Single Mom + 2 young sons live in stunning Tiny Home & farm

I would definitely highly recommend Tiny House Living for a single mom. It's allowed me to have so much more time with my boys. I have a lovely deep bath. That was for me, not my kids. So here's my bedroom. It's super cozy. As you can tell, I'm a little squished, but I mostly just use it for sleeping. And this is the crown jewel of the tiny house. Hi, my name is Charisse. This is my tiny house, and I share this house with my two boys, George and Frankie, and our dog Sarge. My life before moving into a tiny house was quite different. I was married 15 years, and I was a stay-at-home mom. My ex-husband chose not to be married to me anymore, so I had to kind of reinvent myself. I had been ruminating off and on about a tiny house for years, and this just seemed like to be one of the best paths for us. We had the shell built by a local company, Carriage House Northwest, and I was able to design my own tiny house, a house that would work best for me and two boys. I hired contractors to help finish it, and then a lot of the work was done by friends and family. And so I feel like it's a love letter to us with all the love and care that's gone into it. Good job, Batman. If I'm remembering correctly, the shell was about $50,000. The rest of it was about $25,000 to $30,000. I was able to save costs by getting laminate flooring from Marketplace, getting a lot of stuff used and so forth. So I tried to be really creative, if you will, with sourcing materials. I think probably the average house here is like a minimum of $700,000, so there's absolutely no way I could ever afford that. I work part-time as a nanny and a bookkeeper, and so the tiny house has given me the opportunity to raise my boys in a beautiful environment and a location I could never afford otherwise. This is our tiny house. We have all named the tiny house with our silly names, and our tiny house's name is Daisy Troll Charlie. These are my lovely boys, and they're both silly goosey geeses. No, I'm not. He's not. This is George. George is seven, and this is Frankie. Frankie's five. Our tiny house measures about 40 feet in length, 11 in width, and then 14 feet in height, so I got it as large as possible that's road safe. We live in Duval, which is a gorgeous little town east of Seattle, and we have friends from our church who have leased us two acres with multiple gardens, chickens, bees, all that kind of stuff, and they can just go play out in the woods and have fun, and I don't have to worry about them. So for hookups, I have water from the city. We do not have septic, so we have a composting toilet. I do not have a direct electrical hookup. Our neighbors, they have been letting us use their power. A very, very low wattage, but it gets us done. That's pretty much the outside of our house, and here's the inside. Come on in. This is my tiny house. It's a bit larger than most tiny houses. This is a lovely garland I made last fall. The base is from cress, so I just dried it and twisted it, and it was a perfect base. A lot of it is foraged, but some of it I grew. I like to implement flowers as much as I can. This was my little attempt to bring flowers in our house. Here is our kitchen. I absolutely love to bake and cook, and this is the crown jewel of the tiny house, this beautiful gas range. Here's some produce from our little homestead. We have some beets. We have some potatoes, garlic, shallots, eggs, obviously. So these actually live edge shelves I made myself. I got from a local gentleman who sells live edge. Installed them myself as well, which involved possibly lots of cursing. A friend of mine is a contractor, and so I was able to get solid wood, which I was really excited about, and I went with a lighter toned wood because it's a tiny house, and I wanted it to be as light as possible. And these lovely ladies here I special ordered on Etsy. Cold-plated agate. They're all the way from Australia. We're able to have room for a little pantry here. This is the world's most adorable fridge. So teeny tiny. And I have showcased a lot of my food because I think food is so pretty. So I have a lot of my dried food there, and then over there I have a whole bunch of spices. I do not have a dishwasher. I opted for more cupboard space, and that's totally fine. The tiling I actually had a friend help me do, and she got me started, and I wanted to go for a very neutral aesthetic, if you will, again because tiny house, I don't really like clutter. I like more of the minimalistic look. Here's my bathroom, and this is a lovely sliding door with actual hardwood that a friend's dad made for me as a gift. So that was very kind of him, and it's absolutely lovely. Having little boys and being a single mom is very important for me to be able to have somewhat of a private space, if you will, but it really doesn't help. It doesn't. Ma'am, are you pooping? Anyways, here's the bathroom. I absolutely love our bathroom. This is a lovely wallpaper from Etsy, and I really wanted to kind of have that Pacific Northwest boho style, if you will. And then I have a lovely deep bath. That was for me, not my kids. They do enjoy it, but I am a huge bath person, and it's just a great inexpensive source of therapy when you're a single parent or even just a parent of young children. I made this shelf as well, and the rocks I've collected from different beaches throughout the Pacific Northwest. I'm the one who's collecting all the rocks