The Beginnings: Part I

Bienvenidos! Welcome! Bienvenue!

Cedric and Andrea here with the latest on our path to conscientious living on earth. This is our first blog entry and we expect most folks reading this will be family and friends but for all those others that visit we'll open in an overview of how the tiny house movement caught our attention.

We've lived in all sorts of situations, from single family farms in tiny villages, to international ideas factories in large towns, to olive orchards on isolated mountains and communal house sharing in the city. What brought us to this point? Here's a little history of our path to revelation that tiny house living was our next BIG adventure!

In 2009 we left for an adventure seeking out the rural life as volunteers in Europe, mostly Spain and Belgium (Cedric's home country), through an organization called WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farm). We had an amazing 10 month experience living and working in all sorts of rural/urban settings learning to work the earth. The more we learned, the more we realized that a communal living situation was what we enjoyed the most. We discovered this when working with a wonderful group of catalunians in Montblanc, Spain. A group of young people were living and working communally to bring an organic CSA to their area. We stayed with them for 2 months and they inspired and helped us to realize the kind of living situation we most wanted. We returned to Charleston, SC excited to buy land and start a community farm of our own but slowly our ambition waned in the realization that those we wanted to work with were not committed. For several months we had an energetic slump bred of disillusionment, depression and the death of a few friendships. It was a really difficult time for us as individuals and as a couple but slowly we began the search for alternatives to our desire to work and live in community.

Tiny space living was not a new topic really but a continuation of a previous situation for Cedric. From infancy to three years of age he lived on a 38 ft steel sailboat his parents handbuilt. At 3 1/2 he moved back to Belgium and lived in several small apartments throughout Wallonia. Upon moving to the States at age 14 he entered a lifestyle based on excess and fiendishness, as is the American way. In 2005, after graduating from USC, Cedric rebuilt a 27 foot sailboat and lived on the Charleston Harbor til the beginning of 2008. His next living space was a 350 sq ft upstairs apartment in downtown Charleston. Now living in a 84 sq ft space, it just seemed like the next logical step to build a tiny house on wheels.

So that's Part I of our history into the tiny house movement. Look for part II later on this week pertaining to Andrea's discovery of why a tiny house could satisfy her sustainable, conscious living desires and her need for community and how the spark that launched enthusiasm, floor plans and renewed vision was inspired.