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.
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.
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…
This past weekend I connected with my colleagues (and friends) BA Norrgard and Lee Pera to teach a Tiny House 101 Workshop in Washington, D.C. Our twenty students joined us from various locales ranging from down the street to Florida to Brazil! I look forward to teaching a Tiny House 101 Workshop again in June in Denver, CO with BA Norrgard. If you'd like to join us, please register now so we know you're coming!
People often tell me that they'd love to taken one of our tiny house workshops but they can't afford it. I respond by telling them that if they're serious about building a tiny house they really can't afford NOT to come to a workshop. The few hundred dollars they invest in the workshop will save them significant time, money, and heartache since they'll gather information and learn from other's mistakes. Fortunately, my friend and colleague Alek recently wrote this post about the benefits of taking one of our Tiny House Collaborative workshops. So in case you're not on the Tiny House Collaborative mailing list, I am cross-posting it here. Enjoy and feel free to respond in the comments. Thanks!"
If you've been fantasizing about a small space of your own (whether that's a backyard cottage, a converted vehicle, or a tiny house on wheels), this course is a brilliant way to dig deep and have a great time exploring the possibilities. I hope you can join us! Please share with other small space enthusiasts who might be interested, too. The more, the merrier!
We're really excited to move into our new tiny house, T42, as soon as it's ready and create shared space here in the big house. In the meantime, over the past four weeks Isha and I have been composing a list of all the reasons we know we're still in the tiny house phase of our lives. We've made a handy reference list so that you can determine whether you're ready to transition from a big house to a tiny house (or know what to prepare yourself for if you ever need to make the transition from a tiny house to a "normal" American home!)
Saturday we greeted our workshop participants at our awesome venue, Soma Vida. Participants flew from Connecticut and drove from as far as Tulsa, Oklahoma to join us for this workshop. We shared inspirations, considerations, and information and as we helped them identify the big decisions when going small and explore some design ideas for their wee homes.
It's high time for a catch up! The month of September was a fun one because we wrapped up the O'Keefe Tiny House Build Blitz and I spoke about tiny house design at Tiny House Fest Vermont... I kicked off October with a trip to Ojai to teach at Tiny House 101 workshop with Lee Pera and Vina Lustado through the Tiny House Collaborative... and so much more!
The Green Mountain Panel crew came out en masse to help us get the first wall panel up. We tipped up one of our slanted end walls and then its adjoining panel on the corner. Once we had a corner in place we were able to work our way around the building in both directions. With a crew that big it went pretty quickly.
Niche has a new website! In the fall of 2011, I created my blog This Is The Little Life to share vignettes about living big in small spaces. A year and a half later, I created my company Niche Consulting so I could help others through sustainable design consulting. This summer I hired my friends Casey and Eli to guide me in consolidating the two websites to make a shiny new website. We hope you like it!
Today we celebrated the hard work, incredible creativity, and mad building skills of our students as we wrapped up Tiny House Design-Build. As I've noted previously in Less is More Wrap Up and Tiny House Design-Build Wrap Up, Presentation Day feels like Xmas morning to me! Watching the activity of the design studio the night before Presentation Day is a bit like hanging out in Santa's workshop on Xmas Eve. It leaves one with a night of excitedly disrupted sleep, curiosity brewing about what will be revealed the following day.
