Aging Gracefully in a Tiny Home - Main Floor Murphy Bed + Bathtub

I chose tiny home living because essentialism is my nature. I chose clever because it's beautiful, it's spacious, it's me. My name's Brad. Come and check out my tiny home. The dimensions are, by my foot measurement, it's eight feet wide and it's 28 feet long. In terms of dimensions and layout, I wasn't looking for size as much as I was looking at the functional usability of the space and then the beauty of it. So beauty and function are super, super important to me. So you can see here with all the light surfaces, there's a feeling of spaciousness. There's a utility in terms of using all this space and then all this space, which other tiny homes did not offer. And then just the flow of the design where we have the living area over on one end, the kitchen area in the center, and then over on the back end is the bathroom area, which is also absolutely gorgeous. I'm going to show you that later. It's my little jungle. Welcome to my kitchen. It's so beautiful and awesome. I love this whole sink area, especially this faucet. Just the design of it is beautiful. It's functional. There are various attachments to the sink. It's a huge farm sink. Over here we have the prep area and then we have an induction cooktop. So what's so convenient about using the kitchen space is that I have my spices right here. I have my oils up here. So this is what's great about tiny home living is that everything is within arm's length, especially having long arms like I have. As you can see, there is ample space for storing your kitchen stuff. I have lived in a lot of different types of homes, you know, conventional single family homes, and it didn't have this much counter space. So here in this 220 square foot area, it is the most functional kitchen, I mean, like restaurant quality that I've ever worked in. And it's also beautiful and it's coarse. So it's hard to mess up. When it came time to choose like, do I want an oven here? Do I want space to put my one saucepan in my wok? I opted for the latter because that's what works for me. I've been cooking for 50 years. I know what I need. The other thing has to do with like energy use. If I'm not going to use an oven, but someone else may use an oven, why would I choose an oven that I'm not going to use for resale value? Because when I was looking at other houses, that was one of the first questions like, oh, what do you think about the next person who's going to buy it? Like, I don't think about the next person who's going to buy it because no one else is going to buy it. This is my home that I'm going to live in until I don't live anymore. The other thing that's so great about this kitchen is this. So there are windows right next to the countertop. I have never been in a kitchen where almost the entire area, so this is around eight feet long, is illuminated by natural light. So just the joy of cooking, which I have in my heart, I get to look out and see greenery. And if I crouch down a little bit, then I can see some mountains. This is like one of the greatest features compared to other tiny homes that I looked at. They do not have all of this natural light right on top of where it needs to be most, which in my view, which needs to be the kitchen. The other thing I was considering when I looked at other tiny homes was scale. If there's an enormous refrigerator in a tiny home, it seems that it's off scale and that doesn't work for me just in terms of aesthetics. And in terms of functionality, this refrigerator is the perfect size. The freezer is a little bit larger than I really need, but it's not too much larger like a conventional refrigerator. One of the first things I do when I set up a kitchen is to create an area for composting and recycling and actual waste products. I am happy to report that after a month, this is filled mainly with plastic wrapping. It takes a month to fill one bag. I have a bag that's a paper bag to put in paper products. So what I love to do with composting is I take my food waste, chop them up small, and I take it outside and then I have a composting area outside that works really great. I've been cooking for many, many years. I used to work in restaurants as a cook and I found that everything that is provided here in the Clever-S is what I need from space, lighting, accessibility of the things that I need. My refrigerator is over here. My knives are down here. My range is right here. My fan goes out. It's awesome. It's everything that I want. It's everything that I need and it's beautiful to boot. So what's great about the way this tiny home is in terms of its rectangular size is that there are little transition points. So over here is the kitchen and then right here demarcates the transition. We have these nice wood hues and then you can see in what I've chosen here it feels like the living room. So we've got some artwork. We have a lamp. So what's really cool about this transition spot is its usability as a desk area. Ostensibly