Now that I have to usable outbuildings, my living space has grown from 125 square feet (plus exterior storage compartments, plus loft, plus cab), to that plus about an additional 500 square feet of floor space (never mind the potential of going vertical), plus yard space.

I’ve always done a pretty good job of not keeping Miranda too over stuffed, but I’ll confess that it’s nice to be able to spread out a bit. I’m storing excess cold weather clothing in the cabin and anything related to home maintenance has been moved to the shed, which has really freed up my office overhead cabinets.

I’m also actually doing things in the buildings, especially the cabin. It’s nice to get up in the morning and ‘go to the gym.’ After work, it’s lovely to go spend an hour on the swing in the yard and listen to the birds. Laundry is so much more pleasant now that all that’s involved is bringing the garden hose from the fresh water intake on the RV to the cabin instead of having to move piles of stuff out of the way.

While I didn’t like living in RV parks for a lot of reasons, one thing I missed about them was having facilities to go to. That’s a common theme among tiny home dwellers. If you study their stories, very few tiny home dwellers spend as much time in their homes as I do. Many work away from it, have a city at their feet to use as a living room, and/or work outdoors on their property, so they pretty much only use their space for sleeping. I wouldn’t say that I’ve been getting claustrophobic living in Miranda, but since there is nothing within a reasonable distance of Haven, it’s really nice to be able to get a change of scenery once in a while.

I’ve been asked why I’m building my homestead this way with a series of outbuildings and a main house instead of just bringing in a single prefab home. I really don’t have a logical answer for that other than the fact that the proportions of a regular home are too large for me. Building piecemeal the way that I do, I can have things be right-sized for me. Also, this is how things are done in farm country. Everyone out here except folks living in towns has a main house and multiple outbuildings that go beyond a simple shed. My situation is only peculiar because my main house is an RV.

I really do think I’ve found the compromise that I didn’t believe was possible, a way to reconcile my two very different yearnings for both an exciting nomadic life and a mundane sedentary one. I can’t have it all at one time, but I can have it all. I’ve got my cozy domestic summers in Canada and my urban winters in Mexico, with a bit of exploring in between. I really wouldn’t be surprised if a few years down the road, after exploring Mexico as thoroughly as I have Canada, that I buy property in the heart of a city the size of Mazatlán and then spend my retirement years going between these two extremes. Time will tell. 🙂