SACRAMENTO, Calif — A San Francisco Bay area woman told ABC10 about a month ago she was trading her way up from a bobby pin to a house. After six months of trading, she has quite an update.
"After six months of trading from a single bobby until I get a house, it finally happened," Demi Skipper said.
Skipper eventually was able to trade a jeep to a tiny cabin on wheels.
Skipper said she got the idea for Trade Me Project while watching videos on YouTube and TikTok at the start of quarantine. She was inspired by Kyle McDonald, who traded his way from a paperclip to a house. Skipper currently has over 4.5 million followers on TikTok.
Skipper created several rules for when she began the project: no trading to friends or family, and no money involved or improving the item for a better trade.
"The Trade Me Project family, which is almost 5 million people, all want to be part of this," Skipper said. "The idea is to maybe get the cabin across the country from Pennsylvania, all the way to me in San Francisco and have different people in the Trade me Project family be able to stay in this cabin."
Austin Kratz, the owner of Wildbound Cabin Co, began his business of building tiny cabins at the start of the pandemic, which is around the same Skipper started her project.
Kratz said he initially thought it was a scream when Skipper began texting to trade her jeep for his tiny cabin but agreed to the trade after learning more about her project.
"I feel like I've been telling people the story over and over again and people are like, 'what?'" Kratz said. "People are texting me and don't believe it's real, so it's a whirlwind for sure.
Skipper said even after trading her jeep for the tiny cabin, she is not done and the project continues. She hopes to trade up for a house eventually to donate to someone in the Trade Me Project family.
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