11/22 Couple finds solace in off-grid tiny house when yurt maintenance is too demanding

“I feel like living in a yurt saved me,” Mollie says. “Back when we lived in the house, we’d come home, make dinner, watch a movie and go to bed. But when you come home to a yurt there is work to be done. And it’s healing. I can be outside and listen to the owls and be connected to nature. There’s a real rhythm to it.”

That’s why when Sean was diagnosed with Lupus last year, they didn’t abandon the yurt. They built a tiny house.

“After living with Lupus for a while, I realized being in a yurt is so much hard work especially off the grid. We appreciate and love the work, but on days where I feel sick and can’t move, Mollie has to do everything while also running businesses. There are just a lot of systems that can fail,” Sean says.

The tiny house is about a third of the size of the yurt, and they can heat the thing up with one log. The pair learned from building the yurt how to make the tiny house systems more efficient, and added a wood-fired hot tub on the deck so Sean can use it for recovery when Lupus attacks his muscles and joints.

“Every piece of this house has a story and that was really important to me while building it,” says Sean. “Eighty percent of the house was built from reclaimed materials. The frame and support systems were made with timber from our property.” They found the rest of the materials from houses that were torn down and their sliding glass was found at ReStore by Habitat For Humanity.

Ultimately, this lifestyle Mollie and Sean have chosen grounds them. That’s why they are still doing it despite so many wrenches thrown in their show. “I can choose to dwell on the fact that I’ve been dealt some shitty cards,” Sean says. “Or I can be skinning up to the yurt and be like ‘man, this is so rad I am so grateful for everything I have and I have been given so much.’”

Read more – http://www.tetongravity.com/story/culture/these-guys-live-in-a-yurt-tiny-house-off-the-grid-in-montana