What You Should Be Doing One Week Before Moving Day:

After months of planning, preparation and tough decisions, moving day is less than a week away! The few days before your move are often some of the busiest days, as you finish getting everything in order.  By tying up the final few loose ends the week before moving day, you can quell any feelings of uncertainty you may be having.

We hope you’ve been following our past posts on what to do throughout the moving process – if not, you can catch up by following the links below:

• What You Should Be Doing on Moving Day
• What You Should Be Doing One Week Before Moving Day
• What You Should Be Doing 2-4 Weeks Before Moving Day
• What You Should Be Doing 4-6 Weeks Before Moving Day
• What You Should Be Doing 6-8 Weeks Before Moving Day

Prepare your belongings for the move

With moving day right around the corner, now is the time to make sure all your belongings are ready to be transported.  Make sure your refrigerator and freezer are disconnected and defrosted in advance, so no water leaks onto your other possessions.  Washers and driers need to be disconnected from the walls, and things such as grandfather clocks need to be serviced before they can be safely transported.  Your mover can likely work with you to arrange a third party to handle many of these tasks for you.

Also, remember to take anything permanently mounted to your walls down before the movers arrive.  Things such as drapery rods, towel bars, or mounted paintings should be removed and placed on the floor.  It is also a good idea to unplug and pack the cables from your TVs, computers, and electronics in advance.

Finish up your packing

If you are packing yourself you will need to have all of your small items boxed up before the movers arrive.  Hopefully, you already have packed many of your non-essential belongings.  Now is the time to focus on getting everything remaining in order.

Go through your drawers one last time to remove anything that could spill or break. Leaving soft items such as clothing or blankets is fine—your mover can move your furniture with these things inside.

Remember to check all the closets, cabinets,  storage lockers, and the attic for any overlooked belongings.  Also, remember to bring home anything you are planning on moving from your work office, and gather any belongings you may have loaned out to friends.

Create an “Instant Aid” box

It is a good idea to put together a box of things that you might need immediately upon arrival at your new home. Unpacking can sometimes take a little while, so you will want to have some items set aside for easy access.  We suggest packing bathroom supplies including toilet paper, kitchen items such as paper towels and paper plates, cleaning supplies, a basic tool kit, and of course some snacks and easy to prepare food items.

It is often helpful to have your “Instant Aid” box in a clear plastic container in order to be able to see its contents and distinguish it from the countless other boxes that will be involved in the move.  If you don’t have room for this box in your car, ask your movers to load it into the van last—and unload it first—so you can get to it as soon as you pull into the driveway.

Once these last tasks are all complete you should be just about all set for the big move. Now the hard part is over and you can sit back relax. On moving day the movers will handle all the heavy lifting for you.

A Moving Plan for Seniors Who Are Downsizing:

If you are looking to downsize in retirement, moving to a smaller home may be in your plans. Although the move may seem like a practical thing to do, it probably won’t be the easiest, especially when it comes to the memories you’ve made in a home where you’ve lived for decades.

Additionally, the sentiments attached to belongings you may have to give up when downsizing require you to take pragmatic steps to ensure the move goes smoothly and with the least amount of emotional stress possible.

Make a Convincing Argument

There are a lot of good reasons to downsize in retirement, including the financial benefits. But besides having fewer financial obligations related to home ownership, with a smaller home you’ll spend less money on upkeep, taxes, and utilities. You’ll also have less stress and more time to do the things you like. This change in focus can lead to better physical and emotional health.

Just because you are aiming for a simpler life doesn’t mean you can’t live comfortably or will have to give up your personal style. Families often spend 80 percent of their time in just 20 percent of the space they have, so you may just start using your space more efficiently. In fact, if you follow some common-sense steps, you just may be surprised at how much happier you are in your new home.

Avoid Procrastination

Rather than put off packing until the last minute, start going through items as soon as you know for certain that you are moving. Begin by separating, organizing, and getting rid of what you don’t need. And if you are putting your house on the real estate market, it’s a good idea to start sorting through items even before you put your house up for sale.

Ask Your Adult Children to Help

Your children—and perhaps even your grandchildren—may want things that you can’t take with you.

Tackle the most cluttered areas of your home first. People tend to accumulate the most stuff in rooms where household members congregate most often, such as the kitchen, family room, and living room.

Go Through the Contents of Your Home Slowly

Separate the items you definitely want to keep from those you want to sell, give to a family member or friend, or donate. Consider giving items you intend to leave to others now, especially if you won’t have room in your new home or would need to pay for storage somewhere.