when I go to the beach, not my kids. So when I do the laundry, I always have to make sure I empty my pockets better than my children. So yes, I was definitely meant to be a little boy mom. We do have a composting toilet. That's why we're able to live on the property here because they do not have septic. I also have a wee washer and dryer. That's what's hidden behind here. So I don't actually have enough power for the dryer currently. So I haven't had a dryer in two years, which has been delightful with small children, but we've made it work. Summer's not bad. Winter, we just have clothes drying all over the place, and that's just how it is. It's a busy house with little kids, and it's going to be messy, and that's okay. And the washer's right here. And then all the tiling I did in here myself. I'd never done tiling before, and I had a friend come and show me how to do it, and she lent me her tile saw. So I have learned so many new skills that I never thought I would, but I'm very grateful for that. Here is our little dining room. My auntie and I made this table together. These table legs, I glued dowel rods on them. So I got that fluted look, not for like $5,000. So I was very happy about that. And we have seating for six people. I got these lovely bar stools off Marketplace, and the boys helped me paint them. They had orange paint on them, possibly for a week later, but they had fun. So this is good. I got this lovely chandelier off Amazon. I think it was like a used one for $40, so I was very proud of myself for that. And it's just really light and not gaudy, and just, again, minimalistic. And then I use a special paint, paint the walls. It's called Lime Wash, not toxic at all. And it can kind of give you an unique textured look, if you will. When I was designing the tiny house, I was also warned that you don't want too many windows, because you're not going to have enough wall space. So I tried to include as many windows as possible, with also being somewhat conservative, to maintain some wall space. And I actually got almost all of these from like some gal off Marketplace. Apparently, her husband thought she had a plant addiction. So I was helping a girl out and taking these off her hands for a really good deal. And then coming into my living room, it is a lovely size for a tiny house. And I'm so grateful. And I hope to keep this couch as long as I can, because it's so lovely. So here's storage for linen. And then it also actually folds out into a queen-size bed. And it's quite comfy. And sometimes we have movie nights here, and it's so cozy. I homeschool my boys. So I just got this off Marketplace. And it just pops open right here. So we have a lot of our homeschool, excuse me, goodies in there. Baskets in here. Let's see, like for example, here's all the delightful plastic cars. I don't want to see those all the time. I don't want to step on them. I made this little shelf right here. And it's a wee bit crooked, and that's okay. And then I have my Samsung TV frame, which I absolutely adore. I was able to get it on a killer sale. And it's meant to be aesthetically pleasing. And clearly, I have an interest in things being aesthetically pleasing. So it's kind of meant to be dual purpose art as well as function. So here's my bedroom. It's super cozy. As you can tell, I'm a little squished, but I mostly just use it for sleeping. So that's great. The highest point, it's about four feet in height, all considering for a tiny house loft. It is pretty spacious. This is actually a king size bed. I wanted for my boys to feel comforted and able to snuggle with their mom anytime they want. I was able to get storage here. I think I have plenty of room for clothes, and I could probably get rid of clothes. I made this bookshelf myself, and I have all of my books ordered in a beautiful rainbow tone. And then I have more storage and baskets here. I feel like I have plenty of room for all I need up here. And then we also have the two skylights, which of course makes it more open and spacious. And I can look at the stars every night when I go to sleep. So that is such a treat. This is my bed, and this is Frankie's bed. These are our stuffed animals on our bed. I like about sleeping in here, it's so comfy. We both have two pillows. That is where we keep our clothes. We like to build Legos here, build train tracks. I have so much gratitude. When I walk in my home, I just look all around and see all the different projects that friends, family have worked on and how people gave their time to bless me and the boys in the most difficult time of our life. I would definitely highly recommend tiny house living for a single mom. I was able to pay off my tiny house, so I own the tiny house outright. It's allowed me to have so much more time with my boys instead of working 40 hours a week. I think it allows the opportunity to have a lot more quality time with your kids before they go off and do their own thing. I do not have the intention of living in a tiny house. When my boys are teenagers, they're seven and five, so we have some time. It's helped them kind of focus on more important things such as not being so materialistic and being able to just be outside in nature. One of my main priorities was it to be a safe place after a couple years of just a lot of pain and heartbreak and disappointment. It's very cathartic to be able to create a space and see your dreams come to life. 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.