How to live in a tiny house by the sea

Last week, Micah and I were finally able to officially move into our tiny house by the sea. Enhanced community quarantine notwithstanding, it turned out to be no more difficult than just letting the relevant offices know what our plans were.

Since then, we’ve been doing pretty well, thank you very much. Fresh food, plants everywhere (trend upwards) and a breeze that almost makes us forget that it’s supposed to be 40°C (104°F) out there. I guess now we really are mostly doing what we would be doing even without the whole Covid-19-thing.

The craziest part is that before moving here, we used to easily sleep until 10/11am every morning. I hated it. But there was just nothing to do in the day, nothing inspiring waiting for us. That, combined with a full set of black-out curtains, really just perpetuated a vicious cycle.

Now we naturally wake up at 6am. We can hear birds chirping from outside our window, and we usually can’t wait to go outside to enjoy the fresh morning air. First, Micah usually makes coffee (for me) and tea from freshly cut basil leaves (for her).

Then, we head to the sea. We usually just sit there for a while, slurping our hot beverages, watching the sea birds do their thing and seeing the fishermen head out to sea. To me, that feeling of having all the time and space in the world right after waking up really is the best part of every day.

Once we feel ourselves getting hungry, we walk back to our tiny house and have breakfast. Toast is the staple component (pandemic times), but we like to take things to the next level by also making pancakes, crêpes and large varieties of chicken produce. Well, by “we” I mean mostly Micah, while I do the dishes after.

The day itself is then mostly filled with studying for me, while Micah tends to the plants. We already have a large variety of both indoor and outdoor specimen, but there can never be too many. Next to all the direct benefits they offer (like shade and produce), they are just really nice to look at and add to the feeling of really being on a constant holiday.

Of course, there is work, too. During the hottest time of the day, we like to retreat into our tiny house, sometimes even skipping lunch. It tends to be cooler than the outside even without A/C, so we just spend two hours or so doing some work, until things outside have cooled down again.

In the late afternoon we like to read. Micah is almost all the way through “Figuring” by Maria Popova, and I like to listen to audiobooks while either lying down on our front porch or just walking around the place looking at plants.

Then it’s time for sunset. Sunsets are pretty much always at some point just after 6pm, so the timing is ideal to just return to our spot from the morning and sit there again for a while. Seabirds slowly make way for bats, fishermen return, children, who are returning from the fields with their parents, splash around in the water… and then one of our bellies grumbles, reminding us that we skipped lunch that day.

If we are lucky and get our hands on some fresh fish, that’s usually what we have for dinner. Just add some rice and veg, and there is your full, healthy meal! Micah also makes mean Mediterranean pasta, all things potato and even falafel or shakshuka among other things, though, so we can always mix and match.

After dark, we just shower off the day’s sweat, enjoy our A/C and spend some time on the internet, until it’s time to sleep. By 9pm we are usually pretty beat already, so we slowly make our way to bed. Then it’s rinse and repeat! But as averse to routine as I usually am, I think I could keep doing this for a while.