At the beginning of this year I started to notice the tiny house movement. The more I noticed the more I started to fall in love with the idea. I started making plans to build a tiny home for me and my kitty. I even went as far as buying graph paper and designing a couple of homes. Years ago when I at the beginning of separation from my husband, I took a correspondence course on interior decorating. I was fascinated by the structural design of houses more than decorating them. So when it came to designing my tiny house I was careful to utilize some of the knowledge I gained from that course.
Many of the tiny homes I viewed on HGTV network had sleeping lofts. This was not for me although I implemented lofts in my designs for storage and guest bedrooms. I would not be able to get up and down stairs or a ladder easily, especially during the night for a bathroom trip. So I designed my tiny home with a downstairs bedroom. I laid everything out and put every piece of furniture I want to keep in a place. My dream was so real I almost believed it would happen. I even shared my plans with one of my brothers and nephew who is a contractor by trade.
One day in June when I was visiting my brother and his family my nephew suggested I take over my mother’s trailer and remodel it into a tiny home. My mother’s trailer is an 8×35 foot travel trailer. It is older and needs some work to make it livable in the summers. However, it would take extensive work to make it livable in the subzero winters of northern Wisconsin. But I was too excited to think about the details! I spent a couple of hours measuring and placing my furniture on paper in the trailer. I looked into heating it and new flooring and paint all around inside. I even called a trailer park manager to see if I could put it on a lot at a trailer park. I even picked out a lot that I really liked. However, the city said no to putting a travel trailer on city land to live in full time so that was out.
At that time I started to rethink things because I was also on medical leave with no income. Reality started to set in as I certainly did not have the money to buy land nor did I have money to fix the trailer up. My focus shifted to my disabilities and whether I would be able to return to work. Living in a trailer would not be for me.
However, God saw I needed a tiny home and yet not all the work so He gave me a tiny apartment instead. It’s a lot bigger than your typical tiny home on wheels but at roughly 460 square feet it is still considered a tiny home. My apartment also has the tiny home feel as it needs to be organized to get everything in it. Organization is not my strong suit since I tend to hang on to stuff. It is a work in progress. Yes, it is an apartment in a house with three other apartments but the lay out feels like it’s a home by itself. I just have to put up with noises from the guys who live upstairs from time to time.
I still look at tiny homes online to this day. The dream is still there only I know now it would only be a dream unless by some miracle I became rich and could hire somebody to do all the work required to living in a tiny home in the northwoods. A girl can still dream.
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