Elisabeth Dimitras on Living Off the Grid and Embracing Minimalism
This week, we had a long conversation with Elisabeth Dimitras, a passionate researcher, activist, and tiny house dweller who has dedicated her life to promoting sustainability and conscious living. After years of feeling out of place in urban settings, she made a bold decision to leave behind the city life in Athens and embrace a nomadic lifestyle that eventually led her to a tiny house on wheels in the stunning landscapes of Greece. Her journey began in 2018, inspired by the documentary “The Minimalists,” which introduced her to the joys of tiny house living and the concept of living off the grid. Elisabeth’s experiences as a volunteer animal caretaker and researcher have deeply influenced her commitment to vegan permaculture and sustainable practices, reflecting her desire to live in harmony with nature.
Throughout her journey, Elisabeth has faced numerous challenges, from adjusting to rural life to navigating social isolation in a community that often doesn’t share her values. Yet, her resilience shines through as she continues to prioritize self-care, rest, and connection with like-minded individuals around the world. In this interview, she opens up about her transformative experiences, the lessons learned along the way, and her unwavering dedication to creating a more sustainable future for herself and the planet. Join us as we explore Elisabeth’s inspiring story of courage, compassion, and conscious living.
Tell us about your journey to living in a tiny house on wheels, off the grid. What inspired you to make this lifestyle change?
Everything started in 2018 while I was living in a small house in a Greek mountainous village with just 4 inhabitants. One day I watched the documentary “The Minimalists” where I first heard about the concept of a Tiny House on wheels and it was so interesting to listen to the people who were living in Tiny Houses because they were saying how happier they have been since they started living as such in comparison to living in the city in big houses.
The off the grid idea is something that I can’t tell you when I first heard about it but I was thinking that either I would construct a cob house or a Tiny House on wheels and I would live off the grid for sustainability reasons but also because I don’t believe in the current system and I don’t want to be part of it or support it in anyway.
At the time (early 2018), I had just felt the urge to leave the city because I was feeling that I don’t belong in the city nor in the society. I grew up in a suburb of Athens but I had also lived a semester in Montpellier, France & a semester in Lesvos island – for my masters – and later on in Almere, Holland – when I worked voluntarily through the EVS Erasmus+ program as an animal caretaker at Stichting AAP.
In hindsight, I can tell that what happened to me when I left the city is that I started seeing it with new eyes and I considered it for the first time as a concrete jungle. The pollution started annoying me. Both noise pollution and air pollution – and imagine that I wasn’t even in the centre but in a green suburb. But still, it was an urban setting.
So, I booked an Airbnb in that remote location of NW Greece and started living as a hermit with my pets. I was trail running every day with my dogs and it was the first time in my life that I was living remotely and exploring the mountains, because up until then, I was mostly attracted to the sea and visiting coastal areas.
Imagine that, for my masters, I had to go and live in a similar setting in 2011 because I was doing a thesis on bears, wolves and other mammals (and their use of the crossing structures under and over the Egnatia Highway), but I wasn’t enjoying life in the village back then. So, I was collecting the data from the camera traps and then going back to Athens or visiting friends in other places while I was working on my thesis. Back then, I wanted to do my thesis on cetaceans but I couldn’t find a reliable organisation doing such work in order to include me in their research so it felt like a compromise what I did instead.
In 2011, I just wasn’t ready to face myself and spend time alone & isolated back then. Whereas in 2018, I was more than ready to do the inner work and I was feeling very tired from people and at the same time disappointed by them, after my volunteer involvement in the refugee crisis, because most people were there for the wrong reasons and were doing more harm than good, to the refugees who were coming in Europe for a better life.
Anyway, long story short, without having this intention, I ended up living a nomadic life. I changed 26 houses in 6 countries (but mostly in Greece and in Spain), during the period 2018-2021, always with my 2 dogs and 1 cat. During this time, I decided to sell my house in Athens and I wanted to buy with this money a piece of land somewhere where I would install a Tiny House or build a cob house, to do what I am now actually doing.
If only I knew how hard this is though… But when you dream, you never imagine the challenges that may emerge from making the dream come true… It’s always greener on the other side, don’t they say?
How has your background as a volunteer animal caretaker and researcher influenced your decision to live sustainably and focus on vegan permaculture?
I think that the reasons which led me to this decision are not really related to these experiences. I mean, obviously when you love animals and take care of them for years, you are a person who wants to live close to nature, but I think what made me take this path is mostly the desire to live as much sustainably as possible, because during my studies in France, I realized that humans are causing the biggest harm to the planet and to other animals. I didn’t want to be part of the problem, but part of the solution.
