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Living In Tiny (Or Small) House In The USA

What are Tiny Houses?

They are houses that are small in size. The cost of living is extremely low, maintenance costs are low, and they leave you with more time and money to enjoy life.

 

People are slowly beginning to realize that owning a huge home that will take 30 years to pay off, and that will require heavy maintenance even longer than that, is not the way to go. Some people are even finding that you don’t even need to own land to have a place to call home.

How Tiny is Tiny?

Tiny, or small houses are generally less than 1000 square feet, and some even less than 100 square feet! Some are placed at a permanent location, whereas others are mounted on trailers so that they can be moved easily whenever the need arises.

The Trend Toward a Smaller Home

The housing crisis has caused many people to sit back and think about what they really want out of a home. Many people have lost their homes, and are some are still losing their homes due to the economic downturn and mortgage crisis recently seen in USA.

Having a huge house is not the most important thing to a lot of people anymore. What is more important is the financial freedom that is found when they no longer have a mortgage payment.

Build Your Own Home

Tiny house plans are simple enough that most people can build their house by themselves.  You don’t need to hire a contractor, and pay someone to build the home of your dreams. You have choices; you can buy a do-yourself plan and build it yourself, you can buy a prefab for a small house, and have it set on your property, or you can have someone build it for you. Most of these homes require around 14 tools to build; many of which most people already have around their house.

The prefab kits are meant to be built upon some kind of foundation. That foundation can be a cement slab, a wooden foundation, or a trailer – no matter what you choose as the foundation, your tiny home can be put together quickly and easily. Most already have finished exteriors and the windows preinstalled, so your house can be built in a matter of days. Your neighbors may be gone for a long weekend and come home to find your house is complete.

Many of the tiny house are built using Structural Insulated Panels (SIP) construction. This type of construction is usually less costly than traditional construction. Insulation is already installed and the pieces are precut to fit the site, and the job site waste is less due to pre-cut panels.

Housing you Can Afford

If affordable housing is your goal, you’ll be happy to know that the majority of tiny houses can be built for under $20,000, if you do some or all of the building yourself. People don’t even realize that debt free living really can happen early on in your life if you rid yourself of huge monthly housing payments.

Most people can only dream of a zero debt to income ratio. Without the cost of your home weighing you down for 30 years, this is a dream come true.

Go “Green”

People who enjoy doing things “” will be happy to know that many of these homes can be built with recycled materials.

When using recycled materials it is important to know what you will be using them for. Items such as wood pallets are well known these days for being reused for all kinds of things. However, some of them have been treated with chemicals and should not be reused.  You need to be aware of the dangers that could come with previously used materials when planning your diy home.

Overall Downsides of Tiny Living

As with anything, there are a few downsides to living the tiny life. The most obvious is that there is not a lot of room inside to do any sort of physical activity. Not a lot of space to do aerobic or yoga type workouts. Even laying out a board game or a puzzle can be a challenge in the smaller space.

Storage space is another challenge. You will need to be organized, and having only the bare minimum needed for the space will be important. Even then, certain spaces that are built as storage areas may be hard to access on an everyday basis. Also, because storage space is at a premium, shopping trips for groceries and other necessities will need to be made more often.

Overall Benefits of Tiny Living

One of the main benefits of living the tiny life is the good that it is doing for the environment.  The average house in the US produces tons of construction waste, and takes almost an entire acre of forest to build. A smaller home uses considerably less.

Freeing yourself from debt, and the monthly expense of a large home ownership are huge benefits of tiny house living. Not only will you have less expense, you will have less stuff. The fact that there just isn’t room in your small home to fit more stuff will stop you from purchasing things that you don’t really need.

Learning how to live creatively in a small space can be fun and rewarding. Add to that the benefit of being self-contained and being able to move the house wherever you want at any time with little effort.

Maintenance of the house will be much less when it is smaller. Just the task of vacuuming or mopping a floor alone will take a lot less time.

Buying things like flooring and a countertop for a smaller area will mean that any renovation or upgrading costs will be a lot less than they would be in a large house. You can splurge on the nicer wood floor, or a marble countertop.

Energy bills will be much less for a smaller home.  It doesn’t take much to heat or cool a home that is less than 1000 square feet.

The housing market trends are leading us into what can be called the tiny house movement.  People are realizing that they don’t need a huge house to be happy.  As long as they have a roof over their head and enough space for their family, they can be perfectly content. And most people living in tiny houses are not complaining about the lack of making a monthly payment to the bank!