Living OFF-GRID & Mortgage-Free In a Forest Tiny Home | Full Interview

Hello everyone it's Becky from Unplugged Tiny Homes here. Today I'm going to take you through this tiny home behind me which is a Kookaburra, an 8 by 3 meter long tiny home. We are so lucky to be in this beautiful location in the mountains and we will be chatting to the owner Joanne who's going to talk about her journey and tell us the story of why she went Unplugged and why she went tiny. So I can't wait to share this with you and I hope you enjoy. Hi Joanne. Hi. Thank you for having us. You're welcome. I've been so excited to come and see this property. It's so beautiful so like congratulations on having such a beautiful home. Thank you. I've been waiting for you to come and see it. I was lucky enough to be offered this piece of paradise here to put my Unplugged Tiny Home on and I'm just yeah really happy with how everything's ended up and I'm just living the dream. Well like everyone else wants as well so I can't wait to see everything for you to take us around and talk us through your property, your choices and everything like that. Yeah. So so yeah let's let's take a little look through your home. Okay. So one thing we get a lot of questions about is things to do with disasters such as fires and floods so take me through that thought process for you when you were planning your home and you have a plan? Yeah sure do. So the main thing is yes I'm in a fire area so when I planned where I was going to position my tiny home and the lawn and everything it's all designed so that with my second pod now that I have the deck here it's more of a fixed building but so my fire plan is to take out all my personal items if I'm limited to time we just take everything out and put it into the second pod and then we've got a tractor on the property that can hook up to the drawbar on the on that one and you can see how I've landscaped it so that I can bring that tiny home out through here and move it to the back of the property where it's it's very rainforesty very wet area where the fires don't come. I've also tried to clear as much as possible the vegetation so it's more lush green and we have goats on the hill to keep that vegetation down. Permanent fire fires. Another important thing is to have gutter guard in your gutters right and keep the leaves out of yeah keeping all that dry vegetation away from your tiny home but the gutter guard in the gutters eliminates the leaf buildup that can cause from embers and things like that. Yeah so there's a lot of things to consider I guess it changes from area to area for clients that are looking for this option but just even thinking about the placement of the drawbar on the property so that you can easily pull it out those are things that you have thought about in your journey. Yeah yeah same as why my drawbar on this one is here and the way I've I've measured it exactly so that one can also be taken out of the property yeah if need be. With some planning. Yeah with some yeah if with time to be able to move the deck but yeah it is doable yeah. Nice awesome thank you. Before we start I want to acknowledge all these beautiful sounds that we're hearing right now so if you can't hear this we've got the the birds we've got the wind it's just so peaceful you you couldn't make this up yeah it's beautiful yeah it is yeah so I want to hear a bit about your journey to this point that we're sitting here in in your tiny home right now so can you tell me a little bit about why you chose to go tiny and how did you you get there? Okay I was living in a city had a mortgage on an apartment and I was injured at work and I haven't really worked a full-time job since so I was very stressed out about how I was going to continue paying my mortgage and I moved up to the mountains and was staying with family up here and and then the tiny home sort of appealed to me after walking the Camino de Santiago and realizing that we don't need need so much stuff in our life and that you know I just decluttered my life and so I moved into a small cottage up here and then started to research and went to the Hawkesbury Tiny Home Expo where I met Tim and Amy and I went through I went for two days through all of the tiny homes I took my daughters with me so that they could point out things that maybe I didn't see and we just kept going back to unplugged and that just the feeling that I got with Tim and Amy and their product their build just everything was just beautiful I went this this is the one this is the one and this is the kookaburra that they had at the expo yeah so you actually saw the home yeah and I actually somebody bought that kookaburra at the expo so this is the same slightly slightly custom built for me so from there on I sold my apartment and now I'm debt free and stress free and wow yeah just life is life is just so much happier now not having to worry about a mortgage to pay yeah yeah so that's something that appeals to a lot of people a lot of our clients and the people that come to our expos yeah what was it about the home when you were walking around what were your little things that you needed like did you have a checklist or did you have something that kind of inspired you like what was your drive that you needed in a tiny home so this is my forever home now so I wanted those luxury items like I wanted a bath and I wanted the dishwasher and yeah I wanted a full working kitchen like a full size kitchen where I could fit a full size fridge and a full pull-out pantry because I do a lot of cooking and baking and living rural you need to have a lot of staples so you need that cupboard space so yeah good sized kitchen for me this outdoor deck was also on the plan to have this space to come outside and just sit and enjoy everything that's around me yeah getting a bit well it's isn't it beautiful though it is it is enjoy this every day and that's also I think something that is a desire for a lot of our clients they want to change the pace of life yeah they want to get out of the city and they want to have a more calm pace of life yeah yeah so can you tell me a little bit about uh while your tiny home was getting built yeah what kind preparations were you doing were there anything for you to think about like yeah how did you prepare for this change okay so yeah the first was the plan and which way it was going to face and also we talked about the fire plan how how we would position them to be able to move them so the landscaping of the garden had to be where the driveway was positioned in the right place and the two tiny homes in the right place connecting to electricity because of the amount of trees that I have here I opted to go and connect to the mains power yep and organize to have 20 000 litre water tank that was delivered right at the very beginning I had the lands leveled off and the road base put down and got all the ground read ready for the tiny home to sit on and the and the water tank and connecting the electricity ready for it to just be plugged in when it arrived yep and yeah that's and just starting to shape the gardens around where I wanted shade and trees and things like that yeah yeah nice so there are things to think about even while the home is being built just prepare mentally especially if you have land or don't have land there's things to think about during that process another thing I would like to ask you because we spoke briefly on the phone before we came here and you mentioned just I think you said something like I live a very boring life and then you explained or you described what you were doing every day and for many people I talk with every day that's what they want to be doing yeah so can you can you describe to me what do you do when you live in a tiny home what do you what does your week look like what does your day look like well one thing it's not a lot of housework tick nice um no I mean I love my garden it's like a meditative hobby for me it's I just get a good feeling being in my garden um and my rescue chickens and just um yeah growing my veggies I've also got my grandson up just up up close by so I'd spend a bit of time with him but yeah it's just big and and be able to just go on a bushwalk there's lots of bushwalks around here yeah um but just yeah I just enjoy being around my chooks and my veggie garden and my flowers I mean who wouldn't yeah in a place like this yeah and as you mentioned as well earlier on you you don't really want to leave no I'm sitting here and I'm so content I know I sit here every afternoon and yeah and I just look out and I go oh life is good this is my home this is my life yeah yeah I don't don't want to leave yeah it's beautiful can you talk to me a little bit more about your services so you said you you have electricity and a rain tank um and do you have gas as well so I have gas hot water yep and I only just changed my gas bottle over after 18 months wow yeah so the one the one bottle yeah 18 months I got out of one bottle and so my my water tank is hooked up I've got both my gutters connected so all my rain water off the roof is topping up my my water tank and yeah I've connected I went underground I don't have any power lines above ground they're all underground to the main Endeavor pole so that is some you have to apply for that through Endeavor Energy but yeah yeah the other thing I wanted to mention is phone signal that if you're living rural it's phone signal internet all of that sort of thing even tv reception yeah can be an issue you can see there's a lot of trees around here so what I've done is I've put a a cell fire repeater aerial that's up on the roof there so with that that boosts the the 4g network in my area so I only could get one one bar 4g and with that I get three to four bar 4g oh so it's a it's worth investing in getting a cell fire repeater aerial that's through Telstra that's so without that I wouldn't have any internet yeah or phone reception and so what I do is I I hot spot my phone onto my devices to be able to watch say like channel 9 SBS ABC and so I just use my internet data on my phone and that's yeah that was one of the issues I found here when I moved here was reception for phone internet and also to even have a tv up here not that I needed tv yeah you got yes you got 24 hour beautiful aesthetic views yeah and what kind