A cats perspective

A little while back we took Yuki for her first visit to the trailer and with that to her future living space – a part of the garden that she had not yet known – which seemed to be equally exiting for us as for her. We notice time and time again, what a valuable and important co-habitant Yuki is for us. Things have to be right for her just as much as for the two of us. After all, we are the three Tiny Deers 🙂

We want to take this as an opportunity to share our experiences thus far when it comes to moving with a cat in general, moving from city to country, becoming an outdoor cat (kind of) and moving into a way tinier space. Even if it is not yet as tiny as it will get.

A move is always a big happening. For a pet it must be connected to a lot of stress; I always imagine, that they have no idea what is happening. All their familiar items are being packed up, hiding spots suddenly don’t exist anymore and their favorite sleeping place is gone. And then they are packed up themselves, taken away from all routines and familiar smells. For Yuki it was certainly a stress, even though we did as good a job as can be done for the move. On the car ride it almost seemed as if she was pleading with us to just bring her back to her home. We equipped her with a familiar blanket in her traveling box and bought one of those pheromone sprays (I am honestly not sure if that did have an effect on her or not. But it certainly didn’t harm 🙂 )

Luckily Yuki is as much a “person related cat” as she relates to places. So her settling in in our temporary space went relatively easy. In no time she got all her affairs in order, found new climbing places, hiding spots and piles of fabric (mostly my clothes) to dig herself into.

From 5 rooms to 1

One big worry for me was, how she will deal with the small space after having lived in a big apartment in Basel. Especially since in the first weeks we did not yet let her go outside. One thing I have learned, is that they don’t need as much space as you would sometimes think. Even now that she has a whole nature-universe outside our door, she still stays close, visits the same spots over and over again and even has many days where the interest to be outside is non existing. I could imagine that this has also to do with being an indoor cat for the first years of her life; but she does still enjoy being able to be outside, sometimes just sitting on the window sill, chattering at the birds or observing Sam working in the garden. One aspect to consider in this regard might very well simply be having the possibility to go outside to make her feel happy in the smaller indoor space.

As I mentioned, Yuki is a “person related” cat. So I think, she actually enjoys the closeness to us and that she can have an eye on us, no matter in which living space of the house we are – bathroom, kitchen or bedroom. She usually joins us, wherever we go – to sleep or sit on the couch, have breakfast at the table. And somehow she still manages to disappear and not be seen for several hours if she wants to.

It is all about making the most out of Tiny

So a smaller space doesn’t need to be a challenge. As long as you consider some basic factors. Those of course depend also on the routine you create with your cat (mostly under which circumstances she can go out). A general tip: be sure to include little hide-outs for your cat. Even in a small space they should still have the possibility to go completely MIA and do things on their own terms 🙂 Yuki loves “her loft”, where she can hide but from where she also has the perfect overview of the whole house and even some of the outdoors. When we have visitors she usually also goes up there as she considers it her safe space for peace and quiet. Another thing that we deemed important (already when living in the city) is a little window space from where she can observe birds or the occasional squirrel in the trees.

But don’t overwhelm yourself (and possibly the cat) with instantly making the whole house a cat-jungle-gym. Because while it is important to offer the cat those spots, it is (actually I guess this counts for Tiny House or otherwise) smart, to trust your four-legged companion to also find their own (often very strange) hiding, lounging, sleeping or observing spots; one of Yuki’s is a decorative “wall-curtain”, behind which she can spend hours laying.

One more thing that changed significantly with our move is not only the outdoor setting but also a clear shift in seasons. And while Yuki harbors a certain appreciation for the snow – the other cats generally avoid going outside during those times, so she has her own undisturbed turf – she spends a great deal more time inside. So the recent addition of our fire-oven next to the bed has given her a new source of entertainment during the harsh cold wintermonths laying ahead of us. She often sits peacefully in front of the fire and watches the flames. I realize, we could learn a lot of our furry friends – observing birds and burning fires all day long might occasionally be a good anti-stress-therapy.

Smells and other cat-related joys

One other question that was bugging me, was the situation of the toilet. Cats can create quite smelly situations and unlike in our apartment in Basel, there is no easy way to “evade” the smells, by simply moving to another room and keeping the toilet far away from any cozy living space. A helpful prop for this is a “cat-litter-box-box”. It completely keeps the smell contained, once you put their “doings” in there. As for the immediate aftermath: incense sticks do quite well if airing out is not an option. It is a known fact, that small spaces confront you more with the various smells – the good and the less good. There is no way of completely avoiding that challenge. But we consider it a small challenge so far and as far as visits are concerned: we just warn them 😉 I am sure, that in the actual Tiny House plan it makes sense to consider a nice comfortable dedicated space for Yuki’s toilet, as I have seen many nice options on Tiny House Tours on Youtube 🙂

One thing, we have learned, is that cats in a Tiny House are in general more present in their “messy behavior”: carpets moved around while playing, material (little feathers, some grass, dirt) brought from outside and then disposed in the middle of the house. So I find myself more often then before walking through the house before going to bed and picking up items of the floor and adjusting furniture. But on the plus side: a mouse brought home from outdoor adventures you will usually spot easily in a small space 😉 Additionally, much like humans, a cat also comes with her luggage of bowls, toilet, food bags, etc. Granted it is usually less than all the stuff us Non-furry beings possess, but it is not to be underestimated and it is good to find spots (or create them) for all those things. Especially a calm and protected eating area is important.

