Small Living Journal

I think the main financial benefits of small living are pretty apparent.

Built-in Savings

These are the obvious up-front savings you should expect to see with decreased rent or purchase/construction cost. Add to that (or subtract from it!) the limited utility and maintenance costs associated with small living, and we’ve got most of the financial benefits of small living accounted for.

So much money can be saved right here that I can say with some certainty that there are loads of people out there who don’t identify as small-housers, (or even know that such a thing as the small-living movement exists) who nevertheless choose to rent or purchase tiny apartments or houses simply because they cost less; the money they’re not spending is instead salted away or put to better use.

Minimized Consumer Spending

This is probably the second biggest financial benefit to small living. The small house, as we have all no doubt observed, offers scant quarter for superfluous items, (so little in fact that it may present a bit of a problem when Christmas or birthdays roll around, because one can begin to dread the presents purchases by clueless but well-intentioned loved ones.

“Um. Thanks?”

So obviously, the small-houser is prohibited from excessive consumer spending simply by virtue of space issues. This should contribute to financial strength.

Simple Living, Organization, and Finance

I’d LIKE to think that the practical steps taken when moving towards the simplicity and organization that the small house demands would have salutary consequences in the realm of financial organization, budgeting, and spending etc. This is however, merely a speculation on my part. Financial discipline is it’s own realm, but I can see it going hand-in-hand with the discipline of small-living.

At the beginning of 2008, Logan and I sat down and made some big commitments and we followed through with our goals of living a smaller, debt free life. For us the key to staying on track was writing down our goals and checking back in every few months to measure our progress.

A number of blog readers and friends have asked me how the heck to live a smaller, debt-free life. So here are a few tips that might help you:

1. Follow the program in Your Money or Your Life. If you want to understand more about finance and money management, pick up a copy of Your Money or Your Life. Why am I advocating that you read this book? Economic uncertainty, layoff’s and other world events have many people stressed out about money, how to spend it, save it and invest it. This book lays out simple steps that will help you gain a better understanding of money.
2. Budgets? Budgets are like diets. They don’t work. To get around budgets we’ve developed a monthly tabulation sheet, that allows us to evaluate our spending and examine our true consumption patterns. Our general expenses like rent and food stay constant, but we’ve found that our monthly spending pattern is never the same. Usually there is some kind of weird expense that pops up. Even though we watch our spending, we know that it will fluctuate. Thus, it is better to be mindful of each purchase.
3. Live within your means. Don’t buy stuff you can’t afford. This probably sounds like cliche advice, but how many people do you know that charge stuff on their credit cards all the time? Know the true expense of items by converting the price of stuff into your labor cost to earn it.
4. Wear out your stuff. Before you buy something new (like shoes), wear them out first and get repair estimates before buying something new.
5. Plan in advance. Planning drastically reduces the dreaded impulse buyer regret. For instance, make lists before you go grocery shopping and research the best deals for things like clothing and food.
6. Evaluate your living situation. If you’re paying an excessive amount to “own” or rent, take some time to evaluate the value of your location and the space you use. Examples of living small in this journal demonstrate how very little we need to live.
7. Buy local food. Healthy, organic, and fair trade foods can be very expensive in stores. To obtain this great food inexpensively look for a local farmer’s market to save money. Farmer’s markets allow you to purchase directly from the producer without the overhead cost of brick and mortar store fronts.
8. Cut out the unnecessary shopping trips and stay out of the mall. If you don’t go shopping, you won’t purchase items on impulse and your wallet will stay fatter.
9. Before you buy anything, ask yourself these 3 questions:

A. Did I receive fulfillment, satisfaction and value in proportion to life energy spent?

B. Is this expenditure of life energy in alignment with my values and life purpose?

C. How might this expenditure change if I didn’t have to work for a living. What expenses would increase, decrease or disappear if I didn’t go to work everyday?

Via Your Money or Your Life

Living a smaller lifestyle has changed my perception of consumerism and how so many of our spending choices negatively effect the economy, the work we do, and the planet. I wish I’d stumbled across the concept of small living earlier in my life.

Would you add anymore tips to this list?

