We live in a tiny home on wheels.

Energy to charge our devices is generated by the sun.

All our water is harvested from the rain that falls on the roof.

We warm ourselves by the fire of a rocket stove.

We don’t eat animals.

We have bad WiFi.

It may sound drastically and extreme. Uneasy or free or rebellious. It may sound as an escape from the polarized world, a flea from the rat-race.

It is just a way of life. Not because it’s our only option, but because we believe in this way of life.

Tiny home

It has never been our intention to live in this tiny wooden home. It was supposed to be a show-model in which ecological ways of living unite: harvested rainwater to filter, wash and drink; solar panels to generate energy; a rocket stove to warm ourselves on chilly days and cook (cooking we actually haven’t done much as we use the community-kitchen, but we did bake bread!).

As more and more dedication and love had been invested in making this home, we decided to move in last April. Moreover, if you believe and say it’s possible to live this kind of life, you must do it first!

Change

This eco-friendly and sustainable lifestyle I have started to appreciate. I gave it some time, because it’s quite a change. I shower when the sun appears over the hills, so the water will be warm. When we have bad weather, we light the rocket stove that warms up the house and the water so we still have warm showers. We need to anticipate and see what the weather does. Two or more days of heavy clouded weather coming? We shouldn’t use the electrical water boiler as there will be hardly or no sun to charge the batteries. And washing our clothes in the wash machine then needs to wait too.

Conscious

This way of life makes me more conscious and appreciative. In the Netherlands it’s so normal to always have a warm shower or bath available and the water from the taps seems an endless stream. Here we have warm showers too, but things need to happen first to achieve this. When it rains for example I feel gratitude for the rain as it fills up the water tanks beneath the floor. The sound of raindrops is a grateful sound. I never thought this way.

Therefore it’s with mixed feelings that we say goodbye to our sweet home nine months later. We don’t take it with us. It will be a show model here in the ecological centre, just as it was planned.
The plan is to live in a new “eco gypsy wagon” in a couple of years. First other tiny homes will be built for our friends in our new community on Mallorca.

My slow life in this green Ibizan valley has turned me into a more flexible and conscious human. And I am thankful for this.

To be continued on Mallorca!

Con Amor,

Eva