Family decides to downsize in big way

The Blade

TOLEDO

In a few weeks, Jamie and Kelly Rye hope to start building their new dream home, which requires them to downsize in a big way.

The young couple, with their two young children, will soon move out of their 3,400-square-foot home, which sold after only a little advertising on a private neighborhood Facebook page, and into a 400-square-foot “tiny house.”

“It’s kind of funny,” Jamie Rye, 31, said. “... We’re literally subtracting 3,000 square feet.”

The Rye family is one of the first in northwest Ohio — and possibly even beyond the regional borders — to seriously take on the task of living small recently. Others have considered it and even come up with tentative plans, but ultimately decided tiny living wasn’t for them.

The family is all in and hopes to be in their new, small home by the end of summer.

The concept of downsizing and living minimally in houses that typically range between 150 and 400 square feet started in recent times about 11 or 12 years ago and, as housing prices and debts — particularly student-loan debts — increased, so has the popularity of tiny houses, said Linda Beall, an associate lecturer in the construction and engineering technology program at the University of Toledo.

Beall is working with the Rye family in an advisory role, “giving [them] advice on some constructability issues, some options for design elements involved, and furthering [their] dream of living in a tiny house with a family of four.”

There is no database that tracks tiny-house living, so it’s nearly impossible to say how many there are and how many people live in small residences. The living-little phenomenon is “sporadically popular” across the country, said Beall, who has attended tiny-house workshops. They tend to be most popular in places with temperate winters or as vacation homes.

The Rye family will build their home while living in a camper on Jamie Rye’s parents’ property in Michigan. The house will be built on a 32-foot trailer and moved to the Holland area of western Lucas County and onto property that belongs to the Ryes’ friends. Because it is built on a trailer, the home is licensed as a recreational vehicle.

The home will have a dishwasher, a washer and dryer, and a dual-burner, nautical stove. The children – Jonah, 5, and Jane, 2 – will have separate lofts, and their parents will have a private bedroom that can convert into a living area using a Murphy bed which folds up into a sofa. In the bathroom, there will be a composting toilet.

Utilitarian, transformative furniture is essential for small-house living. The idea of “wasted space” has to be totally eliminated.

Everything the Rye family owns now they hope will be sold at a garage sale and then at an estate sale open to friends and family. Whatever is left will be donated to Goodwill. Mr. Rye said he’s been paring down his wardrobe and the family has reluctantly narrowed down their book collection.

When the Ryes bought their home for $121,250, it was their “dream home.”

They wanted to use the house for community living, but “shared space can be really difficult,” and the family’s dreams and values started to change. Having their second child reinforced some of the lifestyle changes they wanted to make, and they seriously started to consider how they could live more sustainably and become debt free.

Rye said he’s been interested in tiny houses for about five years and was left in charge of the research and planning. The couple went through several ideas — renovating a school bus, living in an old camper, and having a stick-built house — before settling on a tiny house.

With Jamie Rye’s longtime interest in the movement, he’s met and made friends with others who are living small, including Kim and Ryan Kasl, who also have two children, Sullivan, 7, and Story, 5.

The Kasl family, who lives just south of the Twin Cities in Minnesota, has been living in a 267-square-foot house for about seven months. Kim Kasl, 32, who blogs about living small at blessthistinyhouse.com, said the experience so far has been “excellent. We love it. ... We love everything about it. No regrets.”

She said a major concern people present to her is surviving the brutal Minnesota winters, which, she said, was not a problem. In the small space, with a wood burning stove, the home would get so warm that a window in the loft would have to be opened – even in subzero temperatures – to keep the space comfortable.

Within 31/2 years, Jamie Rye estimates the family will pay off about $100,000 in debt – about half of that is student loans and it includes the tiny house’s estimated cost – and become debt free.