We all come to simplicity from our own view point and "Level". Simplicity does not have an end all, we are not all striving to be legalistic Minimalism (not trying to degrade that choice). Simplicity focuses on Simplifying your life from where you are at. Some of us take it in strides and for some it takes years to make a dent. Also Simplicity focuses on our mindset. We start to look at why we own the things we own, why we put the money into what we put our money into, why we worry about the things we worry about. The guy was in debt while living in a shared apartment but he saved so much by living in his truck to where when he received a parking ticket for $177, he did not worry about it. For Smallwheels he seems to want a bit more luxury but with the expenses of van conversion would be better than having to deal with the expenses of even a small apartment. For Smallwheels, he would like the luxury of being able to have something he could fully stand up in instead of something you can barely sit inside of. Since I am a college student right now and do not truly have a place of my own, I am focusing more on possessions than my actual living space. To reiterate, we all come to simplicity differently and all like to implement simplicity to certain degrees. Some like to take it to the full on Ghandi where he had about 10 possessions and for some we are lucky if we get rid of half of our hundreds of t-shirts. It also takes time and everyone at some point reaches a point to were we say its enough or we are still trying to simplify and some may even try to simplify beyond what they think is their point and find that they like it or they may go back to how they were. The point of simplicity is to get the unnecessary/ not needed out of life so that the important can be given more time and that comes in all shapes and view points.

^^ Good point. :) It would be great to know if the guy in the article actually likes it this way or if he would go to something bigger if he could afford it. We may never know but oh well. :)

He has a blog at gotruckyourself.blogspot.com which he is still running (the article is from 2007). His truck life just ended recently. I guess he was going to do it till he could not. He definitely probably by now has plenty of money for shelter.

17 years ago, we started on raw land, in the mountains of Montana, in a tent. Never in debt. Doesn't get more "simple" than that. It's been a hard 17 years.

Are you still there? What's it like now? A hard 17 years, but are you glad you did it that way? Sometimes living "hard" wears you down, sometimes it builds you up....

Wherever I live I do want the ability to stand up while inside.

Living in a conventional van would be better than living in a truck bed with a camper top because there would be access to the radio, the air conditioning, and the electrical socket for the cigarette lighter. It would have at least two seats in the front. There are van seat mounting kits that allow the front seats to swivel.

My reasons for wanting to live in a stealthy RV are so I'll always have a home that nobody can kick me out of, and to have my home wherever I travel. If in time I find that I like a certain city or perhaps I prefer to stay in a city for a year or so at a time, I'll build a Tumbleweed tiny house and find places to park it. There are probably plenty of people who wouldn't mind renting their driveway to somebody along with a little bit of water usage.

In 2006 my landlord kicked me out so he could put his daughter in the house. Luckily there was a suitable apartment nearby. I actually like it better. I don't want to be at the mercy of a landlord. Even with a lease I don't know if the owner is making payments on this property. One day the bank might decide to evict us all if the owner messes up.

Simple living will be a necessity in an RV, at least from the standpoint of possessions.

This happened to me in 2008. The bank foreclosed on my landlord. He continued to try to collect rent from me! It turned out pretty good for me. I lived in the place rent free for eight months, although I did pay out of pocket for maintenance and repairs. then the bank paid me $2,000 "cash for keys" to clean up the place and move out within 30 days. It only cost me a couple hundred bucks to have the trash (left by the landlord) hauled away. so I did pretty good.

If you do find yourself in this situation, hang tough. As a tenant, you don't have a lot of rights, but the bank at least has to go through the court to get you evicted--even if you are, in effect, squatting. To avoid the hassle, they'll often pay you cash for your keys. If you're lucky (like I was), this cash will pay your moving expenses.

Stress levels going down. More time. Less noise.

I have been living a cluttered life for over 40 years, I rode into this town on a motorcycle. I wish to ride out on a bicycle, and NEVER come back.
But I have all this stuff, is there any hope for me?

I am looking at the van with utility trailer, my van is my business office, it full already.