of toilet grey water system what okay so I've got the EcoFlow compost toilet yep love it no smell I know let's bust the myth and you know so it's it's three months you don't have to do anything amazing and then when my first three months came up when okay it's time to do the changeover and I was dreading it and within five minutes unclip it take it out put the empty one in sit the other one to the side for three months I thought wow that's it's not messy it's not smelly it's not it's like yeah yeah and I was I was thinking um my three young grandchildren when they come to visit they'll probably look at it and be a bit scared of compost toilet looks different because there's no water in it I'm thinking it you know are they going to be too afraid to use it and they all don't go in there and they know you know handful of that and 10 sprays of that yeah okay they call me Gjo Gjo I'm just going to the toilet they're fine so that's I got the compost toilet um so my grey water at the moment all of my products I'm using are eco friendly um earth products yeah so my grey water goes into a hose and I water my plants with it and the same with my kitchen sink water I will get a a grey water system built but I'm at the moment I'm doing the same I'm just using it in my garden at the moment and being plant-based diet I really don't have any animal fats and things like that in my in my washing up water it's it's maybe a bit of olive oil and things like that so it just goes into the garden and as you can see there's nothing wrong with the garden she's thriving yeah yeah she's doing very well so my grey water is yeah it goes into the the the garden so yeah amazing yeah one last question with the composting toilet do you where do you do you bury it you put okay so I take it down the hill yep and wherever there's a a bit of a ditch yep down there um I just pop it in there and it's just like leaf and um vegetation uh compost pile over there it just looks like that nice yeah yeah so yeah it just I just wheel it down because it's on wheels yeah and I just find a little bit of a ditch and I just you know I put all my lawn clippings and things in there too like just to level out areas of the land yeah yeah amazing but you can put it in your flower gardens yeah yeah yeah just not the veggie yeah not the veggie beds but yeah yeah Joanne we're in this beautiful kitchen there's so many things that I want to talk about and for you to walk us through but let's just start from the beginning so you told me earlier that a big functional kitchen was important to you yeah so what went into that thought process what are some of those important things in the kitchen I wanted to fit a good my full-size fridge I also wanted the dish drawer the dish drawer dishwasher and I also wanted this island bench um and I've I had a powerpoint put in the floor there so that I can have my appliances in the center of the of the kitchen but it still gives me plenty of bench space and I I love this timber feature open shelf I like to be able to just get my cups and glasses and things down from there and the amount of cupboards was important because because I do like to cook a lot yeah and the full-size pull-out pantry that I have there as well to put all my pantry staples and things amazing while we're on the subject of drawers and storage how was the process of decluttering for you when you were going tiny in a kitchen but also in general like how did you go through that process okay I think you've got to look at what what you use on a regular basis on a daily basis and then look at items and think I have not used that for ages little gadgets and things like that but then when you think about it I'm I live here alone I really only need a certain amount of bowls plates cups especially coffee cups like I do have a few coffee cups but sometimes you end up with an entire cupboard of a collection of them yeah and you think well you're only really using one or two per day so you've just got to ask yourself what am I using and what am I not using and yeah we don't need that amount of stuff in in your kitchen yeah something we often tell our clients at Unplugged is move into the space first and live in it get a feel for what you actually need and use and don't necessarily make all your decisions before you've moved in a lot of people think oh I've got to get rid of everything straight away but you also get quite creative in a tiny home where you might get used for something in a different way than it used to be or there are things that might not occur to you until you've lived there exactly yeah you do tend to move things around a bit like for instance this area here was meant for the microwave but I prefer to put all my cookbooks up there and I actually asked him and Amy to put a shelf in and just design that for me for my everyday like pasta and oats and things and then my cookbooks and I put my microwave on the center here so that that and my toaster and my two main appliances that are just easy with the bench on the top just to take things out of the microwave and straight onto here so that was an important thing for me to have that microwave close by yeah and