This is "home sweet home" for now. I haven't seen it in person yet, but Rowan's been living there since the fire, and it's possible he'll still be living there when I get there. He has made some improvements since that photo was taken, including setting up an outdoor "bathroom" behind the trailer, and setting up the awning out front to create a "living room".

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3650/...bb2ee88e_m.jpg

Fairly simple living, I think.

I am seriously considering doing something similar when I graduate. I want to build something like this and either purchase a house in the city (biking and transit!) to park behind and rent the main house or purchase land just outside of the city (some transit, some biking, some driving). Get to a point where I can work part time just enough to pay the necessary bills-ideally running the tiny house off of solar with propane heat and cooking.

I have been trying to do the same thing. I recently got divorced and moved with my clothes, my bike and my dog. It's refreshing not having responsbility for so much "stuff"

I used to be far more minimalist that I currently am. I have found myself accumulating a much larger collection of stuff, although much of it is utilitarian. My collection of bike tools and household tools has gotten pretty big. I have a ton of kickboxing equipment (headgear, boxing gloves, bag gloves, knee pads, shin guards, mouthpiece, and soon a heavy bag). I'm considering getting a second bike so that I'll still be mobile if one is out of commission for a few days. I have too many black metal CDs that I never play, considering that my entire collection is on mp3. However, the physical albums have sentimental value.

I'm only really minimalistic in the sense that I eliminate possessions that I don't use, whereas many are packrats. Also, many people find use for a greater number of possessions than what I have. If I had a TV, DVD player, Playstation, or car, they would sit idle. I don't think I live simply on the basis of any moralistic principle.

I've been working on simplifying my life over the last year, and so far:
In the last year, i've sold off my entire DVD collection, video games, TV/stand/dvd player. And my car.

Next up are my books and bookshelves, because I just bought a Sony E-Reader(The TV paid for this) which is much more compact and nice to use. I'm still debating on my CD collection, but I think in the end, it will go as well (except for maybe a few that have sentimental value).

I'm a very materialistic person, but at the same time I hate feeling crowded or tied down by too many things. The most important things I own are my laptop, bike, iPod and my e-reader. I could probably do without the rest, it'll just take some time to convince myself of that.

I'm also 23 and all my friends think i'm crazy.

this summer I moved from Ohio to Oregon. When I moved, with my girlfriend, we sold everything that wouldn't fit in the back of her Toyota and headed out. I sold my car and bought a better bike. Getting rid of everything that we didn't need was incredible; it has simplified our lives 20 fold. We share a one bedroom apt. and it's great. I would never have imagined how much the crap I owned was holding me down.

I suppose it depends what hobbies and family you have. My wife and I run a music band and so have our instruments and mic stands, amplifiers to house. I work on the radio and constantly receive CDs and press releases from record companies. My wife uses two lap tops for her work and we look after our 4 year old grandson three days a week so we have loads of his toys! Oh for a clear out!!

We've upgraded from the trailer! It looks like we'll be moving into a one-room cabin in a remote corner of the orchard where Rowan works. The cabin survived the bushfire.

The cabin is fairly large ... probably about 2/3 the size of a basement. It isn't insulated and there's no heat, but there is a large fireplace. There is no electricity, but there is a flush toilet in an outhouse adjacent to the cabin. And there's no kitchen, but there is a countertop with an Australian-style BBQ. It is furnished with a bed and a sofa.

Not quite as "simple" as the trailer, but perhaps a little more functional for winter with the fireplace. And I'm excited about the luxury of having a flush toilet. :)


The last two photos show the cabin in question: http://www.flickr.com/photos/1430288...7611337191865/


I'll be heading over in June with one of my bicycles, some bicycle touring gear, and a bit of my clothing. The remainder of my stuff (maybe 400 cubic feet packed) will come over later.

How cold does it get in the winter? Probably much warmer than you're used to!

Leaving in about a month, eh? You must be getting excited.

It's kind of like a Vancouver winter ... lows around 0C or so, maybe -5C on occasion. Some frost, rarely snow at that elevation, but snow in the higher elevations around. Lots of rain. It will be the dead of winter there when I arrive.

And yep ... about a month to go, and so much left to do. But yes, I certainly am getting excited. :)

We are living very simply right now - on an extended tour on our bikes. Everything we use is carried on the bikes. Makes life very simple indeed!