Being an animal caretaker of wild animals ended up being something I can no longer do because: A) You have to feed meat to most wild animals and B) Most rescued wild animals are captive and rarely can be reintroduced in nature so they live their whole lives in captivity and this doesn’t give me joy as it’s something less bad than their previous experience. As a result, I started volunteering in farm sanctuaries where I could see animals enjoying their inherent value without being exploited by anyone and at the same time, I wasn’t hoping for something better for them because this is the ideal for these animals.
However, I have come to understand that domesticated animals will always be dependent on humans which means that they will never be liberated. In addition, animal care consists of vaccinating, applying chemical products on the skin of the animals etc. All these products are most probably made after being tested on some animals. This is something that makes me feel that I no longer want to be part of it, so I think that if we purely love non-human animals, it’s better to live in a natural setting where we can enjoy random encounters with free wild animals, rather than being on a constant hands on “policy” with rescued animals. Otherwise, we are unwillingly supporting practices and products which otherwise we wouldn’t.
Being a researcher has made me get to know things that I wish I wouldn’t. For example, solar panels and their batteries are made after a lot of extraction. They are also contributing to unfair job conditions and to environmental destruction. So, am I indeed living more ethically nowadays or is it just what I am telling myself?
Your journey involves a significant shift from urban living to a more rural, off-grid lifestyle. What were some of the biggest adjustments you had to make, and how did you overcome them?
This went smoothly and slowly. When I first moved to that remote village, I had to start making bread myself because it wasn’t affordable to drive to the nearest city/town in order to get some whenever I needed! This made me realize how spoiled I had been in my life until that day.
Where I am now, I may be in a remote location but the village is 10’ drive by car and 20-30’ by bike so if I need something it’s not that hard to get.
However, being vegan & following a low waste lifestyle makes things a bit hard to get in rural Greece. Although I am grateful for the Mediterranean cuisine which is mostly inherently plant-based, there are no vegan restaurants nearby so if I ever want to enjoy a vegan meal, which wouldn’t be full with olive oil (typical with the traditional Greek plant-based dishes) I must drive 1.5 hours to go to Athens. Furthermore, because I only use cruelty-free detergents, soaps etc. I order from vegan/zero waste shops in Athens as well. Especially for detergents, all these years while I was living a nomadic life in places farther away than now, I had to go to Athens every six months in order to refill my detergents!
My highest priority is to stay aligned to my values and this comes at a cost because sadly all these products are still more expensive than what you can find in a typical supermarket (I rarely go to supermarkets though; I prefer the open market with local farmers and to support small shops). When I first left Athens, it was impossible to find toilet paper in paper packages for example, but now it’s not! Even in rural Greece I can find this. But not in the village nearby. It needs good programming for errands. Another hard part of living as such is socializing. Maybe this is the hardest.
I am surrounded by hunters, shepherds and people who live a life in a sense of “business as usual”. Also, there is a lot of animal abuse (mostly passive, dogs living their whole lives chained) and littering the environment. All this is painful to experience on a daily basis so I often feel that I want to migrate to a country where at least some of these things aren’t a daily routine. And eventually I will do it, at least in a way to live 6 months in Northern Europe and 6 months here, when the summer will become unbearable here.
Luckily though, where I came to live, 9 months later I met a wonderful man who is now my partner and we agree on everything. But we feel lonely in our values here. Being childfree by choice, having pledged flightfree while you are already vegan and ecologically conscious, makes you an alien here. I try to overcome this by joining zoom meetings with people around the world who are spiritually and value-wise in the same level as me, because I need to nourish my soul with such contacts.
Finally, a big problem is vets. Vets nearby are not as competent as in Athens. And they are more expensive. This is something I can only adjust with. I try to do my own research though and help my pets with natural remedies instead (which again must be ordered so my carbon footprint is not as low as I would like it to be).