Since I am about 85% downsized and already living a pretty simple lifestyle, I have chosen to talk more about a couple of my biggest past obstacles and my solutions to them in hopes they will also help others to simplify their lives in those areas:

First, a little from my background…

Although in the beginning I was never quite sure why I was so attracted to the idea of uncluttering my life, I am quite sure now that it had everything to do with building a mortgage-free Tiny House to live my retirement years in! Up until the last year when I first heard about the Tiny House Movement, I just wanted to live very simply. When I was in the Air Force I only had a single duffel bag and a large footlocker that carried everything I owned or needed for 8 years! I loved that kind of simplicity and after doing it for that long I knew it was do-able! However, it was not without costs!! Military life was not always an easy way of living. For me, it meant a single tiny room with a set of bunk beds, a desk and 2 lockers in the noisy barracks with a roommate who was often not of my choosing, the less-than-private community bathroom, the nearby chow hall for most of my not-always-so-tasty meals (when i wasn’t engaging in my then staple diet of drinking beer or California wine and eating pizza, chicken wings & subs) and the nomad life of rarely knowing when I would be moving on to the next place – all the stuff I have no interest in dealing with at this stage of my life!! While it became a lifestyle I no longer wanted to endure, that transition into civilian life was very difficult for me. I was leaving behind my close knit family that I could trust my life with… I loved living within walking distance of work… I loved that everything I really needed was right on the base in a community where prices were affordable – like the base exchange (a smaller, cheaper version of Walmart)… mostly free work/hobby shops (like woodworking, the auto shop and ceramics, etc) with access to all their work areas, tools and machines…I was used to the military ways… and I loved the simplicity. It took me a few years to adjust, but in the meantime I started accumulating ‘stuff’ I thought I had missed. Now if I wanted to work on my hobbies, I had to invest in my own tools and have a place big enough to work on them. One thing led to another and before I knew it I was surrounded by lots of debt & clutter. Although back then there wasn’t really a term for it, I knew I felt boxed in with too much stuff!! Luckily, a few years later I was introduced to clutter, what it meant and how to deal with it… a then fairly new concept in the early 1990′s.

For the most part, this whole simple living procedure has been very cleansing for me. It took many moves, but once I got started, the process of every move meant a fresh new start with a lot less. I began to realize what was important and what wasn’t. Of course, the beginning was tough, especially when at least 2 of the moves were real estate turnovers and not my idea. I couldn’t seem to get settled in anywhere and I still struggled with what was important enough to keep lugging around with me and what wasn’t. Moving now is much harder than military life because they used to do all the work for me.

As you can see, the steps towards my Simple Life Endeavor have been a long and trying process. If you are just starting your Journey of Simple Living, you need to also understand that by stretching this process over a period of years, it was much easier for me to start letting go of the ‘things’ in my life that no longer served me any purpose. Each little step made the next step easier. The key was to keep on keepin’ on!!

Before I start though, I must tell you that everything I have let go of in my life so far, I have never missed for a second!! That fear alone was the single biggest mental obstacle that kept me locked into not moving forward in the earlier years of implementing my Simple Living Plan.

I have only chosen the 2 biggest obstacles I have faced in order to cut down on the size of this article. Here they are:

DEBT

Obstacle:

This has been, by far, the biggest obstacle I have encountered in my quest to ‘lighten up’! While I was in that ‘stuff’ culture, I accumulated a lot of debt. I can’t even remember some of the stuff on those credit cards, but at the time I was sure I just had to have them! As for the stuff I do remember, I don’t have most of it anymore. Impulse buying was one of the most unfulfilling habits I had and now that I finally had the room for all the clutter, I became overwhelmed with it. I began to call it Financing Unnecessary Clutter Karma!! And the acronym for that is what I said every time I opened my monthly credit card bills!! With each purchase, of whatever it was, the void I was trying to fill inside just got bigger. And with that, it made things more stressful with payments, maintenance and clutter. I longed for that simple military lifestyle without the government control. It took me awhile to discover that my ‘void’ needed to be filled from within. Thankfully, that was about the time I got into Shirley MacLaine’s works and the mantra…”Go Within or Go Without!”. I have now come to love just “BEING” (one of my alternate versions of doing nothing!)…a state of mind which only requires quietly finding the forgotten peace and tranquilty within myself and my simple surroundings. And it’s FREE

Solutions:

• I moved very close to my job to save gas, insurance costs, maintenance and wear & tear on my car…have access to public transportation if I wanted to take advantage of it…have easy and close by access to almost anything…end the wear & tear on my body, mind and spirit from the stress of driving 2 hours a day!

• I moved to a smaller apartment in which heat & hot water were included in my rent, a huge savings here in Upstate NY with our cold, harsh winters and the costs of fuel!! Little did I know that the new place was going to be one of the best places I have ever lived and the rent alone was cheaper than the apartment before it!

