A Year in an Airstream

It's hard to believe it's been a year since we downsized our life and hauled our aluminum home up a mountain to live in. We did it to stop paying rent, save money, and to own the roof over our heads for the first time in our lives. Looking back, this year has been full of challenges, from power outages and frozen pipes, to losing our wonderful canine companion, Maggie. I could never have predicted all the little bumps in the road that this year would present us with. But I've learned that whether your house is tiny or large, things still break and need to be fixed, the roof may spring a leak, and life unfolds generally the same. We said we'd live in the Airstream as long as we were happy doing so, and while winter tested us to that motto, we came through the other side and are enjoying the rewards of another beautiful island summer in our tiny home. It's easy to forget the tears I cried when the first winter rainstorms hit the island in October and our roof leaked right onto our bed at 3am, or when the pipes froze, the propane ran out, Maggie got sick, the driveway got snowed in, Jacob was away... But it's also so easy to just remember the good times – baking for the first time in our Airstream oven, the sound of our first night of summer rain on a tin roof, and the moment when we realized that the Airstream was pretty much “done” and we didn't have to work on it all-weekend-every-weekend anymore.

I've noticed I spend a lot more time outside because of living in a smaller space. I want to go running or take the dog for a walk more often, which is good for all involved. We still have people over all the time – small space is no excuse not to entertain. We are honored by all the compliments we've received when people visit our Airstream and leave saying how inspired they are. I feel lucky. Lucky to have lived another adventure (remember when we lived in that Airstream on that island??) that will surely become another story worth telling.

We've been asked by many people how much money we've put into our Airstream. Including the purchase price of $2,000, we've invested a total of $6,000 over the course of the year and a half we've owned Blue Moon. Of course that includes hundreds of hours of free labor by ourselves and some key friends and family! That came out to an average of about $150 per month that Jacob and I each contributed to making Blue livable again, which is about all the extra cash we had each month at the time when we were still paying high rent, and had a lot of debt. Living in the Airstream this past year has changed that, and for the first time in our lives, I think we both feel financially free – something I wasn't sure we'd ever feel! Making the big change to give up our wonderful beach side rental house, downsize to only owning one car (ride your bike!), and generally focus on what's possible was very scary at first, but now going back to a mortgage payment or buying a new car is almost scarier. We won't live in our little aluminum home forever, but I know we'll never regret this adventurous year, and we'll take so many lessons learned from living Small, even if someday we end up living Bigger.

At the moment the future is uncertain what's in store for us beyond September, but one thing is for sure, we'll always be hitched to Blue Moon.

This year of tiny living, and the previous near-year of remodeling would not have been possible without the love and support and helping hands from so many people, and we want to thank a few of them here...Michael, Diane (mom), Morgan, Andrew, Jim Lawrence, ...and of course, all the people who we know and those we don't who read this blog! Documenting our adventure here has been a way to measure our own progress when we needed to see it to keep us going, and your encouragement has let us know we we're doing OK even when our motivation was low and Blue was still full of mouse poop. So, keep reading, you (and we) never know what will happen next in the Blue Moon Airstream Chronicle...

Tiny House Friends

We recently took a trip over to Bainbridge Island to go check on our friends, Meghan and Christian (in green/blue below). They have been pretty busy this winter building their own Tiny House on wheels! It was pretty exciting to see their house nearing completion. The trip turned into a bit of an island reunion and SJI-ers came all the way from Oregon to meet up there for the weekend, including Andrew! Andrew (with pups below) also just started in on his own Tiny House, and I am beginning to think a)we must be a bad influence on our friends, b)we're all crazy, and/or c)soon we'll all be living on a large piece of property parked side by side - yay! :)

How many people (and dogs) can you fit in a tiny house?

I'm so inspired by our friends intentionally embarking on these challenging projects --we all have our own reasons for having done so-- but what a neat thing to create one's own home. These folks are digitally chronicling their experiences as well and if you're bored at work I recommend checking out their blogs: Meghan and Christian: Does this come in small and Andrew: La Cabañita Chiquita.

