CHAPTER
1

A House with Benefits

In This Chapter

• Discovering many benefits of living tiny
• Finding freedom in living mobile
• Freeing up your time to follow your passions
• Discovering joys of living simply

If you’ve been feeling like things are harder than ever, you’re not crazy and you’re certainly not alone. Houses are bigger and more expensive today than they’ve ever been in the history of this nation. Unfortunately, our household income hasn’t kept pace and now is actually lower than it was in 2000.

Home ownership is at a 50-year low, and rental vacancies are so slim that even the dumpiest places are fetching top-shelf prices. It’s no wonder that the tiny house movement has exploded with interest. For less than half the cost of the down payment on an average new home, you can build your own beautiful, sustainable, and fully furnished tiny house.

If you’re tired, stressed, and frustrated by how unfulfilling your life currently feels, fret not and read on. In this chapter, we will cover the numerous benefits to living tiny, ranging from financial freedom, to improved relationships, quicker cleaning, smaller environmental footprint, increased joy, and much more. An exciting new life could be just a decision away for you!

Financial Freedom

In today’s economic market, home ownership has become an increasingly distant dream for many. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average-size new house in the United States will set you back a record high of $360,000. In comparison, that same house in 2000 would have cost $200,000, reflecting a whopping $160,000 increase in just 16 years.

The housing market hasn’t been kind to American home renters either. In 2000, a median rental went for $475 per month according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Today, you’ll pay $875 (almost twice the cost) for the same house.

TINY QUOTE

“You weren’t born to just pay bills and die.”
–Author unknown

In the meantime, the median household income has actually dropped from $57,000 in 2000 to $54,000 in 2015, according to Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED). The disparity between income and housing costs, as well as other economic factors, are contributing to the rate of homeownership being at a 50-year low.

In comparison, a comfortable, self-built tiny house costs an average of just $23,000, according to a survey conducted by thetinylife.com. We have seen tiny homes completed for as little as $8,000 with the builder using free and reclaimed materials whenever possible. A professionally built tiny house can be fetched for as little as $50,000.

Here’s another way to punctuate the dramatic difference in cost between a tiny house and conventionally sized residence. Using the average new home cost of $360,000—and assuming you’ll have a standard 20 percent down payment due at closing— you’ll be staring down the barrel of a $72,000 down payment. Ouch. To add insult to injury, you’ll then spend thousands of dollars furnishing and filling all those empty spaces. With a tiny house, though, you can build something wonderful for less than half the cost of that down payment.

We designed and built hOMe, our Tiny House On Wheels in which we happily reside full time, for just a hair over $33,000. This included all appliances and furnishings. It fulfills all of our needs while allowing us to live a lifestyle that is well within our means. Assuming that we live here for the rest of our lives, we will never, ever have another housing payment. The sense of security that this brings is truly priceless.

By now, you might be wondering why we haven’t mentioned the cost of land in these equations. After all, if a tiny house is on wheels, it will need a place to be parked. This is a very fair point and one that must be addressed.

After connecting with hundreds of people who are building and living in their tiny houses, we have found again and again that those in significant financial hardship manage to find a low-cost/free place to park their tiny houses. Often, this is on a friend or family member’s property or in a work-trade scenario.

Generally, the most expensive component of housing is the structure itself. While you can certainly buy your own land or pay rent for a place to park your tiny house, you can most likely find something at very low cost or even free in a pinch.

The financial benefits of living in a tiny house go well beyond the initial housing cost savings. Take the issue of debt for example: getting out of debt is extremely challenging, if not impossible, when your mortgage/rental costs are high and your income is proportionally low. There’s typically not enough money left over at the end of the month for anything other than minimum monthly payments.

TINY TIP

Tiny houses are the best antidote for the habitual shopper. Tiny homes simply lack the physical capacity for someone to accumulate nonessentials, which is good news not only for the planet, but also for the pocketbook. We personally saved thousands of dollars the first year we lived in our tiny house by not buying things that we didn’t truly need.