Another challenge is when it’s snowing. I get stuck here for 3-4 days until the snow melts. The first year it was OK, I was prepared. I try to stay informed by looking at the weather forecast. The 2nd year though, my younger dog got sick and I couldn’t take him to a vet nor go buy meds. Thankfully someone who lives in the capital of the island bought us the meds and my partner went to meet him to collect them, and then left his car on the asphalt and walked 1 km to bring the meds to me. The next day he came again to pick me up, take me to his place where I could shower because the water wasn’t coming to the house as the pipes were frozen! I was melting snow in a pan on the stove…to wash dishes, and I had to unplug the fridge, and let the stuff from the fridge outside where the temperature was like a fridge’s (because I deny having a generator as a plan B). This year it didn’t snow…
Living off the grid means you can’t have an ADSL internet connection so I couldn’t take on a shitty job that I found to do for some time, because things are tight lately, because they wanted me to have specifically this type of internet. My internet works just fine so I don’t understand why this is a rule for them but the result is that I am still unemployed.
How do you prioritize rest and self-care in your daily routine?
To sleep well and to take good care of my pets are my top priorities.
I lost so much sleep while at school and during university years but even more while I was involved in the refugee crisis, that I no longer allow this, since 2018. As a result, I sleep A LOT and without any guilt. I know now that rest is resistance – against the grind culture & capitalism, so I never use alarms, I don’t wear a watch and when I sleep, I have my phone on flight mode.
I often uninstall Instagram (or even deactivate the account), I no longer use Facebook and I spend some days with my phone on flight mode during the whole day. The ideal would be to take days off from using the laptop as well, but this is not as easy when you are looking for a job to sustain ongoing emerging needs (what I am doing since I came here…with no luck) or when you have a health issue of an animal and you are looking for ways to help them…Also I need to use the laptop or my phone in order to listen to the music so this is something I would like to find other ways to do so. I don’t like my dependence on technology but I can’t live without music.
Another way is that I do yoga, specifically kundalini yoga. Some days I listen to mantras and chant all day long. Or I am listening to Chantress Seba , Malte Marten and other similar artists. Sound baths are so healing.
I also try to spend days hiking in some areas nearby, a forest bath or Shinrin-yoku as the Japanese say, is the ideal way for me to disconnect from the madness of the world and rest my mind.
Finally, I swim all year round. This is helping my nervous system very much. I prefer winter swimming though because sadly from May until September beaches start getting crowded and most people are noisy, they litter and they don’t respect the others around them…
I am blessed to live on an island where in a 40’ drive I can be in the Aegean Sea and in a 40’ drive towards the other side, there is Alpine scenery.
Can you share some of the challenges you’ve faced and lessons you’ve learned on your journey towards conscious living and sustainability?
The most important lesson is that I will never achieve the ideal. I can’t be perfect. Especially as long as I am using a car which is necessary where I live at the moment, mostly because of my dogs.
I try to buy everything in bulk but some things we just can’t find in bulk. It’s Okay though. No one is perfect. I try to stop shaming me if I buy something that’s not fully aligned to my values.
In the past I wasn’t allowing myself to buy mushrooms if I couldn’t find them in bulk or I was never buying plant-based milk because of the package (recycling in Greece isn’t working effectively). I was trying to achieve a zero-waste lifestyle. It’s not possible though. Low waste is okay too.
When I go to the supermarket to get the toilet paper in paper package that I mentioned, I see what other people buy and what is there on the shelves and I wonder “why do I put so much energy and effort in this lifestyle while others just keep living as always and buying meat, dairy, stuff in plastic etc.?” I feel hopeless at these moments.
So, I now allow myself sometimes to make mistakes while in the past I wasn’t doing so. Some examples:
I can get myself a drink in a single use paper cup if I have forgotten my reusable mug.
I can use silicone to cover gaps while I construct something.
I tried to make this Tiny House 100% vegan and eco but it wasn’t possible to find wood in Greece with FSC certification for example. I brought vegan paint from the U.K and wooden insulation from Romania but how about silicone rubber? It’s needed. And it’s not eco.
My partner recently constructed a shed for me and we had to use 4 bottles of this awful product. I don’t feel well with this but there is no other way to keep it insulated so the rain won’t come in (we installed in the shed the inverter, charger and batteries of the solar panels which until now were exposed to heat, on the side of the Tiny house, so it’s very important that no water will ever come in).
Challenges arise all the time. When I decided to live off the grid, I wasn’t expecting temperatures of 45 degrees…I only put a fan on the ceiling. Now I am about to install an air conditioner even if I didn’t want to. But it’s necessary if I want to protect my dogs from a heat stroke. I try to allow myself these kinds of setbacks.
