The Spartan RV

Finally, a book that helps you DOWNSIZE your life
The Spartan RV
instead of “upsizing” your life.
The Spartan
RV
By RV52.com Founder!
Marlan Winter
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The Spartan RV
Copyright 2014 by Marlan Winter.
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All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or
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permission of Marlan Winter (“we”, “Author”).
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should not be used as a substitute for consultation with professional accounting, tax,
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should consult with such a professional.
While we have made every attempt to ensure that the information contained in this
document has been obtained from reliable sources, Marlan Winter is not responsible for
any errors or omissions, or for the results obtained from the use of this information. All
information in this document is provided "as is", with no guarantee of completeness,
accuracy, timeliness or of the results obtained from the use of this information, and
without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including, but not limited to warranties
of performance, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event will
Marlan Winter, its related partnerships or corporations, or the partners, agents or
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The Spartan RV
employees thereof be liable to you or anyone else for any decision made or action taken
in reliance on the information in this information product or for any consequential,
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Throughout this work, the Author may use hypertext links. Some of the links may go to
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represent an endorsement by the Author unless the Author specifically notes the
endorsement and recommendation by the Author explicitly.
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The Spartan RV
Table of Contents
What this Book is About!
8!
Why Sparta?!
10!
Going from BIG life to RV life!
13!
Everyone is Always On Vacation!
16!
Consistently Inconsistent Terms!
17!
Trading off Money, Assets, Time & Complexity!
19!
Putting Things into Perspective!
21!
The Cost of Stuff!
23!
Stuff has Costs: Hidden and Direct!
24!
The Pool was Free. Feeding it, not so much!
25!
Hot Tubs & Energy!
27!
Have you ever tried to sell a couch on Craigslist?!
29!
Who wants used kitchen gadgets?!
32!
Storage - Circling the Globe Several Times Over!
35!
Worry is Worship!
37!
The Reward of Spartanism!
41!
You can go RVing!
42!
Spartanlike is not about Poor!
44!
Freedom from Place!
46!
Freedom from Time!
49!
Freedom from Worry!
55!
Being Present Now!
57!
Consistent with Most forms of Spirituality!
62!
SWITCHING GEARS!
64!
Your House!
65!
Digital Sparta: Digitizing Your Life!
70!
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The Spartan RV
Digitizing your old life!
71!
Books - Lightening the load of your older books!
72!
Books - Keeping new books "light"!
77!
Memorabilia!
82!
Pictures!
86!
Bills, Papers, and Documentation!
88!
Movies!
95!
Music - Getting rid of the CDs!
97!
Cutting the Ties to Cable TV!
100!
A Whole RV Electronic Infotainment System!
103!
Creating Your Favorite Radio Station!
106!
E-Communications Sparta!
120!
Email Address Sparta!
121!
Email Management Sparta!
126!
Smart Phone Sparta!
130!
Your Mobile Life!
135!
Your Home Address!
136!
Getting and Shipping Stuff!
139!
Spartan Fitness!
143!
Bikes!
145!
Musical Instruments!
146!
The Spartan RV Itself!
149!
Room by Room Spartanism!
150!
Things You Won't Need!
151!
Kitchen & Dining!
153!
Bedroom!
159!
Clothes!
162!
Bathroom!
165!
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The Spartan RV
Outdoor Entry!
167!
The Living Room!
169!
Storage Inside!
170!
Storage Outside!
173!
Ashes!
175!
My list of Essentials!
177!
Conclusion and Final Words!
181!
Thanks for taking a journey, perhaps a tough journey!
182!
THE END!
183!
About the Author!
184
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The Spartan RV
What this Book is About
How in the world do you live in 300 square feet when you’ve been consuming
3000 square feet or more?
How are you going to get into that RV and enjoy being in that RV without
feeling that you lost everything you ever worked for?
A reader wrote into RV52.com saying that “shrinking” was his number #1
struggle.
I realized that I have a gift. I’m at a great mental and geospatial place with
minimizing the “stuff” of life.
In this book, I’ll share what I do and I think it will help you.
Be forewarned, to make this work, you MUST look inside at your spiritual self.
To travel light physically, you’ve got to travel light spiritually and mentally.
We’ll survey all of this throughout this book.
Can you do the following?
If you had 15 minutes to evacuate your living space and was told the darned
thing is going to be 100% incinerated with no record of it ever existing, could
you do it with no regret and no sense of loss whatsoever?
I can.
I know that all my memories are safe. All my records are intact. My life wouldn’t
skip a beat.
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The Spartan RV
I’ll share how I do it.
——— ++++ ———
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Please enjoy the book, and feel free to contact me to ask questions or provide
feedback at http://rv52.com/contact By the way, this isn’t my first book. I have others located here -> http://
rv52.com/books
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The Spartan RV
Why Sparta?
Truthfully, this book was going to be called RV Zen, but that was already taken.
Then I looked up Zen. It had nothing to do with this book’s main idea. Nothing
at all. How many words do we think we know what they mean, but have no clue. [ I
once had a friend that thought “platonic” mean sex without commitment because
the girl he spent many hours with kept saying they had a platonic relationship.
True story. ]
Penultimate is a word like that too.
To me, that sounded like the BIG ultimate, the MAIN ultimate, the ultimate
above all ultimates.
I would tell people “The software we’re making is the PENULTIMATE in
development software.” I used that darned saying for a year or two.
One day, I’m telling someone that our software was the PENULTIMATE way
of doing some little thing that seemed important in that meeting. One of the
engineer that I’m good friends with says to me “Did you really mean to tell him
nd
that our software is the 2
best?”
Then I looked up the word penultimate. It literally means second best. I was
mortified. I had said that word in that context to 1000’s of people!
So I looked I better look up ZEN. It has a whole lot more to do with meditation
and intuition than anything. All good stuff - but not what this book is about.
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Zen is absolutely NOT the way to lesser stuff. Althooooough lesser stuff MAY
be a path to Zen.
No. This is more about minimalism. But minimalism cannot be about simply
doing without. It has to be a state of mind. You see, you gotta get something in return for minimizing possessions. Sure - I’ll
show you how possessions are terribly costly and that simply minimizing your
PHYSICAL footprint on the planet can be good for you economically. But more
than, I’ll show you how all that stuff actually has a gigantic negative toll on your
psyche and spirituality. So when I thought about a symbolic anchor that people might get I thought
about the Spartans.
They were WAY above the idea of things. They put the idea of excellence,
presence, team, & relationships above all else. I love that.
So the idea of Sparta, of a spartan existence balled together everything I thought
should go together. It combined an ethic of excellence and utilitarianism with a
symbol that to me, just makes sense.
Some of you may have a negative idea attached to the idea of “being Spartan”. I
don’t agree with that idea. You choose to be Spartan because of the incredible
integrity of your being. This is the real and inclusive meaning of “integrity” here
- not the abbreviated version meaning “good morals”. 11
The Spartan RV
So in my RV, “we are Sparta”. [ Sidenote: A really fun movie about Sparta and the Spartans is 300 [Blu-ray]
from Amazon. Massively entertaining show! Another sidenote is that a book that
starts to get at the heart of the mental state I’m descibing here is a book called
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. ]
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Going from BIG life to RV life
We all have the vision.
We can vision ourselves visiting all the amazing places in North America. Seeing
it all, let alone, living immersively in it all, would take a lifetime. We lived our lifetime working. We spent our YEARS getting ready for the adventure of a lifetime. Getting
ready also meant, getting financially ready. Scrapping, scraping, living,
accumulating, and if all goes well retiring. All these places are on our list (this is just a sample, ok?): Niagara Falls,
Carhenge, USS Lexington, Corn Palace, Mile High stadium, Yosemite. Any lake
or place in Canada, Mall of America, Orlando, Orlando, Orlando, Grand
Canyon.
The list goes on and on. It is as endless as the imagination of the adventurer.
A large portion of these people would like to visit these places with 1) No
schedule, 2) No reservations, 3) No commitments, and 4) traveling as you see
fit.
Doing it in a recreational vehicle (RV) seems like a perfect fit.
The largest RV that can legally roam the road is 399 square feet. I repeat for
EFFECT: The LARGEST RV is 399 square feet.
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The problem is that after 30, 40, or 50 years of living you accumulated some
stuff. In fact, if you are AVERAGE, your house size has ballooned to nearly
2,500 square feet. [ See graph ]
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Getting all that stuff from 2,500 square feet to less than 400 square feet is a
reduction of 5 times. Oh yea, RVs don’t come with garages which most home do
so the space problem between the two is even bigger.
Before ending this short chapter, do you remember when you were in your
parents or grandparents house, perhaps in the 50ʹ′s, 60ʹ′s or 70ʹ′s or even earlier?
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I do. I remember that those houses were really small. They were cozy little 3-6
room houses on modest lots. What they lacked in size, they made up with
character, quality, and little touches like porches and outdoor areas. This is what
we’ve gotten far away from. I imagine the jump from those little houses to an RV
wouldn’t be hard for the people that lived in them.
So the BIG question is… how do you go from 2,500 square feet to less than 400
square feet while simultaneously having everything you need to experience
North America fully?
That my friendly reader is the idea behind the book: Going from BIG life to RV
life.
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Everyone is Always On Vacation
When my wife and I are in an RV park we noticed something really weird.
Everyone is happy.
In fact, they were all friendly, conversant, cheery, and just about every other
sappy-syruppy word you can imagine.
Once we switched from an RV park to a mobile home park. The mobile home
park just happened to be very close to where we needed to be with space for an
RV.
The mobile home park had a completely different vibe. People were busy living
their lives. They didn’t talk or really try to be friendly at all. It seemed an awful
lot like real life. Yuk. Who wants real life?
The mobile home park allowed us to really understand that in the RV parks everyone is on vacation. For the most part, almost everyone is either retired or working mobile at what
they love. They are just happy.
As you think about RVing, be prepared to deal with lots of happy satisfied
people.
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The Spartan RV
Consistently Inconsistent Terms
You are going to read this book and you are going to realize that as an author
I’m impossibly inconsistent.
I’m sorry.
Please let me explain my terminology and perhaps you’ll let me slide a bit on
consistency. Some things I’ll use interchangeably.
Physical footprint - this is the amount of space you consume. For example you
would have to count in your physical footprint all your cars, your RV, all your
storage, your house, and any toys. You would have to count your garage and
bicycle too. If you put a small cardboard box around everything you owned and
then calculated the total volume, that would be your physical footprint. I don’t
think LAND counts in that foot print - just the stuff that is on top of the land.
Mental footprint - this is the space inside your head that is consumed by
something. Jealousy might consume some space in your head. Your stuff
consume space. It requires remembering to have your car insured and
registered. You need to remember where you parked it every day. You need to
think about when to replace it, what thing are going wrong with it, and all sorts
of other things. Owning a car takes up mental real estate. <— THERE! I did it.
I swapped terms.
Mental real estate - same as mental footprint. It just sounded better in that
sentence.
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Stuff - the never-ending pile of non-specifiable things you buy that accumulate
and take up space. A key idea around stuff is that it doesn’t warrant having a
specific mention of any one thing because other people would look at your stuff
as a pile of crap.
Pile of crap - Like stuff but said in a much less complementary way.
Things - Stuff.
Asset - A single thing. One item in a pile of stuff. Connotes the the item itself is a
reasonably moderate storage of value - usually measured in a monetary unit like
dollars or Euros.
Utility - this is the service or benefit you get from a thing. Utility could also be
emotional utility - for example - a clock which is more decorative than functional
that you wind every day. This clock is part of an important daily ritual.
Furthermore the clock could have a deep emotional collection to someone
important in your life. Because the clock isn’t necessarily completely just for
function, it can still bring you huge amounts of “utility” because of its
importance to you throughout your day. There is nothing bad about emotional
utility. !
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Trading off Money, Assets, Time & Complexity
All life is a tradeoff.
But if you can make the right trades you can live a life at a level of fulfillment
that exceeds the average.
One thing that people might not think about is that you can actually TRADE
some time, money, and assets back and forth from each other. When downsizing
from a house to an RV, you need to think in terms of converting Assets to cash or
vice-versa.
For example, when you buy something, you convert cash into an asset. For me
(not Robert Kiyosaki - author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad a book with some really
useful ideas), an asset is something that has an innate value. It has been said that
the PROFIT is made when you buy something, not when you sell it. One of the best ways to eliminate regret when you downsize from a house to an
RV is to make your COSTS of the transaction as small as possible. That means
as much as possible, you want to only buy things that you can sell for close to
the same as the purchase price. Ways to do this is to buy very expensive, very
durable, high dollar items that hold their value. The downside of this is that you
have a very small market that will buy your stuff. Another way would be to have
very LOW cost items purchased perhaps very carefully second hand. But the point is you are simply converting between asset value and cash value.
So when you downsize, you are simply converting your assets to cash.
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In general, cash is a better asset to have because it is the most simple thing to
have.
Cash is simpler than an asset. An example of an asset is a refrigerator. While
cash requires little to no effort to maintain, a refrigerator does. If it is plugged in
it is way more complex. It takes energy. You have to make sure it is working.
And so on. Owning and operating an asset by definition requires effort. So in
this way, eliminating assets simplifies your life and increases your cash. You get
rid of complexity when you get rid of the asset.
Continuing with the refrigerator idea, the refrigerator also requires time, partly
because of its complexity. For example, when you have a refrigerator, you need
to spend time to change filters, to manage the ice maker, to clean the refrigerator,
to serve the refrigerator. Getting rid of assets frees up time.
So if you can get your mind into the mindset that you are simply shifting from
assets to cash, from time to freedom, and from complexity to simplicity, then you
are heading the right way. You simple decide ahead of time what time and
complexity demands you are willing to tolerate and then move your cash into
those assets. In other words, you can “dial in” the life you want.
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Putting Things into Perspective
One reader wrote into RV52.com saying the biggest challenge in full time RVing
was actually deciding what things you should keep with you versus what things
you have let go by the wayside.
As I write this, I’m only 50 years old. I don’t claim to know anything. But I can
pass on some perspective that might help.
After church every Sunday, my wife and I go to Cherry Creek Catfish Parlor to
get some of the best catfish in Austin. In the scheme of life, it is a meaningless
trip, just from church to a restaurant. For us, we string these trips together into
a set of great memories and a tradition that brings us comfort.
One of those days, along the meaningless route, we saw a simple sign - “Estate
Sale —>”.
We followed that sign and several others until we got to a house with a box
truck, a pickup, and people streaming in and out of the house.
The entire house was setup to lead people through to see all of the different
things that were for sale.
There were antique typewriters, Democratic party paraphernalia (he had an
obvious leaning), autographed books and pictures, china, and glassware that
would fill rooms and rooms. There was one entire room dedicated to media. It
was like a library. The fellow that lived there also spent hour after hour learning
and refining his Swedish, the dictionaries and language training tapes a
testament to that fact.
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Did the inhabitant die?
No. He only fell. But he fell and was never going to return. Where he was going,
none of these things would be needed. Or accepted.
An entire lifetime of “stuff” - snuffed out in a single fall.
When it is said and done, your whole life probably fits in a cardboard box. The
parts someone kept that is.
It broke my heart. I thought ahead to that moment in my life. Yuk.
It seems so very futile to collect stuff. In the end, it simply gets left behind. Sold
to the lowest bidder. Or worse, some person, simply passing by on the way to the restaurant, passing
judgement, or turning up their nose at something that at one point seemed very
important to you.
It seems so much better to simply travel light.
So at least one yardstick you can use might be the answer to the question “What can I take with me to my single room where other people will limit my
possessions to what will only fit on a small bookcase?”
Because, whatever passes this test, is probably worth keeping.
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The Cost of Stuff
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Stuff has Costs: Hidden and Direct
This chapter tries to get you in the mindset of thinking about the direct costs of
things or stuff. These are the costs that are really easy for you to recognize, like
the monthly bill or the original cost. But there are other costs which aren’t direct and we can explore those too.
If you only get one thing out of this chapter, it should be “stuff costs a lot more
than you think”. Or you might say… maybe we don’t need some of these things.
Didn’t I help out then?
Lets go rummage around in your house. I’ll try to be gentle as long as you
forgive me if I’m rough.
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The Pool was Free. Feeding it, not so much
A friend got a killer deal on an above ground swimming pool.
The pool is about 4 feet deep, 24 feet long and about 12 feet wide. It is a really
nice sized pool. He paid nothing for it. It was “free”.
He couldn’t see past “free”.
To setup an above ground pool, you must prepare the ground, which requires
leveling, bringing in sand, and then making the sand very, very smooth. It is
probably very smart to hire someone who does it every day. There is hidden cost
#1.
Once the pool was setup, my friend needed to fill it with water. No surprise here,
but there was definitely a $100 extra on his water bill. Cost #2.
After the pool was full of water, then he had the realization that you had to
maintain the water with chemicals. Not only did you need to buy chemicals, you
had to spend your time doing this. Chemicals are hidden cost #3 and your time is
hidden cost #4.
Once the pool was ready to swim in, he noticed that there was some debris so he
bought a used vacuum for his pool. Hidden cost #5.
After a month or two of operations, you know with the vacuums going and the
the pumps running, he noticed his electric bill was about $50 more per month.
So that free pool really cost my friend a pile of cash. The cash you can replace.
The commitment of time, much harder to replace. Oh wait, replacing time is
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impossible. It is like an available seat on an airline flight. Once it is gone, it is
truly GONE.
I hope he swims in his pool a bunch. You know, get lots of utility from the pool.
