We live in an era that seems to specialize in making everything faster and smaller. The mobile home, which is probably a descendant of the covered wagon and the gypsy caravan, is also essentially a triumph of the modern urge to streamline everything and put it on wheels.
While trailers may have something of a bad reputation owing to media stereotypes related to the concept of “trailer trash,” there are some very real benefits to living in them. One need only think out of the box to appreciate the benefits of living in trailers. After all, whoever said that a home had to be a full-sized house with a yard and a mailbox out front?
The most obvious benefit of living in trailers is mobility. When you live in a trailer, you can move any time. You can move because the weather is bad, because you don’t like your neighbours or because you’ve found a new job somewhere else. It satisfies the nomadic wanderlust that’s a holdover from the olden days when man was a hunter-gatherer and had the prospect of a new vista to look forward to at regular intervals.
The next benefit of living in trailers has to do with the significantly less amount of housekeeping that’s required. When you live in small travel trailers, you don’t have a yard to take care of. There’s no need to mow the lawn or to trim the hedges. You’re also not likely to lose anything, and cleaning the house will probably take you less than an hour. The space limitations will also encourage you not to hoard material things and to count only on what’s absolutely necessary for your existence. With less junk to weigh you down, you’re more likely to have a free and open attitude towards life. After all, it’s often the fear of losing material possessions that stops us from taking risks and making necessary changes.
Finally, living in a travel trailer also detaches you from problems like power outages or failures in the water system. In permanent homes, the lack of electricity and water for even a few hours seems like a calamity. But with travel trailers, you learn to be more independent of the pampering conveniences of modern life. Living in a trailer doesn’t necessarily mean being poor and deprived. On the contrary, having to live with less space, less technology and less material junk can turn out to be a very edifying experience for people in an overcrowded and psychologically burdened modern society.