Telepak: Backyard casitas make multigenerational living possible

A few years ago, we read Marie Kondo's book, "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up," and watched her show and others, like "The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning" and "Queer Eye" — all which led us to seriously question and talk about what we had, what we wanted, and what we needed.

When many of our friends nearing retirement started building homes and cabins in Northern Arizona, we thought — why would we build a home somewhere else when our four kids and four grandkids are all here? We realized instead of buying a second home far from family, we wanted to build a space for family and connection — for our kids, for our grandkids, for our friends.

Genine’s mother died when she was 45 and one of her biggest regrets is  she didn’t get to enjoy time with her mom during her golden years. We decided we wanted to build a casita for her 85-year-old dad, Steve Martinez, who recently sold his home in California and bought an RV. We saw the opportunity to enjoy multigenerational living right here on our property in Arizona, where we have lived for nearly 30 years.

Next came the research to determine if we really would be able to build a second home in our backyard. Ted googled until 11 p.m. one night, contacted a company he found online that built minimal guest homes with a mid-century modern design that we loved, and had them come out to give us a quote. Minimal Living Concepts presented a product with a form that seemed beautiful to us, and a function that seemed good and true to us. So now, we're building this sacred space, our Minimal Living Concepts LIVE unit, our 'casita' as we will call it (since CASITA will stand for Come All Strangers Into This Abode). It will be a place of investment into what matters most for us. Relationships.

After we started building our casita, Genine, and I watched the Netflix series "Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones." The journalist, Dan Buettner, spoke with an elderly man in Singapore who lived with his family instead of being sent to a nursing home. The man was asked if he thought living close to loved ones improved his longevity. He said he thought it definitely did. He was able to babysit and tutor his grandchildren and even learn things from them like how to use a computer. They also talked about studies showing how older adults are less likely to experience mental health issues as they age because they live with their children.

The episode, "The Future of Longevity," made me think of Minimal and what they are enabling and empowering families like ours to do. It all sort of came together and we felt even more so that we made the right decision to build our LIVE unit.

Our casita will soon be home for 'PopPops' (as our kids and grandkids call him) and his dog Nacho, for as long as he chooses to live there. How wonderful for him, for us, for our children (his grandchildren) and for our grandchildren (his great-grandchildren). We’re planning to build a long table outside where we can all eat meals together and do some landscaping to create an environment where we really don’t have a need to go on vacation or to a resort. And to be totally honest, we built this live wholeheartedly believing that we ourselves will live there one day and one of our children's families will live in the house we are currently living in. It’s really a dream come true.