The Mom that Built Her Own Tiny Home

I’m Shalina, a 34 year old single-mom and graphic designer. I share my 350 sq ft tiny home with my 15 year old daughter, Katie, who’s about to start her sophomore year of high school. We live outside of Sacramento, CA in a lovely mobile home park. We can easily walk or bike trails down to the river or to grab something to eat in the old town area of our city.

I work full-time from home and commute into the Bay Area once a week for meetings. I love estate sales and thrift shops. And I enjoy collecting oddities of all kinds to add to our Cabinet of Curiosities or to decorate our house with. I love to travel and my favorite genre to read and watch is historical fiction. I’m fascinated by history and the way people used to live their lives before our time.

I’ve always loved to work with my hands – designing, crafting, building, etc. I’ve started and stopped a lot of creative hobbies over the years, but building seems to be the one that I come back to. This is out of a desire to create things that are useful, custom, and unique. I find woodworking to be the perfect mix of planning and precision vs problem solving and making it work as you go.

I’m not often drawn to conventional things in life. Instead, I usually seek out unique and interesting places to live and explore. My favorite past rentals included a beautiful 1930s 4-plex apartment and a loft apartment converted from an old tire shop warehouse. Building a tiny house felt like a natural next choice as a unique and alternative living space. Doing the work myself was a challenge that I welcomed without hesitation.

Having been involved in the art world for most of my life, I was familiar with the word minimalism. But I thought of minimalism simply as a design esthetic that I wasn’t drawn to. I lean more towards a mix of an eclectic and calculated esthetic.

As time went on and I started to learn more about minimalism as a lifestyle, I started to really understand the broad range of what minimalism can mean to different people. You don’t have to be a certain type of person to embrace it. I eventually read the beloved “tidying” books by Marie Kondo and the KonMari Method resonated so much with me.

It’s what I had been trying to practice for years. Collecting things that I loved and wanting to honor them with a specific place in my home. But having not given myself permission to discard the rest, I fell short. The stuff would just pile up. Giving myself that permission was the most freeing feeling. From that point on, the downsizing process has actually been easy and enjoyable.

I first became interested in the alternative and tiny living movements about 5 years ago when I stumbled on some British TV home shows – specifically George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces (I believe you can find some episodes on YouTube). The way that people were taking all types of small spaces and converting them into functional homes just blew my mind. My wheels started turning and after a whole lot of research on tiny homes, I began to plan and design the house that we now live in.

I love the freedom that comes with living more simply. Less stuff means less to clean and manage! My house stays tidy on a regular basis now and I don’t feel like a lot of my time is spent cleaning. I have more time to relax, work on other projects, and spend time with my daughter. There’s also a deeper appreciation for the things I choose to keep that I never had before. I really do feel like I’m honoring my belongings now.

The financial freedom that comes with living tiny is a huge plus. My space rent and utilities are significantly cheaper than what I was paying in my large Bay Area apartment. With freed up funds, I’ve been able to save for the future, and travel and experience more with my daughter.

I’m still a single-mom right now and having just myself and my daughter living in the house has been perfect. I think that if I were to have a partner move in with me, we would need to re-think the space a bit and possibly add more storage solutions. I’d like to own land eventually and have a workshop on the property for all of my tools and project materials. I think that would free up more space for another person to live in the house.

Whether I always live in a tiny home or not, I don’t see myself letting go of the choice to only keep what brings me joy. I will always be conscious now of what I bring into my home and how it will effect my every day life.

Blog: www.hertinyhome.com
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More posts about families in unique small spaces:

Living in a sailboat as a family of four.