Why Spending Almost $100,000 on a Tiny House was the Best Financial Decision of my Life

This is an article I first wrote several years ago for The Tiny House Magazine, which if you are not aware of, you might enjoy checking out! https://tinyhousemagazine.co/   Anyway, I thought it was time to share here with those of you who didn't see it when it was first published.

$99,702.00 is a lot of money. At least for me it was. More than I had ever had in one place at one time for sure! But that is what my tiny house cost. And looking back now after having lived here in my house for 7 years, it was a great decision for me. This is true for many aspects of my life, but the one I want to address today is the financial side of that. I have seen and heard a lot of discussion about "what a tiny house should cost." Or that the "whole point of a tiny house is to be cheap." Or "tiny houses on wheels are a dumb investment because they don't appreciate

Big News from the Tiny House

A short post today. I have some pretty exciting news to bring you today from the tiny house! First a project I've been working on for a while for someone else and am now excited to have available for you all to see. And then some more personal plans. Hear all the details right from me

Ordering Seeds for the Tiny House Garden

The snow drifts are just deepening around here. But spring will arrive eventually. Even here where I probably won't see the ground for 4-5 months yet. Though it's going to show up a lot sooner for almost all of you! Do you have the seeds you need for this year for whatever you are planning to grow? Tiny green things will soon be ready to start popping out of the ground for many of you. Even if you only have a deck, balcony, or window sill, you can

Winter Snowfall

The snow is steadily deepening around here. And Burley and I are enjoying watching every flake fall! We've been having fun snowshoeing through the woods among other things. Now that it is deep enough to not catch the snowshoes on every little bit of unburied brush and twig. For those of you who enjoy watching snowfall without having to shovel it, here's

How Much Produce did the Tiny House Garden Grow?

Now that I have a bit more time to catch up on some things thanks to winter slowing my life down, at least compared to summer, I wanted to check in on how the garden actually produced this year. Does the work it takes to grow fresh food here produce something useful? How much food did I get? This year I did something I've never taken the time to do before and weighed all the various things the garden grew as I harvested them so I would know the total poundage of food produced through the year. What would you guess that total ended up being?

Looking for a Gift?

Unlike the last one, a really quick post. Just in case you need a gift for someone who is not in need of something actually essential to life 😀, did you know you can buy your own photo prints and canvases of wildlife, landscapes, or even my tiny house? I hate to get all salesy, but then people say "Hey! You should sell some of your photos!" So I guess not everyone knows that I do just that. And did you know that scientists have found that even just looking at nature scenes lowers your stress levels, heart rate, and more? If that sounds interesting, I would love if you come on over and check out some of my work!

https://arielcelestephotography.zenfolio.com/ 

 

Planting a Tiny House Garden with No Frost Free Summer

Planting a garden in a mountain corner of Wyoming where there is no official growing season... As in most areas have a "last frost date" and "first frost date" and in general (though not always!) you can pretty much count on plants growing with no frosts and freezes in between. If you don't know what your growing season is, you can put in your location in this handy little calculator - https://davesgarden.com/guides/freeze-frost-dates/index.php and it will tell you some general info. Like in my parent's area, they generally have a frost free growing season a little over 150 days long so they can plant things that take up to that many days to mature without freezing. But in my area, there's always a chance of frosts or freezes all summer. So really what I grow is kind of what many people would call a

Tiny House Life Frugal Tips - Ghost Power Draw

Ghosts sucking power from your outlets? Vampires drinking from your electric bill? Sounds scary or crazy, right? Well there's a real thing that often goes by the names ghost power use, vampire draw, phantom power use, and a host of other terms. For me this is an issue of concern due to my house being powered by a pretty small solar power system. So my electricity is limited in the first place and I don't want to waste it. But even if that's not the case for you, it's likely that you pay for the power you use. And who wants to pay more to a utility company than they need to?

Continuing with the theme of tips that can help reduce the total expenses one has, just in case you want the option to

What Can You Do if Quarantined in a Tiny House?

I know that currently much of the world is in some kind of quarantine or lockdown either voluntarily or mandatory. And many are struggling to find things to do to entertain or occupy themselves with much of their regular activities canceled or closed. Since I feel very blessed that little has changed about my life here in my tiny house, I thought I'd try to make a little list of what I stay busy with. Maybe some of them will be things you are interested in or enjoy too, or maybe they'll just inspire new ideas of your own! I sure there's no way that all of them will work in every place or interest everyone, but I feel like I have so many interests, hobbies, and things I'd like to learn that I could fill several lifetimes before I got bored! While this is by no means an exhaustive list, here's a lot of what keeps me busy at various times during the year or

Housekeeping & Blog Info

Just a little tiny housekeeping stuff of two kinds around here. First a little business. Then a look back through time. :) It's come to my attention that some folks get the auto email alerting you to a new blog post, and then try to comment by replying to that email. The only thing that does, thanks to some kind of software magic I figured out at one point by watching a tutorial and have now forgotten, is to automatically send you an alert so you know when there is a new blog post.... and no one sees replies to that. So please comment so right under the post! I love hearing what you folks are doing, what the weather's like in your area, and answering questions. Though I know sometimes it takes me a bit to have time to sit down and write replies to everyone.

