Living Large by Traveling Light

Just like any kid living in America, I was socialized to want stuff from an early age – from Hello Kitty to stuffed animals to Barbie dolls.   I would pour over the Sears Christmas catalog, seeking out the prizes that I wanted Santa to bring me.  I had been a very good girl.  While we never had a lot of money growing up, and certainly much less after my father departed the scene, I embraced my southern California upbringing wanting all the things that other teenager girls wanted:  clothes, jewelry, a car, music, etc.   I got a job at the age of 16 to pay for what I wanted.  I worked 2-3 jobs in college in order to partially support myself…and buy more stuff.  By my mid-20’s, society told me that I should settle down, go to grad school, get a good paying job, and buy a house.  If you own a home, you know that a house requires a tremendous of time and responsibility. Like goldfish we tend to grow to the size of our bowl, we get another chair for the guest room, new paint in the office, and the attic and closets fill up with…you guessed it, more stuff.  Somewhere along the line, I discovered that stuff never really made me happy. Since I despise clutter and searching for things, I would often go through fits and rages of cleaning out closets and drawers and giving away or throwing away stuff….stuff that I don’t even know from where it came.  

 

Last year I found an ad in a magazine which stated, “Travel is the only thing you can buy that makes you richer.”  I cut it out and it now hangs on our cork board inside our camper.  It’s become a bit of a mantra for us and reminds us how we want to invest our money and the kinds of things we are looking for as we enter the next chapter of our lives.

I got the travel bug in 5^th grade when my gymnastics team was invited to Hawaii to compete with a team from Oahu.  We had homestays, participated in a couple of meets, did some exhibitions in parks and at elementary schools, and got to tour 3 of the islands.  Not a typical 10 year old experience, but one that I cherished because I raised the money to do it all by myself.  You’ve heard of run/walkathons?  Gymnasts do cartwheel-athons.  Two hundred cartwheels and 48 sponsors later, I had enough money for my plane ticket.  After experiencing a culture very different from my own, I was hooked on seeing more of the world.   While I didn’t get to travel much as a child or teen (my parents just weren’t enthusiastic travelers), I worked multiple jobs and saved my money to be able to go to Europe for a month while in college.  Did that satisfy my travel bug?  Nope.  It did nothing more than make me want to see more of the world.  As a bit of an armchair anthropologist, I’ve always been fascinated by discovering how people live and work, finding out what makes them tick, and learning how they celebrate life’s joys and sorrows.  

Since this time, I have been lucky enough to travel to 21 different countries (some more than once) and have experienced a bit of how others live out their lives on this planet – from the cities of Europe to the islands of Vanuatu.  Hutch has joined me for many of these trips, most of which were funded by frequent flyer miles, camping/hostelling instead of staying in hotels, eating from local fruit/veggie stands and grocery stores instead of restaurants, and all the usual ways of making travel more affordable -- and in my estimation, much more rich.   I’ve never really been much of a resort person.  I tend to find locals more interesting than other tourists, and enjoy off-the-beaten-track beaches that aren’t listed in the guide books rather than those with a sea of matching lounge chairs.  I have found that traveling in the back of a truck with 8 other people, 4 bags of casaba, and a flock of chickens is much more exciting than the comfortable air-conditioned bus.  Both get you to where you are going, but the former makes for a lot more laughter, good advice, and interesting stories.  While I realize that I’m often the oddball amongst my friends and family, the idea of arriving in a foreign country with nothing more than a return plane ticket and a map that I picked up at the airport is simply way more fun than an overly planned itinerary – even if you get on the wrong city bus and get the cheap tour of Verona…right Hutch?

What I’ve come to realize during my travels is that most people I met or stayed with had very little stuff.  Unlike Americans, they don’t have large closets full of clothing, kitchens cupboards stuffed with pots, pans, and gadgets, and garages piled so high with tools and junk that you can’t find anything. In 2006, after traveling abroad for 7 weeks with nothing more than what we could carry on our backs, we came home and found ourselves dumbfounded by the ridiculous amount of stuff we had and didn’t need.  Where did it all come from?  That summer we began systematically downsizing our lives by cleaning out each drawer, closet, and cupboard in every room of our house.  If it didn’t meet at least 2 of the 3 following requirements (beautiful, useful, or specifically sentimental -- i.e., the cake pan in which my mother made my 3rd year birthday cake), out it went.  Three car loads, 5 charity shops, and 1 trip to the dump later, we felt tremendously lighter (and somewhat embarrassed about how much we had accumulated).  From that point on, we encouraged our friends and begged our families to make donations in our names and/or give us consumables for birthdays and other gift giving holidays.  We simply had to take control of the amazing amount of stuff that continued to enter our home.

In 2012, we took an even more drastic step.  We made the decision to sell it all -- or at least most of it -- and rented out our 3 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom house.  Our friends and colleagues repeatedly told us that we were “brave” and “courageous,” but for us, this just made sense -- or cents depending on how you to choose look at it.   We strategically downsized our lives to what we could fit in a small pick-up truck and 12 foot camper.  We now live on about $2000 per month (or about half of that when we are WWOOFing), which includes food, gas, lodging, cell phones, insurance of all kinds, a retirement plan, a small emergency fund, and about as much entertainment as two people can possibly take in.   Just looking at energy savings alone, we used to pay about $3600 per year in utilities; we now run our lights, computer, etc. on solar power, spend about $90 per year on propane for cooking and heating, and are on a pay-as-you-go cell phone plan.   We get water and wi-fi where we can find it – which is as simple as finding a McDonald’s or public library.   We’ve reduced our showers to 2-3x per week and even make our own laundry soap for about $.05 per load (thanks for the recipe, Jaimie!).  To make a few extra dollars of spending money, Hutch is doing some busking and I am beginning to sell some of my photography.  

Despite living on what amounts to below-the-poverty-line wages, our lives have never felt so rich and full of meaning!  Instead of running frantically from one project/meeting/email/program to the next, and squeezing in vacation time between semester breaks and house projects, we are doing what we want and giving our 40-something year old bodies and brains the nourishment they need to thrive, grow, rest, and be sustained.  We have never felt so unstressed.  Instead of paying for gym memberships, we cycle, kayak, hike, and snowshoe.  Instead of paying Earth Fare or Whole Foods prices for organic produce, we volunteer on WWOOF farms and get locally grown fruits and vegetables in return – thanks Rippling Waters and Orchard Pond Organics!  After living like this for nearly 6 months, we’ve come to terms with the real meaning of living sustainably – for not only the planet, but for our bodies and minds.