 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  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 3rd piece on her tiny house experience, Three Things Tiny Life is Teaching Me! If you've ever wondered how to downsize, this is a great piece for you! After living tiny for nearly a year with my husband, two kids, and our pup, we have learned a lot about what it truly means to downsize and live tiny. We absolutely love our 300 square feet on wheels and count going tiny as our best decision we’ve ever made as a family.
Here is what tiny life is teaching us: Don’t Make Fear-Based Decisions: If I never went after a dream or a goal when I was afraid of the risk, I’d have never accomplished anything. In talking to thousands of people across the country who have aspirations of simplifying their lives or going tiny, they all could list a hundred fears: But what if there isn’t enough space? What if I can’t find a place to park legally? What if people think we are crazy? We could build a tiny house community out of ‘what-if’s’ but the common thread among those of us who have taken the plunge is that it is one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. Don’t let fear guide your decision making or you’ll be left with nothing to show for it but regret. Presence Over Presents: We aren’t the type of parents who buy our kids a lot of toys and things, but because both sides of our families are large, it is nothing for us to bring a car load full of toys home after a birthday or Christmas. While we teach our kids to serve and give back, it just seemed like we were constantly giving away things. We realized this had to be our children’s decision and not ours. We had our son lay out each type of toy, count them, and divide them by half. We repeated this process about four times before moving and have already done it once again since going tiny. He took to it much more quickly than I imagined. And, as the book explained, I was surprised by the freedom with which he cut things loose. Some things were harder for me to let go than him! What we are experiencing is a freedom from things we thought we needed. I thought I needed to hold on to momentos from my past and our son thought he needed every little trinket and toy. My husband and I thought we neededtime to unwind after work with a mindless TV show, but now we rarely even turn on the TV and we don’t have satellite or cable. We are, however, making our own memories. Every weekend we are experiencing our community, visiting new places, being active together every chance we get. We are getting dirty, building things, learning things, and enjoying building our tiny lives together in a big way. It is pretty incredible and costs next to nothing. 3. Intentionally Be Intentional: Admittedly, this is not my spiritual gift. Emotions make me clammy and uncomfortable. However, allowing myself to let go a little is kind of amazing. Since going tiny, we have freed ourselves from the mundane but necessary parts of everyday life. We no longer have a yard to mow, fence to fix, barn to clean, house to sanitize from a week of baby goo, mountains of laundry to wash, forget about, rewash, smell to make sure we didn’t leave it too long, and then forget about in baskets for the upcoming week. All of that is gone. What we are left with is ourselves and each other. Our job now—our primary goal—is to be together and enjoy life. Yes, I have to go to a full time job that is more stress than they pay me for, but I am able to focus during my ride home on doing my best to rid myself of what is leftover so I can give my best to my husband and kids when I get home. Now we can let ourselves have time to feel things, discuss things, and experience things we just couldn’t or didn’t make a priority before. We are intentional about what we choose to eat, where we choose to visit, what we teach our kids; every decision is intentional because we have freed ourselves up to have the timeto make those choices on purpose. I still don’t do it perfectly. However, we sit around the table together and we talked about school, our day, what we learned. We are intentional. I can now read bedtime stories to my kids each night and kiss boo-boos and remind our son who struggles with his emotions that mommy does too and that’s okay. It is a change I may never have experienced otherwise. Transition is never easy, but the liberation that is being born from this type of simplicity is indescribably beautiful. - Brynn Burger  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 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! 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.  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
 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  Thanks again for another shout out Tiny House Talk!
Our most recent Mohican tiny house on wheels (The Last Mohican) was featured on the world's #1 tiny house blog! Check out The Last Mohican on Tiny House Talk Here Check out The Last Mohican Photos & Video Walkthrough  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 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 |
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