• I got rid of my land line phone in favor of a simple pay-as-you-go cell phone plan. I don’t talk on the phone much so that part was pretty easy…and inexpensive.

• I stopped watching those shopping channels!!

• I changed to a cheaper internet provider.

• I got rid of costly cable bills in favor of renting DVD’s from Netflix and online access to local news & weather.

• I stopped all my magazines, book clubs and newspapers.

• I simplified my eating habits.

• I started drinking mostly water.

• I take day trips with a picnic lunch rather than vacations that cost alot of money in lodging, food & travel expense.   

• I CUT UP ALL THE CREDIT CARDS!!!

BOOKS

Obstacle:

I think the hardest things for me to downsize have been my books! I had lots of them!! I was sure I would never be able to part with any of them. I am a real lover of books, but let’s face it, moving books around often requires alot of muscle power and sweating! It seems no matter what size the box is, it is still pretty heavy. Most of my books were information & technical books which are usually larger. I found that alot of the information in those was outdated by new and improved technology. All books spend most of their time on shelves…untouched and taking up space…sometimes for years! Slowly and painstakingly I have been able to let go of 95% of them. Here’s how…

Solutions:

• I rarely read a novel more than once so the novels were the first to go…I mostly gave those away. I then started going to the local library or searching & reserving novels online that can be delivered from anywhere within the US Library System to my library for me to pick up and check out. I can even renew my books online if I haven’t finished them or can’t get to the library by the time they are due back. My library card is free!

• It didn’t take long to realize that as much as I didn’t cook, the cookbooks would not do me any good!! I wrote down my favorite recipes (a pretty short list by the way!!). Then I used my computer to type them up and store them on a standard word processing recipe card template in my Recipe file. Mostly now if I want a recipe I search online for it, print it out and then throw it away or store it on my computer when I am done using it.

• Nearly 80% of my books were arts, crafts & hobby instruction books. I slowly started to eliminate those by deciding which activities I would actually commit to. Happily I found alot of them would be more expensive in supplies and take up alot more room than I was willing to accept, so those books were the next to go! I found that selling them on Amazon was fairly profitable because alot of them were brand new. I made up my mind that I could always check out (from my library), rent, borrow, buy or download instruction books & videos if I changed my mind and wanted to take up something I no longer had those particular books for. By doing it this way, I was able to easily and effortlessly let those go. And guess what? So far, I have never missed any of them

• Investing in the Kindle 2 from Amazon is a very smart idea. It will hold over 1500 books, is small and easily portable. This is, by far, the easiest & lightest box of books I will ever be carrying again! I have been lucky enough to find most of my favorite info & reference books that I use on a regular basis in Kindle format for roughly $10 each and delivered in seconds to my Kindle 2 via cyberspace…without an internet connection! Some of those books cost over $60 in the hardback, space-raping, heavyweight version!!

• I started reading the local newspaper online instead of buying one…some of the more popular newspapers can also be subscribed to on the Kindle and delivered before the news stand copy comes out!

• I download free audio books available at my local library website to listen to on my mp3 player or with my laptop software (available at the library’s website). Although the list isn’t all that big, it continues to grow.

THE HARDEST OBSTACLES COMING UP

The hardest obstacle I have yet to face is giving up all the space I have acquired by downsizing. I love all the open & unused space. Even though my apartment is small, it still allows for healthy air circulation and positive flowing energy. It allows me room to move around freely and it leaves plenty of room to do Yoga or my (mostly small & portable) Artwork in either the living room or bedroom. Since the heat is included in my rent, I am no longer (directly) paying to heat all that unused space. My little cat, Bandit, can still run and play inside and we have a place to store his litter box.

The solution to this might be to design my Tiny House to be one large rectangular room with no interior walls, 8′ – 10′ high outside walls, a loft, lots of windows, a larger wood stove for heating & air conditioner for cooling and maybe a couple of support beams if necessary. Then build a small, simple, one-room Tiny House for my Yoga and Art Studio right next door…something similar to the Shed Cluster Concept that Michael Janzen mentioned on his Tiny House Design site back in May 2009.

I will find it really hard to give up the central location I am in. Although it is not very compatible with the way I want to live (the peace and quiet nature stuff), I am loving the conveniences. Everything is just around the corner…the grocery stores, small education centers, my medical, dental and optical facilities, Bandit’s pet hospital…stuff that is not always easy to get to or as inexpensive in a country atmosphere.

