Living in a shipping container: is it really a good idea?

The tiny house movement is definitely growing as an answer to the housing costs which make owning a traditional house impossible for most of us. Living tiny also helps decluttering and often living more in armony with the environment. Have a look at the Vanlife hashtag and you will see a small army of people who have chosen to convert a van and make it their home; another option I’ve been exploring is building a tiny house out of a shipping container.

I like the idea at the base of this, which is to recycle something which otherwise will be abandoned in a disused parking someday, and I like that shipping containers have intrisic quality such as resistance to natural disasters (that’s why they are normally used as temporary houses in areas hit by earthquakes).

But is full time living in a shipping container really possible? Let’s look at the pros and cons of this housing solution:

The PROs of living in a shipping container

• environmentally friendly + great recycling idea
• strong and resistant against extreme weather and earthquakes
• cheap
• movable
• if you combine more than a container the possibilities of building modular structures are endless
• by insulating the container with the right materials, depending on where you want to place the container, and going off grid you can save a lot of money in utility bills in the long term.

The CONs of living in a shipping container

• it’s strong, but when you start cutting out windows and doors you might lose stability; and some would wonder, what’s the point of using a shipping container if you cut most of its surface?
• the insulation needs to be done right, to avoid unbearable temperatures and excessive noise inside the container
• at the end of the day, a container remains a box, and it might make you feel a little claustrophopic (although we can argue that all houses are boxes, aren’t they??)
• containers are cheap to buy, but there are often additional costs which might add up very quickly to the final bill, depending on the foundations you need to lay down, and transport costs: a container house is not movable as easily as a house sitting on a trailer.
• Very often you will need to get building permissions, which will vary depending on where you want to place your container house, but are usually not very different from the permissions needed for a traditional house; same goes with paying taxes, in most countries, if you obtain permission to live in a container you’ll have to pay the same taxes you’d pay for living in a traditional house. Do your research!