To make a swimming pool in your backward pay off, you really have to swim
EVERY day. Additionally, you really need to NOT have access to a fitness club
that has a pool. That is a rare combination.
Spartan RV Lesson: Dump your pool asset. The alternatives are easier, cheaper,
simpler, and require less time.
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Hot Tubs & Energy
The same friend who bought the pool - traded some stuff for a hot tub on
Craigslist.
Yep.
Another great deal.
I’ll spare you all of the details like I wrote in the story about his pool and skip
right to the good part.
Phone rings.
Sheri (my wife) answers.
Voice on the other end “Holy crap, the hot tub made my electric bill THREE
times what it normally would be.”
Needless to say, the hot tub was shut off and he is searching for a lower energy
hot tub.
So, when you wonder what some of the hidden costs might be for things,
consider the daily operational costs, like energy. The increased energy use could
even cause you to bump over a threshold and then cost you more across the
board for all of your energy - which is like a double cost.
Don’t forget to add in the occasional maintenance too - like chemicals, repairs,
and normal usage costs. You might be very surprised at the real costs involved
with owning “things”.
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So what if you REALLY do like to swim and use hot tubs?
Even assuming your usage is almost daily, join an athletic club. Some of these
clubs have memberships as low as $25/month and you get access to their
equipment, their pools, their saunas, their hottubs and so much more. Better yet,
you just show up. They take care of everything. Not only do you save money,
you lower your “complexity” level. Lower your complexity level, then you can
give more attention to your marriage, or a real hobby.
It really is a big deal.
If your usage is very occasional or monthly, you can pay the club a one-time fee,
or even go book a hotel room at a hotel that has the equipment. That might be
fun for you and a great break. But the important point is that ownership is simply not the end-all be-all in life.
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Have you ever tried to sell a couch on Craigslist?
A lot of people paid really good money for furniture. Things like couches, love seats, ottomans, coffee tables, end tables, tables, and
book cases.
They agonized over those purchases - comparing costs, checking colors,
checking wood composition, scrutinizing manufacturers and so much more.
They were going to make a really solid purchase. So they plunk down several thousand dollars to get all this furniture.
Within seconds, an $800 couch new becomes a $10 couch used.
Used furniture isn’t worth much.
The more the potential “yuk” factor, the more money you lose. A couch - full of
who knows what in the cushions can’t hardly be given away.
Craigslist shows you why:
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Notice all the things in red. These RED highlight items simply CRUSH the high
dollar items that I didn’t highlight.
No one, and I mean NO ONE gives a ding dang dong what you paid for your
furniture or that some really cool guy in a loft in New York designed it.
Worse, the chances the color scheme you picked for your house, works for
someone else is pretty slim too. Probably ZERO chance, not just slim. So when
someone is mildly interested in what you have, they probably aren’t interested in
it enough to help you get all your money back on your item.
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As much as you think you might have the best furniture on the planet, you are
probably the only one that thinks so.
So to downsize from a house to an RV you are going to have to get very
comfortable with the idea that your furniture is not worth very much money.
Particularly if you want to get rid of it in a hurry.
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Who wants used kitchen gadgets?
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I love kitchen gadgets. My wife loves kitchen gadgets even more.
Food, and the kitchen, tie into our deepest reptilian brain in ways we don’t even
know. Our feelings on friendship, comfort, safety, and family route through the
idea of food. More than being necessary - food is a fundamental identifier of who
we are.
Kitchen gadgets, implements, or appliances identify who we are.
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Wine paraphernalia lets us say to the world, via visitors to our kitchen, that we
are cultured, sophisticated, and very social.
Industrial looking refrigerators with the stainless steel doors, industrial looking
cookstoves with bold burners, and a seriously big and varied pots and pans say
that we are SERIOUS foodies. We prepare our food at home. We entertain lots
of people. We are hardly bologna and Miracle Whip people. But how much do we REALLY use.
Assuming we have all the stuff I described above, we probably only use maybe
2-5 different pans, tins, skillets, and more… EVER.
It is pretty likely too that bologna exists in our refrigerator. Or sliced ham. And
most certainly a mayo or salad dressing-like product so we can slap together a
sandwich.
For 95% of you the truth hurts. You blew all that money on things you don’t use
but will look pretty good.
The good news: Some of the HIGHER end things like a copper pots or specialty
skillets will convert to cash quite readily and you won’t be out much money at
all.
The bad news: Toasters, coffee pots, toaster ovens, anything with the name
Ronco… probably won’t convert well.
If you are going to downsize - these things gotta go.
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In an RV, you are going to have a built-in refrigerator, a built-in small stove,
likely three burners, a smaller built-in oven, and limited storage space. Pick the
things you use AT LEAST once per week to keep from your BIG house kitchen.
Everything else is wasted space and money.
That candy making pan you only use every third year to make peanut brittle you can leave it behind.
When making fancy reductions or fooling with sautés, you might simply need to
use a more mundane pan instead of a specialty pan.
In an RV, I don’t think this is about going without, it is making sure that the
things you bring serve you well. It is better to wear one or two things out
because they served triple duty than to have three things taking up space.
You simply must be relentless.
Heck, I’d even make the argument that a REAL gourmet chef can get it done
when the equipment list is more limited.
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Storage - Circling the Globe Several Times Over
One of the options that RVers might consider for downsizing their life is storage. Their logic is that for a nominal monthly fee, they can keep their stuff in storage,
and then when they end their adventures, they simply buy an empty house, fill it
up with stuff and shazzam, they are back in business just like they left it.
Personally I don’t like this option.
However, it does avoid RE-purchasing furniture which is usually done at retail
prices, while selling furniture is done at Craigslist fire-sale prices.
But in exchange for avoiding the RE-purchase it also allows everything you own
to deteriorate in storage while you travel. Some of your stuff may be so
hopelessly out of date when you return that you don’t want it. I’m thinking
about TVs & VCRs which might have been pretty useful going in, but the
HDTV and DVD revolution killed them.
Also, it seems very silly to spend $50-$150 / month in storage costs to keep your
stuff. After two or three years in storage, you could easily be down three, four,
or five thousand dollars in storage costs. I don’t get understand people would do
that? My theory has to do with an idea that it is hard to “let go” for people.
If your stuff was SUPER valuable, like Picasso paintings that might make sense
- but if you have that kind of juice, you really don’t need to downsize because
you can afford to simply add RVing onto your life. You would keep you home in
the Hamptons, right?
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But the really, really big reason that you should avoid storage is that it is very
unhealthy for you.
Storage is unhealthy for two reasons.
1) You leave a little piece of you behind inside your storage shed. That may not
be much, but if your goal is to truly live and travel with complete freedom, total
experiential immersion and 100% presence, then you can’t leave pieces of you
scattered around. 2) This is related to #1, but just slightly different in an important and subtle way.
If materialism is an illness in modern North American society, then perhaps
absence of materials is an antidote. If you could learn to live without, learn to
live light, clearly define your true needs and stay within those boundaries… then
maybe just maybe when you return from RVing you might be surprised that you
are the most mentally healthy and well adjusted person that you know. So not
having storage might teach you that you simply don’t need those things, even
when you have the space for them. That might be a very freeing thing indeed.
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Worry is Worship
Just for a minute, I’ll get a little bit Biblical. For those of you who are not
Christian, don’t be offended, there is some really great stuff in there. But I
wanted to pick out just two verses from the most popular book in history. It also
happens to be a book in which I believe what it says - particularly when it is
highlighted in red.
Matthew 6:27 - And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his
life?
Luke 12:34 - For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
My wife has a saying… She says “Worry is worship.” When you look at the two Bible verses, uttered by the greatest philosopher and
teacher in the history of mankind, you should have trouble disagreeing.
Your mental state - particularly one that is negatively oriented - simply cannot
ADD to your life. Quite the opposite in fact. Negative emotion can be shown to
produce elevated levels of cortisol. Cortisol helps you handle stressful situations by readying your body with extra
energy and power. That can be a good thing when you get these jolts of extra
power only when you need them. But if you park your body in a continual state
of chemical readiness, you actually will wear out your body. You are not meant
to be at high alert at all times. So if you have a bunch of stuff that you worry about, it isn’t adding to your life worry can’t do that. Worse - it is killing you.
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How do you handle this?
I’m reminded of a story about JP Morgan. In his day, around the turn to the
th
20 century, he was very very famous. An equivalent famous today MIGHT be
Warren Buffet except JP Morgan was much more in the limelight than Mr.
Buffet. JP was approached on the street by an investor who explained to
Pierpont that he was having trouble sleeping at night because of the stock
market. He then asked Pierpont what he should do. JP, without even skipping a
beat told him “Sell off stock until you can sleep.” JP Morgan, while very, very wealthy also knew that money was really just
money. [ I read a really fantastic biography on JP Morgan here - The House of
Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance ]
The second quote speaks to the idea of being present.
If you have your treasures strewn all over the country your heart will be strewn
all over the country too. By heart, it means parts and bits of your mind.
Lets say you say “Just because it is in the Bible does not make it so.”
Ok. Fine.
But what if it is true. For example, you lets say you are enjoying life down in
Biloxi. Having fun on the beach, gambling, drinking fine wine, and carrying on
th
without a worry at all. Then the 10 of the month rolls by and you forgot about
the payment to the storage place. So then they call you and give you some crap
and say they are going to sell off your storage unit. You are able to fix
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th
everything, but now on the 10 of every month you carry that little bit of worry.
You might even have a nice Steinway piano in the storage shed. But now you
have in the back of your head worries about humidity and rodents. So you
NEVER really get free of the stuff. Remember you put it in storage in the first
place because you assigned so much value to it you wanted to keep it. No matter what you believe about the Bible, the wisdom in the verse is rock
solid. It gets worse if you have a house that you just kept. You’d worry sick
about broken pipes, windows, burglars, and more.
So now lets bring this all together.
All your worrying, all your mindshare, all that energy that you devote to your
stuff represents your attention. It represents mental energy. It represents focus or for the things other than your stuff it represents a loss of focus. But if the
application of focus, even in a small way, could be interpreted as a kind of
adoration, then that starts to track with the Webster definition of worship. And if your time is spent worrying about your stuff, then your worry is indeed,
worship.
I don’t know about you, but worshipping at the altar of stuff, particularly
fungible replaceable stuff that no one will care about when you die, is time NOT
well spent.
What is the entire point of this story? To encourage people to break any
emotional attachments to things. The better you can do this, the healthier
mentally you will be.
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The better you can do this, the easier downsizing your physical footprint into an
RV will be.
!
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The Reward of Spartanism
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You can go RVing
All this talk about the COST of stuff, all the trade-offs and spiritual stuff might
even sound a little bit negative. Who wants to give up their stuff, their toys, and look like Paul the Baptist out in
the wilderness eating locusts and honey. For most people that doesn’t sound
good. If that is what you’ve heard, then you might have went PAST the target level of
stuff that this book is pitching.
The target level is really to be dispassionate about “stuff” or things, pick what
you’ll want around you carefully and to keep cash around instead of things.
But even if you get the “target level” correct, that still doesn’t sound too great. It
begs a really significant question.
If you can “get Spartan”, what do you actually get for getting Spartan?
The FIRST and maybe the most important benefit relative to the title of this
book is that you can go RVing. You can downsize your life and RV without fear.
RVing successfully isn’t just getting smaller and leaving your stuff behind
though. It is about completely living in the moment. It is about experiencing
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It is about the single ONE thing God gives you - He gives you the “today”. You
ONLY get the moment. It is guaranteed. What you do with it, how you utilize
the moment, is completely up to you.
You can go RVing… AND you can live each day, totally in the moment.
That sounds pretty cool.
!
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Spartanlike is not about Poor
Before going into some of the really amazing things that being Spartan-like can
do for you, I just feel compelled to deal head-on with the idea that I’m espousing
a philosophy of “poor”, of lack, or doing without.
No. It isn’t that at all.
Being Spartan-like is about having things in your life that you use, that have
function, and bring you lots of joy, either from its use OR from some deep
meaning associated with the thing. Having an potentially extremely expensive,
high quality kitchen knife that is razor sharp that you use every day to prepare
meals would be an example of a very good purchase consistent with Spartan-like
RV living. Even if the knife was ridiculously expensive, if you get massive utility
out of it, then it is a GREAT thing to have.
Having possessions that only consume(d) your money, time, and mental energy
is to be avoided, particularly when those objects have no real daily value to you.
Or worse, you bought them to show off! Egads, aren’t you better than that?
Owning an RV that is spending its days in storage would be very UN-Spartanlike. No utility, tied-up money, depreciating asset. Not Spartan-like at all.
Spartan-like is about having what you need. It is about having little emotional
attachments to things that are simply “things” that you use.
But it is not about going without.
If going to Starbucks every day brings you huge joy, then by all means do it. If
having a Steinway when an electric studio piano would do is important to you
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(and you play often), then by all means do it. But don’t just have “things” for the
sake of having them.
If you have things, use them doggone-it.
In fact, having things and not using them is a TERRIBLE steward of the earths
resources. Consumption for consumptions sake is ugly.
Stop it.
You can be Spartan-like if you have lots of money.
You can be Spartan-like if you have very little money.
It is about attitude, not altitude.
!
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Freedom from Place
If you will implement a Spartan style RV lifestyle you will have increased
freedom from geography. Geography is just another way of saying place.
We get LOCKED into place several ways.
The first way we get locked into a place is usually because of a job. Many, many
jobs still have a requirement that you are in a certain place at a certain time for a
certain duration. This book doesn’t go over how to make money without being tied to a location,
but being Spartan-like can make a big big difference.
Here is how.
If you free yourself from lots and lots of stuff, particularly things that come with
a payment attached either due to debt or due to a subscription, then you don’t
have to make as much money.
If you don’t have to make as much money, then more and more jobs become an
option to you because you can accept jobs that pay less. Or even better, you can
accept part time jobs and earn less because you focus all your hours into just a
few days a week.
Again, I want to emphasize this isn’t about living without, but instead clearly
identifying what you are going to live WITH.
If, for example, you purchase cable TV ($100/month), Have miscellaneous
payments to different memberships around your town ($200/month), and have a
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car payment that is $200/month more than a more reasonable car ($200/month)
then you have to earn enough money to pay for all this. In this small paragraph
I’ve identified $600/month of expenses. Considering taxes, you would have to
earn potentially $700/month or more to cover these bills. Most people’s monthly financial footprint is even larger. It is just smart to
identify the things you don’t use that much and CEASE to be a servant to them.
Lower your unnecessary costs from serving “things” and then you have more
jobs to select from. More jobs to select from means you have more locations that
will have jobs you can do. More locations means that you have much more
geographic choice.
Another way we locked into place is with our stuff is just having a whole life tied
to an area.
Some things that are hard to replace, for which you might HAVE to find
alternatives no matter where you go, are medical people like doctors and
dentists. I know my wife particularly detests having to find a new gynecologist.
If you need medical attention where-ever you might be, you’ll have to get new
people. But the point here is that the people you work with in your non-work
life are how your current life slowly binds you to an area. There are other things that are less traumatic that over a lifetime slowly start to
hold you back. Maybe you have a hobby and you have a very good hobby
supply store nearby. That is an example.
Or you just bought a BMW car and you are tied into their local service.
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The new business model in America is to sell you something that has a monthly
“tie-in” that you find valuable. Those monthly tie-ins get harder and harder to
break. The more stuff you buy, the more monthly tie-in you get. I know one thing for sure. If you reduce your lifestyle to the most essential
things you will reduce this local tie-in. Furthermore if you work hard to
scrutinize those tie-ins on the things you decide you are going to do anyway, that
will help keep them to a minimum.
Finally, where possible make sure that whoever you do business with would be
willing to do so via mail, email, and phone.
Now that you have worked so hard to be free from any particular place, why not
drive another 100 miles and stay for 3 weeks at that hunting lodge resort in
Utah. Does anyone really care where you are?
I didn’t think so. Sounds like you have a good grasp on being location independent.
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Freedom from Time
Being Spartan-like - and reducing your stuff, increases your ability to have
freedom from time.
Freedom from time can mean several things.
Freedom from time might mean that you do not have specific time slots in which
you have little to no choice whether or not you attend.
For this type of time freedom, this is very much akin to the idea that by reducing
costs related to things, that you can reduce your need for money and in turn
create immense flexibility in how your get your income. With income flexibility
comes tremendous freedom. One of those freedoms might be the freedom to
define when, where, and how long you spend dedicated time to earn that
income. You can read more about my ideas around this idea in freedom from
place.
More interestingly, freedom from time might mean that you do not have to
commit time, albeit unscheduled, to servicing a thing. One example might be
mowing a lawn. Another, providing upkeep to a swimming pool.
Lets dive into the idea of how “things” or “stuff” create time demands.
I haven’t worn a watch in 30 years. I quit the first time because I got tired of my
personal neurosis of constantly looking at my watch. I keep time in my head. It
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Recently there has been a trend for a new kind of watch that works with your
smartphone so you don’t have to take your phone out of your pocket to see the
phone’s screen. This watch is called a smartwatch.
So I bought a smartwatch. It was very cool. Sleek. Black. It came with a cable which allowed you to plug it in and charge it. And a box.
To use it you had to install an app on your smartphone. In terms of tech, it was
pretty easy to use and get going.
I wore it a week and then sold it on eBay.
Why?
Because the utility it brought me was not enough to outweigh the added time
fuss it created.
On the positive side I liked the cool watch faces, the ability to see my text
messages, the ability to see email, and the ability to control my phone without
taking it out of my pocket.