Then there is the question of whether or not (at retirement age) I will forgo power from the grid in favor of using solar or wind power. Do I want the maintenance it may require? Will the initial cost be worth it for me? Is it going to be easier for me to just pay the price rather than endure the hassle? These are questions I must answer after I have honestly studied these power alternatives.

ABSOLUTE NO NO’S!!

In closing I would like to mention a couple of things that (right now) I refuse to forgo:

• A Real Flushing Toilet

I find the alternatives unacceptable to me at this point in my life! Of course this means a septic tank and a lot less freedom to move my Tiny House around the property. By then though, maybe something will come up that I am willing to accept…like some kind of RV or other portable plumbing system.

• Running Water

• A Bathtub

These 2 things really go hand-in-hand because surely I am not willing to haul water and heat it for one of my favorite luxuries…A NICE HOT RELAXING BATH

I’m sitting at my desk with a sprawl of paper threatening to eat my organic, goat cheese pizza.  I just crunched numbers over my late night feast.  I can do it.  My bank statement is sitting on top of my Tumbleweed plans.  Across the table, my research list scribbles every trip to the hardware store and every name of my construction recruits.  I know what I need to build my tiny house.  I know what it’ll cost.  With my new bank statement, I know I have the money.  Here’s the tripper; I also have the land.

What’s the Problem?

It’s this last point that’s caused the late night pizza binge.  My free home site lies in the corner of my parent’s yard.  My tiny home will sit on a permanent foundation and forever keep me living with Mom and Dad, while I chase the ghosts of my childhood.

Even though my relationship with my family doesn’t require a tunicate, there’s something deep seated in me that calls for autonomy and needs physical separation from my family.  I’ve grown up in a country that expects independence, and lays out this freedom along a linear flow of events:  Education, career, house, spouse, kids, retirement.  Although a degree of variation is acceptable, cross too far off the path and you become a social eyebrow raiser.  “Live in Mom’s backyard,” lies in the realm of eyebrow raising.

Questioning Freedom

I know I can easily point to the downfalls of this freedom lineup.  It’s impossible to ignore the high cost of education, the sick-laden workaholic and the mortgage meltdown.  These are the questions I ask as I chase simplicity: Is this freedom?  What happened to my independence in this pile of bills?

Balancing “We” and “I”

For me to accept land from my family, and dig my foundation in their space, I feel like I’m crossing a boarder that values, “we,” over, “I.”  It would be a sharing of resources, with an acceptance of work and care in return.  No, my parents would not breath their expectations through my windows.  But I would need to be around to care for their animals when they go out of town, tend to the garden, and resolve myself to share my comings are goings.  Then there’s the larger question of care as they grow old.  It would only make sense to become their caretaker when it’s time.  I would be their closest neighbor.

Working this family dynamic is a process for every person.  But it becomes more alive and tangible when you live in close quarters and rely on their grace to build your tiny dream.

Asking the Question

Without question, planting my tiny home next to my parents would afford financial freedom.  Sharing resources would lessen our impact on the environment as a family.  So the question remains.  Can I hack it?  Can I leave the social norm.  Sure, I see tiny homes on the path to culture coolness.  Living in Mom’s backyard isn’t quite there.  When I except that cool is not my destiny, can I hold on for the lifetime ride of these new family ties?

Figuring Thing Out.  Slowly

This is why, fellow tiny house-ers, I resorted to my organic pizza binge.  From here, I’ll continue to mill over my questions.  I’ll practice clear speaking and deep listening with my family.  I’ll give myself the room to make a decision, knowing there is not only one way to live freely and walk lightly on this earth.  Of course, I’ll leave the oven on, pizza ready.

Author Bio

Amber is a writer and outdoor educator.  She lives small in Los Angeles with her mutt, Kona.

The subject of this issue of Small Living Journal was actually my suggestion. I thought it would be useful to hear how people have solved, and plan to solve, past and future challenges. Here are some example of common obstacles and my solutions.

Past & Current Obstacles

Debt Reduction

After watching the equity in my home evaporate I began to think very differently about money. I decided that for me, debt is to be avoided at all costs because the risk it too high. For example if I were to loose my job I would put my family in a very difficult position.

I’ve made some immediate changes in spending and have chosen to eliminate every unneeded expense. Living frugally immediately puts money back in my pocket and gives back some of the freedom lost by taking on debt.

When the housing market recovers we’ll be able to move on and into a smaller less expensive home on a larger piece of land. Once we’ve landed my financial focus will be becoming debt free.

