She Escaped California Expenses in a Tiny Home

It was pretty dramatic. I was actually in the tiny house at the time, along with my dog. We had to actually call the fire department to get me out. Hi, my name is Rosemary, and I'm very grateful to be living tiny. And I'm even more grateful that I took out a tiny house insurance policy. And I'll tell you why. But first, let's take a tour. Welcome to the Lemon Drop Tiny. She's eight and a half by 24 feet long, roughly 200 square feet, not including the loft. When you first come into the tiny house, there's the galley kitchen. Behind me here is the bathroom with my shower and toilet. And then above that is the storage loft. Then over here is the office slash living room. Above that is my sleeping loft. This is my galley kitchen. What we've got here is my farmhouse sink, which I was definitely wanting a big sink. I have a big countertop, nice and long, plenty of space on my counters. For cooking, I've got my two burner induction stove top, which is great. I've never needed more than two burners at one time. And then my good old toaster oven really kind of does it all. It's got all the functions I need. I decided not to have an oven because I wanted the storage space and I'm not a huge baker. So it just made more sense to have a toaster oven that did most of the functions of an oven. For storage, it's really mostly down here around the sink. And then I have these two upper cabinets here. And I think the one thing that I'm still working on or figuring out is where to put my spices. I'm envisioning a spice cabinet right around here because there's a lot of open space that needs to be utilized. And then behind me, I have under the stairs storage. My pantry is pretty much isolated to this one cabinet. And then I have my laundry is down here. And then I have shoe storage underneath the wheel well entryway. I just have plenty of storage in the house. So I decided to put my fridge under the stairs and that allowed me to have more counter space. And this opening here under the stairs is specifically the size of my fridge, making sure that I'm maximizing the space here. My fridge is, I think, a perfect size for me and my lifestyle. I would say some features that I really love about it are there's a rack for beverages. There's the ability to reposition the shelves at different heights depending on what I'm trying to store. And then my freezer has pullout drawers. If anything, that's a little challenging because I have to figure out how to fit things into the drawers. But I have plenty of space. It's a great fridge. For heating and cooling, I have the mini split heat pump. It's great. If anything, it's maybe a little overkill for the space because the space is small. It can cool and heat a much larger space. But I really love the ease of it. You know, it's operated by this remote here. The compressor is outside. The compressor doesn't make any noise. I never hear it. And it's just really easy to adjust when I need it to. Yeah, it's been really, really worthy investment. The tiny house is actually built with a steel frame. And so I bought both the trailer and the frame from Trailer Made Trailers. I actually designed the frame based on one of their designs. And I kind of tweaked it a little bit. This opening and this wall and then my bathroom wall are steel frame. But then the rest of the plan was open. And it was up to me to decide what I wanted the layout to be and what I wanted it to look like. I remember spending a lot of time figuring out where my electrical outlets were going to go and making sure I had enough electrical outlets. Someone gave me a great tip at the beginning of the design process that was like, just do more outlets than you think you'll need, because it's better to have more than not enough. Just a lot of time thinking about the function of the house and how I wanted to use the space. And that really dictated the layout and the plan for the space. Now that I've lived in the tiny house for a few months, I definitely am very pleased with how I planned the layout of my kitchen. I especially like the fact that the lighting underneath my cabinets allows for plenty of lighting for prep. Generally, I'm just really loving the kitchen and the amount of space it allows me to cook. And yeah, it hasn't been a difficult transition. We're now at the back of the tiny house and this is my bathroom. I definitely didn't need a big bathroom. I really just needed the bare necessities, a shower, toilet, sink. Those are my only requirements. I did want to have a window. And I've got this nice privacy screen to protect me from my neighbors. I would say storage in this bathroom is a bit of a challenge. There's no cabinets to speak of. Everything's just kind of out. So I do have a hanger for my towels here. And then behind me, I have my medicine cabinet, which has pretty limited storage, just a few things in there. I do have additional storage for bathroom items elsewhere in the house. And then I have my closet just right outside of the bathroom. Across from the toilet is my beautiful pink shower. It's about approximately about three feet by three feet. It's pretty small, but it fits me. It's definitely customized to my height. I love it. I'm obsessed with the color pink, as you probably notice