How  People In small Homes Have Sex?

Strategically installed handles are just the start.

If you've tuned in to HGTV at any point in the last year, you may have noticed one stalwart trend conspicuously absent: all the couples asking for a sprawling open floor plan. Gone are the days of worshipping square footage; in its stead is a raft of shows about tiny homes — the urban hipster's rustic, design-heavy take on mobile homes designed primarily for full time living. At most recent count, the home improvement network has five separate shows dedicated to tiny home living, saying nothing of the many existing shows that have tiny home dedicated episodes.

Aside from being incredibly fun to say, tiny homes are becoming increasingly popular across the country, with cities like Austin, Denver, and Portland becoming hubs for young, eco-conscious minimalists looking for an alternative to traditional rentals and expensive homes. Clocking in roughly 150 to 400 square feet at an average price of just $23,000, they're an affordable way to avoid getting saddled with a mortgage, making the investment particularly attractive to couples in their late 20s and early 30s. But in a domicile where space is at a premium, tiny homes can come with their own tax; namely, your sex life. Beds are usually lofted just feet from the ceiling, living rooms and kitchens cease to be separate rooms, and with "shower" being a generous term for those tiny homes that even have running water, shower sex is all but a foregone conclusion.

Which all points to one big question: How are people fucking in their tiny homes?

The question has been raised before, both by incredulous viewers of Tiny House Hunters and by tiny home owners themselves who resent the idea that their sex lives might be anything other than perfectly mundane.

"You just have to get creative in a tiny house," says Alex Gore, 31, co-founder of F9 Productions, a design firm that creates mobile tiny homes. "Use the features of the house. You have a lot of unique opportunities." While most tiny homes have beds and couch areas, Gore argues that the lack of space in a tiny home can actually open up more possibilities sexually. He and co-founder Lance Cayko, 33, point to features in a tiny home that might be overlooked in a regular home, such as the stairs leading up to a loft (great for doggy-style), as well as ones you probably wouldn't find in most neighborhood suburbs, like strategically placed handles affixed to ceilings and walls. Other tiny home users also embrace the 'use what you've got' motto; one homeowner in Colorado mentioned that in addition to a futon and bed, the wall behind his wet bar provided a great place for a blow job with the added bonus plenty of back support for his girlfriend.

Picking the right bed might seem like the most important consideration — murphy beds can offer space while loft beds offer privacy, hammocks offer an entirely different sex swing experience all together — but finding or building the right tiny home can be just as critical as learning how to maneuver or furnish it. For Austin, Texas resident Robin Medina, 24, having a high ceiling was of tantamount importance. Even though Medina tops out at just around five feet, her husband, Ryan Adams, 26, is tall. The pair moved into a charming bespoke tiny home Adams built on Austin's quirky east side just a few months ago, but had lived in a rental tiny home two years prior, one where the ceilings weren't quite high.

"That particular loft was pretty small," explains Adams. "The ceiling was very low and I did feel like that had a physical impact on actualizing sex, at least for me as a tall person." In their current tiny home, Adams has built a vaulted ceiling over their full-sized loft bed, to accommodate his lanky frame. While the stairway-accessible loft still feels vaguely reminiscent of a bunk bed, both Medina and Adams can sit up comfortably. Given the full foot between the crown of Medina's head and the cedar ceiling, it seems that now Adams has little problem actualizing sex in the tiny house that he built.

Just because tiny homes are minimalist doesn't mean the sex has to be Spartan.

Medina also cites the importance of keeping their small space as uncluttered as possible for optimal sex-having. "When you already have a limited space, you don't want other belongings and distracting things in your bed. You're sleeping here, you're having sex here, so [keeping it clean] creates a much more focused, intimate space."

Unsurprisingly, missionary was the most cited sexual position for the majority of tiny home residents I spoke with.  A fair number also claimed that the lowered ceilings in a tiny home offer excellent support to brace against for anyone riding cowgirl (this is where those handles really prove their usefulness, if you know what I mean). In tiny homes like Adams' and Medina's, a variety of surfaces, like a tabletop here, or a staircase there, lend themselves well to becoming props in a creative sex life, reinforcing the concept that just because tiny homes are minimalist doesn't mean the sex has to be Spartan.

While maintaining a creative sex life is paramount to tiny home happiness, dating and maintaining your relationship can often take significantly more effort than just navigating the sexy times alone. Though Reddit's Tiny Home forum is a rich trove of blueprints, tips, and yes, questions about sex in a tiny home, a large number of threads are devoted to dating and relationships, rather than just banging: when do you mention living in a tiny home? Is it worth dating someone who doesn't want to live in a tiny home? Is there any room to go to bed mad in 48 square feet of space?

Though deciding to purchase a tiny home as a couple, like Adams and Medina did, makes the transition much smoother, enthusiasts say living in one doesn't hamper their dating lives much. "When you downsize to a such a small size, it's an extreme, but what it does is force you to examine your life and what you want to do and who you want to be," says Ryan Mitchell, author of popular tiny home blog, The Tiny Life. "When it came to dating, I was able to get a lot of clarity. I knew what I could give and what I needed, and I had a better sense of who I was actually looking for, which has been big a help."

But it took some serious communication to downsize, even for Medina and Adams, who were already together for three years before building their first tiny home.  According to Adams, "We just had to really check in with each other about how it would work, how we'd get this money [to build a home], making sure Robin felt she could trust my judgment. There was a lot of stuff to work through, but we did, and I feel like we're stronger for it."

Nobody is getting pegged in a low-ceiling loft.

With the sex proven to be adaptable and the price tag great, it's no surprise tiny homes are being adopted en masse by people as yet unencumbered by scores of children each requiring closets filled with packs of diapers. Sure, there are still obvious drawbacks. Living room windows often offer little to no privacy, and certain positions are a foregone conclusion; you can't have stair sex if your bedroom only has a rope ladder, and nobody is getting pegged in a low-ceiling loft.

But ultimately, for tiny home enthusiasts, the pros tend to weigh out the cons. For Medina and Adams, one of the biggest benefits of living in a tiny home is being on the same page emotionally and sexually because of the space constraints. Explains Medina, "Since we're always having to talk to each other about moving about the space and using things, we're [constantly] in a mode of sharing. So when things turn intimate…it's not awkward getting things started because you've already been talking and communicating so much about all sorts of stuff. It just helps us get in the same mood."

The potential of not being saddled with a crippling mortgage that traditional homes often come with is also incredibly attractive to young couples; not just for financial security, but relationship security as well. Financial troubles have long been the leading cause of divorce in America, with couples who argue about money once a week 30% more likely to get divorced than those who argue occasionally. As Ryan Mitchell, the owner of The Tiny Life blog, puts it, "To be debt free is helpful…To walk into a relationship and be able to eliminate that whole factor, which is so stressful for so many couples at least puts you in a good spot." And if you partner up with someone who builds the tiny home you'll live in, there's the inordinately sexy benefit of living with someone who knows how to build things. From scratch. With their hands.

Is having sex regularly and often in a tiny home for everybody? Probably not. But if the only thing keeping you from giving away all your material possessions and relocating to a cabin in someone's front yard is the specter of stale sex, heed some classic advice: "Where there's a will, there's always a way." And when that isn't enough, use all the money you saved and get a suite at the Marriott — after all, not everything can be solved by a few strategically placed handles.