Our lives are filled with trinkets

Our lives are filled with trinkets. As I look around my room with my possessions I see a bunch of trinkets that I have gathered through out my life. Junk. Purging my stuff down to what I use every day and season, I don't have that much stuff anymore. All the trinkets that I bought throughout the years that basically bookmark different times in my life are gone. Pictures of our life are worth more, and in 2012 we can store thousands of "pics" in a small plastic box. The ipod replaces a closet full of records and CD's (although records sound better). T.V's are no longer the size of a oven but the size of a picture frame. Living alone in a car and tent, I learned that I really don't need a house or an apartment. I just need a place big enough to provide my basic needs and some storage. And in 2012 we have super efficient, small, and relatively cheap appliances that take up less space. And thanks to the Green movement we have better equipment and building materials. Personally I don't care about my carbon foot print or green foot print, I'm just trying to survive this economic "slump" the world is in right now, and if living simply can save me money then I'm all for that. Enter the Tiny House movement. There is a "green movement" right now of tree huggers designing and building tiny houses to live in, lowering their carbon foot print. This is all good and great for them and their green conscious, but I'm in it to save money. Building a tiny home on a 7'x20' foot trailer lets you save all that cash you would have given your mortgage bank or renter. That is A LOT of money saved. Lots of people work long hours, and some 2 jobs, and drive a looong commute every day just to spend a few minutes in their house, then they're off to bed. Your working to get money to spend on a place to sleep and rest up for work the next day, making someone else s business a success. Your house is just a really expensive hotel room at that point. And who's to say that in 30 years your home will be worth that much more? Maybe I'm just ignorant.  People like me who have an interest in wilderness self reliance and colonial period living might like the idea of living small. The pilgrims lived in small houses. They also spent most of their time outside. I'm looking at a tiny house on a 7'x20' foot trailer. This house can be moved when ever, and where ever I want. Now that is freedom. I could park it at a walmart lot close to my work for the week and save gas. I can go on vacation and not rent a room, visit friends in other States, all without a mortgage to pay. Ownership of property is real freedom but how many of us can buy out right property close enough to our work? Most of us must rent or get a 30 yr mortgage.   Count your trinkets, and then count your essentials.

CCD lessons learned

Car camping is fun at first but then the long term logistics start to make themselves very apparent.

·         Camp security- You can’t leave your stuff out in the open for critters or gluttonous people to help themselves to your stuff, and the few stuff that you do have is very important to your daily living activities. You can build a log cabin which requires time, time, more time, and more stuff. Or you can have a tent for your stuff, which can be broken into very easily. You can put your stuff in your car but your car becomes very overweight and you’re driving with that weight everyday using more gas and wearing out your shocks.

·         Tent- I used a small tent for fire wood storage (after someone stole my wood). I put a small lock on the zipper but that is more of a nuisance for any would be thief. My buckets and cooler were stored in there too.

·         Food- you can put a cooler in the ground for vegges, but most of my food was, and still is, canned meat (tuna, lots of tuna), grains, trail mix, and instant coffee, dried fruit, raw honey, coconut oil, Almond butter. I kept this in my car with no problems until summer time and the car would heat up making my perishable food parish faster. Even parked in the shade the car’s interior would quickly surpass thermal equilibrium. So a couple of coolers in the ground would have solved this.

Now that I’m back in a house I now have, in addition to the camp diet, ground coffee (what a treat!), and in the fridge I have raw milk, frozen & fresh veggies, the weekly ribeye steak and that’s it.

The can opener on my Multitool became indispensable. Nesting cups, spork, and MSR seagull pot was used everyday. Cooking while camping is fun, but when you are living in the camp and have to go to work, cooking becomes a long process and you quickly miss your quick cooking stove. I’d have to wake up even earlier in the morning to get the fire going, to cook breakfast, and get reading for work. A small propane stove would have made a big difference and cut down on cook time & fire wood.

·         Fuel/firewood-  Tinder and kindling became a longer and longer walk to gather up. Fuel too, but the camp ground sold firewood bundles and cutting down trees was a no no. This same rule also put a stop to the many shelter projects I had planned.

·         Hygiene- Small bottle of bleach did multible jobs, but a bottle of regular castile soap, or in my case Dr. Bronner’s Sal-Suds did every cleaning job that needed to be done, with just 2 tsp of the stuff in a spray bottle of water(purified water from the pond of course, ha)

·         Companionship- KJV 1611 and a radio. “music wips away the dust from the soul”

·         Containers- They are King. A couple of 5 gallon buckets w/ lids became more valuable than gold. I used them for sponge baths, dishes, extinguishing my fires before leaving for work, chairs & table, laundry, tick drowning device, Tinder and kindling storage, etc,

·         Paperwork- Where do you keep important documents, check books, etc? In your impenetrable tent? Where do you get mail? Do you open a p.o.box?

·         Weather- I hung a 10x12 tarp 15 ft up above my firepit and table, which worked well in a down pour.

·         What do you do when winter comes back? Lol

·         Basic Needs-  I had all my basic needs met, shelter, fire, clean water, food, companionship. But I soon found myself wanting more. More fire wood, more space, more tent interior square footage, a toilet seat would be good, a quicker way of fire would be more efficient, etc, etc. With all my needs met my human nature quickly wanted more, more efficiency, more ease. Justifying this by telling myself “I just need to figure out how to be more efficient, so I have more time to do more stuff” In other words, more time left over in the day to do more work. 

But I thought I was doing this car camping thing to learn to live more simply, to have more time to muse about life. Human nature of a funny thing.

In the Army they strip you of everything, even your identity. You quickly learn that you can live with barely anything. I got quite comfortable living out of a rucksack in the woods. But back then I didn’t have a cell phone bill, car loan & insurance payments, etc. which made living out of a car in the woods a tricky deal.

I’m sure there is a way to combine the modern and simple life, Cody Lundin does it every day. He set up his whole life to live simply and cheaply. I’m sure with more time I would figure out how to blend the two worlds, and I still plan to. In fact my journey to the minimalist life will be the topic of future Pilgrim videos. I’ll share my success and failures so you can learn from my mistakes.

As of this writing I’ve been housesitting a friend’s house for about a month now, while they are away for the summer. It’s a summer beach house that was converted into a 4 season house, a stone throws away from the beach. Nothing in the house makes sense, the clothes washer drains into the bathtub, and the scalding hot water only lasts 10mins. My roommate is a Norwegian Forest cat who could easily tip the scales at 20 lbs. He talks alot making all kinds of vocal sounds. He also is a great hunter and proves his skills daily with protein on the doorstep to pay his rent. We’ve gotten very close.

I joined Planet Fitness too. You can’t beat $10 bucks a month! I do my workout around 4pm after work. My workouts last no longer than 50 mins, after which I drink my protein shake (Garden of Life- Raw Meal) and then take advantage of the gyms free showers, just don’t make eye contact with anyone and you’ll be fine. After that I drive home and cook up my dinner of canned tuna and frozen corn, peas, and broccoli with an avocado. Before bed I’ll drink another shake.

My plan now is to work and save money. I’m researching other simple, self-reliant ways of living and small houses. I’ve been looking at TinyHouses.com and exploring that option, even looking at Yurts and big toolsheds. Whatever the future brings me it will be a learning experience. It will be fun to see what God has planned for me.

I want to thank you for watching my videos and joining me on this journey. I’ll continue to make videos on topics that I think should be covered and discussed, and God willing, they won’t be as boring.

Thank you,

Jim