The Harsh Reality Of Living in a Container Home (1 Year Review)

Yes, this is our shipping

container

home

and my wife and I have been

living

here for over a

year

and while we were excited at first, there are a few things we really don't like if you are thinking about purchasing a shipping

container

home

. or a tiny house here are five things we wish we had known: our tiny house is a 40 foot tall cube that is a little taller than a normal shipping container, it has one bedroom, one bathroom with kitchen and

living

room, So we have all the needs within 320 feet. Our first problem is that there is no space for guests.

We have children who live out of town and many grandchildren who my wife loves to come spend the night, but it is very difficult to find space for everyone. It's hard during the holidays because we all like to get together, uh, and when everyone comes to town, there's no room for them to stay with us, also when friends come, it's okay, we can hang out outside when the weather is nice, but if the weather is bad. We can't invite friends over because there is nowhere inside for everyone to be if for some reason they needed to spend the night.

I don't know what we would do, so our second issue is structural because the house was pre-built off-site and When we moved to this location, we had some damage that occurred during the move, like broken tiles and things like that, that had to be fixed now that the house is ready, we still had some resolution issues that we didn't think we would have with uh. some tiles cracked again and the floor of all things cracked in half so this is our tile shower and we talked about how the house settled during moving and we had cracks.

We used to have a crack that followed this line all the way to the top, but He went out and took out all those tiles and fixed them, but since then the house is a little more fixed up and we have a crack in this corner that runs quite a distance, it's not all the way up and down. , but it's pretty uh also one of the problems that we've run into is that when it sits, it moves and this sliding door rubs against the wood and you can see where we rub. Mark that we are going to have to also solve one of the other structural problems that What we have is when we try to hang cabinets or things like that, we have to be very careful with the pipes that go through the walls because it is a very small space to run the pipes water and power lines, you have to be very careful where you hang things or you could reach a line also with doors with sliding holes, we can't hang anything on those walls because the door goes inside the wall, so to try to To find more storage space, we hang these cabinets and shelves ourselves. uh, but since we were worried about the water and electric lines, we had to buy a special stud finder so we could follow the lines and I had to go ahead and outline the water and electric lines before we hung these brackets right here, uh, to make sure I don't hit them, this is one of the sliding doors I was talking about and when you open it, we can't really hang things on this wall here, anything heavy, you can see we have some command strips right there. so we can hang light things but nothing that can pierce the wall with a bracket.

The pictures on this wall we probably could have hung with a screw, but I think we just used a command hook on that one with the TV. I had to make a stud finder so I could mount the bracket on the wall because it rotates and pulls in and out so we can move it in and out of our way, but you can see in the pictures most of the pictures on the walls what we have. I just hung it with uh strp command, but these two really lightweight. I've used small picture hangers that don't go far through the sheetrock.

Our third problem is the most common one you hear about these things and that is storage and downsizing. We come from a 14,400 foot house and knew it would be an adjustment, but it's been a lot harder than we thought it was going to be. I could see that it would be easy for those who are coming from a small apartment or this is their first home and not have things, but moving from a large house or a larger house to this square footage has been a very difficult adjustment over the past

year

, we've been trying to go through our stuff and eliminate what we don't have.

We need and save things we need, for example we got rid of a microwave and bought a toaster oven because we thought we wouldn't use a microwave as much. We realized we did it so we found a microwave that is a combination microwave and convection oven and now we have them both in one place and there are several things so we've had to change just to try to figure out what really works for us. Our fourth problem is the fact that we live inside a metal box things we didn't think about before we moved here was getting cell phone signals and Wi-Fi inside the building uh before we figured it all out as soon as you walk in the house and you close the door, we lost all the external services wouldn't go through the walls, so what we've done is put an active point right here on the window where it will actually receive signals.

That's the only place we will receive a signal is at the window and everything in the house is connected to that little box and we have to put our cell phones on Wi-Fi and connect to that access point or we won't have any service inside our house and, although being off the grid is not out of the question. We would love to move towards that at this time, we are not like we have said before, and that has created a problem for us, it is the only Internet we have and cell phone service. One of the other problems is the layout of our house even though we love the layout, we had some problems with the heating and air conditioning because the air conditioning was in the bedroom and it was a direct shot through the house to the living room, it worked pretty well as long as all the doors were open, but if we had to close any of the sliding doors to, you know, take a shower or for someone to go to bed and close the door, the ends Opposites of the house were polar opposites temperature-wise, so we had to add a second mini split in the living room, but since we did it it's been wonderful.

Another accompanying problem is the exterior of the shipping container. We didn't place it too far from the ground trying to keep a low profile. but in doing so, we've created a small space that stays shaded and cool, which is perfect for some of the creepy crawlies that you don't want making homes right under your house. Also the shipping container door inserts are shaded and cooled. and out of the weather, so we have a problem with things being installed right outside our door, not where you want them. This is the end of the shipping container with the doors I was talking about and here you can see where. all the pine needles have fallen off, we haven't cleaned it in a few days because we've been busy, but you can see all the little cobwebs that have collected under the awning or overhang because it's a safe, dry little area, one of the Things that we just noticed and that we are starting to have problems with and that also damage the pylons of our foundation.

We have a gopher. He apparently likes to live in the cool darkness of the house and dig from there, as you can see his little path runs to the right. under my smoker I just moved to this place a few days ago and I think he is there under the house where you can see that little Gap and our fifth problem and another one that we knew we would have to make an adjustment. but I didn't realize how difficult personal space was going to be. I love my wife. I know she loves me. We've been married for a while, but when you go from 14-1500 square feet to 320, you really spend. a lot of up close and personal time and sometimes you just need your own little space and that's been something we've had a hard time figuring out how to do, you know, our house is basically a straight line and a hallway running through it.

All of this, uh, is hard when we're both getting ready to work at the same time in such a small space, figuring out how to work together without stepping on each other's toes, sometimes it causes a little frustration, but we're figuring it out. So when we talk about personal space, if I'm in my bedroom and my wife is in the living room watching TV, she'll be down there, walking past the dog watching TV on the couch, so if I've made her angry, One day I can close these two doors and she can have a little time to not get angry, but that's all the personal space we have here, but if you're considering moving into a tiny house or a container home with someone else, that's definitely It's something you'll have to consider before moving.

Having said all this, all we are trying to do is make it clear that there are some things that are disadvantages or that you should consider, we still love living in our fish container house there are many more positives than these negatives, they are just things that we wish we had known before we moved, none of them would have stopped us from buying this house and living here, just a few things we could have thought about to make adjustments. We've talked beforehand about maybe one day expanding a little or even trying a different type of tiny house, but for now we love the house we live in and plan to stay here.

It's been an eventful year and we would just like to say thank you. To all of you who have supported our channel, we hope you enjoyed these videos. We love making them. We plan to do more, so I'll see you around, but for now, that's all friends.