Man Living in a 10'x10' Tiny House & Homesteading in the City
Hey everyone, in this video we're going to meet up with Rob Greenfield. He's a really inspiring guy
and now he's living in a tiny house that he built for only $1,500 using reclaimed materials. In this
video Rob's going to give us a full tour and explain how all the systems work because in
addition to building the tiny house he's also collecting rainwater, growing and foraging 100%
of his food, using a biodigester to create fuel and a lot more. On top of that he's doing all of
this in an urban backyard. We're also going to ask him about the challenges and benefits of his
super sustainable lifestyle so stay tuned because there's lots of good stuff in this video.
I really strive to live simply and so for me this tiny house and this homestead that I've created
it allows me to live the simple life that I desire. I don't have any bills, no debt,
no car, no driver's license and really a lot of that is possible because this little homestead
allows me to meet the basic needs that I have and really prevents me from overextending myself,
from wanting more and having more than I can need. I have food, I have water, I have electricity,
the little bit that I need and I'm able to live a pretty peaceful content life here.
So this is the house here. It is pretty small as you can see. It's about a hundred square feet,
10 foot by 10 foot and one of the most important things for me when I decided that I was going to
build a tiny house was that I wanted to do it in a way that had as minimal of an impact as I could.
So for me what that meant was using repurposed materials. So this was built out of about 99%
secondhand and repurposed materials and I did it for about $1,500, under $1,500.
One of my big goals through living simply and living sustainably is really to make it accessible
to other people and to help them to be able to live in a similar way if they desire to. So I
see some of these really expensive tiny houses out there that might be $100,000, $150,000 and my
goal is to kind of show the other end of the spectrum of just how simple it can be, how
inexpensive it can be and doing it in a way that really minimizes our environmental impact. I'll
take you inside but you know 100 square feet it's pretty small. So I'm living in Orlando,
Florida in a very urban area. I'm just about three miles or so from downtown and so the way that I
designed this house was to really fit into the neighborhood. I didn't want something that really
stuck out since tiny houses aren't actually legal in a lot of places and I'm not putting it on wheels.
So what I decided to do is build it to be basically just like a shed and that's the way that I really
designed it. So what I used is mostly leftover materials from construction sites. So I'm using
basic two by fours and plywood. I used pallets as the foundation. The roof is just basic metal.
These are secondhand materials I got off craigslist for the windows. Same for the doors.
So yeah building wise it was a very simple design. I basically did research on sheds online
and then adapted it for my needs. You know sheds aren't typically going to have so much windows
and such large doors for example. Here in Florida we deal with extremely hot weather during the
summer so one of my main challenges was designing this in a way where I'd be able to make it through
our heat you know our hot humid summers. So one of the most important things was just leaving the roof
open so that I could have a breeze a cross breeze that just comes through here. Same with the
windows and the doors on either side there can always be a nice breeze coming through here.
Obviously I don't have air conditioning and I don't even really have insulation. I used a burlap
just as a cover and all that really is is it just makes it look better so it's not
you know plywood on the other side but there's no insulation in there. So this is really designed
for the heat of the summers and the winter is a little rough because I don't have a stove or
insulation but the winter here is short and I made it work through my first winter.
Other things the bed is just designed out of leftover 2x4s from the build mostly
and this is flooring from a house that flooded. Same with the floor down here this is just I got
this off Craigslist. It was flooring that was from a house that had flooded and this was stuff
that wasn't damaged but they were still getting rid of it. The desk is built out of pallets and
leftover 2x4s. Most of the things that I didn't build I was able to find used. I got this chair
for $15 for example from a garage sale. The shelves are from Habitat for Humanity. You know
pretty pretty basic pretty simple stuff you can see there's just not a whole lot here. I always
have a little bit of hard time with the tours because there's kind of so little going on in
here but what's really going on is food. I'm currently doing a project where for one year
I'm growing and foraging a hundred percent of my food so what this house really is is a capsule for
my food. Over here I've got pumpkins that I grew last summer these are called seminal pumpkins.