We are exited that in the Tiny House we can create those spaces specifically for the needs of our cat. Yuki and me are lucky to have a motivated, creative and skilled constructer in Sam who will make those spaces as perfect as can be.

A tight-knit community

As mentioned above, Yuki likes to join us for the most part in our daily life, so it is an obvious fact: You will in general be less able to have “cat-free zones”. That was for us not an issue anyway, since we also never had that in our apartment in Basel. Yuki was able to go anywhere she wanted (except human-food related areas and my shoes ;-)). But we can see now, that it would be absolutely impossible (not to mention uncool) to keep Yuki away from certain areas, with an open floor plan like ours (the “bedroom” and “living room” are kind of one and the same). We like to let her get creative and utilize (almost) whatever she wants for her needs.

As much as Yuki might be more “present” in her smells and contribution to chaos, she is also more present in our everyday routine, which we are so thrilled about. Yuki made this feel like our home from the very first moment by climbing around and trying to catch flies and being visibly comfortable. As for the future, we are very exited to see, what will become her new spots when we move to our Tiny House.

Yuki makes the most out of tiny spaces, so she is actually a perfect example for us to live by.

The art of waiting and what “not doing anything” really means…

Many months have passed already. Spring has come (kind of… wait, did it really?) and later on we had a little bit of summer warmth and in the meantime autumn has arrived with colorful trees and it’s signature golden sunlight. It still is a challenging year. Not only weather wise of course… But boy, did we feel the repercussions of the moody weather. The long winter, the storms, the never ending rain. Our garden suffered and we lost some of our harvest. For Sam particularly it was challenging. Luckily the garden recovered for a big part and did provide us with delicious herbs, flowers, vegetables and fruits. But simultaneously the wet days kept us from starting the build (even though we anyway still miss quite some windows before we can start). The farm demands a lot of work too, so the wait did not feel like sitting in a doctors office for hours reading a fashion magazine from 5 months ago, until you’re finally called in. It could be called “productive waiting”, where sometimes only at the end of the day we noticed, that another week has passed without any work for the Tiny House being done (including writing about it on this blog…)

Our trailer became a playground for plants and various flowers. Our fireplace disappeared under a layer of weeds, still holding the memories of warming fires in the wintermonths. A romantic sight for sure, but also one that made us start blaming ourselves for dawdling so much. And let me tell you, if you are ever in a situation – in a building process or any other situation in life – where blaming yourself seems like the “right thing to do”: don’t. It isn’t. It is not helping and it usually does not make you move any faster. It is something I had to learn the hard way these past months and I am glad I got to learn. One usually has their reasons for stopping or slowing down. Sometimes they are more obvious and sometimes it is a complex construct of different reasons. But either way, being disappointed or frustrated with yourself is not a smart choice; it is hurtful, unfair and paralyzing. Or at least that is how it felt to me. You start to forget what you are doing and why you are really doing it. Kind of like a picture that you stare at for too long and then it just becomes a “mush” of various colors.

Sometimes you need to make a step back and re-evaluate a situation or a process. For us that also meant to remember, why we build a Tiny House in the first place. It is not something we do for someone else, to please anyone and there is in the end no hurry or deadline. We do this for ourselves, it is our adventure, our project, our future home. We can take all the time we want. We did not make a promise to anyone other than us; so if a 3 month building-process turns into a 15 month-building process, that is one way or another a natural development (I guess in the end, it is more natural than building a House – even a tiny one – in 3 months). Promises can be altered without being broken.

So we learned the art of “stopping”. Stopping with blame, worries or even feelings of shame or inadequacy (yes, this post got deep fast). Which for me meant laying in the sun, observing changing cloud formations, improving my Macrame-skills and of course baking lots of sweets while Sam got really good in carving animals out of wood and spending a lot of time with his other passion-project: the garden. There was even time for an epic 4-day hiking adventure with my cousin Joris. In other words we allowed ourselves to rediscover just “going with the flow”, trusting and waiting for the right moment to get back into our building adventure.

We also noticed, that we get to give our current home in the Pavillon more attention. It is now after all already for over a year our “temporary residence” and we feel at home here. But some things were clearly still remains from the time where we thought, we are going to live here for about 3 months. So we dedicated a bit of time and energy in some slight remodeling and updating and we realized: a little goes a long way. From a more comfortable water/sink system to more shoe storage and some new hanging plants (macrame skills fulfilling their purpose). Even something that you might consider a “waiting room”, gets to be cozy and inviting.

Some concrete Tiny House – development after all

Throughout our “stopping-experience”, Sam still started to study and learn a lot about framework thanks to some good Youtube-Channels and it was nice to see him approach this significant (and to me rather challenging, heck, let me be honest: boring) part of the build playfully and with curiosity. He noticed that for this, SketchUp is the better program than Sweet Home 3D, which we used for the interior and exterior design (and which works wonderfully for interior-design-purposes). SketchUp on the other hand is designed to plan out a structure in the smallest detail; you can use multiple “layers” in your sketch like for example a wall frame, an exterior wall and an interior wall. This makes the program more divers and detailed, which is a plus for designing a house “on paper”; for Sam it felt basically like creating an “Ikea-like-blueprint-instruction” based on which we will later build the actual house 🙂

And finally a few weeks ago we bought two more valuable contributions to our house; one of them being our door! A lot of searching on secondhand online platforms payed off – and we found this very affordable glass-door. We have a super enthusiastic co-habitant who was instantly ready for the adventure, to go pick them up for us (as we are still both not driving – another thing that we haven’t found the time for yet). It is not exactly the kind of door we originally envisioned, as we had the idea of a big nice glass-sliding-door, but that is another thing we learned already a while ago: compromising is a valuable quality. As well as knowing, where you absolutely don’t want to compromise (we both agree that this is a decent big couch to lounge on).

