Photo Courtesy of leone-venter-VieM9BdZKFo-unsplash.jpg
Dear readers,
I took a brief hiatus from writing, and I thank you for your patience and your support. I recently ran into car trouble and felt rather ‘grounded’ for days which grew into weeks.
My car still has a funky sound, but I feel less troubled and now I can re-focus on writing.
I have thought a lot about minimalism while I have been grounded.
Embracing Minimalism
Minimalism is a way of living I have subscribed to for a few years now. Something about paring back a life well-lived both materially and mentally has an almost visceral appeal for me. Travelling and living on the road requires a pared back lifestyle. With the obvious limitation of space, serious consideration is required to know what I can live with as much as what I can live without.
The basics such as a bed and bedding go without saying. How much more do I need?
Clothes, shoes, tick.
Cooking equipment, tick.
Eating utensils, tick.
Towels, toothpaste, soap, tick.
Torch or lantern, tick.
As a writer, I MUST have writing tools. Pen and paper as well as a laptop, tick.
Sounds basic, yet that list is very much what my car holds every day. Packing and re-packing is a necessary part of living on the road. It helps if you are good at that Tetris game!
There are extras I like to travel with such as a little bit of makeup for when I feel I want to face the world without looking like I live in my car. Or my Kindle, an item that still brings a smile whenever I pull it from my bag. Even my iPad, which has become part of my daily routine for waking and sleeping. They are extras yet they maintain my mental health through the pleasure they bring.
Challenges of Van Life
Water, food, fuel, electricity, and internet access have become the items I am constantly foraging for. I always feel a thrill when I discover the towns that offer free water. Otherwise, I am constantly buying water from Woolworths at seventy cents a bottle and paying more at independent outlets.
I buy small quantities of food as I don’t have a fridge in my car and do not wish to spend hundreds on setting up a frig that will take up too much of my sleeping space. Fruit and bagged salad are the easiest items. Together with bread, beans, rice crackers, canned fish and occasional noodles, these items form the bulk of my diet. I shop every two or three days so that I can eat a varied diet and avoid food going to waste because of the lack of a cold box.
Curiously, the only day of being ‘unwell’ on the road was the result of dehydration and I used painkillers to ease the splitting headache that resulted from insufficient water intake over several days. Only once.
Foraging for fuel can become an obsession if I let it. I currently drive a diesel vehicle and I must confess that fuel has become my biggest expense. I use an app called “Petrol Spy’ to locate the cheapest fuel outlet wherever I am. This has proved cost effective when I notice other petrol stations prices are well above the cost I pay.
I bought a huge data plan for my mobile phone so I can access the internet almost anytime. That works perfectly except when I am in a ‘Telstra blackout zone’.
Electricity has, at times, proven more elusive. Usually, I find a library or a food court that offer plugs for laptops and phones. I did purchase a small power bank to keep my phone charged, although sometimes I just use the cigarette lighter port in my car as I drive. Options abound!
The trickiest item to maintain a charge is my laptop. My mobile, iPad and Kindle can all use my power bank if they urgently need a recharge. However, the laptop has died on more than one occasion when I have not been able to access a power point. Yes, I can resort to using my iPad to write if I am truly desperate. Its tiny keyboard is not ideal, but it is functional. Again, options abound!
Camera, deck chair, headphones. These are probably the only extras that I could live without, although I use the headphones every single day either with an audiobook or with meditation practise. So, maybe the headphones are more of an essential that I first thought.
The Essence of Minimalism
That leaves the camera – a generous gift from my brother, and the deckchair I bought from Bunnings. I can do without both. I use the camera in my mobile phone and some of the images are exquisite (even if I do say so myself).
The deckchair is not essential, yet. What I mean by that is that during the cooler months I was more likely to sit in my car or find a sheltered place to sit. Now that the warmer weather is coming, I may or may not use it. After reviewing my list, I realise that if I stopped travelling and settled somewhere, my belongings in my car would take up less than a bedroom worth of space.
I think this is the definition of living a minimalist life.
What more do I need?
I ask myself that question each time I think about the storage unit with two cubic metres full of the rest of my life belongings.
Those belongings hold cherished memories such as gifted kitchenware and photo albums, and books that I cannot give away – especially considering Marie Kondo’s principle that ‘they bring me joy’. Other items include winterwear and winter bedding, crockery, and sacred spiritual belongings like tarot cards and a drum I made fifteen years ago.
I wrestle with the question of how much I really need whenever I think of the storage unit. Can I ever reach that place within me where I am willing to let go of everything that does not fit in my car and learn to live with less? The truth is, I am living with less. I live a minimalist lifestyle; however, the storage unit suggests that I have not fully embraced the minimalist lifestyle I want.
Unless …
Unless …
Maybe one day I will arrive at a place within myself when I choose to stay put and not travel ceaselessly. If and when I do that, will I fill up my new ‘home’ with more stuff? Or embrace the lessons of living with less learned through living on the road?
Would you, could you, live with less?
Christine C. Elliott 