Where Living in a Dumpster Gets a Whole New Meaning

Some say that they don't notice the homeless living by garbage dumpsters, so one California artist decided to create a functional home, complete with kitchen, toilet and shower, out of a New York City dumpster that he believes could actually go undetected as a home. It's one of the tiniest mobile homes you might find (yes it is on wheels). It's smaller even than some of the 150-square-foot houses that have gained notoriety.

AOL Real Estate first reported on Gregory Kloehn in September 2011, but others, as seen in the video above, are just taking notice now. It was "a challenge to see if I could make a home that would go undetected in the city," Kloehn, said on HGTV, "People would just walk by. It is in this gray zone of legal housing, illegal homes."

"I was trying to deconstruct what a home can be," he says in the video we first ran, "how you can turn different objects into a home." Since Kloehn constructed his home, tiny homes as a means of alternative living seem only to have gained more notice and inspired more designers. After all, sustainable living, with efficiency and minimal upkeep are all desirable in a home. But living in a dumpster? That gives recycling and repurposing a whole new meaning.

The home has a functional toilet and an outdoor shower that use a six-gallon tank of stored water. The kitchen area comes complete with minibar, stovetop, and an optional outdoor barbecue that runs off of a five-gallon tank of propane.

The coolest feature is perhaps the windows. Kloehn created a crank that extends the top portion of the home by a couple of feet to reveal them. When no one is home or he wants it to look more like a regular ol' dumpster, he simply rolls it back down. However, if you're looking to pull back the lid to throw out a bag of trash, well, that's Kloehn's skylight.

It's a little cramped for style, but if you've ever seen the inside of some Manhattan apartments going for a couple thousand a month, they are not that much bigger. Some are as small as 78-square feet.

More about tiny homes:
Yep, It Can Get Smaller: A 130-Square-Foot Apartment in Paris
Tiny House for Sale in Arkansas Has Everything but Room
San Francisco's 'Micro-Apartment': How Much Smaller Can We Go?

GALLERY OF TINY HOMES:
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