People’s heads aren’t the only places you can live rent-free.
An enterprising Scottish woman is bypassing extortionate housing costs by living rent-free in a shipping container — where her expenses total just over $330 per month.
“It’s amazing to see my ideas coming together,” Robyn Swan, 33, told South West News Service of her unconventional living arrangement. “It’s quite tolling on your body, but I’d like to keep living off-grid as long as I can.”
The minimalist, whose goal is to become fully self-sufficient, gets by on the cheap by growing crops, raising animals and even harvesting rainwater.
The Scotswoman’s dream of living off-grid began in 2023 when she moved out of her home, sold all of her possessions — including her car, furniture and TV — and remortgaged her house so she could buy a seven-acre plot of land near Stirling for around $240,000.
She then dropped another $5,400 having a 40-by-8-foot shipping container erected on the land for her and her partner, Luke, 29, to live in.
“Once I bought the land, we didn’t even start in a caravan (a trailer) — we moved straight into the container and built it around us,” said Swan, who quickly got to work outfitting her barebones abode.
Putting herself in a literal box was initially rough going. Swan slept on a mattress on the floor of the shipping container during its construction because the trailer where she planned to reside in the interim had broken down.
Swan, who works as a full-time dogwalker, eventually set up a bed and bought a kitchen off Facebook marketplace for around $6,500. She later outfitted the house with a fridge, freezer and even a full bathroom with a working shower and a WooWoo waterless toilet.
“The container is a full house now — I chose what insulation and double glazing I wanted, so it’s a lot cozier than a caravan,” she said.
Nonetheless, the barebones accommodation forced Swan to get creative.
She survived off battery packs for eight months while her solar panels were being installed because there was no electricity during that time.
“I just had to adapt — you definitely get better at seeing in the dark when you’ve been doing it a while,” observed the homeowner.
She also had a rainwater harvesting and filtration system put in, along with a log burner that’s fueled by wood donated by one of her dogwalking clients.
If that weren’t “Mad Max”-evoking enough, Swan also has a polyethylene tunnel where she grows basically “anything that can survive in Scotland,” including carrots, potatoes, turnips, tomatoes, strawberries, kale and berries.
In addition, the homemaker raises chickens for meat and eggs, plus rabbits and pigs for meat, which she hopes to eventually sell.
“I hope by the end of summer, we’ll be growing all our own meat and vegetables,” said Swan. “I’m hoping we’ll be able to create a market garden and sell our food back to the public. We already sell our own eggs from the chickens.”
The goal is to visit the supermarket as infrequently as possible. Among the few items Swan buys are dairy — because she doesn’t own cows — as well as the odd takeout food or “cheeky” bottle of wine.
She also uses an app called Olio to score surplus food from markets for free. Due to her self-“contained” lifestyle, Swan has managed to spend just $40 a week at food stores — less than half of what she spent before moving into the shipping container, she told SWNS.
Meanwhile, her monthly expenses clock in at around $330 for council tax minus water, food and her phone bill.
All told, Swan calculated that she’s spending $1,000 less a month than when she owned a home, allowing her to put a lot of money back into the land.
The Scot estimates that she’s about 40% self-sufficient at the moment and hopes to become 70% by the summer.
While her hardscrabble lifestyle might seem quite taxing, that living off the land provides “peace of mind,” Swan said.
“If anything happened in the world, I know there would be no food shortages for me or my family,” declared the homeowner, adding that producing her own food allows her to know “exactly what goes into it” as well.
