WOMAN lives in a TINY HOUSE so She Can TRAVEL the World

| August 10, 2019
WOMAN lives in a TINY HOUSE so She Can TRAVEL the World


Hi, I’m Jenna from Tiny House, Giant
Journey. So, little over four years ago I was working at a job that I wasn’t
passionate about. I had gone to school for film-making and I was working at a
movie studio in Hollywood, but I felt stuck as I think a lot of people feel
stuck in a job after they’ve gone to college for and gone into a lot of debt.
My partner and I at the time we decided to live a more minimalistic lifestyle
something that would free up our finances and with the savings that we
had, we decided to build a tiny house, and spend one year traveling on the road
doing photojournalism and blogging. We were just in way over our heads and
it took us a year. I was working on it mostly only on weekends for the first
six months and then I quit my job and started helping him full-time. So I
traveled for one year with this tiny house and we went about 25,000 miles
which is huge in one year. We went all the way up to the Arctic Circle in
Alaska and all the way down to Florida Keys at Key West. ♫Music Playing♫ So this is the hitch end of my tiny house.
It’s been raining here a lot in Oregon so you can see that my reclaimed siding, it’s
75 year old wood siding from an old barn in Wisconsin, is looking really dark right now. It probably weighs twice as much as it normally does because it’s
just soaking up all that rain. Where I keep my propane tanks so I have two 15
pound propane tanks. In the winter I like to use this heat blanket because
helps with efficiency I also had trouble with when I was staying in Colorado not
getting enough propane pressure to my water heater and it actually broke down
so this was a must. I’ve also put on a winter skirt this year. Just learning
from my time in Colorado. I’m in Oregon now so it’s not quite as cold. It
definitely has made the floor a lot warmer in my tiny house. It’s the coldest
part of the tiny house, heat rises, and with all the wind and cold air coming
underneath the tiny house this is definitely made it so I don’t always
have to wear slippers. So this is the front or the license plate end of the tiny house. We found this on the side of the road. At the time we just thought
wow this looks really cool with the old reclaimed wood so it’s not structural.
It’s kind of a nice handrail in a way because we don’t have a handrail. It’s
just been aging with the tiny house it’s been on here for about two years now and
every day it looks a little different and I really like it. I’m parked at an RV
park in Oregon and this is my setup. I have my electricity here, it has a little
meter on it. I just plug in right here as you do. This is my sewer line but since I don’t have a black water system, I have a composting toilet, it’s really just for
grey water. Hello Oregon *laughter* and this is my fresh water line so this is going in
with an RV hose and a filter into my fresh water system. I also have a 46
gallon I think freshwater tank in here so when I am off-grid I can just fill
and I have a portable gray water tank as well that I hook up right where the
sewer hose is hooked up when I’m off-grid and then I can dispose of that, however. I also do movie nights out here so I
have a projection screen inside the tiny house and it can hang right here, that’s
what these cooks are for. I bring my projector out here, it’s battery-powered,
and everything works off my Wi-Fi. “It’s hailing now” *laughter*. ♫Music Playing♫ So, now we’re inside my tiny house! This first little area is just like this tiny little mudroom area where
I put my boots. It’s also where I keep my dogs dishes. Directly to my right in the
bump-out area so because we have the porch it creates this little bump out is
the living room slash office slash spare bedroom. So I spend a lot of time here
cuz I work from home. It’s constantly evolving. Have outlets back here cuz this
is where I work a lot of the time. There’s USB plugs everywhere throughout
this tiny house. The whole motif of the inside is very rustic using reclaimed
materials, like this is all reclaimed wood that’s exposed here from a barn in
California that I was able to get on Craigslist. This is sort of my desk area.
I’ll sit here if it’s just me having coffee in this morning to maybe move
this ottoman out and do some work or if I have people over… this is the full table so when I move these Ottomans,
which of course has storage inside. So right now I have my snow gear cuz it’s
still winter and I go snowboarding just up the street. You can have seating for
four comfortably. I’ve had actually six people, just really close together,
three back here three there. And since this is a pretty thin table I really
have to think hard about what I want to cook if I’m gonna have a dinner party. I
don’t want everyone to have a big plate so I mostly do like chili night. Chili is
a great tiny house food because you can make it all in one pot and they go in
little bowls or mugs or whatever cuz I don’t have six, I don’t have six bowls.
Underside and bottom side is painted with chalkboard paint. This also turns
into a spare bedroom this is a futon mattress that fits perfectly I was able
to find it on Amazon. I flipped this piece of plywood over and then this
would be like a full-size bed I call it. Everything fits perfectly. It is a Kimberley
wood stove you can cook on top of it it’s stainless steel so it’s lighter