Determine what items you really need when packing areas of your home that aren’t part of the main living space. You are sure to find things you don’t use often or don’t use at all in places like the attic, garage, or outdoor storage shed.

Get Rid of Junk

As you clear out and get ready to move, you’ll probably have a lot more to toss out than your normal trash collector will take. Some items you’ll want to discard or recycle. Put items you don’t want but that are still in good condition out for people to take for free.

Don’t Include the Word Maybe in Your Vocabulary

Items you will maybe want to keep are usually those you don’t really need or don’t use often. Decide what to keep without taking time to think the matter over. Remember that your reason for moving is to downsize. Give yourself only two options—either keeping an item or getting rid of it.

Be Realistic

You need to be realistic as you downsize—even when it comes to the mountains of keepsakes you’ve kept from your children’s growing-up years. When you downsize, you won’t be able to take every item of sentimental value with you.

Mementos connect you to your past, so why not scrapbook some of your fondest memories? Perhaps your now-adult children will appreciate having a keepsake or two from their pasts to share with their children. When it comes to family photographs, transfer them to a digital frame rather than keeping stacks of photo albums or individual photos in picture frames.

Be Practical With Your Furnishings

Get the floor plan for your new home so you can determine which of your furnishings will fit. You may find that some furniture pieces just won’t fit the new space, and you want to know what your options are sooner rather than later.

Although you should take the furnishings that mean the most to you, you may need to give up some of the largest pieces. Instead, take furnishings you can use for more than one purpose.

Get Help With the Packing

If you hire a professional moving company, a professional packing team can do the job faster than you could. But if you do some of the packing yourself with the aid of younger family members, begin packing by tackling smaller tasks like a dresser or closet first. Complete all the packing for one room before moving on to the next.

Moving is a hard chore, especially if you are getting older. However, if you are considering hiring professional movers, you can count on the fast, reliable, and efficient moving services Wheaton World Wide Moving offers.

Tagged in: Downsizing, moving, Moving Tips, planning

Hiring Movers to Load a Truck:

Using movers to load or unload

DIY moving has many benefits — lower rates, flexibility, and the ability to control the move from start to finish. But sometimes you need a little help. If you’re trying to cut costs but want assistance with some of the work, hiring moving labor is a great solution. You’ll get the help you want without the high price of a full-service move. Find out how to hire a crew, how to prepare for the big day, and how to manage the crew when they arrive.

If you haven’t reserved moving equipment yet, U-Pack® prices are affordable and include two equipment options — the moving trailer or moving container. In most cases, U-Pack rates are comparable to truck rental. Click here to get a free quote.

How to hire movers

Here’s how to find loaders and unloaders:

1. Decide which tasks you need help with. Do you just need help loading heavy items or do you want a moving crew to load everything? What about a crew for unloading? The first step is determining what tasks you need movers to do.

2. Figure out what size crew you need. After outlining your needs, determine how many movers to hire. A two-person crew can handle smaller moves, but we recommend a third crew member for homes with two or more bedrooms. Here are some general guidelines:

• Studio apartment – 2 movers for 2 hours
• One-bedroom apartment – 2 movers for 3 hours
• Two-bedroom apartment – 2 movers for 4 hours
• Two-bedroom home – 2 movers for 5 hours or 3 movers for 3 hours
• Small three-bedroom home – 3 movers for 5 hours
• Large three-bedroom home – 3 movers for 6 hours\
• Four-bedroom home – 4 movers for 5 hours
• 5+ bedroom home – 4 movers for 6 hours

3. Get an estimate. We can refer customers to moving crews across the country. Give us a call at 800-413-4799 and we can help connect you to the available options.

4. Book the movers. We recommend booking the movers so they’ll arrive the day after the moving equipment is delivered. This will avoid any scheduling conflicts if delivery happens later in the day.

5. Prepare your home and belongings. Along with packing items prior to the move, there are several things to take care of before help arrives. Keep reading for those important tasks.

Preparing for moving truck loaders

Make a list of items to load

Make a list or put a note on items the movers will load. If you plan on doing some of the loading, you’ll be able to easily identify the things to leave for the moving crew.

