Living in a Tiny Home - Part 4: Living in it!
Now it is early July 2018, we have just moved into the tiny home, the dogs and cats are adjusting… Our cat Maia was weakening by the day. She had been diagnosed with cancer the prior summer, and almost died during the prior winter. We knew her days were numbered, and we were in fact surprised she was still with us. I had a sense that all the cats wanted to see us in the new place. She was the first to go, and just a few weeks after our arrival, it was time to say goodbye to Maia. I wrote about her here. We were grateful she stayed with us so we could bury her by our tiny home, in such a beautiful and peaceful location.
The horses were still in Oregon at the boarding facility, and even though I knew they were well cared for and out on grass and with other horses 24/7, we really wanted to bring them home to us. We had a place secured in a boarding facility close to where we had moved to, so it was time to have them transported to us. This is another story that I will write about another time, as it was a pretty dramatic arrival and much happened that first month in their new location.
Dakota (front right) with friends in the boarding facility at Skyranch in North Plains. They had 100 acres to roam, and it was a heaven for them.
We also had our yoga studio to care for. The short story is that even though we had incredibly capable people, staff and teachers alike at the studio, we had always lived 5 minutes away and most days both of us had been there daily. So it was a big shift. Our plan was for each one of us to drive back to Portland OR (a 7+ hr drive) once a month, and stay for one week. We did that for 2 years! We took turns every other week, and it was crazy really, because we always had bags around, and one of us was always coming or going. Incredibly unsettling and ungrounding.
A typical sky in the Methow :)
The valley and its incredible beauty was working its magic on us. It is still to this day the most gorgeous place I have ever lived in, and we lived with our mouths open much of the time, almost incredulous, taking in its stunning nature.
It’s one thing to see a place for a few days, while you are visiting, but when you live in a place and see the sky and the colors change hour by hour, day by day, and thru the seasons, it’s a totally different story.
The Methow valley and perhaps high desert areas everywhere, I don’t really know, have this incredible light. It could be the altitude (we were at around 2400 ft) or the latitude and longitude, or just a combination of all the above, but the sky, the open spaces and the light were all conspiring to make this place so mesmerizing and appealing. I think in all the 4 years we lived there, there were just a handful of days when the beauty wasn’t enticing (with the exception of when there were fires nearby and everything went hazy and orange).
We were able to go walking/hiking with the dogs every day, since our work was really caring for the yoga studio when in Portland, with some online work on the side. Most days were open for us to play in nature, which we did!
Another beautiful area we found where the dogs could swim or at least get wet.
And at the same time we had so much work happening at the property…..!
Some photos below of the first few months; getting our water pump installed, having a deck and roof extend our tiny home living space, digging for the electric and water lines to the tiny home and beyond to what became the horses paddock. Yes, all this took a lot of money, and lucky for us for that extra 40K from the sale of our home, since we pretty much spent it all on installing power, water pump, building the deck, creating fencing and shed for the horses, etc.
The land was incredible and spoke with us every day in a different language, with all the nuances of colors, shades, light, and sounds. Being so close to nature, much of the time with no noises to distract us, was incredible and very healing. And the hikes, the water, the mountains all around it made it for such a beautiful, breathtaking time.
I do want to share more about the adventure we had those 4 years, because it really deserves to be written and shared (so I will write more in the future on that), but I will get to the tiny home living I keep mentioning! Ha.
Living in a tiny home was at first an adventure. We never really planned to stay in it forever, it was a way to get out of town and be on a larger property, really immersed in nature. We chose that vs a typical home on a small lot. We had hopes to sell the yoga studio and build a small house with the earnings. Over the years, we realized that it would cost too much for our budget to build anything, even a very small cabin (and when we lost the yoga studio in 2020 with the pandemic, that possibility was gone, and prices for supplies had gone thru the roof).
We had to move our stuff out of our friend’s barn after a year or so, and had to rent a storage unit, which we had to pay for all the years we lived in the tiny house. Of course I was the one who insisted on this adventure, and then I was the one who 3 yrs later said “Enough”, when Todd was just beginning to settle into life in the valley, with work that he loved and a community that he appreciated and felt a connection with.
Fall comes early, but it is a gorgeous time in the valley, with cooler temperatures and colors everywhere
Pearrygin lake, a beautiful small lake with a trail around it. We went there often to hike with the dogs.
