People love talking about tiny house toilets. Let's get to the bottom of it. Hey Tiny House squad! We recently met a wonderful woman, Brynn, who has made the jump to go tiny with her family of four. After getting to know one another, we concluded that we just had to have her experiences and lessons, triumphs and tribulations documented on her tiny house journey. As such, we have a four part series of her thoughts and experience going tiny! Here is Brynn's 4th piece on her tiny house experience, Tiny Toilet Talk: A Review of the Good, The Bad, and The Best of Tiny Living Toilets! If you've ever wondered about tiny house toilets, this is the piece for you! When catching up with tiny house builders across the country, they all agree on one thing: They talk about toilets…a lot!
Why Are Toilets Such A Big Deal? When building a traditional home, toilets are pretty much basic outside of fancy upgrades like a dual flushing. When you are talking about a build that allows your house to move around, you have to consider all of the options for plumbing since many aren’t connected to traditional water and sewer/septic. This can also come with a hefty price tag so, in the tiny house world, toilets are actually considered a luxury item for many interested in saving space and saving money. Things to Consider -Cost:Handmade composting toilets can be built for under $50, while some other types can cost up to $3500. Your budget can be seriously impacted by your choice of commode, so choose wisely. -Odor:Many people worry hard about how their toilet might smell, depending on what type they choose. Do your research. Composting toilets, if maintained correctly, shouldn’t smell. Incinerating toilets have their own smell. You have to choose how important this is to your quality of life. -Emptying Options: Make sure you have someone living in your tiny who is comfortable emptying the waste, whether it is being drained outside or taken to the compost pile. If not, choose traditional flushing and have plans for plumbing and sewer hook ups. -Space:Depending on your choice and brand, some toilets can be large since they hold the waste in a self-contained tank. Other options can be built to suit or can be moveable within your bathroom space. This should be a priority consideration when building a home under 400 square feet. What Are Your Options?
Since we are currently living in a 36 foot fifth wheel while saving to build, we use a traditional RV toilet. We really appreciate the water conservation aspect and we use a draining service for a separate large holding tank (500 gallons) when parked. This allows us to drain our tanks while we are on the road but also have a constant system when we are parked for longer periods of time. What Do We Recommend? Our recommendation, after trying nearly all types of tiny house toilet options, the Nature’s Head Active composting toilet. This is one of the most popularly installed toilets for tiny home builders across the U.S. because they are more affordable than other brands/types and easy to maintain. While some models can ring in closer to $1200, this one won’t break the bank during your build at $975. You can go directly through Modern Tiny Living to get yours! - Brynn Burger The people are loving our two Modern Tiny Living tiny homes in Siesta Key! We are thrilled to see people enjoying these beautiful tiny house rentals by Modern Tiny Living down in Siesta Key, Florida at the Tiny House Beach Resort. If you've ever wanted to rent a tiny house, there is nothing like being right near the beach. Go check out the Tiny House Beach Resort at https://www.tinyhousesiesta.com. Learn more about our Siesta Key Models here The first Modern Tiny Living customer has moved in to the Cedar Springs Tiny Village! The first home at the Cedar Springs Tiny Village has moved in! "The Fox" takes the first lot with its happy owner, Kimber. This is going to be a tiny house revolution!
Many more tiny houses are moving in over the next few months - it is going to be a spectacular tiny house community! Learn more about the Cedar Springs Tiny Village at our upcoming event! That's right: Modern Tiny Living builds a lot more than just tiny houses for dwelling.Hey Tiny House Fam, remember when Modern Tiny Living built "OutCold", the tiny house co-work space and coffee shop? Well, we wanted to share with you the final, final result 😎
Yes, we built this project for UpWork, one of the largest freelancer marketplaces in the world along with Fiverr, and considered one of the "billion dollar unicorns". UpWork was looking for a mobile studio for work, coffee, and most importantly, marketing and brand recognition. Modern businesses are starting to understand that in a noisy marketing world, boots on the ground are often exponentially more powerful than another Facebook ad (or worse, a TV ad). For less than the price of an spot on TV, a company like UpWork is able to build a tiny house mobile marketing machine capable of making an impression on anyone at any time (and that can go all over the country, to any market, at any time). Paired with the tiny house movement, a forward-thinking company like UpWork realized that they could get exposure to entirely new demographics that may not be aware of their awesome services. Modern Tiny Living is proud to have helped UpWork realize that vision with a custom tiny house on wheels. Our custom tiny house, The Fox, is already a nationwide fan favorite. We are thrilled to announce that our most recent fully custom tiny house on wheels, The Fox, was just featured on Tiny House Talk, the world's #1 tiny house blog!