Anyway, on to fun stuff. The photo above was about the second day after I moved into Fy Nyth. I know many of you never saw it back then so I thought a look through the changes as I gradually rearranged things to best fit my needs would be fun and possibly provide thoughts or ideas for how to best fit your own needs. As you can see, I was just trying to get everything in the door. Below is actually what it looked like just a few hours before

Pandemics, Panics, Murphy's Law, and Living in a Tiny House

I hope you are all having a wonderful, healthy, and safe winter, spring, or whatever season it is for you at the moment! Recent events, or more accurately, some of the reactions I've seen from people to them, have prompted me to cover a little bit about what I do when things go wrong around here. I've been asked many variations of these questions over the years. "What if you get sick?" "What if you get hurt?" "What if you are snowed in?" "What if your vehicle breaks down?" "What if any of the other million things someone can think of goes wrong?" 

The short answer is that I plan on things going wrong, breaking down, and getting ill. Because this is what I've observed through both my life and broader history. Stuff breaks. Weather does unexpected things. Things wear out. I get ill. And usually all these things happen at the most inconvenient times too. 

One good example is shortly after I moved into my tiny house here, the heater broke. Now I'd just moved in recently. I only had one heater, a situation that is no more as I now have at least three options to heat my house! It also happened to be a Friday night. Also it happened to be twenty something below zero fahrenheit. Also, the closest heater repair guy was a 17 hour round trip drive away in the winter, and did I mention this was heading into a weekend? Also, I happened to pick up some kind of stomach bug and was flat on the couch throwing up. Too

Can You Help Fy Nyth Win This?

Hey all! Just a really quick post asking for your assistance. You can help this photo's chances of being picked by the judges in a photography contest. If you have a minute to go give it a vote, I'd much appreciate it! Just click here:

https://woobox.com/56uw8x/gallery/g_0bq0VqNCY

The top 10 photos as voted by the public get consideration from the judges for the winning spot. When I last looked, my photo of Fy Nyth was in the top 20, so it would be sweet if it could make it into that consideration! And... back to regularly

Changing Showpack Depths

Up to the first of January, this winter was running a little below average snowfall. Of course long term averages are made from higher and lower years. As you can see in the above photo, heading into the new year the snow around the house was not very deep.

 Then at the begining of January, it started dumping. It snowed almost every day for the first half of the month, and actually broke records for January snowfall totals. Which has brought us up to about average for the whole winter so far. Anyway, I thought you might all enjoy photos of

Possible New Video Hosting Site?

Hey folks. Less fun stuff post here. For everyone wandering about videos, I've been playing around with other potential video hosting platform options. This one seems to work more of the time than most (as in from the upload end, it only glitches about half the time). I have a handful of videos there now and would be curious to hear feedback on how the viewing experience is for you all from the viewing end? Do they load and play smoothly on various devices? Is the quality and sound the same as you are used to for my videos? Is it easy to navigate and find things? Any other thoughts you have? https://www.brighteon.com/channel/fynyth 

(For those who will ask, yes I've been trying to copy videos to BitChute too, and over the past 9 weeks, have not yet had a single one of 550+ videos successfully upload to their site though I have hundreds of failed tries.)

And, of course none of this changes anything about the FTC's stated goal of pursuing individual creators with massive fines over vague rules that could include

Safe Cleaning

At this time of year, some of you may be doing a bit more cleaning than normal due to the residue of family visits and holiday parties. In any case, I'm guessing that most of you do some cleaning, at some point in your life. As a society we seem to have been sold the idea that this needs to involve a lot of expensive and toxic

Night Time Noises

The most frequent night time visitor we see here is a fox. Probably more than one as there are quite a few in the area, though I don't usually see more than one at a time in our yard. I love having them come through as they are great at putting a dent in the population of small rodents. Last night Burley and I were awakened in the middle of the night by a very different sound though.

Winter Decorating with Pine

As you probably know, I really enjoy the flowers surrounding my house, garden, wild in the woods, and seeing their beauty all summer. With our long winters, there are many months of the year with no flowers growing outdoors here. So, I do some winter decorating with

Deepening Snow

Over the past week or so, the snow pack on the ground has deepened a good bit. From the above photo to just a little deeper now than

Tiny House Coloring Book!

If any of you enjoy coloring, check this out! A brand new Tiny House coloring book featuring many people's tiny homes, including Fy Nyth (and Burley!). See a couple pages below. Put together by my fellow tiny house dwelling

Welcome & Follow by Email

Hey folks. If you just found your way over here from Youtube (or anywhere else!) welcome from me and Burley at Fy Nyth!

 I just got a heads up that the subscribe to the blog by email link was not working which I was unaware of. I believe I've fixed it, please let me know if it's still not working. Find it near the top of the right hand side, and please do subscribe so we can stay in touch no matter what the FTC, Youtube, or other media companies decide to do. We're very glad to have you here and trying to stay in contact as I figure out what all these rule changes mean for my ability to share info