Prepare appliances, furniture and outdoor equipment

Unless you’ve added this service, the movers will not pack or prepare your belongings, so you’ll want to handle that before they arrive. In some cases they will help with simple disassembly (like taking the mirror off a dresser), but it’s best to prep all items in advance.  Don’t forget to:

• drain the washing machine
• defrost the fridge or freezer
• wrap furniture in paper padding
• remove any flammable liquids from grills and lawn mowers

You should also perform the gypsy moth inspection on outdoor equipment before loading if it’s required for your move.

Prep the house

Clear a pathway through your home to make it easier to load the moving truck. Measure larger furniture to ensure it will go through doorways without a problem (you may have to remove trim or hinges). Remove hazards like rugs and cables or secure them so nobody will slip or trip over them.

Make a plan for parking

Make a plan for parking  the moving equipment and for your  moving labor. If the trailer or ReloCubes are taking up the driveway, make sure there is a safe, legal place for the movers to park.

Arrange a place for kids and pets

For safety reasons, it’s best if children and pets are in a place that’s away from the movers and equipment on moving day. Designate an empty room for them to spend their time (and supervision for smaller children), or hire a sitter so they can stay off-site.

To tip or not to tip?

It’s up to you! Learn all about tipping movers.

How to manage the moving crew

When the loaders arrive, they will do what you tell them to. Even though there may be a crew leader, they are customer-directed — so you’re in charge! Be clear about what needs to be done and give them any special instructions before they start working. Once everything is loaded, check to make sure the job was completed to your satisfaction.

Have questions about hiring movers?

Give us a call at 800-413-4799 or leave a comment below. We’re here to help! 

Organizational tips to help keep your home spotless:

A clean home equals a clean mind. The best way to keep your home truly clean is to do a little bit of cleaning every day instead of letting it pile up. Developing these habits will prevent any critters from finding their way into your home, and will also decrease the spreading of germs and allergens in your home, helping your family stay healthy. It also encourages kids to establish strong habits of picking up after themselves and creates a greater sense of responsibility.

We’ve assembled a list of recommendations for how often you should be cleaning the different areas of your home.

Every day:

• Wash countertops and appliance handles with disinfecting spray/wipes
• Eliminate any clutter that has accumulated and put in proper location
• Clean all used dishes and wipe up any spills that have occurred
• Sweep floors
• Take out the trash
• Straighten up and make beds
• Hang up all wet towels or hand towels and allow to air dry completely

Once a week:

• Wash and fold laundry
• Wash all hardwood and tile floors
• Vacuum carpet and underneath cabinets
• Dust shelving, furniture, and light fixtures
• Wipe down toilets, showers, and sinks with proper disinfectant
• Clean mirrors
• Wash all pillow cases

Once a month:

• Empty the refrigerator, wipe down shelving, and throw out any expired items
• Dust the baseboards, fan blades, and air vents
• Clean the inside of microwave and oven
• Hose down and disinfect the bottom of trash cans and underneath the trash cans
• Disinfect all doorknobs
• Wash all bath mats
• Dust underneath all furniture

Once a season:

• Clean pantry and throw out any expired items
• Steam clean carpets
• Wipe down blinds and wash curtains
• Wash windows and window screens
• Clean out bedroom, shoe, and coat closets and throw away or donate items you no longer want
• Wash or dry clean duvet covers, throw blankets, comforters, and throw pillow

We hope you’ve found this information to be useful. Do you have any advice for keeping your home tidy? We want to know! Like us on Facebook and subscribe to our blog for more helpful tips and tricks.

TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® is the first and largest franchised moving company in the United States. Let us help move you forward! For more helpful tips and information on moving services subscribe to our blog and like us on Facebook.

The 7 Best Things to Do in Orlando (That Aren’t Theme Parks)

Though Orlando is best known for its vast array of theme parks, it gets old pretty quick. Personally, I’d rather avoid the theme parks — too many kids and too many crowds.

But since I’ve seen and done everything there is to do in Orlando, trust me when I say there’s plenty of places to visit that can help you avoid both the kids and the crowds, especially if you’re looking for a great happy hour. Yep, there are many things to do in Orlando that definitely don’t involve theme parks. Here are my favorite things to keep you chilling in your own age bracket for a stress-free stay in Florida.

1. Kick Things off With Wine (That You Made)

Yelp.com

Let’s set the bar at age 21. For those of us who love to DIY and drink, try The Corkscrew Winery. It’s been a hit every time I’ve done it. Great for friends, dates, family members – you name it.

