The Tiny House movement is, by now, a well-known phenomenon: there are TV shows, books, YouTube videos, and everything in between. Like many, my boyfriend Garve and I are pretty hooked on the idea of having our own tiny house. Neither one of us are the traditional “have a house with a mortgage” types. I don’t like the idea of being tied down and Garve really can’t be bothered with anything outside of his computer desk. The ability to customize an entire space to our needs is appealing, with less money spent per square footage, and we could move it! We already signed on the imaginary dotted line, but we needed to try one out.
Glenwood Springs Tiny Home
Luckily for us, when researching Airbnb options for our Glenwood Springs trip, Rachel’s Rocky Mountain Tiny Home was one of our first options. Ladies and gentlemen, I fell in absolute love right then and there.
The Airbnb listing showed a beautiful outdoor area, with lots of pictures of the inside, which was light and airy (very important in every tiny house video ever). I was also fascinated by the fact that it’s on a gooseneck trailer, which for my own tiny house ideas was essential. I booked soon after, very excited about spending 1) our weekend in a tiny house and 2) our weekend when it was supposed to be cold in a tiny house. A lot of the blogs I have read and videos I have watched all talk about winter and how cold tiny houses can get, so this was exciting!
Our Introduction: Act One
The drive to Glenwood Springs through Independence Pass was beautiful and we arrived with plenty of daylight left to explore. We stopped first at the Rocky Mountain Tiny House and we were a little like children – once we opened the door the pictures didn’t really do the place justice. It’s an entirely different experience seeing a place in pictures and that first introduction when you can actually pull out drawers and climb ladders.
This Glenwood Springs tiny home was absolutely amazing. The outdoor area was probably my favorite – sitting outside with a cup of tea beside a little creek overshadowed by fall leaves was the best. Inside the house, Garve was in love with the loft, because he liked being able to sit at the edge and still see everything I was doing on the couch.
A lot of the tiny house videos I have watched will have someone, say “This is a bigger kitchen then I have had in most apartments.” This isn’t embellishment I think, because this kitchen was the most functional and best laid out kitchen either one of us had ever been in. That being said, for Garve and I, we realized that kitchen space isn’t all that important, since neither one of us will ever compete on Master Chef. A tiny dishwasher is non-negotiable, however. Although we didn’t cook in the Rocky Mountain Tiny, we definitely could have.
An Interlude; Act Two
There were a couple of practical lessons we learned our first morning staying in the tiny house.
First, it was cold. Neither one of us has lived in apartments that required much heating, and we thought we would be too warm in the loft with the heat on (very true), so we didn’t leave the heat on. Big mistake. That first touch of our bare feet to the floor was like stepping out on a frozen lake. Even Scotland-born Garve got a cold!
Putting on socks didn’t really help either, since the damage had already been done. We migrated breakfast into the gooseneck, which also had a couch because it had a separate heating element and was up higher. We were able to get warm inside the house before leaving to go explore relatively cold Glenwood Springs. Lesson learned: keep the heat on!
Second, trying to get ready in a loft wasn’t the smartest choice either of us made. We wanted to at least try it but soon realized that even though we could sit on our knees and still have an inch or two of headroom, getting ready on the first level was a much easier option. A lot of tiny house videos talk about getting ready and how different people do it – I personally got ready in the bathroom, which brings me to my next point.
The Glenwood Springs Tiny Home had an excellent bathroom (yay hot water!), but I am a full vanity kind of girl. The one we had was a space-saving marvel, but I had nowhere to put anything but on a little shelf above the sink, and my toiletries bag didn’t fit.
The last lesson we learned staying in the Rocky Mountain Tiny was how easy it was to navigate around the space. A lot of tiny house videos show couples and families easily going from one room to another, without ever running into each other. That was how it was for Garve and I – we had plenty of space to move around! Eight and a half feet wide doesn’t seem like a lot, but this is where laying out the different parts of the tiny, like the kitchen and living room, is really based on personal preference.
The Finale: Act Three
The Rocky Mountain Tiny Home was parked in an RV park. Truth be told, I had no idea what that entailed in Glenwood Springs. The one we stayed in was at the base of a small mountain, away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and was packed. I could finally empathize with a can of sardines. The tiny houses, campers, RVs, airstreams, and small dwellings were, in some cases, only three or four feet away from each other. This highlights an important aspect of Glenwood Springs culture.
Like everywhere in Colorado, Glenwood Springs is expensive. In a ranking of the top 10 most expensive Colorado cities, Glenwood Springs is #10. There are a lot of factors that go into that ranking, but imagine trying to be a middle-class family living and working in such an expensive city. A traditional house might be too much and out of reach – but, Glenwood has RV parks like the one we stayed in, allow tiny houses! Being able to live in a smaller space in a (close quarter) RV park might be just right for single people, couples, or small families. That is the tiny house lifestyle.
For our Glenwood trip the tiny house was a far more affordable option than staying in a hotel or even a traditional Airbnb. By staying in the Rocky Mountain Tiny Home, Garve and I now know what we want in our own tiny home and have a realistic picture of what we want and how much space we need. We were lucky enough to take a great trip through Colorado and experience a tiny house!
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