Tuesday’s Top 10: Reasons to Live in a Double Wide

When I was young and we lived in Laredo, Texas, my dad, just out of Bible School and taking on his first job as the pastor of a small church on the Mexican border, found us a trailer to live in. I was only four at the time, so I remember only a few things about it: it was blue (or green); it was very grimy; we shared the space with the local inhabitants (ie roaches and lizards).

I also remember sitting in one of those plastic blue kiddie pools on the cement slab outside the front door with my then-2-year-old sister. She pooped in the pool.

Surprisingly enough, when I first spotted the double-wide trailer that my family of 6 currently lives in, I didn’t have any flashbacks – this place is cozy, clean and in a beautiful location. Here’s 10 reasons we love living in our double-wide:

1) We went from a 4500 square foot townhouse to a 3000 square foot townhouse to a +/- 1500 square foot trailer, and with each move the cleaning became easier and everyone seemed happier.

2) No need for one of those fancy intercom systems – just shout, and the kids can hear you from anywhere in the house.

3) It’s cozy – I actually like having our four kids relatively close by. In our other places they slept way down the hall and it just felt kind of far off.

4) This particular double-wide is on two secluded, wooded acres bordered by a horse pasture and a small stream. If we start to feel suffocated, the outside space adds thousands of square feet.

5) It takes about 15 seconds to lock all the doors at night, or turn off the lights before we go somewhere.

6) Everything here is on one floor. In one of our townhouses we had close to 40 steps from basement to top level.

7) Did I mention it takes about 28 seconds to clean the entire house?

8) The kids share a bedroom. At their current ages (Cade, 7, shares a room with Sam, 1; Lucy 5, shares a room with Abra, 2) this has caused them to really bond and have to learn to share space. I don’t think this is a bad thing.

9) It feels kind of like being in a cabin, and I love the mountains.

10) I can tell people, in my best Chris Farley voice, that “I live in a trailer down by the river!” (even though a van still sounds better, and our river is more of a brook, or a small stream)

What do you love about where you live?

4 Replies to “Tuesday’s Top 10: Reasons to Live in a Double Wide”

  1. While no place in WV is TERRIBLY ethnically diverse, we live in a fairly diverse neighborhood. So my kids have the opportunity to play with other kids who don’t look exactly the same as them, something that I never had. I think that’s pretty cool.

    As far as the actual house itself, it’s not super small, but for six people, it’s not huge. The kids have to share bedrooms (girls in one, boys in another — hubby and I turned the dining room into a 3rd bedroom for us). That is nice. I get these moments of guilt when I read about how every kid is supposed to have their own room, but that’s just not feasible with four kids. So they learn to get along. And I think that’s beneficial for everyone. And the physical closeness does seem to foster emotional closeness a lot of the time.

  2. I’m so with you Shawn … we live in a one floor ranch style house and I love it. And the view from our living room is excellent, overlooking two farms in the Allegheny Valley.

    PS. Thanks for the twitter convo last night — you inspired my blog post for today.

  3. Living in a questionable part of a small city, I love the fact that I’m not isolated from real life. I can’t just walk around a gated neighborhood and pretend that “ugly” doesn’t exist.

    And since our kids are growing, I’m finding that, as you mentioned, cleaning out of the extra *stuff* is very gratifying.

  4. My wife and I live in a very small third floor apartment in Lancaster city.

    One of the things I love about being in such a small space is that we have to be very intentional about what we buy (or what we take bring back from parents’ attics).

    Every time I buy a book, I need to get rid of one to fit it on the shelves we have. Ditto for everything else in the apartment. The utility bills are also pretty sweet, especially in the winter since we get most of our heat from the first and second floors.

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