I think I've mentioned in the past that one of my ideas was to live in a utility trailer. It is still in consideration though a box van might be more advantageous while parking within a city because it's shorter than a truck pulling a trailer.

Here are a couple of web sites by a guy who lives in a small cargo trailer. There are also several other pages on one of these sites with different versions of living in vehicles. I think I could do better with an interior design but it doesn't take away from these people and what they have achieved.

This guy lives in a tiny cargo trailer.
CheapGreenRVLiving
CheapRVLiving
This is a brief box van story without photos.

These sites don't render well on a Mac computer. The owner says they look fine using Windows. I don't know if that's true. If you use Firefox you can remove the photos to read the full articles by right clicking on the page. Select page info. Then in the box that pops up, click the media tab and check the block images box. Then refresh the page. When you're done at the site just go back and undo the block images box.

Well, sooner or later you're going to have to leave it all behind. What's stopping you now?

Probably the logistics of getting rid of it all.

I am doing a bit of this currently. Trying to make sure that my surplus gets re-cycled and not landfilled.

Craigslist and the Salvation Army are your friend.

Nothing in life is ever certain, not even that you will be alive five minutes from now. Simplicity doesn't mean not having stuff; it means not being owned by stuff. If you can walk away from your stuff with only some temporary regrets, you're fine. On the other hand, if you're so worried about having stuff because you can't bear to think of losing it someday, it already owns you.

What's it like to be owned by stuff you don't even have?

I've got my list of less than two-hundred things to keep. All of the other stuff is up for sale. I've got a guy coming by today to buy a motorcycle helmet. Sure I could give all of my stuff away but I want some value from it. I can use that $30 from the helmet sale.

Dreams are what make life worth living. If we all were perfectly happy with what we have then everybody could just sit down and die. If we didn't want to change a thing then we all would have no desire. Desire is the cause of all suffering according to Buddha. Life is change. So I suppose I'm owned by my desires for a different life within a stealthy RV. I don't have it now but it is a dream to which I'm attached. Dreams and desires are motivation for change.

I wouldn't suffer too much if all of my possessions were lost in some disaster. As long as my landlord would refund my security deposit quickly I'd get by OK. I'd find a room to rent. Then I'd buy a new cheap laptop computer, some clothes, food preparation supplies, a used bicycle, and get on with my life.

To me part of simple living is not owning too much stuff. Last week I sold two 20" studded tires for only $40. It is good that they are out of my living space and the money is in my bank.

I think that's great if it works for you. Do you have any other stuff you'd like to sell cheap? ;)

Dang...I could have used the studded 20" tires :(

Aaron :)

I would probably sell my Dahon Smooth Hound with the front Q fork for just $400 plus shipping. I've got the original box. I stopped using it over a year ago. My neck hurts too much to ride bent over these days so I'll buy something else next spring as my spare bicycle.

A picture of a Smooth Hound is on my MySpace page in the photos section. The link is in my signature.

Yes, still here. Glad? Absolutely! I would make the same move again if I went back in time. We would have bought more land if we knew what was going to happen to land prices. Wow. Since we wouldn't go into debt, we built and expanded as we could afford to with cash. Started a business on that fancy new fangled internet thing and here we are.

Worn down and built up, both.

Electricity and Power. Glad I have them now. A well and pump that delivers clean water to the "house". So nice. Being able to shower, be clean and be warm, great. Laundry in a washing machine instead of a 5 gallon bucket, heaven. A warm comfortable bed. Mmmmmm.

Not quite right. Sprouting the stuff and eating the sprouts is done. Good stuff.

About this "owning only one hundred things" stuff. Can I plse count my tools as "one item"? If not I am doomed..:innocent:

It's a bicycle forum, therefore yes. :) And you can count all of your bicycles as one item too. :lol:

SWEET! :thumb: I have a few more bikes than I really need, but they keep accumulating. I think I do have 2 sold though.

