As we prepare to transition out of airstream living (over the next year or so), we've been motivated to tie up some loose ends in the trailer.
Here are a few of the prettier projects from the last couple weeks.
New Headboard:
First, here was the "bedroom" when we first got the airstream in 2012. Note the hideous curtains. And the lack of, um, everything for a bedroom...
We got a bed frame very soon after this first photo and a plywood headboard not long after Lucy arrived. You can see the headboard in the background of this picture of my goofy girls.
It was lovely to go from the utilitarian plywood headboard to this cushy upholstered item. It feels so civilized!
I think the snuggly baby accents it nicely.
Next: Removing the old mini blinds! We got the last of them out yesterday and hung up more matching curtains. Makes me happy!
Installing the last of the kitchen doors:
To fully appreciate the kitchen, one must see the before:
Ick ick ick! Grass seed from a mouse hoard on the floor, curtains all stained with rodent mess. No coverings on the cupboards. Mini-blinds. It's come a long way!
Here it is half-way done:
Lots of painting done. Mouse mess cleaned. New table. Some drawer and cupboard covers.
And here it is after the last finishing touches! Including a rack of clean dishes. :) Real life in a tiny airstream.
I've really enjoyed having that under the sink space covered!
There are a few more tiny things to be done, but it's mostly finished. Lovely airstream has taught us a lot. It's been a good, challenging season of life.
(Not a new pic...I just enjoy it.)
I would love to hear more about your experience living in an airstream (good and bad). Seth and I keep throwing around the idea of someday buying some property and building a tiny house. We love our (relatively) small house and wonder how much smaller we could go - and I always end up thinking of you! If you ever feel like chatting about it, feel free to email me (annaleah dot riley at gmail dot com). =)
ReplyDeleteI may have to send you a more detailed email, but here's the gist. :) Tiny living is doable for a season. It is a challenge, but I enjoy many aspects of it. I cook entirely differently. I actually think through how many dishes each meal will make, whether it will dirty a pot or pan that I need in the near future. Doing dishes is a challenge, so I try to limit it to once a day. We actually use paper plates and bowls to limit dishes. Otherwise, it is an all-consuming task. I've really learned to think outside the box. For instance, I once made a pie crust in a shallow stainless mixing bowl, formed the pie crust in the bowl, filled it, and baked it right in the bowl! It worked really well, and I only had one bowl to wash when the pie was gone. :) I like that this way of living has challenged my thinking. The parts that are challenging are as follows:
DeleteThe house shakes when the girls are rowdy. That drives me crazy, especially in the winter when it's harder to get outside. It is really hard to just let them be kids when the noise is so condensed. Summer is a blessing for all of us.
Airstreams get pretty moist in the winter. Condensation causes water issues all over. Traditional trailers have the same issue, but they are MORE prone to mold and such since they are made mostly with wood framing and materials. Airstreams are all aluminum, except for the floor. We have chosen to keep the painted plywood floor bare, so that we can keep eyes on the water issues and make sure the floor doesn't stay wet. Many MANY vintage airstreams have their floors rotting underneath carpeting or some such.
The summers are HOT. It's like living in a solar oven. Haha. An air conditioning would be a help, but we have chosen to get through with good fans, open windows, and lots of water play. :)
Last summer, when Lucy was little, it was challenging to get her good naps. It always seemed she was awakened, whether she slept in our bedroom, or the girls. That was frustrating for me, but she learned to be a pretty good sleeper after it all. One thing we can't live without is a good sound machine. Since all 3 girls sleep in the back bedroom now, the sound machine is really helpful for them not waking each other up with their night time noises.
I do enjoy how the girls have learned to share their space. I think it is a lesson many American children don't learn. Most of the world lives like we do! Small spaces help people to learn that the world doesn't revolve around them. You have to be considerate of other people. It's a constant giving up of self and asking "do I really need this?"
90% of the clothes I wear on a daily basis fit into 1 hanging closet organizer. The girls each have 1 18 gallon rubbermaid bin under their bed for their clothes. They also have a small plastic tub for special, personal toys. Then there is 1 18 gallon tub of shared toys. That's IT for toys. I'm still amazed at how messy their room is at the end of the day. :)
Now, we live in a property with a big shop, so our overflow storage is close by. Tiny living with a family would be WAAAYYY harder without that! If I need more paper plates, paper towel, TP, oatmeal, winter clothes, etc, it's just a short walk out to the shop. It would be a lot more shopping trips if I didn't have our overflow storage out there. That would be hard!
Well, that's what comes to mind now. I might email you with more later. :)
Thank you for writing all this! I find all of this stuff fascinating! We have read/watched tons of things about people who live in tiny houses, but most of them don't have kids, so it's always fun to get perspective from that angle! I had never thought about your house shaking! I think that would drive me crazy, too. So, just out of curiosity, what do you think your ideal house size would be? Would it be something still small (but maybe not as small), or would you prefer to go much bigger and spread out? Our house is 940 square feet, so much smaller than most houses, and we love it, but for us there is also an appeal of an even smaller house, for reasons such as less upkeep and less stuff (it's always easier to keep stuff you really don't need if there's still a place to put it!). But, living so tiny may not be the best for the long term, particularly with kids that just keep growing! We've thought about our house, what we love, and what we could do without, and we think that we could do really well in a house that was about 600 square feet, if the layout was designed well. We're just so inspired by people who are content to work less and have less, to then have more time with their family, serving others, and pursuing their passions. Like you said, learning to share and take others' needs into consideration is such a valuable lesson! All four of our kids are in the same room, which some people probably think is really weird, but I love it! I love that they're together, and I do think it helps eliminate some of the "mine" mentality. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts!