there can be a chair here. I don't want a chair because I like to work standing up but down here there is storage where I have my remote controls. I have books there. I have my journals there and here's a little tip that I thought of just by needing something to step on because I don't have a stool and I don't have a chair. This is my box with all the files in it that I use. So everything is organized that way. So all I have to do is take this over if I want to reach up here. So I step on it carefully on the edges and then you can see that this is now a stool and then I put it back. And then I like that it's out of the view plane and it's out of the way because I just can't imagine unless I have a round stool something with a back would interrupt the line here. Welcome to the space that's many spaces. So you can see just right away that it's a greenhouse. So we have very happy plants here. The next thing you can see it's like the cozy zone with all these pillows. The next thing that you can see is that it's also the storage zone. So we have one, two, three, four areas to put to store things in and the areas are they this is around six feet long goes back around three feet. So you have a very deep area to store stuff. I like to eat on the ground. I like to hang out on the ground. So it really works well for me to have this beautiful cozy wool freeform rug here which breaks up all the angularity and all the rectangles and the squares. So you can see rectangle square square square. And then the other thing that I've done intentionally is to get textured fabrics that kind of soften the sharpness of this place. The other thing is a cute little cozy tuck away zones. Over there is a place where you can put your drinks and there's a USB port over there tucked next to the Murphy bed. So when you're sitting in bed you have a place to put let's say you're drinking some tea or something else. Right over there where I'm pointing is where my TV screen is. So I don't have to be looking at it and I don't like I'm never like looking at TVs anyway. If I want to have this theater experience totally can have it right. We have a cute little area. I can make it dark put the TV up soundbar out. No problem. Remember it's 220 square feet. It's not a long walk to get my soundbar over there on top of my refrigerator. The Murphy bed is just the most amazing feature ever because you don't even see it. There's a handle that you'll see that suggests like oh maybe it's a big closet. So when I pull down the Murphy bed the production is it takes maybe two minutes. Say good night to the plants. Put down the Murphy bed. The Murphy bed's already made so it's really the most genius invention ever a Murphy bed. And this by the way this is I love one of the many many things I love about Clever is that this is not a piece of crap plywood Murphy bed. It is substantial and it's queen size. So what I love about the Murphy bed is that it disappears whereas in other conventional houses there's a bedroom and how much of the time is spent in the bedroom is spent with the eyes closed right like eight hours with your eyes closed and then all that space that could be used for something else. So this space is used for a lot of other things and it also happens to double as a bedroom. So it's no hassle whatsoever to be pulling down a Murphy bed at all and making it no hassle. And let's say you're too lazy like oh my god I'm so lazy or I'm running late. You know what's great about a Murphy bed? You just put it up and you don't have to look at the mess. This is one of the greatest things about the Clever model. It's not made to have areas that you have visible clutter. Everything has a place and a place for everything as that saying goes. So the same thing goes for this Murphy bed. No hassle. Very easy. High quality. You can have a mess in your bed. You know pillows and sheets and blankets everywhere. No problem. Out of sight. Another great feature of this awesome tiny home is all this storage space. I got my sweaters up there. I got my pants up there and way at the top I have things that I don't use often. Here is a place where you can hang your clothes. So we got the hangers with the shirts and stuff in here. I like everything to be artistically beautiful. So I pull open a drawer and just the way the things are organized is beautiful and you can see what kind of clothes you have. I can see all my t-shirts in this one. So the other thing is when dressing it's important to have like a table or a counter area right. So oh god I wish I had that. Well yes I do. It's right over here. Then you have a mirror right here if you want to look at your ensemble your outfit. As we go back from this cozy big embrace zone to this open space. So I'm a yoga instructor and a person who likes to move around a lot so I can do my qigong here. I can do my yoga asanas here as I put my arms out reach up sun salutation. I have the space to do that here. I can roll out my yoga mat. It can fit here if I want to do yoga inside. And