the toaster I do like my toast we do need a toaster in Australian homes is like and my coffee machine yes of course yeah I really love that you've you've managed to fit the kitchen island in as well because that's I feel like that's something that's more you can't fit that because it's more for a traditional home but yeah this seems like it's a DIY kitchen this is a little I did you know measure and research and this one is an IKEA one you put together yourself and Tim and Amy gave me some matching bench to go on top of that the good thing is it is on wheels and I can move it and if I decide that I don't want it anymore it's it's not fixed so it can be taken out and the power point in the floor is one that is flat to the floor so I can just put a mat on it and you wouldn't even know it was there so awesome love that so through the design process we're building you a home so take me through that journey how did you experience the whole planning and designing your home from how was that journey with Unplugged for you really easy yes the fact also that Unplugged during Lawson in the Blue Mountains I was able to go and visit and sit with Amy and go through and do my mood board and and talk through my ideas and all my visions in my head and be able to put that into a plan on paper and to be able to custom design this kookaburra to how I wanted it yeah it was yeah everything that I wanted yeah is what what I got is this yes so these are all your ideas yeah in a physical shape yeah so the the tiles on the back of the kitchen here I sourced them from a supplier in New Zealand so they're an adhesive um lightweight tile which looks like ceramic but in a tiny home it's all about the weight so I wanted this green yeah you want the look you want the effect but we have to be mindful of the weight yeah so this is a great compromise I mean when you walked in I think you thought they were yeah yeah I think so I was I was convinced that these were tiles they look very realistic and very easy to clean yeah that's what I was going to say yeah easy to clean as well very happy with that product awesome yeah this is same as any kitchen in a standard size house yep the amount of cupboard space that I have got you know my bowls got all my plates big cooking bowls up there I've got my um all my storage containers and things cutlery all of this down in here you've utilized this corner really yeah so I've got my oils and my peppers and salts and things like that my coffee machine my beautiful dish drawer and then I mean look how many saucepans and things I've got in there yeah that's like a professional I think I have six saucepans and about six fry pans and then my bottom drawer down that below there it's got my you know my ziploc bags and things like that full-size fridge size right and this pantry that's I mean you know yeah plus yeah all this up here is also pantry staples and then I have all my um pulses and flowers and because I live a long way from the local shops you know you've got to have everything yeah just go okay I'm gonna make this I'm gonna make that can't just nip to the shop or have something delivered so yeah you know my cookbooks up there so I mean to me this is yeah I've even got like I've got my tea towels and everything in here my dish cloths microwave toaster yeah and my little uh you've got a tiny air fryer as well yeah pretty much everything you have in a standard kitchen or even more in some homes in tiny apartments in Sydney but look what I have but look at this window you don't get that who gets that cooking and having that I love it and sitting here I sit and have a coffee in the morning here yeah and just watch all the little birds yeah there's no boring uh uh splash back that most people have at the perfect what more could you need all right I think we're standing in probably my favorite room because it's my favorite room too you have a bathtub in your tiny home yeah how did we get there so when I went to the expo and I saw the Kookaburra which is this tiny home on display it's the one I fell in love with but I did want to customize a certain a few things and I wanted a bath and I wanted this back back door mudroom entrance yeah so sitting down with Amy and the team and we moved this wall and made the actual lounge area smaller that's why I have the second pod as my lounge so I wanted a combined sort of mudroom bathroom so this wall got moved put the sliding door in so we could put the the bath in yeah and the shower it wasn't easy it was a lot of moving things around because of this bulkhead of the of the bed this is the bed upstairs yeah so we had to make sure that we designed it that the toilet didn't have anything above it and the bath and the door so yeah there were a lot of adjustments yeah but it worked out perfectly yeah and then I put in the the tea cupboards this one is my bathroom cupboard and this is my shoe cupboard with and it's also my cat foods in there and then this is my hanging my coats and things so this is pretty much the entrance you would use yeah like I come home or if I've been out in the garden I've got muddy boots or anything I've got my boot rack outside I come in this