Once you’ve tamed your housing expenses, it becomes much easier to chip away at debt. According to a poll by thetinylife.com, 89 percent of tiny housers have less credit card debt than most Americans, and 65 percent don’t have any debt at all. That’s something to get excited about!

Another way of saving big in a tiny house is by not having the high utility expenses that those in larger houses must bear. The cost to condition and illuminate a tiny house is drastically lower than that of a conventional house. We often hear from full-time tiny housers paying just $20 per month for all their utilities. This isn’t too surprising considering that the average-size house guzzles 12,500 kWh per year in electricity, while a tiny house sips less than 1,000 kWh.

In our new house, we all disappeared into its various corners and our day-to-day contact decreased significantly. We didn’t think anything of it at first, but after about six months, we noticed the toll that our lack of interaction was taking. Awkwardness had set in and conversations felt strained for the first time. It took a while, but eventually, we realized that the culprit was, in large part, the size of the house.

Our experience is certainly not unique. We hear again and again from families and couples who experienced a dramatic improvement in interpersonal dynamics after moving into a tiny home. Sure, there was an adjustment period, but in time, their relationships improved because close contact invites healthy communication and there just isn’t the option of retreating into seclusion when things get tough. Ever see someone storm off down the hallway and slam the door to their bedroom? That’s not an option in a tiny house.

Prior to owning our tiny home, we lived in a pop-up tent trailer in Baja, Mexico, for five months with our (at the time) 10-year-old daughter, Terra. One day, she was mad at us for something and stomped down the narrow corridor, jumped onto her bed, and “slammed” her curtain shut. Because a tent trailer is essentially just one open space with a couple of curtains for visual privacy, we suggested that she open the curtain and talk about what she was feeling rather than staying on her bed fuming for hours. That one interaction set the stage for all future conversations. Now, six years later and in our tiny home, Terra talks to us rather retreating to her room.

Terra sitting and reading in our pop-up tent trailer where we lived for nearly five months on the beaches of Baja, Mexico.

Honest and vulnerable communication is a major component of a happy and successful relationship. This way of interacting is fostered in a tiny space, and we would argue that a large one hampers it. A lot has been written on the topic of how to create a joyous life, and all of it points to the same sentiment: a happy and fulfilling life is one in which a person prioritizes her relationships and connections, and focuses on the things she loves. The way to achieve that level of closeness is through communication and connection.

Relationships suffer immensely when people are stressed about money, impending foreclosures, or long work hours and commutes (ours certainly did!). Living outside one’s means is a sure-fire way to create unnecessary stress. At the end of the day, when people are tired and drained, that penned up tension is often taken out on those who are closest.

On the other hand, living in an affordable tiny house can have a positive effect on a strained family dynamic. When you live within your means, financial fear goes away, and you have time and energy to pursue the things that you are passionate about. Your sense of humor, joy, patience, and kindness increase, and you have a chance to thrive in a way that’s not possible when you’re buried under stress.

Cleaning Made Simple

There’s something meditative about the ritual of organizing and tidying space and, sometimes, it’s a really nice way to bring calm and order to a chaotic day. In contrast, cleaning a 2,200-square-foot house after a really long day at work can become a dreaded burden.

TINY TIP

Taking care of a tiny house is a lovely experience because the scale is so small. Nothing takes very long to do; cleaning our tiny home from top to bottom takes about 30 minutes.

There’s something rather enchanting about cleaning and maintaining a space where everything was placed with intention and given a home. When you value the things that surround you and they truly benefit your life, you’ll likely want to take really good care of them. We’ve never enjoyed cleaning a house as much as we love taking care of hOMe.

Studies show that a clean and tidy environment invites greater productivity and mental clarity. This allows you to be more effective at work and, thus, generate more money in the shortest period of time. Conversely, a lack of cleanliness fosters distraction and becomes a detriment to productivity.

Cleanliness even inspires people to make healthier food choices. A study published in Psychological Science Journal shows that people in tidy work environments are twice as likely to choose healthy food options over unhealthy ones than those in a cluttered space.

