Aglobal awakening is upon us. The coronavirus pandemic has forced people to reconsider the way they have been living and consuming. If you weren’t already moving towards a sustainable life, the spring of 2020 will be remembered as the time you started.
Many shifts have been part of this whole, The Zero Waste movement took off only a decade ago, Marie Kondo helped a wider audience re-evaluate their possessions, minimalists started sharing their stories of living with less, permaculture has boomed, and advocates for self-sufficiency, such as Rob Greenfield have planted all the food they eat.
Tiny Houses became a trend in line with these newly acquired values of “being satisfied with what you have rather than what you want”. It is difficult to unlearn that living with less is an essential part of sustainable life, and once you’ve let go of what doesn’t “spark joy”, to use Marie Kondo’s words, you’ll have greater appreciation and enjoyment from using and taking care of the few items you decide to keep.
The series Tiny House Nation first aired in 2014, only beginning to stream on Netflix in August 2019, yet the concept is already part of a global vocabulary tied to sustainable living and financial freedom, two things that will be even higher on the agenda post-COVID19.
However, let’s remember that living in small dwellings is nothing new. In fact, Mallorca’s countryside is dotted with casitas, small houses that were more common before tourism swept the island. Plenty sit unloved on decent plots of land. Many are uninhabited in varying states of decay, some are used as shade from gardening, and others are kept for the weekend or renovated into guesthouses alongside newer, dominating structures.
Due to the development laws in Mallorca’s countryside, plots smaller than 14,000 square meters cannot be developed beyond the size of their existing structures, regardless of disrepair. This means that there are many plots with low value, because the square-footage of the existing building site isn’t deemed worth renovating
