A Minimalist

A Minimalist

A blog post

I've recently been involved with helping to clear out the living spaces of someone who died. These are a few of my observations: 

 Humans just like stuff. Usually, the more stuff the better.

Very little of this stuff has much objective value.

Often we keep stuff because it has some sentimental value… or we just don’t want to confront the reality that we won’t ever use something given to us as a gift. And disposing of it would be disrespecting the person who gave it to us.

We have so many places to put stuff that we don’t really know how much stuff we actually have. And so many of those places keep the stuff from being visible, hide the stuff from our view.  Cabinets, drawers, boxes under a bed, more boxes on shelves out in the garage, up in the attic, out in the shed… it’s all tucked away out of site. We always seem to find enough space for new stuff. Sometimes we even rent more space from a storage company. 

If it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind. Where have I heard that before?

There’s probably an evolutionary reason why so many of us are so attracted to having more of anything. If there is, I don’t know what that would be. , but it seems logical that one exists. You would think, historically speaking, nomadic peoples would want less as more would become a barrier to moving around. So the whole subject is confusing and it really doesn’t make much sense.

We buy and accumulate stuff, we put it where we won’t see it, we forget about it, we pay for the space to keep it. We sometimes try to find something and get frustrated when we can’t find it. After a while, the piles of stuff become like background noise… unnoticeable and part of “just the way it is”.  Not really realizing that someone is eventually going to have to deal with it all, we decide that the future will take care of itself. And, if questioned about it, we spritely say “The kids can take care of it”.

Beyond Branson; Pondering Future Travel

This past Tuesday, we moved from Branson to a very nice Corps of Engineer’s Park on Wappapello Lake.  We’re in the Redman Creek CG. This facility is like so many other Corps parks with long asphalt pads, electric, water, and this one even has full sewer hookups as well.  Regular price $24/night.  We get half off, so $12 for a premium FHU site.  I don’t think this is going to last too much longer. What a deal!

With the latest plan, we're here until the 17th… next Friday.

The following was done for my Journal, but I’ll re-post it here for future reference:

Regarding travel in a more expensive future world… I did some math yesterday.  Here’s the setup:  Consider two versions of a one day, 500 mile trip.  One is by small RV pulled by an adequate but still relatively efficient tow vehicle.  Real life data from the Escape forum says that a Ford F-150 with an eco-boost 3.5 motor, pulling a small camper like our E19, will get between 12 and 14 overall mpg.  So let’s use 13mpg. With this setup, a campsite is still needed to complete the full day. The second version is an efficient car - a CRV or similar - that get’s a real world 35mpg overall.  Here, we’ll have to get a motel in order to complete the day. Both vehicles use regular gas at an assumed future price of $5.00/gallon

And the results:  

Fuel consumption:  Truck: 38.5 gallons;   Car: 14.3 gallons

Fuel cost:   Truck: $192.31    Car: $71.43

Lodging:   RVPark:  $35.00     Motel:  $140.00 (a mid-level+ joint, a Hampton Inn or similar)

Total cost:  Truck+RVPark:  $227.31      Car+Motel:  $211.43

Upshot:  The Car+Motel model is $15.88 less costly than RVing.

Sure, there are other considerations.  Some just hate sleeping in motels. But on the other side of the equation, there are always the side-hassles of using the RV model… hitching/unhitching, set-up time and effort, comfort, bathroom size, dumping tanks, reversing the process the next morning.

All in all, however, this example calls into question the use of big RVs for touring.  For example, would I pull the Escape all the way across the country in order to tour New England and the Maritimes?  Really?  Small RV Parks, higher expenses, smaller roads, more people, and maybe even more people.

 

It might be time to fully consider more alternative methods of travel:  B and Bs, AirBnBs, hotels and traveling by small efficient car, or even mix it up by air travel for some trips… or cruises… 

Biding our Time in Branson

Recently, I've heard a couple of people say it was easier to follow our travels and our whereabouts when I kept a current blog.  I've also been looking for something more to fill that creative space, or purpose, that I've missed. Therefore, I think I'll take a shot at reviving the old "Sabbatical Journal" again.

It's going to be a slow start. I'm not planning on extensive posts explaining every detail of every moment we're out on the road.  I'm envisioning something along the lines of a weekly (maybe) post of where we're at and what we're doing... but in general terms.  Brief. Probably better to start slow than to make it complicated from the start.  

So here's our status for this week:  As (some) of you know, we're on our way to the Escapees Travel Clubs' big annual meeting/convention/rally.  It's called Escapade and it will be held in Lebannon, TN. We'd like to be there by June 17th.  

Even at our pace (slow and easy), we're only a 3 day drive from there right now.  And we're in Branson MO.  We've been here for a couple of weeks and will be here until the end of May. Then we'll have 17 days to make 3 drives.  I think we can handle that.

Helping

The last few days Dar and I have been in the Portland area helping out our Son-in-Law Gage, Our Daughter Andrea, and their family.  I haven't written anything here about whats been going on.  The short story is that a few weeks ago Gage was involved in an accident between a bicycle and a Jeep.  Gage was on the bike. As you can imagine, (Jeep vs. Bike, Bike vs. Jeep, either way) he got the raw end of this deal. A number of broken bones and a long recovery is expected.  We're here to lend a hand.

As of a few minutes ago, he awoke from his third surgery.  All is good. Bones have been put straight.  He's now on the road to recovery. 

Clutter

We have too much stuff. 

It's time to de-clutter.

But where do I start?