The gist of the place is that you can sign up to learn the wine making process right there from your seat. I’m surprised at how I can get immersed in the wine-batching process and learn how the pros get those grapes into the bottles. Plus, the end of the wine-making course, each guest leaves with their own bottle! Great perk.

These events are more intimate and are a complete antithesis to the crowds typically found at Orlando’s theme parks.

2. Need a Shoe Repair? Or Maybe a Beer? How About Both?

The bar’s original form from the 1940s. Instagram.

Let’s keep the drinking theme going. I can’t help you if you actually need your shoe repaired, but I do know of a speakeasy and eatery in downtown Orlando that looks exactly like a shoe repair shop. And that’s because it used to be one! It’s called Hanson’s Shoe Repair — the venue itself is one of the oldest downtown buildings in the area. And Andrew Hanson’s family-owned shoe repair store is one of the best-kept secrets in Orlando.

What’s cool about it is that isn’t as uptight or spendy as some other Orlando spots. The fact that it’s still standing in Orlando is awesome enough, but the new owners kept the name of the original shop. They’ve got a great beer menu and, if I do say so myself, a truly amazing Cuban sandwich.

3. The Store That’s Got Everything

One of my favorite shops to visit If you need to add a bit of the magic to your Orlando trip, there are more options than the Magic Kingdom.

North Orlando is home to the strange and wonderful Carmine Oddities Boutique, home of an infamous two-headed mummy and a variety of historical occult books. Whether you’re into learning about sub-cultures or just want to make first contact, there are a ton of super interesting trinkets, books and much, much more. Over the years, a lot of the items from the shop have begun to fill out my home. It’s worth a trip if you’re in the area — every time I’m visiting family, I make my way over there and end up walking away with something new.

The shop is open Tuesday through Sunday, and you can even make an appointment. Keep in mind it opens by 10 A.M., and it closes at 6 P.M. on weekdays (and 8 P.M. on the weekend).

4. Winter Park, Orlando’s Fun Neighbor

Winter Park Village, HotSpotsOrlando.com

If you want to try and get just outside of the city for a little bit, Winter Park is one of my favorite spots to visit. There’s just always something to do. Located north of Orlando, the city of Winter Park is known for its arts initiatives, shows, and small-town vibe. Some of the planned events in Winter Park include:

• Dance lessons
• Music jams
• Rummage sales
• Community cleanups
• Movies in the park
• Fishing tournaments

I’ve found that the people are especially friendly too, if you’re feeling chatty after a few beers. It’s a great place to stumble upon a random dog show or neighborhood parade.

5. Rent a Swan-Boat on Lake Eola

For anyone visiting Orlando as a couple, this one’s another great date idea. It might seem like a tourist trap, but it’s actually quite charming and totally worth doing just for the great view of the water. Lake Eola is located in downtown Orlando, so it’s the perfect thing to kill some time before happy hour or scheduled events. The lake itself is home to many different types of birds and, if you’re visiting Orlando in the spring, you’re sure to see some baby swans flapping about. Rent a swan boat and paddle your way around the water. Bring a bottle of wine with you, maybe even the one you made at Corkscrew. It’s a great way to see downtown from a new perspective and avoid the crowds.

6. Take a (21-And-Over) Guided Ghost Tour Through St. Augustine

trolleytours.com

This one’s a bit weird, considering it’s a ghost tour and a pub crawl run by a church. But that just lends to the authenticity! The church of St. Augustine offers a Haunted Pub Crawl and Paranormal Investigation that guides “spirits with the spirits” while searching for new haunts. From their website:

“Ever since opening to the public, there has been an immense number of reports of paranormal occurrences, continuing to this day. The old well in the gardens has been the center of many strange happenings; you’ll learn more about this during your investigation. Through research and archival records, stories of deaths and strange events on the property have been found. A number of psychics and paranormal researchers have investigated the property and reported bizarre findings- but no public programs have been allowed until now…”

It’s one of the most fun things to do in Orlando simply because of how it guides you from bar to bar with new visitors and locals alike. Attendees will explore the town’s most notorious haunted caverns where it is alleged that the honorable Judge Stickney stalks the graves nightly and searches for the bodies buried alive during the post-Civil War typhoid outbreak. Just your average night!

7. The Best Theater and Cabaret Performances are Local

One of my absolute favorite venues for local theater is The Mad Cow Theatre, where local actors collaborate to put on raucous, riotous plays and musicals that are sure to have you in stitches laughing. As a bonus, if you’re in Orlando in May, the Mad Cow Theatre puts on the Orlando Cabaret Festival – now in its 15th year! – which you can’t miss if you love pure, musical entertainment in cool, intimate spaces.