So, it turns out, that while you think you’re doing nothing and just sitting and waiting around, you are actually doing a lot. One thing being to recover, regain energy (sometimes you do need to regain energy simply from spending so much time thinking about your project. It sounds silly, but we found that to be true) and in the process generating new brilliant ideas for your project. And isn’t that so much better, than rushing through something that you spent a lot of time looking forward to?

So throughout a Tiny House-Build (and other intense phases in life): Be kind to yourself. Be patient. And be mindful of the tiny steps. I am sure (I will update on that a few months in the future) that they are the ones that make the journey so unique and special and teach you maybe the most valuable lessons along the way. As the “Tiny House concept” is showing us: it is not always big that matters, sometimes tiny provides the essential 😉

Other things we learned along the way:

  • A house is way more than just rooms that need to be planned. It has so many details we need to pay attention to, like: where does the old paper storage go? And where do we put Yuki’s “food-station”?
  • An outdoor kitchen is awesome and has to be included in the building plans moving forward.
  • If you need help, just ask for it. Don’t feel like you first have to do others a lot of favors, before you can be granted one. It all evens out in the end. Don’t worry.
  • Communication is key. It is a cliché fridge card saying. But it is absolutely true.
  • Hiking in a thunderstorm: quite adventurous and also super dangerous. Don’t do it.
  • “How I met your mother” has aged rather poorly but does the trick when you just want to relax and shut off your “worry-brain” for a bit.

A strong foundation… or: how many words are there for snow?

Over a month has passed since our last post. It was a time for rest and patience. A new big load of snow got in the way of continuing. So our trailer got to spend many days on his own in the back of the garden but his presence was never forgotten and fires we could anyway make and enjoy its warmth with some hot wine, nice stories and wonderful inspiring company – it was a blast to have our friends and family members here for christmas and to have you stay here for so long, Eleonora! 🙂

Sam told me that in dutch there are countless words for rain. In this month I started to wonder, how many there are for snow. Or rather, how many different emotional expressions snow can bring; joy, boredom, frustration, impatience, calm, peace, curiosity, fascination… I felt a lot, as our home kept being covered in white and let the world underneath – gardenbeds, paths, stonewalls – become somewhat of a distant memory.

This would mark – for the first time really – the month where we also learned that a Tiny House build can enforce a lot of the same emotional expressions.

When mid January the snow started melting away we still took this development with a grain of happiness as well as sadness: Sam had just started to find his groove, and me a new found wintersport-passion, on the cross country skis; we got to discover our neighborhood on new paths and stand on hills, we’ve before only passed with the train.

However, it also meant that we were finally able to pick up our project of creating a stable foundation for our trailer (and finding the brussel sprouts in the garden without having to start a whole treasure hunt – but thats’s another story). So we stored the skis away and got the shovels and pickaxes (I learned this word recently; still call it “axe-pick-thingy” though) and started a process that would cost a lot of muscle power, endurance and nerves. I would call creating a good foundation not one of the more interesting aspects of the build. You don’t really see all that much of a result and it is somehow a repetitive work. And still in the end it is one of the most essential things you do for your future home. A strong foundation ensures a stable home; a home that does not suddenly sink into the floor after some days of heavy rain.

The ground beneath our Tiny House turned out to be a mixture of earth, roots, clay and after a some digging solid rock. The plan was to dig until the rock foundation and then fill the holes up with stones – first bigger ones, topped off with smaller pieces. We needed two big holes for the three wheels on each side, as well as five smaller ones for the pillars and the front wheel. Every hole was a new surprise – none of them where the same. Whereas one was completely grown through by sturdy roots, another was solid and absolutely nerve wracking clay more or less from the get go. Not only did we find clay, but some of the stones used for the foundation had beautiful shiny geods inside, only discovered after being hammered into smaller pieces. A true treasure, our Tiny House spot. Yuki chose to grace us with her presence on several occasions, inspecting the trailer and the newly dug holes and being heavily confused by the wet mud on her paws. She feels more and more like an outdoor cat though, expanding her outside trips, climbing on trees and checking out new areas and she also feels clearly already at home on our construction site.

So over the next days we trained our arm muscles – it were busy days, where at their end we always felt the work in our bodies. They also gave us the chance, to get even better acquainted with our surroundings. There was still always the time for a coffee, enjoying the sun on our faces, the view and inspired conversations or to show Sibylle the building process and plan barbecues with the train chauffeurs (they clearly start to be curious about what the heck is going on here – we get a lot of joyful waves, when they drive by). And sometimes we would take a moment to just to lay on the trailer and stare up to the sky. It is funny how different a landscape looks and feels once the snow is gone. We instantly had our first spring-feelings; sort of getting out of hibernation, rested and fully awake, eyes wide open and ready to move ahead with our project. Yet we knew, it was only early February and winter was far from over. The snow might come back and halt our build again.

