Tiny house brings big lifestyle change
Couple, toddler and dog move out of condo and into 240-sq.-ft. home
The first impression of Bianca and Justin Metz’s tiny house is that it is, well, tiny.
The couple sold their Guelph condo this summer and moved, with their two-year-old son Bodhi and their cocker spaniel, Sadie, into a 240-square-foot home in the Hamilton area. That’s less than one-sixth the size of the average Ontario house.
Their home may be small, but it’s extraordinarily charming. Ten windows let light into the compact space from all sides. The outside is clad in a rich dark cedar that contrasts nicely with pots of late-fall flowers. The inside is light pine and, like the living quarters in a sailboat, is compact, neat as a pin, with everything in its place.
The pair felt an odd disconnect when they lived in their condo. They didn’t know their neighbours, they had little access to the outdoors with no yard, and they felt like a good part of their lives was dedicated to earning the money to cover their monthly mortgage payments and condo fees.
“We just wanted to live slower, more sustainably and more affordably,” Bianca said during a visit to their home this week.
The Metz family is part of a growing trend of people looking to live more simply in homes with a much smaller footprint. “There’s a pretty large movement,” Bianca said. “But most live under the radar, since the houses aren’t legal in most areas.”
That’s gradually changing. In October, Kitchener changed its zoning bylaw to allow tiny houses, as well as granny flats, coach houses and other small units, without the need for a zoning change or Official Plan amendment. The changes were mandated under Bill 108, provincial legislation passed this spring that requires all municipalities to allow such units, as a way to create a broader range of housing types, especially inexpensive ones that make use of existing land.
The Metz family lives in the Hamilton area and asked to keep the exact location of their home secret, as Hamilton has yet to allow tiny homes. Even with the zoning changes in Kitchener, their home would still be illegal in that city, which limits tiny homes to no more than two people.
They felt strongly that a bigger home leads to the impulse to buy more stuff to fill that space. “What we found was instead of bringing everything in to fill the space, we say, ‘Let’s live in the space first, and figure out what we need,’ ” said Justin, who learned as a wilderness canoe guide to live with what he could carry. Today, he’s a teacher at a private school; Bianca works as a maître d’.
Living in a small space means they think consciously about the stuff they need in their lives and what is extraneous clutter, Bianca says. “Everything we have here is only exactly what we need. We have four forks. We have four plates. We have one serving spoon, one pot and one knife.”
“It’s about who’s in the house, not what’s in the house,” Bianca adds.
Life in a tiny home has its inconveniences. Because they get their electricity from a nearby building, they’re restricted to just 120 volts. With the fridge and the composting toilet continuously drawing electricity, they must think carefully any time they plug in any other appliance, or they’ll overload the system and their power shuts off.
By year’s end they hope to be off the electric grid, generating the power they need from solar panels.
Each season, they switch out bedding, clothes, coats and footwear, and store what’s not needed in an off-siteood cooked on a barbecue or on an induction hot plate. They do laundry off-site. Their hot water heater has a 31-litre capacity, which means luxuriously long showers are out of the question.
But their lifestyle is also freeing, they say. Housecleaning takes about 10 minutes. They feel closer to the land and the outdoors, are able to spend more time together as a family and focus on what matters, and say the move to a tiny house made a big difference financially.
They found their home on Kijiji, bought it for $60,000 and towed it from Quebec, with few mishaps — except for the time the extra-tall house scraped the bottom of a bridge it was being towed under.
Their monthly costs are minimal, and they now find they have money in the bank they can use for travelling and other family priorities.
And they learned a lot, through trial and error, as they figured out how to make the small space work for their family and meet their needs. Getting home insurance was also a challenge, as most insurers don’t have a policy for that type of home.
“We had absolutely no idea what we were doing,” Justin admits.
“Not everyone can live like this,” Bianca acknowledges. “This is pretty extreme. But our point is, we don’t need so much stuff. If you pare down everything and you don’t consume as much, that frees up your finances and your life.”
“We just wanted to live slower, more sustainably and more affordably.”
BIANCA METZ HOMEOWNER