But on the negative side, I had to remember to mess with it in the morning, I
didn’t like wearing a watch, just like I thought was still true. I looked at my
watch face a bunch, I ended up looking at my phone anyway, I had to deal with
the watch charging, and finally, the watch interfered with using my laptop
because it rubbed on the keyboard the wrong way. I even spent quite a bit of
time messing with the apps on the watch.
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It just wasn’t worth it. Even now, I am amazed at all the EXTRA time that the
watch consumed.
My smartphone (Apple iPhone 5s, Gold 16GB (Unlocked)) consumes time but the time it consumes is worth the extra utility it gives me in my life. It is
invaluable to me. This examination of reward versus expenditure. Thoughtless
spending and accumulation has a high price.
My wife bought a Roomba (iRobot Roomba 770 Vacuum Cleaning Robot for
Pets and Allergies). Everyday she moves EVERYTHING that could keep
Gussy-Lou (the name for the Roomba) from doing her job. That sounds
positively awful to me to have to create all that work every day. But for her she
doesn’t get dirty socks and she really, really wants her house to be sparkling. So
even though the Roomba requires work (an example of a thing making work to
keep it going), it REDUCES work because she couldn’t/wouldn’t clean the
house every day, but Roomba does. She LOVES her clean, squeaky clean socks
because there is no dirt on the floor ever. She LOVES it a lot.
The Roomba was another example of deciding to ACCEPT the extra work
because the extra work was worth the benefit.
One example of something that costs a lot in time, money, mental anguish, and
complexity is a car.
In Austin Texas, I’m starting to run into people who do not have cars. In
America, that is shocking.
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But there are great transportation choices in Austin. We have instant car rentals,
instant bike rentals, busses, taxis and a little bit of light rail. You CAN get
around town.
What did these people give up? By not owning a car they gave up a $100/month insurance payment, car
payments (for some), gasoline payments, parking payments, registration
payments, licensing payments, oil changes, engine maintenance, car cleaning and
probably bunches more not needed to get the point across.
What did they give up that was a good thing about owning a car?
The utter and sheer convenience of hopping in a car to do something or go
somewhere willy nilly.
Given traffic and air pollution - maybe they gave up something and all of us
gained something in return?
I love the Windows computer owners. This little vignette is about freedom from
time, but it is also about having the RIGHT asset to get your freedom from time.
I have reboot my Mac maybe once every 4-6 months. I haven’t had a bad error
in a couple years where it rebooted for me. It just works.
I have a Windows computer for my work. Sometimes search works on it well.
With about 20% of the websites I browse using Internet Explorer it tells me I
get a script failure and has a little error message in the lower banner bar. It
mostly works, but the websites usually don’t work as well in IE as with other
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browsers. I deal with all sorts of adjustments I have to do to function on the
Windows computer on a daily basis.
I estimate that task-by-task Mac versus Windows, unless I’m completely limiting
my activities, I spend about twice the amount of time getting something done in
the Windows computer versus the Mac. Example: Windows has trouble searching email in Outlook. Takes forever. Mac
Mail on the other hand has an almost instant search. To find an email in Outlook
- 5-10 minutes. To find an email in Mac - 1-2 minutes tops. To find a file in
Windows I’ll spend as much as 15 minutes. To find a file on the Mac, about 1
minute.
In this example, Windows computers require an inordinate amount of effort to
do the job. You are burning time. If you selected a more efficient asset, you
might find yourself with an extra hour or two every day.
Given you only have two things granted to you in life - irreplaceable time or
replaceable money, you might want to protect your time very carefully.
I’m hoping that after reading this chapter you get the idea that eliminating assets
big or small can buy you time. I’m also hoping that you can see having the right
assets can buy you time. If you have an asset and you burn time on it, make sure
that the time you spend actually matters to you.
Now that you have all this time on your hands, you can decide to stay the extra
week to watch the Padres opening game for the season. After all, who cares?
Where do you have to be?
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Now we’re talking.
!
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Freedom from Worry
Worry.
Defined roughly as a “state of anxiety” over actual or potential troubles.
As I write this a storm is coming in. We recently bought a new car so we parked
the car in a nearby parking ramp because we didn’t want hail to hurt the finish
of the very pretty car. But once we did it, we moved on and didn’t think
anymore.
We DID worry about the hailstorm. We took action to address the WORRY.
Once we implemented our plan of action, worry was released.
Worry that leads to action that leads to release of the worry could actually be
good.
Some people worry that the stock market might go down. The problem is that
they cannot control the stock market. Their worry cannot spur action. Well it
could - they could sell the stock. Then they will worry that they are missing out
on the market going up. People who worry about the stock market very likely
will worry simple to worry.
If you are RVing in Florida having the time of your life and you are worried
about the 6 feet of snow that could potentially break the roof on your house, you
are being a slave to your house. You are TAKING FROM your joy of the
current moment and placing mental energy on something you can’t control and
cannot take any action to remedy short of double checking your insurance. This
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Worry that spurs you to action is good worry. That worry is temporary. One of
the most important words in the definition is the word “state”. The state of
anxiety is a state that is fight or flight. When you are in a fight or flight mode,
you will produce cortisol. Cortisol is good for short periods of time, but for
extended periods of time, cortisol will shorten your life.
For you to effectively know if you need to downsize something you need to ask
yourself “Will I be thinking about this [insert thing here] while I am a thousand
miles away from here?” If the answer is yes, then you need to seriously consider
exchanging the item for cash.
Note: If you exchange something for cash because you were going to worry
about the thing, then worry that you are missing out in stock market returns,
you might need professional help. Certainly the question has to be - what exactly
is it that you want or need out of all this worry?
But if you can be free from worry, you can completely detox your body from
cortisol, get yourself some sleep, and leave your troubles behind.
Wasn’t that why you bought your RV in the first place?
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Being Present Now
This may be the single most important chapter of this entire book.
Once you are free from place, time, and worry, you can focus less on being free
FROM something and focus on being free FOR something.
There may be no better thing to be free FOR than simply enjoying the moment
you are in 100%. I suppose it is the most cliche’d item in the last 5 years, but mastery of it can
bring to your life a fullness of experience that few people ever achieve.
It is “being present”. People also might say “being in the moment”, “being in the
now”, “creating the space” between people, “listening intently”.
There are already FANTASTIC resources that touch on this subject in a big
way. I’ll give it a layman’s treatment, but before I get started, I’ll list some of the
resources where you can go very deep on the subject:
◆
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
◆
Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness
◆
10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress
Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A
True Story
◆
The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to
the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
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Before getting into the real benefits of “being present” I just want to poke on
how prevalent the topic is in mainstream culture - probably because it is so
important.
In one of the Star Wars, Luke Skywalker is training with Yoda on Yoda’s crazy
dark forest planet. In several of the training sessions, Yoda reveals to us his
amazement of Luke’s powers, but just as Yoda is getting blown away, Luke’s
disbelief causes him to not finish the exercise completely. Yoda chastises Luke
for “always having his mind elsewhere”. An example of just how critical and easily detectable “being present” is by
another person came from the Queen of England. When speaking about Prime
Minister William Gladstone she said "When I am with him, I feel I am with one
of the most important leaders in the world." However, regarding Benjamin
Disraeli she mentioned that "He makes me feel as if I am one of the most
important people in the world." This can only be caused by truly being an active
listener. My guess is that if you make the queen of England feel important then
good things happen. No need to resort to puffery, simply be interested.
What are the benefits of “being present now”?
◆
Better love life
◆
Deeper friendships
◆
Massively increased learning
◆
Increased enjoyment of every day
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◆
Tons of ancillary benefits such as longer life, better health, better career
opportunities, increased business, and on and on.
◆
People just might attend your funeral
I can’t possibly dive into all of these, but lets take just a few and go over them.
Better Love Life - Think about this. All partners really want is for someone to
love them 100% and pay attention to them. This means that when they speak,
you put down the iPhone and you listen. You don’t look over their shoulder or
glance at things around the room. Don’t stare either, you can watch different
parts of their face and not appear psycho. Be sure to blink or you’ll appear
psycho, but be intent on them. Mentally imagine there is a tunnel between the
two of you that communications passes back and forth. Do this as much as you
can and your partner will say things like “I’m really glad we had a nice talk
tonight.” How about “You really made me feel special tonight.” When your
partner senses that you value them, then you will get that back several times
over. Yes some marriages are troubled. But most people earnestly want to be
successful. Stop waiting for the other person to go first.
How does freeing yourself from stuff help? Easy! It is pretty hard to create that
space between you and your lover if you are checking stock quotes on your
iPhone. You’ll get no bonus points when you partner is asking you questions or
checking your understanding and your mind was drifting to your classic car
under the cover back at home. No, stop all those thoughts and focus. It will be
worth it.
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Better Friendships - This is like Better Love Life except it is with people who
are not your lovers.
Massively Increased Learning - When you learn, you intake information from
your ears, your eyes, and some of your other senses. But 9 times out of 10, your
learning will involve reading, audio, visual, or video transmission of information
from the source to you. When your mind is thinking about the snowstorm back
home - worrying about the pipes freezing - it isn’t fully paying attention to the
learning material. You are in effect making a connection with bunches of static.
Just like a far away radio station, you cannot hear all the music because of the
static. If you had to replay the song you couldn’t do so with perfect fidelity
simply because you never heard the full song. But if you had a close by radio
station you would have heard the entire song, including the subtle notes.
Just like a static filled radio station, so it is with your mind wandering while
learning. Worrying about stuff, or anything for that matter is simply static.
Logically, if you paid for the information, why would you pay and then not pay
attention. That doesn’t even make sense. You would have purchased maybe $100
of information or learning and only got $50 of it - and it was YOU who decided
to make the bad bargain.
Don’t do it. Leave your stuff behind. When you are ready to learn - learn
without static! Increased Enjoyment of Every Day - When you are fully present - when you are
fully in the here and now - you can experience all that life on earth has to offer.
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Just waking up, when you mind is focused on the very moment you are in, you
can taste the coffee more completely, the subtle flavors are completely revealed
to you. Stepping outside of the RV into the brisk air of the majestic beauty of the
world, you nostrils can really take in the scent of the pine. You sense the hint of
flowers in the air. You step boldly one foot in front of the other. You can sense
your heart beat pickup as you start to walk. For the first time in years you truly
hear the birds and the animals of the area.
None of this is possible when your mind isn’t focused on where you are at that
very moment.
Why shouldn’t something so simple as cup of coffee be truly enjoyed. Beans
harvested from the plants by human hands, dried, roasted, packaged, shipped,
bought and sold, ground, brewed, and served. The fact that you get to enjoy it so
far away is a miracle. It is the work of many many people. Hurrying through
your cup unappreciatively is disrespectful.
People might attend your funeral - If you are a great lover (not just in the
Biblical sense), a great friend, and find joy in all that life has to offer, then people
will want to be around you. On your final curtain on this earth, they will find
time to send you off as well.
One of the rewards of being Spartan-like is that you mattered.
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Consistent with Most forms of Spirituality
Many, many people believe in something - some form of higher power. My
personal bent is belief in some guy that died 2000 years ago, came back to life,
and mediates between me and the creator of the universe. Some believe in
Mohammed, some Buddha, some people are Hindu… there are many, many
more religions and things to believe on this earth.
If I’m a betting man I must believe that you are a believer in one of those
religions I’ve listed above. I could be wrong - don’t hold that against me - I’m
just betting the odds.
Now assuming that you are in one of those belief systems - I have to believe that
you also have to want to be better at whatever your religion is - a better
Christian, a better Muslim, a better Jew or what have you. If you aren’t striving
to improve, then you really might be a fake. Again I apologize.
Following my reasoning, given you want to improve yourself, given that you are
probably in some form of belief system, then it goes to follow that nearly
EVERY ONE of these religions has as a fundamental tenant that you should not
accumulate stuff for the sake of doing it. Having substantially more than you
need is immoral.
So by choosing a Spartan-like life you are also choosing to be closer and more
consistent to your belief system.
Doesn’t that make attending your normal religious services feel that much
better?
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You bet it does.
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SWITCHING GEARS
We’ve spent a lot of words on pros and cons of living a Spartan-life, well at least
the pros. Personally I don’t see many cons.
But I haven’t spent any time giving you any techniques to get it done. I did tell
you that lots of your stuff really wasn’t worth that much. That is advice, of sorts,
but it is now time to get dirty. Some of the areas we are going to dive into, most with really super actionable
content will be:
✓
How to reduce your physical footprint using digital means.
✓
Streamlining your digital communications and making it work for you
instead of it just making work.
✓
Resources for enhancing your mobile life that help you interface with the
“rooted” world
✓
Some very random parting thoughts on different parts of slimming down
your house
Lets get into it.
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Your House
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Not a lot of answers in this short chapter. But maybe, just maybe, somehow, this
will help you by giving you different perspectives. Some of the perspectives
might be contradictory, but again, maybe something will stick.
In the United States home ownership is a cornerstone of the US idea of middle
class wealth creation. It has many special provisions in the US tax code. That
makes the idea of a home a “bigger deal” in the US than in other countries, but it
is a big deal in other countries too.
The whole idea of the Spartan RV is to really get you MIND wrapped around
the idea that possessions just are not that important. That you can simply trade
money for possession and back again is a pretty fundamental idea too. You just
can’t fall in love with a thing. At the end of this book, if you feel a little bit
detached from things and you want to go hug lots of people, then maybe I’ve
done my job.
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But the Spartan RV is NOT a book on managing your money. It is only about
refining your feeling towards money and things.
But the house… it is the most thorny of the RV issues.
A house isn’t just a physical possession. Think about it. The first question out of
people’s mouths almost anywhere in the world is “where are you from?” or
“where do you live?”. That ties back into the idea of a house. A house is roots. It
is belonging. It is being.
Even in the RVer parlance, almost everyone has a home-base. Home base is
where a stuck on the ground permanent house is usually located. It is almost as
if RVers think of their RVing as a temporary journey - a “going out”. Similar to
St Paul’s treks through the middle east. St Paul always returned to his home
base - except for the Rome part at the end. But everyone always wants to return. There are LOTS of reasons to return, right? Children. Grandchildren. Cousins.
Family. Friends. Those are pretty good reasons and I can’t fault a single one of
them. Shoot - my secret fantasy is that my kids want to live on my 5 acres in
their own little houses and we make a “compound” and do internet marketing
together. Stupid I know, but don’t all of us parents secretly want the family to be
this big happy kumbaya?
Take away the family aspect and aren’t you left with only friends and familiarity
as the reason you return? Are those two things good enough?
Is the idea of “place” so ingrained in the human experience that we are fighting
our inner being of who we are?
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So if you can get to a financial place in your life where you are free from
geography, can you truly be free to live without a home base?
I can’t answer any of these things. But I can help you through some ideas about what to do with your home and
how to keep it from holding you back. In NO WAY is this a complete treatment
of the aspects of home ownership and finance, but maybe just maybe it will help
you get over the hump or break loose some ideas.
A reader of my blog (http://rv52.com/the-official-rv52-com-blog/) wrote me one
time saying that he was upside down on his house and that was a big
impediment to RVing.
Just in case someone doesn’t know what “upside down” means, it really means
that to sell his house, he may actually need to cough up money. It means you
OWE more on the house than the house is worth. There might be an in-between
idea where the house is worth less than you paid for it, but you still got some
money back after paying off the mortgage. For that reader, he is in a tough pickle because unless he has the money to pay
off the mortgage he really is stuck with owning a home until he can make good
on his loan commitment. You should always make good on your commitments
with no exceptions. If you don’t then you are wrecking our country.
But that reader still has options. You could rent out your house. You can use a property manager to do the heavy
lifting on the renting. Property managers get 8-10% of the yearly rents to do this
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work - about a month’s rent. Get a good one if you can. No, really, get a really
good one that you can trust. Otherwise your house could get tore up.
When renting your house - set your expectations accordingly. You’ll get an
occasional headache from renting. You might make a little monthly extra cash,
but probably not. More likely you’ll get close to covering your mortgage and
your taxes. If you can have a long term successful run of renting you might end
up with a paid-off property which is an excellent goal.
If the house can mostly cover its expenses, even if you are upside down, at least
you’ll be somewhat close to not having to cough up money.
Be prepared to have a fund for paying 2-3 months rent and swapping out a
carpet and painting occasionally.
You could just sell and pay off the mortgage by coming up with a little money.
That requires some nerves of steel, but let me explain the ideas behind this crazy
move.
If being underwater with your house is keeping you in place and your dream is
to be on the road I have news for you. You will die someday. Be very careful
about not living your life trying to recover a little bit of money. As you get older,
this becomes more imperative.
Lots of people say - “I’m waiting to sell until the market improves”. But here is
the scoop. At any one time your asset is worth exactly what it is worth now. If
you don’t want to sell your house and take a loss but 15 other asset classes will
provide a better return on the money, then it is better to sell the house and put
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the money in a different asset class (bonds, stocks, CD’s, T-bills, gold, pork
bellies, and on and on).
Here is an example. You buy the house for $120K. It is now worth $100K.
Based on the real estate market in your location, in five years it will be worth
$120K again. However, you can find a CD earning 5% (this is just an example).
In 5 years the CD will be worth $125K which means you would be worth more
than the house. I’m ignoring all sorts of things like tax considerations or the idea
that you need a place to live, but you can see what I mean, right? The
QUESTION should never have been about how much money you lost, the
QUESTION needs to be: what is the best place to put $100K to invest. If you had to cough up the $20K in the example above then you look at the
differential in value between what the $20K was making (CD @ 5%) versus
mortgage loan at 7%. You would still be better off paying the $20K and getting
an effective return of 7% on the money, which is 2% better.