In other news, we made these groovy rounded corner shelves to go on the far side of the bed. The coolest thing about them is that they are removeable! The whole unit can be un-clasped and lifted off to provide more room to work down there (all of our wiring/converter etc is housed underneath this one), but at the same time sort of covers up all that stuff when we don't want to look at it.

We also removed the (brokenFallingApartBecauseI'veHadItSinceDormDays) floor lamp that used to be in that corner and replaced it with a nice wall-mounted sconce that is original 1963 from our Airstream! I know, it's amazing, we managed to not break it all this time in storage and we finally installed it.

Before:

After:

Oh yeah, we got a new duvet cover, and much to J's dismay, more fluffy pillows! Wohoo! And believe me, I'm not trying to trick you by taking the Before photo at night and the After photo during the day -- it really feels so much brighter back there with the light-colors and the new bright light.

Rocky the bear still rules the bed

Also, if this post wasn't exciting enough for you, here's J in his new gnome sweater :)

Now if that doesn't just make your day, I don't know what will!

Spring Light

It's hard for me to believe we made it through the winter in our Airstream, but the daffodils outside are living proof, literally! We've officially entered spring, and I couldn't be happier to say farewell to frosty nights, frozen pipes and the four letter word that starts with the big R (rain). While there are still many wet days to come, I'm sure, spring comes with such relief that the long nights of winter are truly over. September doesn't seem so long ago when we were pondering whether or not we would be able to maintain our sanity living in 180 square feet throughout an island winter. With some help from friends during the cold spells, a handful of vacations when we needed to get away, and more than a few bottles of wine, we came through all right. 

Sunny spring days turn into beautiful west side sunsets at the lighthouse.

First daffodils harvested! LOTS of joy!

We also finally got around to ordering some 12v lights and installing them. The idea behind keeping our wiring 12v was to have overall less draw and someday have a rooftop solar panel setup on the Airstream. But somewhere in this whole project, the lighting situation got too complicated and we threw our hands up in the air, capped all the wires sticking out of the wall, just got two floor lamps and plugged them into our outlets. Mid-winter we decided to tackle the lighting saga again and spent a ridiculous amount of time poking around Amazon searching for 12v track lighting that we liked. We finally ordered some and they got lost for 35 days with FedEx. When we finally tracked them down, to our dismay we discovered we'd somehow ordered regular household voltage lights, not 12v --- arrrgh! So we threw our hands up in the air again, returned the lights, and settled back in to life with our floor lamps. The kitchen sink was still a very dark corner (therefore I was not responsible if there were still food chunks on dishes after I cleaned them), and J was always moving his bedside reading lamp over to the kitchen counter top to have better lighting for food prep. The only light we ordered that ended up working out was a cheap, 12v task-style light with a switch on it that we had gotten for my side of the bed so I could read. 

 

So we decided to just order a few more of those and be done with it! J wired them into the kitchen area on Saturday!

I got one over the sink (yay!!!! and also ewwww I need to clean the sink now that I can see all the grime in it...)

And J got one right over his chef prep area and the stove. Seriously, once you get light, there's no going back to living in the dark. We got rid of one floor lamp and it feels like a lot less clutter. I was worried about having all the lights be on their own switches instead of being able to flip one switch and have them all come on. But I actually like having the option to turn each light on or off, especially since we don't have any dividing walls in the Airstream. It's nice to keep the lights off at the sleeping end of the trailer if you're just hanging out on the couch reading, or if one of us is still asleep back there (that would be me). 

My favorite new Airstream addition is this chalkboard/mail holder/key and coat rack thingy. I ordered it on etsy from The Wooden Attic, and it's awesome! Current chalk art above is by J. I've learned you can never have too many hooks in the Airstream. There are also slots on top of the chalkboard that hold mail, DVDs, pens and of course, the chalk! Fun to write messages on and free's up our counter from piles of mail, keys, hats, whatever :)

Some spring days are still quite gray. But Agnes doesn't care what the weather, it's always a great day to be at the beach in her mind. Thank you for all of the kind words, phone calls, and emails when we lost Maggie. She will always be in our hearts. We are able to smile and laugh now when we think of her and it hurts less. Agnes is our fur-ball of good times - she has been always been good at that, so thank goodness for her! Here's hoping spring reaches you soon, wherever you are.