For years, 36-year-old Anders Boisen lived in apartments all over the city of Aarhus, the second-largest in Denmark.
Despite having a comfortable living situation — a two-bedroom apartment he shared with a girlfriend at the time — and a job working in city development at a local municipality, Boisen tells CNBC Make It he felt confined by his lifestyle and the societal pressure of what life should look like at his age.
“I had this claustrophobic feeling about living in an apartment, not so much because of the size of it but more because of the lifestyle that seems so predefined,” he says.
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During that time, Boisen came across a YouTube Channel featuring people living in tiny homes, totally off the grid.
“I thought it was very inspirational, and it opened my eyes to a new possibility where I could actually live more economically free, and I could also live relatively sustainably,” he says.
“If I could build a house that is off the grid and in sync with nature, then maybe I could learn how to get a better sense of life on a philosophical level.”
Boisen left his apartment and moved into a garden house where he came up with the idea to build a tiny home of his own. In 2018, Boisen started building a mobile one, but it was stolen just a few months later.
“It was all over the news here in Denmark, but we didn’t find it,” Boisen says.
But Boisen didn’t give up and started building another the following year. In the spring of 2020, Boisen finished the tiny home after working on it on and off for eight months.
He did most of the building himself and estimates he spent 80,000 to 90,000 Danish Krone or $A17,475.00 to $A19,659.77.
The tiny house is 6.5m long and 2.5m wide.
At the time, Boisen lived on a piece of land he had been renting for over a year.
To finish building the tiny home, Boisen quit his job and focused on the project full-time. He also started a Facebook group to share his journey, and some of the people he met there helped with the building process along the way.
“I realised how personalised this home already was because I had built most of it on my own, so it was filled with my own memories and personal decisions,” he says. “But it also had the memories of all the people who came and helped out. It was qualitatively very different from what I imagine, having a contractor build a house for you.”
Since quitting his job, Boisen has made his career creating content for YouTube and giving talks around the country on tiny living and life off-the-grid.
While Boisen has fond memories of building his tiny home, he admits there were many technical issues along the way, including having to move the house itself and a hole in the roof.
“At that time I hadn’t secured the framing enough so it wasn’t stabilised. When I moved the house, it ended up tilted to one side, and it was hard to correct it later on,” Boisen says.
“It was a setback and I was kind of bummed out. In my dreams, I dreamt about burning the house down because then I would get rid of the problem. But, of course, I didn’t do it but it was very stressful,” he adds laughing.
Despite those challenges, Boisen says there is no greater feeling than seeing the tiny home he built finally finished.
“There were bad things but it was a nice feeling knowing I was creating something that will be my home. You get this giddy feeling because you’re so excited about the things that you’re doing. It was like realising a dream,” Boisen says.
“I wasn’t just building something like a roof over my head; I was actually building a dream. It was like stepping into a new chapter in my life and all the things that will hopefully follow in that life.”
In September 2021, Boisen bought a plot of land about 17,800 square feet (1653 sq m) outside of Aarhus for 160,000 Danish Krone, or $A35,000, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
“It’s at the end of a dirt road and it doesn’t have immediate neighbours. It also has a meadow and a big forest adjacent to it so it feels a lot bigger than it really is,” Boisen says.
A month later, Boisen had the tiny home moved from the property he was renting to the land he now owns.
Living off the grid in a forest
Boisen made sure his tiny home was equipped for life off the grid, which he defines as “self-sufficient with water, electricity, and heat”.
The house has a rainwater filtration system, solar panels, and batteries to store energy.
Boisen has lived in the tiny home for over four years now and says he’s run out of power several times and water just once.
Now he keeps a close eye on his water tank, takes short baths if his tank is starting to run low, and aims to save water in other ways.
“I tend to think I need power but then I think to myself is it the lack of power or is it how much power I’m actually consuming and that’s been part of my journey,” he says.
In the winter, Boisen uses less power and lives more sustainably by storing certain items like milk and condiments outside in the cold instead of using electricity for a fridge.
“The point of this house is to teach me how to consume less resources and that was part of the idea from the beginning,” Boisen says.
“I wanted to see how low you can go in terms of still living comfortably in a tiny house. My journey is to not only make the tiny home liveable but also adjust my need for resources and my behaviour. The house nudges my behaviour in a way.”
Boisen also has a permaculture garden — which Better Homes and Gardens defines as one that ”helps build soils and doesn’t rely on synthetic inputs” — where he’s growing potatoes, several berries, apples, leeks, cabbage, and different kinds of herbs.
“I try to plant permanent plants that will give me a yield for the greatest amount of time,” he says. “I will be expanding my entire food production because right now it’s only on an experiment level, but from next season, I will expand the size of the garden considerably.”
Boisen says growing his own food is an extension of his original journey to trying to be self-sufficient.
“On a personal level it teaches me how I can be more in sync with the seasons and with nature in general. In order for me to grow food, I need to learn a whole lot about gardening. It gives me joy that every season has its own types of foods so you’re always looking forward to something and you’re always eating food that is local and seasonal.”
Boisen uses his food scraps to feed his chickens and composts it to use for the soil in his garden.
Since finishing up the initial work on the tiny home, Boisen has added a mud room and upgraded the water filtration system. He’s getting ready to build a new house and sell this one.
Boisen says the plan is to build a tiny home that is more practical for having a family and continuing a self-sufficient lifestyle: “I’m in a way, preparing for the future.”
He plans to finish the new home next spring.
