Goodbye Washington state

Surprise-  Anyone here? I am alive and well and filled with joy in a world of constant change.

After surviving fifteen years of MOSTLY gray skies, drizzle, rain and minimal sunshine I felt like I was going to (crack) or quack. Was I morphing into a duck or just suffering from a severe vitamin D deficiency? Other than a couple of decent weather months each summer, I struggled with the damp, wet and  cold weather and felt like I had moss growing on me from the lack of sunshine in the Pacific North West. I was sun starved and miserable, struggling and always in search of a blue sky and rays of sun to warm my bones and help me to find and remember my old self.

                                                                     

                                                          

I was completely fed up with the weather, insanely high property tax in King county WA as well as WA States liberal politics, their gun laws and regulations for every turn or step you take. In fact it was not much different from life in the CA bay area where I was born and raised. I owned a 3 bedroom, 3 bath home on rural acreage in WA, and I paid between $4,000-$5,000 in property taxes yearly. While at the same time, I was unable to spend one night in my tiny home that was parked on my well maintained land in rural King county on a private wooded gravel dead end road about 50 minutes away from Seattle, also known as the land of the Seattle Freeze (google it).

Long story short... cause you blog peepers prefer pics over wordy posts, - I moved my tiny home to NC and parked it on land I purchased in the Appalachian mountains, about an hour outside of Asheville.     
                                                                              

Tiny homes often come with their own set of headaches. They are illegal to live in, in most towns, cities and states across America. Most tiny homes do not meet local building codes and being they are built on wheels the county can't collect property taxes on them. That makes tiny home dwellers unwelcome in most areas of the United States. Some tiny home owners are now registering them as recreation vehicles allowing them more legal parking and road travel options. Some trailer parks welcome tiny homes and some towns are in the process of modifying county regulations, laws and building codes so that more people will be allowed to dwell in them legally. In the meantime we have TV shows that make the tiny life look so appealing when most of the people on the shows are piggy backing off of someone else who owns land and they are not paying their fair share of property taxes.

                                           

My tiny home is part of my emergency preparedness plan in order to give myself options. I have lived long enough to learn that one's lifestyle and circumstances can change quickly, I like having options. Yet, owing a tiny house while owning a normal size home with a swim spa that was the very same size of my tiny home gave me the time and opportunity to try on a very itsy bitsy home for size. While tiny homes are cute, cozy and can be so appealing, there are HUGE drawbacks to the tiny life. There are thousands of tiny homes for sale because they don't always work out the way people thought they would. Do your homework before you build or buy one.

                                                                   

 In my opinion the downside of tiny house living is that dwellers become dependent rather than self- reliant. Surprisingly, quite the opposite of what many tiny home owners believe life will be for them once they build or buy their tiny slice of heaven.  Let me explain what I mean. In the current state of political unrest and with what I believe is a criminal administration, not to mention the criminal who is now running for president,  America is in a distressed condition and is being run into the ground and fast, I think it is is of utmost importance to physically prepare and plan so that we may live more sustainable lives in perilous times.  Living in a tiny home in most cases is not conducive to preparedness planning and living. I personally feel that it is time for America to wake up and be discerning of the realities as well as the vulnerability of the times in which we live. While I am not quite sure of all the actions I myself should take I am fully aware that the most basic ones such as food preparedness and storage will not fit within the walls of a tiny house.

                                                   

Being prepared for emergencies requires more space than my shabby chic tiny retreat can provide.
Not to mention all of the animals I have. There simply is not enough oxygen for me, and the furkids to share, nor is there any space for the "STUFF" in my life. And I am not interested in becoming a minimalist where I own just 12 items. At this point I like my "stuff" and may collect some more stuff.
Keep in mind while some call the current tiny house trend a "movement" there are no rules that say you have to get rid of all your cowboy boots or the 56 shirts you own. It is your business and don't feel pressued to throw everything you own away because someone says you are bad and wrong for owning more than they do.

                                          

I wanted my next home to be much smaller than my 2,300 sq foot, 3 bedroom, 3 bath with a 500' connected home based business size home yet not the size of my shabby chic girl cave. I desired to make a life change and search for a home that would be a small space that worked well for me.Where I would be able to collect, stock and store supplies as well as grow my own food and have my own water well, so not to depend on the government nor the local grocery store in the case of unexpected emergency or circumstances.

                                                              


The RADICAL shifts taking place in our country, government and society were and still are a huge motivating factor in my desire to become better prepared for possible or probable future catastrophic events. After much thought and prayer, I still kept to my plan and choose to downsize my stuff and my lifestyle and sell my larger home yet upsize my life by choosing a home to live in that is larger than my tiny shabby chic tiny retreat. 

You may be wondering where the tiny house was towed to. I had it towed to Western North Carolina where she was parked next to my new home.  I prayed asking God to guide me as I worked towards a debt free, sunny, simple, and sustainable life. In 2014 after years of hard work I entered that reality. Dreams do come true.  I purchased a tiny 570 sq foot, one hundred year old plus, farmhouse online, sight unseen in a town I had never been too nor heard of. I loaded up my vintage 22 yr old Casita travel trailer with dogs and drove over three thousand miles to my new (old) farmhouse hidden the hills of Western North Carolina.

I am doing a happy dance. I love it here. It has not been easy but I can tell you God is good and I am blessed. I give all glory and praise to HIM. It has been and continues to be an adventure. I have been working on personalizing my little farmhouse and it will be a mix of shabby, rustic, primitive, prairie with splashes of French country.

More about the journey here to NC and a few pictures of my vintage Casita in my next post.

Remember it is never ever too late to create a happy, silly, fun filled childhood. I am near sixty years old and still seizing each day and shaking it up as best I can.

Blessings,
Tonita