Woman who lived in shed for 10 years reveals the thing that makes living off grid worth it

As a kid we might have often begged our parents to let us spend the night sleeping in the garden.

Maybe you were obsessed with the idea of staying in a tent or dragging a duvet out to the shed. Or maybe you were used to seeing one of your parents going out there for for a ‘minute’s peace’.

But this woman decided to make her stay permanent, spending the last 10 years living in a shed.

And Catrina Davies has revealed the thing that makes being off-grid worth it.

The author and songwriter was living in a shared house but was getting stressed after not doing ‘anything apart from working to pay the rent’.

So, she decided to go back to her roots in Penzance and moved into her dad’s old office – an abandoned shed he used in the 90s.

Catrina doesn't have much space. (YouTube/ITV News)

She told The Times back in 2019 that she thought to go and stay in the shed just to give herself ‘a breather’.

“I've been here for nearly 10 years on and off constantly since 2013."

The tiny little shed features a room with a small amount of furniture and if she needs to go to the loo – she has to go outside, no matter how cold it is. And for a kitchen, she uses an old camping cooker she bought years ago for £20.

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But with a wood burner on the go, she loves living in her little place.

“One of the things I really like about living here is having to go outside all the time,” Davies said.

With it ‘tiny’ inside but ‘loads of space’ outside, she gets out a lot and loves to be in the garden and grow food.

She finds she lives a life ‘low of guilt’ with her modest lifestyle.

The shed used to be her dad's office. (YouTube/ITV News)

“I wouldn't say that I am poor but I don't have very much money. But actually you do so much less damage if you don't have enough money to do damage with,” the author added. "So I'm lucky because I've fallen into this lifestyle that is low on guilt and really nice."

In an old blog post at the age of 36, Davies wrote: “live in a shed because I would rather live in an uninsulated tin can on the side of the road several hundred miles from anywhere with no toilet or hot water than bite my nails for the privilege of renting a boxroom in a house full of semi-strangers, from which I am obliged to erase all evidence of my existence every time the letting agent lets himself in with his own key to perform one of his ‘regular and invasive’ inspections.”

Well, fair enough.

Topics: Community, Lifestyle, UK News, Home, Money

Jess Battison

Jess is an Entertainment Journalist with a love of all things pop culture. Her main interests include keeping up with the Twitter girlies, waiting for a new series of The Traitors and losing her voice at a Beyoncé concert. She graduated with a first in Journalism from City, University of London in 2021 and has previously worked at MyLondon.

@jessbattison_