MOVE IN WEEKEND!!! Or how to make everything fit and still be comfortable?

Our move-in weekend was one of the worst to be moving! Thanksgiving...we had 4 days to get everything, including the animals, moved out. I had to work, Jason took the Friday after Thanksgiving off, and the kids weren't in school. Shannon & I put up a temporary electric fence for the horses. We barely fenced 1/4 acre, just enough to get them confined. We'd have to finish it in the spring. For now, they didn't need much because they were eating hay. Putting up T posts is not easy for a woman, we don't have the upper-body strength that men have...and Shannon & I are SHORT! I am only 5'3", Shannon is only 4'10". She did try, though, and as funny as it looked to watch, she did get some T posts driven in.

We had 12 cats to move (one was strictly a house cat) and had found cat breeding cages (again, craigslist) and a few small animal cages to put in the barn to confine the cats. All our cats had been born on our old place, so we were worried about them running away. I think we had 10 cages, two cats had to share. A few didn't like each other, boy was that fun arranging them so they couldn't see each other. LOL!

A new neighbor had a horse trailer and he moved our two horses for us, Tim helped him load them. Our old neighbor had to come get his horse he'd been boarding up at our old place and she lost her halter the night before (of course). We had four dogs to move (two indoors, two outdoors). We had to figure where the outdoor dogs would go, because they'd always had a kennel at the old place. I guess dog houses and staked out to trees ended up being the answer to that. A bunny, but thankfully she had her own cage/coop. Two drakes (male ducks) and five chicken hens. They were the hardest to get moved. Their coop (came with them when we purchased them) weighed a TON, was really tall, and didn't handle well. Jason & I ended up moving them last, and he cut the legs down on their coop so I could help him move it...otherwise it was far too tall for me to get a good grip. (This also made it easier to gather eggs...so it worked out well.)

Most of the barn and Jason's shed got thrown into boxes and bins and toted to the barn storage unit. I don't recommend waiting til the last minute to do something like this, it took us a year to sort everything back out again, and even then we still can't find some things that are probably buried in the back somewhere.

I am very proud of my husband and kids' hard work. The cabin is cozy, cute, and laid out very well. We have been in here over two years now, and we rarely feel "cramped". That usually happens when we have company, when I'm babysitting, or when everyone is getting "cabin fever" in the middle of winter!

The cabin is 12' x 32' and has two sleeping lofts. The big end of the cabin is our living space, with the kids' sleeping lofts above. The smaller end is the bathroom with our master loft above it. The lofts are only about 4' high at the peak, so unless you're laying down, it's not very comfortable, but somehow the kids manage to play video games up there, do their homework, and each has a laptop or a computer.

The bathroom is a full bath, and we put two dressers in there for clothing and towel storage. It even houses a litter pan! The doorway was too short to put a door in, plus there was really nowhere for that door to swing, so we opted for a curtain. We put up a shower curtain across the doorway, but the first time one of us used it, we noticed you could see right through it! We doubled up the curtain with another one, and that worked just fine. We also installed an exhaust fan in the bathroom, it keeps the rest of the cabin from becoming too humid after someone's showered. Mold is a huge problem in Missouri.

The kitchen layout is GREAT, and the only drawback is that the ladder to the master loft gets in the way. Jason installed the portable dishwasher from our old place and our cabinets are from his grandmother from the '40s or '50s. He even built a big, deep shelf above the cabinets for our "pantry". I have always kept a really well-stocked pantry. I believe it's a necessity. Having grown up on not much more than green beans and hamburger, I have grown to love cooking and baking, and I am always trying new recipes.

We were already starting to think about "what if" in terms of shelter, food & water. And I was beginning to buy in bulk and get some emergency food storage. People were losing their jobs like crazy, and the shape of the economy was the biggest reason we opted to get into something more affordable...but more on that some other time.

Here are pics of our cabin after we moved in.

I forgot to mention the little shelves Jason built along the edges of the main room, they're great for extras, like spices, boxed mixes, etc., that you don't use every day. Most people don't even notice them right away. If I weren't so big into food-storage, I guess they could be used for books, DVDs or cubbies for anything else you might want them for. Oh, and our heating system is 3 small space heaters. They do well heating this small space, they are normally set to low. One in the bathroom, one in the "kitchen", and one in the "living room". The heat rises, and the kids are usually too warm and run box fans upstairs. If they're too cold at night, we all have heated mattress pads. I always use mine, Shannon always uses hers, Jason has his side turned off, and Michael doesn't even put his on. LOL! Tim uses his sometimes, but he always has a sleeping bag on his bed, so he's usually warm enough. In the summer we run two window A/C units and they keep up pretty well with cooling, so long as I don't use the oven. Summers are for grilling and hoping the wind isn't blowing too hard.