Preparing for Winter
It is mid-December and we are finally finishing up getting Lil Blue ready for winter. Granted, we have had a pretty warm start so we haven't been too motivated to get things finished. It's hard to prepare for snow when you barely need a coat.
We knew we should skirt our house to help further insulate and keep cold wind and ice from blowing under our trailer. We just didn't know how we should skirt it. We looked at lots of options and Googled what other tiny house dwellers do. It looks like there are three main options:
1. Skirting: You can buy skirting panels at places like Home Depot and attach them to your trailer. We liked this option but it can get pretty pricey and we mostly had no idea how to go about attaching it. Nor did we care to put a lot of time and effort into researching the hows and the what-to-buys.
2. Snow: You can actually use snow to insulate! If you live in a place with a heavy snowfall, you can push snow up around your house and trailer and it will help insulate throughout the winter. However, Iowa doesn't usually get a ton of snow and due to the strong winds all winter, whatever snow does land doesn't stay in one place for very long. If we lived in Michigan, where I am from, then that would probably have been the option we would have gone with. Mostly because it's free (!) and easy.
3. Hay bales: You can stack hay bales around your trailer for the winter. This is the option we ended up doing. We live on a farm in central Iowa so it was easy to find hay bales to use and it only cost us about sixty bucks to go this route. Plus, they look really cute around the trailer and give the effect that our house is on the ground instead of on wheels. The one thing that worries us about using hay bales is that it will be easy for small animals to get in and live under the trailer. But again, we live on a farm, and there are about 30 barn cats that come around here. They will keep any mice and rodents away for us.
I am dying to outline the whole house in Christmas lights. I think it would look so pretty to see this tiny thing all decked out! But, as tiny house living is not technically legal and we are somewhat trying to fly-under-the-radar, we settled for a tiny little wreath for our tiny front steps. Even though it isn't to the extent that I had imagined, it still brings joy to my heart to see it lit up at night.
