We moved into a tiny house in a small Wyoming town. It was dreamy at first, but we just feel stuck 5 years later.

• We were living the van-life dream until pandemic-related shutdowns made it a nightmare in 2020.
• Out of desperation, we impulsively bought a tiny house in a rural town we'd only just arrived in.
• You'd think living tiny would make it easier to leave. But the reality is, we're stuck years later.

In 2020, when the world was locking down, my partner and I were living full time in our self-converted camper van, chasing fresh air and freedom.

But as COVID-19-related closures swept the nation, that freedom dried up almost overnight.

Campgrounds shut down. Laundromats became off-limits. Gyms we relied on for weekly showers locked their doors. When people took one look at our out-of-state plates, they offered nothing but scornful looks.

Practically overnight, van life became entirely unsustainable, and we went from wholeheartedly embracing the motto "home is where you roam" to the concept of "home" feeling fragile and elusive.

We needed somewhere to land — fast. But we never expected that search would lead us to a tiny town in Wyoming, or that we'd still be stuck there five years later.

At first, it felt great to upgrade from a van to a tiny home in a small town

We always intended to make somewhere in the Mountain West our home.

I grew up in Montana, and my partner, who's from the very different world of suburban Philadelphia, fell in love with the wide open spaces I'd grown up taking for granted.

But we never imagined we'd put down roots during a quick stop in Wyoming to meet up with a friend of a friend to go rock climbing.

Before this visit, we'd never even been to the small town we ended up in. However, when we found a tiny house for sale on a rented lot in a mobile-home park here, we knew it might be our only shot to put down roots.

The housing prices in the Mountain West had already started to skyrocket — homes in areas where I grew up were suddenly selling for three to four times what they had just a year earlier.

We didn't have the luxury of waiting or saving, and we certainly didn't want to go back to renting.

The tiny house wasn't perfect, but it was relatively affordable. And even though we'd still be renting the land, owning the home itself at least meant building equity.

Two weeks later, we signed the paperwork and said hello to the first actual home we'd ever owned.

In the beginning, our jump from 40 square feet to 400 felt downright luxurious. We had a real shower, a full-size fridge, and a toilet we didn't have to dump out on our own.

We reveled in having a designated couch that was not also the bed and enough space to work out indoors when the Wyoming wind howled outside.

We already knew how to live with less, so transitioning was easy.

But as time passed, so did the phase when living tiny felt novel

Over the next few years, we opened several small businesses, and we eventually ended up running a full-time upcycled crafting business out of the house. This meant an influx of raw materials, tools, shipping supplies, and finished inventory.

Suddenly, every corner of our home was bursting with stuff. What had once felt spacious now felt claustrophobic. Soon, we felt trapped living tiny.

Unfortunately, we've run into a lot of issues while trying to improve our situation.

We rent the lot our home is on, so we can't just expand our house's structure. Though we'd purchased the home with the intent to move it onto our own plot of land so we could build a garage or outpost buildings, that, too, has proven to be far more complicated than we expected.

The house exists on a trailer for a foundation, but it's big enough that it requires a semi-chassis (a type of support frame) to move. But even if we did coordinate a move, we don't have a place to go.

With so many local homeowners association restrictions and prohibitions on manufactured homes, it's become apparent that most nearby neighborhoods and counties don't want our tiny house, either.

In an inflated housing market, trying to buy a bigger home also feels impossible. We've browsed every listing within a five-state radius — beyond, when we start to feel extra desperate.

We haven't found a decent option we can afford without landing in a hole of debt so deep that we realistically would never be able to climb out.

For now, we're trying to make the most of the life we have

We chose this tiny house because it was the best of our very limited options. At the time, it felt like the only open door available — but it's now locked itself behind us.

Though we've carved out a small support circle in this tiny town, its isolation still feels heavy. We're a full day's drive away from any close friends or family to speak of, so those wide open spaces we value have ironically become a cage in their own right.

We still believe in living simply, and so we're making the best of it as we remain hopeful for more.

To give ourselves breathing room, we travel as often as we can — usually in our trusty camper van, which faithfully waits for the next adventure in our garageless gravel driveway.

We've also been working on adjusting and organizing our home so it's more efficient to live in and has as much storage space as possible.

It's so easy to romanticize the trend of tiny living when you're watching it on your TV, but sometimes, it feels like we were sold a dream that didn't account for how life changes.

Our lives got bigger, while our home couldn't grow to match.

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