Secretly - maybe not so secretly - I’m also a partial believer in the Dave Ramsey
no debt is good good debt concept. If you want to sell your house and RV and
the house debt is holding you back, then you have to attack it. In general, freedom with no money is better than debt servitude with complexity
and an asset that needs care and feeding.
Freedom is always better.
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Digital Sparta: Digitizing Your Life
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Digitizing your old life
After reading my entirely depressing thoughts on why traveling light is my
preferred way of traveling through life, I’ll then explain how I actually “cheat”
that philosophy, at least a little bit.
The concept is pretty simple, but I have taken the idea to the extreme - or at
least I think so.
It is this - use your computer(s), tablets, and phones to digitize your life. Do it
aggressively and do it algorithmically. By algorithmically, I mean, have a
procedure where you do things in the same order in the same way. That way
things just tend to get done.
In the next few sections, I’ll share some ideas & strategies on how to reduce the
clutter of your life, without actually giving up on having the clutter! In other
words, I’ll tell you how to make your clutter digital.
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Books - Lightening the load of your older books
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Books.
Boxes of Books.
Books in bookcases.
Books in nooks.
Nooks and nooks of books.
Books as makeshift coasters.
Books on the nightstand.
Books in the window sills.
Books are literally EVERYWHERE. They are running us over like the
proverbial “getting hit by a bus” type of thing.
How could Gutenberg ever have imagined the complete and utter success of his
printing press?
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Beyond disrupting religion and uprooting regimes, could he have seen that he
could have completely filled entire rooms, houses, and buildings with books and
books and books?
No of course not.
And there is NO WAY he could have foreseen that the book is the enemy of the
RV. An RV with perhaps a limited carrying capacity of 500 pounds. While that is
a very bad RV indeed, some are actually that limited.
A single box of books could weigh as much as 50-100 pounds. You could see
how a single bookcase could make your RV unsafe and illegal.
The books have to go!
But wait you say. You are a person of learning and will continue to learn, and
read, and visit imaginary lands via the written word until you die.
No problem I say. But you still have to get rid of books. Paper books that is.
Getting rid of books is actually more difficult than getting rid of CDs. CDs have
a very easy “ripping” method to get the audio off onto your digital storage device
(usually a computer). Books on the other hand are trickier.
Most books today are still on a printed medium like paper. The ONLY way to
get this off of the paper and into a computer is to do something called scanning.
Worse yet, books do not lend themselves well to scanning.
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So I think the hardest part about books is figuring out what you are going to do
with your historical books - by historical I mean the ones you already own.
There is no easy prescription here other than asking yourself the hard questions.
I’ll list a few here:
* Is the book signed by someone famous? If so, then perhaps this book is a
special candidate for keeping. Otherwise, you need to consider putting it on the
chopping block.
* Is the book immensely valuable like a collectors edition? If it is, then you
simply make the call - should you convert it to another asset type as a value
store?
* Is the book a family heirloom? Are you a descendent of Charles Dickens and
you have an original manuscript? If so, then maybe you keep this due to family
pride or heritage. But otherwise - maybe the book needs to move on.
* Is the book one you read often? The Bible? The Koran? Peanuts? The point is
that you get the darned thing out and read it all the time. If the dust on the book
is over 5 years old, I would have to question why you would keep it?
* Is the book easy to replace? A quick check on Amazon.com shows me that
there are literally 1000’s and 1000’s of books that I can buy for $0.01 plus $2.99
shipping. Honestly, why would you lug all these books around when you can
replace them so darned cheaply?
* Do you have more than one copy? Hey, I totally get the fact that “not keeping”
th
your 8 version of the NIV Bible given to you as a gift feels funny, but all 8
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copies are going to read almost identical. My advice? Keep the BEST one and
pass out the others to everyone you see. Honestly, aren’t you supposed to spread
the word rather than keep it bottled up? * Related to reading a book often - when was the last time you read that book?
Fifteen years ago? Are you REALLY going to read it again? Get rid of it.
* Oh, was that a gift book? No intention of reading it? Get rid of it too.
Lastly, lets dig into having a pile of books you can point to… Lets be totally
honest. When you have a massive stockpile of books, doesn’t it point to how
smart you are? Doesn’t it point out just what an amazing person you are? And
by having this totally visible, totally touchable, very real, stash of “intellectual”
proof, doesn’t it completely validate who you are? Why anyone just seeing your
big stash should simply know and cherish your very company and sage words.
We all know it is true. Heck I had the same feeling. Then I moved once or twice. Then I lived in an RV.
Then I got real.
I don’t need other people’s acceptance. Part of getting older. Part of the “zen” of
being an RVer is the freedom. Freedom from other people’s opinions. Freedom
from geography. Freedom from a clock. Free to be. Free from the clutter of
books.
So get over it and GET RID OF YOUR BOOKS.
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Pick 5 books that you need to keep with you that you’ll really use and use often. Anything more is silly.
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Books - Keeping new books "light"
After taking a hard look at the books you’ve already owned and making the hard
decisions on what to keep, lets talk about what we do for the future.
Before we do that, I think we have to agree to some maxims.
1) We don’t accumulate books to show off our intelligence to other people.
Therefore, we have no need for a display of everything we’ve read.
2) A small physical footprint is more important than being cheap.
3) I may have to spend money to stay “read” and educated. If I’m going to
approach intellect with a Walmart mentality, then maybe I shouldn’t try to be
smart. That sounds cruel but lets be real. Why would you scrutinize a $5.99
book purchase like it was the last money on earth and then go spend $14.99 on
an Applebee’s lunch. That doesn’t make sense. You got it backwards. One builds
and edifies you for the future and has long lasting value. The other just makes
you fat.
Now that I’ve got that out of the way, what happens when you find a GREAT,
no AWESOME $0.99 hard cover book?
Don’t feel guilty about it. Just read it and pass it on.
Do not accumulate it.
Do not buy 20 of them and let them sit.
Read it and move on. That is critical. Remember, in an RV, space and weight is
at a premium. If the item occupying the space and weight is simply occupying it
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and not providing value, then you’ll soon get a ticket - or worse - you’ll have an
accident caused by overloading.
For ALL other books you want, need, or plan to read for which you simply
didn’t “run across” at the local yard sale, then I’ll contend that you need to get
them electronically.
OBJECTION #1 - I can’t read on one of those electronic gadgets. Bull crap. I
have 20/2000 vision, misshapen eyeballs, and a non curable condition called
divergence insufficiency. I can find no discernible difference between reading on
an ebook reader and a regular book, save dropping the bathtub. They both “die”
in the tub so honestly even that isn’t much difference. So, get over yourself and
your objection and just admit that you simply say you can’t read on the device
because you don’t want to, you don’t want to learn something new, or some
other internal flaw. So just stop it.
OBJECTION #2 - The media is more expensive. This might actually be true.
You do get some advantages in return for the higher price. The book never ages.
You can have awesome bookmarks and notes. You can remember where you left
off no matter what when and where. You can have all your books with you all
the time - major coolness. I’ll discuss some ways to get books at the end of this
article.
There are lots and lots of good ereaders on the market. Amazon has some great
choices (start here http://rv52.com/amazon it helps the author out but costs you
nothing) called Amazon Kindles. Barnes and Noble (aka Microsoft) has a very
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respectable line of ereaders called Nooks. Apple of course has the iPads. Almost
everyone else on the planet can sell their Android tablet as an ereader.
I can recommend any of them. If you have a preferred vendor just use them. You
can’t hardly go wrong.
The TRICKIER choice is actually the book formats themselves. I have some
pretty strong recommendations for that. Or at least I have recommendations.
Apple iBook - I do NOT recommend. Why? Because if I buy iBook format, I
can’t read it on a Kindle, or Nook, or Android, or PC. It is Apple ONLY. So that
means once you buy an iBook, you are stuck with Apple products. I think that is
a limitation since you want the books to be useful for a long time without too
much regard to your hardware. Kindle books - Ok. I am OK with Kindle books. The reason for this is because
you can get a Kindle app (a program that reads Kindle format books) that will
run on PC’s, Macs, iPads, Androids, and of course Kindles. The ONLY ereader
that won’t read Kindle is Nook from Barnes and Noble which is pretty silly. I
also think Amazon is a great company and has a great library.
Nook books - Ok. I am OK with Nook books, but slightly less favorable than
Kindle. The reason for this is because you can get a Nook app (a program that
reads Nook format books) that will run on PC’s, Macs, iPads, Androids, and of
course Nooks. The ONLY ereader that won’t read Nook is Kindle from Amazon
which is pretty silly in reverse. I also think B&N is a great company and has a
great library. B&N has shown financial weakness but with Microsoft backing
them, your digital library should be fairly safe.
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There are probably many more PROTECTED book formats which won’t let
you copy books, just like Kindle, Apple, and Nook, but honestly, unless you
have a super good reason, I would have to question that. I think most authors
know to make books available in multiple formats so if you pick a lesser format
maybe that just isn’t smart. I can be convinced otherwise.
EPub - ePub is a great choice. What you’ll find out in the world is that many
people will make books available in ePub format. Don’t be afraid of epub.
PDF - Portable Document Format from Adobe is a great choice. I collect
bunches of these, including whitepapers, tech publications, and much much
more. You can get so much great reading from this that you simply ought to
consider this as one of the best. In this case, I do use Apple iBook to keep my
PDFs so that I can keep them all synchronized and backed up on all my devices.
I’m pretty sure you can do the same using your Nook or Kindles too. Keeping
things synced is cool. You can find it on your PC, then drag and drop the PDF
to your Nook/Kindle/iBook app on your PC and then the PDF shows up
magically everywhere! Love it!
Usually you will buy books on a PER BOOK basis. But I do want to highlight a
couple of options.
1) Kindle Lending Library. This library has over 300,000 books available to you,
1 at a time, if you subscribe to Amazon Prime (http://rv52.com/prime). Prime is
really cool - I won’t describe it much here except to say if you read lots of books
- 300,000+ could keep you busy for awhile. You pay 1 time per year and get this
access. So as fast as you can read you can get books.
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2) Local libraries. Many local libraries have lending agreements with Nook and
Kindle. Check out your local library. Usually they are about 6-12 months behind
on best sellers, but the local libraries can be a great money saving option.
3) Audible - Like books on tape except it comes to your Kindle. I think you can
get it to work on your Apple devices too. You pay Audible (ultimately Amazon)
a monthly fee and get a one AUDIO book (basically a book you listen to instead
of reading) per month and reduced rates on more Audio books. This is an
identical option to reading, but if you drive a lot or truly struggle to read, this is
pretty incredible.
So that wraps up my ideas on getting new books and new information without
getting a bunch of clutter and weight.
1) Limit physical books. Read-em and move-em out.
2) Go electronic.
3) Pick a format that works for you.
4) Consider a subscription plan - and yes, you can get monthly periodicals like
Ladies Home Journal in electronic format too. They don’t really cost much more
AND they won’t take up weight. Plus finding those great recipes will be as easy
as ever.
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Memorabilia
One of the hardest things to do is to get rid of those very, very special mementos.
I’m talking about the physical thingys that are hard to describe.
I’ll make a list here, but no way can this be inclusive. My list is slightly tonguein-cheek, but go with it, ok?
* Cross country and track medals (I really did have these)
* Sports and competition trophies. (Racing, fishing, basketball, poker, and on
and on and on)
* Commemorative plaques, plates, glasses, chairs, placards, coffee cups, and on
and on and on.
* Old projects, work awards.
* Watches, sculptures, and on and on.
* Diplomas, certificates, certifications…
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I for one struggled with my track medals. I was super proud of all my racing. I
had medals in the 400 meters, 800 meters, relays, and also cross country races.
At least one lifetime ago I was skinny. My running weight was 154 pounds. I
could run like the wind. I wasn’t world class. Heck I wasn’t even “state” class,
but I still did pretty darned good.
Somehow I could never part with those medals. So I lugged them around with
me for 30 years.
One day, after living in an RV (growing more Spartan-like) I had several very
big realizations about the medals - and “stuff” for that matter:
1) I couldn’t remember the details of some of the races anymore.
2) None of the races were really important.
3) No one cared but me.
4) I had two kids, not one. How would I split the medals anyway?
5) My kids really didn’t care that much.
So, after my Spartalization ( a Spartan-like realization ) I made some decisions.
1) I would photograph each medal carefully, front and back.
2) I would throw away all the medals with absolutely no tears. Actually what I
ended up doing was giving them to some local kids as chachkies. 3) I would not have any regrets.
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It was absolutely the most freeing experience I had in a long time.
I then did the same thing with my University of Nebraska framed diploma, my
high school diploma, my Master’s diploma, my 1 mile track award, and almost
every single other thing in my life that no one cared about but me.
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And the world continued to rotate just fine.
Cute side note on the diploma thing. I had a friend who was HIGHLY educated
- way more so than me. He actually had a masters from M.I.T. and a Ph.D from
another prestigious university. He puts a very high value on credentials - I’m not
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faulting him - I’m just saying. When I told him I threw the fancy sheepskin
away, you’d have thought I stabbed him through his heart.
So now I’m asking you, RVing friend…
Can’t you simply take a picture of all of your little memorabilia and won’t that be
good enough. Why do you really, really, really have to lug that crap around.
After all, you can’t take it with you.
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Pictures
This ought to be the shortest section on digitizing your life for RVing.
If you are still taking film pictures with a traditional camera, please stop. Stop
now.
All new pictures you should just take with your cell phone, MP3 player, iPod, or
digital camera.
Don’t print out pictures. No paper. Paper costs money, uses resources, is hard to
find, and takes space in your RV.
All new pictures should be moved into a picture management software. I use
iPhoto. There are others for the PC. There are plenty of choices. But do it now.
If you find it scary get over it. I mean really, you’ve experienced surgeries,
childbirth, probably combat, and who knows whatever in your life. Learning a
picture management program won’t be that bad.
Back your pictures up. (See my List of Essentials). If you are a man, and you
make everything digital and you lose it all in a fire, storm, accident or computer
failure, your wife will kill you while you sleep. I repeat, back up your stuff now,
quickly, early, offsite, and often.
You still might have the problem with OLD pictures.
Treat them like memorabilia.
You can:
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* Scan them.
* Pay a service to digitize them.
* Photograph them.
Either way, when you are done, all your pictures are now available digitally.
If you do this right, you can organize really nice slide shows and have them
show up on your big screen TV.
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Bills, Papers, and Documentation
Life has a certain bric-a-brac that simply comes with it.
That bric-a-brac embodies itself with a crapload of paperwork “stuff”.
It starts at birth - birth certificates, social security registration, health insurance,
life insurance, wills, living will, living trusts, car insurance, car inspections.
Sometimes it seems the list goes on forever.
Each new law seems to make a new mountain of paperwork for businesses and
individuals - the bureaucrats seem to not care. It isn’t a new idea, even Mary and
Joseph had to return to Bethlehem so the Romans could count them - mostly
related to better/more taxation for the Romans, but still the paperwork and
mindless task for the bureaucratic machine are not new. We still don’t have to
like it.
So the question becomes - how do I keep from having to dedicate an entire file
cabinet and room to this stuff? This paperwork is funny - when you don’t need
it, it isn’t very important, but when you need it, you really need it bad.
I have a strategy for managing paperwork that has worked “pretty well”. On a
scale from 1 to 10, 10 being best, I think my strategy has worked at about a level
7. I’m happy with that and know I can refine it better.
The first part of my strategy involves saying “no” to lots and lots of things. One
tendency for people is to consider everything that comes in the door. For
example a new credit card offer comes in and many people think “I should
evaluate this to see if it makes sense.” The truth is you can’t evaluate all of them.
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It is impossible. There are more of them than you. So any of those offers I see is
an automatic “no”. It hits the trash immediately. That goes for lots of other
things as well. The flip side of this concept is that if you have a real problem, you
will actively work to solve it at that time.
The second part of my strategy is related to the first subtlety. Make sure you
sign up to the gov web site to reduce junk mail. The FTC has a pretty good
article on their site with several of these sites ( http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/
articles/0262-stopping-unsolicited-mail-phone-calls-and-email ). I’ve registered
and it really does work.
Continuing my screening process, we get almost all of our mail at a place called
PakMail. We’ve done it for several years. One of the benefits is that the owners
of the PakMail store (with our blessing) throw away the obvious unsolicited
mail. So some, like local grocery flyers, we simply do not see. We’ve asked them
to do that. I estimate that cuts down our junk by about 15-20%. One side benefit
is that by having your mail at a place you have to go out of your way to visit, you
put mail in the correct spot on your priority list - that is to say - way down the
list. You’ll get to it when you can.
When possible, I work with my vendors (bill collectors) to change everything
over to electronic bills whenever I can. Where records can be kept online and
fetched “upon request” I convert over to that style of record keeping. Do I really
need 14 years of bank statements from a checking account that never has more
than $500 in it at a time? Lets be honest. The IRS really doesn’t care about that.
If you really need it, the bank can get it for you. Otherwise, the record keeping
is a mindless activity. Same with credit cards statements.
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All that is left are things that you want to retain records for which there is no
alternative. Receipts from items where the replacement value is high enough to
warrant keeping receipts is good. Things where you might have to produce
proof - perhaps for a court case or for taxes - you might want to keep that.
Everything you used to file your taxes. Records which would be a real effort to
get any other way (like dental receipts from a dentist years ago)… these things
you should keep around handy. All these item still add up to quite a bit of paper. So now that I’ve narrowed
down what you have to “digitize” I can go over my procedure to digitize things.
