Jewel Pearson is a tiny house designer, consultant and advocate who lives in a 480-square-foot tiny home on a farm just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. She first started downsizing in 2006, wanting to live freely and to be able to travel and relocate easily. She began her tiny house journey with a mobile home Her space started out as a mobile home but she eventually relocated the home added additional space. Though she now considers the 17,000-pound home stationery, it can still be transported if Jewel ever decides to relocate again.

When Jewel began her journey around 2013, it was hard for her to find information on building a tiny home, so she started with a smaller house frame and came up with a design on graph paper. The original tiny home featured a main living space, two lofts, a full bathroom, a small screened-in porch and a kitchenette. In 2020, Jewel converted the screened-in porch to a sunroom.

Born in Brooklyn, Jewel was always drawn to big cities and wanted to be able to use her tiny home to travel around the country. Originally, Jewel’s home was primarily stationed at RV parks, but eventually she relocated the home to a friend’s farm. "I can honestly say I would not have been able to live in this area when I first started my tiny house journey because I was still so connected to needing that energy from the city," she says. "But over the course of 7 years, life changes."

Initially she missed the hustle and bustle of the city, but she has learned to love the space that provides her peace after her seven-year tiny-home journey. Now she has the wide open space of rural living but with proximity to the growing metropolitan Charlotte area.

Jewel was a single mother in her early 20s who had to quickly learn to budget for herself and her daughter. Now that she and her daughter are older and both well established, Jewel has been able to focus a little more on herself and the things she wants — and that includes making her space one-of-a-kind and fit to her liking.