Welcome To My New Tiny Home: Living A Minimalist Lifestyle

When COVID hit Australia, we decided to buy a Caravan and now live in our new tiny home, living the ultimate minimalist lifestyle. What is Minimalism? Minimalism is intentionally living with only the things that you absolutely need. It’s having and being surrounded by fewer material items, so you can do more with your time and life. Think about it: When you have fewer dishes, you spend less time washing and drying them.

For us that means no longer living in 3 bedroom houses where 1 out of 3 bedrooms were in use, large open space living rooms, dining rooms and 2-3 bathrooms to clean, vacuum and mop. Our tiny home’s living space now consists of around 14m². And honestly it’s enough!

Table of Contents

Let Me Show You Around My New Tiny Home!

Pre-Covid, living in a tiny home with my husband seemed like such a daunting thought. How would we live? Where would everything fit? What about my husbands snoring?! However, over time I realised the positives more than outweighed the negatives- we could live anywhere we wanted around Australia, we could move with the seasons, less cleaning time more fun time, beautiful spots with amazing views you wouldn’t get from a house, cheaper costs (no electricity, water and rates bills!), off grid living, living on a beach and the list goes on!

Kitchen, Dining and Bedroom

The view of our living space when standing at the bathroom door. Our tiny home has a full functioning kitchen with a fridge, gas stove, grill and oven, a kitchen sink and a microwave. We customised our dinette table which was originally meant to be a fold out table and was about half the width which we expanded so that eating dinner or sitting on our laptops we weren’t fighting for space. Instead of folding out, the table has a telescopic leg which allows it to drop down to the height of the lounge seat and turn into a single bed! (It came with a pillow insert which matches the lounge seating.) We also have 2x sirocco fans that service our bedroom (one is hidden in the left corner) and the other services the kitchen so when I am cooking with the Thermomix it blows the hot steam out the kitchen window! A third fan sits in the dinette area. Plenty of cupboard space with a full size pantry (right side of stove)

Our bedroom- even though we have a tiny home, we still have a queen size bed with bed side bench space. 3 hanging wardrobes (one on each side of the bed and the third one is sitting just behind the lounge seat in this photo)The bed also lifts up for plenty more storage space (that’s where we keep all our wine!) We also have a gas heater which we can control from our bedside for those chilly winter nights! (And we don’t need power to run it!) There are also 2x Fusion speakers above the bed and another 2 in the dinette area which you can also connect via bluetooth to listen to music or watch TV- or in our case watch on the projector screen! Yep, just above the bed you will see we have a projector hanging from the overhead cupboard. There’s also an aerial for the TV and the Dometic Dust Reduction System is what you can see on the ceiling above our bed. The non-powered DRS operates whilst driving to pressurise the caravan with filtered air reducing dust entry.

How Our Power Works

We have a sun hatch that we can open up for air on those warmer days, however we can also run an air con on those more hotter summer days. It even works when we are off grid too! There are also USB ports on each side of the bed as well as one in the dinette area to charge our phones and other devices. These run off 12 volt so we don’t need to be plugged into power for it to work.
Our power runs off a lithium battery system and solar panels. We have 3x 100AH Lithium Batteries and on top of the caravan there are a few solar panels that gives us 680W of power that goes back into the battery system when we are using any power like lights, charging our phones, the fridge etc. However we also have a 3000W inverter that allows us to use 240v power without the caravan being plugged into power! That means I can use my hair straightener, microwave, air-con and Thermomix whenever we go off grid and as long as there is sunlight our battery will stay charged. (With controlled use of power of course)

Bathroom

I call our tiny home our little luxury apartment on wheels because we even have a full bathroom with a shower, toilet and washing machine! Underneath the van are 3x 95L water tanks and 1x 62L drinking water tank that allows us to live off grid for a while!

The Ultimate Guide to Buying a Caravan– See this post for a comprehensive guide to buying a caravan!

The Caravan Exterior

Our tiny home on wheels means we can go almost anywhere! We have 2 9kg gas tanks that sit on the front of the van which allows us to have a stove, grill, oven and heater. We can also connect to a gas bayonet outside the van for a BBQ. The toolbox sits behind the gas tanks and give us more storage for larger items and tools. We also don’t go anywhere without our bikes which stores safely onto the bike rack on top of the toolbox. More storage sits underneath our bed but is accessible externally as a ‘tunnel boot’ on both sides of the caravan.
What makes our caravan equipped for off roading is the Cruisemaster ATX Airbag Suspension which allows the caravan to manoeuvre comfortably over all different types of terrain like sand and corrugations and softens the impact on the caravan. We can also raise and lower the van as we need and this makes it much faster when we’re setting up the van on an uneven site.