Sam taught me a lot in those days about some tools and how to properly use them. I got to learn how to best and most efficiently smash stones in little pieces and how to correctly hold a pickaxe. I realized that I am better in neat and organized stonelayering than I am in smashing them and I also learned where my physical boundaries are and to not be upset with me when I reach them; construction work in that sense is not my forte. And it is not where my knowledge – or my passion for that matter – lay. But still it was and is important to me to be part of the build from start to finish; even if that means, to sometimes just stand next to Sam and observe how he works. Sam on his end also realized that he has limits and needed to learn when to stop and give himself a rest. Something, as he told me, he has never been particularly good at. This was especially hard, as we reached our last day of digging and filling up holes. It indeed came down to a race against the snow; on Sunday, the 7th of February it was due to return, so it was inevitable to get the work done before then. It seems almost natural under those circumstances to put your sensations, such as hunger, pain, exhaustion, aside and to just push through. I myself know that very well from long distance hikes. No matter how much my toes hurt after a few days, I cannot, do not want to, stop walking until I reach the destination I set myself.

As all the holes were dug and filled up, moving the trailer posed another challenge; with the help of some wooden planks we planned to maneuver the trailer on the foundation spots; moving the trailer by hand: something, that back in December with all the snow was simply not possible and now worked surprisingly well (easy for me to say, I pulled the light weight – Sam did the heavy lifting. Literally).

After a strengthening lunch and a much needed rest, we set up for the last part of this step in our project. Under a coat of Sahara sand, that somehow made its way to Switzerland and wrapped everything in a slightly spooky reddish-yellow light and with daylight slowly fading, we gathered some remaining strength and pushed and pulled our future home to it’s final spot. After that it was all about leveling; with the help of some water scales we made sure the trailer was leveled (as much fun as it would be for Yuki to observe rolling marbles on an uneven floor 😉 ).

And no 24 hours later the snow did come back, covering everything in white yet again. So the pulling through was after all worth it and we are very grateful for the help we got, to make this deadline – thank you so much, Julia and Gian Mauro!

It is exciting to be able to say that the trailer is now exactly where it will stay. And that those are now exactly the views we will have, once the house is built.

For me and Sam to do the final steps – or rather pushes – together, just the two of us, was a beautiful experience. Working together towards something that is very near to both our hearts and for what we share the same kind of excitement and the stakes are equally high for both of us. It was a bonding moment which added a new layer to our relationship.

Now we get to go in another quick hibernation-break, before we get on to the next step: structure! 😀

Downsizing Part 1

Currently we are being snowed in here in the Jura; we spend time looking for building material (a good fire oven to keep us warm in winter will be a key product to find!) and taking hikes in the snow. So, I thought, I take this time to write about downsizing. As I already wrote in one of our previous post about this subject, decluttering can be a real challenge and should get enough “space” in your moving (in) process. As we have moved and are finished with our big “pre-move-decluttering project” (for now ;-)), I thought it would be nice to share our tipps so far with you. Many – if not all of them – have already been written down by other brave individuals who faced “The Purge”. But if nothing else, they just get our stamp of approval as well 🙂

Time is of the essence

And this means enough time. I said this before, but to me it is one of the most important factors: don’t rush the downsizing process. Take your time. Integrate it in your everyday life however it fits you best. Like this it will become almost a natural thing you do while walking through your current home – putting (imaginary) stickers on things, labeling them as something that will come with you or stay behind.

Get an assistant

No, you don’t need to hire someone to do your decluttering for you. But when it comes to certain aspects of your household, it might be helpful to have someone at your side, that gives you their honest opinion about wether to keep or toss something and asks you the critical question if you really actually think you ever gonna need that again. And don’t forget that when you do this as a project with your partner or a friend, this should anyway be a teamwork based on compromises and respect for the other persons possessions and you can be each others assistant 🙂

Listen to yourself

An assistant is helpful and can be the voice of reason (or the voice of emotions 😉 ) but your own voice and opinion count the most in the end. The key is just to really listen. To support this and to bring some much needed structure, I gave my items categories: for example there can be “need to have” and “nice to have”. To be clear: your home should definitely contain “nice to haves”! It is not about getting rid of all of those. And for me personally, “nice to have” was and is not always clearly separated of “need to have”. What helped me a lot was to envision myself using/wearing/looking at etc. this particular item. Let that first reaction that you get be a clear hint and honestly allow yourself to feel it (does it spark joy? 😉 ) even if later that other voice appears; the one with all the “but’s” and “on the other hand’s”…

Keep a checklist

Sometimes even listening to yourself does not bring a clear answer, that is the moment, when something a bit more systematic can come in handy. Like a checklist. That doesn’t need to be an actual checklist, but a way to see if and how often through the months and weeks you actually used something. With certain things there are easy ways to check that. Clothes on a hanger can be put in the closet with the hook facing towards you and then changed the other way, once you’ve worn them. Books can get a Post It on them or be turned upside down when you take them out of the shelve. And well, the pans that start to have a layer of dust on them might maybe also be ready to go. Be aware that this is a process that needs some time and is not a one-week project.

Sentimental Items

The category where checklists might not really work. I found three piles of old birthday cards from over the years that I hung on to because they could always remind me of the many good people I get to know. Technically three little piles of paper should easily fit somewhere in a box in a Tiny House. But those things accumulate over the years and three piles at one point would become thirty piles. And in the end I came to the conclusion, that – even when disposed of after a while – the content of those cards as well as the friendships stay with you. So I decided to do a little ritual: as luck would have it, we owned a fire place in our old apartment. I burnt a lot of those cards and sat there with a glass of wine, enjoying the warm bright flames. This felt more right to me, than to just put those cards in the trash. From a lot of them I took pictures, so I can still look at them when I feel like it. Of course not only handmade things have a personal meaning to you; books, clothing, a Mix-CD can remind you of a dear person that gave it to you or of a happy event that you love to remember. For me this is for example my two wedding dresses. I don’t intend to necessarily wear them again, but every once in a while I get them out of their cartons and remember that one wonderful day I got to wear them.

