Making a Living Outside of Traditional Norms

Living alternatively can be an exciting adventure, but it's not always easy. My family and I have been living in non-traditional housing for over three years now, and we've learned a lot from our experiences. In this blog post, I'll share with you our journey and some of the challenges we've faced along the way. Before we started living alternatively, my husband and I had already gone through a lot of moves due to his 23-year military career. We were used to relocating and living in temporary housing until we found a permanent place to call home. However, living in a tiny cabin or unfinished barndominium with our family of nine was a completely different experience. We had to adapt to new living conditions, such as limited walls, small living spaces, and no flushing toilet or running water in some instances. One of our biggest challenges has been dealing with the weather conditions in our rural community in NE Washington State. We experience snow and cold weather conditions for 4-6 months a year, and the temperatures can drop as low as -26 degrees Fahrenheit. During our first winter, we learned how difficult it was to winter livestock, and we experienced many tragedies and few triumphs. We've had to learn how to acclimate to the cold weather and find ways to keep ourselves and our animals warm. Balancing work and building up infrastructure has also been a significant challenge for us. My husband and I were both full-time public school teachers when we started living alternatively, and finding time to work on our off-grid property was difficult. We had to prioritize and plan our time carefully, but we found that we still had to deal with overwhelm and frustration more often than we would have liked. Despite these challenges, we've learned a lot from our experiences, and we've developed some tips and tricks that have helped us get through the difficult times. For example, we've learned how to create a composting toilet system out of a bucket, a bucket toilet lid, and cedar shavings, and we've discovered ways to keep our animals warm during the winter months. Our next challenge has been raising different kinds of livestock and trying to create a sustainable food supply in an area where the growing season is limited and often unpredictable. We've had to get creative and find ways to grow and store food year-round. In conclusion, living alternatively has not been easy, but it has been a rewarding experience for our family. We've learned a lot about ourselves, and we've developed new skills that we wouldn't have otherwise. We hope that by sharing our experiences, we can give a less perfect and more realistic view of alternative living and inspire others to pursue their own unconventional paths.