Tiny Home Living at 51 - The Unfiltered Truth

Super excited to be able to do this and experience this, especially being at 51. Not many people are gonna be able to experience something like this. Hey, I'm Eric. Come and check out my tiny house. So we just came through the front door. Now we're in the kitchen area. I would probably say the space is adequate. Sometimes I need a little bit more space. What's kind of cool about this particular setup, the rack opens up and I can put a cutting board here and it extends the working space, which has really been helpful. And even with the cutting board, sometimes I'll even put it on the stove and then use it as a working space. I use this all the time. I make breakfast. I'm a breakfast person. Love my eggs. Love the little stove. Works out really great. Got a little vent. I use my pressure cooker a lot. That is a huge item that everyone should have living in a tiny home. You can make so many dishes in a pressure cooker. It's the microwave of tiny homes. I don't like using microwaves and the pressure cooker is, that's the go-to. I mean, I don't really cook like maybe the average person. So it's not like I'm cooking crazy meals. The only thing I did get rid of was my juicer, but I've got a high-powered blender that works pretty well too. So I really don't need a juicer anymore. I might end up getting a little bit more of a simplistic juicer than what I had before. It's just the breakdown of those things are kind of a pain about to clean. That's the negative of having a tiny home off-grid because I only have 50 gallons of water so I can wash so much. I don't think I'm losing out on anything as far as cooking meals. And again, the microwave is probably the biggest thing that might be hard for some people. But once you learn to live without it, it's just, you don't miss it. That's with anything. I mean, in general, when you live in a specific way, then you learn to adapt to it like anything else. There's actually a lot of storage underneath, which I wasn't expecting under this particular sink. I don't feel like I'm having to go shopping more. Plus I do have an outside area where I do keep more food, which keeps pretty well. I've got Spam in there and I've got tomato sauce in 100 plus degrees weather in the summertime. And I have not gotten sick on eating that stuff. But storage is pretty adequate in here. As long as you know how to organize things, it's not that hard. I mean, you can manage. The kitchen feels pretty efficient. It'd be nice to have a little bit slightly bigger kitchen. But again, you just adapt to it. I really don't need anything bigger. And it's kind of one of those things where once you adjust, you just learn and you just kind of work with what you have. I lived in a van for a year and a half. So this is actually pretty immense compared to what I had before. I didn't really have anywhere to prep. If you go to the other side, people that have big kitchens, that's been more of a mess, more to maintain, more to have to worry about. So it's just it's all about simplicity. This is the living space. This is one of my favorite spots right here. This is the bump out. So you pay a little extra for this, which I totally love. In hindsight, I wish I would have went with a bigger bump out, which is almost like a room, which would be super cool. I would love to have a super nice lounge area. But this is cool. I totally dig it. This is where I spend a lot of time, even in my condo. When I lived in a condo, I sat on my couch like we all do. You don't need a big house. We all go to our little spot. This is my little spot. These windows are not tinted. So I get nice, good natural light. That one's not tinted as well. Rest of the windows in the house are tinted, which is really nice to have, especially in a tiny home. You want to try to keep it as cool as possible. As far as living space, when I initially was looking online, you don't really think, well, at least I didn't personally didn't think of, oh, I figured eight by 20. That's a lot of room. After living in a van, it seemed like a lot of room. But then, you know, once you kind of put in a couch, a water cooler, you know, shoe rack, things kind of get smaller. But again, it all goes kind of boils down to your one little seating area. Even if you're in a big house, you're going to end up sitting in one little spot. So you don't really need a big house for all this stuff. You really don't need. The main thing to kind of focus, too, is you want to be outside, too. You want to kind of focus not just inside. You want to be outside and grounding your feet and filling that dirt on your feet, which feels really nice. In the summertime, I cook outside because it's too hot. In the wintertime, I cook inside so it warms up the place. You can entertain in a space like this. I actually had my family. We're going to start doing it from now on in October. We're going to have a little October get together. It's tight, but you can, it's doable. And again, you can kind of, now that I have my nice deck, you can go outside, inside, and have a fun little experience. As far as storage, I keep my clothes in these two drawers. As a matter of fact, when they were building this, they actually called me and said, hey, we're so sorry. The height of the couch is a little bit higher than we thought anticipated with the drawers. I go, hey, no problem. Keep it like that. I'll take the drawers. I'll deal with the height. I know I'm short. My legs will pop up when I'm sitting down. I'm OK with that. Got to have drawers. As far as hanging clothes, that's kind of a difficult thing. I'm going to eventually have something installed up there at the end of the foot of the bed that's an L, using the galvanized plumbing. Super