Quoted: Quoted: Not necessarily an easier life just much more simple. Sometimes while in traffic driving to and from work I look around and I kind of feel like we're a bunch of cattle being herded along the asphalt prarie just doing what we're supposed to do. We do it because the rent or mortgage is due, the phone, the electric, bills bills bills. I owe I owe so off to work I go. But to eliminate those bills......get rid of luxuries that we've come to accept as nesessities.....and just get away sounds nice sometimes. Buy a plot of land in the woods somewhere put up a cabin and live off the land. Fish, hunt, garden, chop wood for the stove etc. It would sure as hell be a lot of hard physical work, but to be that self sufficient could be satisfying in a way. What do you all think? You are only stuck in the rat race as much as YOU want to be.  Turn on, tune in, drop out.

LOL

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Not necessarily an easier life just much more simple. Sometimes while in traffic driving to and from work I look around and I kind of feel like we're a bunch of cattle being herded along the asphalt prarie just doing what we're supposed to do. We do it because the rent or mortgage is due, the phone, the electric, bills bills bills. I owe I owe so off to work I go. But to eliminate those bills......get rid of luxuries that we've come to accept as nesessities.....and just get away sounds nice sometimes. Buy a plot of land in the woods somewhere put up a cabin and live off the land. Fish, hunt, garden, chop wood for the stove etc. It would sure as hell be a lot of hard physical work, but to be that self sufficient could be satisfying in a way. What do you all think? You are only stuck in the rat race as much as YOU want to be.  Turn on, tune in, drop out. LOL

Laugh away, but that's good advice.

Quoted: Quoted: You HAVE to buy or rent a documentary called "Alone In the Wilderness". It is about a guy that does just that. He takes off for Alaska and lives there in a cabin he built by hand(including the hinges for doors which are also made from wood). He left for alaska when he was about 50 years old to do this. He finally left his cabin in alaska after being there for 30 years by himself. He documented his life there with a film camera he had brought with him. GREAT movie!!! Not on Netflix. Do you have it?

Alone in the Wilderness, DVD and VHS available, the story of Dick Proenneke

The simple life is what life is about. You don't need all those techno toys and unnecessary necessities.

I love living the simple life and wouldn't trade it for the world.

(And the "Alone In The Wilderness" movie/book is well worth it... Trust me!)

Quoted: The simple life is what life is about. You don't need all those techno toys and unnecessary necessities. I love living the simple life and wouldn't trade it for the world. (And the "Alone In The Wilderness" movie/book is well worth it... Trust me!)

Are you posting from some coconuts tied into the grid via vines?

Quoted: Quoted: The simple life is what life is about. You don't need all those techno toys and unnecessary necessities. I love living the simple life and wouldn't trade it for the world. (And the "Alone In The Wilderness" movie/book is well worth it... Trust me!) Are you posting from some coconuts tied into the grid via vines?

NO! Jeeze... I'm using a homemade wooden computer! Duh.

Seriously though, this is the last thing I have that's connected to the outside world. I'm giving it to a friend in a week or two and I'm also getting rid of the phone bills, etc. I will still use it once in a while (gotta stay with the hive, ya know) but, it won't be that often.

One of these days...

My life is pretty simple.  It's not all it's cracked up to be.  

Quoted: Yup, parts of Alaska.  Delta Junction is famous for folks not wanting to incorporate to avoid a property tax. Of course, they want their kids educated, roads plowed, unemployment checks.  Hipocrites just want someone else to pay for it.

And none of those things are covered by income tax, sales tax, special tax for liquor and tobacco, gas tax, personal property tax on vehicles, or unemployment insurance. All that stuff is funded by property tax on your land. Right?

Those damned hypocrites.

You sure you're on the right website dude?

Quoted: Not a chance in hell. Yes, my job can get to me sometimes. Sure, every now and again it seems that various bills and problems all seem to hit at once. But I like my HDTV and X-Box and PC and Starbucks Lattes and large selection of restaurants and EBRs and all of the other pleasures of life. To trade that in for a life of rooting for grubs and berries? Fuck no.

You CAN live a simpler life without getting to the level of rooting in the dirt with a stick, and living in a one room cabin in the woods. You need to define "simple" for yourself.

Ways to make your life simpler: decide what's essential in your life, and what's extraneous bullshit. Jettison the bullshit. Most people have way more material goods than they really need. They require maintenance, cleaning, room to store them, etc. Have a yard sale and clean out the extra crap you have sitting around. This is extremely difficult for some, like my wife and I, who are packrats. Stuff just keeps appearing out of nowhere.

Do you really NEED to be running around 24/7, doing stuff? Doing things because they're "expected"? Keeping up with the Joneses? Bah. Do things your way, for your reasons, not someone else's.

