Leininger Homestead

So it hit me the other day that Ed and I have been camper-dwelling for about one year now. Before we got married, he lived in the camper and I spent a lot of time out their as we got it ready to go. Now that we are one year in, I feel like I have a much better idea of what small living is like. I understand its benefits and challenges better. But there are so many posts out there about challenges, so I'm going to focus on the positive things.

 Feels like home.

Living in a camper together is very homey. It's not like walking into a house and seeing all of this design and architecture and your stuff is just kind of mingled in there, messing it up and not matching. It's a lot more like walking into a small cabin and your coats are hanging on the walls and your shoes are by the door and if you have any wall space, your paintings or signs or trinkets are covering it.

It feels like home because everywhere you look is your style and your favorite things and your spouses things. Really, you don't have room for anything that doesn't fit that description.

Our home has my paintings all over the walls in our dinette area, which my husband hung up for me. It also has a digital picture frame that showcases our road trip adventure. We wash our own clothes so there is a small clothesline with our shirts and pants hanging on it. There's almost always something hanging there.

We don't have fancy dishes that all match, so if there are dishes on the counter or in the sink, its an amalgamation of pottery that either I made, my mom made, or someone I know made (we both come from families of artists).

And no matter where I am I can always see some of his favorite tools, like the saw on the wall, or the leather shoes he is working on.

It's the same space from every angle, and I couldn't wish for more.

Gardening is not out of the question.

When we first started this adventure I assumed that we would have to put off our garden plans until we got a "real house." But soon we realized that in our campground almost all of the sites had flowers planted in them. We decided to take a different approach and start a container garden. We used 5-gallon buckets and planted tomatoes, cilantro, tomatillos, peppers, black beans, onions, radishes, mint, oregano, wildflowers, and more. It's a small site too! I was pretty impressed with us.

Some of our planters are made of empty kitty-litter buckets. And some of them are made of  recycled leaf-spring crates (kind of like wooden pallets but more box-like). I think it looks really cute. Ed thinks the kitty litter buckets are kind of tacky but he puts up with them.

Rain makes an excellent soundtrack.

I don't know about you, but I love the sound of rain on my roof. I've noticed it can soothe a headache, calm me when I am stressed, put me to sleep when I cant sleep, and is just generally wonderful.

We also get acorns falling on the roof sometimes, and it scared me at first but now that I know what it is, I don't mind it.

Sometimes the skylights will get covered in a mosaic of leaves, but the rain always washes them away eventually. And when thunder or lightening is nearby, we can see it and hear it very well. I personally love it, so I look forwards to storms.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is our backyard.

The other benefit to living in a camper is that I can live very cheaply in a place where I could not normally afford to live. An acre of land with a house on it can be very expensive in this area. Especially if it's a nice house. But our campground has a great location a couple of miles from the blue ridge parkway. We can zip up there after I get off work and go for a hike or a drive.

Thanks for reading!