These are all ferments like honey wine and vinegars and ginger beer and jun and such.
A small library of books a lot of these are about how to grow food. More food down here if I come
back here this is another one of my food storage shelves. I have lots of honey I have four beehives
two here and two at another place. Last fall I got 75 pounds of honey and it's been plenty for me
it's a really important part of what I'm doing. And then I do a lot of foraging so here's citrus
oranges grapefruits lemons here is papayas I grow these in my garden. And down here I've got a lot
of my staples so pigeon peas that come from my front yard pumpkin seeds lots of herbs like onion
and garlic dried got things like my coconut oil that I make from coconuts that I forage and
salt from the ocean. So really you know the purpose of me living here in Orlando for two years and
having this tiny house is a part of this project of growing and foraging 100 percent of my food for
a year. So that's really what this whole house is based around. I live pretty simply with pretty
minimal stuff this is my clothing shelf right here all of my clothes fit pretty comfortably
onto one shelf. These are some of my personal possessions here you know hygiene wise I don't
need a whole lot of things a bamboo toothbrush a chew stick that's a alternative way of cleaning
teeth some essential oils dental floss you know not a whole lot pretty basic stuff there. In my
last tiny house I lived off the grid so I had solar panels to meet my electrical needs and I
wasn't connected to the public utilities for water. For this project I decided to be connected
to the municipal electricity. One of the main reasons is the deep chest freezer so I store
lots of food in here things like prickly pear cactus fruit just you know bags of things that
I'm trying to save this is roselle for example it's important to be able to store bulk amounts
of food like this is yucca for example one of my staple crops. So the thing about the deep chest
freezer is it only uses about three dollars a month in electricity but I can store about 200
pounds of food so I just have an extension cord that's running from the property that I'm on
and I'm using less than ten dollars a month total. So I was originally going to do solar panels but
I'm just living here for about two years and realized I didn't really feel like the trade-off
of spending the money on solar and having them for a short period of time was really necessary
and I felt like it's actually more sustainable to be connected to the to the grid for the little bit
of electricity that I use rather than doing something like buying new solar panels. So I have
just three plugs so it minimizes the amount of electricity I can use my computer is one thing
that I'm often using a lamp and other basic things the bed this is where I store things underneath
plenty of space to store things a lot of this is food oriented as well one of the big things is
my bee boxes the honey supers for when they're not using those so just some very basic storage
I would have a bed on the ground but it's kind of key for the storage in an ideal situation I'd
like to have a loft but just didn't quite play out this time the bed works as a couch or my bed
just simply pull it out like this and I've got my bed and then put it back and there's the couch
and it's not always that simple or easy but behind it here is a mosquito net so you can see this
place is very open I don't have screens in the windows so I have a mosquito net so at night I
put that over don't have to worry about the mosquitoes at night they get pretty tough here
in the summer this summer I'm probably going to put screens on the window and a net here and then
put mosquito nets up there because it was pretty rough last summer I decided not to do it on wheels
because I just really don't want to be moving around a tiny house and because a trailer would
have been the most expensive part so I built it right here on pallets and it'll stay here
that's pretty much the inside of the house I don't spend most of my time inside of my house
I spend more of it out in my community or or out in my yard in my outdoor kitchen and things like
that so I'll take you outside now so this is my outdoor kitchen behind me and I spend a lot of
my time here in a normal day I might cook breakfast lunch and dinner one of my favorite parts about
this is that I drink rainwater so I'm not connected to the grid for water I do have access
to a hose but about 99% of my water here comes from harvesting rainwater I harvest it on the roof
of the tiny house and then for drinking water it goes right into here and comes out pure delicious
fresh drinking water behind me is a barrel and I fill that up with water from that I harvest from
the property owner's roof so that I have more surface area to harvest from and this is just a
gravity fed sink so no electricity or anything like that it just comes out using gravity using
the weight of the water in the barrel and then the water when I release it just goes down instead of
going off into a sewer system to be a waste product for someone else to deal with it just goes down a
tube and then right out to the back where I've planted different water loving plants bananas
for example and taro I have a few ways to cook I have a solar oven which I need to start using more
