Tiny Homes: The Value and Beauty of Small Living Spaces

Tiny homes are houses that look just like any other house, except they are tiny. They range from under 100 square feet to around 800 square feet. They include everything one wants in a home through a purely genius use of space. They are both an amazement and an inspiration.

There are several companies that design and/or build Tiny Homes, but Tumbleweed is by far the highest quality AND lowest price I’ve found. They’re well designed and totally self sufficient. After researching the competitors, I am still very impressed.

After much thought, I have decided to expand my search though. A tiny home would work for me, but it still wasn’t quite what I was looking for. I was hoping for something much more inexpensive, and less intimidating to build myself. Less is better, when it comes to costs and effort. Even building the house myself, and using recycled building materials as much as possible, the house alone would force me to take out a most dreaded mortgage.

Additionally, I was concerned about winters. In fair weather, my family of 3 would have acres to romp and play. In rain and snow, though, my kids would be at each other’s throats. 100 square feet might fit us, but one winter in such a tight place and my kids will likely cause serious damage to the house. Not to mention, we are avid readers and have a small library of our own already. We trade unwanted books through paperbackswap for new reading material, so it’s a living collection that doesn’t really grow so much as evolve, but it still takes room. Would a tiny home mean giving up one of our healthiest habits?

I do love tiny homes, though, and I visit the Tumbleweed site often to look at them. They did me a lot of good in opening my eyes to alternative systems and layouts for homes, too. Tumbleweed’s site introduced me to composting toilets, gravity plumbing, and many useful concepts in heating and cooling. If the lifestyle and cost seem like a good fit for you, I do highly recommend them.