Why…

It’s time to get to the why.  Why in the heck would we want to build and live in a tiny house?  Well, let me take you back to when the idea was conceived…

It was bedtime, early November 2015.  A mother and father were laying in bed, the 3 year old was asleep in her cot at the end of the bed (she had just recently decided she did not want to sleep in her own room) and the baby was in his cosleeper.  The three dogs were probably in the room as well, it was not uncommon for the family to be together in close quarters.

Okay, I’ll get back to first person!  I had quit my job after Mars was born, and Mark was covering the whole state with his job, so I thought this would be the perfect time to get closer to family.  We were three hours away from support that I knew I would need having two young children and a husband who traveled way too much.  Not to mention, Mark was really wanting to get out of his current job, and get back into a classroom.  We started talking about living accommodations.  We had just bought our house in February, had rented for a couple of months before that, and had sold our other house just a year ago.  Moving 4 times (there was a brief month that Mae and I had to live with my parents) in one year was hard on us, I couldn’t imagine how hard it probably was for a little girl.  Mark refused to rent again.  We didn’t know where we really wanted to be (I blame my gypsy blood), and Mark finding another music teaching job would be hard, so buying another house was not an option.  I jokingly said, “you know what we should really do, build a tiny house on wheels so we can just move it wherever.”  Never say something in joke to Mark Monteith, if you say you want it, he will find a way to get it for you.  So the seed was planted, we would put our house on the market by the end of the month, and whenever it sold, we would start this crazy adventure.  So the main reason we started this journey was mobility.

Now, you can’t really talk about living in a tiny house without talking finances, and in our case, the lack there of…  We are down to one income, and that income is commission based, so it may not always be that reliable.  As we talked about how much a tiny house would cost, and the money we would save, we realized all the things we could do.  We could actually DO!  We could pay off all of our debt in a short amount of time, we could start our little homestead, we could actually use the timeshare we bought for way too much (one of the reasons for the debt) and travel.  When I was young, my parents had no money, we never had new cars or name brand clothes, but we went on vacation every year.  My parents wanted to give me experiences, not things, and that’s how Mark and I want to raise our children.  We decided that the Monteith’s want to be a doing family, not a having stuff family.

Along the lines of doing, we want our family to spend time as a family.  Living in a tiny house, we will be forced to live more outdoors.  Living in the country, we may not have access to internet, so no more Netflix binges or hours spent on the iPad.  My husband was raised in the country, and he is not happy unless he is doing something outside.  I am amazed everyday at how much he knows, and what all he can do, because his parents taught him to work, build, and fix all sorts of things.  I love watching him teach our children these life skills.  Maelyn could tell the difference between a phillips head and a flat head at 2 years old!  She wants a pig (thanks a lot Charlotte’s Web) and I want some chickens and mini donkeys!  I can’t wait to see Mae and Mars working on a little farm!

Finally, we want to build and live in this tiny house because we don’t know anyone else who does!  We want to get in on this tiny house movement before it gets mainstream.  Really, we are just weird people!  We love the unconventional, the uncommon, the unorthodox, the weird!  We know that with all the talk, all the ideas, all the pinteresting, that we have to do this or we will regret it.  Now, I’m not saying that we will never have a normal house, because if we find a place that we can see ourselves staying for a while, we would definitely think about putting down some roots.  I want to build all sorts of eccentric housing: a yurt, an earth bag house, and storage container house.  Right now, in this season of our lives, a tiny, mobile, cost effective house on wheels is the perfect dwelling for us!