easy. Paint it black. And whatever clothes is going to go up there has to be nice looking and not just like whatever because it's going to be part of the tiny home, you know? Got my shoes over here. Baby dog is over here. So she has her little spot. Coat rack. I love this cute little coat rack, all natural wood. Initially, when I had designed everything, you kind of fall in love with the idea of having a wood stove. I mean, it's just beautiful. You go online and go, oh man, a wood stove. But in reality, do you really want to get up early in the morning and get that fire going and get that stove going? Maybe on the weekend if you have time and you're not feeling too lazy. But you really want to have a mini split no matter what. And that was obviously the plan. I did have that mini split. They roughed it in. I wish I would have had them put it in initially, but I was just spending so much money on everything else. Might spent close to $5,000 on the stainless steel wood fire stove, which is a beautiful stove and I love it. I wish I really would like to put it in here. But it just takes up too much space in reality. And this one little chair is nice because when you have company over, you got to have somewhere else to sit besides the couch. I kind of regret that. I would have put that money towards the washer dryer unit and having them put in the actual mini split instead. It would have been better use of money to have done that instead. The overall comfort from being and living in a tiny home, it depends on the person. I mean, this is not for everyone. For me, I love it. I'm not sure if it's my forever home. But for now, I'm enjoying this process. At night, when I can look up at these tall windows and look at the stars in almost every direction, and I put my little ambient lighting on, I have some nice music. I mean, man, this is pretty not a bad place to be. I'm very fortunate to have this experience. Why did I buy a tiny house? Living in a condo for 13 years, I think I was ready for something different. I wasn't really planning on this move into a piece of dirt. And one of my buddies had bought a piece of property here in Owonga. And I'm like, where's Owonga? I had no idea where this place was. I started looking and I'm like, let's just buy a piece of dirt and we'll figure it out. That's just kind of how I am. I don't really plan, which is a good and bad thing. And I just decided once I sell the condo, I'll figure out as far as I'm going to live in when I move out here, which became pretty stressful. And I ended up buying a Sprinter and lived in that for a year and a half. I was going to do a yurt, but things kind of changed in the process. And I decided to buy a tiny home instead. I looked up tiny homes in Oregon and Trueform, I think was the first one I found. And I kind of stuck with it. I stuck with that. After I made that phone call to Micah, I just felt compelled and like, okay, I'm sticking with this company. I liked the way he was dealing with me and felt very comfortable with him. When you're working with a tiny home builder like that, and boy, being new to it myself, I kind of just like, I just do whatever. And my friend Mary's like, you know, you got to sit down and really pick stuff out. So Micah navigates you through the website and they have like three different models that I was kind of checking out in this particular size. The process was pretty easy. Obviously, the more things you pick out, the more expensive it's going to be. But one of the most important things that I just do not regret at all is putting the Victron system in for the solar. So now I'm, I don't like to say off-grid, but I'm off-grid as far as with my power. I've got nine panels hooked up and I totally love that. The cost of the tiny home, I'm trying to remember the exact cost, it was about one, I think 75. I put 20,000 down or 19,000 down approximately. It's hard to give you some really good numbers as far as the expense living in a condo versus tiny home because the initial setup and getting the land prepped and getting solar installed and building decks, what is expensive? I mean, everything is definitely pretty costly. So I used a big chunk of what was left on the cell of my condo to buy this wood and have heavy machinery come in here and clean some stuff up. But as far as the monthly, once everything is kind of set in place, it is a lot less expensive to live like this. The average place now is about 2,500-ish. I mean, my mortgage here is 15. My Sprinter is nine. So that compares to someone paying for a condo essentially. And I have a tiny home and a cool Sprinter. Lots of unexpected expenses. Septic could be something. When you're buying a dry piece of land like this, there's a special assessment tax that pays for the roads, the schools. That's about $17,000 just for that. Land prep, that could be huge just to get some tractors. Luckily, my neighbor has tractors, so that was super cheap for me. But that could be a huge expense for someone. Prior to him, I had some people come and it was like 3,500 bucks just to prep this little tiny area right here. And that's actually pretty cheap compared to what it could have cost. Someday getting water up here from my lower plot to here, that could be $15,000. To get power from a power pole to here is $22,000. That was a recent survey and they gave me a price on it. But you need a permit to get that process rolling. So that's why I'm on solar. Do I think tiny homes are a realistic solution for affordable housing? I guess it kind of depends. That's an open-ended question. If you have a friend that has property and you can just plop one down, yes. Parents, if they have a spot, oh definitely. But if you have to buy a piece of land, this property alone costs $187,000. Now it's 20 acres. I don't need 20 acres, but I bought it for the location. I'm 3,000 feet elevation. I'm right smack in front of a big mountain, Palomar. That's a tough one. It's cheaper for the tiny home itself, but where are you going to put it at that point? There are a lot of parks in the area that will charge you about $800 to $1,200 a month on a monthly plot. So if you can swing that, or if you have cash to pay for a tiny home, then yeah, that would be a great way to go. If you're a couple, you can knock it out pretty fast. So now we're in the back of the tiny house. We're in the three-foot bathroom. When you're designing it, you do get the option of a five-foot bathroom with this particular model. I decided to go with three-foot. I didn't want to not have that extra two-foot in the living space in the bathroom area. It would be nice to have a five-foot bathroom, but I'd rather have it in the living space. It makes a huge difference. One of my favorite things is the tiled shower. Even though it's small, I love it. Water's nice and hot. Got plenty of room in there compared to living in the van. I was really getting tired of that after a while. Has the cute little sink over here. Toilet's right here, composting toilet. That works pretty good. Change it like every two weeks on the bag. Just be careful if you use composting bags. Don't let it go over those two weeks. Bag will fall apart. I think it's gross. As far as that, it's got a little ventilation van. You want to make sure you keep that moisture out. The biggest thing with these showers is this is such an enclosed little area with the glass. It will mildew in there, so you need to wipe this glass down, turn the vent on, and just leave the door cracked. That's all you need to do. You'll never get a mildew smell. Of course, keep it clean. But if you don't do that, you will get that mildew smell pretty fast. I do have these little incense matches that I like to light. I set them in this little fire pit thingy, which kind of makes it nice. So we're in the loft in the bedroom. I chose to go with a, I think this is a six or eight inch mattress. I did originally have a bigger one, and it was just a little bit too much. I'm about five foot nine on a good day. When you pop up, you don't want to hit your head on the ceiling. So if you're six foot tall, it might be a little tough for you. I totally love this little space. It is such a comfortable, neat little place to just kind of chill out. I have a little access roof here that pops open that at night in the summertime, it just releases all the hot air, which makes a tremendous difference in a tiny little space like this. The negative part is it also brings in a lot of hot air. So I usually keep a towel over here that covers the sun. Again, the windows are tinted here, but the wind flow, I mean, you can open this window, this window, and this window on a summer day, and it just, the wind just pushes through here. Luckily, being at this 3,000 feet elevation, I get really nice nights up here. I've got my little workstation here. I thought I would use it more, but I don't, because I have a hard time sitting Indian style for too long of a period. I'm just not as flexible, but I still like this. I don't regret having this specially built, the little table. I put my laundry basket under there. It fits perfect in there. It's a nice little usable space. The negatives on living up in a loft like this, sleeping up here, is when you get out of bed, you have to go to the bathroom late at night. That's a little bit of a tough walk down those stairs. They're very narrow. I think about when I walk down those stairs, because you don't want to fall off those things. You have any kind of issues with your back. It's a little tough sometimes, but it's just part of the deal. It would be kind of nice, you know, if that bump out was the bedroom, but this way I'd have it set up. But again, you know, as we get older, it's good to challenge yourself. So maybe this is actually better, because we all say, oh, I don't want to walk on stairs. Well, maybe stairs is good for you, because it helps that muscle memory of reacting on how to walk down a stair, and that kind of sounds ridiculous. But the more you challenge your body, maybe it is better for you, even though it doesn't seem like it is comfortable. You need to get out of your comfort zone. The overall feel, I can't say enough how much I love the skate patch, I call it. That is by far one of my favorites, and even the windows, because when I go to bed at night, it doesn't matter what direction I look out, I'm seeing stars. I get to see the sunrise. I mean, the sun is going down on one end, right? And then the moon's coming up. I've never experienced that in my life. Like, that's something you don't think about. But to experience the moon come up and the sun going down, and you can see it in real time, you can't see that in the city. So for me to experience this in the last couple of years was like, wait a minute, I've never experienced that before. That's kind of cool. So I'm very fortunate. So in closing, thank you for checking out my tiny crib. I'm super excited to be able to do this and experience this, especially being at 51. Not many people are gonna be able to experience something like this. So if it's something you're thinking about, I would truly say, look into it and do some research and get out of your comfort zone. Go out to an Airbnb and rent one and try one for a weekend and see what it's like and try to visualize if you can live in one of these and make it happen. You can check me out on Instagram, ericwheeler53. I'm eventually going to start renting out some campsites, but that's in the future. And thanks for coming and thanks for watching.