The exciting tale of the ClickClackGorilla begins with a daring escape from a cubicle life in the U.S. and ends with a life of traveling with a band, Dumpster diving, and living in a rescued caravan in a wagenplatz in Germany. The Gorilla is Nicolette Stewart, an ex-pat writer, proud gleaner and soon-to-be mother who blogs about her unconventional life while trying to live that life with more freedom and environmental consciousness.
Her home in Germany (which she shares with her partner, “The Beard”, who also has his own trailer) is a caravan which was formerly parked on a farm. The 60-year-old wooden wagon, known as a Bauwagen in German, was on the farm for at least 20 years and the owners of the farm gave it to Nicolette for free if she hauled it out herself.
She proceeded to fix and decorate the wagon over a the course of a year with about 900 Euros and many trips to the Dumpster for furniture, lighting, kitchenware, bedding and even food. Her wagon, affectionately called the trash house, is parked in a wagenplatz, an intentional community in which people live together on a piece of land in a variety of wheeled dwellings.
Her tiny house contains a woodstove, a bed, a desk and shelves for books and a closet for clothes. The wagon does not have running water and Nicollete cooks in an outdoor summer kitchen or a communal kitchen in the wagenplatz. The bathroom and shower is also communal.
The birth of her baby may have Nicolette getting a larger wagon, but she intends to stay in the wagenplatz because of the opportunity for instant community.
“I can’t imagine a better place to raise a child. It’s the “it takes a village” principle in living color,” she said. “There’s space to play outdoors. There are seventeen different people to talk to and learn from. It’s not any smaller than most of the apartments I’ve lived in. And we have a hell of a lot more money then we would if we had to pay a normal rent. I can’t think of a single reason to leave, no longer being attached to the luxury of having running water within arm’s reach at all times.”
Photos Courtesy of Nicolette Stewart/ClickClackGorilla
By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]
It is mesmerizing to see you living so creatively in such a small space. I have moved into my daughter’s house into one bedroom and find being in a “capsule” a big challenge but also liberating. You go girl! If there is a good midwife around you won’t have to go far for anything with that precious new one. No day care for her/him.
This was very interesting and different. I like it. Small and cozy with things you like around you. Nice.
wagonspaces (wagenplätze) are pretty common in germany, i live at one myself. i always wonder why in the states car trailer are a lot more common as base for wagons, since in germany most people use lorry-towen workswagons or lorries.
Wagon-living in America is virtually unknown. Instead, we have RVs, converted vans, campers on trucks, shiny Air Streams, park trailers, etc. Our regulators will stop at nothing to prevent Americans from living outside the Matrix.
Those forced into uncomfortable living situations due to our economic problems have found temporary shelter in tents either in urban settings as dissent or in rural areas.
For others, it seems over-priced sheds on trailers are all the rage these days.
Still, there’s a certain romantic sensibility about Wagons. Dee Williams produces interesting offerings from our tiny outfit. The punk rocker from Relaxed Shacks did a nice internet piece on a converted wagon in Boston.
Well said!!
But Deek, a Punk Rocker?!?!? LOL
It’s hard to define what “Punk” is these days. For me, I think of the Clash, Fugazi, vintage Beasties, Mission of Burma, Stiff Little Fingers and the Dolls.
Much like the Tiny House movement, there seems to a growing divide between the purists like myself and the neophytes who think $1,000 stock plans are the way to off-grid enlightenment.
I’ll take Peter King, Dan Price, Michael Oehler and Lloyd Kahn any day over families who patent terms like “Urban Homesteading” and people who sell photoshopped images at ridiculous prices.
Punk Rocker- I got a kick out of that too tim- but hey, not insulted in anyway. I DID play in, and tour with several punk bands when I was younger though, but never really considered myself a “punk”- although its probably in reference to the title of the video on my work from Kirsten Dirksen “Tiny Houses As Punk Rock”. My band did record/write a punk-influenced tune last year for the Bruins/NHL though…. you might get a kick out of it- lol- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNVGQNWJjNU
Fugazi! LOVE ’em- one of my bands opened for them eons back…
Also, Kent, was THRILLED to see this piece- Nicolette is great- we’re slowly piecing together a tour video of her place, have been for some time, and she’s featured in the new version of my book as well. I LOVE that interior shot (facing the bed) of her place. A fascinating person.
-Deek
Relaxshacks.com
Good tune. It sounds very similar to Rage.
I think I listened to Dropkick every day during the Cup Playoffs last year. They play a nice rendition of my school’s fight song.
Interestingly, there was a nice piece on Fugazi Bassist Joe Lally in the Globe the other day.
Did you play at Axis, the Rat or the Paradise back in the day or the Middle East?
Yeah- our singer never could escape the “You sound like the dude from Rage” comparison, so eventually her formed the RATM Tribute I also play in. Tune’s got some Motley Crue flavor in it too.
Played Axis, Middle East (Up and Down), etc- never the ‘Dise, or Rat though- although I used to go to those rooms all the time- old Dropkick shows, The Business, Showcase Showdown, etc….
I JUST LOVED THIS POST. EXCELLENT, JUST EXCELLENT. READING THIS ARTICLE MADE MY DAY.
A woman of color with nappy hair, (single by choice, HAPPY in south central sunny Arkansas, drinking spring water and barefootin’ living in a ‘tiny’ house
PS: REMEMBER: The USA has more single adults than any other nation in the world except for china and India. There are more single head of household than there are married households with children. America has gone from being “Married with Children to Home alone” — Bella DePaulo is author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After. She is a visiting professor at UC Santa Barbara.