Whatever you, your date or your family end up doing, just make sure you don’t sell yourself short. There’s a lot of interesting stuff to do in Orlando that has nothing to do with a certain mouse. Explore it – just like I did!

How to Unpack After Moving House:

There is so many tasks that you have to do if you want to prepare for a move. While you may have an idea of how you want your move to go, you may find out that the actual act is nothing like what you imagined it.  The whole relocation process can be the best thing you can do or it can be the worst thing, depending on who you are working with and what you have to do. It’s important that you find one of the best moving companies before you even start moving anything. You will need to pack up your home, your life. Now you will have someone helping you do that. The success of your new home will be determined by who well you organized your move.

Make the move seamless

You hope that you don’t run into any problems during your move and if you do, then you will need to make sure that you can deal with it. However, you can make this move a lot better for yourself if you hire the right professional moving company to assist. You can hire a group of friends to assist you with your move in hopes of saving yourself money however you may find that you have a stack of cardboard boxes that are mix matched and lots of stories to tell instead.

Stay organized

It is best to be organized when you start packing. Pack and label each box as per the room. Thus, it is best to pack each room before moving on to the next. Similarly, it would be much easier when you unpack as each room’s things would be unpacked in an organized way.

There is a certain way that if you unpack your boxes, you will know where everything is with a few organizational tips that have worked so well in the past. If you packed your boxes up quickly, you most likely will need a new system to unpack your boxes to ensure that everything goes in the right room. The only problem when you unpack is that it could take twice as much time to do what you need to get done. The length of time that it takes for you to unpack will depend on several factors; the number of boxes you had to move, the number of people helping you, whether it is professional movers or just friends, and the number of special items that you had to pack with special care.

Houzz Tour: An Earthship Adventure in New Zealand:

The word “sustainable” in real estate is overused. However, when homeowners Gus Anning and Sarah Rowe began exploring how to build a home for themselves and their three children, they really dug deep — literally and figuratively — for a building type that was genuinely self-sufficient for energy, water and waste. After three years of research, two years of planning and nine months of building, their home — dubbed Te Timatanga, or “beginning” in Te Reo, one of New Zealand’s official languages — was unveiled to viewers in the first New Zealand season of the television show Grand Designs.

Photos by Peter May of The Flying Kiwi

Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: Sarah Rowe and Gus Anning and their children Bryony, 14, Toby, 12, and Whio, 4
Location: Hikuai, Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand 
Size: 2,580 square feet (240 square meters) on 2½ acres (1 hectare); four bedrooms, three bathrooms and an atrium
Building designer: Harriet Pilkington of Young + Richards

Like many people, Rowe and Anning knew the overarching principles of sustainable design: using the sun to warm the house, collecting their own water and utilizing recycled materials to lower the house’s embedded energy. It also helped that they were starting from an ideal place, as Rowe’s parents had given them land nestled in a valley on the eastern slopes of the Coromandel mountain range, with the perfect north-facing orientation and a gentle slope. 

The community, just over an hour from Auckland, is in an area known for its many alternative lifestyles. This worked in the couple’s favor, as many of the skilled craftspeople, helping hands and materials serendipitously came their way just when they needed them.

Their three years of research found its focus when the couple came across the movie Garbage Warrior, which focuses on the biotecture of Mike Reynolds, the American founder of the Earthship building system. The passive-solar homes use natural and recycled materials to create a thermal mass that stabilizes temperature, paired with renewable energy and water systems. 

The family’s first piece of luck was Anning spotting a passenger on the ferry he skippered wearing an Earthship T-shirt. Turns out there was a hands-on building session with the Earth Building Association of New Zealandrunning in Christchurch that summer. Not deterred by the fact that it was already booked up, Anning turned up at the site. By the time the organizers realized he was an interloper, he was already working with the tools. The couple also visited an early prototype house, the Gubb home in Ngaruawahia. They realized that it takes a lot of work to build a modern home to meet today’s building codes.

Ceiling reeds: Brustics; pendant light: David Trubridge

Although they had the perfect site, the couple recognized that the rainy Coromandel weather posed more challenges than the desert environment Earthships are usually built in. Right from the beginning, the pair was in discussions with their local council, which was keen to make sustainable housing doable in the community. Earth houses built from mud bricks or straw were already not uncommon, but the couple’s plan also involved filling recycled tires with earth and using a passive heating and cooling system. 

