Tiny House Living Isn't Always Easy! Challenges of Living in My Tiny Home

Hey everyone, Rob Greenfield here, and I live in this 100 square foot tiny house that you see behind me in Orlando, Florida. Today, I'm gonna talk about the challenges of living simply and sustainably in my tiny house. Before I get started, I just wanna say one thing, and that is that this is just my example. Don't look at this video and think that it represents the tiny house movement. This is just my life that I'm sharing with you today. People have all sorts of different examples. Some people do this with families. Some people do this in cold climates where it freezes versus tropical climates where it's warm year-round. Some people have tons of money. Some people have very little bit of money. Some people are more physically capable than others. So, look at this as one example and take from it. I'm trying to do things in a way that is very simple, very sustainable, and uses very little bit of money, and I'm sort of on that extreme side of the spectrum there. So, just keep that in mind that this is just my example that I'm sharing with you. Number one, it is tiny. Even for a tiny house, it's pretty small. At 10 by 10, it's 100 square feet, and I'll be honest, it's a little bit small for me, especially with all the different projects I'm doing. For example, if I wanna dehydrate using my dehydrator, there's not really a spot for that, so I'm either sticking it on top of my freezer or my desk, and I don't have that much space for the different projects. Plus, I'd love to be able to host people in my house, but the reality is it doesn't have a loft or a separate bedroom, so it is just a little bit too small. Number two, I live sort of outside. My kitchen is outdoors, my compost toilet is outdoors, so that's a lot of going in and outside of the house. And because I live a partially outdoors life, I have to deal with all those elements. Mosquitoes, the sun, the hot and the cold. When it rains, some of my stuff gets wet. So living outdoors partially certainly has its challenges. Number three, temperature and climate. I live here in central Florida, where it's one of the easier places to live outdoors in a way, although most people here think what I'm doing is crazy anyway. I grew up in northern Wisconsin, so I've experienced the winters, and I'm happy to not be living through the winters. Like I said, though, everybody has to deal with their own situation. So if I was doing this in Wisconsin, I would build a different way. Here in central Florida, I don't have air conditioning, so it gets pretty hot on those 90, 95 degree days during the summer. But I have my house built under the shade of a big tree, and the great news about that is it keeps it cooler, but in the winter with no heating, that means pretty chilly nights and some pretty chilly mornings. There's not insulation either. So that's a big challenge. Number four, I use repurposed materials to build this tiny house. And repurposed materials take a lot more time and really a lot more effort and creativity. Going to the store and just buying everything brand new and having your list saves really a lot of time and thinking. And beyond that, the building is done, but still I'm trying to use repurposed materials. And with repurposed materials, not everything fits together always quite as smoothly, so sometimes it makes things a little less convenient. Along those lines is number five, and that's that I still try to only buy secondhand materials. So for example, my cutting board has broken into three pieces, but I haven't found a used wooden cutting board yet, so I'm just using a third of that cutting board. So trying to do things as only secondhand materials and not buy new stuff has definitely been a big challenge as well. Number six, I am definitely a minimalist. And generally minimalism and having a tiny house do go pretty hand in hand, but one of the challenges is that versus having no place whatsoever and having a place, there's always a lot of things to do and more possessions are actually needed versus when I traveled with everything that I owned fitting into my backpack. I also try to have as few electrical items as possible. So I have a manual hair trimmer, and that is definitely more work than just a electric razor. Also, I don't have a fridge, only a freezer, so that's not as convenient. No oven, and of course, no microwave. I haven't had one of those for probably about seven years though. And also, I just have one extension cord with electricity going to the house that just has three plugs. That's to keep my electricity usage to a minimum, but it often means juggling things if I'm trying to do a few things at once. Number seven, this tiny house gets dirty really easily. Because it's so small, it's really easy to sort of make a quick mess, and it's also easy to just fill it up with dirt, especially because I'm constantly going in and out, in and out, in and out to my outdoor kitchen and my compost toilet. The good news is that it's very easy to clean because it is so small, but I do find myself constantly cleaning. Number eight, sustainable living takes time. A lot of people that you see online will make everything just look super easy, and in some ways, it is easier than living that busy life where you need to earn lots of money and have lots of bills, but it also has its challenges. For me, all the different things I have to do around here to live sustainably add up. For example, there's my compost toilet. I have to empty the bucket about once a week. I have to get sawdust, and I grow my own toilet paper. Water isn't just coming from the tap seemingly infinitely. I harvest my water from the sky, and that means I'm so often having to refill my Berkey filter to have clean drinking water. Algae grows in the tank, so I have to clean out those tanks eventually, and it just takes a little bit more time. My biogas stove turns food waste into methane that I can cook with, and that's great, but I have to constantly feed it with