Last year, I was left with no water during the heatwaves – because apparently this is a possible scenario when you are dependent on rainwater… while I had to keep alive 60 pumpkins and a veggie garden along with many newly planted trees. It was 1.5 months of constant stress. We had to bring water from elsewhere, daily. My partner and I, daily were carrying 10 plastic packages filled with 12L of water each (we were refilling them, we didn’t buy them) to bring here and water the plants. Also, I paid two other people with barrels (can’t find the right word for this vehicle) to come and fill my tanks so I could have some water in the house…. This was a very unfortunate incident that made me think small this year. I only planted a very small veggie garden and I will be observing how things will go during this summer. This was the biggest challenge. And when we overcame it, depression, grief and anxiety came. But I worked through the trauma, and I still do, hoping to become stronger and more resilient.
In your experience, how has living in harmony with nature and practicing vegan permaculture enhanced your connection to the environment and the world around you?
Vegan permaculture is very hard to achieve. You must observe each plant and try to find ways to keep insects away, without harming them. One day someone recommended that I make a liquid with water, soap and garlic if I remember well, to keep the ants away from corn. But it killed them. I felt terrible. Another day, I was putting wood on the stove and hundreds of ants came out of a piece of wood that was on the stove…I just left it out and I felt relieved that I hadn’t put it in the fire.
Each time I have to cut the weeds with the bush-cutter I feel awful again.
I am not sure how someone with my level of empathy can achieve this lifestyle without a constant feeling of guilt.
These experiences made me wonder if I am indeed capable of keeping living like this.
Also, I can’t really enjoy the beauty of birds, snakes, turtles … .as I have been living with 2 dogs and a cat. My younger dog recently found a poor turtle and was behaving to her as if she was a ball… I actually went down to see which ball he was playing with as they were in the house but he was out. I felt so bad for the turtle. Thankfully she wasn’t hurt but imagine the stress she went through.
When I walk them, if I see a snake, I have to go away because if it’s a viper, it’s dangerous.
And last year my cat killed a small bird, which made me cry so much. In addition to the moles that she constantly hunts and I constantly try to stop her from doing so.
I want to provide water to the birds who I have attracted because through planting perennials and flowers, insects came which as a result attract birds – and I need to find a way to do it without my cat being able to harm them.
If we genuinely love nature and the other animals, it’s very hard to enjoy interaction with them – as long as we live with pets. And this is a very sad realization because I can’t imagine myself living without pets.
This has made me decide that I won’t adopt again, at least animal species who are omnivores and carnivores.
Because I want to be able to observe the animal kingdom without the constant fear of keeping my pets away as they are destructive towards other animals.
I still don’t know if I will achieve it though. Maybe if I start volunteering again, in sanctuaries and having this place as my safe refuge for time to rest between volunteer experiences? But how will I live here without my pets’ company? They are my extension and their passing is the only thing I can’t get ready for, nor can I imagine myself without them. They bring joy and love, on a daily basis.
In the past, I was saying that I will rescue some goats, chickens, ducks, turkeys…and they will be happy here. But if I do this, I will constantly have the fear of a viper coming and killing them, or of a fox doing so – and I can’t keep living in fear and anxiety. In addition to the fear of a wildfire…
I must make an important decision one day….
As the founder of Ethos & Empathy, could you tell us more about your organization’s mission and the initiatives you’re currently involved in?
Ethos & Empathy was founded in 2017, and the goal was to promote in Greece anti-speciesism, the zero-waste movement and the idea of fair trade. I was still in Athens when I started it, so some in person actions were arranged too, through it, but then I left to start living remotely.
At that time, I had people who I trusted to coordinate actions in Athens. In 2018 we did for the world day for the end of speciesism an action in many areas in Greece, giving out leaflets talking about speciesism and later on I coordinated with the help of some volunteers the most successful animal rights march that has ever taken place in Greece.
Later on, E & E took part in some actions & meetings with WWF Greece and Greenpeace, but we soon after stopped trying to cooperate with huge NGOs who clearly won’t ever embrace anti-speciesism and have such a hard time to talk openly against animal agriculture.
So, in combination with COVID19, me leaving for Spain and already working remotely for anti-speciesist NGOs, it eventually transformed to “just” an online platform, an encyclopaedia for whoever wants to start living more ethically. It has a vegan directory that helps many people, and lists with documentaries &films and books (under the column ‘useful links’) for whoever wants to get informed on matters related to animal rights. I try to keep these lists up to date.
So far, in the Greek version, more than 80 articles have been published translated in Greek by volunteers -to whom I feel very grateful- and some 20+ articles / essays have been written by me and other activists or scholars / academics.
