“Everything is both simpler than we can imagine, and more complicated that we can conceive.”
– Goethe
Hooray for Family Day
There’s much delayed gratification when building a mortgage-free home. We live in a tiny house and sometimes long for more space. All we have to do is look up the hill to know…it’s coming. Maybe not as fast as we’d hope....
Building a Family Seat and Cultivating a Sense of Place
In my last post I introduced you to Virginia, a dear reader and correspondent. In her letter she didn’t just talk about setting the day in your mind, she also talked about how we are creating a family seat here on our land. That term...
Set the Day in Your Mind
It’s been one week since Sarah Beth Jones said “I think writing a daily blog post might be easier because it becomes a habit.” I got up the next day and decided to give daily posting a shot. She was right. A daily post forms a...
Super Sheds Support our Tiny House
We recently had visitors who were on a whirlwind tiny house tour, and it was super-fun to be included on their tour. One thing they noticed about our house was that we had more stuff than most tiny house folks. I guess we aren’t totally...
Happy Mother’s Day
A prayer for all the mothers and children. Be well. Be present. Enjoy each other. Share...
Great Clothing Roundup
In order to fit four wardrobes into our 8′ x 21′ tiny house, twice a year I hold the great clothing roundup. Yesterday was the day. This is the time when I switch out our seasonal wardrobes. Ideally, no one is home, but if they are,...
My Love Affair with Cardboard
Thank you for keeping my mother-in-law in your thoughts and prayers. She had surgery yesterday and is in recovery. Knowing so many of your thoughts are with her means a lot to us. Since MIL loves to garden, I’m writing about the garden...
Idea Flow
Right now, the big house is full of water since it’s been raining for days. Karl drilled a few holes in the sub-floor, so it will drain. I’ve been going up to sweep the water toward the holes, and it’s taking a while for it to...
Hooray for Progress!
Thank you so much for supporting my work by buying my book! I am enjoying this feeling of accomplishment, and your encouraging words fill me with joy. I am also grateful for the support of other bloggers. Here are links to reviews of my book...
My Book is on Amazon! Coming Home: Letters from a Tiny House
Today is April 3rd. I marked this day on my calendar a couple of months ago as the day I would launch my book. I picked April 3rd because it is an auspicious day for our family. I birthed our first child, Ella, on this day 10 years ago, and 6...
And We’re Legal! A Certificate of Occupancy for our Tiny House
This is the third and last post in my series about our interactions with our local building inspector and the steps we took to get a Certificate of Occupancy thereby making our tiny house a legal single-family dwelling. Read the first post...
Our Path to a Legal Tiny House
This the second post in my series about our interactions with our local building inspector and the steps we took to get a Certificate of Occupancy thereby making our tiny house a legal single-family dwelling. Read the first part of the story...
My Worst Tiny House Fear: Being Told I Can’t Legally Live Here
This post is a compilation of excerpts from my weekly letters during the time between December 2, 2012 and January 27, 2013. I’ve been quiet on the blog lately, because the past six weeks have been scary and hard. I am sharing publicly...
Emotional Learning Helps Children and Parents Get to the Heart of Connection
Please help me help keep Social Emotional Learning in my local community. There’s no denying it; living tiny with kids is challenging. But isn’t challenge what forces us to grow? We have grown tremendously as the tight quarters...
Merry Christmas
What an amazing journey 2012 has been—from the darkness and depression I experienced in January to flying to New York City to share our tiny house with a national TV audience in April, to a summer full of planting, harvesting, and canning to...
Mama Hari
Mothering in a tiny house is rich with opportunities to grow. Because we are crammed into such a small physical space, we have a
microscope on our relationships. Patience and peace, please! Sometimes, there is no room for those. The practice is making room.
I am mama to Brother – age 7 and Sister – age 9. I am married to my match.–We share an authentic love that has helped me to become vulnerable. I am practicing voluntary simplicity, mindfulness in parenting and mindfulness in education.
I will write about our family mishaps and the lessons we learn from living so close together. I will also share insights and tips on getting out of debt, downsizing, living frugally and sustainably, mindfulness, and my take on voluntary simplicity.
Papa Karl
Papa is the most DIY man I’ve ever met. In my 14 years knowing him, I’ve only seen him hire a plumber once. In this time, he has remodeled our 100-year-old house, fathered two brilliant children, dreamed up a restaurant concept with me, turned an old fast-food restaurant building into a lovely casual-dining restaurant, was a critically acclaimed chef-owner, built a tiny house, built a shed, worked as a handyman, tile man, glass block man and a chef. He has talents he doesn’t even know about. He’s the kind of guy who gets things done. I lovingly call him “The Latvian”, because I remember visiting the Coral Castle in Homestead, FL where the tour guides explain how no one ever saw Latvian Ed Leedskalnin carve and erect the 1,100 tons of coral rock. See, Papa is a first-generation American–half Latvian and half German. I can only attribute his mysterious way of accomplishing a stone walking path in the time it takes me to go to the grocery store to his Latvian/German heritage. He amazes me, inspires me and through example reminds me that I can always do more.
–Hari
The Kids
They argue and work it out. They love each other. They hate each other. They are the best brother and sister in the world and the worst brother and sister in the world. They frolic in the woods and by the creek. They have five visiting dog friends, and their favorite toy is a dog leash and collar, which they use to catch the roaming dogs and play dog whisperers. They will dazzle you with their videos of life in tiny land.
"Many people go fishing all their lives without knowing it is not fish they are after." -Thoreau Learn More
