ADU, Travel, Community
Lina Menard
Maui, Hawaii

After A Week Long Send Off, My Round the World Trip kicked off with eight days in Maui visiting my sister Sarah who has split her time between Hawaii and Alaska for many years. What an epic way to start this adventure! There was mist falling when my sister greeted me at the Kahului airport on Maui a week ago, so she teased me about bringing the rain from the mainland. We headed straight for Paia where she presented me with a young coconut and a lei, accompanied by the chant for the gifting-of-a-lei.

Maui, Hawaii
Tiny House, Travel, Planning
Lina Menard
Lucky Penny Moves to Walla Walla

A number of circumstances collided recently to compel me to move the Lucky Penny to my property in Walla Walla where I have a ground bound small house called Valencia Cottage. So on Tuesday trusted tiny house movers Linh and Stephanie Pham helped me move the Lucky Penny safely from Portland to my place in Walla Walla.

Lucky Penny Moves to Walla Walla
Minimalism, Workshop
Lina Menard
Downsizing Tune Up

As I packed up recently in preparation to travel cross country in my Honda Fit, I did some downsizing… It was harder than it had been during my last couple of moves because this time I had more stuff. I’d been living in a bigger space…My apartment was a studio, but it was still about 6 times bigger than the Lucky Penny! I talked with several people about the experience and a handful of them said “oh my goodness, I need to do more of that!” So I’ve decided to offer a 6-week Downsizing Tune Up…

Downsizing Tune Up

tiny house events

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Looking Forward to 2014

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With the transition to a New Year, I'm celebrating Another Year of Little Living. (You can read the highlights of my 2012 A Year of Little Living, too.) Here are some of the things I'm most excited about for 2014:

January & February

On January 6th and 20th I'll be teaching Organize Your New Year: A 2-Part Decluttering Workshop. On January 25th and February 8th, I'll be co-teaching Portland Alternative Dwellings' Tiny Chair Workshop, which is an introduction to power tools. I'm exciting to be co-teaching the Tiny Chair Workshop with Laura Klement, who participated in the Tiny House Design-Build class at Yestermorrow. The first weekend of February and the first weekend of March I'll be helping out with PAD's Tiny House Basics Workshops. This weekend workshop introduces tiny house enthusiasts to everything they need to consider from tiny house structural issues to regulations and community building.

Over the next couple months I'm also Coordinating the ADU Case Studies Project, which involves interviewing ADU owners from across Oregon and writing up case studies which are featured on the AccessoryDwellings.org website. Our goal is to help people articulate what motivated them to develop an ADU on their property, what's working well and what they would do differently, and what advice they have for people considering building an ADU on their property.

I will also continue to build out TinyHomes.com, a website for tiny homes and the people who love them. Our goal is to create an in-depth, engaging, and informative website for people interested in tiny homes. We are currently collecting Profiles for tiny homes and tiny house enthusiasts. We look forward to having the profiles serve as a who's who of the Tiny House Movement, so we'd love to have you add a profile for yourself or your tiny home! We also feature regular blog posts from people who are exploring, designing, building, living in tiny homes. If you would like to be a contributor on our blog or facebook page, please contact me at lina@tinyhomes.com. I look forward to meeting more bloggers and supporting the small house movement through TinyHomes.com!

would you like to contribute to TinyHomes.com? just contact me!

March & April

In March, I'll be teaching a week-long Less is More class at Yestermorrow Design-Build School in Vermont with the fabulous Dave Cain. This course, which I took myself in the fall of 2010, helps people design a small (or tiny) home of their own. After seeing a great set of presentation following the two-week Tiny House Design-Build, which I co-instructed in October, I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with!

The first weekend of April I'll be speaking at the Tiny House Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. There's a great speaker line-up, including Dee Williams as the keynote, so I look forward to this opportunity to meet giants of the Tiny House Movement.

I'm considering staying on the east coast during the time between my Yestermorrow course wrapping up and the Tiny House Conference starting up. I've got connections with Greater Boston Tiny House Enthusiasts, Boneyard Studios, and an artist community in West Virginia, so it seems like it could be a fabulous adventure. If you know of other things I should check out if I decided to spend this time on the East Coast, please let me know!

Dee Williams' book, The Big Tiny (which I've already pre-ordered in Kindle format!) comes out on Earth Day and there will be festivities surrounding its release. I'll likely join in the fun here in the Portland area.

It looks like 2014 is off to a great start! What are you most looking forward to in the coming year?