Living in a Construction Trailer

Because our house was not in a livable condition, we had decided to rent a construction trailer to live in for a couple of months. It was summer, and it had air-conditioning. We would at least have some place to sleep. Since we had a 5-year-old and a 6-month-old, my main concern was making it as cozy as possible.

Our trailer had two and ½ rooms. The ½ room was a “bathroom”. I put quotes around it because it wasn’t really usable. The toilet was missing and instead there was a hole in the floor. The sink required that we run plumbing, which we decided wasn’t worth it. So, basically, it became a closet for the diaper genie and other items we didn’t need on a daily basis. The back room wasn’t very big, so we declared it the Walk In Closet. I used laundry baskets to divide the clothing—one for each person. I also stored some food items and basic food-prep items in this room as well.

The front room was our main living space. We had put our mattress on top of the futon and this was our bed. The baby had her Pack-N-Play to sleep in, and the boy got an air mattress and his twin mattress to sleep on. We also set up a lamp since there wasn’t any other lights, and we had a TV and DVD/VCR player set up—quite essential! I also set up the high chair for the baby. Needless to say, there wasn’t much room left to move around.

We did many things on the queen-sized bed. If we weren’t eating dinner outside, we were eating on our bed. We watched videos on the bed. We played on the bed.

Our only decoration was a Napoleon Dynamite poster.

For the most part, our experience was good. The air conditioner did a great job. The windows could open to let in fresh air. When it got a little chilly, we had space heaters that would make it too hot.

But during storms, I was really scared. For one thing, the trailer was supported by 16 cement blocks precariously placed at each corner. Secondly, it’s a trailer in the forest. What if the wind was strong enough to blow the whole thing over? What if the wind blew a tree over onto us? We’re in a big metal box during a thunderstorm. Not very comforting!

We survived. We lived exclusively in the trailer from the first week of August until the first week of November. In fact, the trailer is still there and still standing fine. Now, if we could just get the guy who rented us the trailer to take it away, we’d feel a lot better.