Income Growth

I have a simple plan to create multiple revenue streams by leveraging my knowledge and skills. Most of us make money by selling our time to an employer. We make more money over time as our skills and knowledge improve, advancing as our contributions increase. The problem with this is that we’re reliant on someone else to support us and if that company should fail we go down with the ship.

There is another option that everyone can capitalize on immediately, and that’s banking your knowledge. To some degree everyone is an expect in something and when you take the time to record that expertise on a blog, book, recording, video, etc, you are banking your knowledge.

I’ve chosen to blog about my passion for tiny house design and have a couple book ideas in the works. Each one of these efforts becomes a small self-sustaining revenue stream. They don’t have to be large, they just have to be plentiful and require little effort to maintain. Blogging does require a lot of time and energy but I love to do it so I’d actually say the effort is low. In other words I’ve taken something I love doing and turned it into a revenue stream.

My long term plan is to create enough small streams to help eliminate debt and give me back more and more of my time. It’s a slow process but can work if you can maintain that entrepreneurial spirit.

More time with my Family

In 2006 Julia and I adopted our daughter Katie. As every parent can attest, having a new baby is life altering. The job I had at the time was a 100-mile commute away. I took the bus mostly and then the train when the bus route got canceled.

After Katie was born I began to make the trip to San Francisco by car because it was faster and gave me back about 2 hours a day with my family. But this was still not enough, I wanted more.

One day a job opportunity presented itself and a few months later I had switched positions and was working from home full time. Working from home has saved me so much time commuting and I can even have lunch with my wife and daughter.

Not every profession is as accommodating to working from home as mine. It’s also very hard to imagine working from home if you’ve always worked outside the home. But I think if you use your creativity and do some research you might be able to find a niche that fits your skill-set. My only warning is to look for real jobs and avoid anything that looks like a scheme.

Future Obstacles

Peak Oil Transition

I realize this is a loaded topic so forgive me for blurting it out like this, but hang in there with me for a few minutes.

At some point in the future the demand for oil will exceed supply. This will be due to increasing demand and fewer sources of oil. It’s clear that business and government are focused on the problem and are injecting more resources into finding a way to curtail demand, like using energy more efficiently, and diversify energy production by exploring coal, new oil exploration, tar sands, solar, wind, nuclear, etc.

In my humble opinion, all of this momentum has created a peak plateau and I’m certain it’s all in an effort to make a smooth transition to a new alternate energy source world. Some see our future powered by coal, nuclear, and natural gas; others see a wind, solar, hydro world… but they are all united in finding a way to make the transition smooth to keep human civilization strong.

Here’s a list of things I’m doing and plan to do. Ironically no matter what your predictions are for the future, none these choices can hurt.

• Eliminate all debt.
• Move to a temperate climate with adequate rainfall.
• Become less dependent on an income by building a sustainable and self-reliant lifestyle and multiple small revenue streams that could theoretically survive a deeper economy downturn.
• Move toward a sustainable lifestyle and live in balance with nature.
• Buy only things I’d be happy keeping for a lifetime.
• Buy only electronic devices that can run on 12VDC.
• Invest in alternative energy equipment like photovoltaic solar panels, batteries, and wind turbines.

Life, Liberty, Happiness

While peak oil concerns have acted in part as a catalyst for my interest in simple living, downsizing, sustainability, and self-reliance; I think it’s really the desire to live a happy and free life that is my primary motivator, as it should be.

This is also something I think every human around the planet can relate to, we all ultimately want to be happy and freedom is a prerequisite. It seems many of us have strayed from that goal by giving into short-term perks powered by borrowed money and a society that seems to require the sale of our time, aka, a job.

Ironically the solution to this obstacle has been staring at us through the pages of history. Species that survive are those that are in balance with their surroundings. We are an incredibly resourceful animal. I’m certain that if we choose to solve this puzzle and take into account the need to be in balance with our natural surroundings we will prosper, be happy, and free. I suspect if we choose to use up our natural surroundings we will ultimately fail because we’ll be so far out on a limb when the branch finally decides we’ve gotten too heavy to hold.

So I’m choosing to get off the limb and climb down the tree. I certain I can find a way to live free and be happy by choosing to use my clever human ingenuity to architect a sustainable future for myself and family. I figure the more of us that put our focus on what truly sustains life the better our chances will be for a long and fruitful civilization. The first step is it to move our focus off the noise around us and redirect it on the things that keep us in balance with the life around us.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter, and visit my design blog, Tiny House Design.