Our vision of a regenerative homestead includes that its human inhabitants (that’s us!) are nourished and find joy in the process of building it.
Finding joy in building a house? Really?
I know, it sounds nuts.
And it sounds nuts because when we hear stories of people building houses we hear negative things – it was exhausting, stressful, financially overwhelming, or worse.
What we’re curious to know is…does it have to be that way? Are there ways we can approach this building process that could make it enjoyable? How could it be fun? Where could we find joy in this process of creating a new place to live?
I hate to spoil this for you, but I don’t know the answers to these questions.
I’ve never built a house before. And to be honest, I didn’t even research how to make it fun. What I do have to share are some experiments we’re trying, and eventually, stories about their results.
Guiding Principles
Before we set out on this uncertain journey of building a house, we agreed on our vision and some principles that we hope will guide us through choppy seas.
We have two main principles:
Build a house that is as regenerative as possible.
Find ways to enjoy building a house.
Today I’ll dig into a few of the ways we’re playing with making this hosuse build an enjoyable ride.
Minimize financial stress
Building a house is a big financial commitment, no shocker there. We don’t have the skills to build it ourselves, so we’re hiring others who do.
So how do two people who get stressed out by debt and big bills enjoy building a house?
And what if we also value our time together as a family and prefer not to work more (be apart), just to afford our new house?
To bring more lightness and fun into this building process, one experiment we’re trying is simply to set minimizing financial stress as a guiding principle.
We will…
- Proclaim ‘We shall minimize financial stress!’, in writing. In my head, I imagine yelling this proclamation from a mountain top – hands on hips and feet planted firmly in the earth, like we’re some kind of stress-minimizing super hero weirdos. I think it may become my new mantra.
- Revisit guiding principles regularly, especially at decision points.
- Notice when feelings of financial stress come up and take deep breaths. After the panic subsides, discuss how to find support or ways forward.
This all sounds pretty fluffy, I know. I wonder if/how it will work in practice. We’ll keep you posted.
Remember: less can be more
We’re also hoping that setting minimizing financial stress as a guiding principle of our build will be a reminder that more/better/fancier is not automatically the right choice.
This is so hard, by the way.
I’m 100% a product of the capitalist system I grew up in. I can always choose the most expensive thing. Always!!!!
Saying no to that tendency also feels sneaky-rebellious, like giving capitalism the finger. It helps me pivot feelings of ‘I can’t have it all’ into an invitation to turn on my creative problem-solving juices. Yes!
Prioritize fresh water
Another approach we are taking to minimize stress and enjoy building a house is to prioritize. There are so many aspects to a regenerative home. At the beginning of this process, the problem-solver in me stayed awake at night trying to figure out how to optimize alllll the systems, given our budget and other constraints.
To simplify, we decided to prioritize one system – fresh water. It was the obvious choice because we live on an island surrounded by salt water and all our fresh water comes from rainfall. In addition, most of our rain comes during the winter months, but we need water to grow our food in the summer and to drink year round. With climate change, the predictions are for warmer and drier summers and we’re already experiencing droughts. Forest fires are also a serious threat.
Here’s how we plan to prioritize water.
Collect and store rainwater
We will use our roof to collect rainwater and store it in above-ground tanks both for household use and for irrigation.
Minimize water use
To save up to 30% of our household water budget, we are installing dry toilets. They use no water. Solid waste, or humanure, gets composted and can then be returned to the soil.
We will install water efficient fixtures and appliances and continue with daily habits of water conservation. We take short showers only every couple days, turn off taps when brushing teeth, almost never wash our car, etc. These conservation methods have already helped us reduce our household water usage to less than half of the 80 gallons per day that the average person in the U.S. uses.
We will re-use what water we can, including sending our grey water (from household sinks, showers, laundry) into our gardens to water fruit trees.
Increase the land’s capacity to hold water
We will shape our land and build up our soils to slow, spread, and sink water. Since our land is quite sloped, we will grow as many perennial crops along the contour of the slope as possible. These plants that grow year after year without requiring re-planting, along with cover crops and no-dig methods, will hold the soil in place. Adding compost and other organic material will increase the soil’s ability to hold water.
Our land also borders a stream and we are keenly aware of protecting it and its inhabitants. We will restrict our activities to well outside the forested area buffering the stream (or riparian zone).
Ripple effects of our Focus on water
We hope that focusing our house design on water will also benefit other systems.
For example, composting our humanure instead of flushing it into a septic system will build the soil. And soil with more organic matter will hold more water (and carbon) and grow more food. Growing more of our own food will cut our carbon footprint down, by minimizing the miles our food has to travel to us.
These are the experiments we’re trying to help create a regenerative home, that regenerates us!
We are super curious to see how they work out.
I know that over the past week I’ve been holding on tightly to our guiding principles like a life ring to keep me afloat.
I look forward to sharing more about how it’s all going soon.
