6 Things You Need to Know About Tiny Homes

Tiny homes can be considered a newly popular way to live. Obviously, small-scale homes are not a new concept. But the extent to which you can make a truly small home viable and comfortable nowadays is genuinely stunning. Of course, not everything is ideal if you opt for this kind of lifestyle. There are considerations and some background info you need in order to really be able to decide on a tiny home with no lingering fears or regrets. To this end, we’ve put together a list of 6 things you need to know about tiny homes.

The size of a tiny home

Before you decide you actually want to live in a tiny home and go looking to learn more about homeownership in general, one of the things you need to know about tiny homes to make this decision is how large they actually tend to be. Typically, a tiny home needs to be smaller than four hundred square feet to qualify for the moniker. At the same time, it needs to be larger than one hundred square feet in order to qualify as a home at all. To conjure a slightly more concrete image, a home the size of just one hundred square feet would barely be able to fit a bed, a nightstand, and a wardrobe. And you would be dealing with just four times that space.

You will be forced to declutter frequently

If you are living in a tiny home, there is no space to waste. You will need to stay on top of your storage needs, or you will start to struggle. And while closet organization ideas and storage tips will help you have room for everything, they will still not provide you a lot of leeway. This means that you will be very limited in the number of personal effects, you’ll be able to own. Naturally, this means having to throw out old things as you continue to acquire new ones. Or, at the very least, hiring a cheaper storage unit to hold it all. This can be really tough to deal with since you can’t even have a lot of photos in your home.

The types of tiny homes

There are several common and popular types of tiny homes. They are:

• Tumbleweed homes—Homes that can be pulled by a car or a truck, but are mostly meant to be stationery
• Trailer homes—Traditional mobile tiny homes widely available for purchase
• Converted homes—Tiny homes made out of converting larger buses, trains, crates, or other suitable things
• Tiny cabins—The smallest size of cabins on the market!
• Backyard homes—Tiny homes made in backyards. Mostly a solution for older relatives that need assistance but still want some privacy
• The A-frames—Tiny homes made in a very specific ‘A’ shape. Great for areas with lots of rain

Now, it should be noted that some states do not allow for any sort of tiny mobile homes to actually be recognized as a residence. Even if one can be registered as your address, you may not actually be allowed to move it afterward.

A tiny home requires compromise

One of the most important things you need to know about tiny homes is that you’ll always be making some sort of compromise. If you choose to have a nice bath and put in the effort to do a DIY bathroom renovation, you will lose out on storage space—or kitchen space. Or maybe you’ll have way less space for a bed, forcing you to buy a smaller one. Having the best of both worlds is simply impossible in this scenario. The only thing you can do is figure out what you really need and what you can do without. And then actually follow through with your planning. It’s also extremely hard to shuffle rooms around in a tiny home. So, expect things to mostly stay the way they were set up before you moved in. Or, if the home was entirely unfurnished, the way you decide to set them up.

A tiny home may not be an option for you

This is mainly for the sake of efficient urban planning, but most cities don’t allow the building of tiny homes. This means that if you live somewhere with a dense population and the dream of owning a tiny home, you may not have the option at all. This has led to most tiny homes being located in rural areas or smaller towns. Alternatively, they can potentially be found in trailer parks if the city features one such location. Albeit, this applies only to the one specific type of tiny home. So, before placing your hopes and dreams on the ownership of a tiny home, do your research! Look into your local housing laws or consult a professional. This way, you can avoid a lot of unnecessary trouble.

Family planning in a tiny home is crucial

The final thing you need to know about tiny homes is that if planning to have a family while living in one, it will require a lot of careful planning. Obviously, as we’ve gone over already, space is in short supply in these homes. And kids always need a lot of it. Clothing, toys, the essentials required to take care of a baby or a toddler… The list is extensive, and even it alone is enough to make the idea of a tiny home sound claustrophobic. That’s without even accounting for the fact that the kid would eventually want, and need, a room of their own. This is not something even looking into the potential removal of a load-bearing wall to get larger rooms could fix. Since that would just mean shuffling the space around uselessly.

Final comment

Now that you are familiar with the 6 things you need to know about tiny homes, you can better make a decision if you want one! Obviously, living in a tiny home is not always easy. And it’s likely not something you want to do outside of the earliest stages of parenthood if starting a family. But it is cheap, both when acquiring a home and the utilities, one needs to pay when living in one.