There are also the obvious health benefits of living in a clean house, especially for those that suffer from asthma and allergies. The accumulation of pollen, mold spores, pet dander, dust mites, and general dirt are all much easier to eliminate in a small space. Having a tiny house makes it much more likely that you’ll keep things clean and that your indoor air quality will be as clean as possible.

Environmental Benefits

According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the average new residential house in the United States is about 2,600 square feet. In comparison, the average tiny house measures a diminutive 186 square feet. As you can imagine, the difference in resources it takes to build a conventionally sized house compared to a tiny house is staggering.

TINY TIP

The national average cost per kWh of electricity is 12 cents. The owner of a conventionally sized house must cough up $1,532 yearly just to pay for electricity. A tiny houser on the other hand, spends a mere $109. That’s a savings of more than $1,400!

Laid end-to-end, the amount of lumber used to build a 3,000 square feet house stretches more than four miles and requires more than seven logging trucks of material. Conversely, the average tiny house consumes just half of a logging truck worth of material. Being that the construction industry accounts for 75 percent of the lumber used annually, this is a significant impact.

Furthermore, the average-size house consumes more than 12,500 kWh of electricity yearly for running appliances and lighting. This contributes a staggering 16,000 pounds of CO₂ to the atmosphere annually. A tiny house, on the other hand, uses just 914 kWh and generates just a little more than 1,000 pounds of CO₂. Heating and cooling combined in a conventional house generates 12,000 pounds of CO₂ yearly, while a tiny house generates 780.

Mobility

Once upon a time, life was a bit simpler, and the path to a lifetime career was clear. One could go to college, get a job, work there for 40 years, retire, and then receive a pension in retirement. A hard-working employee was afforded the comfort of knowing where his next paycheck was coming from, and it was common for families to plant lifelong roots in the same community.

Today’s job market looks quite different. The path to employment is uncertain and even if one follows all the rules, there’s no certainty of reward. Companies are less and less comprised of workers, but rather, by projects and tasks that must be completed. The digital age has enabled remote, offshore, freelance, part-time, contract, and less expensive solutions to enter the equation. Generally, the cheapest offer takes the cake.

This impermanence in the job market has significantly influenced homeownership trends. It no longer makes a great deal of sense to lock into a 30-year mortgage when a job change could occur at any time. The value of flexibility is becoming synonymous with survival in the work force.

TINY WARNING

Approximately one in five workers have lost their jobs in the last five years. Living in a house that is paid for or that incurs minimal monthly costs is a proactive measure one can take to protect oneself in case of unexpected unemployment.

Tiny houses on wheels allow for the utmost flexibility and can provide the best of both worlds—the stability of a home coupled with the ability to move it to the next job or adventure. We often hear that people who serve in the military, as well as traveling nurses/caretakers, tech industry specialists, consultants, artists, entertainers, and so on, are tired of uprooting and finding a new home each time they must move. With a tiny house, you take your home wherever your career leads you.

Free Up Your Time

Assuming that you fall within the range of averages for Americans, you currently have a housing payment in the form of monthly rent or a mortgage, and you spend 27 percent of your income on housing. That means roughly 10.8 hours of each 40-hour work week goes toward housing costs. Once you add in utilities and maintenance, two of your five workdays are solely devoted to earning money to cover the costs of housing.

Then there’s the issue of commuting. Consider that you not only need to work, but also need to get there and back, often in traffic. Census numbers reveal that you likely have a one-hour round-trip commute for an 8.5-hour work day. Right off the bat, you’re looking at 9.5 hours away from home. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, when you finally do get home, you spend another nine hours sleeping, leaving you with just 5.5 hours of time to enjoy the house that you’ve worked so hard to pay for. Is it worth it?

