ENGINEER / ARCHITECT AND THINNING OUT !!……

Probably the most important new best friend you will need! That is the person making your plans…. It is amazing how difficult it suddenly becomes when you are thinking of getting 3 rather large human beings to live in a very very very small space – the beauty of where we are though being that 90% of your life you can live outside. Now don’t take that as me saying that 90% of the weather here is sunny and hot – it is not!! We just have thick English skin and are quite prepared to sit outside even with thermals, thick blankets and a fire pit – and hot chocolate… with added chocolate…. and brandy … and marshmallows…..sorry I digress, almost changed over to a food blog!!!

So your “plan maker” will need to be willing to think not “outside of the box” but in the box – actually a small oblong but you get the idea! Now it may be like us that you have been planning this for let’s say 5 years and have a million and 1 pinterest saves [literally] and various little plans on scraps of paper to the extent that there is no way in a million years that you will get to use all these amazing ideas you have saved – this is where your “plan maker” takes over and basically tells you what you can and cannot fit in a real world. One important thing to remember is what is REALLY important and what you REALLY want then make a new list of what you actually NEED. The ‘need’ list should actually be at least half the size of the other lists if not smaller ……and this is the list you need to try and stick to when making your plans. I have already literally spent the last year thinning out everything we own…. donating, giving away and selling anything that will not fit in the new “planned lifestyle” …… it is actually quite liberating, letting go of things that you are keeping “because” ….. Some things were quite “emotionally precious” – these things though had no practical purpose and would not have anywhere to be in the new smaller area – so I used my passion for photography and photographed anything that came into that category, when the house is up and running I am then going to make a huge mural in our bedroom of the photographs of these items so no space will be used but the beyond precious memories attached to these items, will live on……….

So what do you need? You need somewhere to sleep, somewhere to wash, somewhere to “poop”, somewhere to prepare food and somewhere to hopefully relax and hang out…… these are your essentials – the beauty of shipping containers being you can make all of that on a very, very, small scale – if it doesn’t work and you can afford it – get another container. Our “dream” plan has a HUGE kitchen – we are a foodie family you may have gathered- until we can afford the dedicated “kitchen container” we are going to live in 2 smaller ones which cover the “Sleep, wash and poop” functions with an outdoor kitchen. This is the plan so far – but watch this space as they say!

In the meantime we have been incredibly lucky to find a couple of engineers who are interested in what we want to do, who I met with the day before yesterday and will hopefully be a big part of putting the dream into reality!