Chronicles of Our Desert Homestead–Ch. 1

Where and Why

A couple of years ago I announced Ken and I were moving to Chicago, only to denounce it a couple of weeks later.

We finally found our “what’s next,” and I decided to wait until it was a done deal before mentioning it publicly (lesson learned). Alas, here we are with a for-real announcement:

On August 8th, Ken and I closed on a house with a detached shop on 10 acres of fenced desert land.

There’ve been lots of questions, and I have lots of answers. (See the Q&A section at the bottom of this post for a few to start!)
But there’s also a whole lot more to it than just snatching up a new place.

I’ve been trying to figure out where to start with the whole story, but my indecision has kept me from posting at all, which is the opposite of what I want. I want to share with you!

So, I will experiment with a Monday-night Write to see if I can unfold the story as we go.

Tonight’s entry is a bit of background. Let’s call it:

Where and Why

Ken and I (married in 2020) own a super sweet online business that we built together. We launched in August of 2016, working with a local manufacturer for printing/cutting/sewing, and packing/shipping orders from our home.

In Aug of 2018, we started leasing a warehouse, bought some machinery, and took over the manufacturing so we could own, learn, and understand the whole process end-to-end. We moved packing and shipping out of our home and into this new shop.

We always wished we could run things entirely from our home. It’s a fully online business with no foot traffic, and personally, I hate the 30–min traffic-riddled commute, even if it is to our own place. I’ve harbored a little resentment about it for years because it took me away from home. Working from home and owning my time was the whole point of walking away from corporate work in 2011.

When we launched Picture This Clothing, I was already running a mid-six-figure coaching/speaking/writing business I’d built up between 2013–2016, working fully from home so that I could be a more present mom for my two daughters.

We launched this company, and as awesome a story as it is, I chose to sideline the coaching business in order to focus on building the clothing business with Ken. This is…