Good person/story find, Christina. The writing and photos are such a drawing card that I have now spent an hour spotting through Nicollette’s blog to find out more. Yes, people can just ‘go and do it’ and this is one of those great stories that hopefully will encourage others in America, whether on home soil or over the water, to take what is at hand and ‘just do it’! As Epperson indicated above, there are people in the US in dire situations who, thinking outside the American box of how domestic living is done, could be happily living in affordable circumstances, with a bit of vision and sweat equity (though I’ll diverge on separating ‘purists’ from ‘less’ pure, I’m a cheerleader for the ‘anything anyone is doing to try to live with less dependence on a) foreign made goods b) useless junk and the more/more/more mentality’).
Best wishes on the life and the new life, Nicollette (and Beard).
I am not a purist, however I do enjoy my smaller lifestyle.
This reminds me a bit of when I used to live in a wall tent in a small squatter shack community in the Yukon. There were lots of kids around and it was very sociable if occasionally a bit wild. People were eventually offered a chance to buy their land and become an official part of the city but the area remains an activist haven to this day. http://www.yukon-news.com/news/24750/
In reply to the hard-core “purist crowd” (those who actually condemn and mock those who don’t join them)…
Considering the countless Americans (if not others) who are 1) overweight if not disabled, and 2) have never put together anything more complex than thanksgiving dinner (a harrowing experience by many accounts) … it’s not surprising that some are willing to shell out an obscene amount of money, not only for ready-made floor plans, but even nearly the $50,000 for a ready-built tumbleweed, if it means they can park it on a relative’s land and get off the grid and out of debt slavery some day, without the zoning headaches, or moving from one level of tax slavery to another.
Many, many people out there simply are not healthy enough, or have not got the technical know how to tackle even the wooden shell of a project like this, without building something doomed to break the moment someone gets into it… never mind things we know absolutely nothing about, but believe we can’t live without, like plumbing or electricity, the latter of which might get you killed if you don’t know what you’re doing when you fiddle with it. Heck, as someone pointed out on another article, some people try to build these houses with wooden pallets that are covered in toxic chemicals and are totally unsafe! Talk about dangerous! Many Americans now get winded just going up a flight of stairs, or doing some light vacuuming. Whether it’s because they’ve spent too long behind the TV, or just too long in an office chair, how do people seriously think everyone who wants a tiny house is going to be able to hall and saw lumber?
Sadly, most of us are not physically fit architects, lumberjacks, construction workers, plumbers, electricians and (perhaps most importantly) lawyers, all rolled into one, attractive package. But there’s a very important lesson to be learned in realizing this.
In the computing world, the Linux (free operating system) community frequently mocks the Microsoft/Apple slaves because we can’t overcome the “small obstacles” (as they see it) that keep us from adopting otherwise decent software to replace these money leeches. But the fact of the matter is, most of us have work to do, and we can’t waste time trying to install Gimp instead of Photoshop, and then wait a full minute or so every time we need to actually work in it, OR… spend hours trying to learn radically user-unfriendly interfaces. (Just one example.) The purists see, “Excuse, excuse, excuse…” The people who need to work for a living on that software see, “if it doesn’t work, my job is toast.”
It’s easy to discount the difficulties of adopting what looks like a very, very good idea, and what may in fact BE a very, very good idea, because of limitations we don’t have or experience ourselves. But for lots of other people… especially those of that ever growing number who are being stripped of the American dream in the name of a certain European ideology that once ended in world war… those “over-priced” companies like Four Lights Houses and Tumbleweed might end up being the only path for some, short of a homeless shelter. If there’s no more income, Uncle Sam slams the door in your face, and your savings is running out, but you aren’t an architect or plumber… what are you going to do with that last few thousand? Start cutting down trees and hope you don’t kill yourself, or that you know what you’re doing in trying to throw something together?
I think what will ultimately be important for the tiny house movement, will be the same thing the Linux movement has been ultimately forced to concede: you can be a purist… but if you have a good, liberating idea, to save everyone lots of money, you’re going to have to acknowledge that if the majority haven’t joined you on your boat, yet, there are reasons for that, and those reasons are the reasons that need to be addressed and accommodated, so that the rest of humanity can benefit, too.
I’m all for the tiny house movement, but I’m one of the many who are stuck waiting until someone comes up with a genius ready-built thing that doesn’t cost $50,000, because I cannot build it, and not many have beds that aren’t in a loft.
Purism in action has consequences, and I have yet to see one tiny house that gets around zoning and tax laws, with electricity and even tank-dependent plumbing, that a person who is loosing or has lost their home even might be able to afford, OR put together on their own, with zero building, plumbing and electrical experience. Never mind the whole disability question!
My heart goes out to those who are desperately looking for any way to avoid homeless shelters, and who are finding out that their only other options seem to be a teardrop trailer, a plastic shed with no door that can be locked from the inside, or a tent. And with no electricity, in many climates, you’re going to have serious mold issues. But if you can’t build anything more complex than a bookshelf to save yourself, what do you do?
Being a purist is only ever completely beneficial to society, when one is a purist about truth (especially moral truth). One should NEVER compromise when it comes to what is right, versus what is wrong or evil. But in just about everything else, it’s detrimental to otherwise very good ideas, to insist upon only one way, or only one degree of implementation, and to look down on those who can’t meet those standards.