The only way I can possibly afford this is to not have many expenses here in the USA. No apartment, no car payment, no electric bill, no cable. My apartment lease is up February 8, 2018 and I will officially be homeless on that date. After giving away my stuff, I am putting the remainder in a storage room.
I got the idea to try this experiment about 2 years ago. My family have never really been planners. When we travel, we have no itinerary. So when Katie was in Europe traveling around really cheaply I was coming up on 2 years until my retirement and decided I would travel. Todd was in his last year of college, so we had a big house full of stuff and decided to sell and move to various apartments and condos. We put our house on the market and starting really sorting. We gave things away and took loads of stuff to GoodWill. Like most Americans, we had gathered a ton of things we really didn’t use. We only kept what one of us could use, plus the furniture that had been in our families and sentimental items. I was really specific that no one should get rid of something they wanted to keep.
For the past year, I have spent hours and hours researching AirBnb, determining where I could afford to live cheaply. We paid off our cars and really committed not to buying anything. We minimized Christmases and birthdays and focused on trying to save a little money, although we are not very good savers. I stopped buying work clothes, jewelry, and shoes and worked to mix and match the closet full of clothes I already had. I found that my cousin who is about my size had taken a new job and really needed clothes, so she agreed to take whatever I wanted to send to her. During this past two months, each day I would choose an outfit with the thought it was the last time I would wear it. Then I would come home from work and add it to the pile. I am really sick of my clothes by now, but this made it feel fun and new, knowing she would get them and make her own outfits. Plus I am watching the contents of my closet go down!
In September, I rented a 5’x10′ storage unit and have gradually been putting stuff in it. When I leave this apartment, Todd will take whatever he needs for furniture (which remains to be seen because he has no plan which is worrisome to me but not him apparently!). All that is left will go to whoever can use it or GoodWill. The storage room is all I will have for me and Katie.
It feels a little weird, but like traveling with a backpack, it also feels liberating! Again, I won’t get rid of anything I love, but the rest is quite replaceable. We never spent money on furniture and housewares. Our one big piece of furniture was a pool table in our living room which we sold when we moved. We spent a lot of money on musical instruments and will always keep those. And books, cd’s, movies. But even those have been pared way down. In some ways, we got in the habit of not buying high end stuff when the kids were little. We were a one-income family for 7 years. Like now, the only way we could do that was to have no car payments. The paint completely peeled off my Dodge Shadow. Honestly it was embarrassing at work. I used to spray paint it every few months (seriously). To make ourselves feel better we would say, “The kids don’t care that we don’t have a minivan.”
For a while, I listened to a podcast (available for free on all iPhones) called The Minimalists. Basically two lawyers in NYC who got rid of most of their stuff. We’ve all gotten a little out of control, but I’m not sure it’s like that in the rest of the world. In fact, all the AirBnb’s I’ve found in Japan are virtually sparse.
Still, it felt weird all over again last month when Katie said, “This will be the first time I really don’t have somewhere to go home to.” Ugh. It bothered me and I felt like a rotten mom. And I felt sad.
But Katie does not want to live in Orlando and her dad lives here along with other family, so there is always somewhere to go. And, if this experiment goes belly-up, I can get another apartment! Or if it works, I can wander from place to place, visiting kids, family, and friends. I really hope it works ❤
Photo: Katie and Todd near New River Gorge, West Virginia. We stopped there on our way to Niagara Falls–we ended up driving to Nova Scotia.
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