The Good Life

Tumbleweed Tiny House Company founder Jay Shafer teaches Americans how to build efficient homes of less than 1,000 square feet.

When Natural Home first featured Jay Shafer’s tiny house back in 1999, building an 89-square-foot house was not only radical—but illegal. To get around the minimum-size requirements in his hometown of Iowa City, Iowa, Jay had to put his small, beautifully built house on wheels and call it a trailer. Jay wrote at the time: “The scale of our homes should be as varied as the spatial needs of their inhabitants, and it is those needs rather than government regulations and conspicuous consumption that should determine house size.”

 
With plans ranging between 750 and 847 square feet, the Sebastarosa is one of the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company's larger homes. Photo Courtesy Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. 

In the past decade, Americans have caught on to the brilliance and efficiency of building just as much house as they need—no more—and Jay’s company, Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, has been meeting their needs with homes ranging from 65 to 800 square feet.

Today, Tumbleweed Tiny House Company is at the forefront of the small house movement. Jay and his homes have been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, CBS, MSNBC and in The New York Times. This past week, more than 400 different media sources published an Associated Press report about the growing popularity of Jay’s 16 house plans designed to fit the needs of both single occupants and growing families. The plans are designed so that anyone, from novice to professionals, can build a Tumbleweed home at a reasonable cost.

Every year Jay Shafer holds two-day workshops throughout North America in which he shares his years of experience and provides participants the opportunity to design their very own tiny home. At this time 12 workshops are planned for 2011. They’re worth checking out, if you find one near you.