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Brielle and Carson Matranga tell PEOPLE that leaving the tiny home where they welcomed both of their children won’t be easy
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- Brielle and Carson Matranga spent four years raising two children in the 560-square-foot tiny home they built themselves
- The couple says they always planned for the home to be a stepping stone, but leaving it has become far more emotional than they expected
- Now building a larger home across the street, they’re hoping to give their children room to grow without losing the closeness they found living in the tiny home
The tiny home Brielle and Carson Matranga built with their own hands was never supposed to be their forever home. But somewhere between bringing home two babies, celebrating milestones and figuring out life in 560 square feet, it became the place that told their family’s story.
Then came the moment Carson couldn’t stop thinking about. Every time he watched his young daughter disappear into another child’s bedroom to play, he found himself imagining a room she could finally call her own.
“I really wanna be able to give my daughter her own space that she can just go off and play in and use her little imagination,” Carson, 26, tells PEOPLE. “Not be distracted by us cooking or her brother doing whatever he does.”
For Carson and his wife, Brielle, 25, that realization marked a turning point. While they had always envisioned their tiny home as a stepping stone, seeing their children grow made them realize the next chapter wasn’t about wanting more space for themselves — it was about creating room for their kids.
The New Orleans couple originally built the 560-square-foot home as newlyweds after rising housing costs made buying a traditional home feel out of reach. When Carson’s parents offered them an extra lot in their backyard, the pair embraced the opportunity to build a home themselves while saving money for the future.
“The goal... was to save as much money as possible while still having our own space,” Carson says.
At first, they imagined the tiny home might comfortably fit them and one child. Life, however, had different plans. After welcoming their daughter, they began casually thinking about what might come next, and Brielle says learning she was pregnant with their son became the moment those conversations turned into action.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna have to figure this out,’ ” she says.
Even then, finding their next home wasn’t as simple as packing up and leaving. The couple wanted to stay close to Carson’s family, whose support had helped make the tiny home possible and continued to play an important role in helping care for their children.
That search eventually led them just across the street, where they’re now building a larger home by hand once again. While the extra bedrooms will give each child a place of their own, the Matrangas say they’re intentionally designing the house to preserve the closeness they found in tiny-home living, with open spaces that allow conversations to flow from the kitchen to the living room.
“It kinda forces us to spend more intentional time together and really be very close as a family,” Brielle says of their tiny home. “I think that’s something that we wanted to incorporate in the other house.”
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Leaving, however, won’t be easy. The couple always hoped Carson’s siblings would one day move into the tiny home, but Brielle admits it will still feel strange watching someone else live inside the house where their own family story unfolded.
“I talk about this all the time because... it’s gonna be very hard for me to not look at it and be like, ‘Wait, that’s mine though,’ ” she says with a laugh.
When they walk through the tiny home today, they don’t just see carefully planned storage or the walls they built together. They see the place where both of their children came home from the hospital, where they learned how to navigate parenthood and where a starter home became something much more meaningful.
“It’s the story,” Carson says. “Looking around and seeing everything that we did... It’s the story.”
Read the original article on People
