Our family had a major and unexpected life change happen this past Friday that made Josh and I stop to reevaluate the direction of our home-build. My husband very unexpectedly lost his job, and while we have savings that we can live off of for quite a while, we decided to really stretch that out and move out of our current rental house. Portland’s rent is sky high compared to its wages, and this will allow us to save literally thousands of dollars every month that we will be putting into building our house! This will also free Josh up to work on a lot of the actual building, which he really wanted to do himself but was limited by a full time job and living way across town from our building site. Last Sunday Josh casually said to me, “What if we just live in a tiny trailer while we build our house?” We went about our day, then later that day I mentioned to a friend how that didn’t sound wrong to me. In fact, it sounded incredibly freeing. I’ve been feeling so weighed down by the amount of STUFF we own (though I’ve been purging for many months and we down shop often at all) and our monthly bills. We currently have an entire 1,000+ sq ft basement we never use, a full bedroom (playroom) the kids never go into, and a giant yard that we can’t garden in because we are in rental. The idea of scaling WAY down on possessions and financial burdens feels like a Godsend right now. I’m feeling so light and so excited about it all.
We found a 31 foot RV trailer with a 14 foot pop out that we will make our own! It has two separate bedrooms with doors (thank GOD, because I love my alone time), and once it’s renovated it will have plenty of space for our family to live and homeschool in! Our boys are usually outside if they’re not doing school/in a school related activity out of the house, and we are used to all being in the same one room, piled up on each other anyway. I am sure this will be a huge test in patience with each other but I’m mostly feeling a time of sweet bonding and adventuring with our family. The boys are THRILLED and can’t stop jumping up and down about this! I’m personally looking forward to jumping into the decorating processes of this, and planning a tiny home for a homeschooling family of four is a challenge I’m looking forward to!
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