Some Tips I’ve Learnt Along the Way

Lounge seat keeps slipping out-

One of the biggest pains we were starting to experience is the lounge seat cushion sliding out every time we sat down and having to get back up again to push it back in. It felt like it was happening 10x a day!! So while we were at Clark Rubber we decided to buy some “rug hold” which is like a non-slip mat that sits underneath the lounge seat. We only needed half a lineal metre for both seats which only cost us $6! You want to make sure you cut enough to allow for the space where the cushion squeezes into otherwise you will struggle to get the cushion in. Straight away we found that there was absolutely no slipping and sliding anymore!

Bin Drawer-

Something to think about is where are you going to put all your rubbish? We were told we were the first people with Lotus to customise our kitchen cupboard into allowing space for a bin drawer. We decided to add this in our kitchen underneath the bench space where we would be doing all our food chopping to make it easier to discard scraps into the bin. It also keeps your whole space looking neat and tidy as you don’t have garbage bags hanging off doors or bins floating around your floor.

Living Space Ideas-

We added a full length mirror onto our bathroom door. I hate getting dressed and not able to see my whole outfit! *Girl problems* (My husband secretly loved this idea)
Only add 1 or 2 small decorative items- if you overdo it you will just create clutter and your space will feel smaller. We also try to keep as much as we can off the bench space so our home feels like its bigger. I use a kitchen sink organiser to keep all my cleaning accessories easily accessible and stored neatly by the sink.

Pantry Organisation-

I found plastic containers with bamboo lids at Kmart! They come in all different sorts of shapes and sizes and I love using them to store all my pantry goods like pasta, cereal, rice, sugar, coffee etc. They keep everything in the caravan organised and they look great too!

Shower Organisation-

We bought black matte shower wall caddy’s and soap dispensers which match all our black finishings perfectly. They help keep our shower space neat and tidy and we never have to worry about things flying around in the shower creating scratches all over the walls when we are on the move as they are stuck on using a little air pump that sucks onto the walls (instead of those suction cups that tend to never work)
Another great buy off Amazon was a shower drain filter to keep our hair from clogging up the pipes and getting stuck inside the grey water tank!

Mattress is on an angle-

We found that our heads were slanting downwards towards the bed head and our bodies were laying on an angle. It started to cause problems with sleep and creating aches and pains. We spoke to Goce at Lotus and he suggested that we get some high density foam from Clark Rubber to sit under the mattress at the top end of the bed. You can see the photos the difference this has made! It was also really easy to jump online and order as click and collect on their website. We bought a 50mmm thick foam and measured from each side of the bed (our measurements were 1600×350), however we would recommend you double check your measurements. Make sure you allow a gap for the bed to be able to lift from the hinges.

Things you may need for your tiny home:
– Bed Sheets
– Mattress protector
– Melamine dinnerware
– Plastics cups
– Wine cups
– Towels
– Dishtowels
– Macrame Hammock
– Australia scratch off Map

Thanks for visiting my new tiny home! I hope I’ve helped in some way to those who are thinking about or just starting out with a minimalist lifestyle. Hopefully some of my tips come in handy- and if you haven’t already, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter so you can keep up to date as I post more advice and tips on living in a caravan around Australia!

If you’re in the market for buying a caravan (or even just thinking about it) – check out this comprehensive guide I made from our first hand experience! The Ultimate Guide to Buying a Caravan

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6 Comments

Jayne Doddssays:
July 4, 2021 at 6:47 pm

Hi Mia 🙂
I LOVE your photos and information, thank you!! We have a Lotus van on order and I have been thinking of going all white with the timber benches and loved finding your FB post and photos, it looks great. Can I ask whether you went Matt or gloss and was it the Alabaster TruMatte colour? I was thinking of going the concrete look for flooring but I love your timber look. Can I ask the name of your flooring? I am all for being minimalistic, good on you!!! I can not wait to be you and be able to breathe!! I’ll definitely be following you from now.

Kind Regards,

Jayne Dodds

1. Miasays:
  July 5, 2021 at 1:32 pm
  
  Hi Jayne,
  Thanks so much for your lovely comment! I love getting feedback from my readers and it really means alot so thank you 😊
  So my colours are as follows:
  – All of the overhead cupboards are matt white – and yes you are correct its the Alabaster Tru Matte colour
  – The rest of my cupboards, pantry, wardrobes all the bottom cupboards area TruMatte “Ash” grey colour- I found this really breaks up all the white as your walls and ceiling will be white too
  – My floor is the “Rustic Oak Grey”
  – The leather colour is “Greystone Suave”
  I hope this helps!
  Look forward to crossing paths with you one day on our travels! 😊
  Warm regards,
  Mia xx
  
Melsays:
July 6, 2021 at 7:40 pm

Great Post, love the idea with that silly slideout cupboard! finally found a use for it, Kmart here I come!

1. Miasays:
  July 6, 2021 at 7:42 pm
  
  Hi Mel,
  Thank you! Kmart’s the best! 😊
  
Karen Schultzsays:
July 15, 2021 at 10:16 am

Do you leave your Macrame Fruit Basket hanging up when you travel?

1. Miasays:
  July 15, 2021 at 10:23 am
  
  Hi Karen, no we just put it on the bed as its hanging off a hook.