1) You gotta have a scanner. I have an Epson Workforce All-In-One. Inside the
scanner I can add a really big SD Card. Whenever I scan something, the Epson
automatically puts the files it scans either in PDF or JPG format onto the SD
card. I’ve tried having active connections between a computer and the scanner
but that takes a really long time and I have to setup the computer. With the
Epson all I have to do is have the scanner running which is really fast and
reliable. It also has an automatic sheet feeder which is awesome when you have a
stack of documents.
2) Whenever a document comes in you need to digitize just walk to the scanner,
insert the doc, and press the button.
3) After it scans, put the document into a “shred box” which you’ll empty every
6 months. If something went wrong, you’ll have the paper copy around for that
period of time.
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4) Every 1 or 2 months, I copy all the files from the SD Card to my Mac into a
directory where I have all the files which have these useless generic names like
Epson56.jpg. Every time I copy files, I’ll copy them into a new directory called
2014_Spring or something similar.
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5) I delete the files off of the Epson. For this brief moment in time I have a single
copy situation. Even as I write this, I realize that I should simply buy a second
SD Card and I would never have a single copy situation where a single failure
can wipe out my records. That is one advantage to writing a book!
6) Within 12 hours I get a good offsite network backup of the computer where I
copied the files. I use JustCloud and so far have been happy with them.
7) Every 3-6 months I’ll go into the generic file name directory which I call
“unnamed”, at the very top of the directory tree. The whole directory tree might
be called “Documents->Scans->unnamed->Jan_2014-><filenames>”. When I’m
in that directory, I look at the files in Apple’s OSX Finder mode called “Cover
Flow”. This allows me to see the files first page AND the name at the same time.
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I also can rename with a single click. I rename the file with a very long and
descriptive file name which will help me locate the file later. For example I might
name a doctors bill for me something like “2014 medical doctor bill headaches
january.jpg”. If I get enough words in the file name usually I can find the
document pretty easily.
9) After I change the file name, I drop it into a directory called “named”. The
whole tree would be “Documents->Scans-named-><filenames>”. The Apple
Spotlight search is so good that in a few seconds I can find that file whenever I
need it.
10) Within 12 hours I get a good offsite network backup of the files with their
new names.
11) Empty the “shred box” into a secure shred place. You can find them at a mail
store if you look around. But this way your stuff is disposed of without exposing
your data to prying eyes. Yes I know about digital offsite backups potential
security risks, but you gotta pick your battles. I don’t want local people getting
my data as they have more “side information”. Side information combined with
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secret data could undo me more easily. So I focus on local shred and trust my
digital backup to be pretty tight too.
There are quite a few improvements I have been thinking about trying. I’ve
heard the Snapscan is the best scanner on the market. It does 2 sided scan in a
single pass and automatic OCR which means it will always get a better search
results when looking for your data. I want to think positively, but I’ve found that
usually the extra OCR steps usually cause more inconvenience than benefit.
I’ve only had two real situations where my system doesn’t work that well.
The first one happens about 2x per year. It is when I’m trying to find file I
scanned but I have yet to make a meaningful name. I panic every time because
they are hard to find with those generic names. The second situation is when government agencies want originals. This
happened when I needed to get a license plate and they wanted to have the
original odometer statement. My copy wasn’t good enough. So two days later
when I reappeared with an original statement I watched this “so called worker”
walk to the copier, make a copy and hand the original back to me. I choked
down my words. The honest truth is that this “so called worker” couldn’t have
determined a fake from the real thing if her life depended on it. I think of the
saying “mindless consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” I’m getting mad
just writing about it.
There you have it. The RV52.com simple method for digitizing your bric-a-brac
of life.
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Movies
Movies come in two main formats or at least you probably have two formats
laying around. I’m going to ignore the Sony big disks that were about the size of
a 12 inch LP.
I’m assuming that you might have VHS tapes laying around. I’m amazed at how
many people still have VHS players and VHS tapes. Letting go is really just that
hard isn’t it.
But then most of us still have these things called DVDs which come in a 6x9
plastic box called an amaray case. I’ll lump in the new fancy Blueray disks into
this category too.
Between these two digital formats you can completely fill up a large bookcase.
Worse yet, ask yourself, how many times have you gone back and actually
watched those movies again? I’d venture a guess, probably very few times.
For VHS tapes there is no hope and no salvaging them. Just throw them away.
No one wants them. Your player won’t really work. The tape quality stinks. You
can’t sell them. They are just junk. Not even worth a garage sale quarter. Junk
out the VHS player too. I’m sorry, but the time for these has came and gone. It is
over.
For DVDs the prognosis is not much better. Hollywood has done such a very
fine job of protecting the digital information on these that grabbing the movies
and moving them to your hard drives is really not worth it. Even if you did get it
done, movies take huge amounts of space. Then you’d want to back it up which
would take up piles of backup time.
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Unless you are a true, true videophile, or a real student of film and
cinematography, I just can’t see keeping movies around. Buying movies is a
really really bad investment.
So the RV52.com position on DVDs is to sell them or pass them on. Don’t keep
them. If you want to have 3-5 laying around for the grandkids to watch over and
over like kids will do, then great. But stop there. For all movie watching, I would HIGHLY consider ONLY renting using
RedBox, Netflix, or the online services. Yes there is an issue around internet
bandwidth, but I think paying $2.99 to rent a movie you’ll only watch 1 or 3
times is still cheaper and a better deal than buying. There is no reward for
ownership.
There is ONE “halfway” idea I will share.
Take all of the DVDs out of the amaray cases, throw away the amaray cases and
put the DVDs into a very skinny DVD disk storage folder. You can condense a
whole bookcase to something the size of a small Bible. That is a good
compromise if you can’t get rid of DVDs.
Remember, movies are an experience. Its hard to “own” an experience. It’s just
gray matter in your brain after all.
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Music - Getting rid of the CDs
Music, in the form of DVDs, Vinyl LPs, CDs, and whatever other forms you
might have is a tremendous space “sucker”.
Catalogs, like LL Bean, are chock-full of DVD and CD storage racks. There
isn’t a TV show or picture of a room in a decorating magazine that doesn’t have
the obligatory rack after rack of CD cases artfully placed next to their CD
player.
But that is very silly indeed.
Why would you take up all that space?
Lets go over how you can free up all that space, yet simultaneously, NOT give
up and go without your music.
I will admit, I’m a bit of an Apple bigot so this explanation will be a somewhat
Apple focused. Please forgive me, but understand that this can be applied to
other types of computers as well.
First, you have to deal with the CDs that you already have in your possession.
The way to eliminate these is to do something called “ripping the CD”. What this
means is that you insert the CD into a CD drive or player on your Mac (you
may have to buy one to plug it in) and then the Mac will “copy” the music from
the CD into an excellent Apple program called iTunes. ITunes is the program,
but the music is placed into a library - called the iTunes library.
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After the the CD is “ripped” you can listen to it from your iTunes library. In fact,
there are many things you can do with the music once it is in your iTunes library.
But most importantly, you can listen to it as if you had the actual CD.
What do you do with the CD? Assuming you have a digital backup (see my
chapter on essentials) of your computer, you no longer need the CD.
It would be a violation of copyright law and really a “pickpocket” of the artists
pocket to resell the CD so the proper thing to do is to simply throw it in the
garbage - even breaking it in half. I think most artists would be OK with the
idea of providing the CD to people less fortunate. There are other things you
could do with the CD, but I’m simply not going to encourage anything more
here than charity or the trash!
For new music, I think you have to examine the idea of how sensible it might be
to “own” music.
If you simply MUST own music, you can buy more CDs and rip them. Or you
can buy the music one song at a time, on iTunes and have just the songs you
want. No longer are we subject to the music labels making us buy entire albums
just to get a single song we like.
There are music “library” services from Amazon, Pandora, and many others
where you can get access to the library as long as you pay or as long as you
subject yourself to their advertisements.
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Some of you RVers are already using satellite radio which is also like a library
service except you can’t select songs, just channels or genres. But that has its
own fun because you get to hear new things.
So to summarize, if you’ll rip your CDs, back up the computers, then subscribe
to a digital download service of some type, then you can completely eliminate the
clutter of CDs from your life… and your RV.
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Cutting the Ties to Cable TV
One of the most foolish monthly expenses that I can see most of America doing
is purchasing cable TV.
Cable TV costs many, many people well over $100/month. And they pay it
month after month after month.
I don’t. I’m not deprived either.
Even though I haven’t purchased cable TV for years, I still get excited when I
get to stay in a hotel room. Why? Cable TV will be there. Yay me.
Then I turn on the cable TV and I start the never ending click-click-click trying
to find a decent TV show.
Ooooh. They have HBO! Oh darned. Crappy movie. Neat. Good movie. Oops.
Already started. Oh well.
Off to the History Channel. All WWII all the time. Nope. Duck Dynasty or
some nonsense like that on the History Channel. That isn’t even history. I have sat and literally WASTED 2 hours clicking endlessly to try to find
something to watch.
There has to be a better way.
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There is - it is call the internet. You can watch pretty much anything you want,
any time you want, when you want, on the device you want. Why in the world
would you EVER pay for bad TV? It doesn’t make sense.
If you were willing to pay, something like $20/month, you could watch more
movies, TV shows, and even a couple on-demand shows anytime you want. I’m
not counting the internet costs, because not having the internet is really not
something I’ll discuss in one of my books. I LOVE being connected. I’m only
counting costs of TV.
I personally use Amazon Prime for most of our shows. This costs about $100 per
year. But you get other things with prime, so I could argue (tenuously) that the
Prime video comes free. If you COUNT the Prime membership, then I’ve only spent about $10/month on
a service in which you can get piles and piles of TV shows and movies.
If you want new releases, you can rent them from dozens and dozens of services.
Even ABC.com and the other big networks provide the ability to watch their
content for free off of their sites. Of course you get advertising but it is reduced.
If you’ll commit to getting internet based TV instead of cable, you’ll save a pile
of money AND watch TV 100% at your convenience and leisure. It is a huge
improvement. The next chapter is a pseudo-reprint of an article I wrote and
published on RV52.com and on youtube which goes through how I connect
everything.
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Confession: There is one thing I cannot do that I badly want to do. As of this
writing the Big 10 Network (btn.com) does not allow me to purchase BTN.com
2Go directly from the web. I would have to buy cable TV to get it. That shows
you how UNFAIR the contracts are with the cable companies. It actually
PICKS the pocket of the Big 10 Network. Why? Because I would gladly pay
$20 to watch my dearly beloved Cornhuskers live off of the web. But BTN.com
th
would NEVER see even 1/100 of that $20 per-person from the cable
companies. I think they would make much, much more money without the cable
tv deals. Can’t prove it though. But I’m still not buying cable TV.
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A Whole RV Electronic Infotainment System
Networking & Entertainment where the equipment is hidden yet useful
[ This is almost a direct reprint of an article on my website RV52.com. ]
When we took possession of our Open Range 399BHS it was equipped with 2
TV’s and a simple surround sound home theater system. I imagine that is typical
for RV’s – and probably even all sorts of homes with built-in appliances too.
For us, we really had no plans to utilize cable TV and wanted something better.
What we wanted was a system that could :
•
Record any TV shows we wanted to watch so we could watch them later
•
Record multiple channels simultaneously
•
Play our music on the built in audio system
•
Play any TV/Music found on the internet on our TV or audio system
•
Share files all over the house ( RV )
•
Not worry too much about where the printer/scanner resides ( yet still be
able to use copiously )
•
Have access to all of our iTunes content everywhere
•
Interconnect all of our electronics
•
Not have any wires all over the house
•
Play DVD’s/CD’s
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•
Have movies/content available on OTHER TV’s!
•
Not have to deal with the cable TV company or phone company
!
Our system does all of this. Here is a drawing ( some details left out ) of that
system that show the major components:
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rv entertainment system schematic for tv, cable, and satellite !
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Here is a list of the components I use ( and can personally recommend strongly )
and their Amazon links.
•
Apple Mac Mini ( We work the heck out of this thing – its on 24/7 )
•
Apple TV ( Very cool )
•
Apple Airport Extreme ( I tried others but other routers were truly
unreliable )
•
Apple Wireless Keyboard ( bluetooth )
•
Apple Wireless Trackpad ( bluetooth )
•
HD Home Run IP TV Streaming Tuner
•
Clear Wireless Internet ( Or similar - Clear was bought by Sprint and I
think is not long for this world )
•
Western Digital USB Disk Drive (Any USB disk drive would do)
•
Epson Workforce Printer ( I’ve used HP and Canon and the Epson I like
much better – less SW clutter )
•
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Creating Your Favorite Radio Station
One you start thinking digital, thinking Spartan, then a whole new world opens
up to you. The best thing about this world is that it is free and consumes no real
space on the planet. While this chapter seems out of place just slightly, I’m putting this in here
because I think it helps open up your mind that being Spartan doesn’t have to be
about “less”. It is simply about getting “more utility” out of things.
Being in an RV means a lot of you are on the road, and I wanted to tell you how
to create your own personal radio station for RVers. One of the ‘lifestyle’ things, habits or rituals that are part and parcel of a
particular locale is your favorite radio station.
But what if I told you, that you can make your own radio station that is even
MORE of what you really want.
You can and that is what are you going to learn in this chapter.
We will discuss a little bit about what's unique about RVers, radio stations, and
the pros and cons of different technology, a little bit about podcasts, which is
kind of the foundation of this, how to create your own personal radio station,
and all those types of things.
So let's talk a little bit about RVers. RVers are, well, mobile. In fact, very mobile.
You range far and wide, from Alaska to Florida, or from Vancouver to Ottawa,
and all across Canada, the South, the North, everywhere. And you might travel
at very odd times, and every time you try to use your radio, and you go any
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distance at all, it's a brand new set of channels, different schedules, all that
baloney. And I don't know about you, but I certainly never hear what I want to
hear on the radio.
Discussing FM radio, some pros: they're easy. They're very easy. Every radio in
your RV has access to it. It's everywhere. Some of the cons: you're limited to, I
don't know, 50, 100, 150 miles. You will have to show up for their schedules. So
they basically have one set of programming, they put it out over the channel, if
you want to listen to something, you've got to bend to their programs. And I
don't know about you, but I'm never in my car or wherever at the right time for
these guys. You may not even find a station you like in your geography. And you
know what? It's really hard to review or re-listen to things you liked. Ads, ads,
ads, ads, and more ads. Yuck.
What about satellite radio? Pros is, well, it's everywhere you are. That's kind of
cool. There's quite a bit of variety of stations in satellite. Cons: you pay money,
and you still get ads. You still have to bend to their schedule, mostly. You can't
review and replay shows you liked. And you need special equipment, like XM,
Sirius, and all that. And you still might not find the shows you like. So there are
some pros and cons on satellite.
What if you could make your own radio station? Some pros: available when you
want it. Absolutely no geographic range or limits. Limited ads to no ads. You can
replay whatever you like. Listen to your programs, not anyone else's. And it's
on-demand. It's kind of like the perfect DVR. Some of the cons — and this is
kind of what we're going to talk about here — is, well, you're the program
director, and that means you've got to put together the program, and it does
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require some effort. But I will say, from personal experience, I have way more
programming than I'll ever be able to listen to, and that's kind of cool.
Let's talk a little bit about creating your own radio station.
Before we do it, you're going to have to have a few basics.
One of the first basics is you've got to know a little bit about audio. I mean, this
is the actual sound that my voice has right now as I'm speaking. It's audio media
for you, songs, speeches, talks, and all of that. What is it? All right.
So let's start with the basics. On the left-hand side I've got the song, or spoken
word, or whatever. On the right-hand side, I've got an ear. And so the radio
station's going to take this song or spoken word, and they're going to try to get it
to you. So part of what they do — and they may not actually do it, they may just
utilize it — but they have a process that converts sound into radio waves, okay?
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And they send it over radio waves to, well, a radio that's in your car, or RV, or
boat, or whatever. And in your radio, you have a process to convert radio waves
back to sound. Those two orange circles are separated by distance. That's pretty
much it. And I hope that you feel this is a reasonable way of thinking about this.
Now, it's a little bit different with these computers now.
So you've kind of got this idea of a radio station, but it's not really a radio
station. It's a place on the world wide web. And instead of converting it to radio
waves that get transmitted, we convert the sound into a computer file. Most of
you are familiar with Excel or Word or PDF. Those are computer files. You can
attach them to email. You can send them around. But they're a file. And that's
what you convert the sound into a file. You can transmit it.
And this way, probably not transmitting it over the air, and I'll explain that in a
little bit.
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But that gets transmitted and received by a computer or an iPod. And inside the
computer and iPod, it has a process to convert that file to a sound. And you
convert and transfer these things over the Internet.
Now, let's go a little bit further and talk a little bit about these personal media
players. So I got this computer or iPod, which contains the process to convert a
file to a sound. And it turns out there's a lot of different processes. There's two
major processes, MP3 and AAC. AAC is Apple, and MP3 is, well, pretty much
everybody else.
And most podcasts, which are basically what I'm doing now, talking to you
about a subject, and those podcasts are sound converted into an MP3 file,
mostly. And then you can have these processes running on a computer, an iPod,
a car radio, an iPhone. These are all media devices on the right-hand side. So
anything that can decode an MP3 can play these files. And mostly we won't have
to worry too much about car radios. I'm going to show you in a little bit. And
when I say "car radio," most RVs have the same darned stuff in them, as well.
So what is a podcast? In real simple terms, it's a series of talks. Like, maybe
somebody is a political speaker. They're conservative. They're a big, heavyset
guy out in . . . I think he's in Florida, and he has a conservative talk show. It's on
the radio. But he can just as well capture his show that he put out over the radio,
he can capture that show into a file, and then each show becomes a whole series,
and you can store them as MP3 files, and you can make them available for
download on the Internet.