now that it's going to be summertime and my backyard is pretty shady and so now that it's
summer there's going to be more sun so I'll start using that more I have two stoves I have a regular
propane stove that I fill up a five gallon or 20 pound propane tank and that's what I currently
am using at the moment and then I also have a bio digester that turns food waste into methane that
I can cook with that hasn't been able to produce as much as I need so I still need to keep my
propane stove I'm hoping I can get that thing running to the point where I can you know be
completely independent of the fossil fuels but for now I'm still using the propane so I also can
cook with wood the wood is just wood that I gather from the neighborhood fallen down trees or heat
treated pallets that are clean to cook with and if I have a large project like boiling lots of salt
water I'll use this I'd like to have a rocket stove but just haven't gotten around to making
one yet over here is the bio digester so food waste simply goes down into here and it's basically
like a stomach the bacteria in here creates methane as one of the byproducts of breaking
things down the methane is collected in this bladder here and then this is pressured goes
through a pipe that I just a little pipe that goes underground over to my stove so that's one way that
I deal with food waste another way is right here and this is the compost bin so the compost bin is
extremely simple it's one of the simplest forms of compost bins out there it's just a some chicken
wire wrapped around into a circle and this is a way for me to not put my burden on others not
put food waste to the landfill where it makes methane but instead it turns into a healthy
nutritious soil that I can then use to grow my food so here is one of my favorite plants if not
my favorite plant in the backyard and this is my toilet paper it's called the blue spur flower
it's got many common names and not only does it actually smell great because it's in the mint
family but it actually is just about as one of the softest plants I mean it's just oh one of the
softest plants you can possibly imagine so I grow my own toilet paper I haven't bought toilet paper
for about five years and I just come over here pick some and then go over to the toilet the amazing
thing is that this actually stays good after being on the plant for a while I've had it sitting
here for five days and still being soft and strong so that takes me to the compost toilet I've
mentioned it a couple times already but really my lifestyle is designed to not place my burdens
elsewhere but instead to take things that would otherwise be a waste product and utilize them
to you know add fertility to the world make the world a better place poop and pee is something
that a lot of us are just basically kind of scared of that we think is this horrible thing
but it's not it's something we've been doing for millions and millions of years and it can be dealt
with in a way that's environmentally responsible and actually can grow us food I have a pretty
simple system here this side is going for going number one p that is just used for the nitrogen
and that is really great for plants like bananas papaya and it's diluted using water so mostly
fruit trees bushes and such and then poop I just use sawdust as the covering it up medium and then
there's a five gallon bucket under here that is then composted it's called humanure and it's
supposed to be composted for a year and then that can be used for fertilizing fruit trees and such
so this is the compost toilet very simple system the entire thing probably costs 30 40 something
like that it's mostly leftover materials from the build so next I want to take you to the shower
I shower with rain water it's really my favorite way to shower this is a pretty simple system I'm
using a 275 gallon tote this is on the homeowner's house because I want to maximize my rainwater
harvesting 100 square feet captures quite a bit of rain but this house captures more so basic
pretty simple rainwater shower what I love about this shower is there is no such thing as wasting
water all I'm doing is slowing the water down from the sky to the time that it reaches the ground
and then actually this water is watering a banana tree that I've recently planted that will hopefully
grow tall into many and all of that treats the gray water and hopefully will grow me bananas
so you might be wondering how do I get around transportation a bike so and then one of the keys
is to have a bike rack to throw panniers on here to to carry what I need I also have a trailer that
can carry 300 pounds on it so I got rid of my car about six years ago now seven years ago now I've
been car free and do most of what I need to do on my bicycle and with the trailer all right so I'm
going to take you out to the garden and one of the most common questions is how does this work
how are you living here do you own the land do you rent and so what I'm doing is a work exchange
there's millions of unused backyards all across the United States and what I decided to do is
find a way where I could be of benefit and of service to someone else and meet my basic needs
at the same time so I found someone here in Orlando that had always wanted to grow their own food and
live more sustainably and the exchange is I've turned their whole front yard into a garden
