In the highly-curated, online community of tiny dwellers, tiny living is nothing short of fabulous. But even considering the many advantages of tiny living, the downsides still exist – and they can become particularly irksome if you’re not fully prepared for this lifestyle.
Speaking of advantages, tiny living is good for your budget in the long run, for your mental health, and for the environment, but it also means a lot of compromises on anything from your daily habits to your material possessions, and the kind of activities you can still do indoors. Annie Colpitts is a marketing manager who lives in a tiny house outside of Richmond, Virginia. For her, tiny living meant readjusting to a new life, but there were a handful of compromises that she just wasn’t willing to make.
One of them included a bathroom with just a shower stall instead of a proper bathtub. As a result, Annie’s tiny, the Pocket Manor, has a clawfoot tub, which is the one feature you’re the least likely to come across in a house of this size. It also packs plenty of storage space and a very practical interior, and that’s because Annie did the design and a large chunk of the build herself.
Annie is a practical person, and as one, she knows that the fact that she lives alone and has no pets and no significant other to consider, means she can utilize the entirety of the 160 square feet (15 square meters) of the living space for her own comfort. Her tiny is a two-axle house that’s 20 feet long, 8.5 feet wide, and 13.5 feet (6 x 2.5 x 4.1 meters) high at its highest point, which is the bedroom loft. It’s not the biggest tiny house out there, but it’s big enough for her so that it feels like a proper (pocket) manor.
Photo: Instagram / Pocket Manor
Like most tiny-dwellers, Annie has been posting about her experience on social media, but she’s different from the rest because she started with tiny living way before the 2020 health crisis. In fact, she got the idea for it in 2017 and had already moved into the home in December of the next year, with help from her family, a local bank willing to risk offering a loan for a tiny house, and some strict saving through what Annie calls “side hustles” like pet- and house-sitting.
Pocket Manor cost $45,000, including the work Annie and her family put into it, which totaled one full week at the local manufacturer who did the bulk of the construction. The design is her own, with emphasis on a full kitchen and a spacious bathroom, the sleeping area upstairs in the loft, and a nice lounge that can be anything she needs it to be, from a dining area to an office or a secondary guest room for when she’s having people spend the night. Because the build is pre-2020, she was allowed to be as involved in the process as she wanted to be, which is something that’s not as frequent today, when demand for such mobile constructions has skyrocketed.
Pocket Manor is elegant, but not in an overly striking way. With a white pine exterior and matching interior, it features stained white pine countertops in the kitchen and a DIY barn door to the bathroom, golden faucets, and vintage appliances, with the occasional pop of color either in the form of painted cabinets or one (or several) potted plants. The combination of these elements seems random, but you can tell it’s all a labor of love, so it works to create a cozy, elegant, and very functional interior.
Photo: Instagram / Pocket Manor
The ground floor holds the lounge with the convertible, hand-made sofa, which spills into the dining area slash the office, and then the kitchen. Storage-integrating stairs lead to the loft, on the opposite side of the kitchen block, which has a gorgeous Master Chef three-burner propane stove, open shelving, and custom-made pantry. Under the loft is the bathroom, with a small but beautiful and lightweight clawfoot tub, a small sink with a custom cabinet, and Nature’s Head composting toilet. Annie’s father is a retired cabinet maker, so the two did the cabinets themselves.
The tiny is insulated, and heated by means of a Mitsubishi Electric mini-split. Water and electricity are from the grid, while greywater goes directly into the ground, so Annie only uses biodegradable detergents. Renting the spot of land is $350 a month, and Annie’s tip to others who might want to make the transition is to search on rental sites and platforms, for landowners who might be looking to monetize their property. Her hope is that she’ll be able to buy her own land someday, and she doesn’t believe she will ever outgrow the tiny living stage.
To other potential tiny dwellers, Annie has one piece of very sound advice: prioritize and plan accordingly, take your time looking around and asking questions, including with zoning, and give tiny living a try before you actually make the transition. There will be surprises along the way and there will definitely be downsides, but if you’re truly prepared for it, all the effort will be worth it. Or so is her experience of it.
Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends. Full profile
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