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And that makes it so that people can see that files, and then they can go grab
them, download them, and put them on a device, like an iPod. Ergo, "podcast."
That's why it's usually an iPod, and how it got its name.
And why the name "podcast"? Well, a podcast is kind of like "broadcast", except
you don't need a $500,000 radio station. You don't need any of that, because the
Internet took care of all that. All you need to be able to do is have a website.
Those are, you know, $20, $30 a month, tops. You can put podcasts available on
that.
So you don't need much money to broadcast. And it is like broadcasting, except
you don't have radio towers. And instead of broadcasting, you're sending
something to an iPod. You're not sending it to a radio. And you're not really
sending it. You're making it available. People come and grab the podcast
willingly. And then you smush all this stuff together. Broadcast and sending it to
an iPod. You smash that name together and you get "podcast." All right.
Now, if everybody made these podcasts, and they were all over heck, it wouldn't
be very useful. One of the neat things iTunes did is they made podcasts kind of
an industry thing. So if you come into iTunes, it's a great front end, or store
front, for Apple, of course. And inside there, you can get music, movies, and all
that, but you can also get podcasts. And they don't actually store the podcasts at
Apple. All it really is is a directory. And so you click on the red arrow on iTunes
store.
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!
Most of your iTunes interfaces are going to look like this. And then the blue
arrow, you click across the top on podcasts, and you'd see all these choices. And
here you can see some new and noteworthy. So I look at things that are getting
added and are popular. They keep track of who's downloading. If things start
trending, they pop them to the top as noteworthy. And that's kind of how they
work. So once you find these podcasts, you can organize that content any way
you want. So once you do that, and find the podcast you like, you can play it
back your way.
And so in my case, I made a podcast playlist — and you'd have to research
playlists a little bit in iTunes — but with the playlist, you can say, "I want to use
podcasts that have been created after this date, or before this date, or match
these terms." There's all sorts of ways you can make these playlists. But in my
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case, I went and grabbed all my podcasts and put them in chronological order.
And you can see the kinds of things I listen to. And the very first one on the list,
you'll see, is 50 minutes and 27 seconds. That's somebody named Amy
Porterfield. She talks about online marketing. And so there's 50 minutes of
advertising-free content. And it's content I want to hear.
My wife thinks it's totally boring, but hey, that's for her. This is for me. I love it,
and I get the radio station I want, and it gives me a reason to do things when I'm
away. And while I'm going on road trips, it just passes the time so fast. I've
actually gotten where I like traffic.
I call it my four-wheel university.
Apple also has the idea of radio stations, in which case you click on "my station".
And you could have, like, 50 different podcasts. In my case, you've got Dan
Miller, you've got the Smart Passive Income. But you might have 50 of those,
and you might pick 12 for one radio station and 15 for another, because they're
topically oriented. You might have your health radio station and all that. And
then what'll happen is when you're in your car or you're listening on your
headphones — I got my aircraft-style stuff — you can actually pick out the radio
station you want to listen to at that moment in time.
And of course you can also, with your iPod, listen to music and all that. But I'm
trying to tell you about something different. And a lot of people just don't think
of the spoken word and radio stations as something you might listen to and
create your own radio station.
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So I'm trying to show you how to break free of the FM radio station. Now, how
do you get the music and audio from your personal player into your car, or
really, anything else, for that matter.
!
Okay? Well, what I'm showing here is a 3.5 mm jack, audio jack. And it can go
into almost any car radio. See the green arrow there? It's pointing to where that
is. And a lot of times, they're on there, and they don't really label them. They're a
little tricky to see. But look around. Most radio stations and automobiles and
RVs, the manufacturers, say, in the last six, seven, eight years now have those.
And, of course, your iPhone or iPod would have a jack like that. So you just
hook them together with a 3.5 mm cable. It's got a 3.5 mm jack on each side. It's
got audio cable connecting them in between. It looks just like that. It's very
convenient. It's very simple. And if you have that cable, I keep my cable with
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me, and I can plug into just about everything, so I can hear my show anywhere I
want to go.
Bluetooth. Ugh, it's really just beyond the scope of this. I'll tell you what.
Bluetooth, in general, is like this. You put your car radio, and we're going to talk
about your car radio or RV radio, in pairing mode to make it discoverable, if it
has Bluetooth in it. You go to your iThingy device and tell it to scan for new
devices. You click on the car radio, you click the connect button. If you're lucky,
it gives you a number. It says, "Please enter a number." You enter the number.
And if you can, you find an option that basically says, anytime your Bluetooth
devices are gathered, just hook them together. Almost like a cable. And that's
really Bluetooth overall.
So let's put it all together.
1.
Select the things you want to listen to in iTunes.
2.
Make a radio station or a playlist.
3.
Connect to your iPod using the cable, like I said. I think that's far easier. I
mean, you can use BlueTooth and all that, but the cable's easiest.
4.
Select the appropriate options on your iPod screen in iTunes. I'll show you
that in a little bit.
5.
Hit the "Sync" button. Oh, I told you wrong.
6.
It's connect your iPod to your computer.
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7.
And then you're going to select some options on your iPod screen in
iTunes, hit the Sync button.
8.
Everything's now on your iPod.
9.
Now you can connect your iPod, your car, RV radio using 3.5 mm jack
and cable.
10. Set your radio input to "Aux." Usually they don't spell it out. It's auxiliary.
But in this case, usually it's "Aux". It's usually a button or a menu. It's easy
to find.
11. And then find your podcast app on your iPod or iPhone, navigate to your
playlist. It'll say "Play". Bang. Done.
She'll start playing.
And the beauty is, when one podcast is done, it's going to move to the next.
That was why I had to build a playlist, is because it's actually dangerous to be
driving, and particularly if your podcasts are short, you're always fiddling with
your device. Very unsafe. So once I turn it on and go, bang-o, it just continues to
go. And finally, you've got to mess with the volume.
So let's talk a little bit about options. So when I hook up to sync on my phone, it
shows up where the green arrow is. I click on "Podcasts". I click on a little
button that says "Sync Podcasts."
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And on the bottom there — I've got it all on one screen — I say pick the playlist
that brings it all together. That's how I sync. Simple as pie. And now let's just
talk a little bit, the kind of things you might find.
!
Because there's probably stuff you'd like on iTunes. So in the upper left- hand,
they have a new and noteworthy section. And this is new stuff.
Again, Apple monitors the downloads and the success, and things that are
running. They're going to poke up here. And then on the lower left, they've
got… these are top podcasts. These aren't just new ones. These are ones that are
continually good over life. So "This American Life." You see NPR, "Planet
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On the lower right-hand side, they actually keep track of the most popular
podcasts, as well, and you can see things that have been very, very, very popular
over time. And of course in the upper right-hand corner, you'll see the different
kind of categories you can find. And there are literally thousands and thousands
and thousands of these up on iTunes. It would take you a long time to find
everything.
!
And then, in case you're wondering if the whole world is liberal, it's not. And
just for fun, I just typed in Laura Schleissinger. So she has podcasts.
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!
And this is how you do search. They've got a search box. It looks like that. Type
in whatever you want to type. And then you can see Dr. Laura's podcast. And
then, of course, something you might not have thought of is you can get
audiobooks, and you can get those put on your iPod.
They're very economical, and you listen to those, as well. And a good book can
take you for a good 14-hour trip.
So, at the end of this, let's hope you can say goodbye to Howard Stern and say
hello to "radio you."
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E-Communications Sparta
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Email Address Sparta
What is your email address?
An awfully large bunch of people have email addresses that were given to them
by their internet provider.
You can tell by looking. The email addresses might look like this:
◆
[email protected]
◆
[email protected]
◆
[email protected]
◆
[email protected]
◆
[email protected]
If you are using an email like this, you are making your email life harder and
more expensive.
Since you are planning on being an RVer, you are planning on being mobile.
Since you are reading this article you are planning on how to downsize your
physical footprint. You can’t downsize you physical footprint without seriously
considering how to downsize your financial footprint.
If you are paying money to a LOCAL internet provider like Comcast they will
give you a Comcast email ([email protected] or something similar). Wow,
what nice guys those Comcast guys are.
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But then you decide to spend 12 months on the other side of the country and
you don’t need Comcast anymore. The PROBLEM is that you have to keep
paying for their internet service to get their email. This might not be 100% true,
but for many it is true. If you have to keep paying for their service, even though
you aren’t using their internet, then that seems a bit silly to me.
The SECOND reason, which is related to the first is that if you decide you don’t
want to pay for their service and cancel their service, then you need to change
your email address. For heaven’s sake, if you do this, then DO NOT use the
email address assigned to you by the NEW internet service - I’ll tell you the
RIGHT thing to do at the end of this article.
The THIRD reason, is that the local internet service people are rookies. Really,
your email is at risk because internet service providers don’t have that great of
managed email services. You are going to get crappy interfaces, substandard
tools and honestly, the world has much better things to offer.
The FOURTH reason is that by using the local internet service email address,
you are divulging to the world more about you than you need to divulge. For
example, if your email address ends in “rr.com”, then hackers know you have
Time Warner internet service. Usually the email address has a prefix like
“Austin.rr.com” so they can get your approximate location from your email
address. They can also assume what equipment you have in your house, which is
a HUGE help when trying to find vulnerabilities. They also know that you have
an account with Time Warner with a credit card so they can zero in on the card.
This is enough info for someone skilled to perhaps make a single phone call or
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two, figure out your credit card info, with you zip code, and wreak havoc on
your life. An aside related to the FOURTH reason is around security. Before creating
Fort Knox, you are even better to make it so people don’t even know Fort Knox
exists. That was an obscure way of saying “The best security is complete
secrecy.” For example, if they don’t know your location, even if approximate,
they will have a lot more trouble deducing things about you that can be used
against you. I’m not trying to make you paranoid, but an email address,
particularly when personal, should maybe not have any locality information in it.
I hope you can see that an email from you internet service provider isn’t the best
thing.
HOW DO YOU GET A DECENT EMAIL ADDRESS AND WHAT
SHOULD IT BE?
Getting a great permanent email address isn’t that hard to do. There are a few
GREAT places to some that I would highly recommend.
✓
Gmail.com
- You can get email from Google called gmail. Your address
would be [your_unique.name]@gmail.com. No one ever got fired for
Google and you can do almost everything you would want to do with
gmail. Great web based front end. Great search capabilities.
✓
Yahoo.com - One of the original big daddies of email. Pretty much the
same as Gmail, maybe even more reliable. Your address would be
[your_unique.name]@yahoo.com. I personally use Yahoo and pay for an
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extra level of access that allows my Mac to work with Yahoo even better.
Great web based front end. Great search.
✓
Outlook.com - From Microsoft. I think Microsoft is solid, but I struggle
with the idea of using them because everything always tries to hook back
to other Microsoft things and I don’t have the time to always be working
on the computer doing silly stuff. There are quite a few Microsoft fan boys
though who have more time and for them, this is probably a fantastic
choice. [Hee hee - I’ll get hate mail for this one!]
✓
Icloud.com - From Apple. Honestly I don’t use it. As much as I love my
Mac, I struggle to trust Apple on this one. They do great work on lots of
things, but I’m just not so sure on email. I tried to sign my son up to
icloud.com one day and to use icloud.com it told him he had to have an
Apple device. No matter - it seemed fishy. From the outside it looks solid,
but between gmail and yahoo, I just really feel the rest of the pack is “the
rest of the pack”.
✓
I would avoid facebook. I would also avoid small companies no one has
heard of - too many things can go wrong and you’d be back to square one.
Now that you know some places to look, what should your address be?
I do think names with lots of numbers in them are not very good. They “scream”
temporary. If you want to have a number or two that means something to you,
then that is ok, but don’t make it too long. My wife keeps using “35” in her
emails - wishful thinking I’m sure - but it works for us and her so who am I to
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judge. Go ahead and use a dot (.) to get more choice - or an under bar (_). Put
your alma mater in the name. Make it truly yours. !
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Email Management Sparta
Now that you have email, how do you manage it? If you are even the least bit
interesting, you’ll get LOTS of emails.
But email can run you over like a truck.
You need to have email serve you, not the other way around.
I see lots of people make folders and try to move things into the folder. But the
emails might have a different ontology (cool word - look it up) based on the
context of what you need to know at the time. For example one email might be
related to your bank (put in bank folder) and your taxes (put in tax folder). But
you can’t be in two folders at one time. So that is a problem.
Some people simply keep everything in their inbox. That might be OK, but I can
tweak this a bit to get a system that is SIMPLE, CONCISE, and very hard to
argue with.
First all non-spam (mostly) email comes into your inbox. Some is automatically
filtered and put into a “junk” or “spam” or “bulk” box. Usually you never have to
look in here, but I check about every 2-4 days and just scan to see if something
pops out at me as being from a friend or vendor that I’ve used. Aside - Spam hurts my feelings. According to the spam senders, I’m “small” if
you know what I mean. I’m bald. I’m fat. I’m old. I’m ignorant for many reasons
- at least one is because I need an online degree. I wonder if the spam people
know they are meanies with all those insults.
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!
You should have the following folders and I’ll coach you to use them:
Archive - The bulk of the email that you have managed, but for which you might
someday have to look up for some reason, any reason.
Trash - Email that can disappear forever with no real ramification. This can even
be from vendors (like your phone bill and more) because you will have online
methods to get the records you need. I don’t put vendor stuff in here, but I’m
pointing out that if you have an online source for your data, you don’t need to
keep it. Here is the procedure:
1.
Email is in the inbox. 2.
Read the subject line and the from. 127
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⁃
If spam - something irrelevant you never asked for and you
hopefully never want to see again - Mark as SPAM. Your email
should automatically move it to the spam folder. If you asked for the
emails because you signed up for them as an email subscription, this
isn’t spam and you can deal with this another way (read on)
⁃
If NOT spam, but not anything you’ll read that the subject line was
enough for you, click on “Delete” or “Trash” and it should be
automatically moved to the trash folder and will be swept away
someday forever.
3.
If NOT spam, because you asked for it but don’t want to receive it
anymore, then do the following.
4.
⁃
Open the email and find the unsubscribe link/button and click.
⁃
Then hit the delete button.
The only thing that should be left now is email you care about. When you
are done with this email and you never really have to revisit it, then click
on the “Archive” button. Now you’ll have it forever - or a long time.
5.
For emails that are left, they form a sort of “to do list”. Just keep them in
your inbox until you are fully done with them.
6.
Endeavor to have no emails in your inbox.
7.
Every few days I take the extra step on my Mac to copy the emails in
“Archive” (which is online) to an offline folder on my Mac hard-drive so
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that I have them forever and if they get lost it is my fault not some vendor
I can’t be angry at and couldn’t have recourse with anyway.
If you ever need to find an email, just get smart about searching your Archive
folder and it will be there.
!
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Smart Phone Sparta
One of the neatest little handy tools that can be used for good or evil is a smart
phone.
If you still have a flip phone, you might consider switching because the smart
phones are easy to make calls. No need to be afraid. It is just that smartphones
can do much more. They are expensive, but if you don’t do too much with your
computer, a smart phone can completely replace your computer.
I own an Apple iPhone. My wife owns a Samsung Galaxy. The iPhone brings
you into orbit around Apple, and the Galaxy brings you into orbit around
Google. Nokia has a slick smart phone and it brings you into orbit around
Microsoft. I’ve no experience on the Microsoft side of things so can’t comment
on them.
Buying a smartphone on ebay or Amazon is a dizzying experience and I would
recommend going to your local phone store that you trust to get some guidance.
You might not get as good of a deal, but then again, you are more likely to be
happy that you got what you needed.
Now that you have a smart phone, here are the ways that the smart phone can
simplify your life substantially, which is yet another form of Spartanism (utility
per dollar or utility per trouble). I’ll explain how I use my iPhone. You can reasonably assume there are similar
things on the Android (Samsung Galaxy) front as well.
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✓
Eliminate clutter from business cards. I use the business card app called
“ScanBizCards”. There are others. This one cost $1.99 which is basically
the same as free. It does a good enough job that I haven’t hunted for
others. After scanning, you can make corrections. Then (a critical step)
you can send the business card to your Apple Address Book and it will be
saved for you on your iCloud and then all your Apple devices. I use this a
bunch.
✓
Get rid of the paper address book. Honestly, you probably aren’t doing
that good at keeping up on your paper book anyway. I keep ALL my
addresses in my Apple Address Book. Furthermore, it keeps anniversary
dates and birthdays and puts them on my calendar. If I cared more, I
would send out cards. But there should be NO address book clutter laying
around your house. Or post-it notes!
✓
EBooks - You can read Apple iBooks, Kindle books, and Nook books on
your iPhone. You can also read PDFs. You can use iBook app to manage
your PDFs, which means when you put it in iBook it appears everywhere
on your Apples due to iCloud. Very cool. I’m not recommending LOTS of
reading on your smartphone, but if you are bored it comes in handy.
✓
Music - All your music can be on your iPhone. If you have lots of music
stored on your Mac, you might need an iPhone with lots of memory. I’ve
found that more memory is always better. No exceptions.
✓
Presentations for Work and Play - Any presentation you put on your
iPhone, say it is stored in your Keynote iCloud or in your email, can
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simply be displayed via the iPhone. I’ve presented successfully at work.
Now you can eliminate your large computer completely. Personally I
won’t do that, but you could. If you are in sales this could be invaluable.
