I had five friends over for lunch recently. No big deal, right? I've written before about how we do a lot of entertaining on our deck or in our porch.

But our lunch was set for a date that was below freezing. And, though we have a table that can be slid out from the wall to easily accommodate six, we've never gotten around to buying the two additional folding bar chairs we meant to get. So...

• I brought in a couple of our salvaged folding lawn chairs and set them up facing the sofa.
• I put our ottomans in "table mode." (Taking off the cushions leaves a tabletop big enough for two to share.)
• I moved one bar chair around the kitchen counter/table, so that two people could sit, facing the rest of the guests.
• I had my friends stay seated, and I served them from the kitchen (so, no squeezing around one another to get to a buffet).

It was a wonderful afternoon of soup and salad, conversation and laughs. And it reminded me, once again, that going tiny doesn't have to mean going it alone. 

Here are a few things that make entertaining work in our wee space:

• In good weather: the deck and porch and having three doors for entry/exit.
• In all weather: light and views. With 11 windows and our glass doors, the house feels bigger than it is—even on a dark, cold winter day.
• Comfortable folding chairs that can be stored easily when not in use and moved easily as needed.
• Multi-functional furniture like our ottomans/tables/storage cubes.
• Wheels. We have wheels on just about everything in the screen house, to make cleaning and re-configuring easy. In the house here, the ottomans are on wheels and get moved anywhere they're needed as seating or tables....And the bathroom door is on wheels, so it doesn't have to swing open.
• A big sink—with countertop inserts. It gives us plenty of room to stack dirty dishes and hide them away!
• Vertical storage galore in the kitchen that keeps everything we need for cooking close at hand.

Now, here are a few things I'd like to do to make entertaining even easier.

• Buy two more of our IKEA folding bar chairs. Added to the two from the house and the two from the porch, we could easily sit six around one of our tables.
• Put wheels on the table/counter in the house, so it would be easier to pull out for a sit-down meal.
• Get a sleep sofa when we need to replace our old loveseat, so we can invite a guest or two to spend the night.

Having a lot of people over on a cold day will always be a tight fit here. But as one of my friends told me, that's part of the charm. Being in close quarters can heighten intimacy, foster cooperation and supply a laugh or two.

We've been living full time in this sweet, little house for four years now. Life here just keeps getting better as we fine-tune anything that hasn't worked quite as planned (like the stove pipe, a rock wall or two, the solar panel location, frozen pipes...and all the rest).

​To honor the occasion of our four-year anniversary, we thought we'd answer some of the questions we often get asked:

Do you miss all the things you got rid of when downsizing?
No.

Has the novelty of living in a tiny house worn off?
Sure. But that's a good thing. Now, it seems so natural to live in a house this size, that we don't give it a thought most of the time. There are couple exceptions. When we have more than six people over, we have to give logistics some thought. Is it nice enough to eat on the porch? Could we set up more chairs on the deck? And when we want someone to spend the night, we do wish we had a guest room. (Hopefully, coming soon in the form of a "shed.")

​Don't you get on one another's nerves living in such a small space?
Short answer: No

​Longer answer: Though our house is only 250-square feet, it's divided up just enough that one of us can be sleeping in the "bedroom," while the other is working online in the "living room" or starting the coffee in the "kitchen."

In addition, we have a 400-square-foot deck that wraps around the house, with rocking chairs great for reading on one side of the house and a table and chairs on another side—perfect as a work space or for alfresco dining on a nice day. In addition to that, we have a 160-square-foot "screen house" (a free-standing screen porch), with room for dining, cooking, reading, and/or socializing. At this moment, I am in the main house working on this blog, while Bill is in the screen house enjoying a beer and a movie. We have plexiglass panels that we put up on the screen house so that we can use it most of the year.

On top of all that, we spend a good deal of our time in the Great Outdoors: gardening, working on projects (shed to come), walking, biking, volunteering and more.
​​

​Do you think everyone should live in a tiny house?
No, but we do believe everyone, including us, should be investigating how to live more sustainably. How many resources are we consuming? How can we reduce our carbon footprint? How can we be reasonable stewards on this planet?

Do you want to build tiny houses for other people?
Nope. Though we don't want to go into business building houses, we do love to talk to people about their plans and help them, in any way we can, achieve their tiny house dreams.

