She lives in a gorgeous Tiny House near the beach 🥰

Hi, I'm Martha and this is my tiny home. So welcome to our tiny tranquility garden. This is one of the most wonderful things. It'll always stay with me even if I decide to go somewhere else. My electrical bill is $35 a month. What I like about this is that it does have a closet. What I don't like is... Hi, I'm Martha and this is my tiny home in tiny tranquility. And this is Zach who is 19 and a half years old. He's my kitty. I bought my tiny three years ago from somebody who lived in tiny tranquility. I had been an educational administrator for many years and decided I didn't really want to go back into that profession at the time. And COVID hit, but the market was high enough. Houses similar to my Victorian were selling at three or four times what I had bought it for 20 years ago. So I went ahead and decided, you know, now's the time. My tiny is an Escape Traveler XL. If I had just bought the tiny outright from Escape, it would be now about $98,000. Then it was about $87,000 new. It is 344 square feet total. It is 30 feet long and eight and a half feet wide, plus another five feet for the trailer hitch. To live here, I just pay rent. My monthly lease is less than $700 a month. That includes all utilities except for electrical. My electrical bill is $35 a month. Whereas in my former home, which was 2000 square feet, that could be three or $400 a month. What I really like about my tiny are the windows. I also like the modern facade, as opposed to the more cabin-like facades that you'll see. Rather than having an elevated deck like many of our people have, I prefer to have it all just straight clean lines. We are allowed to have storage bins, but they have to be authorized and they have to be pretty much off-ground because of the environmental concerns. And you have to think about the coastal air, the salt, and the wind, and the rain when you're looking at product in terms of its survivability. That's why I got these. They're designed to be corroded like this copper color, and I thought that the geometric design echoes the geometry that is in my tiny. And since our spaces are small, I don't have a dining room space in my design. It's really helpful to have a table of some kind outside. And I like to have a garden, but again, you have to think in terms of plants that will survive the salt, and the wind, and the moisture. So some of these plants will, and certainly some are more seasonal, but you get them because of color. And I also try to choose plants that are pollinator-friendly. Here at Tiny Tranquility, we all share a centralized septic system, and electrical system, and water for home use system. So part of our fee is just the hookup of that. To me, that works out really well. I don't have to worry about even the cleaning of the septic tanks or any of that, and that comes as part of the monthly lease. Also, I have propane, and I have a gas kitchen stove. And personally, I like the complement of that because if the electrical grid goes out, then you still can heat and cook via your propane. We have lots of storms, and sometimes the electrical grid on the coast will go out for a few days at the most, and the folks that have generators do well. Otherwise, we just go into our lodge and hang out. So now I'm excited to show you the inside of my tiny. The design of the Escape Traveler XL has a lot of focus on the kitchen area. So I have four burners and a grill, which I use. I cook. Also a microwave, and then a full oven. I don't use the oven all that much, so here's a trick in a tiny. You know, that's where I store all my pots and pans, and when I need to use the oven, they all have to come out. But that's what you do in a tiny, is you find multi-use of the spaces. No space is left vacant. I also have a fabulous refrigerator that I thought, well, that would be too big for me. Why don't I have a small one? But actually, because we live 30 miles, really, from the closest really good grocery store, anything you can buy in large enough quantities, if you have a place to put it, then you do that to minimize your trips. This is my office as opposed to a living room, and for me, it was important for me to have a workspace. Of the few things that I retained when I downsized, I kept my roll top desk. I did purchase this fabulous chair from Macy's. I love sitting here in the morning with my cup of coffee and Zach, my cat, will often be in my lap, and we just will watch the morning symphony. I love doing that as a special moment. I have a big CD collection. I love to play my music, but my Bose gets a buzz when I'm playing it if I don't have it kind of located in exactly the right place, and I've been told that was because of the LED circuitry. Lesson learned there. And then this is my bedroom. I'm really glad to have a bedroom rather than a more tiny loft. I can store things up above. Now, Zach loves it because there's a catwalk all the way around, and one of his beds is right up here, so if I'm down here and he doesn't want to join me, he can be up there but still know where I am, or he can go up the ladder that's off the kitchen there, and he has a separate space up there. What I like about this is that it does have a closet. What I don't like about this kind of a bedroom is it's taken me a while to figure out how to change and put the sheets on. So now I'm going to show you the bathroom area and the loft. The other nice thing about my XL is we do have a loft up here, and if I want to go up there, especially if I want to get anything, I just, I can still climb up here and I can get something, and then usually I clear this off and I put it on the refrigerator, and then I come down. Up here, though, is a fold-out. It's a chair, but it also folds out into a bed, but this is sort of my LP collection as well as my LP player. So the loft is really handy. So my bathroom has a full-size vanity. I did add some more lighting because I'm visually impaired and I just need lots of light to be able to see much, and then I'm fortunate to have a bath and shower. I also keep my dirty laundry in there in a basket. That's how you do things around here. This model also came when I bought it with an all-in-one washer dryer. Personally, I don't recommend those, so I took it out in order to be able to have a space for my cat's kitty litter. So welcome to our tiny tranquility garden. This is a 4,000 square foot greenhouse. We're really lucky to have it. It is maintained by the folks in the community. Totally volunteer, totally optional. This is an area I spend a lot of time in, mostly in the fall and the spring, and then some other gardeners come in and do a lot of the growing in the summer. This is our centerpiece, and it's designed to attract a lot of pollinators. I kind of came involved in the greenhouse because someone with a lot of expertise was moving out of tiny tranquility, and folks were kind of freaking out, and I said, well, okay, I know how to organize. And then I decided to enroll in the Oregon State University Extension's Master Gardener program, which I had always wanted to do and had never had time to do. We have an herb bed. We do a lot of kale and Swiss chard, strawberries. This is a red acre cabbage that I just think is gorgeous. Some folks don't really want to do any gardening, but they decided to add some artwork, and another group decided to put the banners up to add some color. When folks say, well, I'm not a gardener, and I say, well, just start where you are or adopt a plant, and we'll help support you. This is one of the most wonderful things that will always stay with me, even if I decide to go somewhere else, is the experience of community that a garden can bring. So what tiny tranquility means to me and what it has brought to my life, I really have appreciated, one, having a greenhouse to cultivate my own food. I had a stroke two years ago, and so it made me really radically think about my diet and get serious about it. The other is I really appreciate the emphasis on sustainable living. And since moving to this area of the coast, I've really discovered I'm what I would call a joiner. I really get involved in the community, because life here in my tiny is very efficient. I feel like I can spend much more of my time and energy out involved in the community. So that's been a new realization for me. Maybe it's just part of quote-unquote retirement. I don't know. It's great to have that kind of ability to pursue things that give me joy, and music gives me joy, performance, the arts, learning about marine life and what it is to live on the coast. Any one of those things and being a master gardener are a lifelong passion and pursuit, and I'm a lifelong learner. It's just brought up a whole part of me that I didn't have time for, I guess, or make time for when I was working. Thanks for watching this week's episode. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Please make sure to like, share, and subscribe, and I will see you soon with another unique home tour.