✓
Banking - Eliminate all papers from your bank because banking apps have
your records online. Never write checks again - so you can eliminate
checks. Never go to the bank again because you can eliminate having to
deposit checks. I’ve done all this. Most national banks have good banking
apps with picture deposit. I would also recommend having Paypal
installed on your iPhone as well. It is related to banking.
✓
Eliminate Any Credit Card Machines - this is only if you are selling things
at shows. If you don’t have the Paypal triangle or the “square” you are
really in the stone ages. If you don’t accept credit cards, then I would have
to question your business acumen. I’ve heard that accepting credit cards
increases revenue by 63%. Yes you part with 1-4% but come on, can’t you
build that in? What are you scared of?
✓
Pedometer - Your smart phone can replace your pedometer. Then it is a
superior pedometer because it can keep track over time.
✓
Emergency Scanner - When you want to grab a “scan” of a piece of paper,
use your phone. I like scans better for a number of reasons, but sometimes
you need to grab a copy of something because you might not get it another
way. ✓
Camera - 95% of the pictures with modern smartphones are good enough.
Unless you make money from pictures, be honest, get real and get rid of
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the digital camera. Make sure you get them off your phone, onto your
computer, and backed up. I had a friend who dropped his phone and a
truck ran over it seconds later and he lost 2-3 years of pictures. Please
don’t let me say I told you so.
✓
Camcorder - 60% of the videos you need are just find with a modern
smartphone. Get rid of the camcorder too! It seems harsh, but lets get
down to the essentials.
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Voice notes. Yep. No need for a voice recorder. Lots of ways to do this.
Just look for a good app. Apple has an OK app for this. Not great, just
OK.
✓
GPS - Yep. Get rid of the GPS device. Apple app is fairly good. Google’s
app for mapping and navigation is amazing. You can also purchase offline
apps from the appstore as well if you need navigation when out of cell
phone range. This does become an issue so to be fair to GPS, the
smartphone is not quite as good, but I think it is good enough. Just know
the difference.
✓
Get rid of all those stupid plastic cards. I use an app called “Key Ring”
and have eliminated my Lowes, CVS, Walgreens, Randalls, Health Club,
and about 20 other cards. You take a picture of the front and back. It is
pretty amazing and I highly recommend it.
I could go on. Depending upon your profession, you can find many apps that
can reduce your need for extra clutter. No it can’t be a hammer if you are in
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construction, but it can carry a version of plans, allow you to geo locate from
virtual to real world, make measurements, and do other things that are amazing.
So make sure you use your smartphone as a tool to simplify your life. And like
all tools, the more you use it the more valuable it becomes.
[ P.s. Make sure you back your phone up every few days, even with iCloud.
Someday you’ll thank me. ]
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Your Mobile Life
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Your Home Address
Most people won’t understand you.
They won’t understand the idea of not having an address because you are
traveling the world.
They won’t understand the idea of not having an address… a physical address.
The LAW really doesn’t understand that idea either. The LAW wants you ON grid, plugged in eating your own poo and putting out
enough energy to light a small light bulb (dont’ understand this reference - see 4
Film Favorites: The Matrix (The Matrix, Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix
Revolutions, Animatrix) ).
You gotta give the LAW something.
Even people who don’t care about the LAW still care about a physical location.
Honestly, some people will want to send you stuff.
Examples of this might be your drivers license, your passport, your federal
income tax, and other areas where you need to put in an address and you don’t
want to be changing it that much. This address is pretty important because it is going to determine things like what
tax forms you have to file. I can’t speak for other states, but in Texas, you can have a Postal Box (not
United States Postal Service) from PostNet, Mailboxes, Pak Mail or similar
places as the address for your permanent residence.
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I actually do reside on a property in Texas, but even if I didn’t, the PakMail
address would be OK. No one cares or asks.
I’ve only had ONE and only ONE instance where my physical address had a
profound impact: What school my kids go to. Schools tend to care where you
physically are when determining bussing, which school, and what privileges.
Soon this will change as the online revolution continues. But for now…
What does it mean to have a residence in Texas, particularly when it is a post
box? [Note - please check out all aspects and legalities yourself ok? I’m simply
writing all this to open your mind to the possibilities. ]
✓
I don’t file state income tax because Texas does not have one.
✓
I don’t pay property tax because I don’t have a property Texas cares about
if I’m only renting an RV space.
✓
I get an automatic sales tax deduction because Texas wants an deduction
like other states income tax deduction.
✓
I don’t pay property tax on my vehicles because Texas only has a
registration fee.
✓
I still get a deduction for my RV’s interest since it meets all the
requirements for that in the IRS code.
What ever you do, selection of your home address for these purposes has a
TRUE monetary implication. You should do your homework and make sure you
know and are satisfied you know what you are doing.
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Now that we are past the BIG idea of state of residence and all that, having a
post box address is really nice since they can collect your mail and then once a
month you can have them forward it in a big box wherever you might be. That is
super cool. This allows you to give people a physical address that is unchanging,
yet you get to travel all over the world. It is win for everyone.
In summary I recommend you think about the following ideas:
◆
Consider getting a permanent address that is a post box like Pak Mail or
Mailboxes
◆
Selection of the state for your home address is important
◆
Make sure the post box place will forward your mail and that you trust
them.
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Getting and Shipping Stuff
Even though Spartanism is important (to me at least), you’ll still want things
sent to you.
Spartanism does not mean you must go without.
There is a whole class of things you do and products you buy and consume
which will happen which are 100% compatible with Spartanism.
I’m a huge user of technology. A laptop, smartphone, camera, camcorder,
wireless router, printer, and several other things are almost a necessity,
depending upon who you are.
If you are on the road for any appreciable time period, you’ll need to upgrade
your tech and buy something or sell something using eBay or Amazon. There are
zillions of online retailers so what is written here will apply to those unnamed
retailers as well.
Every one of these retailers has the idea of a BILLING address and a
SHIPPING address. These addresses do not have to be the same. More
importantly, the smart retailers make it so that you can have an often changing
SHIPPING address. One great way that the retailers make it easy for you to change your shipping
address is by having the idea of an online address book. I personally use the
heck out of the address book on Amazon. I’m always shipping things to different
places - for example - gifts for people - things for my mom - and then things for
myself.
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There is no reason that you simply can’t have things shipped to whatever
address you are at. You have to double check the shipping address everytime or
you’ll send things to the wrong spot. The other thing you have to do is to really
think about when you decide to move out and make sure that you either send
things AHEAD to where you’ll be OR wait and order. But these are small prices
to pay.
Even your consumables, like coffee, tea, toothpaste, and toothbrushes can be
purchased online very conveniently.
Amazon is a very amazing service. You could subscribe to a service called
Amazon Prime (learn about Amazon Prime here) which would allow you to
eliminate shipping fees on many many products at Amazon. If you can eliminate
shipping fees, it makes purchasing things online very easy and convenient. You
simply won’t have to feel like you are isolated or out of touch.
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!
I have a Keurig (learn more about Keurig here) which allows me to make really
good single serving coffee without a mess. The Keurig is a GREAT example of a
“thing” that I use copiously which brings great joy. For some, this might be
wasteful and extravagant. But for me I love it, use it often, and enjoy the fact
that my wife can get something different from me and we can have coffee
together. Its fast, there is no clean-up, no waste, and very few accessories. I
cannot stress enough that Spartanism is about having things that give you utility,
not living without.
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We can supply our Keurig from Amazon or Keurig.com. We can also supply it
from local stores, most of the time. The Keurig is mentioned here because no
matter how remote you are, you can buy supplies no matter where you are.
After reading this, you should now be realizing that being mobile does not have
to feel like you are discombobulated, disconnected, isolated, and remote. You
can get the things you need using your computer (or telephone) no matter where
you are. You can go mobile, without fear.
Before you even buy your RV, you should consider buying a few things and get
used to online services (if you aren’t) so that it is second nature when you are on
the road.
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Spartan Fitness
Americans tend to think about fitness in terms of the “stuff” you have to exercise
with.
For example:
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Dumbbells
◆
Barbells
◆
Hulahoops
◆
Fitness rings
◆
Nordic Track
◆
Weight machines
◆
Elliptical Trainers
◆
Etc.
Space and weight aside, lugging exercise equipment with you in your RV is a
bad idea.
The main reason this is a bad idea is that the #1 reason you are RVing is to get
out into the big bad world and SEE it! Why in the world would you stay inside
on a treadmill watching TV in your RV parked at Yellowstone National Park? You could actually simply be walking on the the special treadmill called “the
earth” seeing, smelling, hearing, and drinking in all of your surroundings. Get
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OUT and get IN touch with where you are. I just believe with all my heart and
soul that is the absolute best path to go.
If you absolutely MUST use equipment, don’t lug it in your RV. Find a local
gym, even if you have to drive 5-10 miles so that you meet more people by being
out in the world. By going to the gym, you’ll see countryside on the way, you’ll
meet people at the gym, and when you get coffee/breakfast afterwards you can
meet the local people there.
Doesn’t that sound better than dragging a bunch of stuff with you?
Besides, you won’t have space and it will make your RV dangerously
overweight. It can’t be done.
EXCEPTION: A bike rack on the back of your camper is a GREAT idea. You
can ride your bikes and see more countryside faster. This is a GOOD exception.
Definitely recommend this.
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Bikes
Bikes, and other outdoor recreational equipment, are JUST FINE to have in a
Spartan RV, if you use them.
Don’t just drag them around for ornamental purposes. Get on the darned things
and ride them. You should use them to zip around the RV park. Or go to the
7-11. Make sure you are using them every day. The added benefit is that
movement will be GREAT for you.
But don’t do what MOST people do: Buy the equipment, then never use it. How
many people do you know have a treadmill consuming space somewhere. How
ridiculous is that? A quad whammy of foolishness - used the money, don’t use
the treadmill, consume the space, and ignore your health.
My advice - KEEP the bikes and ride them. If you don’t keep them, then figure
out some exercise to get yourself mobile.
Just as a side note to the importance of “moving”, a study in the European
Journal of Preventative Cardiology showed a statistically significant correlation
between being able to get up and down from the floor to overall life expectancy. Things like walking and riding a bike are hugely important.
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Musical Instruments
I love the idea of discussing musical instruments.
Why?
Because for the REALLY large musical instruments you get to have a discussion
about “good enough”.
You can’t have this conversation about a trumpet. If you play the trumpet - fairly
often - then doggone-it, you should have a trumpet in your RV. If you don’t play
often, then MAN-UP (even if you are a lady) and admit you won’t play it and
stop dragging it around. Isn’t that ALWAYS the point of the Spartan RV? Use it
OR lose it?
But what about “good enough”?
I’m sitting with a guy the other day and he is telling me about this grand piano
that he had shipped into Texas from the East Coast somewhere. He said there is
simply something about the sound on a grand piano that is pretty amazing. I’m
thinking that if he was really into the MUSIC and the ability to make it, munge
it, modify it, and do something magical with the music, then the tonal differences
between a grand piano and a GOOD electric piano are probably small enough
to NOT get in the way of practicing your art.
In short - the purists can be a bit silly. My point here is that if you play something that can be BIG like a piano, don’t
be a stubborn purist - go ahead and enjoy your art, but get an electric piano that
is good enough. Practice your art. Most of us un-educated losers (like me) in the
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audience won’t even notice a difference. Even more sad for you purists is that if
you completely blow a section of your music and seamlessly hiccup over it - we
won’t even notice.
Love your music. Don’t be a purist.
I can’t leave this purist stuff alone. I’ve another point to make. If you are going to be a purist - at least know the
reason why…
I drink expensive Mochas from Starbucks. These darned things cost anywhere
from $3.50 to $5.00 per drink depending upon options.
I was doing it everyday.
Then I did the calculation which said that this habit is super expensive. Worse, the habit has LOTS of calories.
Then I bought a Keurig (http://rv52.com/keurig).
I found a Mocha k-cup (http://rv52.com/mocha). It isn’t as good as Starbucks. If I put in 10 ounces of water it only has 60
calories. I can get the k-cups for about $0.50-60 each. I can do three k-cups, get
30 ounces of mocha for $1.80 and only expend 180 calories for the day on my
habit. All this while saving as much as $3. The downside is that they aren’t as
good as a Starbucks mocha.
But HERE IS THE POINT - they are good enough.
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I’ve been doing this for a long time - drinking k-cup mochas. I now find myself
driving by Starbucks to actually CHOOSE the inferior k-cups.
Why? Really the question truly is why? I’ve thought about this a great deal. I’m
absolutely sure of MY answer to the question.
Because of the ritual and the habit. I get more joy, stability, and personal
satisfaction out of the RITUAL of drinking my k-cups than I do drinking my
Starbucks. There is so much that actually goes with the drinking of the mochas
that I realize I was purchasing the “experience”, not the coffee.
If I say anymore, that would be an MBA level course so I’ll just stop.
Just remember - if you are a purist - make sure you know why. The difference
might just allow you the satisfaction of keeping a small electric piano in your RV.
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The Spartan RV Itself
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Room by Room Spartanism
You have read about many of the “big” hitter considerations around getting to a
more Spartan existence. But there are so many smaller consideration that affect
your life and your RV that it is really useful to do a walk-thru of your RV and
discussing how you can 1) reduce weight, 2) simplify your life, and 3) get more
out of what you do have in regards to your RV.
!
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Things You Won't Need
It seems a little bit silly, but if you are very new to RVs, here is a list of things
you won’t need. You won’t need these because there is either no room in the RV
for it, or the RV has it built in. This list is partly the list of what things to get rid
of…
* Couch - these are built-in to the RV.
* Comfy TV Chairs - these are built-in, come with, or there is no space and
you’ll use the built-in couch. Sometimes, you can discard the RV chair and bring
in your own - but beware the weight difference. Extra weight is dangerous and
illegal.
* Dining Room Chairs - Almost always built-in. Usually as a bench.
* Dining Table - Built-in
* Master Bedroom Bed - Built-in
* Master Bedroom Dresser - Built-in
* Big screen TV - Built-in, but you could replace. RV TVs are usually really
cheap.
* Stereo System - Built-in and pre-wired. It would be hard to change the
speakers, but you could change out the electronics. I’ve looked and decent super
small surround sound systems are hard to find.
* Storage cabinets - Built-in. No room either.
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* Range, refrigerator, microwave - Built-in usually. * Kids Beds - If a bunkhouse, these are built-in. Usually, there is spare sleeping
quarters in an RV and they are equipped with mattresses or inflatable beds.
* Desk - Sometimes built-in. Usually no room. Recommend using the kitchen
table which is usually by a nice window. Very pleasant.
* Ottoman - There is no room. Leave it behind.
* Coffee Table - You really hate your shins don’t you?! Leave it behind. No
space.
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Kitchen & Dining
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The kitchen in an RV is an area that can get out of hand very quickly. You will
need to balance the convenience of having things available and “on hand” with
the idea of having just enough.
If you stockpile food or kitchen gadgets, you RV will get overran and
overweight very quickly.
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Food:
Don’t stockpile canned goods. Canned good are very heavy. Making things
worse than just being heavy, canned goods are very expensive. Stockpiling
heavy cheap items is a surefire way to make your RV overweight and dangerous.
A great way to view food, when possible, is to try to buy locally and FRESH, as
much as possible. Shop more at open markets and less at stores like Costco or
Walmart. Those larger big-box stores are great, but they can cause you to overbuy. Plus if you care about your health, buying local fresh food is better for your
health. Buying local fresh food puts money in local economies and encourages
local economies to be RV friendly.
When you buy local, you also can avoid some of the foods that are produced on
industrial scale with the accompanying industrial problems.
When you cannot avoid buying at a larger big-box food supplier, refrain from
buying bulk due to the added weight. Try to get a supply of food that will be
mostly exhausted by the time you are ready to move your rig.
Gadgets:
Avoid gadgets unless you use the gadget AT LEAST a couple times a week.
Gadgets consume space and have weight, both of which you have a limited
supply.
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I use a Keurig coffee maker EVERY day so this is a gadget which passes the
weekly usage test. Stay focused on usage, not on impressing people. Purchase
gadgets that help you use space more efficiently - perhaps reducing waste needs,
storage needs, or accessory needs. A GREAT example of a space saving gadget would be an aluminum can crusher
- for those who drink lots of sodas. This gadget reduces the VOLUME of your
waste. That seems like a pretty neat thing. Otherwise you’ll be overran with BIG
TRASH in your RV. Worse, aluminum cans are recyclable which means keeping
them around in an uncrushed state will be a big mess.
If you juice everyday a blender might be critical. If you only do margarita’s on
Cinco de Mayo, then the blender might be useless weight. My wife would not go without a toaster oven. I was able to keep a toaster out of
the RV since the toaster oven could serve double duty as an oven and a toaster.
We were hooked to electrical shore power so we were able to reduce trips to fill
propane by using the toaster oven instead of the regular RV propane range oven.
All gadgets must be looked at closely. If you find yourself saying “because we MIGHT need it”, then you probably
don’t.
Entertaining:
Somehow, everyone always stocks the kitchen thinking about the big family
dinner or a having a bunch of people over for dinner.
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Sadly, this is the exception not the norm.
If you are going to entertain, focus on the people not the utensils and dishes. If
you’re trying to impress people with your kitchenware, then maybe there is
something inside you worth examining.
People don’t care about your plates. They care about you! If you’ll take the time
to focus on your guests rather than your stuff, your life will be more rich and
more full.
If you really want to impress people in your kitchen, you COULD focus on the
recipe. Sharing a delicious meal that you prepared for your guests shares your
skills with them and creates a shared experience together which builds
relationships. This is how to impress.
