From the age of 10 until I was almost 35, I lived in a mobile home. Two of them, actually: first in a trailer park with my parents, then with my now-husband on our own land. When we built the house we live in now, I joked that my only non-negotiable requirement was an upstairs.

In my 25 years of mobile home living, I learned to appreciate their efficient use of space. I also enjoyed a lot of years without a big mortgage, which enabled us to save a good chunk of the construction costs for the new house. Now, we rent out our mobile home to pay our (small and almost-paid-off) mortgage. The old trailer has been very good to us!

In her book Trailersteading: How to Find, Buy, Retrofit, and Live Large in a Mobile Home, Anna Hess profiles a collection of folks who have discovered the advantages of mobile home living. For a number of people, mobile homes don’t carry the stigma of “trailer trash,” but rather represent freedom from big mortgage debt and the opportunity to live a simpler life.

I’m all for that. How about you?

~PEACE~