Repurposing

Even after checklists and patient listening, some things simply mean too much to you to give away. Maybe in a year you will be ready – things change. But if something in your heart clearly is not ready to let go yet, in my opinion: don’t do it. You might regret it. There is however a way to maybe give the item a new life, a new purpose. Some things can become a useful product in your household others can become a piece of art to hang on the wall. Space saving possibilities lay also in temporarily changing the purpose of something, when it is not in need for a while: my summer purses (yes there is such a thing) are performing wonderfully in their role as plant pots. The same goes for certain mugs that you are rarely using for your coffee but you adore for their design. Another form of repurposing for me is to just give things to someone who will give it a new life for me.

Allow yourself to be emotional about material things

There is no fault in being attached to your material possessions in my opinion. In the end you would still know what to take out of your house in case of a fire and it would certainly not be that new plaid scarf or that really good novel you have read three times in the last two years. And still it can mean that you have a close relationship with them. Just allow yourself to feel that – even if a few of those things anyway end up on the give-away-pile. And in turn also feel ok, with deciding to keep some of them.

For us the quintessence was and still is: You are moving into a tinier space and you will have to say goodbye to some things. With some it is easier, with others it is a, at times, almost hurtful process. In the end, at least for us, it felt liberating. We literally got lighter and freer – as if it is nearly possible to just pack a backpack and start a new life somewhere (even though we of course still have too much stuff for one backpack 😉 ). And last but definitely not least: It is not about getting rid of everything that doesn’t serve a practical purpose. It is a balance and in the end your new home should first and foremost also feel like a home: warm, cozy, lived in – by you.

Those who can not yet build walls, build fireplaces…

After our trailer has arrived together with a lot of snow, it seemed as if we had to let all the excitement settle. So we had some quiet days of visiting the trailer regularly, sitting on it and talking about the next steps in this big project. It is interesting – we waited so longingly for the trailer to arrive and I somehow assumed that right the next day we would start building. Of course, for this we still need a lot of material (As of today we are still proud owners of two windows and one trailer) and maybe the weather would have influenced this as well. But somehow the arrival turns out to be a several day process, defined by pausing, taking in and observing. This of course is not at all a bad thing:

Recently, after an afternoon of sledging on a nearby snowcovered hill (it has been ages since I’ve done that; I forgot how much fun it is!) we decided to go and sit on our trailer and watch the sunset over the fields. We admired the view that we got with our trailer being positioned not quite parallel. Somehow it before always seemed like a given, to align it with the train tracks in front and the stone wall in the back. After our challenging move of the trailer over the wall however it stood differently and we decided to for the moment just leave it like that (we were tired and hungry 😉 ). But seeing it now, we realized that this slightly shifted position adds some dynamic and offers some new – even more beautiful views – from certain windows. It is nice, how sometimes purely by chance those realizations happen that slightly influence and change your original plans. It taught us that, while you have to be flexible and ready for things to change without having a lot of influence, you also gain some freedom in short term decision changes.

Even though we are still in the “Arrival – Phase” and waiting with commencing the actual build, we are clearly both anxious to get busy with building something Tiny House related and continue the project of creating our own home. And roaming on Online-secondhandshops for building material and watching Tiny House building tutorials and tours just didn’t cut it anymore. So we decided to dedicate some of our time to the outdoor area. Because as previously stated, the surroundings of the Tiny House mean almost just as much as the indoors. The snow had in the meantime almost completely melted, which is in general a shame of course (we want a white christmas! 🙂 ), but worked well with our intentions. The plan was to build an outdoor fireplace; it will allow us, to keep our trailer company while sitting at a warm fire and it makes this little piece of chosen land already more feel like a home. We decided on a spot next to the (future) kitchen window, close to the little stone wall, with some distance to the train tracks.

The fireplace is supposed to be part of the expanded garden, that we will still create and develop around our Tiny House. A garden with fruit trees and berry bushes, that grow harmoniously and naturally next to and under the big old fir trees, who guard our building spot already since a very long time. For this reason we wanted to build the fireplace in a simple organic way; kind of as if it has, like the trees, always been there and has already heard thousands of campfire stories. With some big stones, that we carried all the way from the front to the back under the watchful eyes of several curious cats, this plan was easily and fast achieved.

It in general is a simple project; it just takes some time and patience and some practical skills to find the right sized stones and place them in the right order. I found it to be a very peaceful and satisfying work. It was in fact my first (or maybe second?) fireplace build and just like the cats, Sam had very watchful eyes over my work, as we slowly closed the stone circle.

After done work it seemed logical to immediately make use of our new addition. The weather was beautiful – a very strong sun brought some generous warmth and a lot of light. So with Solomon Grey’s “Home” fittingly playing in the background, we lit our first fire. We toasted to our first “mark” left here next to the fir trees and enjoyed this little festive moment in presence of the trailer, deciding, that a fireplace is a good place to officially start our build; after all it is a place around which people gather and come together and share stories, memories and visions – something we truly wish for (again) in the future; especially after a year where coming together was so limited and greatly missed. So, we toasted to the beginning of a new chapter – not only for the three of us but also for everyone all around the world.