We do have a bunch of stuff in storage up in the USA, and I envision getting back to there in a couple years and sending 3/4 of it to charity. The one thing I'm really struggling with is my map table. My parents had this great big, enormous, oak map table (I mean - this thing is HUGE!!) and I really liked it. At one point - I was a total vagabond at the time - my mom was asking all us kids what we wanted from the house so she could put it in her will and I blurted out, "Map table!" She just laughed and shook her head.

so now I have the map table and I can't get rid of it - I really do love it. But how in the heck does one carry a 400-pound, 6-ft X 4-ft X 4.5-ft chunk of oak around on a bike??!?!

When I first moved to Central Alberta I got rid of half my stuff, but still had a lot left. I put most of it into storage with the idea that when I finished school I'd dig it all out and set up a new place to live. 4.5 years later, when I dug it all out again, like you have, I realized I didn't need a large portion of it, and quite a bit of it is going out.

Somehow now, however, I feel better about the boxes of bear ornaments which have been given to me. All the boxes together don't add up to a huge oak map table!! :D

There are now 14 photos up, with some shots of the interior of the cabin.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/1430288...7611337191865/

Turns out it is well furnished, and comes complete with a toilet and tub, some gas power, and some solar power. :)

Loos like a comfy little place. Very nice.

Well I have read alot of the information on here and still manage to screw up. I was really enjoying my used digital camera. So I figured I would buy a bigger one. Yeah I was probably saying the same thing. I will regret this. But I did it anyway. Funny I carried the smaller camera more. Luckily I sold it to a girl at work. Only lost 50 on what I paid for it. So I guess that was a cheap lesson.

I just graduated college, but i work for myself. I've been reading through this thread for the first time as i've always thought myself to have a decently simple life, doing the whole "purge half your posessions" thing once a year.

I live in a city, 2 bedroom apt. with a roomate. my main posessions include:

bag full of cameras
toolbox of leathersmithing tools for my job and a hide of leather
iphone (phone and ipod in 1...what's better?!)
macbook
3 bikes (im gonna sell one off soon)/toolbox/pump/ minimal extra parts like handlebars, etc.
tv
bed and a worktable/desk for my leatherwork, one small side table .

clothing: I only have 2 pairs of jeans, 3 or 4 pairs of shorts, and usually buy a stack of $2 tshirts every 6 months to keep them a bit fresh. I'm a huge fan of sweatshirts/sweaters and button shirts but i keep to the classics: 1 red plaid, 1 chambray, 1 white oxford,a couple hoodies, etc. a yellow rain coat, a blue wool coat, some white tennis sneakers, and a couple pairs of boots/flip flops. that's about it that i wear....the rest needs to go...i need to clean my closet.

my kitchen stuff is my moms, our furniture is my roomates. I've always tried to live to the point where I can have some gear for my hobbies, but if i needed to i could fit everything into a car and go. besides my desk and bed, i could do that. I think it's pretty good and swel.

My goals for graduation and living/working on my own are to ride daily, work independently, cook daily, and become less dependent on eating out and watching tv. I'm thinking about buying a car, because I want to travel to ride trails and work on my photography projects. I would be ok with that, it's like a box to fit everything in. I'd probably go so far as to test it one day!

Ive always been into "survival" and stuff, and back in 1996, between high school and college I went into the Nanthahala National Forest in NC, with a shotgun, axe, sheath and pocketknife, sleeping bag and about 300 square feet of tarp material, plus some cooking pots and lived for 4 months. I did have a few extra little things, but my backpack heading into the woods on the first day only weighed 60 pounds. Things did get tough a few times and I went and found work in local towns to make a bit of money for food or clothes but I made it the whole 4 months in relative comfort.
Notice I only did it as a sort of vacation or experiment though. I would never suggest anyone try to live like that permanant. Its a mighty lonely life, especially for a 18 year old. Girls want nothing to do with a dirty forest dwelling hippie.