so what I like to have in my spaces in which I live are this indoor outdoor interplay. So here we have another greenhouse area just like in our little banquette seating area. So I chose to use this space which is the wheel well. Use that as a plant shelf and then it has sacred objects and beautiful objects that I've collected over the years. When I first got this it was all a blank canvas and the house kind of spoke to me like oh what would you like to have here. It's like plants. This could be used to put a table and things like that but I don't want to compromise this open space feeling. This place is like healthy lungs. Lots of space to breathe and a lot of open circulation and it's totally awesome. I chose to go tiny because I'm 63 years old and as a part of the aging process rather than adding more aging gracefully is about subtraction not addition. I had done my research online, forums, YouTube videos. Research is visual and mental. So there are trade-offs of just living life visually and mentally. I needed to walk inside and feel what it was like. So I went to a tiny home festival in San Jose about a year ago. I spent at least 10 minutes in each tiny home talking with whoever the rep was or the builder was and I knew just like you do on a good blind date or one that's not so great. I knew right away this one was for me this one was not for me. When I walked into the Clever Tiny Home I'd already spoken with Jonathan and just about what philosophy led them to build this which was the housing shortage. Jonathan's heart was in the right place. In the end my decision was not based on what my thinking was. My decision was based on my feeling in the space. What I came across when I was doing my research for tiny home living was where are you going to park this thing? I had an idea. I had a dream. I had a dream 20 years ago to find land in which to create a wellness and retreat center. I had this cowboy mentality that oh I want my 20 acres and I can go live out there with the land and be friends with the birds and the wildlife and all that. Grizzly Adams kind of thing. And after looking at all the regulations and the environmental impact it was just not it didn't feel right to me. Then I thought okay then where are you going to put your tiny home? And then I looked to see what place had all the regulations in place so I didn't have to worry about that. As it turned out there was one in Desert Hot Springs called Paradise Tiny Homes and I thought oh paradise really? I said that name we'll see if it lives up to its name. And as soon as I got here and talked with Jonathan the property manager I was just like yes to this place. Another factor to consider with tiny home living are the expenses. Here at Paradise Tiny Home Community what's great is that they have a flat rate. $300 for unlimited use of electricity, water, sewer, etc. With this system here you can run your air conditioner all day and it's going to cost $300 for all utilities. Why is that? Because we're not on county water this is well water and there's a solar farm that powers the whole community. The lot space itself has a particular fee. It ranges here from $495 to $895. What I want to do eventually is go off-grid so what happens when you do transition to off-grid here then you don't pay that $300 per month fee. So the other financial considerations to keep in mind are how much does a tiny home cost, how much does it cost to move it, how is it going to be moved, etc. So what was great about Clever Tiny Homes is that they as one company takes care of all of that with you. Not for you but with you. So they have a financer called 21st Mortgage that they work with to get you a loan. For those of you who don't want to pay the $80,000 that it costs for a Clever S when I bought it it was $10,000 less so it was $70,000. I did go through financing. Currently I don't make enough monthly salary to be paying you know a $2,000 a month mortgage or to be paying a $1,500 a month rent. So my loan with 21st Mortgage, that mortgage payment, monthly mortgage payment is, drum roll please, $650. That's it and that's with 20% down. I looked at tiny homes again for many many months. I looked at a lot of factors. This place is still a steal. For what you get, for the high-end materials, it's totally worth it. Actually it's above value for me. And having lived here, I haven't lived here for a long time, but having lived here I just appreciate every little fine appointment here. Again I'm 63 years old. In the past 40 years I've lived in a lot of different places but $650 is what I pay now in 2025 for a mortgage for this beautiful house. Welcome to my greenhouse spa. It was really important for me in a bathroom to have one main feature which is a window. So we have this huge window over here that's frosted for privacy and you can see here a beautiful sink that's mounted on top of the counter which is great because there are times that I wash my feet in here and I just love that. There's there are not many other types