door yeah I've also we designed it that we put the washing machine under the stairwell yeah so it saved room there and it's just tucked away use every nook you can yeah and it's enough space to be able to fit my laundry basket on top of the washing machine perfect yeah so everything fitted in here and it's like it's a who has a bathroom this big like and this is a tiny this is a tiny home it's really spacious and every time I walk in I go I love my bathroom oh I love your bathroom I just yeah and the tap where the API tap where it's beautiful the rain shower yeah it's all really nice upstairs quite a spacious bedroom and yeah this is the first thing I notice yeah standing heights lofts the one thing I didn't want was a bedroom where I'd have to go up the stairs and then sort of like crawl into a bed I wanted to be able to stand up I mean I am short but I can walk around and make my bed got the whole chest of drawers here with all my smalls and t-shirts and everything and plenty of hanging space either side size yeah there's a lot of storage in here and also just behind the bed here you've got this I've got all my linen in here which is really handy to have you don't even know it's there but it's it's like goes all the way down and you've also got I mean like you could put books and things along the back there if you wanted to and the skylight I had to have the skylight of course lying there seeing the full moon and just the trees I can see all the trees moving at night and then in the morning looking out over the property yeah there is one thing with these windows they're open at the moment if it rains you do get rain in so I think I'm eventually going to add some eaves some little little I don't know what you call them to just so that I can leave the windows open great yeah yeah and you don't sort of realize these things until you move into your tiny house think oh yeah well I want to leave my windows open yeah to get that cross ventilation and if there's rain coming then you know you know if you're going to head to town you can put the eaves if you've had eaves there then you can leave your windows open and the rain won't come in great little tips there for everyone all right so this is your second pod yeah it's your DIY project yes talk us through this one so at the time when I put my order in with Tim and Amy with Unplugged financially I couldn't get this second pod at finished stage so I got it lock up yeah so they were happy to deliver it like that and so as I'm progressing along through the build I'm just getting the interior done but the purpose of this second build is because I took out the lounge area from the Kookaburra this is going to be my my chill room in the winter time with the couch and it's having a wood fire in the corner I've also put in storage sliding there'll be sliding doors so extra storage in the in one end of here so this is a sofa bed so that family and friends can come and visit but eventually down the track I think if I'm not able to go up the stairs in the bedroom yeah yeah I can convert this to a bedroom yes and very easily make this my my bedroom area and just have the and then your guests guests will be guests can have the um the upstairs so it's a multi-use pod so it came to you as a so a lock-up stage yeah you had the cladding on frames were off yeah so I've done the insulation yep I'm now just about to put my walls in and I've got my floorboards to go in and then the fireplace and my son-in-law has done the his electrician and he's put all the wiring in ready to go for my lights and my outside lights and indoor lights and power points and everything yeah so hopefully be finished for winter time and we'll have to come back and yeah look at the final product by the fire yeah so that's a very clever way for people as an option for a cost-saving thing and also space that you can add that extra space later on yeah these can also be modular to fit on a home if you wanted that entrance prepared in the wall for later on to connect yeah I've also thought about um yeah how easy it is to connect I mean and these are so this one is 2.8 wide yeah the main cooker bar is three meters wide and this is six meter width so yeah it's it's quite a big space to do whatever you want with it as that extra room be it a bedroom a lounge room a study you could even make it a bedroom and have another like an ensuite could easily put an ensuite yeah like a little toilet and and shower in this end and make it another whole living space in their bedroom and yeah it's a very clever use of space and yeah you're flexible to do with it what you want yeah yeah yeah oh awesome yeah that's it for today thank you so much for coming along and checking out this tiny home with us and listening to Joanne's beautiful story I hope you found it informative and beautiful like I did I've had such a beautiful day here uh enjoying this stunning property so if you want to follow along for more make sure that you follow us on socials instagram facebook pinterest youtube all the rest of it and check out our website we update it with vlogs and vlogs and all the rest of it so unplugged.com.au and yeah see you next time