Living Large In Our Little House

I always start off talk­ing about our Little House by say­ing we never intended on liv­ing here full-time. The 480-square foot one bed­room was great for week­ends and vaca­tions the 4 years we used it as a lake home, but I could never imag­ine us liv­ing in it forever.

Nearly six years ago, I started deal­ing with my mother’s ill­ness and she and I, along with my hus­band, Dale, started rid­ing the roller coaster of the ups and downs asso­ci­ated with that. For any­one who has been on the jour­ney with a par­ent or loved one as they grow old and sick, you know the path isn’t always smooth as every­one involved comes to terms with mor­tal­ity – theirs and our own. In the end, there’s always the sad­ness, loss and the accep­tance of our new “nor­mal” asso­ci­ated with hav­ing to finally let that par­ent go.

After Mom died 2 ½ years ago, Dale and I were ready for a new adven­ture. We had never lived more than 2 miles from the homes in which we were both raised, but we were ready to leave our home­town in Kansas City, Kansas. My idea of a great adven­ture was sell­ing every­thing that had equity, buy­ing a camper and trav­el­ing the U.S., set­tling wher­ever we ran out of money. (I think there was a bad 80s movie with that theme!)

My easy-going-safe-steady-as-she-goes-husband, who doesn’t even like to move the fur­ni­ture around, was ready for a change, but not that big of a change!

We already had a famil­iar place; a place that brought us peace, a place we used to renew our souls on week­ends and vaca­tions. We made the deci­sion to spend what has amounted to our mid-life cri­sis – and most likely the rest of our lives – on our prop­erty on Bull Shoals Lake, a gor­geous, yet largely unspoiled vast water­way that extends from the very south­ern most of Missouri into Northwest Arkansas. Our plan included build­ing a big­ger house – at least the 1,110 square feet we had in the city. The Little House would be used as my office and guesthouse.

I would like to brag on my envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness and say that liv­ing a more sus­tain­able, green life in smaller digs was our moti­va­tion for mak­ing The Little House our per­ma­nent home. Or, that I had heard of the small house move­ment and the other ben­e­fits asso­ci­ated with liv­ing smaller. In real­ity, we were pretty much forced into this life by eco­nom­ics. Our liv­ing space wasn’t the only thing down­sized when we made our move, and now the econ­omy has piled onto that downsizing.

There have been times in the dark­est of nights (and it’s very dark here in the coun­try), when we’ve been lying in bed and doubted our move – lots of times.

However, some­thing was hap­pen­ing to us that we didn’t even real­ize dur­ing those dark­est nights. Decluttering our lives phys­i­cally has nat­u­rally declut­tered our minds, emo­tions, spir­its and rela­tion­ship, mak­ing for a hap­pier and health­ier life. We’ve learned the dif­fer­ence between what we really need and what we want; and we’ve rede­fined the word “home” for ourselves.

We’re def­i­nitely Living Large in our Little House.

Through nar­ra­tive and pho­tos and with the help of a good friend I’ve made here, Onedia Sylvester, who is the tech guru for Living Large in our Little House, I hope to take you on this adven­ture with us on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays.