Soon we will be in a tiny house again, but this time not on wheels. We bought this 18 acre homestead in April and first moved into the larger mobile home. But we soon learned that it will cost us way too much to heat in the winter.

We got two homes and a garage on our new homestead. Melanie wanted to live in the mobile home because it was larger an has a nice kitchen. The chalet/tiny house was going to be a guest home.

We actually served a few guests who came around during the first few months we lived here. Because we are on YouTube we often have guests passing through.

But with some freezing cold nights during the summer it quickly became obvious that heating the mobile home would be way too expensive for us during the long, cold winter months.

We calculated that it would cost us about $15,000 to renovate the mobile home in order to make it livable all year. This would include new windows and insulation, plus siding. The walls are too thin and you can see daylight around the unsealed and aging windows.

The tiny house, on the other hand, has mostly all double windows with build in, sliding storm windows. This will help keep the heat in better. And the tiny home is better insulated as well.

So we made the move before the baby was to arrive. We wanted to get the baby room moved first and get our home settled before Melanie was too pregnant to move around as well.

We just moved from a tiny house in NY so this was no big thing for us to settle into a smaller home again. The biggest problem comes when looking for storage space.

We are homesteaders and are trying to become self sufficient on a budget. This means that we have a lot of hand crank tools for making our own foods. And these take up space. For example we have canning jars, canning pot and utensils. We have a hand crank grain mill, sausage maker, meat grinder and even coffee grinder. These all need a place to stay.

Having two homes helps but since we are only using one house, it is likely that mice will invade the second house. Precautions must be taken to ensure nothing gets damaged. Anything that says in the other home goes into plastic containers.

We plan to take our little home fully off the grid in the coming months. We are going to use wood heat and solar power for most of our needs. We heat our bathing and wash water on the wood stove as possible. And we use a solar powered shower pump for bathing.

We will put in a propane on demand water heater for times when we have guests around. The electric water heater will remain in place for now. I hope to convert that to solar electric power next year if funds allow.

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Troy
The Do It Yourself World