We’re not saying that spending money on housing is a bad thing. Rather, we’re suggesting that the pattern of wasting money on things that we don’t actually need and which don’t actually benefit our lives ought to be reconsidered. Why spend more on your housing than you actually get out of it? Jose Mujica, former President of Uruguay, said it best: “When you buy something, the instrument is money, but in reality you are buying it with the hours of your life that you spent earning that money.”

When we realized the real cost and sacrifices we were making in living in a house that was much bigger than we needed, we experienced a couple weeks of sadness and regret. It took us a little time to pick ourselves back up, brush the dirt off, and start taking active steps toward creating a life that allowed us to be our best selves.

It’s rare for someone on his death bed to say that he wished he had worked harder, lived in a larger house, or made more money. Any regrets tend to revolve around not spending enough time with loved ones or not following passions. You don’t need thousands of square feet to be joyful. In fact, we’re suggesting you need less square footage to find your freedom and ultimately, your happiness.

A UCLA study titled “Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century,” found that all of the study subjects’ stress hormones spiked when they were dealing with their belongings. Researchers at the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute found that productivity and efficiency are greatly hampered by clutter and an excess of material possessions. Stuff competes for our attention in the same way that a toddler standing next to us repeating “ice cream, ice cream, ice cream, ice cream …” will make us lose focus.

TINY WARNING

It’s estimated that there are between 5-14 million hoarders in the United States. It used to be mistakenly considered a subset of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Fortunately, new treatment protocols appear to be much more effective than what was previously used.

Humans own more material possessions today than at any other time in the history of mankind. The average U.S. household hoards more than 300,000 items (from paper clips to large furniture), 1 in 10 people rent an offsite storage facility (there are five times more mini-storage facilities than there are Starbucks coffee houses), and the average woman owns 30 different outfits (compared to nine in 1930). To top things off, we waste more than $1 trillion per year on “nonessential” goods.

The worst part? Americans are unhappier today than they were 30 years ago, according to a study presented at the “Policies for Happiness” symposium. “The increase in hours worked by Americans over the last 30 years has heavily affected their happiness because people who are more absorbed by work have less time and energy for relationships,” said one of the study’s authors.

Interestingly, the study found that happiness had remained stable in Europe during the same time period. They attributed this to the fact that European workplaces had, for the most part, avoided some of the pitfalls seen here, such as longer hours, less vacation time, and more pressure to excel and succeed.

There are high costs associated with the acquisition of stuff: energy, money, and, most importantly, time. When we started calculating the “real” costs of all of the nonessential stuff we had surrounded ourselves with, we were heartbroken. The sacrifices and choices we had made were painful to face, especially when it involved our kids. It took us seeing things from this perspective to commit to living a more mindful life.

Living the tiny house lifestyle has allowed us to share some wonderful values with our kids. We are raising them in an environment where happiness is not locked into the acquisition of material possessions and they are given the opportunity to learn positive communication skills as well. We all help to make each other the best versions of ourselves by focusing on balance, joy, and life experiences.

Living simply isn’t about surviving with as little as possible, but rather, about removing the extraneous so that the important things have a chance to shine and be appreciated. When money and time are not spent on unnecessary items, resources free up for things that really do matter. Leonardo da Vinci knew it even back in 1452 when he said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Natural Disasters

The rate of natural disasters around the globe has increased significantly. In 1970, 78 natural disasters were reported; in 2004, there were 348. There has been an 80 percent increase in climate-related disasters between 1980 and 2009. Every year, an average of 25 million people are displaced by weather-related disasters (the equivalent of one person per second).

A study by RealtyTrac highlighted that 43 percent of U.S. homes are at risk of one or more weather-related natural disasters (wildfire, hurricanes, floods, tornados, and earthquakes). Tiny houses on wheels are unique in that they can be moved fairly easily in the face of a natural disaster, sometimes in a matter of minutes.

TINY TIP

One distinct advantage of tiny houses on wheels is their mobility. In times of imminent natural disasters, they can be moved out of harm’s way (assuming there is enough warning time). This is especially helpful in hurricane- and wildfire-prone areas.

