Traveling

I'll start by dis-abusing the notion that my tiny house traveled. Sorry, folks. That would make a story, but I traveled. My house stayed where I left it (I assume.) For much of the month, I was on a road trip across the continent, from the coast west of Seattle to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. (Road Trip – August 2025) The person who watched my house while I was gone made a point; watching a tiny house barely took any effort. One less thing for me to worry about.

Travel is great. I miss it. For the previous decade or so, I've curtailed all of my travels because of finances. So it goes, eh? My previous long vacation was a walk across Scotland in 2010. (Walking Thinking Drinking Across Scotland) Since then, I even missed my Dad's funeral and burial. So it went. I'll get to make that visit next year. In the meantime, there was a family celebration happening on the East Coast, so I left town, largely on a whim and with barely any preparation. My tiny house made that simpler.

Scale that up as if I had a mansion. Mansions are regularly abandoned by their owners. Anyone with more than four houses is regularly leaving many vacant. But they tend to have staff, security systems, and complexity. 

My 391 square foot house had two peace lilies to water, and one orchid. The big leafy green ones are forty years old and have survived many trips. They can look haggard, but they've survived. It was a treat for them to have someone water them weekly. I tend to water them weakly, as in sporadically and randomly. They look much nicer now. The orchid is on a dry diet, yet is blooming. Fine.

There wasn't much else for my friend to watch. No pets. No..., I guess that's it. No pets. No other plants. They'd walk in, look around for leaks or breaks, and leave. When I returned and thanked them, they basically shrugged because there was so little to do. Tiny house. Tiny worries.

A well-built mansion may not have issues either. Of course, a mansion with only three houseplants would be austere, cold, vacant. And yet, someone taking care of the place would have a small tour to travel with every visit. There might even be safety concerns if a burglar thought a vacant house was worth breaking into. Surely they'd have something worth stealing.

Whether because my house is tiny, or because I'm a frugal minimalist, there's not much here. Pardon me as I glance around the place, but my biggest purchases would be hard to take out the door: a new mattress and a washer/dryer combo. Aside from that, my art is available online for not much money and not much hassle.

There are things for me to do after the trip. Being a writer meant I took the first two days to write up my notes. There were also some bills to pay, but the bulk of them were held by the post office. I'll get them soon. The weeds in the lawn are happy, flowering, and blowing away seeds into the wind. Oh, and I temporarily forgot the ever-long list of chores that are part of any homeowner's life. Someday I'll repaint those doors, beef up that deck, mow the lawn, weed the gravel, etc.

Tiny house living is living an intentional life, but that doesn't mean a life that has to be lived for the house. It can mean having more time to live a life.