Taking downsizing to the extreme, I am flirting with the idea. Has anyone experienced with a tiny house?
No, but I love the idea and read/watch anything about tiny houses that comes my way. DH would never agree to it, but, if I were on my own, that would be my life. Parked some place along a bluff in Maine, of course.
My wife is flirting with the idea, but she has these oddly inconsistent ideas of “tiny”. Combining the living room, kitchen and bedroom means less to clean, but the kitchen should also have a juicer, a blender and a smoothie machine. The house should be two bedrooms, but she wants her own room and the kids shouldn’t need to share and we need a place for them when they come home but not the rest of the time. You get the idea, a fun exercise that’s pretty much going to wait until we get a couple more into college.
I would suggest taking an extended stay at one before making a decision - do some day to day to week living in one.
How tiny?!
Personally, I am not going to crawl up some small ladder and crawl on my hands and knees to the bed. At my age, could you imagine having to go down to the bathroom in the middle of the night? If there is a decent bedroom downstairs, and no requirement to crawl up into a loft, it might be OK.
I think anyone could practice this type of living by trying to live in a motor home for a month.
The main thing they don’t point out on the TV shows about these tiny homes is that there has to be an energy source and, more importantly, there has to be a sewer drainage source. You cannot just ‘park’ it anywhere you want. The poop has to go somewhere and that requires connection to a public sewer utility, a complex composting system, or a holding tank that needs to be pumped out at least once a week. Motor homes accomplish this by traveling to a pump out station. I cannot imagine that a tiny house can be transported to a pump out station once a week.
Detroit is doing really cool things with tiny houses: https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2017/11/06/more-tiny-homes-come-detroit-giving-homeless-shot-ownership/835553001/
Personally, nope couldn’t do it. I need space.
The ones that hold the poo and are movable are called RVs and deserve their own topic. 
I love tiny houses the way I love dollhouses. It’s super fun to move the furniture and tiny people around. Then I get to live in my normal-sized house. 
Priceless
Our home is about 1200 sq ft. It’s tiny enough for us. Stairs get tougher as we get older.
I don’t get why if you live in a tiny home you’re cool, but if you live in a mobile home you’re trailer trash. Some mobile homes are pretty darned nice.
I stayed in a tiny house for a couple of nights. It was adorable. And tiny. Very tiny.
We have a smallish cabin next to our weekend place - small sitting area, then beds (currently 2 twins), then a 3/4 bath. No kitchen, but there is a microwave, electric kettle, nespresso, and dorm-size fridge. The septic system isn’t big enough to have this qualify as a full-time residence, but a sibling insists they will live there, as it meets the requirement of a real bathroom.
The whole gray water, sewage/composting toilet issues never seem to be addressed. Draining into the ground shouldn’t be an option. And a metal trough isn’t a bathtub.
And please! What’s wrong with cabinets? We have a trailer and everything has to be buttoned up and stowed before the thing moves. Nothing like having the contents of a shelf flung all over.
I don’t get the difference between a tiny home and a trailer. I don’t like the ladder to the loft either. I can’t imagine crawling up and down in the middle of the night to go potty. Where do people “hang” out at night? How are they heated/air conditioned?
I have a feeling that there are few owners where a tiny house is the main home for any period of time. Trendy? Yes. Viable long term? No. It will be very interesting to see how Detroit’s tiny home experiment goes in, say 15 years. Probably not well.
The one I stayed in did not have a sleeping loft. The bed rolled out from under the kitchen/bath level (a few steps up) into the space where you could “hang” with one or two of your closest friends. It had an gas stove type heater fueled by a propane tank. It had a composting toilet. I’m not sure where the sink/shower water drained.
I would rather just live in an apartment.
One thing that I rarely see discussed on the tiny house TV shows is plumbing and utilities. I want a shower and a toilet that flushes and electricity.
We do have a trailer park a few miles from my house. I do wonder why these aren’t the original tiny homes. I am pretty sure that they do have utilities.
I agree with others that you should try this out before committing yourself. You might want to rent an RV for a month or so.
I feel like the movement is the pendulum swinging too far in the opposite direction. Perhaps a needed lesson, and adjustment in home sizes from the mega-mansions, but would be too small for me as a permanent residence. I also feel it works better when there are plenty of options for escape ( ie: a city environment with lots of public spaces, or a warmer rural environment, where you can expand to the exterior).
Agree about mobile homes. My best friend in HS lived in one that was roomy compare to some tiny houses I see on TV - single wide with 2 baths and 3 bedrooms and no ducking or climbing stairs! What kills me are ones with kids and open lofts. If you are talking 400-500 square feet, that trend is not new - it’s called an apartment in NYC (or similar).
I actually enjoy the shows that show more what I call extreme downsizing - small condos or houses in the range of 500-600 and in one place. Seems like if you really want to move a lot, buy a camper or RV. These tiny houses can’t be fun to pull. Now a permanent tiny structure in vacation place - maybe but I get up to many times a night to want stairs between me and bathroom and I definitely don’t want to go outside.