Boldly Stumbling Into a Simpler Life

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• Tags: Adventure, life, simpler, travel

This is a guest post by Hugh DeBurgh

Dear Friend,

You never know where a particular life path might take you.

My family’s path took us in a direction that we never imagined or even knew of.

Our Story of Simplifying Life…

My family really loves to travel.

And we love adventure.  Right now we’d love to travel more overseas. But six plane tickets, big hotel rooms and oversized rental cars get expensive, fast.

So for the present we thought that we’d try the RV lifestyle.  It allows us to take more people along without a significant increase in cost.

But, at the time we decided this, we didn’t actually own a big motorhome.  Just a small trailer that would not do for what we had in mind.  We knew that a motorhome would be perfect for our needs.

We spent some time online looking for options, and it quickly became apparent that the best deals and choices were in Fort Worth, Texas.  So we piled everyone into our car and headed off to the airport with one-way tickets to Texas.  We would return home in our new motorhome, once we found it.

At our third stop we found our new baby.  We call her the Road Warrior, and she is today our home on wheels.  We were able to pick her up for half price, as the maker had gone out of business.  Yet even at that it was a big number for us to swallow.

Now, We Had to Adjust Our Lifestyle

Once we started getting into the nitty-gritty of transitioning from our big home to living, at least part time, in a 35 foot motorhome, we made some discoveries.

The biggest one was actually a problem of smallness.  You see, at the dealer the Road Warrior looked huge.  But now it was looking mighty tiny.  How were we gonna fit all of the junk that we live with in that little thing?  Obviously we weren’t.  So we’d have to pare back a bit.  A big bit.

Reducing Our Amount of Stuff

My family has never been particularly materialistic.  But we still like stuff.  Fun stuff.  Cool stuff.  The latest stuff.  You know.   The kids want the latest video game or doll set.  But they just used most of their toys as projectiles, which they hurled around the house and at each other.  At least the noisy ones broke quickly!

My wife and I like a nice dinner out once in a while.  But we drive used cars and have little bling to show for our years.  Nevertheless, even with our "modest" lifestyle we found that we still had too much junk.

The process of fitting all of the things that we thought we needed into a motorhome is fascinating.
It is interesting how one’s concept of need can change.  We are not "roughing it" types.  I am willing to travel to any wilderness as long as it includes air conditioning and cold drinks.  In other words, we aren’t tent campers or back-to-nature folks.  I mean, we can do that for a night or two.  But then it’s time for a nice warm shower and a DVD movie to cap off the evening.

So we had to decide what we needed to take with us.

We underestimated some things.  For example, we ended up putting a table-top dishwasher on top of our full size washing machine because we discovered that it was a handy extra place to store dishes and it cut down on trash from using paper plates and cups (Handwash, you say?  Well, several incidents with totally clogged sink lines made us wary of relying on our sink for anything – plus, this thing is totally cool! ).  And yes, you heard me right.  We have a full sized washer and dryer set on board.  And wi-fi internet. And a cell signal rebooster.  In fact, we have more antennas on the roof than some spy planes.

We discovered that when you live in a motorhome, versus just traveling on vacation in one, there are just some things that you don’t want to do without.  At least we don’t.

The Adoption of a Simpler Life

Despite some high-profile concessions to convenience, we discovered many other things really didn’t matter to us like we thought they would.

Television, for example.  In our home, the TV was on everyday.  In our first four-month excursion across the US and Canada, we never turned it on.  We had several built in to the motorhome.  And we had no rules about it.  We just "forgot."

We all love to read.  But carrying our home library around just isn’t going to work.  The new Kindle device from Amazon.com has allowed us to read whatever we want without crowding us out.

Then there was all the stuff that we usually buy when we are out shopping.  When you live in a motorhome, you simply cannot fit lots of stuff in your space.  And the more junk, the more cramped and uncomfortable the space becomes.  So we just stopped going to Wal-Mart so often.

We all keep only three or four sets of clothes now (if that).  The automatic washer allows us to easily have these ready for the next day without hassle.  Just getting rid of all of those extra clothes freed up tons of space.  And it eliminated our desire to shop for more.

Simplifying Beyond Just Possessions

We also discovered that we all had to slither out of commitments that we had made before deciding on a more mobile lifestyle.  You see, we had made tons of personal commitments over time, and these precluded us from going anywhere anytime soon.  Well, we were going, very soon, so those commitments would have to go.

Some of these were long standing involvements.  Others were more casual.  Nevertheless, it wasn’t easy to tell all those folks that we would no longer be there to take care of whatever volunteer activity that we had previously been involved in.

Our kids, too, were involved in tons of activities that they could no longer take part in.  Although many of these activities were close to our hearts, we had no choice in the matter.  And, after we stopped our involvements, we were amazed at how much more calm and quiet our lives became.  For once, we weren’t constantly running around from here to there.  We realized that our kids did not have to be involved in all of this stuff.  That they wouldn’t go to hell in a handbasket as a result of slowing down their lives.

We also rediscovered simple foods.  We made hot dogs and beans a lot.  Not as a sacrifice, but because most of us liked it and it was a simple food to prepare.  I started eating oatmeal for breakfast instead of packaged cereal.  The milk in a cereal bowl can spill easily when you bump around a small space.  But my oatmeal stuck nicely to the bowl. And it’s healthy, too. We would prepare a simple crock pot meal for dinner and it would last us for days.

The secret here was that we did not feel like we were cutting back.  We were actually doing exactly what we had done back home.  We were striving to be more comfortable in our surroundings.  But in our case, less stuff equaled more comfort.

Adopting a Simpler Way of Life for Good

What really got interesting was when we returned to our regular house.  I noticed several changes in our behavior.  First, we rarely went to the store.  And when we did, the desire to shop, as opposed to just buying what we went to get, was gone.  We no longer associated shopping with pleasure.  Second, we began living in a smaller area of our house.  We realized that this brought us closer together as a family. And spreading out again felt lonely somehow.

Finally, we realized that our home was way too big for us – even with four kids.  So we put our house up for sale.  If we buy a new one, it will be much smaller.

Something else that we discovered in this downsizing process is the simple pleasure of being.  Consuming, being constantly entertained, or "zapped" as I call it, by TV and popular media, can be an addiction.  Over time we had discovered that the peace that lay beyond these behaviors was more inviting, more pleasant, than those "zaps" ever could be.

I believe that we discovered the simple pleasure of living.

Every day we become more aware of the beauty that lay in just being with each other, rather than going or doing anything.  And, combined with our lack of need to acquire anything, I think that we have started down a new family life path that will keep all of us more healthy, happy and together, than ever before.
Sometimes by charging boldly into a new lifestyle of adventure, you discover simplicity, too.

I hope that our story is an inspiration to your family. 

There is a better life just beyond all of the noise and clutter of modern living.  And you don’t have to become a monk to discover it.

All the best,
Hugh

Hugh DeBurgh, The Passionate Warrior, has dedicated his life to the achievement of the ultimate family lifestyle. You can find him writing about Creative Family Lifestyle Design over at his blog, The Way of the Passionate Warrior.  Currently he is on the second leg of a worldwide travel adventure with his wife and four young children. Follow Hugh on Twitter or sign up for his RSS feed and don’t miss an update!

The photo above is of Hugh and his boys.