ReplyDeleteI've thought about how small we could stay. My sister lives in a 400 square foot house with her son. The layout is great, and it works really well for them. I know a family with 5 kiddos that lives in roughly 600 square ft. Their main challenge is definitely storage and play area for rowdy boys in bad weather. Another family I'm close to with 9 kids lives in roughly 1000 sq feet. They have similar challenges. They want to expand their home to have a girl bedroom and boy bedroom, a dedicated play area and a larger dining room. They are also currently building a shop for better storage and workspace. I think large families often face the same issues in small spaces. Storage. Room for kids to be kids. Big enough space around the table. :) It's true that these little people just keep getting bigger! Fitting 4 kids on the couch for a story is no big deal when they're all under 5, but it starts to look a lot different when those legs start sprouting. Oh, and things like 11 pairs of shoes in a tiny entry way even becomes a problem. Where do you put everyone's shoes (even if they only have 1 pair in use) in a tiny entry way. You have to get creative. :) We keep our girls' shoes just outside the door. We keep outerwear in an ikea bag in the car, so it's handy. The girls have overalls for outside play. They put these on over whatever they are wearing when they go outside. This cuts down on laundry and dirt in the house. Big help! We even keep the bulk of our dirty laundry in the shop. We just have a tiny milkcrate for our daily laundry. (We do laundry in town every 2 weeks.)
DeleteCome to think of it, I think there should be 2 categories. Micro living and tiny living. I'd call what my sister does tiny living, and what we do micro living. In our case, we simply can't keep everything we need in our home and need additional storage space. In the other case, you can keep what you need in your home with a little creativity. :)
I think you guys would enjoy a tiny living adventure! I would surely enjoy gleaning info from you as you negotiate how to do it with a family. Oh, by the way, the most tiny living families I've found seem to be living in converted school buses, aka skoolies. If you google large family school bus, you find some fun stories. :)
It's nice to hear of some real life examples - it encourages me that we could do it, too! I think you're right about the common challenges. We have enough space here that none of those things are problems for us right now, but I could see how that might be the case if we went smaller. My main thought is always to just get rid of more stuff - but you're right, even if you just have the very bare minimum, with that number of people, you still have a lot of stuff to deal with.
ReplyDeleteYes, the skoolies are fascinating, too! I was following one family of six who lived in a bus, but I'll have to look for more stories! =)
Wow - you do laundry every two weeks? I'm seriously impressed. I have to do two loads a day just to stay on top of it. I would love to hear more about your laundry routine. You guys must be much better about re-wearing clothes! I admit it's much easier for me to just have the kids throw their clothes in the laundry each day. But then I probably spend much more time washing everything! What do you do about kitchen towels, washcloths, things like that?
I think we'd love living tiny, too! I'll be sure to let you know if we ever do it! =)
What are your plans for when you leave the airstream?
Laundry. It's always a chore, no matter how you do it, isn't it?! We don't have laundry on site here, but we hope to soon. The only reason it works to do it in such long intervals is that we can go and do 8 loads in giant washers all at once at the laundromat. It takes the same amount of time as one load, but it's all done! Expensive though. It run $16ish/trip. I am pretty strict about what I consider "dirty" laundry. If there are no visible stains or food particles and it doesn't have an odor, it's not dirty. :) We obviously have to have quite a large amount of kitchen towels, washclothes, and rags. I swap out the kitchen hand towel every couple days, we go through one washcloth a day, and if we are using too many rags, I switch to paper towel. As far as bedding and bath towel, I just strip the beds and wash everything with our bi-monthly laundry trips. I do have extra sets of things if a need arises in between trips as well. It's a big ordeal every 2 weeks, but then it's over! It'll be quite a transition when I have laundry capabilities at home again!
DeleteThe current post-airstream plan is to move into a home on the property that we rent when it's finished. It's been under construction for a while, happening in phases as money is available. It should be mostly ready soon...ish. You know how construction projects go. The minute you set a completion date, it gets pushed back. So, I'll just avoid that. :) Anyway, that's our laundry routine!
The aspect of doing all the laundry in one day is definitely appealing! I feel like I'm constantly doing laundry and almost always have a pile sitting around waiting to be folded! I am able to line dry pretty much all of my laundry, though, which helps keep my electricity bill down, so I'll probably just have to keep doing it daily! But you've inspired me to try to be better about reusing clothes and not be lazy about that, because that would probably help my laundry load a bit!
DeleteSo you're renting your property and building a house on it? Are you guys doing the building, or are you having it built for you? And yes, I definitely get construction projects. I've only been involved in a few smaller projects, but even those are enough to get the nature of construction! =)
I hear ya on the line drying! I really enjoy it in some ways, but it slows everything down! I used to line dry exclusively at our old house.
DeleteWe are renting, and the owners are building. It's a bit of a complicated situation, but it seems to be working out well.
So something else I'm curious about: have you ever gotten flack for living as you do? Especially now that we have #5 on the way, we're starting to hear things like "You guys need a bigger house", etc. While we bought our house primarily for financial reasons (it was what we could afford), we felt at the time that it was more than sufficient for our needs, and we continue to feel that way, and of course, we feel like we could do with even less. The mentality that we "need" more is just so frustrating to me, because, like you said, most of the world lives as you do, and really, even in America it has only been in recent decades that we all "need" huge houses with a separate bedroom for each child. Of course, we see the need for separate girl/boy bedrooms in the future (but I personally don't feel like we're there yet), but we already have enough bedrooms that we can do that; it would just take some shifting of our office things elsewhere. Anyway, enough ranting from me! I was just curious if you've met with any opposition! =)
ReplyDelete