I've already cut 80% of my clutter and working on doing the next 80% cut. I am an outdoors enthusiast and accumulated a lot of outdoors "gear" I never used. I'm working to getting my lifestyle down to a 1 bedroom apartment from a 2 bedroom house (no storage units - that's cheating). As to what I "own", I am a real estate investor so I own multiple properties (I'm the only landlord I know who's picked up rent via bike) but those are are just my means of having an income instead of working 9-5. It's actually amusing getting snide comments from people who are twice my age and worth about 1/8th of me simply because I'm not driving a $900 a month car payment plus insurance around. You would be surprised how much real wealth you could make if you just got the crap out of your life and made room for simple means of investing the excess you didn't spend on crap.

Besides I need to get to the 1 bedroom apartment because my next "house" is going to be a sailboat on which I may have my now girlfriend, by then who knows :love:, from Iran and I won't have room for anything else. I will say this - having a relationship with someone who did not grow up in the US has helped me in this quest a lot...and it's easier to flirt when you're not tripping over clutter.

Look up Tim Lively. He's a hippie knifemaker out of Texas who lives in the dirt and has a very attractive hippie lady by his side - Marian. There's some hot hippie girls out there. And the best part is because they're not putting crap on their skin every day, when they put the slightest bit of makeup on they look like cover models. Besides, a good earthy tan beats foundation and mascara any day.

Im going to check that dude out, he may have figured out the trick! How is the sailboat coming? My wife is from India and she has the same idea about living an untraditional life.

i only buy what i think can be useful for my job and for school. laptop of course for my studies, bike to commute.

Coming together very well. I have about 2 more years of building this real estate portfolio up here until I sell it all and buy a slip in Florida. The gf is a math wiz and wants to be an actuary. I'm an independent adjuster so Florida's a good place for both of us, the boat and 2 wheels year round.

Indian? Very nice. I worked for an Indus newspaper in Boston for a couple month in advertising sales.

If you want to get rid of DVDs and books, follow what OP does. Keep a few of them which you will want to watch/read from time to time. Oh and there's no need to try to live paperless, paper is our friend, it's also bio-degradable. The problem isn't using paper, it is using paper wastefully and, not growing trees.;)

I think most people have the wrong idea about what is living simply. You can have different definitions for it, but basically it means simplify in getting what you want in your life. OP stated that he always try to reduce the things that he owns, it's because he realize there are things he own that he does not want, and he think of simpler ways to get those which he does want. He also mentioned that he does not deprive himself in doing so, therefore it's not always about restraining yourself to certain things, even though eventually you may come to that.

For example, if you really enjoy good food and you're a bad cook, it would really kill you if you try to "live simply" and cook yourself every meal even though you don't like what you cook. Therefore It would be much simpler if you just go eat out and save yourself time and trouble if you can afford it. It's the same thing with drinking wine, as I've read a few previous posts. If you demand top quality glass of wine and service, spend the money, enjoy and have fun, just be sure it's what you want.

Just a reminder here, there is no such thing as wastefulness as long as you make full use of what you own. If you use paper and print a lot, make sure you make good use of all that you printed and think before you print, even though I like handwriting more, since you won't throw away a few pages of what you write lightly. If you have the need for a car, go buy one, and use it daily, as much as you can, to accomplish things more efficiently. If you own DVDs or books, watch/read them so often until you get tired of them, and then get rid of them, so you don't have to back them up in your hard drives.

I can make so many examples but hopefully you all get my drift, but I would recommend one to read OP three times.

Rowan and I are together in our "Love Shack" now. :)

The cabin is 9 metres by 6 metres (so, about 20 ft x 30 ft, or about 600 sq. ft ... a pretty good size). It has a fireplace which is our source of heat, and there are more than enough dead trees in the area to provide us with firewood.

We are in the process of insulating the place so it will hold the heat a bit more because it does get fairly cool at night. However, we did buy a down duvet for the purposes of keeping warm at night and it works quite well. Things like clothing are important because we need to keep warm, so we've got a collection of warm clothes, and I am hoping to pick up a few more pieces in the next few days.

We have power provided by a generator and the sun (when the sun shines). Rowan has set up the plumbing so that we have running water in the cabin now, although we are still working on getting consistant hot water. Oh, we also have good internet access up here so we can communicate and listen to the radio etc.

We've got decent food up here, although we can't keep much that needs to be cold. And we've got a small gas stove to cook the food, so that's all good.

And we've got a few luxuries ... like our bicycles. :) I've also picked up a handful of used books because we don't have a TV or similar forms of entertainment here.

We're living simply ... but comfortably.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/1430288...7619719051119/