Small Takes with Elaina Jindra
How a couple makes their 350-square-foot Wisconsin yurt work
In Small Takes, I ask people who are living small how they make it work. I’ve been following along with Elaina Jindra’s journey to living small from afar via her lovely newsletter Hobby Hour. (She originally started writing it to document her attempts to carve out an hour each day for hobbies, hence the name).
Elaina and her husband Zach recently moved to a 350-square-foot, off-the-grid yurt in Wisconsin, but previously they’d lived in a very conventional house outside of Milwaukee. However, Elaina remembers, “The day that we moved into our suburban house my husband immediately wanted to move.” Striving for financial independence, Zach realized the house they’d bought was not their real dream.
Avid outdoors people, Elaina and Zach ended up selling their house (and most of their belongings), quitting their jobs, and embarking on a long backpacking trip to “figure things out.” On their trek, they decided they wanted to move to Wisconsin, in part to be closer to reliable snow; they also dreamed about living closer to nature. So they found a cheap rental apartment and started to look for land where they hoped to erect a yurt.
“The idea of the yurt particularly was appealing to us because it was something that we would be able to easily do ourselves,” says Elaina. While the search for land and a community that would permit an unconventional dwelling was harder than they anticipated, the yurt itself was erected in a day. They’ve been living in the yurt for nine months now—and they have no regrets. Elaina says it’s not their forever home, especially if they end up having kids, but she says maybe someday they’ll build their tiny dream home on the property. She’s in no rush, however, “I know good things take time.”
Here’s how Elaina and Zach make their small space work:
What is your definition of living small?
Living small is figuring out how to live with the just right amount. “Small” is subjective and will be different for everybody.
What is the real reason you live small?
I just can’t wrap my head around more. I love living small because it’s easier to manage; it’s less expensive and takes less time and energy to maintain.
“We really like how close we are to nature in the yurt. We can hear snowflakes falling. We can hear all of the wildlife outside around us.” - Elaina Jindra
What has living small given you? What has it taken away?
The most unexpected gift from living small is a sense of clarity about what is truly important to me. I have to be meticulous with what I allow to take up space in my home and that has translated to all the other aspects of my life, as well, including my digital life and my social life.
We've given up some collections, including a 500+ bottle collection of wine and spirits (my husband Zach is a sommelier). Too big for small, non-climate controlled living!
What is your greatest home extravagance?
Outside of our tiny interior, we have a wood-fired barrel sauna. It's super luxurious to have our own little off-grid spa!
What’s something you’re obsessed with right now?
I'm always obsessed with making things myself. I love knitting and almost always have a project on the sticks. We just completed our first season of making maple syrup, which was absolutely amazing to me. I'm currently obsessing over planting a food forest in my yard. My cherry tree and berry bushes will be planted soon!
What’s one way that your home is sustainable?
We are 100-percent off the grid, so almost everything we do is sustainable. We heat our home only with wood*, our water is from a hand pump well, our electricity is solar powered, and our outhouse uses a composting toilet. We cook with heat from wood using our wood stove. We use a solar-powered generator, which a ll of our electronics run off of including our direct-current fridge.
Composting toilets and Humanure might sound disgusting or be taboo to talk about, but it's a pretty amazing process that is used around the world for sustainable waste management. When treated properly, Humanure can be used in a garden to grow food, humans eat the food, and it's a life cycle that you can be involved with every step of the way.
*Ed Note: Both the wood cook stove and sauna stove are high efficiency, EPA-approved models with proper ventilation. Elaina notes, “We do what we can to mitigate by burning only well-seasoned wood and are mindful to burn small, high heat fires.”
What’s on your home wish list right now?
When my husband and I first moved into our yurt we picked out about $7,000 worth of new furniture to buy—but we never got around to it. There were multiple times where we set deadlines for ourselves for these purchases, but never made up our minds on any of it. It's hardly even on our radar anymore.
I do still think about upgrading our table, so it’s a little more comfortable for hosting. This Transformer Table looks really cool.
What’s one thing every small home needs?
A place for everything and systems for managing what is coming in and going out.
What helps you stay organized in your small home?
I put everything away after I use it. I find it to be ritualistic and meditative to do so. Almost every item I have in my home is useful, but also beautiful. Everything is intentional and has its own little home, which makes putting it away a treat.
What’s a cause or organization that you are proud to support–and why?
We love to support our local trail systems. We love the Winman Trails, which are just a few miles down the road from us. We spend lots of time cross country skiing and fat tire biking there and love that it's a nonprofit that gets more people outside and enjoying our neck of the woods. There’s probably a trails-related group in your area that needs support too.
Thank you so much for being a part of Small Takes, Elaina. You can follow along with Elaina’s yurt life through her newsletter Hobby Hour. I especially love her monthly-ish Anti-Consumerist Reports because she thinks about buying things as deeply as I do.
If you enjoy Small Takes, I’d be so grateful if you shared it with a friend. Newsletters live and die by reader recommendations, especially small, independent ones like LIVING SMALL. Thanks for your help!
A Few More Things
The best small space I saw last week was this pretty little beach house in Provincetown via Domino.
Summer things: Wheeled out my beloved 12-year-old beach tent and stopped into the kite shop where my husband bought a pocket kite 16 summers ago and told the owner it’s still in service. A reminder that good things last.
Preparing: In light of yet another natural disaster 💔, I signed up for Notify NYC, which texts emergency updates to New Yorkers. Check to see if there’s something similar in your area–weather is getting more intense because of climate change.
Watching: If you’ve got 30 minutes to spare, watch “The Quilters.” It’s a short, moving documentary about incarcerated me who participate in the Restorative Justice Organization quilting program.
Joining: Indivisible has just launched One Million Rising, a nationwide effort to train 1,000,000 Americans to lead peaceful non-compliance and disruption tactics. I signed up: Join me?
Writing: You know I wrote some books, right? My friend
reminded me I should keep telling people about The Little Book of Living Small (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org), so here I am telling you about it.
Nothing I love more than a big vintage rug :)
Beautiful space!
I so relate to the idea of basing where you live on reliable access to snow.