Demi's incredible path to home ownership began with a bobby pin

A Canadian woman has shared her incredible journey to home ownership — and it all started with a bobby pin.

Demi Skipper explains on TikTok she was inspired by a story about someone who had traded a paper clip all the way to a house, deciding to try the same with a bobby pin.

Skipper began in May 2020, explaining in a TikTok video @trademeproject: "Early this week I started my journey to trade a single bobby pin for a house. In 2006 someone did this exact same thing, but for a red paper clip all the way to a house."

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Skipper traded the bobby pin for a pair of earrings, then traded the earrings for a set of four magarita glasses.

And thus, her journey to home ownership had begun.

The trades quickly became larger and, despite criticism, 28 trades later Skipper had her house — a small home in Tennessee in the US.

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In a recent TikTok video, she explains she can barely believe it herself.

The margarita glasses were traded for a vacuum cleaner, which was traded for other items including a gaming console, athletic shoes, a laptop computer, an iPhone, an exercise bike, a second hand car and then a small house in need of repair.

"There were just so many negative people saying it wasn't possible," she tells The Guardian.

"I was willing to do this for five years if that's what it took to get to the house."

Even today, having completed her goal, she can't believe it is real.

"I wake up and I'm like, 'Is this real?' I have the house. I traded this from a bobby pin!"

In a video showing the completion of her goal, Skipper describes the feeling of walking up to the house as "surreal". The entire journey took a year-and-a-half.

"This feels so surreal," she says as she walks up to the house. With her hands clasped tightly together and a wide smile on her face, she asks: "Can I look?"

And then she sees it, doubling over in delight. "Oh my God," she says.

She runs up to the home and across the front lawn, dry leaves crunching under her feet, and takes it all in.

Skipper says she may kick off another trading journey, but would donate the next home to someone in need.

She says her own journey taught her a lot along the way.

"I think I've gotten much better at seeing the negative and flipping it to a positive," she said.

"Had someone said that someone was going to trade something that's worth not even a single penny for a house that's worth millions of times more, I feel like people would say it's impossible. But this makes me feel like anything is possible now."