Tennessee Edwards, executive producer for Loud TV and the FYI network’s reality TV series Tiny House Nation, said millennials are the primary force behind the tiny-house trend. But the number of boomers choosing tiny-house living is increasing.

“Boomers are growing in the tiny-house world,” Edwards said. “Boomers are catching on, and the good thing about tiny is that it’s a fit for anyone looking to change their lives and reduce the daily pressures of having stuff and to try and do more with less. That message relates to millennials and baby boomers and all in between. Less is more.”

An average-size home in the United States is about 2,600 square feet, according to the website The Tiny Life. Living space for a typical tiny house is between 100 and 400 square feet, but in some cases may be larger.

“Lots of people decide to get an RV when they retire, which is a similar concept since you downsize from a large home to a small space that gives you more freedom,” Edwards said.

“With the growing popularity of tiny homes, we have seen an uptick in boomers wanting to go tiny, and it fits into their concept of seeing the country and living with less when they retire. I think the main concern for boomers is a place that gives them freedom—control of retirement funds—and a tiny home can give you all of that.”

A Garrett County, Maryland, contractor who began specializing in building tiny houses in 2012, Hobbitat has completed more than a dozen custom-built tiny vacation homes—13 for Blue Moon Rising Center for Sustainable Education, an ecotourism venture located on Deep Creek Lake in the Allegheny Mountains, near the Maryland-West Virginia border.

Known as the “Lake Tahoe of the East,” the 3,900-acre lake features 65 miles of shoreline and is 12 miles in length. A four-season resort, the lake is about two to three hours from Washington, D.C., making it a popular weekend and vacation destination.

Sue and Bill Thomas, the owners of Hobbitat, a variation of the word habitat and not an allusion to J.R.R. Tolkien’s book The Hobbit, said the tiny houses or hobs, as they call them, encompass 250-600 square feet.

At the time of interview, Bill Thomas was building a 573-square-foot hob for David and Katharine Law of Reston, Virginia, as a retirement home. David is 70 and Katharine is 60. Katharine works with the elderly by taking them to medical and other appointments.

For a number of years, the Laws have been in the process of downsizing their living space from a 3,000-square-foot residence in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley to a 1,500-square-foot home in Reston; and now, they live in a condo/apartment with about 1,100 square feet of living space. The Laws’ hob is the first fulltime hob residence Bill Thomas has built.

While there are hob plans available on the Hobbitat website, no two hobs are identical, Thomas said. The hob being built for the Laws includes a washer/dryer, a stove and oven, and a refrigerator. It features a loft bedroom with a built-in bed, which can be accessed from both sides, and closets.

The vacation hobs, by comparison, include a three-quarter-size kitchen without an oven; a small, under-counter refrigerator; and no washer or dryer. They are equipped with a pull-down Murphy-type bed located in the loft.

Others feature a nook with a small bed that can only be accessed from one side—think accommodations found in sailboats, which provided a model of efficiency that is applied to the hob design, Sue Thomas noted.

“I’ve been [very] interested in these small houses for a long time,” said David Law, who works as a safety manager for an airport authority in the D.C. area. “My wife and I are on the same page. The bottom line is that it seems to be the wave of the future.”

Law said many people of his generation downsize their living arrangements and un-clutter their lives by paring down their possessions. Any remaining items they wanted to keep, but would not fit in their smaller living space, were already consigned to a storage unit; other items are to be given to their son and his fiancée.

“We really love the way they’re put together; they’re very cool. With everything built in ... there’s not much need for furniture, so I think our next step is to have a fire sale. The whole idea is to eventually pare down to the bare essentials.”

Letting go of possessions accrued over a lifetime is a very difficult chore, Law said. People, as they get older, get very attached to things.

“Most people really won’t be willing to do this,” Law said. “Eventually what we’ll do is give up the storage room and put in a shed at the cabin. We’ve got a beautiful lot. [The Thomases] use a lot of repurposed things like the wood door they found, which was 100 years old.

“The hob has a funky, cool, different kind of quirky appearance—it isn’t your standard carpet, drywall, or standard ceiling. It takes on the personality of the people it’s built for.”

Three Tiffany lamps acquired over the years by the Laws are to be wired directly into the ceiling. The amount of possessions—clothes and a couple pieces of furniture that they plan to move into the hob—would fit in a large van.

Their hob is located on the lake and will have a view of the Wisp Ski Resort, Law said.

“Start unloading stuff,” he advised other boomers preparing to downsize. “Life’s not about collecting stuff—not about hoarding. The prices of the hobs are really fair. We won’t have to worry about a big mortgage.”

The Thomases recommended that people interested in the hobs take a test drive by renting a hob at Blue Moon Rising. If couples considering a hob can’t get along with each other in a small space, living in a hob would only magnify relationship problems, Sue Thomas said.

“Tiny houses contain all the necessities of a larger house, but do so in under 500 square feet,” Edwards said, noting that Tiny House Nation has been on the air for four seasons and Tiny House Hunting is in its third season.

“Tiny houses are part of a social movement where people are drastically downsizing the space they live in.”

For more information on Hobbitat, visit http://hobbitatspaces.com; for more information on Tiny House Nation and Tiny House Hunting, visit www.fyi.tv/shows/tiny-house-nation.