of bathrooms where I can wash my feet in here. What I really love about this is the feature of this quartz countertop is echoed in the bathroom like it is in the kitchen. There's mixed media appointments here. A mixture of black, white and wood. And then there's a combination of an open space for storage and then there's three huge spaces also for storage. In addition another thing that I wanted huge medicine cabinets. So this is five feet long and three feet tall. I don't wear makeup but if you wear makeup or if you have a lot of things that are in your bathroom that you think you're not going to be able to have in a tiny home, think again because this bathroom is actually one of the nicest bathrooms that I've been in any home, in any high-end hotel, low-end hotel. It has everything that I would want. Another important feature to have in a bathroom for me was to have it as far from the other living spaces as possible. I mean ideally I would want to have like a bathhouse situation where the house itself didn't have a bathroom in it. However this is the best compromise about that because it is at the far end of the house as far from the sleeping area as possible which I really love. And also in terms of the design it's not great to have people walk through your your bedroom to go into your bathroom. So let's say someone walks in the door they just take a quick right and then the bathroom is here and it's far away from the other living spaces. So for those that are self-conscious about bathroom sounds it's like it's totally cool. We have a pocket door here. You have total privacy with the frosted windows. You have it far away. And the other thing that's super key is the size of a bathroom. I do not want to have this cramped feeling inside of a bathroom so walking in this bathroom is actually an uplifting and spacious feeling. One other thing on my wish list for a bathroom was to have a bathtub and this is a huge bathtub which you do not find in tiny homes much at all. Especially tiny homes that are 220 square feet like this one is. I don't take a bath in my plants usually so the plants that you see in there now I take them out. The actual construction of it it's a vinyl tub. Easy to clean. It's light and it feels sturdy. The height of the tile in the tub is all the way it's 10 feet up. What I love about the hexagonal black feature is that there's a sense of coziness. It's like the spa experience. Overall the vibe of my bathroom is just a bunch of thumbs up because I have the storage space. I have the beauty. I have the circulation from the window. I have a bathtub and I have high ceilings and it's beautiful. Hey who likes doing laundry? I do. I do. Who likes looking at their laundry machines? Most people don't. So another great feature of the clever tiny home design is that there's a nook right here where the washer and dryer can go. So I got a stackable one. Sometimes you see in tiny homes there's an all-in-one. I did a lot of research about price about whether it works or not. I opted for a stackable and the way that again the genius clever designers that it's the perfect height to have a stackable. Behind my stackable washer dryer is actually an air purifying system. Next to the air purifying system is this split. So it's the perfect design in the sense if you walk in you're not seeing a washer dryer. Let's say that a lot of washer dryer problems are like where do you put your stuff to fold after it comes out of the dryer. Well you have a 12-foot countertop y'all that's not cluttered with your toaster oven and your air fryer and your crock pot. So you take it straight off from your dryer and you go right over there to where your clothes are going to end up anyway in your closet area. I mean it's genius. What I love about this design is that it creates a transition zone just like that transition zone on the other side from the kitchen to the cozy zone. We have a transition zone to the bathroom provided by the refrigerator nook and the washer dryer nook. If I were to choose one word that describes this whole tiny living it's actually the name of my tiny home because I like to name homes. It gives them more of a personal feeling and that word is santosha. Santosha is a sanskrit word that has a lot of definitions interpretations and meanings. One of the main meanings of santosha is peace and within peace is expansive not expensive expansive beauty. So to live a life in a place a dwelling that is peaceful brings peace to my heart it brings peace to my mind and it brings peace to everyone with whom I come into contact because I'm at peace literally and figuratively. I'm at peace. I live in peace and peace to all. Thanks for joining me on the tiny home tour of my Clever S. I definitely want to give a shout out to Clever S for creating such a beautiful space for me to live in and also big shout out to Paradise Tiny Home Community where I ended up landing this beautiful tiny home with these beautiful views. I really feel super blessed and happy to be here.