In the beginning, I wanted to give it a legal form and I tried to gather 19 more people to make it an association but it was extremely hard to find as many people with whom I would agree on everything so I left it as an initiative without a legal form. Majority of these people were absorbed by vegan capitalism and are constantly flying around while I realized that capitalism is the root cause of most suffering so we couldn’t continue together. Ever since, I sadly haven’t met any other Greek people to fit in E & E and my mindset. I mostly can relate with foreigners, because I grew up surrounded by foreigners (my parents were bringing “au pair” from Australia, New Zealand, USA and France who were living with us during my childhood)
In addition, I stopped believing in fair trade certifications (or better say in overall certifications) and in the zero-waste concept whilst I was more interested in promoting the childfree and flightfree lifestyle because these are for me the 2 most effective ways to minimize our environmental footprint and yet there aren’t many vegan activists talking about it…Recently a book on critical animal studies was published with 12 chapters and one of them is an essay of mine on these matters.
As you can probably imagine, this has made me a very unpopular person within the vegan community in Greece. Sadly, most vegan people are obsessed with packaged vegan products which are also not healthy, and they only talk about non-human animals and vegan products, vegan restaurants etc. They gather in vegan festivals and that’s it. You won’t hear many vegan people in Greece speaking about Palestine, Sudan or Congo. And they won’t give up on flying.
Also, I won’t forget how many vegans were celebrating a horrible accident that happened to a man (who by the way was an immigrant from Pakistan) in a slaughterhouse who was grinded in the machine that grinds chickens. I felt such repulsion when I read the comments of these vegan people. I don’t like to use the word ‘vegan’ to self-identify to be honest. I don’t hate humans. And especially humans who are forced to do horrible jobs because they don’t have any other choice. I acknowledge my privilege and I try to be mindful when I speak about this issue. In fact, I have 2 posts on the website, they are in English too, on how these people (who work in slaughterhouses and fishing boats) are victims as well.
Εthos & Empathy may have come to a full circle. Lately, I am more interested in talking about eco anxiety, eco grief, degrowth and slow living but for the first two, again, no one else is talking about them, here in Greece so I am not sure there is an actual audience out there to feel that it’s worth to put the effort into translating all that. Although I know that all these subjects can go under the umbrella of Ethos & Empathy, I don’t have the energy anymore to keep writing or to look for volunteer translators.
I burnt out and only realized it two years ago while speaking to a Chinese Traditional Medicine practitioner about my younger dog’s kidney condition and he pointed it out to me. Better say, I suffer from compassion fatigue so I try to take things really slowly ever since. I try to rest more, I try not to feel that I must save all stray animals that I encounter, and overall that I am not going to change the world. As a result, I haven’t written anything since last January.
Living off the grid and growing food needs a whole lot of energy so there is really not much time left to sit down and write…especially when life threatening situations keep happening, due to the climate breakdown.
I am currently taking an online FREE webinar called “Active Hope” which I recommend to whoever experiences eco anxiety & eco grief. It’s based on Joanna Macy’s book with the same name, Active Hope. I am thinking of a career change, probably to become a grief counselor specializing in pet loss and eco- grief.
Can you share some tips or resources for our readers who are interested in learning more about vegan permaculture, minimalism, and conscious living?
The minimalists: Less is more & their website
Having lost my mother in 2008 while I was just 22 and she was my only caregiver, made me have to face a whole load of (mostly unnecessary) stuff that she was collecting and left behind – this has been a great lesson in my life. I keep saying to people “Stop collecting stuff! Who is going to deal with them after you die?”. I managed to donate her 2000 books to a bookshop run by an ex-homeless man who now helps other homeless people by selling books. I donated a lot of stuff to NGOs for their bazaars but I had to also throw stuff at some point and it was with a heavy heart.
But I feel so much lighter since I only have a few things. We really don’t need a lot to be happy. On the contrary.
Where can our audience follow along with your journey and learn more about your work?
My personal Bluesky account, my Eco Spiritual IG account (former Ethos & Empathy IG account) and the Ethos & Empathy blog (the blog post from January 2023 tells a lot about my decision to live off the grid, grow food, how I turned into medicinal plants etc. and it also has many resources from books and podcasts that have influenced me lately).
To support Elisabeth and her work, visit her GoFundMe Campaign.
This is part of a series where Green & Beyond Mag explores the stories and takes a peek at the lifestyles of incredible people like green entrepreneurs, innovators, climate advocates, activists, community leaders, and content creators, all around the world, who love the planet and are working tirelessly to make the world a better place.