When we built The Fox, we had a vision for a modern, livable, and absolutely gorgeous custom tiny house - and if the early buzz is any indication, we delivered! Check out the article on The Fox at Tiny House Talk Here Learn More About Modern Tiny Living's "The Fox" Here Modern Tiny LIving's Siesta Key model "Aqua" featured on the cover of Tiny Homes magazine!5/30/2018
It's truly surreal to see our Aqua tiny home, built for the Siesta Key Beach Resort, featured on the cover of Tiny Homes magazine. Whoa. One of Modern Tiny Living's 28 ft. Siesta Key tiny houses on wheels, Aqua, was just featured on the cover of Tiny Homes magazine!
It's pretty surreal to be walking down a Barnes & Noble magazine aisle and randomly see one of our custom tiny homes on the cover of the most widely read Tiny Home magazine in the world. We are truly to all of our customers who have given us a chance 🙏 And we're just getting started, believe that! Learn More about Modern Tiny Living's Siesta Key Models Here It's amazing how tiny living teaches you what is truly essential in life. Hey Tiny House squad! We recently met a wonderful woman, Brynn, who has made the jump to go tiny with her family of four. After getting to know one another, we concluded that we just had to have her experiences and lessons, triumphs and tribulations documented on her tiny house journey. As such, we have a four part series of her thoughts and experience going tiny! Here is Brynn's 2nd piece on her tiny house experience, 6 Former Must-Haves We Now Live Without! If you've ever wondered how to downsize, this is a great piece for you! It is pretty incredible, as you begin to downsize and purge yourself of non-necessities, what you find you no longer need or haven't even used. We have uncovered entire boxes we hadn't unpacked in years. Clearly the items packed inside weren't important. I feel certain you have an attic or basement stockpile like we did. Most people do.
So here are the six former must-haves we decided to ditch. Multiple Seasons/Sizes of Clothing Full transparency, if left to my own devices, I can be a hoarder. Growing up with limited funds taught me to be thrifty and responsible. This includes couponing for groceries, buying in bulk, and snagging deals on clothes or shoes before my kids can even fit into those sizes. Now that we live in under 300 square feet, my storage has drastically decreased. This means, aside from our dresser and closet space, we have exact one drawer (I repeat: one.) for the next season's items. So, when I change over from winter to spring, everything that can still be worn next winter must fit into the drawer. This mindset has cut down on excessive spending as well as allowed us a true picture of what we actually wear. Lean in close: It's not that much! The great thing about builders like Modern Tiny Living is that you can build a THOW from 12-28 feet so your storage can be plentiful. It’s up to you, the client! Extras of Everything It shocks me to say that my son does not, in fact, need over 20 pair of underwear and our dog will not actually drop dead if she runs out of dog treats. Say whhhaaattt!? I know. Stay with me here. As a former bulk and budget shopper, I might have 9 bags of dog treats or an entire shelf filled with toilet paper just because it was on sale. It pains me to admit that all of those things just took up space that could have been used for something else and never did we find ourselves in a state of dog treat-less panic. So, my fellow saving-savvy friend, step away from the Chick fil a sauce packets. It's fine. You have BBQ sauce in a bottle in your fridge. You will make it through this nugget crisis without taking 13 extra packets home with you. Trust me. What I LOVE about Modern Tiny Living is that they offer models so incredible that they even offer residential refrigerators. Un-be-lievable! Trendy Toys and Gadgets Maybe it is a good thing we Roadschool because my six year old son will not be another cell phone toting elementary student. Nope. Not happening. Our kids watch Netflix so they don't see commercials marketing the latest and greatest toy with flashing lights and obnoxious noises because we don't have room for them anyway! Each of our kiddos has two fabric bins each for toys. If they don't fit, they don't stay. If they get something new, something old is replaced. We go through and purge toys about once every 6-8 weeks and they know to expect it. It has been pretty freeing. Modern Tiny Living has models like the Cocoa with so much storage and shelving the kids wouldn’t even know what to do with all of the space! Oversized Appliances From giant washer and dryers to oversized refrigerators, American households are littered with appliances that consume real estate inside our homes. When people think of going