Our lifestyle

No heating

Our cottage doesn't even have walls on two sides. Therefore, heating would not make sense. I'm glad that I don't need gas bottles, it saves me shopping, the safety risk in the event of a fire and it's good for the environment. But I hang blankets on the open sides in winter to keep the cold wind out a bit. The coldest temperatures here are around +5°C. With warm clothes and blankets I can stand it quite well. Murielle sometimes has problems with the cold. Then she stays in a tent for a long time or visits friends in France. Also, I can take the summer heat better than Murielle.

No car

When we go shopping or visit people, we mostly use the bicycle. On Saturdays, I cycle 14 km to the church in El Morche to play music in the German service and lead a gospel choir, and back home again. We got the bikes as gifts from friends, sometimes I bought a bike second hand. We often see cyclists on the road, taking their bikes here somewhere by car and then riding them as a sport. Our solution is much more sustainable, better for health and we save a lot of money!

No fridge

We don't buy milk, cheese and whatever else you put in the fridge. 2021 I made my own kefir. A neighbour who also made kefir bought the goat's milk from a shepherd and brought it to me - 4 litres once a week. That also worked well without a fridge. Later I stopped because, according to our impression, my voice sounded mucous more often. We eat fruit, vegetables, avocados and herbs from our garden, home-grown sprouts, fermented seeds, sun-dried crackers, lacto-fermented vegetables (I will write about it later), eggs and dried meat from our chickens, sometimes home-made dried fruit, sometimes we buy something in Nerja, but at home we eat almost only raw food. We don't need a fridge for that.

No cooking

Our health is important to us. And in our experience, a diet of predominantly raw foods does us good. But we don't want to ban heated food altogether. Therefore, we also eat heated food on the road, but usually only raw food at home. I find it easier to eat only raw food, if I don't see the heated food at home. This also means we don't need a cooker, gas bottles or pots, and there is less cleaning work.

No TV

Murielle and I both have smartphones, and I also have a laptop (Chromebook). Sometimes we watch a movie on the laptop. But I mainly use the laptop to write this blog. We can use it to watch everything that's on TV. The screen is a bit smaller, but that's fine with us. I'm proud of my smartphone because I've been using it for five and a half years without changing the battery. I bought it in January 2018, it's a Huawei Y6 2017.

No sofa

When we sit down, it is usually on the floor on a small mattress. This is just as cosy as a sofa, but takes up less space because we usually put the mattress up. We use our chairs almost only for playing the piano (yes, we have an electronic piano at home). Now I use the chair more often to write on the blog. It is better to sit in the chair with a straight back than to lie down when typing on the laptop.

No WC

There really is no WC in our hut! We have dug a small trench in the garden. We shit in it, clean our bums a bit with a stick, cover our droppings with earth and then wash our bums with water. This way, our shit doesn't cause any smell and then benefits the garden plants. The condition for this is our healthy diet. In the case of normal toilets, the toilet contents end up as sewage sludge in a hazardous waste landfill. after it has been laboriously separated from the water in a sewage treatment plant. It is supposed to be valuable fertiliser - what a nonsensical disposal system!