a crib.
She's not old enough to stay in the bed by herself.
And we really liked it because it had the side. So I can,
I don't have to worry about lifting her over in the ceiling and all of that.
She just crawls in and out on her own and she loves it.
Everybody that walks in here says that's a big bathroom for tiny house.
We have four people and three of them at least are usually in the bathroom at
one time in the morning so they have a little bit bigger of a space. Uh,
and we also wanted to fit our laundry center in here. Um, yes,
this unit does both for tiny housers. That's not new. That's,
that's pretty pretty standard I guess. So. Yeah.
Got our nature's head toilet, which is working out great for us. Our son,
he's five. He used it like a drum
I can tell you stories but I won't. Um, but yeah, he's,
he used it great
I don't like claustrophobic showers and so I bent a PVC pipe with heat and a rope
and that was fun,
but it also adds quite a bit of space to our already rather big shower.
We, we found that for 16 bucks a lighting led thing,
really cheap version for the shower, but it's so dark in there.
So we like you know, you and you can,
you can turn on different colors and you could even make everything, you know,
change colors.
So as we go up into the living room, we wanted a decent standing size,
at least for us.
We've got lots of tall friends that they have to do this all the time but works for
us. Uh, and this is our house, right?
So we've got a nice big size couch that we, that I built.
We have a couple large scale drawers, some for toys in here.
And then we've got the diaper center right here for now until she's out of
that. And I hope that day is soon. But we'll see.
And then under here built
this space for Ottomans that pull out and this one stores the cushion that goes
on top, actually
we like having guests even though guests in a tiny houses different,
more difficult than a normal house. So if they need to stay over for any reason,
we have a bed
And then in the corner here is just all of our Christmas decorations.
Originally, I really wanted to put our games in here,
but somebody else we know that lives in a tiny house said,
if you can't get to it, you'll never use it. So she,
she suggested we put something we never have to get to in there.
Our neighbor had a bunch of little small trees that he was going to take out.
So I grabbed a couple and I whittled them down and stained them up and now they
serve as eye pleasing structural things.
Mostly just eye pleasing things but,
but they do help keep the Ridge beam up a little bit. Um,
just cause that's such a long house. And um, maybe, you know, coat hooks
This is our loft. He made it quite long. And so we have room for closet,
um,
his hang up clothes go over here and then it's big enough for a queen size bed,
which he did sink into the floor couple inches. This is a purple mattress,
so it's a little bit taller, so plenty of headroom. And, um,
when our daughter was taking a nap,
our son actually uses this as his play room so he doesn't have to worry about us
feed or toys making noise on the floor above her head.
Brandon made these runners, which are kind of like our,
our nightstands. So they open up and there's a lot of space in there.
I don't like to get changed up here. That's probably the only thing.
So I will take all my stuff downstairs. But other than that,
there's enough room, we don't really feel like it's cramped
with a tiny house and a family.
We knew we wanted outdoor living space of some kind.
So our solution for now is this den
just kind of somewhere for the kiddos to go.
If they're starting to get a little stir crazy inside.
It's nice to hear the rain, especially with the loft, uh,
when you're sleeping or whatnot, you know,
in a traditional house you can't hear it as well.
It's gonna cause an attic space and such. But we like the rain.
So hearing it pitter patter on the roof is nice.
Living with kids. It's chaotic in tiny houses. At times we'll be honest.
But it's funny because moving from that large space to this tiny space,
kids haven't noticed it at all. Like they're more happy here. I feel like.
Then there a lot of times, and it's really surprised me for one,
you really do adapt to your space and don't, don't be too scared about it.
It'll take some changes in intentionality, but at the end of the day,
it'll, it'll be a fun little adventure,
so don't be too scared is what my advice would be. It's, it's, it's good.
Like,
thank you for tuning in this week, guys.
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