Designing a tiny home entails involves more than the design of your small sustainable living structure. Planning the location and outside environment of your tiny home is also part of the delicate tiny-planning process.

• How close are you to utilities?
• Where are you placing your tiny home? On gravel?
• Is the surface area level?

All of these are contributing factors impact your living experience, as well as you the construction of your home, ultimately influencing the interior design of your tiny home on wheels. The tiny house movement encourages us to explore the outdoors and take our living experience beyond the walls of our tiny space.

With creativity and design, we can maximize the endless space around us in the outdoors.

As always, this creative process involves evaluating your own needs as a tiny home dweller. Take time to list your personal needs, wants, and requirements to meet your lifestyle (do you need a garden, wood shed, water storage, electricity). Think about your lifestyle in basic terms. As Thoreau says, “SIMPLIFY!”

Photos from the Pollinator Garden:

Back when I first began the tiny house journey, I attended one of the very first tiny house festivals in Colorado Springs, Colorado. At the end of the festival, it was finally Jay Shafer’s turn to present. His speech captivated me at that point in my journey. He talked about how the design of each tiny house is its own creation, or form of art, an inner reflection of who we are within.

At the end of Jay’s presentation, I waited in line to meet the tiny home legend myself. When I finally got to Jay, he wrote in one of my first tiny house design notebooks, “Do not let design get in the way of necessity.”

Throughout my tiny house journey, this phrase has stuck with me since. At the time, I was almost unsure of what Jay Shafer meant by that. But now, at a crossroads in Design I can see what Jay meant. When designing a tiny home there are infinite possibilities of how to design the interior and exterior of your home. You want to maximize the space of your tiny house on wheels, yet want open and flowy space.

Overcoming details of design may be one of the hardest parts to building a tiny home. We have a vision of how we want our tiny home to look and feel, with every small detail that makes our lives feel complete integrated into each nook and cranny of our THOW. While it is still important to incorporate those core elements of what makes you happy, it is still important to remember Thoreau’s famous words of Simplify.

It’s been a while that I’ve provided an update on the tiny house. In light of the New Year, I thought it’d be proper to share the vision of the Nature’s Nest Tiny Home. Winter is here and we are nearing the 2nd year anniversary of the tiny house. Two years ago seems like just yesterday… putting up the walls, roof, sheathing, siding, windows, door, & etc. etc.!

But the beginning of the quest started in the Summer of 2013. When considering where I wanted to live after graduating college, I searched, “affordable environmentally friendly homes” and was immediately captivated by the images of different tiny, micro homes. “How brilliant!” I thought… This would be perfect. (Little did I know at the time what I was getting myself into…)

That “aha” moment when the tiny house journey began is a time I reflect on frequently when reminiscing about why I started this mission in the first place. In essence, this moment is truly the propeller to Nature’s Nest and the meaning of what it is to embrace living tiny. It’s birthed a vision and desire to share with others how to simplify one’s life and embrace the world around us more mindfully.

When you think about it, what else is our purpose in life but for everyone to thrive and live happily? We all want our little corner of the universe to live in peace. In simplifying or self-sustaining one’s own needs we can turn back to our roots to the land as a planet thereby using less, taking less, spending less, working less, exploring more, seeing more, awakening more, being more (and perhaps even rediscovering one’s full potential)!

The vision is that through tiny house living (sustainable living, symbiotic living, reciprocal living, minimal living, efficient living, mindful living) we nurture the seed that grows us, mother earth. The idea is to not only sustain one’s self but also the planet (and the infinite beings we share Earth with). Join Nature’s Nest in this vision!