This 16-Foot Tiny Home Shows How Awesome Micro-Living Can Be

Tiny living has been around for decades, just like the desire to downsize, lead more mobile lives, and live more intentionally and more in harmony with Mother Nature. Sure enough, what started as a hippie trend in the early 2000s is now the coolest viral trend, one that can be capitalized accordingly, thanks to social media and video-sharing platforms.

Before digital nomads turned tiny houses into the hottest topic of conversation, there were builders like Shelter Wise. This team from Portland, OR, started out in the early 2010s as a company that aimed to offer micro-housing solutions to those who couldn't afford full-size housing, with a keener eye on their environmental impact and more affordability.

This was before the 2020 international health crisis turned tiny living into a money-making side hustle and, consequently, before increased demand, shipping shortages, and a financial crisis drove prices through the roof. Shelter Wise has since temporarily retired from building and is now only selling their own plans online, but the Miter House remains a solid example of what downsizing is all about.

When it was introduced in 2012, it came with a price tag of $35,000, which made it an affordable alternative to other types of housing. It also stood out for its compact size, sustainability credentials, and outstanding style, made even more so by the fact that competition on this segment of the market wasn't as cutting as it is today.

The Miter House was inspired by designer Derin Williams' own childhood, so it came out as if drawn by a child: a simple square house with a pointed roof, but placed on top of a dual-axle trailer. Compared to the units we have today, many of which we've covered extensively, the Miter House is very compact, with just 16 feet (4.8 meters) of total length.

The golden rule of tiny houses says that the smaller the house, the higher its degree of mobility. By contrast, the smaller it is, the fewer features it has – but downsizing "by the book" seems to have been the intention behind this unit.

Miter House has a dual-loft design, with the larger loft holding the main sleeping space and the smaller doubling as a storage solution. Just to give you an idea of just how small it is, let's put it this way: the loft bedroom isn't even a bedroom as much as an elevated sleeping platform.

Unlike what you see in other lofted tinies, this one doesn't have any room to move around up there. It's just a platform with a mattress and a removable ladder to get to it. So here's to hoping whoever is sleeping there doesn't toss around too much at night.

The ground level is divided into several living areas. There's a dinette at one end, with a hydraulic table that can lower over the benches to create another two-person bed for when guests come over. There's also a most basic kitchen setup, with miniature-size appliances and a removable cooker, and there's a small wet bathroom at the opposite end of the trailer.

Perhaps surprisingly so, Shelter Wise included a small porch at the back of Miter House: just a small square of sheltered deck outside the main entrance, allowing you to leave your dirty shoes there so you won't drag mud through the house.

The Miter House offers a total of 150 square feet (14 square meters) of living space, which includes the loft upstairs. It's very compact – not that you needed an exact figure to be able to tell because the photos in the gallery really do speak volumes in this sense. With all that, it still offers enough storage to serve as a comfortable, permanent home for a couple or a young family really determined to give downsizing a try.

In the end, a home like Miter House is really what tiny living is all about: a compact home you can take with you wherever you go, effectively preventing you from overindulging in material stuff and encouraging you to place more value on experiences. The fact that the unit was built with reclaimed and recycled materials is also in keeping with the essence of the tiny house movement.

Shelter Wise is now saying that their business is "to empower people" to build their own tiny homes, even though they're no longer doing the building themselves.

Plans for a home like Miter House are as little as $79 for those who feel empowered and inspired to give tiny house building a go. Materials and construction will add to the final bill, of course, but the experiences you're bound to enjoy once you're done are priceless, as the saying goes. Or so we hear.