Storage solutions

I am always amazed at how a little more storage can make such a big difference. Today I put up a small shelf with some cup hooks in my kitchen. Such a small thing, but it makes things better. The best part is I was able to make the change without any additional money. I did buy the cup hooks a few weeks ago, but the wood was left over from a project at the beginning of the summer and the shelf brackets were salvaged from a house that was being torn down. I will have to take the shelf down when I do get the money to finish the wall behind it, but for now I have the storage and I am using it.

Tiny houses are not good when everyone is sick.

This week my tiny house got the best of me. We are going through the flu this week, and I still have construction materials in the corners and walls that needs finished. Plus we are really limited on storage which means we are constantly stacking things on top of things. My husband finally has a Saturday that he can hopefully finish some projects, and he has now come down with the flu himself. I worked daily to keep up on the cleaning in hopes that I could find my sanity, and today I lost my sanity and my cool. Luckily for me my husband is understanding and my children are loving and forgiving. I am so grateful for the love and support of my family and despite my frustration today, I still love my little house. I just hope that I can somehow, with everyone sick, (and probably me sick next) I can get some more of my house finished this weekend. Hopefully we can make some progress. And hopefully I don't have any kids throwing up tonight, even though at least 3 people have already told me they might.

Building our Micro House

Building our little house has been a huge learning process. Our little home is under 400 square feet. Everything that goes into it has to be very important. Everything has to have a purpose, even if the purpose it just to make us smile. Sometimes we buy something that doesn't work and we have to relace it because everything has to be efficient. Our funds are limited so we try really hard not to make mistakes that cost money.

Patience and hard work has been our daily task. Every day we look at our resources (including our time) and decide what the goal for the day is. Sometimes the project on the house comes first, and sometimes the laundry comes first. All the animals have to be fed and even that takes a learning curve. For example, we started by putting the chickens food in a dish on the ground. Now we have a container that hangs on the wall. This has saved us a lot of money in food.  The laundry is all washed in our washer and then hung on the clothes line (as long as we have good weather). When we can't use the clothes line or have towels we just send the clothes into town. One dollar in the dryer at the laundry mat will do two loads of laundry. Although we don't want to dry all of our clothes this way its nice to have soft towels and options for the other clothes on bad weather days.

Patience has been really important for the family in several ways. First we all got to use a make shift bathroom for the first 4 months that we were on our homestead. We don't like to go into the details there, but we were happy to have a real bathroom. Curtains in our doorways are slowly being replaced by doors and sheetrock is finally going up on most of the walls. We still have insulation to install in some places, but most of it has been installed and what is left to do will come eventually.
Additionally we all have to have patience with each other. We love to spend time together, but here with so little inside space when the weather is bad we get to spend all of our time together. When the weather is good the kids usually still spend all of their time together also. We tell people that we live in dirt, because we do, but the kids seem to find so much to do with that dirt.

Most of all I am grateful for the opportunity to do this project with my family. My kids are covered in dirt almost every day, but they love it. I am exhausted at the end of the day, but I can almost always look at our little home and say look at what I did today. Even hanging clothes on the clothesline can be satisfying.

Shoe Rack

We keep working on our home as fast as money and time allows. One of my recent projects was a shoe rack I built with my daughter. Now we just need a shoe rack for the front door area. this one was built for my bedroom. I didn't want a pile of shoes on the floor and we don't really have a closet, so I needed a solution that looked nice and fit in the space I had.  The only real solution was to build something myself , and working with my daughter is super fun.

A little more every day!

We got our first wall completed. We have a long ways to go, but every day (except for Sunday) we make progress. I try to build something or do something outside everyday. It feels really awesome to make so much progress.

Our garden starts died when we moved. We didn't have an indoor space for them and the temperature dropped too low for them to survive. We hope to get some seed planted outside soon it might be too cold for them still. We will see how our gardes does or doesn't do this year.  We still have made some great progress (slow but good) in some other areas.

 

 

 

 

 

Our compost area.

Area ready for grass.

 

Area for grass before a few hours of raking and removing rocks.

 

 



Our clothesline finally up and in use.

 

Our chicks are becoming chickens and settling into their chicken coop.



Our Garden Starts

We planted 60 seeds so far this year. The first seeds are starting to poke above the soil. It is so fun to see them grow. This is really a first for us. In the past I have planted seeds outside or bought starts from the store. I haven't really had much luck with the seeds I planted so I mostly stuck with starts from the store, but now we are doing a lot more ourselves. It is a family project and we all work together to make the decisions and plant the seeds.

Cold weather

We got snow today. I am glad we aren't living at the homestead yet. Makes me realize how very important our stove will be. This is the stove that we want to purchase to heat our home. We will be able to use it to heat the home and to cook on while we heat the home.

We are just two weeks away from purchasing our homestead. It will be an entirely new adventure for our family. We will be building our own home, planting our gardens, and raising livestock. We have learned a lot, but this is the first time we will be putting what we have learned into practice. The kids are super excited and I hope their excitement stays through the first couple of adjustment months, especially until the cabin gets built. We still have to get the inspection on the property, but we are hopeful that everything will work out.
We will have a one room cabin for shelter (besides tents) until the cabin gets delivered in May or June. We will be doing most everything outside, but at least we will have some shelter if we need it. We are going into the summer months so it is the best time to be in tents.
We are hoping the small cabin gets finished by the end of April. We need to have the sheetrock up and the floor painted to move in.

Our solar panels

 

Carrie hanging insulation in the little cabin.

"Today I shall behave, as if this is the day I will be remembered."
-Dr. Seuss