One day in the city

As the end of this intense and overwhelming year approaches, we would like to take time, to “officially” say Goodbye to the city, where we lived before packing up our stuff and moving to the countryside and a new life. We love all the wonderful new experiences we make here; like enjoying a sunset over snowy Jurafields 🙂 but we would like to appreciate all the things that made us happy in our “old life” in the city. Those are certainly not things that you can only experience in the city (the nearby restaurants of our new home are quite decent 😉 ) but they are things that we associate with our former hometown of Basel and look forward to, whenever we‘re back here.

Spontanious strolls through the city

The river

Coffee and cocktail dates (written in the hope and assumption, that we will get this valuable part of city life back!)

The many restaurants (same goes for this – we will get this experience back!)

Trees in blossom

Sunrises and sunsets

The nearby nature on a Sunday walk

Spontaneous cinema visits


Friends around the corner ❤

Never will it be out of sight out of mind and we are already looking forward to many dates in the city and the countryside. But we want to appreciate the awesome group of people we got and get to share Basel with 🙂

Permits, transports and other big adventures…

As promised we want to take this opportunity to put our experiences and thoughts about some interesting challenges in our project on the paper – so to speak 🙂 A lot has happened, so this is a longer entry in our blog with some technical informations (that I am not yet that good in writing down 😉 ). You will soon find a detailed collection of all the technical details, Tips, as well as our personal Do’s and Don’ts here.

As you might have read in one of our first posts, we got an “unofficial” confirmation, that we get to build our Tiny House where we wanted it to be. The key term really turned out to be “unofficial” in this scenario; I think in a way we both felt some hesitation in our joy over this victory early on. To not have a certain letter of confirmation in your hands feels strange and has been warned about several times. So when we several weeks later got an email of the Canton of Jura, informing us that our desired piece of land is agricultural land (as we already knew) and therefore not to be built on, it came on one side still as a huge shock but also felt a bit like an old acquaintance that you don’t like but you knew he is going to show up at the party.

So our next plan of action became to write an absolutely convincing proposal to pass to the commune and the canton, to make them change their minds and see, that our Tiny House is what’s best for that little bit of unused land. But not only that: It was supposed to be about the ecological importance of tiny living and about how we would use this space in the best possible way – for us and our Tiny House but also for the wildlife around us. You will find said document here soon. We were quite convinced by our document and our suggestions. And it made us actually see possible additions and ideas for the Tiny House as well as the space around it. A Tiny House, we realized for ourselves, really is -more than a “regular” house- something that is meant to be integrated into an existing space. The surroundings are not meant to adapt to the house but rather the other way around. This means that with the design (materials, colors, shape, etc.) one is supposed to be respectful and mindful of what is already there. To us, the longer the more, that became an essential conclusion of the whole “preparation part”.

But laws in Switzerland seem to be strict. Things are labeled and are rarely relabeled unless it serves a – in the opinion of the ones executing those laws – useful cause. Our Tiny House does not belong in that category. Not yet anyway! And even though there is little else to do with that little piece of land from a traditional agricultural standpoint, arguing with the canton that our Tiny House is a good way to use that piece of land – we decided – will probably not change their answer.

We were set on the piece of land – it seemed like it had been waiting for us to live there. But we also had of course respect concerning this clear “No” of the canton. This in the end led to our decision to rethink the whole “Trailer-Idea” – a less permanent seeming option, in case the people from the canton ever decide to drop by – instead of our original plan: to build on a pillar foundation, which is still a quite mobile option but less mobile in the traditional sense (as: you can hook your house on a car and drive away – to put it very simple).

So after some back and forth and careful consideration of other possible parkingspots on the property, we said yes to the Trailer-Option.

An introduction to Vlemmix and many new informations about the fascinating world of Tiny Houses…

We decided to get in contact with Vlemmix – they are located in Germany/Holland and are probably one of the most known trailer companies. We learned that there are companies that build trailers in Switzerland as well and maybe – if we would do it all over again – we would think more about the pros and cons of ordering our trailer outside of Switzerland (but more on that later ;-)). That being said: our first contact with company was super friendly and in our phonecall with them we learned a lot of useful information. The one of them being: you can build a 3 meter wide house on a 2,55 meter wide trailer, it is done often. This was a huge relief and a big motivation to keep going.

Three axes make sense when you plan to build lofts in your Tiny House but are not absolutely necessary when you don’t move your house often. Even though this will probably be the case with us, we went for the three axes anyway.

How does this thing get here?

After the order was officially placed with Vlemmix, the long wait started. A trailer is newly made and in our case the waiting time was 12 to 14 weeks, which back then seemed like a eternity but in the end went by so fast that we still had not figured out the whole transport from Holland to Switzerland. With Vlemmix, the transport of the trailer is usually ones own responsibility and was in our case a challenge since neither one of us has a driving permit yet – let alone the one you need to move a trailer this size. Vlemmix works together with a slovak company but due to the Covid Situation they were not available. First we had our own (awesome!) friends and family members offer to do the transport or pay for it. And after that, friends of friends said they could do it. It was – once again – wonderful to get so much support and we are happy to be blessed with all those great people. Nevertheless we realized that being able to drive is not the only hurdle we will face. Which in the end led us to the door of professionals transporters: Planzer. For a negotiated but still substantial fee, Planzer will pick up the trailer and deliver it here. The big advantage of this solution: All the paperwork has been taken care of and all that was left for us to do was to wait in anticipation.