Unfortunately, certain weather disasters such as tornados and earthquakes appear without much warning at all. However, events such as hurricanes, floods, typhoons, tsunamis, and forest fires can often have minutes, hours, or even days of warning of their approach. This is often more than enough time for a Tiny House On Wheels to be packed up with its contents stowed for travel, and driven away to safe ground.

A community in coastal California recently approved tiny houses on wheels to be built in a flood zone where residential construction is normally restricted. Due to the nature of flooding in that area and how slowly water levels typically rise during large rainstorms, the property owner argued that, need be, he could evacuate the structures to safety in ample time. The local building and zoning departments agreed and granted him permission to build tiny houses on wheels on that lot.

Rebuilding Communities

Census reports show that the urban migration is continuing and that younger residents are leaving smaller rural areas for larger cities. About 60 percent of rural counties saw a reduction in population last year, representing an increase from 50 percent of counties in 2009 and 40 percent in the late 1990s.

The population decline is decreasing the tax base in rural areas, which is having a negative effect on public services such as schools, health care, roads, maintenance, libraries, and the like. The private sector is suffering as well because such a large portion of the work force is leaving for the city. To put it bluntly: many small communities are dying because of a population shortage.

Spur, Texas, a sleepy community set in the western quadrant of the state was nearly crippled by this phenomenon. Shops were boarded up and beautiful historic buildings fell apart from long-term vacancies. There wasn’t much hope for a renaissance in population until one of its residents came up with a brilliant idea: proclaim Spur as the first Tiny House On Wheels—friendly town in the United States. Spur welcomed the tiny homes and their owners into the struggling community.

Two years after the city adopted their tiny house—friendly policy, all of their city lots have sold, as have several county-owned ones. By the year’s end, they will have 20 full-time tiny house residents calling Spur home. Many more plan on arriving next year and there are even talks of buying larger county lots and creating tiny house communities on them. These new residents are bringing a variety of skills, enthusiasm, and a desire to infuse this small community of 1,200 with new life.

TINY QUOTE

“Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.”
–Margaret Mead

There are many advantages to living in a small town, such as lower real estate costs (city lots cost just $500 in Spur). Also, small towns experience 80 percent less crime than typical large cities, suffer less pollution, and have a strong sense of community. Perhaps there aren’t as many six-figure job opportunities as there are in the cities, but if you’re living in a tiny house and practicing minimalism, then there’s no need to make that much money anyway. Instead, you can sit back, enjoy life, get your needs met, and thrive in a lifestyle that supports your physical and emotional well-being.

Tiny Houses for the Homeless

As humans, our five basic needs for survival are air, water, food, clothing, and shelter. When people don’t have a safe house in which to lay their heads down at night, big problems can arise. The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty states that over 3.5 million people suffer homelessness yearly in the United States. Along those lines, three studies conducted by the National Alliance to End Homelessness showed that it costs communities less money to create housing for the homeless than it does to let them remain on the streets and rely on social services.

Tiny houses cost significantly less to build than conventional housing for the homeless. They are currently being used as a part of the solution for homelessness in several municipalities, including:

• Fresno, CA (Village of Hope)
• Ventura, CA (River Haven)
• Eugene, OR (Opportunity Village)
• Olympia, WA (Quixote Village)

More are also in development in Wisconsin, New York, Texas, and other cities.

The Least You Need to Know

• For less than half the price of the down payment on a conventionally sized house, you can fully pay for a tiny house that meets all of your needs.
• Personal relationships often improve in tiny houses because the homes allow families to live within their means, reducing stress and creating more time for connection.
• Tiny houses on wheels create the opportunity for mobility, which is almost a requirement in today’s job market.
• Studies show that a tidy, clutter-free home is good not only for one’s health, but also for productivity and general well-being.
• A tiny house contributes only 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. In comparison, an average conventional house spews out 28,000 pounds.
• Tiny houses on wheels can be moved to safety in areas prone to certain natural disasters (hurricanes, flooding, typhoons, tsunamis, and the like).