My ideal of the "simple life" is a paid off house (have that), enough luxuries to make life comfortable (have that), busy enough to not be bored (but not so busy as to be hectic/keep me awake at night worrying about some damn thing), a good wife, occasional social contact with others.

Not having kids, and/or meddlesome relatives does make this process easier, by the way.

You CAN have a "civilized/high-tech" existence without all the complexities people seem to wallow in.

How do you define simple?

I think I have a nice, simple life. No kids, the wife & I get along. I don't seek drama. We do splurge on a few things but mainly live pretty cheaply in a townhouse.

I don't need to do lawn maintenance, I have a weekend cabin I can retreat to if I want to live life more simple still.

That living off the land many are describing can be a lot of work and create a lot of stress. Been there, done that.

I have a buddy that is doing that.

He married a very cute girl, who had a nice house. Well they remolded the house themselves, and decided to sell it to by some land, by her parents.

The house sold before they done with the remodel, BUT the buyer wanted that, and they got a nice chunk of change for the house.

The place they bought has a pieced together "cabin" out of scrap pieces of wood and sheet metal.
No AC, no TV, barely has running water and electricity. The "cabin" is about 500sqft if that. Trust me if you could see this place you would think WTF?

The other day I helped him dig up his water line to the house from the well, seems it was only buried 2in below surface, needed to be about 16in. We still have to trench in a line for the propane tank. Seems they use those little bottles of propane for gas grills to supply them with gas for heat, and let me tell you, that little cabin is a drafty mo-fo.

They are dumping money into that place to make it livable, they say they are going to build a house one day, time will tell.

Are they happy,seem to be, BUT allways outside working working working, they have a large garden area also. I dont think people know just how much work goes into a large garden, esp one that you want to feed yourself with over a years time.

Me, I would have kept the house they remodeld, but thats just me.

Hard to find a cute girl that isnt sissified....Sorry, I mean citified.

She sounds like a keeper.

My dream is to live in a decent log cabin on a lake with a river nearby. To be able to shoot as much as I'd like, &  be able to go fishing, hunting, trapping, & raise my son to be a good man.



I also want a dvd player & lots of good movies to watch during the long winter months. Epectricity & running water too.

I'm tired of constantly finding thing I need that I didn't know previously existed.

The cabin by the lake sounds good but right now I'd be thrilled just to be able to walk out my front door, walk to my car, sit in my car at a stoplight, and walk into a public building without choking on nasty second-hand cigarette smoke.   It's every where I go!!

Yeah its all fine and good til you need a doctor or dentist for soemthing. Then how you gonna pay them.  God forbid you get sick with a bad disease..and still want to live...how you gonna afford it.

Living like that is easy to say, not so easy to do without some income. I can see someone retiring at 57 (like I intend to) with a decent pension, and then doing it. You would save all kinds of money, do what you want, live like you want.  Personally, having been into hurricane zones after destruction, I like air conditioning and being able to find and get what I want when I want it.  People leave us alone already as we stay to ourselves...and shooting outside the house rapidfire for fun....discourages them even more.  I think I have new neighbors so its time to break out the fun again.

Anyway, I understand you can go to Costa RIca like many americans, get land, villa, housekeepers, and live pretty dang cheap in a beautiful setting.  Seriously considering it later in life.

The wife and I were talking about this yesterday.  We're going to spend the next 15 years paying off a couple acres of land, septic system, well and a mobile home.

Quoted: Yeah its all fine and good til you need a doctor or dentist for soemthing. Then how you gonna pay them.  God forbid you get sick with a bad disease..and still want to live...how you gonna afford it. Living like that is easy to say, not so easy to do without some income. I can see someone retiring at 57 (like I intend to) with a decent pension, and then doing it. You would save all kinds of money, do what you want, live like you want.  Personally, having been into hurricane zones after destruction, I like air conditioning and being able to find and get what I want when I want it.  People leave us alone already as we stay to ourselves...and shooting outside the house rapidfire for fun....discourages them even more.  I think I have new neighbors so its time to break out the fun again. Anyway, I understand you can go to Costa RIca like many americans, get land, villa, housekeepers, and live pretty dang cheap in a beautiful setting.  Seriously considering it later in life.

Thats why I would do some trapping, & maybe find a type of art I could make from the things around me, like doing antler carving, or even start making knives, or knapping flint blades to sell to tourist shops etc. Gold panning, & looking for gem stones. I have always wanted to go look for Montana saphires.

Quoted: Quoted: Yup, parts of Alaska.  Delta Junction is famous for folks not wanting to incorporate to avoid a property tax. Of course, they want their kids educated, roads plowed, unemployment checks.  Hipocrites just want someone else to pay for it. And none of those things are covered by income tax, sales tax, special tax for liquor and tobacco, gas tax, personal property tax on vehicles, or unemployment insurance. All that stuff is funded by property tax on your land. Right? Those damned hypocrites. You sure you're on the right website dude?