Aaron :)

the guys who started the 100 things challenge said that there is plenty of lee-way of how you want to do it. You can count every individual thing in your possession or you can group it. Such as, you can count all of you socks individually, or a pair as 1 item from your 100, or All of your socks in one group as 1 item of the 100. Everybody comes to simplicity at their own pace on their own level. The one important thing is the continual looking at why you own something and judging on if the time to take care of it is worth keeping. There are even things that he does not include with the 100 (tools are included). Here is the article
http://zenhabits.net/minimalist-fun-the-100-things-challenge/


He also runs a minimalist blog at http://mnmlist.com/
I have read every post and they are all great. I am not completely into some of his views of simplicity but that is the point of simplicity in that we all come to our own part of it. The thing that bring us together is the fact that in some manner (Great or Small) we want to simplify our life. Some people are ok with having "Just in Case" items some completely do not understand the thinking, neither are wrong. That previous thought stems from his post: http://mnmlist.com/in-case

As I have already said, all of his post are pretty good and early on, in a specific post (within the second month) he decided that the post on that blog would be no more than 400 words to keep the theme of minimalism going.
Just my 2 cent.

I've decided this week that I should give away some things that I previously wanted to sell. During my week off I'll go through some of the accessible things I have and package them into a few boxes. A friend of mine has a hatchback wagon and can take them to a thrift store or perhaps a charity that can sell or give them away.

I decided that having the extra room and the feeling of moving towards my goal of having less stuff will be worth it.

What I wonder about is whether it would be worth it to package my older series of "how to" and "how things work" books and sell them on Amazon. That's about twenty books from an old set of encyclopedias. It would be a shame for me to donate them to a library system and just have them thrown away. I know that is what they do with books they don't want to put on the shelf. Annual library book sales dump the ones that don't sell.

I'm at that point as well. My thoughts are that since the advent of eBay and CL, people seem to be looking for "deals" and aren't willing to pay the price that something is worth anymore, making it easy to decide to throw (or give) away something instead of going through all the trouble for a few dollars. Just my two cents. :o

Since September, I've been working hard at getting rid of most of my possessions (most are car-related) and I've noticed that even though I'm bringing in more boxes from the storage locker to my bedroom, the pile in my bedroom is getting smaller and smaller. It feels great. I'll organize a garage sale right before leaving on tour for the smaller items that cannot easily be sold on craigslist or recycled.

Another resource is freecycle.org. I'm sure it's been mentioned before but it's so convenient I'll plug it again. I have used itboth to receive stuff and to give them away.

http://www.freecycle.org/

Freecycle requires membership. I don't really like that. I can give stuff away on Craigslist too. I don't consider myself a member. I just have an account. I don't need to go to a message board and sign up there too.

The local Freecycle message board has only twenty-eight messages this month. I can't read them since it requires membership. So I don't know how many people are actually using it locally. There could be just three people chatting with each other for all I know. Maybe Freecycle works better in larger cities just like Craigslist does.

You don't need a membership in Freecycle, but yuo do need a membership in Yahoo Groups to view the posts. But yeah, if you'd rather have an account than be a member, go with craigslist. (Of course people have been murdered for using craigslist.) :lol:

I haven't used freecycle in a few years, so there have probably been some changes. I see that posts on my local group has gone down some, but they'r still in the range of 400 to 600 per month. I 'm not endorsing freecycle, but people are free to look into it and decide for themselves.

My experience with Freecycle has been that people give away stuff that belongs in a dumpster.... moth-eaten clothing, a bike that didn't even rise to the level of scrap metal, etc. It seemed a mammoth waste of time. Craigslist wasn't much better.

I dunno. I've never tried to get anything on Freecycle, but I have given a number of things away. None of them were dumpster-worthy or even close. Examples: A perfectly functioning recumbent lifecycle that I didn't have space for and wasn't using, unopened, unexpired inkjet cartridges whose corresponding printer (not obsolete) had just bitten the dust, wine and beer making equipment that I wasn't using anymore, kids bicycles that had been outgrown but were still in good shape, etc.

I've had excellent luck both buying and selling from Craigslist, including furniture, musical instruments, clothing, ...