Herald reporter Brittany Keogh spent the night with her husband in a tiny house
It's bucketing down as an early spring storm begins but inside the tiny house where my husband David and I are staying the night it's dry and cosy.
We'll be the first people to sleep in this 17sqm prototype from Build Tiny - and while I guess you could call us the guinea pigs, the experience is just as much about us finding out if a small home could work for us long term as it is about testing it out.
Born in the early 1990s David and I are part of the millennials generation - the consumer group that Build Tiny director Gina Stevens kept in mind when designing the home.
Like many young Kiwis we hope to own a home of our own one day.
But with properties in Auckland costing $1million on average, buying a three bedroom house on a quarter-acre section could be out of our reach for a while yet - so a tiny home for $120,500 does seem like an appealing option, at least theoretically.
The house is parked up on a trailer at the ASB showgrounds for the Home Show.
We arrive just after 5.30pm with a bag of spare clothes and toiletries. We've been told the tiny house has all the comforts of a much larger home so have packed light.
As we walk through the carpark towards the black corrugated iron I start to feel a bit anxious - I have a tendency to get claustrophobic and a borderline irrational fear of heights so the thought of sleeping in a loft bed like the one I know is inside freaks me out.
But when the owner Gina welcomes us in my fears are allayed.
The "tiny" house is a lot more spacious than its name lets on.
17sq m tiny home designed with millennials in mind. Photo / Jemma Wells Photography
It may be on a trailer, but it feels homely - nothing like a traditional caravan.
It's modern and eclectically decorated with blonde wood panelling, pens that look like pencils in a jar on the desk in the office and cookbooks piled artfully atop the sleek white fridge.
There's a full kitchen - including an oven that could easily fit a roast lamb - a bathroom with a washing machine in a corner, an office loft on one side and, opposite it in another loft, a large bed lined with plush white and blue pillows.
After giving us a tour, Gina leaves David and I to settle in.
We'll be here for the next 10 hours but I try to imagine us living in this quirky tiny home permanently.
I look at the loft bed and wonder whether I'm really the kind of person who could realistically clamber over my sleeping partner and down a stair case in the dark to get to the toilet in the middle of the night.
I consider myself to be a bit spatially-challenged (aka clumsy) so I'm unsure whether living here all the time would work for us practically.
About an hour into our stay I'm forced out of my comfort zone. I have to use the toilet and it doesn't flush.
I should probably clarify that it's designed not to - it's a composting toilet.
The 'Millennial' tiny house. Photo / Jemma Wells Photography
You use it as normal but instead of flushing when you're finished, you heap bamboo shavings into the bowl.
I know it's eco-friendly, but I'm going to be honest here: the first time I kind of feel like a cat using a litter tray.
However, I'm determined to be open-minded and not let the interesting loo put me off tiny home living.
We eat our dinner of spaghetti and meatballs standing awkwardly in the kitchen because there isn't a dining table - but that could be because the house is currently being used as show home, it would be easy to move a small one in so I don't let that influence my judgement.
After a glass of wine (a small one because I don't want to fall off the stairs when it's bedtime) I relax.
I hop in the shower and am pleasantly surprised at how similar it is to the one our current house. The water's warm and the pressure's strong.
Then comes the trip up the dreaded stairs to the bed.
My hand gripping the wooden rail, I see visions of David or me rolling over in our sleep and falling to our death (vivid imagination, I know) but once I'm up there I realise it's not actually as high - or as scary - it looks.
The low ceiling makes me feel cosy, not claustrophobic. I lie back on the fluffy pillows and quickly drift off.
We wake up at 6.30am and after a quick breakfast of fruit danishes courtesy of our host it's time to head to work.
At the office I reflect on my brief experience of tiny home living.
Could that lifestyle work for David and me? Possibly.
Buying any home - tiny or huge - is a life changing decision and I'd have to be completely certain I could adjust to life without a flushing toilet before signing any paperwork.
But I can say without a doubt staying in that tiny house changed my expectations on what I "need" in a home. Maybe I'll embrace the minimalist lifestyle - minus the ladders.