The first snow and a big arrival

On Tuesday the 1st of December we woke up to a completely white Creux-des-Biches. Everything was covered in thick layers of snow. It was absolutely magical.

Disappointed about the Monday that came and went without a promised arrival of our trailer, we appreciated and enjoyed this white winter paradise. The hours went by and we had still not heard anything from Planzer – it started to feel weird. It was shortly before 5 o’clock in the evening, when suddenly Sam’s phone rang and we learned that the truck with our trailer inside is already in Le Noirmont. Exited and wrapped tightly in winter coats and snow boots we went to wait at the junction of the main road. I can tell you: the moment when that huge truck came into our sight, I actually got that “what the heck have you done”-feeling. The truckdriver was not able to turn into our side street because of the snow and a lack of grip and therefore parked on the side of the mainstreet. Luckily he was a very humorous man, could speak Dutch with Sam and took a lot of our nervosity away. With the trailer being unloaded on the mainstreet, that still left us with the challenge of at least getting it off the street and somewhere safe, so we could transport it to the actual parking spot the following day with better light conditions. Thanks to our routined tractor-driving-volonteer, another current resident of our community and my mother as well as a few patient street-construction workers we succeeded. The trailer and us got some rest for the night.

After a solemnly transport through the snow and an at times panic inducing lifting over a little stone wall the following morning, the trailer has arrived on our little piece of land. And after some moments of feeling like we had to admit that we gravely underestimated the weight of the trailer and almost conceding defeat, we could proudly leave it there and have a well deserved lunch.

We finished this milestone of a day around a crackling fire with self made hot wine and exchanging our visions for the Tiny House, with Sam saying: ” I am looking forward to the first night in the Tiny House, looking around and knowing every single nail and screw, because we put it there ourselves.” This moving day and this moment around the fire wrapped up a chapter defined by planning and waiting and certainly made us bond for the first time really, physically with our future home on wheels.

A “new life”…

It has now been already several months since we moved to our new home. And whereas the location of the home itself is the actual one, the house we live in isn’t, as our whole process of obtaining permits as well as material and building was interrupted by a global pandemic. Our Tiny House was not only not yet ready to move into by July, but we haven’t even started building. Luckily a renovated sheep stable on the property made our plans to move mid July possible after all.

We found it to be a wonderfully welcoming space; bright, warm and – in it’s limited amount of square meters – so spacious! It is a huge step down from our 4-bedroom-apartment in Basel but still not quite at the small space where we are planning to end up on. Still I was prepared for that moment of overwhelmed silence the morning after the move. That voice that gets suddenly unbearably loud and says “what the heck have you done?! How could you have ever thought that all your stuff fits in here? One room? What’s wrong with you?!” That voice never came. Instead we woke up on the couch in the midst of untouched moving boxes at 6 o’clock in the morning with the sun rising over the fields right outside and Yuki climbing on the beam above our heads, catching flies. Nothing felt small or overwhelming. Somehow what we lost in actual space, we instantly gained in relaxation and possibilities. It was a magical experience.

Over the first weeks all or most of our material possessions found a new spot in our house. It is lovely to see, how little it takes for a space to feel like “yours” when it holds all the things that are familiar and have a meaning to you.

Of course the settling in in a new place (which we are still doing – my inpatient inner self starts to slowly accept that), far away from a lot of familiar things, smells, sounds and rituals came with it’s challenges and was and is, not without it’s little crises. Our little home, our sanctuary however always feels like a safe place to deal with those doubts and fears and gradually we both learn, that this is a normal and probably quite important part of entering a new chapter in life.

And so we, sometimes without even noticing, created new rituals and remodeled old ones to fit our new life. From passing phones and laptops up to the sleepingloft in the evening to Yuki jumping on the window sill to watch the chickens and ducks in the morning to harvesting salad leaves for dinner and cooking our pasta on a little camping stove outside of the house.

A lot of rituals were “forced” on us by the situation of our home. As we neither have a kitchen, sink, shower or toilet – all or most of those things require us to go into the main building. It is something I dreaded before the move. And while it is sometimes inconvenient, it has gotten a certain charm; like for example getting out with our basket full of dirty dishes when it is already getting dark and a nice breeze greets you. And to together plan your walks to the toilet because it is more fun than going alone is certainly a new ritual in our relationship.

New rhythms also include my regular departure to Basel for work and return 48 hours later. It is a interesting and at times intense experience, that let’s me feel the differences between those two worlds very strongly. The ride on the little red train through Jura landscapes let’s me ease in to both of them and inspires me to write, experience, listen to my favorite songs, breathe and be on my own.

Staying in Basel let’s me connect and catch up with some of my kindred spirits in a dear old setting which is something I truly appreciate. Sam keeps Yuki company (and the other way around of course) and keeps things moving at home. He spends a lot of time in the garden, working and watching his series in the evening. The magic of spending some precious time on his own is something he newly discovered and appreciates as well. Because that is a special time not to be underestimated.

So so much is new and yet some things don’t change. New chapters now also help us to figure out, what “home” means. It is clearly always the place where you are right now (it is a saying and I have heard it before, but somehow now understand it again fully).