tiny, they sometimes don’t consider that smaller sized large appliances are generally used. We loved shedding the weight and the space laundry took up in our home and the apartment sized fridge is more than enough for our family of four. The most surprising was how little we actually used small appliances that just accumulate dust on the kitchen counter. Our mixer, blender, 4 slice toaster, giant coffee pot, and crockpot took a backseat. The regular sized toaster and standard coffee pot get the job done and we are more than happy no to have to clean the unused appliances. If you love or feel you need large appliances, Modern Tiny Living can accommodate. If those aren’t needs for your family, you can easily downsize even further to models like the Nugget at only 12 ft long. “Just In Case” Items For the love of first aid kits, when has there ever been a need for 2 Ace bandages, 3700 bandaids, and 10 double thick gauze pads during one accident? I couldn't tell you either, but I certainly had that many or more on hand at any given time when we lived in our larger home. Friends, natural disasters occur but they are rare. So, it is unlikely we will need to make the space for a 'Go Bag' or the 30 pieces of fine china most people keep in a specially designated cabinet in case the queen comes over. You don't need these things so rid yourself of them! The great diversity in the lineup of over nine models from Modern Tiny Living lies in the fact that you can not only build in a large size range, but also in a range of storage, sleeping arrangements, and much more! Often Buying In Bulk As previously stated, I am a natural hoarder. At any given time in our pre-tiny living years, you could've basically shopped my pantry or medicine cabinets as if they were an extension of Target. This had to stop. Since going tiny, I no longer buy things in multiples unless they are on budget and on my list. If we don't have plans to use them in the next week (or month, depending on the item), they remain on the shelf. - Brynn Burger Brynn shares how her family made the leap from 2000 to 200 sq. ft.!Hey Tiny House squad! We recently met a wonderful woman, Brynn, who has made the jump to go tiny with her family of four. After getting to know one another, we concluded that we just had to have her experiences and lessons, triumphs and tribulations documented on her tiny house journey. As such, we have a four part series of her thoughts and experience going tiny! Here is her first piece, entitled Simplistic Living for a Family Four: Downsizing from 2000 to 200 Square Feet! Take it away Brynn!  I sat in the recliner covered in spit up, nursing our two week old daughter while our son ran laps in the living room. I had cleaned up the same messes no less than twice that morning. I had been up four times in the night either nursing the baby or changing sheets for the four year old who just had night terrors. The mound of dishes threatened to create an avalanche with our son’s T-Rex stomping in the kitchen. That was the scene that was the backdrop to my epiphany. I tearfully watched a marathon of episodes of tiny home shows on HGTV over a mountain range of unfolded clean clothes on our ottoman, thinking about how blissfully happy these people seemed while my own threw toys around the house and I did my best to keep my newborn from waking up. While some tiny dwellers were hipster singles or ultra cool couples who probably used Uber and put Sriracha on everything, there were also normal sized families going tiny. They were selling off their large four bedroom homes and trading their super sized mortgages for tiny life on the road. But how? How could they possibly afford to do that? Were they trust fund babies or those dads with black rimmed glasses who work at Google and sit and count their money in nap pods while they drink smoothies with kale in them? How could a spit-up covered mom on maternity leave from her thankless teaching career with a husband who had been working years at a dead end job just to make ends meet ever make this dream reality? So, I started secretly researching tiny living. It took a week of undercover CSI snooping before I revealed my plans to my husband. I wasn't sure how he would react. Most people who know us might describe us as unique or "hippie-ish", but would he really go for living in 300 square feet or less with TWO kids? And, if you don't know my kids, they are "those kids"; the ones screaming beside you in the checkout line or ruining your one night out without your own children. Yep. They are ours. I gathered my research both on tiny living and on the benefits of simplified living for kids with behavioral disorders like our son, and I pitched the idea to my husband. His response? "Let's do it right now! Don't you remember that