Serve your masterpiece on simple plates - maybe even paper plates.
How should you think about your kitchen utensils, serving plates, and more?
Most of the time, you’ll be serving no more than 3-4 people at any one time.
More place settings than this will encourage dirty dish accumulation and will
mostly be unused weight in your camper.
I would recommend light weight, microwavable place settings. Find the lightest
weight silverware that you possibly can. Limit serving utensils to a ladle and a
couple big spoons and forks.
Avoid having dishes used for serving only. Serve the food directly from the
cooking pots. This reduces dirty dishes and the amount of dishes in your RV
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overall. It is perhaps a bit simple, but it is practical - which is a fundamental
theme of being Spartan.
Have just 2 or 3 microwave dishes that can be used to cook AND serve the food.
If you get more than three microwave dishes, you’ll be serving food that has
cooled off. If possible, if these microwave dishes can serve double duty by being
used in the oven then you’ll even be more efficient.
If you are a baker who will actually bake quite a bit, then by all mean have a few
extra baking utensils on hand. But avoid the complete specialty dishes that you
would use only rarely. I would think long and hard about having too many pots and pans. Limit
yourself to a 3 to 4 pots and pans. Most RVs only have 3 burners which means
you can use only three at a time. Perhaps a single skillet, sauce pan, large 1 quart
and MAYBE a large pot should be enough. You know yourself best, but stay
focused on the idea of using things at least 2x per week as your cutoff to being in
your RV or in the trash.
You probably ought to have a drinking water filter. It is not practical to filter the
whole RV [I’ll get hate mail and arguments with this so OK - bring it on]. You
can and it is pretty easy, but it is even easier to get a Pur water pitcher and filter
your water.
But keep your kitchen like you should keep your eatin’ - LITE!
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Bedroom
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Inside the bedroom weight and space can be leaked away easier than you might
think.
For example, big blankets can consume tons of space. They are heavier than you
think. If the blanket isn’t on your bed, then it shouldn’t be in your RV. This blanket business is a very tough problem. Many blankets were made by
grandmas and passed down to several generations. What so many people do is
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This is incorrect in my view.
When you use your heirloom blankets you honor the person who made this for
you. Isn’t the blanket that is marred, tattered, stained, and soiled by life the
blanket that contains all the memories? Isn’’ the blanket that your great
grandmother made more likely to bring you closer to her when it hugs you every
day?
Throw away those cheap made-in-China blankets and put the ones on your bed
that were made with loving hands. If you wear it out, then hold your head high
knowing that you gave complete honor to the hands that made it for you.
Even better, know that you saved weight and space in your RV.
Throw pillows:
Ugh. Silly. I’ve always thought they really only made work. Their ONLY
purpose is to impress visitors. For crying out loud, how many people are you
going to give a tour of your RV bedroom! On the flip side, two or three probably won’t hurt anything. So I’ll say no big
deal and they are very light. Probably a “don’t care” overall.
Usually on every RV that I’m familiar with, the entire bed lifts up for a copious
underbed storage. The underbed storage is a very tempting to put clothes,
particularly your out of season clothes. A little bit of that is ok, but clothing is
very heavy and the underbed storage is very large. It would be easy to get 500
pounds of clothes underneath the bed.
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Instead, I would advise keeping bulky lightweight items underneath the bed.
For example - empty boxes, spare boxes, fluffy pillows, that fluffy comforter,
and some things like that. Avoid the temptation to efficiently pack this space with out of season clothing or
you’ll be overweight on your RV very fast.
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Clothes
Clothes deserve a topic all by themselves.
Surprisingly, clothes are very, very heavy. They also take up a fair amount of
room.
Clothes are also a big part of identifying who we are in the world. The neatness
and cleanness of clothes also signal who we are to the world.
To be Spartan-like with clothes you must utilize balance. You should have just
enough clothes, but not any more!
Are you surprised that clothes are heavy? Here is an experiment. Weigh yourself
with a normal outfit and shoes, then weigh yourself naked. You’ll be very
surprised at the difference. It could easily be as high as 5 pounds.
Multiply 5 pounds TIMES 40 outfits. That is 200 pounds of clothes! If your
significant other has just as much clothes, now you have upwards of a 500 pound
clothing weight inside of an RV. Remember, that some RVs might even have a
carrying capacity of no more than 500 pounds.
You must watch the weight at all times. Especially if you are going to live in the
RV full time.
I think the same rules should apply to clothes as they do to everything else, with
some slight caveats.
* If it is casual clothing - you should wear it once every two weeks. I recommend
having a 2 week supply of clothes before you need to launder clothes.
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* You can wear your blue jeans more than one day so you don’t need a 1-to-1
blue jean to shirt mix.
* It is OK to a limited amount of special occasion clothing - perhaps 2 outfits for
special occasions.
* Shoes - I’m sorry ladies - but you have to keep your shoe collection reasonable.
I would shoot for 2 pairs of casual shoes, 2 pairs of bumping around sandals, a
fitness shoe, and 2 pairs of nice shoes that can be worn with you 2 nice outfits
and cross-over to some of the casual as well. That will give you plenty of choice
without filling the RV up with shoes. Putting a shoe rack anywhere in an RV will
affect your day to day living. Trust me I’ve done it.
* Husbands and Wives (or other similar co-habitation units) - Limit your
TOTAL combined clothes collection to no more than what the closet can hold. If
you have a full width closet that is the width of the RV then lets be realistic - let
the lady have 60% of the space and you can take 40%. But under no
circumstances should there be any clothes overflow except for the normal
underwear, socks, and a small miscellaneous collection in a small set of drawers.
* If you have a travel trailer which has a right and left closet, there is no good
way to give the lady more space. You’ll just have to each get one of them. (Hint
to the ladies - a fifth wheel will serve you better if you have lots of clothes).
* Underneath the bed storage - Don’t fill it with clothes. The space is too juicy
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The best “rule” I can give for keeping your RV Spartan-like in the clothing
category is this - If you can’t fit it in your designated area for hanging clothes
then you probably shouldn’t have it.
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Bathroom
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The good thing about the bathroom in an RV is that it is very small and very
hard to accumulate things in the bathroom.
The biggest advice about the bathroom to making the RV a great experience,
while staying Spartan is in the next few bullets.
* Don’t stockpile too much stuff. At any one time, have the item you are using
(like deodorant) and one unopened spare.
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* Avoid having 5 different flavors of something. That will just add clutter.
* Remember that everything you have in the bathroom will be rattling around
when you are moving. Reduce, reduce, reduce!
* Keep your medicinals in a ready to grab/move box so that you can get at them
handy when the RV is stowed and being towed.
* Keep the number of towels to a minimum. Re-use your towels for at least a
week or two. Hang them up to air dry so that they air dry nice. Towels can take
lots of space, so work to keep towels to a minimum.
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Outdoor Entry
This is one of my non-Spartan idiosyncrasies.
Or is it?
Remember, Spartanism is the art of identifying things that you use and that
bring you joy almost every day. These things are OK to have around you. It is
the OTHER items you want to get rid of. Spartanism is about getting use out of
the things you have.
An outdoor area, usually coincident with your RV entry is a GREAT place to
have some fun and be a little bit frivolous.
Having a nice mat to create a clean area outside your RV is a great way to create
extra living space out in the nature where it matters. Being outside is partly the
point to having an RV.
Another thing that just makes RVing FUN is to have some decorative lights
outside your RV. Christmas lights hanging from your awning can really set a
festive mood. Why have a dour and boring mood with your RV. Lights are
simple, cheap, compact and easily updatable. I’ve seen people who had freestanding neon palm trees. Interestingly enough people tended to congregate at their RV because they were just fun people.
I would recommend some lightweight folding chairs and if possible a lightweight
folding table. This can really make your outdoor area your preferred living room
space! Our RV even had an outdoor TV so we could watch football games yet
still be outside. Really, truly fun.
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The Living Room
It is pretty easy to be Spartan in the living room since the TV, stereo, and any
seating is built-in with not much, if any, room for extras.
One area that can get out of control pretty quickly are decorative items.
You’ll have to watch very carefully that you don’t get too many, particularly if
they are breakable. Too many knick-knacks make moving the RV a nightmare
and can really slow down the packing/unpacking process.
One idea for you family picture hounds is to get an electronic picture frame.
With an electronic picture frame, you can put in the important pictures of your
family and have them on display. This seems like a good trade-off since you are
only accumulating one item but getting to display many, many pictures.
RVs are simply not built to have many things on their walls. You can’t put a nail
into the wall of the RV - not successfully. Some RVs are only 2 inches thick. So
nails = bad. You’ll be wise to put the idea of wall hangings out of your mind. I must be honest, we DID have a couple of things on the wall, but still very
limited. You can handle this by using double-sided tape OR the velcro strips
which are kind of like double sided tape. The adhesive is strong so when you do
this, you stand a very good chance of marring the walls which could hurt resale
a bit. Ha ha! Resale for RVs is pretty funny. It probably really doesn’t matter
that much.
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Storage Inside
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Storage is one of those things that I hear the ladies say (ok, just my wife - I’ve
got no proof the other ladies say) “I love this RV because it has so much
storage.”
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While I can completely appreciate the statement and the sentiment, this is a
really big RED flag.
Storage=stuff.
Stuff=weight.
Weight=Overweight+Illegal+Dangerous.
So when it comes to storage BE CAREFUL. BE THOUGHTFUL.
Try not to put HEAVY things into storage. If you own a heavy IBM selectric
typewriter - please do not put it in your RV in your RV storage anywhere!
Do you own gold? Put it in a safe deposit box or somewhere better than a
weight sensitive RV. Think about how many Spanish Galleons went to the
bottom of the sea! That was probably because they had too much heavy gold in
their cargo holds.
AVOID books and other heavy, easily digitizable media. This can get out of
hand very fast. DO use your storage to de-clutter your RV. Put things like stationery, envelopes,
greeting cards, and some other small bric-a-brac of life in the storage. DO use your storage to hold some of your needed (in my opinion) electronics
equipment like your Internet modem, or your wireless router. You might have a
small basket for holding AA, AAA, and 9V batteries and miscellaneous cables.
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DO use your storage for some fun things that you might bring out on special
occasions, like a candle or two, or perhaps a small table standing decoration.
Don’t go overboard on this - but a little can go a long way.
By properly digitizing your life, you’ll find that the storage simply isn’t needed
that much.
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Storage Outside
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Storage outside is a little different than storage inside.
There is a certain amount of stuff you need to effectively go RVing.
See my chapter that has a list of many things I consider essential. I’m sure that
list isn’t complete, but it does recognize that there are simply things you need.
Being Spartan isn’t about standing in the middle of the wilderness eating bugs
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and honey hollering at people like a crazy person. (Email me if you do not get
the reference I made). th
The OUTSIDE storage, called the basement in the 5 wheel, is great for storing
the essentials. But it is also great for accumulation of “crap”. In the picture above
I show a basement that is out of control.
RECOMMENDATION: Have 5-6 neatly arranged plastic totes in the
basement. Be very clear to yourself what is in them and why. Then stick tight to
the rule that if it isn’t the tote or specially designated not to be in the tote, then
you have to get rid of it.
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Ashes
This might be the silliest topic ever.
I was at a friends and they showed me an urn with the ashes from a relative.
It wasn’t HUGE, but it wasn’t small. What it was - was yet another thing to drag around.
I’m not trying to denigrate people’s grief or their LOVE for someone who has
passed on, but dragging around those ashes sounds a whole lot more like
someone having trouble moving on with their life than someone with a bunch of
love.
Or maybe it is just guilt or bad planning. Your loved one and perhaps you
discussed that cremation was the way to go and no one thought to get a marker
anywhere or discuss what happens to the ashes after its all said and done.
No matter. Dragging the ashes around isn’t respect for anyone. What it is, is
indecision.
Do something significant with the ashes. Scatter them in a place that the person
would enjoy. Make “the scattering” an event to remember.
If you don’t want to part with the ashes - turn them into a diamond so you can
really honor the person. But having ashes hanging around your RV/house in an urn, cigar box, or worse
simply creates stress for you, a potential mess, disrespects the person who the
ashes once were, and is the epitome of not letting go.
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So go spread ‘em. You’re doing yourself, your loved one, and your RV life an
honor.
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My list of Essentials
There is an old Zen saying - “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” What that means is that even
though you may have really arrived at the pinnacle of mental states and internal
peace, life still goes on. You still need to perform some basics.
The same applies for the Spartan RVer. You may have reduced your lifestyle, but
you still need to have some things. Not all things are bad. The whole idea is to
have what you need and very little else. It is NOT to have nothing.
There are some items that I would consider so important that I would say they
are essential. Some of these things would be on my “essential” list.
* Scanner/Printer combination - I have been using Epsons for several years and
have found them more reliable, easier to use, and longer lasting than Canon’s
and HP’s. This is critically important because it is a portal in and out of your
digital life. You have to be able to scan things. I like a scanner much better than
digital photographs from your cell phone. They are much smaller, better auto
cropped, and don’t get mixed in with your personal photographs. You get to
avoid sorting pictures on your computer. I also think you need a printer. I’m
always printing something - without a printer the inconvenience factor would be
really, really high.
* Computer Laptop - I think a computer is essential. It stores your digital life. It
is a communications portal. You can share your digital life with it. You can order
things with it. You can do things with your computer that you can’t do with a
smartphone or a tablet. Plus isn’t it nice to have a keyboard? I cannot, under any
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circumstance other than editing video, see the need for a desktop computer. A
laptop should do it.
* Cell phones - I think this is critical. I for one would not live without a smart
phone since it can get rid of so many other things like GPS, Cameras,
Camcorders, Voice Recorders, and more and more and more. These things really
are amazing.
* Backups - There is no real way to stress how important backups are. You
CANNOT successfully back up your equipment to disk drives inside your RV.
If your RV burns down you are toast because your originals AND your backups
rd
will be destroyed. We backup things to a 3 party, OFF SITE company called
JustCloud. I give them my strongest possible recommendation - click here to
learn more about JustCloud - It works on pretty much everything: Mac, PC,
Linux, Android, IOS, and heaven knows what else. I use it every day. I feel
quite confident that my stuff is very, very safe. * RVing items that are awfully handy to have when you need them:
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Stinky Slinky
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Stinky Slinky adapters of all kinds.
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30 Amp Cable / 50 Amp Cable
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30 to 50 and 50 to 30 Amp adapters
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Drinking water hose.
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Extra water hose.
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Kitchen water pitcher that filters your water
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Emergency whole RV water filter
* Modest Toolbox - I recommend a tool box with a reasonable set of tools. It is
important to clearly draw the line between RVer and RV repair specialist. The
RVer has enough tools to do the basics and knows how to use a phone. The RV
repair specialist has an entire truck full of tools. A reasonable set of tools might
be:
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Pliers & Vise Grips
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Crescent Wrench - focus on adjustable tools rather than complete sets this reduces weight and space.
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Screwdriver Set, modest though - focus on manual drivers to save weight
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Hammer
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Tire wrench - just make sure you have one somewhere
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Jack - just confirm you have one
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Electric Air Pump - Make sure it can go pretty high in PSI.
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Tire Pressure Gauge -You’ll need this.
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Teflon Joint Tape - Lots of water hoses on an RV. This comes in really
handy.
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Small Voltmeter - Excellent for measuring battery voltages and checking
RV Parks electrical outlets BEFORE you connect.
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•
If you think I’ve missed something, send me a note.
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Conclusion and Final Words
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Thanks for taking a journey, perhaps a tough journey
Thanks for taking a journey, perhaps a tough journey through the idea of living
a more Spartan life.
Maybe now you’ll be able to let go of some things and grasp on tight to the
people and moments around you. Maybe that was never a big issue for you.
Maybe you just needed encouragement that the fact that you travel light doesn’t
make you crazy - it makes you a more solid person.
Nevertheless, please enjoy the journey, keep it digital, and travel the country.
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THE END
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About the Author
I lived in an RV fulltime with my two kids and a wife for a long time.
This was not due to necessity, but due to personal choice.
At first my wife and I did it as a lark.
But then we decided we liked it.
Oddly, my kids decided they liked the idea too. I can’t explain it, but they did.
We upgraded to a much larger RV with separate living spaces for each kid.
Each kid had a small closet, a bed, a couch and they shared a desk area. They
also had a set of drawers and some additional storage.
We then decided to purchase some land for many reasons, but at least one of
which was that we wanted a permanent address that the schools would
recognize. We purchased 5 acres of unimproved land inside the kids school
district. We had to be very careful about restrictions since most municipalities
are not pro-RV.
We moved the RV out to the land and started living on the land as soon as
possible. We could probably not have afforded to do this without an RV so the
RV gave us a “power” we would not otherwise have had.
Assuming rent is $1200/month in Austin, Texas, every month we use the RV and
not an apartment, we accumulate over $500 of savings. While I would not call
the RV an investment, it is making possible an investment in our land which we
are improving all the time.
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We eventually built a small house on the property, but we didn’t make a
monstrosity.
By living in the RV, we’ve built stronger family bonds than I ever thought
possible and taught my children that you don’t have to give into society’s
pressure to live a consumer lifestyle - driven by impressing other people and
wanting “the next thing”. For this idea and this idea alone, the RV has changed
my life and the life of the people closest to me for the better.
The RV became representative of a higher purpose based on a minimal lifestyle.
I’m not perfect by any stretch, but every day we live we ask ourselves what it is
we truly need day to day to truly LIVE.
When the kids move away, we’ll be in our Class C sailing the concrete seas once
again.
Cheers,
Marlan
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