As it happened, their chief council contact had just completed training in sustainability and linked them up with consultant Graeme North. He worked as an adviser to Anning and Rowe’s architectural designer, Harriet Pilkington, and as peer reviewer for the council to ensure the building met code.

In one of his (many) past lives, Anning had won an architectural designer award, so the couple were happy to sketch out their first ideas for the house before calling on school friend Pilkington to refine the designs and create working drawings for council approval. 

The first principle of the Earthship — “a machine designed to collect heat and distribute it,” as Anning says — was the atrium. With its wall of windows angled at 70 degrees (that angle is determined by latitude) it collects the sun that comes into this front section of the home. The bedrooms and bathrooms are aligned along the length of the corridor behind the atrium.

The combination of windows above the bedroom doors, underground venting tubes behind the rooms and Velux windows along the atrium allows the homeowners to draw cooling air around the rooms in summer or admit and circulate solar gain for winter heat. 

The couple decided the private rooms would have glass walls so they could enjoy the atrium fully. The curving plant beds are sufficient for privacy and provide an attractive view.

They also veered away from Northern Hemisphere designs by opening up the kitchen and living rooms to the outdoors for the indoor-outdoor living Kiwis crave.

At the western end of the house, Pilkington included nearly 645 square feet (60 square meters) of covered terrace — a gorgeous spot for viewing sunsets and sheltering from the sometimes-rainy summers.

Anning and Rowe decided early on to turn the construction of their home into an Earthship workshop, to share skills, get the job done quickly in the summer and contain building costs. Over the summer of 2015, dozens of paying volunteers were schooled in the techniques of stacking some 1,100 tires, filling them with clay dug from the site and plastering them to form the walls. The volunteers were led by project managers Ben Garrattand Rosa Henderson (of Sculpted Earth), whom Anning had met at his first Christchurch workshop. Rowe worked part time while feeding the workers and laboring alongside them; Anning tapped contacts for resources and finishes.

The southern side of the house is dug into the bank, with layers of waterproof membrane carefully inserted between land and tires to ensure no moisture seepage. The subfloor was lined with mussel shells (a local waste product, adhering to the couple’s philosophy throughout the construction process) and more waterproof membrane before concrete was laid. 

For the interior walls, the family scored secondhand mud bricks that were left over from a friend’s earlier building project. Nothing was wasted: Even the broken bricks were mixed into a slurry for plastering the walls.

Pallet furniture: Industrial Design NZ; mud bricks: Solid Earth

Accumulating enough tires for the build took around six months. Rowe and Anning had watched a loaded tire truck drive by their property for weeks before catching the driver at a local cafe and negotiating for the tires that were destined for the garbage dump. Like many participants in the project, the driver was delighted to carry and stack the four different sizes of tires, happy that they were not going to become landfill.

Naturally, the kitchen was to become the heart of the home. In addition to a gas oven (fueled by gas bottles, the only energy brought in from outside the house), Rowe and Anning were determined to have the modern version of the old-fashioned Rayburn range. In the winter its attached pipe system heats the house’s water — there is always a pot of stock simmering on the stove — but the house is so warm the heat is more for psychological comfort. 

Kitchen benches and doors: NZ Totara; Rayburn range: Classic Cookers; copper sink and faucet: All Things Copper; pendant lights: Mr Bead, Mr Ralph; all other wood:MacDirect

Beams for the roof came from Natural Log Homes, a company from New Zealand’s South Island that works with local Douglas fir. When the family was puzzling over roofing systems, their architect, Pilkington, introduced them to the concept of structural insulated panels. Commonly used for industrial coolers, the 8-inch-thick panels bond roofing metal, an insulated core and a ceiling panel in large sheets that Anning says were “awesome” to install and keep clean.

Insulated panel roof: Metalcraft Group

Despite its super efficiency, the family wanted their house to feel warm and homey. They, and their visitors, rave about the embrace of the house.

This Maori carving, called a pare, sits above one of the set of bifold doors outside. It is by Rotorua carver Natanahira Pona, who was selected to represent Aotearoa New Zealand (Aotearoa is the Maori name for the country) at the World Wood Day celebrations in Kathmandu, Nepal last year.