I was going to live on a dilapidated houseboat and pull my S-10 truck on a barge behind it before I met you?!" (Sorry I ruined your killer plans. I thought and smiled.) It took us a year to study, research, and purge our "stuff". When all was said and done, we went through four major purges where we sold or gave away our things. We donated tons of bags of clothes, household items, toys, etc. And you know what? It was AWESOME! It's like losing weight, only instead of people being secretly jealous of you, you were making other people happy by giving them things they wanted or needed. It was creating so much happiness and so much more room for us to move toward tiny living. Fast forward thirteen months to the summer from hell. My husband had been dealing with some difficult situations at the job he had been working for over five years. It was making things incredibly challenging for our little family. This was a pivotal moment for us. We have made some very bizarre decisions in our thirteen years together; many that no one else understood but we knew were right for us. This was it. No regrets. We made phone calls, had our friends and family over, and let everyone know we were moving to Ohio and going tiny for a year. My husband quitting his job, us buying a camper, finding a family to host us on their land, and me accepting a job to make it all possible literally lined up in the course of one week. And in the week since we listed our four bedroom house and it was under contract within two days. So, here we are, a year after I sat soaked in baby vomit and my own tears watching other people fulfill their big dreams of going tiny and now we are three days into our own journey. We are already learning so much about tiny living, about our new city, new adventures, and about what this will look like for our family. Everything that we packed is squeezed into all the nooks and crannies of our 36 foot fifth wheel and we are parked on the sweetest little farm close to hiking, climbing, and biking. We are near great churches, wonderful neighborhoods, delicious food, and stellar Roadschool groups to encourage us as we brave our first year homeschooling our gifted, behaviorally challenged, crazy awesome little man. We don't know much but we do know that we won't be the same after this year--and that is awesome. What we know for sure is that we want to lead by example. We don't want our kids to grow up afraid to take risks or unwilling to trust that God is faithful. We want our kids to run outside, get dirty, meet friends on the playground, serve others, dig for crawdads in creeks, and learn about rocks from climbing and exploring them...not just watching PowerPoints in a row of sterile desks surrounded by prison colored cement walls and the looming threat of standardized testing. Being married is hard. Raising kids is hard. Parenting children with special needs is really hard. And, if I had to guess, most of us all think at one time or another that we are messing everything up. You're not. I'm not. We make choices. We do the best we can. We teach our kids things along the way and hope they don't end up with a lifetime of therapy bills because of it. We know that this is the best decision we could have ever made for our little family. - Brynn Burger Modern Tiny Living's Trent Haery is rubbing shoulders with true tiny house visionairies. We ran into a true tiny house visionary, Derek "Deek" Diedricksen, at the TinyHouseNC Street Festival event last week!
Deek was the host, designer, and builder for the HGTV series "Tiny House Builders" and the host of HGTV's "Extreme Small Spaces". He's truly a pioneer in the tiny house movement and we had a blast getting to know him! Hope to cross paths again, Deek! Modern Tiny Living's Cedar Spring Tiny Village is going to be the most spectacular tiny house village in Ohio.The Cedar Springs Tiny Village Drone Footage is HOT OFF THE PRESSES! As you know, Modern Tiny Living has been working hand in hand with the city of New Paris, OH to create Ohio's first full-fledged Tiny House Village. The time to launch is finally upon us! We're hosting a Kickoff event for the village coming up on June 9th and 10th! We'd love to meet you - come on out, check out some tiny homes, and tour this awesome property. Until then, check out this drone footage of the location. The tiny homes (27 lots) will be overlooking this quaint little lake directly across from the beach. It's going to be a special place to live! If you're intersted in potenially leasing a lot to park your future Modern Tiny Living tiny house, feel free to contact us at [email protected] and we'll connect you with the founder of the Cedar Springs Tiny Village. Grab tickets for the kickoff event here: |
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