We moved our family of 4 into a tiny, remote cabin we bought sight-unseen. Everything was a mess at first, but now we're closer than ever.

• Danielle Elderkin and her husband grew weary of the grind of life in Temecula, California.
• In 2019, their family packed up and headed to Pennsylvania but arrived to a cabin in disrepair.
• The experience bonded them: They spend more time together and have money for family vacations.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Danielle Elderkin, who, along with her husband and two sons, left Southern California for Pennsylvania in 2019. The essay has been edited for length and clarity.

My family and I lived in Temecula, which is between San Diego and Orange County. For a long time, we loved it there. We enjoyed the food and being close to the beach and mountains. But there were a lot of downsides to living in the city.

There was a large transient community and I would have to keep my office locked. I was on a first-name basis with the local police department because of incidents that happened. We really didn't want our kids living in that type of environment.

We also felt like the cost of living was outrageous and we were always working. Despite that, we still didn't feel like we were getting ahead in life. We didn't have extra money for vacations and we had to live very simply.

Eventually we stopped loving the area. 

My sister lives in the Poconos. There are many abandoned, rundown cabins in the area. In the fall of 2018, I visited her and I had a lightbulb moment: My husband and I could buy a cabin cheaply, fix it up, sell it, and buy another one. We could really have a fresh start.

So, that's what we did. In 2018, we found a 760-square-foot, 1960s cabin online and purchased it for $65,000 — we didn't even see it in person. In February 2019, we sold our 1,900-square-foot California home and moved to the Poconos.

We encountered a disaster in the moving process 

Our California home was large, so we had a lot of stuff. Since our Poconos cabin was smaller, we decided to get rid of almost everything — we really didn't care about a lot of our possessions.

I have a good friend who sells stuff on eBay. We gave her two U-Hauls full of our things and just took basics like dressers, beds, and our couch. We decided to take one car with us and sell the other. We really downsized.

My husband and I hired a moving company —  the type where they drop off the van, you fill it yourself, and then they move your belongings. It cost us around $8,000. On the way to Pennsylvania, our moving van flipped over. About 80% of our stuff was destroyed. 

For a week, we had no idea how bad or minimal it was, and if we were going to be able to salvage our stuff. It was kind of devastating. The items we were most worried about were art and our kids' memories. Those were irreplaceable.

Luckily, right before we left, I called my insurance agent to ask if we were covered for the miles between California and the Poconos. He gave us a short-term policy that covered everything, it cost only $15.

When our stuff arrived in the Poconos, we had to go through everything and make a list of our items and look up pricing. Nothing that really mattered to us was destroyed. It really put into perspective how much stuff we really needed in life.

We did deal with inconveniences. Our couch was broken in half and our dressers smashed. My husband had a lot of light construction equipment like saws that were damaged. 

We basically got the purchase price for everything that was destroyed. I think it was like $15,000. We were lucky, the moving company was only going to pay us 10 cents a pound no matter the item.

We arrived to a cabin in a state of disrepair

My family and I drove down to the Poconos in a vintage camper that we bought in 2016. It was so late at night when we finally arrived in town, but we wanted to see the house right away. We had only seen photos.

When we got to the house, it was around 9 p.m. and pitch dark. It did not have any power, so we had to use flashlights to get around. 

The man that had lived in the home prior was a chain smoker, and we discovered yellow film on all the windows. He also had a wood-burning fireplace and the stove was not ventilating properly, so the carpet was stained and a different color in every room. It was horrific. 

We just sort of laughed about it. We were like, "What the heck can we do?"  We were still excited about the potential of the home and knew we could make it nice. We embraced it as a part of the adventure.

It was not in condition for us to move in right away and live in. It needed to be cleaned a lot, and the carpet had to be torn up. So we stayed with my sister for a couple of weeks, while my husband did some initial demo work. 

Since our first date, my husband and I have always talked about wanting to renovate houses. We knew we were going to update this cabin and incorporate all things that we really love.

We made the kitchen bigger and included more cabinets. We kept the bedrooms pretty much the same and painted the paneling and brightened the rooms up. We renovated two bathrooms, which were really fun to do. We installed a vintage clawfoot tub and fun tile. It took us about three and a half years to renovate the cabin.

Within that time my husband had a full-time job working in construction at a local resort, and was renovating the cabin on the side. During that time, we also bought a second cabin, renovated it completely, and sold it.

In December 2022, we moved from the first cabin into the third cabin we bought. For now, this is our house, at least until our boys graduate from high school. But we definitely are planning on acquiring more properties. Right now, we're looking at the short-term rental market.

It took time to adjust to a smaller living space

Living in a smaller space, you have to get really creative with using every inch of the house in a useful way. You can't just throw things in a giant closet, because you don't have that. Everything is super organized.

At first, the boys hated sharing a room. They're 19 months apart and territorial and competitive. As they got older, they just really wanted their own space. 

My husband and I actually loved downsizing. Being trapped in our house during the shutdown, we really made the most of it. Looking back, those were some of the best times that we've all had together.

We played a lot of board games, watched movies, and took cooking classes online. We were trying new things all the time. One of my sons learned to juggle and the other did magic. It was just really good bonding time for us all. 

We're spending more time together as a family 

It's so different living in the Poconos. Though we're still living pretty simply, money isn't so much a focus for us anymore. When we sold our first cabin, we went to Disney World. If we were still living in California, we wouldn't have been able to afford that vacation. 

My sister lives close by, so my sons have their cousins who are close in age to them. But because we moved towards the beginning of the pandemic, for a while, they didn't have any interaction with anyone except Zoom. It was challenging because the boys missed their friends. 

Once they went back to school, they really got to know people. They're now in sports, band, and drama. My older son is in a bunch of AP and honors classes. 

My family definitely spends more time together, especially living in a smaller space. But I do miss my family that still lives in California. Even still, I think we are probably going to stay in this area and keep it as our home base. 

The dream was for us to have more time together as a family, and to focus on renovating houses. I think the timing of everything worked out perfectly.