I Live In A Tiny House | The New Homesmiths | Apartment Therapy

[Music] to be able to walk into a home that you've designed that you've built from the ground up is kind of badass my tiny house was built specifically for me I believe tiny houses offer an opportunity for wealth building or getting to home ownership a lot quicker in the ability then to focus on experiences in life and family versus chasing what society says is the American Dream that ends up being elusive hello and welcome to the Miss gypsy soul tiny house three hundred and sixty square feet of tiny house luxury come on in this tiny house was the realization of a dream that started 25 years ago downsizing was something that I've known I've wanted to do since my daughter was in kindergarten I mean she's 31 now I was a young single mom having to be very responsible and make decisions based on finances and I knew that once I was past all of that and she was headed off into her own that I wanted to be able to make decisions kind of based on once versus requirements I just wanted to a lighter lifestyle I am what I like to say a girly girl so I had a nice-sized bathroom full counter space washer/dryer combo bathtub shower and I have a Mesa rating toilet I wanted to make sure wherever I parked my tiny house I had a bunch of light and I think I have 17 windows so I certainly accomplished that light on all sides I didn't need the storage stairs that you'll see in a lot of tiny houses so I wanted my stairs to be more focused on the aesthetics and decor cooking is not my favorite thing to do I didn't dedicate as much space to a kitchen as maybe some other tiny houses do but I wanted to be able to include my walk-in closet which is not as common for a tiny house but and that's one of the big things about designing your tiny house you get to design it how it works for you this dream for me started out as an RV all of my friends and family knew that I wanted to have that kind of mobile freeing lifestyle once my daughter was grown in my downsizing process I didn't want to feel like I was really giving up things I've lived in some really nice spaces and still wanted to feel that same level of comfort and enjoy ability as I started looking into the RVs they were in the 300 to 500 thousand range the ones that I like of course there's some cheaper but I kind of have some high-end taste a dream can take a while to manifest at any point you change your mind you get to dream a new dream the tiny house ended up being a fraction of the cost of the RVs that I was interested in I initially thought my tiny house was going to cost about half of what it cost one of the mistakes I made early on as an inexperienced builder was trying to gauge the cost of my build from someone else's build and in hindsight they had done all the work themselves on their tiny house had done it over I think maybe almost a two-year time period I used all contractors my build happened in a matter of three months and so a lot of my material was expedited I always caution new builders to make sure that you're factoring apples for apples when I built my house three years ago I probably paid about eighty five thousand total my lot rental is around $500 a month and that includes my utilities that is probably a fourth or a fifth of what I have been paying for an apartment in Uptown Charlotte [Music] if you look at the tiny house community you really see it as a young white hipster movement I'm neither there very few people of color in the movement they're more coming there's the preppy school ease and the van dwellers who are buying the expensive sprinters and traveling and you know California there's surf boarding and you see all their cool pictures and then you've got the segment of people who live in a van because they don't have anywhere else to go there's some train of thought around whether tiny houses are actually poverty appropriation where people have the financial privilege to choose to live this lifestyle versus people who have to live the lifestyle because they don't have one of the great areas of tiny houses is that cities don't necessarily allow you to park them in urban areas rural areas and RV parks are more welcoming to tiny houses those aren't some of the safest spaces for people of color and while all the books could tell you about a tiny house build and all of that kind of stuff what they didn't prepare me for especially as a person of color was racism trying to make sure there's representation in the overall community someone likened it to pushing a boulder uphill it's been frustrating it's been the challenge most of the cities have housing prices affordable housing is a challenge wherever you go if cities would consider tiny homes as opportunities that brings in more people it's been totally disappointing because you're thinking we're building community and this is new and this is innovative and you realize it's still not a community because if everybody's not represented in the community it's not a community true community everybody has a seat at the table from all backgrounds all walks of life all financial statuses it's equitable they're always I think going to be those differences I don't think the people who have the financial privilege are necessarily wrong but I think they have to have an awareness of the other segment of people who are here because they have no options and there's somewhere along there that the conversation has to happen so that you're pulling people along and you're blazing a path that everybody can travel and versus the the two separate paths there's a lot of noise in the world expectations of how you should live your life what success looks like what financial wealth looks like the traditional definition of wealth looks like big a lot of square-footage high payments excess more looking like money and a tiny house is definitely going in the opposite direction and I think a lot of people frown on it because it looks like you're giving up people of color are dead laughs and percentages of home ownership if you've already had the big house you sell the house and you're now downsizing by choice that's a different sell for a person of color who may not have had and it's still trying to pursue the American dream and achieve the house and if the tiny house looks like work or is kind of like the Laura Ingalls Little House on the Prairie deal that's not something that sounds very interesting which is one reason that I share my story so that they can see what a tiny house can be from a maturity standpoint having lived life I realized that wealth is more in life experiences and opportunities versus things your dream is for you and it's not for everybody else I designed a life that I loved it was definitely choices that were made so that I could achieve the tiny-house dream for me it wasn't for anybody else [Music]

Channel: Apartment Therapy

Views: 96,378

Rating: 4.9305105 out of 5

Keywords: Apartment Therapy, Apartments, How To, Interior Design, Home Decor, tiny house, i live in a tiny house, tiny house tour, the new homesmiths, apartment therapy tour, tiny tour, Ms. Gypsy Soul

Id: v1ENwDFgoVw

Length: 8min 49sec (529 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/brettamorphic]

I watched this, and it was one of the best videos on tiny house living I have seen. Ms Gypsy was articulate, engaging, honest, humble, and more than anything else, gave a subtle reminder of how much racism and inequality impacts even something like the tiny house community. This was a truly wonderful video to watch of a beautiful tiny house owned by an amazing human.