and set up the rainwater harvesting and the compost and all of these things to help them
live more sustainably and get to eat their own homegrown food in exchange for me using
the backyard so this is the same thing that I did when I lived in San Diego it's been a really great
setup that allows me to live without a single bill to my name with no debt and live really
simply at the same time being in the service of others that's what it's all about it's about
how can we meet the needs of other people so this is the garden I have six gardens spread
out throughout Orlando and I spend a lot of my time out here it's amazing how much grows in a
small space I'm an environmental activist and an adventurer with a pretty simple mission of
trying to make the world around me a happier healthier place I do sort of extreme adventures
and activism campaigns to really catch people's attention and get them to think about important
environmental and social issues that we just often don't think about one of my big projects was trash
me in that I lived like the average American for a month but I had to wear every single piece of
trash that I created to create a visual of how much garbage just one person creates I've biked
across the United States three times on a bamboo bicycle raising awareness about sustainability
I had gotten my life down to just 111 possessions and for two years I traveled with everything that
I owned fitting on my back to really just get people thinking the more that I've basically
simplified my life the less needs that I have the more that I'm able to help meet other people's
needs the more than I'm able to really live in the service of others so I really love the setup
that I've created here because this allows me this creates that foundation of meeting my very
basic needs so that I can spend my time helping others inspiring others educating others to live
in a way that's better for the world better for the earth better for our communities and better
for ourselves a lot of people think by living with so little people think you're giving things up
and so you know the question of why I choose to have so little well it's the opposite of that
I found that the more that I've given up the more extraneous things that I didn't need the more that
I've opened up space to live with more purpose more passion to do the things that I really want
to do so the reason I live with less is that I can live with more so that I can spend time with
the people that I love so that I can spend time doing things that I love and so that I can live
the life that I want rather than a life that is based around making money to buy more stuff or
insure it or clean it or maintain it or organize it that's what it's all about living with less
so that I can have more more life I have no desire to feed into any delusion that life is easy and
no matter what life we're choosing to live there's challenges behind it this lifestyle you know of
simple living and of really trying to take responsibility for all of my actions and how
it affects the world around me it is challenging there's no question about it I deal with so many
challenges on a daily basis just to you know name a few it's the constant upkeep whether it's
emptying the compost toilet or filling my rainwater system or filling my water purification system or
you know the time in the garden whether it's uh you know maintaining it or the amount of
harvesting or preserving I do find that a small house tends to get messier a little easier because
I don't have tons of space to store things away so I do kind of find myself cleaning pretty often
but the good news is it's pretty short cleaning it doesn't take long to clean up a hundred square
foot tiny house living this outdoor life without air conditioning and without heat means that I am
more at the whim of the weather I am sometimes cold in the winter and I am hot in the summer
so that's a challenge but I've chosen not to outsource that burden to air conditioning which
means burning huge amounts of fossil fuels so it's worth it but it is a challenge the insects
are a challenge here in in Florida and not even having screens yeah last summer I got bit by a lot
of mosquitoes so that's been a challenge and with the outdoor kitchen the insects are a challenge
as well I'd like to improve and set up a just a screen around my outdoor kitchen to help with that
this summer so I'm constantly running into challenges living with so much less money
you know last year I made eight thousand dollars and the year before that it was five thousand
dollars so I live with very little money that has its challenges I really have to watch what I'm
doing and sometimes it definitely means going without things that I really in the moment would
like but all of it is a part of the bigger picture that it is the life that I want to be living
and the challenges are all a part of creating the lifestyle that I want which is living simply
living sustainably being an example for other people who have a desire to live that way
so no doubt it's challenging but the challenges are are definitely worth it
I hope you enjoyed this video if you want to follow Rob you can check him out on his
YouTube channel I'll put a link to it in the description of this video also don't forget
to subscribe to our channel we post a new video every single week about people trying
all sorts of different alternative lifestyles