We would love to update you more about our actual Tiny House plans (as this is still a blog about our journey of building our own home from start to finish). There has for a long time not been that much to tell, but we still want to tell you all about the developments and now there is actually some big happenings. So we will tell you all about it in the following post 😉

Don’t forget your plans in challenging times…

By now there is basically almost only one subject that concerns the world; and that is the Corona Virus. It has life all over the planet quite firmly in it’s grip. Also us here. I have been -like a lot of people- since almost two months cooped up at home. Trying myself at homeoffice, baking whatever the internet suggests (and that has chocolate in it) and maintaining some sort of rhythm. I think we can all agree that it is a big change in some ways at least and overall for everyone a big challenge.

I did not want to include the virus in this blog; it is so omnipresent, I felt it does not also need the attention of us tiny deers with our tiny blog. But being what it is and what the virus has made happen, it did and still does affect us and our plans to some extent. Stores have been closed for the time being, public transportation should be used as little as possible and people should generally stay home as often as possible. So traveling to the Jura and looking for building supplies has been (almost) impossible the last weeks.

We did do some planning from home as much as we can and try, like everyone, to make the best of these challenging times. There are a lot of fun aspects to it and I have over time started to appreciate my sunny homeoffice spot more every day. Sam could go to work, enjoys the time outside and leaves me nice notes in the morning and sends me pictures of nature-(art) from work.

But concerning our project some major relevant steps could not be taken or have to be taken in a different approach (we’ll fill you in on that in the next post 🙂 ).It became clear rather fast: the situation will push our building -and therefore probably also the finishing- date further back. I am not going to lie: that is a frustrating feeling as it brings even more uncertainty to the whole project. (And as we know, I don’t always handle that all that well… on the plus side: I currently have plenty of time at home to stare at my bedroom ceiling 😉 )

But all jokes aside: in times like these when it feels that almost all of our rituals, our daily life has changed and like some things have been “taken away” from us, we realized how important it is to stick with your dreams and your visions and your plans and not just give up on them because of all this uncertainty. Because those are yours and yours to keep and develop and nurture to grow. Yes, we need to be a lot more flexible in life at the moment and be ready for plans to take a different path than originally intended. But this is not the end of the world – much more, it feels kind of like a restart to me. It is a chance to reflect on a lot of things in the larger sense on our planet and also ones own life, to question some of those routines, rituals and decisions. And maybe give them a new boost, some new energy. It might be a scary and frustrating time but it is also a time to hope and to believe in exiting new beginnings.

Time to move on

“It’s time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It’s time to move on, it’s time to get going.”

That’s what Tom Petty is singing. It was always one of my travel jams because of those few lines. And it somehow recently resonates strongly with me. So today I would like to just share some of our thoughts about “get going” – about taking that big step of not only moving, but moving to a new place, a new setting (from the city to the countryside), moving into a tinier space and last but certainly not least: building said space by ourselves (with a lot of great help of course).

Sometimes in all the excitement for the interior design and all that I think we forget what it actually all means. And when that reality hits you, it very well happens that you get thrown in a mix of emotional waves. The excitement is still there; but it is paired with panic, doubt, worries and whole lot of other thoughts and feelings that I could not even name or define. But it had led on more than one occasion to me laying on our bedroom floor, staring at the ceiling for a good 30 minutes, wondering what the heck we are thinking and how this will all turn out. Or talk my friends’ and families’ ears off about all the changes and if and how they might affect my life. But in a lot of ways we learn: A clear laid out path is not really how it works here. A lot is in the open, what lies ahead I have indeed no way of knowing; and I sometimes struggle with seeing that as a good thing. In the end a lot in life is in the open. Oh the opportunities… 🙂

And whereas I lay on the bedroom floor, thinking about city vs. country life and how I will do as a “country girl”, Sam’s occasional anxiety or emotional turmoil is more rooted in the building process and its uncertainties. There is that saying “to not see the forest for the trees” and it seems accurate in this building process that is currently still very much in the preparation process. There are so many little things that will make this house an actual standing building in the end and sometimes it is overwhelming to a unprofessional builder (maybe even to the professional ones…?). And the doubt if and how he can deliver on it all (on time, in the way we planed and with staying in our budget), gives Sam his moments of staring at the ceiling for 30 minutes. What helps is to take a step back, see the bigger picture and then tackle the process step by step.

Apart from all the uncertainties that this “moving on process” just naturally brings, I in those moments also realize that moving on always comes with “leaving something”. I am not only letting go of material possessions in our home, I am also giving up that home. That safe island that I love and always felt rooted in. That hosted many happy events and guests throughout the years and was always a joy coming back to after a journey. A trusted space that I know in a trusted environment, surrounded by trusted loved ones. There are a lot of little things, little routines and rituals one develops over time. I actually think those are the things that really make a home your home. When you know the exact time, the sun enters your bedroom in the morning and makes this the perfect time to have the Sunday coffee in bed. Or knowing that in summer you have the best view of the evening sky from your attic window at around 9 pm. The floor that cracks in that one spot in the corridor, the drumming sound of the rain on the roof and even the sound of the tram driving over the bridge outside the house.

Yes, I think it is important to admit to one self that – as exciting and joyous that whole transition and moving process is – it is also a Goodbye and those can make you suddenly very nostalgic and occasionally scare you. But I just remind myself of Tom Petty’s lyrics. Because it is a good time to get going. Step by step. And where we go there is plenty of grass growing on which we can lay, stare in the sky and maybe even enjoy those uncertainties and the new opportunities.

As cliché as it sounds: endings of one chapter are always beginnings of a new one and the important things and beloved people of the former chapter will accompany you to the next one – one way or another. Your home is where you are.