House of Hyperbole

AKA the tin can. AKA the fish bowl. AKA year-round camping.

When most people hear “trailer” they probably think a lot of rude things, which I get. Movies and television have painted rather unflattering portraits of trailers because they typically exist in trailer parks.

Having lived next to and within a trailer park at various points in my life, that unflattering portrait is not *NOT* rooted in reality. But there are many types of trailers. Many types of properties they sit on. And many types of people who own them. It’s not a monolith.

That being said, with my history of living in a mobile home and being bullied about it at school, I still have some… hangups about it. I actually don’t often say “trailer” or “mobile home” when talking about it. I just call it a house. We also haven’t had many folks over to visit—mostly because there isn’t much room for entertaining. But also a little teensy bit of baggage from before.

To be fair: It’s not bad. It’s just old and it’s a little obvious that in the last decade, upkeep became less of a priority. This is mostly due to the fact that the couple who owned it previously was older. The husband fell ill and passed away. The wife lived here a bit on her own but opted to move closer to their kids. After that, the trailer sat mostly unoccupied for a year or two before she decided to sell.

It’s from 1972. It did have some updates made over the years, including having a pretty substantial living room added to the back via enclosing a patio.

There were newer windows installed (I’m guessing in the ’90s?) in every room except the kitchen, which still has the original single-pane aluminum windows.

It has a new metal roof… but that was only added after the last one leaked and the damage done by the leak was never repaired. So some of our ceilings are not in great shape.

The home itself is nestled into a little too much vegetation for proper sunlight and ventilation so the outside has a lot of mildew. It’s also not on a foundation, but rather the bottom is just covered by wood skirting, so we have animals living (and fighting and fucking and dying) under us at any given moment.

Speaking of animals, we’ve also had to deal with mice. So many mice. If you’ve never had to deal with mice and their mess, count your blessings. What a constant source of extra work by way of cleaning, baiting, and trapping. Woof.

Despite all that, we somehow have a decent amount of space, even if it is rather poorly laid out. The inspector claims it’s 1,000 square feet, which is only 400 square feet smaller than our last house. It doesn’t make sense because this place only has one bedroom and our last place had three. I dunno, we’re able to fit almost all of our furniture in here. We did have to rent a climate-controlled storage unit to house a few extra pieces of furniture and boxes upon boxes of things that used to live in the basement, cabinets, closets, etc.

That’s all relatively tolerable, though. The only thing that I truly STRUGGLE with is the poor climate control. It has a furnace that’s more like someone blowing warm air on you through a paper towel tube and there’s no AC. We had to get three separate floor units because the windows are all too small for window units. The insulation is original too, so we get hot and humid in the summer and we freeze in the winter.

Comfort aside, the humidity is tough on everything: spices, medications, fabric… you name it, it’s damp, clumped, or sticky all the time despite the fact that I put a dehumidifier in literally every room (the total count is one large, two medium, and three small units throughout the house).

At this point, our primary goal is to move into the new place before having to spend a third wet, hot, Punxsutawney summer in the tin can.