It is a much-lamented fact that fewer and fewer young people can afford their own home. The prices for real estate have risen noticeably in the past few years, and even if a couple from Generation Y or Z can be found, where both partners work full-time and do not earn badly, the dream of owning a home can usually only be achieved with high loans and enable years of indebtedness. There has to be another way, thought the young American Demi Skipper, and at the beginning of the pandemic she started an unusual experiment: She wanted to try to “swap” up to her own home with nothing more than a hairpin as a starting object. Lo and behold: it worked!
But how did that work? Demi Skipper’s unbelievable swap story took the young woman through many stages: starting with a bobby pin, a pair of earrings, a set of four drinking glasses, sneakers, a vacuum cleaner, an exercise bike, laptops, bicycles and cars. With her action, the progress of which she shared and documented on Instagram under the name “thetradeproject”, she received a lot of attention on social media – no wonder that the interest in trying to get to your home with nothing but a Bobby Pin, was great. And it still is: Skipper are now following over 5 million people on their TikTok account alone, their posts have been “liked” over 64 million times. Interested followers have also been able to follow Demi and her “tradeproject” on Instagram and Youtube since it started in May 2020, until she really achieved her goal – 18 months and countless swaps later – last week!
Because at the beginning of December the time had finally come: Demi Skipper got the keys to her own little house! This was the result of the last swap. She received the little house in the equally small community of Clarksville in the state of Tennessee in exchange for a solar-powered caravan (which she had previously lovingly renovated by hand).
The Christ Child – or in this case Santa Claus – clearly gave the young woman the perfect early Christmas present! And that’s not all: due to the great attention that her project has received, Demi Skipper has received several invitations to news shows. Only this weekend she is a guest on the “Today Show”, via Insta-Story she announced her arrival and teasers that there are more “big things” waiting for her. (“Big things coming”, she writes there)
Who would have thought that what was actually only intended as an idea to distract from the first early months of the corona pandemic would make such waves? By the way, Demi Skipper’s idea is not new: Because the model for the young woman’s project was the Canadian blogger Kyle McDonald, who has already swapped from the paper clip to the house.
