And I thought a 380-square foot house was tiny! Meet Jay Shafer, who lives in a 96-square-foot house. The owner of The Tumbleweed Tiny House Company in Sebastopol, California, Shafer has lived in tiny houses for a decade. His most recent one (which cost $17,000 in parts and 500 hours labor) has a kitchen, bathroom, closet, sleeping loft, and a living room. Shafer says he's had as many as nine people in the house at once.
The benefits of living in a tiny house are many. They are cheaper and easier to maintain, of course. You can build it with the highest quality materials since you don't need to buy a lot of them. And you can buy great furniture and fixtures because it takes so little to fill the house.
Shafer's house is very attractive and well-designed, and I would love to have one just like it up in the woods somewhere…. but to live in a place this small year-round? I'm not so sure.
Shafer got married last year and they are expecting a baby, so they are now living in a 500-square-foot house and keeping the 96-square-foot house (it's built on wheels) next to it.
Mark Frauenfelder Credit.com contributor, editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and the founder of the popular site Boing Boing, Mark was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998 and is the founding editor of Wired Online. He covers creative DIY projects and how-tos that will help you make the most of your money.
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