If you are new to the blog, then you may not know that my husband spent the weekends last summer building a tiny house for our family! It forced us to come up with some tiny house space saving hacks pretty quickly!
We had a dream to be more self-sufficient, live out in the country, and enjoy life more simply!
We left our suburban home and moved to 80 acres in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was a dream come true and we are so grateful we can make our dream a reality. My husband and I currently have a three-month-old daughter, two border collies, 24 chickens, and 15 rabbits!
The land only came with a barn and some other smaller structures that were in disrepair. One structure became our tiny house, the other a chicken coop, and another still barely standing. You can follow our homesteading updates here!
Our tiny house is two stories, where the top story is a loft about two-thirds the size of the bottom, main level. It is 14 feet by 14 feet and approximately 325 square feet.
While we do have plans to add on a small room to the side this next summer, we love living in our tiny house! It is just the right amount of space, even with a baby and my husband working from home.
Our tiny house space saving hacks help us enjoy living in such a small space. And while we do keep some non-essential items in storage in our barn, everything we use each day is stored nicely in our tiny house. And, we even have some extra space due to our more minimalist lifestyle.
Let’s check out the tiny house space saving hacks you need to know about…
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The first of the tiny house space saving hacks is to get a small swivel mirror that can you easily hide.
We have this one from Amazon and love it! It’s actually completely hidden behind our pantry storage cabinet when it is not in use. And, when we need to use it, we can easily swivel it out.
When the mirror is in use it sits over the top of the sink. We chose this location not just because it could be completely out of sight but also because it’s similar to having a mirror over a bathroom sink you would see in a standard home.
Whether we are brushing our teeth, putting on makeup, and washing our face, we love having a hide-away mirror over the sink.
Perhaps it makes more sense to keep your mirror near your bathroom area. Look around your tiny house and see if there is a good place for this swivel mirror in your home.
This swivel mirror frees up wall space that you can use for other storage. Or, to keep an open concept feel in the home, keeping the mirror off the walls will help your tiny home feel less cluttered and bigger.
One of the most important things with tiny house space saving hacks to keep in mind is how to add functionality without compromising the open design concept so your space feels larger than it is.
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The upstairs loft of our tiny home has our king bed, a dresser, and a rocking chair for me to nurse our daughter. The dresser has 5 drawers and is certainly not enough space to hold the clothing of three people.
We each have two drawers and then my daughter’s burb clothes and cloth diapers on in the top drawer. The rest of our clothing is stored under our bed.
When we were first designing our tiny house, we thought about lofting our bed for more storage underneath, but we didn’t have the space to pull out massive drawers. We also considered just putting it slightly on stilts, but it was not one of the tiny house space saving hacks that would work for us without compromising in other ways.
So instead, we resorted to standard storage containers like these that fit under the bed. We have one under the bed storage container for each of us, or three in total.
What makes this space saving hack great is that we have it functional so all three bins can pull out at the same time. My husband’s come out the backside and the other two pull out form the other free side. Even though the bins are so close to the edge, we can pull them out and turn them so that they are full accessible.
What storage do you keep under your bed?
To heat our tiny house, we use a tiny wood-burning stove! We found ours on Etsy.com and have been enjoying it during the cold winter days here.
One of the best ways to keep your tiny house functional is to find items from a standard home and see if they make it smaller! For example, our hot water tank is only seven gallons and fits under the kitchen sink.
Some things you may not want drastically smaller, but others could be just slightly smaller. An example of this would be our refrigerator. It’s not a mini-fridge but it’s not a standard fridge either. It’s just a slightly smaller version of a standard fridge.
Consider purchasing smaller items for your tiny house like a tiny wood-burning stove.
Limiting furniture is another big aspect of space saving in a tiny house. We don’t have a couch, television, oven, closet, bathroom sink, etc.
But we do have a kitchen table and one kitchen chair. We actually use my husband’s desk chair as the second chair for our kitchen table. And, it works great seeing as one corner of the house is his office.
He simply turns his chair towards the table instead of towards his work desk. Making the furniture we have multifunctional helps keep our tiny house clutter-free!
This is another one of the tiny house space saving hacks we couldn’t live without!
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Under our loft, we have three long rafters that hold it up. We have used them to store several items including guns, extra wires, and other long objects with these hooks.
Because they are right over your head, you barely notice them. We’ve had people visit our tiny home and after a few hours realize the things we are storing above their heads since they are fairly well hidden.
Another way we use the rafters is to hang our baby swing from it! My husband mounted in the supports and now we can push our daughter in it throughout the day!
If you have a baby in your tiny house, use the rafters to hang your baby gear. It will save so much space and your baby will love it!
There you have it, some of our tiny house space saving hacks! Let me know in the comments which one stood out to you or if you have any others to add to the list!
Kelsey at GoodPointGrandma
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These are some great tips – I’ve always wondered how people with tiny houses make the best use of the space! We have a condo but our kitchen is very small so I’m always looking for some good hacks to optimize our space there.
It’s all about getting creative (:
I love seeing how others decorate/organize their house to get inspiration for my own home! We live in an apartment right now, and I regularly declutter to optimize space since storage is limited.
That’s awesome – we are always decluttering and I love it! Keeps things fresh and open
I do not have a tiny house at all, but I am a maximalist, so I always love any tips about saving space and unique storage ideas. It’s so intriguing to me how people make tiny homes work, and it seems like you have some creative ideas.
Thanks Kait – its so cool how they are growing in popularity!
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