than a cast iron and is a double combustion system so really, really
efficient. If you have a nice piece of hardwood it can burn up to eight hours. I
have a stove plate here for the bottom. We decided to raise it up instead of
just having it flat on the floor because we wanted it to be counter height and
so that we could get some extra storage space underneath. Probably the next thing everybody noticed this when they first come into my tiny house is my staircase.
I call it a hidden staircase because a lot of times people come in here and
they’ll ask me how do you get up into the loft? It’s my closet,
it’s my pantry, and it’s also my staircase. This is my closet. It is a lot
smaller than most women’s closets. I think that it’s plenty though. Everything I own I care about is one thing I tell people. I like having
stories around everything. I love to travel so even when I’m wearing right
now like I bought this in Peru. I got this in Alaska, my trip up to Alaska, it’s
a piece of jade. This is actually Mount Hood, which is just down the street. This
is from Taiwan, this is from El Salvador. So all of my clothing items or
accessories are from stories and experiences and they make me think of
those things and makes me care about each item in here. ♫Music Playing♫ Plates, bowls, this is my water tank so yeah. And then if you look under the sink over here, you will see my water heater. It’s a tiny water heater. It’s propane, it’s instant. This is for burnable trash I live in a
campground I have campfires often. Keep burnable trash in there. I have a
composting pile and system outside, this is my indoor compost. Over here I have my regular trash can and my recycle bin Over here is my refrigerator.
It’s a Dometic RV refrigerator. It’s a three-way so it works off a propane or
DC or AC. Spent a long time finishing these countertops they were just big
pieces of alligator juniper wood. We actually routed them out so they look
really thick and so that keeps it lightweight it’s actually hollow behind
here too. So it gives the facade of having a thick wood slab countertop
without having the weight. I found this at the restore recently and it’s just a
closet door, an antique closet door, so it can fold away. It snaps into place with
magnet so just like that. It can actually open up, felt like my house got really
dark when this was closed. So when nobody’s using it I keep those
ventilated. I have a composting toilet, the Nature’s Head composting toilet, it’s
pretty popular in the tiny house world. This is my shower it’s 24 by 32 inches
so 32 by 32 is a standard shower. I think the smallest you can normally put in a
regular-sized house. Mine’s a little smaller than that but
because I’ve extended out this curtain rod and one bonus about having a metal
shower is you can use magnets so I’ll magnetize things like even all the way
out to here so really the only part that small is down by my feet. I decided
to go with a tub for a couple of reasons. The dog, mostly. I can’t really bathe in there, it’s for her. It’s really nice for giving
dog baths. Plenty of headroom for me I’m five foot
four. I have a five inch mattress it’s a Japanese-style mattress so it has
netting underneath it, which is great, means I don’t have to flip it. I was
worried about moisture getting underneath it and getting mold and with
that netting it sort of has alleviated that problem. This is my dog Solis she
has been part of the tiny house the entire project. Got her when we were
building and so she’s more comfortable in the tiny house than any other house I
would say. Five windows they all open so great ventilation, I don’t have air
conditioning. So I actually have a third floor, I like
to say. This opens up completely and I can sit on the roof. It’s really nice and
on a clear night to watch the stars up here and when I want darkness I have
this little shade so if I’m sleeping in or something like that. If you’re looking
into downsizing or building a tiny house there’s lots of resources out there now
that were not available when I was building. There’s obviously some great
YouTube channels as you’re watching right now. I would say going to a build
workshop is not a bad idea. I went to a Tumbleweed Build workshop at the time it
was the only kind of build workshops available and it taught me a lot because
I had zero experience. I used to teach them actually later on after we finished
building the tiny house they hired me to teach those workshops. I’m a big advocate for them because I know what goes into designing those workshops and what they actually mean and there’s plenty of them out there now. What can a tiny house do for you you
know? For me I have always been a wanderlust kind of person. I like to
travel and I loved traveling with the tiny house, but now that it’s parked I
save so much money that I’m able to travel abroad. I travel three months out
of the year. I visit five new countries a year as a minimum. And my goal is to
visit every country before I die. This is a house that facilitates my life and my
passions, not the other way around. I don’t work for my house it works for me.
Thanks for watching guys! If you enjoyed this episode be sure to hit the like
button and subscribe, if you’re new to the channel. Be sure to check out Jenna’s
channel Tiny House Giant Journey linked up in the description. We did a video on
her channel about my van as well so be sure to check that out and, until next
time guys, we will see you later.

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