The irony is not lost on me: we wanted to live simply, so we almost unimaginably complicated our lives. We wanted to save money, so we dumped our entire life savings into building something that financially snowballed out of control until we had nothing left but blood to give. We wanted to spend more time with our little one and with each other, so we devoted nearly every waking moment to executing an endeavor which sometimes made us feel like visionaries, and other times made (makes?!) us feel totally and completely delusional. We wanted to live a life full of adventure together, and one of us had a life-threatening accident mid-build. The process has been a slow and painful death, and a beautiful rebirth. It has torn us to pieces, and drawn us together. It has exposed the worst in us, and drawn out strengths we never dreamed we possessed...

We began inching our way toward tinytopia nearly 10 years before we decided to take the plunge. Back then we ate up stories on The Interweb about whittling one’s possessions down to a mere 100 items, limiting one’s landfill contribution to a single quart-sized mason jar per year, and squeezing one’s lovely little life into the tiniest of houses. Urban homesteading, off-grid living, and holistic medicine fascinated us… but it was all purely academic...