I remortgaged my house to move into a shipping container

A woman who remortgaged her house and sold her belongings to move off-the-grid into a shipping container says she loves her new lifestyle.

Robyn Swan, 32, bought almost seven acres of land and the container which she renovated.

The dog-walker spent several years researching off-grid living before buying the land in Stirlingshire in December 2023.

Ms Swan, who lives in the container with her boyfriend, said: “My happiness is high and my bills are low, what’s not to love.”

Robyn spent £185,000 on the land and rents out her old house to fund her new lifestyle.

She converted the 40ft (12.2m) container in two months using material from a local builder.

She also picked up a second-hand kitchen and a bath on an online marketplace.

She told BBC Radio Scotland’s Mornings programme: “We fully renovated the container. It is not completely finished but it is liveable now. We’ve got a bed and everything like that.

“We’ve not got any sofas or anything, we’ve just got a couple of deck chairs that we sit on at the moment.

“It looks like a fully-furnished home really, well it will do in the end.”

The shipping container has no electricity or hot water.

This means even a simple task like taking a bath is a mammoth effort. Robyn uses a cast-iron bath heated on an outdoor fire.

“It takes about two hours by the time you’ve heated it all up and waited for it to cool down,” she said.

She harvests rain water using a water system on the roof of the container.

Robyn said the thing she missed most about living in a normal home was having a flushing toilet.

“Everyone wants to live off grid until they realise that they have to deal with their own human waste,” she added.

This task involves a bucket and compost.

As part of a mission to become fully self-sufficient she also grows her own vegetables and has eight sheep, six pigs and “twenty-odd chickens”.

Her most recent purchase is a wood-burning stove which she hopes will provide her with enough heat to handle the cold Scottish winter.

Robyn had originally wanted to buy a farm but found them too expensive.

She said she “snapped” up the land when it became available, while other interested buyers were put off by its remote nature.

Her long-term plan is to convert an old barn on her seven acres into a fully-fledged eco home.