food waste, and it doesn't always produce enough gas, so I still have a propane stove as well, and I have to be switching it back and forth. With my solar oven, I'm able to cook food from the sun, which is amazing, but it's certainly more work to take out my solar oven, cook with it, and put it back than it is to just turn on the electricity or turn on the gas. Right now, I'm growing and foraging 100% of my food, and the benefits of that are amazing, but no grocery stores and no restaurants means a heck of a lot more work for me. Right now, I'm working 40 to 60 hours a week just on food alone. The compost pile. Composting is really easy, but it is in many ways more convenient to throw it in a garbage can and have it be someone else's problem, because I have a compost pile, I'm dealing with my own waste, I deal with some things like fruit flies and flies and even some rats. I try to live a pretty zero waste life, not perfect by any means, but trying to create as little garbage as possible, and the reality is is that a lot of times that means the convenient option is not an option for me. Lastly, there's transportation. I don't have a car, I haven't had one for about six years, and it's the life for me. However, if it's hot or it's cold or it's raining and I need to get somewhere, I'm probably biking, and that's not as easy as just hopping into that gas-powered car, turning on the AC or the heat, and going wherever I would need to go. So again, none of these things on their own are necessarily that challenging. It's just that to live a really sustainable life, it's about all my actions and how they combine and the impact that I have the world around me, and it really adds up. Number nine, I'm living here short-term, only about two years in Orlando. So the reality is by the time that I get everything set up and done and feeling the way I like it, that's when I'll be moving. So if I was here for a long time, I'd have time to really get things established and get into that flow, but definitely staying somewhere short-term has its downsides. Number 10, I built this tiny house in this little homestead on someone else's land. I don't own any land of my own. So that means that I don't necessarily get to do things my own way, that we have to work together. We do a work exchange. So in exchange for me setting up my tiny house here, I built a garden and helping her to live more sustainably, to grow her own food, and after I leave, the tiny house is hers. It's the perfect situation for me, but not being able to do things my way always certainly has its challenges. All right, number 11, and lastly, and there's a whole bunch of other ones out there, but for this video, this is the last one, and this is a big one for a lot of people, and that's that this tiny house is not technically legal. So I built it within building codes. It's a shed, basically. So that part's fine, but I'm not technically allowed to live in the shed. Now, for me, it's not really a big worry. I've had media out here every week. I'm on the front of two of the two largest local print media outlets and multiple of the local news channels, so I'm not really worried about it, but it's a slight bit of a worry. Now, for me, what I'm doing is I'm following earth code over city code. I live my life in a way where as long as what I'm doing is beneficial to the earth, my community, and myself, and isn't harming other people, then that's when earth code will go over city code sometimes, and for me, that's what it's all about. Sometimes we have to break some rules to do the right thing. So those are my top 11 challenges of living simply and sustainably in my tiny house, but why make this video? Why even tell you about all this? There's a few reasons. One, I have no desire to play into any delusion that life is easy, and whether you're living in a mansion or a tiny house or simply or extravagantly, every life has its challenges. I wanted to share some of the challenges that I'm dealing with here so you can see that it's not just all glorious and it's not just all easy. There are definitely a lot of challenges to it. Many people who go into something like this, trying to live in a tiny house and aren't aware of the challenges, well, it ends up being something that they didn't expect and then they end up quitting. So I wanna help people to be a little more prepared by knowing that this is something that's challenging and try to be prepared for that. And I'm definitely a big fan of just sharing my experience so you can learn from my challenges. And then when you're planning your tiny house, your simple life, you can use these things to cater it towards your situation. Another thing that I wanna say is that all of this is solvable. These don't have to be challenges or problems necessarily for anyone else. These are my challenges, but they're all solvable. For me, one of my biggest limits is time. I'm trying to do so much in a short period of time. I also just wanna say that I'm definitely not complaining here. This is the situation that I want to be living in. These challenges that I'm sharing with you today are all worth it. And I've known about these challenges because I've been living simply and sustainably for about seven years now. So I'm definitely not complaining. I'm just sharing the challenges of life. So why even do this with all these challenges? For me, it comes down to the fact that a quality existence takes time. We can live in a way where we get a quality existence, but it's a burden on other people. But to me, a truly quality existence that's beneficial to ourselves, our communities, and the world as a whole takes time. And that's why I'm willing to take the time to do all these things. So if you got a lot out of this video, if you got some inspiration, some motivation, some education, I'm right here on YouTube and I'm here to answer your questions and to share with you. So if you like this, definitely hit the like button, subscribe, and stay tuned for more. See y'all soon. Love y'all very much.