touches throughout the house. And I found this tile and just fell in love with it and decided I really wanted to have a tile shower. In terms of the why I decided that this size shower, it really comes down to just what I was able to fit in the space. And it's pretty much just perfect for me to feel comfortable, but not any bigger. So I really wanted a flushing toilet. I decided kind of late in the game that that was the direction that I wanted to go in. But thankfully, hooking up to sewer was not super cost prohibitive. With the layout of the backyard, I was able to hook into the main sewer system of the main house, have a bidet, which is great. And what I'm finding is because my sink is small, I think that is one thing that I'm realizing maybe isn't super functional. So I end up using my kitchen sink a lot for brushing my teeth or washing my face. And it's a little hard to get to it with the toilet being where it is. So that's maybe one thing I would change about the layout of the bathroom. I decided to go tiny because I was living in California at the time and realizing I wasn't going to be able to afford a home. The cost of living was just too high. I'm also just generally a minimalist. And so I found that lifestyle very appealing, just living with less. Those were my main motivators. Portland specifically, you know, I had watched a tiny house documentary and it featured a lot of folks in Portland. That was kind of my first tip off. The more I learned about where folks were that were living in tiny houses, the more I found they were in this area. There was just a really great community of tiny house people up here and a lot of resources, a lot of sharing of information. And so I just felt like this would be the best place for that. My mom and I knew that we wanted to live near each other. Since I already had my tiny house plan in mind, we were able to kind of look for places that we knew it would fit. So we decided that it made the most sense for me to be in the backyard versus, you know, there's a lot of great tiny house communities in this area. It just made a lot of sense to be on the same property. And, you know, a lot of that was financial. We're able to split the mortgage on the house. We're able to split utilities. And I'm just very close, you know, if my mom needs me or vice versa, if I need her, we're just right there. The convenience of it all made a lot of sense. I could have certainly bought a prebuilt home, but I really felt like in order to get everything that I wanted, I was going to have to do it myself. And also I felt like I could save some money by doing it myself. That it didn't end up being the case really, but I still feel like the customization aspect was worth it enough to do it myself. I'm very grateful for what I learned during the process of the construction of the tiny house. I would say that my favorite part was really in the design and the decorating and kind of the little details. That was something fun to learn about myself. I had a tiny house insurance policy for the build. You know, I knew that was going to be important because I was building it myself along with help. And I would say the house was about 80% done and there was an accident or we had a big windstorm in January of 2024 and a neighbor's tree actually fell on the tiny house and caused extensive damage to the roof and compromised really the whole structure. It was pretty dramatic. I was actually in the tiny house at the time along with my dog. We had to actually call the fire department to get me out because the door had been wedged shut by the tree and I couldn't get out of any of the windows, which funnily enough, I ended up changing the windows in the office as a result of that so I can actually get out of them if something happens like that in the future, which hopefully it won't. After the accident, after I'd had a chance to recover from the emotional turmoil of that day, it was the biggest setback ever because I was pretty much ready to move in at that point and had to basically put everything on hold and figure out how I was going to get it fixed and also decide if I wanted to get it fixed and if I wasn't going to just take my insurance payout and buy a tiny house essentially. I did decide that I wanted to repair it but it was a pretty long process to try to figure out how my insurance was going to pay me out and there were a lot of emails and conversations with insurance adjusters and it took months to get the final payout but I did end up getting the maximum payout of my policy which ended up being just enough to actually repair the home. I'm really glad I had that insurance even though it was a pretty big hassle to get the money for the repair. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to do it. Now we're at the front of the tiny house on the opposite end from the bathroom and this is my office slash living room. I would say my favorite spot in the house and it's where I spend a lot of time. The vision for this space was it really needed to be multifunctional. I needed to be able to have a spot where I could work from home comfortably and then a spot where I could just relax. I did sacrifice a bit of space to have a functional desk. For example, my couch is on the small side and I had to really look around for a couch that would fit this space. I can still extend my legs but it's certainly not one that I could sleep on or anything like that very comfortably. So it's a little bit of a narrower walkway here because of the big desk but I think it all works great and it's very comfortable. One of the big misconceptions that I've heard people say is that it's just gonna be tight and cramped and not comfortable and as someone who's on the taller side I definitely planned things specifically for my height and honestly it hasn't felt cramped at all. Maybe that's because I made some deliberate design decisions to account for my height but I think it's just about how you design the space and making sure that you utilize as much of your vertical space as possible. It hasn't been a problem. I think for me it's been really important to mentally separate you know my work from my home life and for me it's been about like okay if I'm sitting at this desk I'm working I'm very careful about not bringing my laptop to the couch or not bringing my laptop to the counter. You know I think a lot of us working from home now we've had to make those adjustments so it's not super different but having the living space integrated with the working space I've just had to mentally kind of keep it to my desk area. I would say I feel really comfortable and cozy when I'm sitting on this couch actually and when I'm just drinking my tea and petting my dog and we're just having a moment on the couch before I start my work day I really found myself gravitating to this space because it's just the most comfortable spot in the house and just take it all in. For my sleeping loft this is a queen-size bed and it's very comfortable I don't have anything underneath it it's just on the floor I originally had it on up on a platform but I found that it was putting the bed too high so I couldn't actually sit up in bed without hitting my head and sitting up in bed was very important and then we've got the two windows which let in a lot of light they have blackout curtains on them for when I need to sleep I have this lovely caning kind of wall here to just give me some safety and protection so that you know my dog is up here often just don't want to be able to fall out of the loft and I've got a railing as well on the stairs for safety so behind me here I have the air exchange system that is cycling cool air in and out there's another one down in my office so they alternate keeping airflow which is really important I definitely needed some storage up here and I didn't want things to just be on the floor I looked around on Ikea and was able to find one that was small enough and wall mounted so it's nice and just kind of fits in this little corner here I have my iPad which is how I watch TV for the most part I'm not really someone who needs a giant TV my iPad is plenty and I just kind of prop it up in my bed while I'm hanging out overall it feels really comfortable up here I like having the view of the tiny house from below and being able to see outside windows so yeah it's just been really comfortable and nice and cozy here we have my closet area and I find that it's the perfect amount of space for one season's worth of clothing I do have basically the rest of my clothing for every other season stored in the storage loft above I'm definitely glad I put the closet downstairs where it is right next to the bathroom I think the location is great I can just kind of grab my clothes and walk into the bathroom to get changed or I didn't want my clothes to be in the sleeping loft and it would have taken up a lot of space up there and it would have been uncomfortable to try to either change up there or you know grab clothes and then carry them downstairs to the bathroom yeah I definitely wanted it to be here near the bathroom welcome to the exterior of my tiny home again this is an eight and a half by 24 feet long tiny home I went with the yellow because I love the color yellow but also I grew up in a yellow house so I have some nostalgia associated with that and I just wanted something to pop against the gray Portland skies that we have the water hookup is literally just an outdoor spigot that I hooked up an RV rated hose to I also wanted to have a water filter and so rather than take up counter space in my home for a water filter I actually just have an RV water filter that basically my hose is plugged into and it filters all the water that goes into my tiny house which is really great for my electrical same thing it's an RV rated electrical that's plugged into the box here and that ties into the main panel of the main house so yeah those are my hookups I think that living tiny has really been a positive thing in my life and it feels really good to have accomplished this goal that I set out to do many years ago and I plan on living in this tiny house for as long as possible I really see this being my lifestyle for the long term even if it's not parked here behind my mom's house you know I could see joining a tiny house community or parking it somewhere else I really want to keep this tiny house for as long as possible so that's my plan I hope you enjoyed the tour of my tiny home if you would like to follow my journey the Instagram handle is lemondroptiny and yeah take care bye