Tiny House Living

Tammy and Logan talk about the reasons they chose to live a simple minimalist life with the folks from Peak Moment Television. One of the side effects of living a simple, car-free life has been complete debt reduction and the savings to build their own tiny home.

Tammy & Logan on Peak Moment Television

If you’re looking for a place to rent in the Washington DC area you might want to check out this tiny house. The interior space is 252 square feet and will be available starting November 1st.

I really wonder why more landlords haven’t jumped on the tiny house bandwagon. It seems like there would be a high demand for small studio apartment sized individual homes.

Tiny House for Rent in Washington DC

Tammy Strobel from RowdyKittens just did a guest post on Tiny House Blog about these great little houses in Portland. They were built by Jeff and Brad who make an extra effort to reuse and recycle while creating these tiny habitable works of art.

Portland Tiny Homes

Designed by architect Manuel Villa this little house was built to augment a larger home on the outskirts of Bogotá, Colombia. I really like the out-of-the-box design and the idea of a tiny dome home. Photo credit to Manuel Villa. I first spotted this on RowdyKittens.

Dome Home

One very appealing solution for making a simple homestead a reality is land sharing. I’ve met a few people who have done this in the past and it requires a different way of looking at property ownership. In one case the residents divided up the asset (land) into shares and had verbal agreements on boundaries instead of physical or legal property lines. When a member wanted to move they would have to sell their shares to another resident or an outsider approved by the community.

While this kind of arrangement has it’s potential disadvantages it has many benefits too. For example a community garden or larger flock of chickens would be easier to manage for a small community than a single family. Sharing the costs of an alternative energy system, water system, property taxes, and general maintenance would also lighten the load on each individual family or individual.

I’ve been thinking I’d like our next move to be to a property big enough for a few family and even friends. Finding the right larger community would be tricky because zoning rules don’t normally allow for such developments. Most planning departments think in terms of dividing land into lots and single family zoning. Finding a community and piece of land that is already zoned multi-family is preferable. Better yet would be a community that already understands how land sharing works and is open to newcomers.

I’m not the only one thinking this way; also read these recent articles on RowdyKittens and The Tiny Life. Photo credit to RowdyKittens.

Here’s another story of people finding happiness is a small space. Sasha and John live in this 480 square foot home in Toronto. After living in a small apartment for 10 years they were ready to buy a home and resisted the natural temptation to buy more. Now they are reaping the rewards of living simply. Read Sasha and John’s story. I first spotted this on RowdyKittens and Tiny House Blog.

Tammy from RowdyKittens took a trip up to Portland, Oregon to see Stephanie from Coming Unmoored this past week. Tammy got a first hand look at Stephanies tiny floating home on the Columbia River. Tammy will be posting more about her trip with lots of photos in the next few days. I’ve seen a few of the great photos she took in and around Portland and tiny houses she visited already. See the photos on Flickr. For more on the slumber party read this post on RowdyKittens.