Life after our TinyHouse

Since I was last actively blogging, A ton has changed.

We no longer live in Alaska, We live in a 500 square foot apartment in Washington State. This girl Owns our Tinyhouse [She calls it her "MicroLoft"] But the hardest change was my husband losing his father.

On July 19th 2015, He was Diagnosed with Metastasized Lung cancer. That November, on Thanksgiving morning, his battle with cancer ended and his family lost a huge part of their normal existence. 

It was devastating to be there for the whole process and to see what cancer can really do to the people you love.

 I could only think how much better equipt to deal with the situation I would be if I were older and had experienced more personal loss myself.

In 2015, there was an estimated 1,658,370 new cancer cases diagnosed, 81,540 of those were in Pennsylvania.

We sold our house on September 6th and began our journey to Pennsylvania, with no real plan, just cash [which sadly provides comfort in this ugly monetized world.]


Before our flight we slept on the bedroom floor of the lady who bought our house [She documented this moment, and sent us a copy]

We had intention to build a new Tinyhouse with designated spaces for dogs and babies. The process got pretty far, I had the blueprints both physical and digital 3D, and we bought the windows doors and lumber. But then our nest egg seemed to loom over our options whispering doubts. 

Will we be able to pull off living fulltime in this Tiny abode on this side of the world? 

Are we ready to undertake this whole experience all over again? 

What if the job market doesn't suit our needs?

So we took a break and thought about our options. I immersed in crafts, and participated in a few fall Craft fairs.

We took a break from basically all responsibility. We hulled up and binge watched shows we had missed out on in the past. Went to flee markets with Justin's Nanne. Justin even tried his hand at some carpentry. But the area didn't seem to embrace us with endless possibilities.

So finally we stopped hiding in Justin's Mom's basement and started making new plans. We had to let go of the ideals of what was already lost. The tinyhouse and every bit of it that had become apart of our future was gone. The time came to start completely from scratch. We had just enough saving still from the Tinyhouse sale, to move us across the country and into a fresh start.

It wasn't to a glamorous job or area. But Justin was able to get back his dependable job at a different branch in Washington state. It`s the City, and it's definitely not our cup of tea. We bought Justin a rather expensive bike to commute back and forth to work, and that got stolen two days later. So reboot, rebought the same bike with a different serial number and tried it again.

The time we spent in Pennsylvania was eye opening. I finally met all of Justin`s family, a huge relatively close knit group of awesome people who will do everything in their power to help each other.

I saw parts of myself that I am not proud of. I really didn't realize how selfish I was, until the people around me were consumed by this very huge life changing event, and I was still consumed with my own bullshit.

Although I have regrets about my own actions and thoughts through the whole experience, I have grown immensely from it. 24 year old Jordan is a better model of human than 23 year old Jordan.

And Justin and I are stronger than we have ever been. We are working towards developing a good healthy hobby together. Hint *We have been watching a ton of Naked and Afraid*