Knowing what you know now, would you still design and build your house yourselves?
Yes. (But we would want to be our younger selves doing that!)

What's something you love best about your house?
The eleven windows and three glass doors!
​

​What's something you would change about your house?
The bathroom door. It drives people crazy. Our "great" design for our sliding door has caused panic in more than one guest who believes they are trapped in the bathroom. We talk about changing it, but here we are four years later with the same squeaky, awkward door—alas.

Yesterday, I came across a journal I started January 1st, two years ago. At the time, we had built the shell of our house, but had stopped work on the house in December. It was just too cold to enjoy the build.

So, we stayed warm inside a rented studio space—and researched and shopped and sketched out interior plans. We ordered our Kimberly woodstove, Dometic alcohol-burning stove, Eco-Privy kit and our SolSolutions solar generator. We resumed our tiny house build in April of 2015, and it took just three months to finish the interior space. We moved in that August.

This New Year marked our 18th month of living in the house. I'm happy to report we love it even more than the day we moved in. Yes, there are some things we would do differently (see below), but there's so much that makes living here better than any of our previous houses. We've learned it's absolutely possible for two adults to live comfortably in an intentionally designed, 250-square-foot space. 

Now, a list of the first ten why-I-love-my-house reasons that come to mind: 

1. Cleaning and upkeep. In a half-hour I can vacuum, dust, wash dishes and do any general tidy-ing up needed. No stairs to run up and down (as in our previous houses), no unused space to maintain. 

2. Climate control. When it's hot, our many windows (including six clerestory windows) plus three ceiling fans keep us compfortable. It doesn't hurt that we're on the side of a mountain with trees for partial shade. In the winter, the clerestory windows let the warmth of the sun into our space. For cold winter nights, our wood stove keeps things cozy. The rest of the time an oil-filled, radiant heater is enough to keep things at a base temperature. (More soon on the new heater we're installing.)

3. Light. With three glass doors and 11 windows, our space is light-filled even in winter. And I'm someone who needs sunlight! 

4. Seamless indoor/outdoor space. The windows also make the forest feel like an extention of our living space. Having three exterior doors means we can be outside in a second from anywhere in the house. And with a deck wrapping around three sides of the house, we walk out the doors to rocking chairs, an herb garden and spaces to grill and eat. 

5. Ground-level sleeping. Yes, our bed takes up significant floor space, but I'm happy we don't climb a ladder to get to bed. And Bill is especially happy not to sleep in a confined space. Lofts work wonderfully for many people; they're just not for us.

6. A spacious kitchen. We have a giant sink, which we use all the time whether doing the dishes, washing things out, soaking labels off beer bottles (for homebrewing!), etc. We can put butcher block inserts over the sink for more counter space, but even without the inserts we have abundant open counter space, because our dining table doubles as an extension of the counter. With more than four feet of space between the counter and the opposite wall, nothing feels cramped in the kitchen area.

7. Extending over the sides of the trailer. For people not planning on moving a house much (or at all), it makes such a difference going wider than the 8.5-foot width of a trailer. Tiny houses that stay inside the wheel wells, are even narrower, with about 7 feet of interior width. Our house is more than 11-feet wide inside. Yes, we'd need a "wide load" permit to move this house, but we'll deal with that if/when the need arises.

8. Shower elbow room. We could have saved space in the bathroom by going with a smaller shower, but we're happy we didn't. Our 54" x 24" stall feels just right, and we're generally happy with the corrugated metal walls in the shower.

9. High shelves. I kept a lot more things than true minimalists do. I have my grandmothers' china and silver, my uncle's old books, souveneirs from our travel, beautiful artwork by my sister Jill Jensen and much, much more. Some of these "treasures" sit on shelves over the bedroom windows. More on shelves over the kitchen windows and more still on shelves over the TV and sofa. Though we have a lot packed into this house, we have sufficient storage for non-decorative items, and we work to keep the house uncluttered otherwise.

10. Our screen house. OK, techinically this isn't part of the house, but our 160-square-foot, freestanding screen porch is a big part of why our house doesn't feel small. In good weather, we spend much of the day in this open-air space. Built partially out of reclaimed materials and left primitive (no electricity, no running water), it was cheap and quick to build. It feels as though we're sitting in the middle of the forest—just without the bugs or rain.

Are there things we would do differently? Yes! And that will be the subject of a future blog...

Please click on the pictures below for more details.