The enthusiasm and excitement we had for the tiny home stayed with us for a couple of years, and possibly for Todd it got better (while for me it got worse); when we lost the yoga studio we stopped driving down to Portland, and both of us eventually got jobs in the valley, which helped us get more settled within the community. But it also gave me a sense of “tightness”, where I felt the limited offerings a small town can give you vs all one can find in the city…. mostly better foods and lots more choices. You really can’t beat the farmers markets in Portland, they offer the most amazing produce you have ever seen. On the other hand, I never really enjoyed living in cities and never took advantage of its offerings (except the variety of food, and my friends of course). I had yearned for open spaces and dry weather after living in wet, drizzly Portland for 18 years….
As fall arrived, we did appreciate having a small space to care for, and heating it was easy. We loved our Envi heat units, and got one extra for the bathroom which was at the other end of the tiny home. We swore that if we ever moved, we would get one for our future bathroom, because it kept all our towels dry and toasty, and it’s such a pleasure to be in a warm bathroom… so sure enough, we now have several units in our new home in Maine.
Those two units kept the tiny so warm, it was always 70° in there, really way too warm for me most of the time. There was no space in it for a wood stove though, which we would have loved to have!
Sleeping in the loft was also something I did not care for. I tend to sleep really well, and I don’t wake up during the night to use the bathroom, so that was good; it was somewhat cozy to have that cocoon of space, but it was always too warm for me. We ended up using a thin blanket the whole time we lived there, because anything more would make us sweat. So if you ever plan on living in a tiny home, definitely get one with a downstairs bedroom!
All tucked in!
We didn’t want to turn the heat down further, as the dogs were sleeping on the floor downstairs, which was much colder than up in the loft. Even with blankets and lots of pillows, they needed the extra warmth.
This tiny home also did not have a sink in the bathroom, so even brushing your teeth had to be done in the kitchen. The lack of personal space really got to me over time. On the other hand, we did coexist well together, and both of us have similar ways of living, and are mindful of each other’s space. However, for me, the total lack of walls, ever, except for the bathroom, started to make me crazy!
The sink in the kitchen, the shower in the bathroom, and the washer/dryer combo (never buy a ventless one, it does not dry clothes!) connected to a pipe that we could either collect in a container and dispose of, or we could just attach a hose to, and let the water go. We chose the latter, and used the grey water to water our plants, flowers and pretty much anything we did not eat the leaves of (to be safe for any risk of pathogens).
The tiny home was on a slight hill, which provided the perfect gravity to allow for the water to drain. We also caught it in buckets in the summer….and watered other trees nearby. That precious water turned the small dry front yard area into a magnificent, lush, green carpet, and all the flowers, small trees and grass and wild animals benefited.
Our garden flourished during year 2, when we planted basil near the house, out of the wind in a container, and our 2 apricots and 2 plums trees gave fruit. It was a feast!
We did not have a flushing toilet, as we wanted to wait to install septic until we knew where the house/cabin was going to be built. So we composted our waste, which was honestly not a big deal, probably because Todd was the one who had the job to empty the full containers and clean them out.
The tiny home came with a “compost toilet”, with a separate urine container (which would have to be emptied daily, unless, of course, you just went outside to pee :). I honestly think the compost toilet should be called a “receptacle for human waste,” because it really is only that. Nothing is composted until someone empties the contents into, hopefully, some place where it does get composted.
We immediately set our $1000 compost toilet aside, and switched to a bucket, and a seat with a lid, and that is what we used, with sawdust in another bucket, to cover the waste. We got the sawdust for free from a local woodworker. I could go on to describe the whole process, but honestly I don’t feel like it, so if you want to know more check out Humanure. Todd followed directions exactly and we did get very good results and spread our compost each year on the few small trees we planted.
I will just add that in locations that get very little rainwater, composting our own waste is really ideal, and once we get past the “disgusting” phase, it really becomes just a way of living. But hey, I am happy to be flushing again!
The property was a valley with two “sides” which we called the Sunset ridge and the Sunrise ridge. Todd dragged a bench to one and another bench and a small table up to the other one, and we often visited at various times of day. It was exposed and often windy, but with incredible views.
If our property had had a home on it, with some trees around us, we probably would have stayed. For me, the discomfort of living in such cramped space and the lack of trees was a big factor in wanting to move. Other issues of course were the constant summer threat of fires, with often one or two fires near us burning, and terrible air for at least the whole month of August every single summer. Yes, we finally got an air conditioning unit and an air purifier, but that did not prevent everything inside the home from smelling like fire, down to all the clothes in the closet, our towels and sheets. And of course the horses could not escape that air.
The story of how the big decision was made to leave is going to be another blog or two, maybe 3 or 4 if I share about our trip east…. So stay tuned for more!