The couple worked with solar consultant Jasper Campbell of Metalcraft Roofing to settle on the best system for their home. At the moment, they do not use batteries to store excess power but feed it back to the utility company’s grid. While they have not signed up for any monitoring studies, Anning and Rowe are still fine-tuning their energy use, determined to get their monthly bill, currently about $50 for hook-up charges, down to zero. They plan to do this by upgrading appliances and checking out smart meters and other systems as they become more affordable. The wood fire is purely for ambiance, as the house stays a consistent warmth (and dryness) year-round. 

Firebox: Woodsman

Anning and Rowe say they are still working on achieving their sustainable dream. Their next project is to cover the concrete floor. Impending winter weather and budget meant that they left the floors as concrete, instead of their preferred rammed earth. They are now investigating building their own kiln to make and fire floor tiles from earth from their property. In the meantime, the black-oxide-stained concrete is good for solar gain.

Rowe and her friends foraged for bottles to make the plastered feature walls, carefully selecting and cutting the glass to create soothing swaths of color that enliven the walls around the atrium and their en suitebathroom. The custom hexagonal doors were built by Bob van Pearce.

As well as providing a year-round tropical ambiance, the atrium garden is an essential part of the water system. Rainwater is used for cooking and drinking, and the greywater from laundry and showers is filtered into the planter, which starts shallow at the front door end and gets deeper as it runs through the house. 

River rocks and peat moss filter the flow (with plenty of Daltons potting mix, customized with coconut husk), and a small bilge pump recirculates the water back to a raised kitchen garden. After greywater is used for flushing the toilets, the black water is fed into a worm farm septic tank system. This uses worms and other natural means to process the waste and turn it into fertilizer; this is then further purified and treated, and then returned to the soil and used to irrigate the 20 heritage fruit trees in the orchard. 

Sewage and wastewater system: NaturalFlow

The plants’ photosynthesis produces oxygen for clean, healthy air, as well as moisture to help maintain comfortable humidity levels year-round.

All the bedrooms in the home open onto the atrium. Again, the couple was lucky to score old French doors that were being thrown out from a vacation house renovation, to add a sense of charm and history to their home.

The master bedroom en suite wall was another labor of love by Rowe, helped by friends and children.

To continue the natural feel of the house in their bathroom, Rowe found terrific random stone tiles for the floor and shower walls from Island Stone. The vanity features recycled and raw timbers.

Using organic materials for fixtures more commonly made out of plastic or enamel was part of the couple’s ethos. Here, the basin is petrified wood, sitting on another custom-made vanity.

The mix of colors was carefully considered by Rowe as she assembled the bottle walls.

Seen here, the main family bathroom opens to the luxuriant garden, through a feature wall complete with another custom-made hexagonal-cut door and surrounding glass.

The walls are finished in a tadelakt plaster common to Morocco and North Africa. The traditional flat lime plaster is waterproof enough to be used as an exterior finish or in bathroom wet areas, and it has the smooth curved look and natural tints that complement the mud-brick walls in the rest of the house. The plaster was burnished to a smooth finish over three days in a satisfyingly hands-on process. 

Stone sink: Pacific Baths & Basins; plaster walls: Rockcote Marrakesh, Resene

The children’s rooms are big enough for desks and hangout areas, and enjoy great natural daylight from the atrium windows.

They also present distant views of the mountain range through the sloping glass. The build required some new thinking from many of their suppliers, but Anning says companies such as Metro Performance Glass helped him solve problems with the angled woodwork and runoff to the ground.

Since it appeared in the first New Zealand season of Grand Designs, the house has attracted a lot of attention. Anning and Rowe are full of praise for the support of their local Thames Coromandel District Council and are so thrilled that they have been able to host tours for building managers from councils around the country. 

The couple also has been renting out the house on Airbnb during past summers while they travel. (Anning spent the summer with the Antarctic Heritage Trust restoring Hillary’s Hut.) Visitors are captivated by the serenity surrounding the house, as well as by the house itself. Anning says most people can’t get over the lack of light pollution and are entranced by the stars in the clear skies.

While the couple did not want to stint on systems and finishes — Anning estimates the finished building cost at around $80 to $93 per square foot — the innovative energy and water systems mean that running costs for the house are minuscule. But what has really delighted them is the quality of life in their Earthship: the comfort of being surrounded by earth and natural materials, as well as the glorious sense of solidity and connectedness. And they are pretty sure they face a lifetime of helping other people build their own Earthship dreams.