Hey dude,

I don't know what MO is like, but in Alaska there is no income tax or vehicle property tax.  Sales taxes exist in some incorporated areas, but not, for example, in Delta.

Gas, liquor, and cigs are about the only thing taxed.  This is about a tax-free area as can exist, and the local town council pleads for small change from the state because they have no tax base.  I hate taxes as much as the next guy, but you have to pay for common good items - or squandered money they do not have in this local case - somehow.

A week's unemployment checks probably equal 10 years worth of deductions for unemployment.  Sounds nearly free and undeserved in my book.

Talk to some of the locals around here, and you get the impression they have a God given right not to pay a nickle in local taxes.  This is considered an economically depressed area, and there is no time limit on welfare like most of the country.  Attracts this type like flies.

WTF does taxes have to do with the philosophy of this website, dude?

Give my finger to society, build a hut in the woods, dress in animal skins, and dance naked around a bonfire every full moon...

count me in.  

Quoted: Not necessarily an easier life just much more simple. Sometimes while in traffic driving to and from work I look around and I kind of feel like we're a bunch of cattle being herded along the asphalt prarie just doing what we're supposed to do. We do it because the rent or mortgage is due, the phone, the electric, bills bills bills. I owe I owe so off to work I go. But to eliminate those bills......get rid of luxuries that we've come to accept as nesessities.....and just get away sounds nice sometimes. Buy a plot of land in the woods somewhere put up a cabin and live off the land. Fish, hunt, garden, chop wood for the stove etc. It would sure as hell be a lot of hard physical work, but to be that self sufficient could be satisfying in a way. What do you all think?

I think it would be sheer torture... Not as bad as prison, but close... VERY boring...

Everything I do is tied to the way things are now....

I dream about it every day. Just pack up my essential crap and settle in the middle of Wyoming or Montana. I'd like to go get a plot of land with lots of lumber. Pitch a tent. And begin to build my house from the trees on my land, basically reap what I sow.

Sure would be nice.

I'm sorry. I just got in from Wally World with a double armload of crap. What was the question?

Yup, I think about it all the time..   havent figured out a plan yet

Simpler life? Yes. Living in a cabin without electricity or running water and depending on a wood burner for all my heat? No. Not having full medical insurance for my family? No. Not having solid comunications? No.

I've gotten up on winter mornings to start the fire before. I've huddled under the blankets dreading the run out to the back house to take a leak in winter weather before. I've washed laundry by hand before. I found that I really like my hot shower in the morning, and my bacon, eggs and hash browns. I really liked being able to casually head into the ER when I had that pesky 8mm kidney stone a couple of years ago. I like sleeping on clean sheets in a comfortable home. I like being able to look up anything from a bananas foster recipie to the relative merits of different .223 loads on the internet.

There's a reason why 'modern conveniences' were wholehartedly embraced as they became available.

Quoted: Not necessarily an easier life just much more simple. Sometimes while in traffic driving to and from work I look around and I kind of feel like we're a bunch of cattle being herded along the asphalt prarie just doing what we're supposed to do. We do it because the rent or mortgage is due, the phone, the electric, bills bills bills. I owe I owe so off to work I go. But to eliminate those bills......get rid of luxuries that we've come to accept as nesessities.....and just get away sounds nice sometimes. Buy a plot of land in the woods somewhere put up a cabin and live off the land. Fish, hunt, garden, chop wood for the stove etc. It would sure as hell be a lot of hard physical work, but to be that self sufficient could be satisfying in a way. What do you all think?

I've actually been thinking about this kind of thing since I was about 16, it always seemed like a decent idea to me, if you can find the land and keep up with the work.  

I moved away from San Diego.  I now have black rifles.  It sure feels simpler.

My wife and I plan to semi-retire when I am 35, into a "simpler life".  This does not necessarily mean a cabin in the woods with no electricity or grocery store nearby.  For some of us, it means having a place with a bunch of land, which is paid off, and a small home we build ourselves.

We live in the city, even though the population is 150,000 the traffic is terrible (mostly due to the huge influx of Californicators), our house is on a 1/3 acre plot, and we can't stand the claustrophobia that this brings.

We will buy some land up the mountains about 45 minutes from here, build a small house, and live in a very small community where everyone knows your name.  The nearest grocery store will be 20 minutes away, and won't be some huge supermarket like here in town.

We will still be able to come to the city if we want to catch a movie, eat at a nice restaurant, etc.  But we will be FAR removed from the daily city life, and we won't have much of a need for income, since the house and property will be paid off, as well as our vehicles.

We won't need to farm for our food, and we will have electricity and phone.  It will still be a much different and better life than we have here.  Due to our low cost of living, we will only need to work part-time if at all, and will be able to do volunteer work and travel as we wish.  THAT is what I define as a "more simple life", and we are working our asses off to attain it.

Cutting wood a couple of times a year= fun
Cutting enough wood to heat your home for a year=sux

Hunting a week or two a year= fun
Hunting enough to feed your family for a year=sux

Gardening=fun
Trying to raise and can enough to feed your family for a year=sux

The list goes on.  It's nice to have a place to go to "get away from it all", but I don't want to live like that every day of my life.

I live a simple life I work all day I sleep all night A couple kids that need a nap Big dog and a little cat Wife that barks but rarely bites So I live the simple life I live a simple life A good coat when the cold winds bite Leather boots for my bare feet Now and then a steak to eat I pick with the boys on Friday night So I live a simple life I live a simple life Couple of friends I really like A little house outside of town An old car that gets me around Complications may arise But I live a simple life And I live a simple life Cell phone when my old car dies The Internet to show me where GPS to get me there Everywhere there’s satellites Oh I live a simple life

It might be helpful to distinguish between absolute, autonomous self-reliance and living a simple life. Absolute, autonomous self-reliance as a way of living would be pre-industrial, mountain man style primitive living. At the extreme limit of this it would be living without any contribution of any kind from anyone else. The progressive scale of dependence and social need moves away from that extreme towards the other end, around which most of us live now, and along the way towards that end it passes the simple life. The simple life might not be physically easier or take less time to sustain than the style of living many of us live now, but I think that when we imagine living a simple life we imagine something not at either of the two extremes of this progressive scale of dependence and social need. The time we spend and the labor we expend in a simple life would be done for our own direct benefit.

Pausing right there you can see the next step involves money or barter of some kind, and thus other people, and so also economics, politics and law. I won't go there. But living a simple life does seem to mean living with fewer needs, both social and psychological. It suggests less reliance upon others, less contact with others, less monetary need, less complexity of need. It is having everything you need and nothing you do not need and being clear about the difference. This is where the distinction between absolute, autonomous self-reliance and living a simple life is useful. Because once you start talking about needs, if you're the type that thinks in extremes, then you're going to find yourself thinking that nothing is a need unless it sustains life, and that everything else is merely a desire. That kind of thinking leads to the veneration of an ascetic life, where there is a renunciation of desire beyond pure, life sustaining need.

But most of us are thinking of a modest cabin somewhere, with land to hunt, lakes and streams to fish, the sounds of nature rather than industry, the air clean, the neighbors distant, the speed and clutter and noise and crowd of the concrete city abandoned with us far beyond its grasping reach. The details of each our dreams might differ but we might all agree that our yearning is for more freedom, vigor and self-determination in our lives.

GL

Mid '80s. No kids. One dog. The wife and I bought a 32ft sailboat, rebuilt it for simplicity and ocean sailing. (I had a good mentor) Quit our jobs in construction & teaching. Rented the house out and lived aboard  2 years at the dock/on the hook in Miami first, then sailed and lived in the Bahamas for a year.  It was both simpler and more complicated. There are things that absolutely HAVE to be done or you die/lose everything. Weather can f*#k you up. Bad health changes everything. (I had an unplanned retina operation a few months before we were to leave the first time) You've gotta do your homework and planning before you make the break. Have marketable skills for where you are going. Learn to fix what you own or think about not owning it. Be brutally realistic about the cost ... then have a trusted other check your $ figures. Realize that you and/or yours MAY change your mind(s). People change. There is no real reason to burn your bridges. That, for us, was the way to simplify. And for a while, it worked. Right now, neither one of us wants to do it again, but who knows.
Keep an open mind. There's a lot of ways to "simplify".  Stay safe

Quoted: What do you all think?

I think the dream would be better than the reality for you.But if thats your thing,try it out.

You never read Robinson Crusoe? Ever heard of Alexander Selkirk? Ol Selkirk was the basis for Defoe's book. Selkirk said he was never happier than when he lived on his own little island in the pacific.

Not only thought about it, but trying like hell to get to it.

Does anyone remember how much simpler life was back in the 70's and 80's? All this damn technology just adds another level of stress.
Cars were easier to work on.
Home computers were a novelty and not a necessity.
Didn't have lots of money but I remember having a lot of time on my hands.

 if it wasn't for Canadian gun laws I'd be trying to move to rural B.C.  tomorrow

still eyeing Idaho, Wyoming & Montana but those places are getting more expensive by the day

Quoted: Give my finger to society, build a hut in the woods, dress in animal skins, and dance naked around a bonfire every full moon... count me in.

I sure will if that's you on your avatar!