When Life Hands You Lemons, Make Lemonade

I haven't posted for a long time because things here have been a challenge ( to put it mildly), however life isn't sugar-coated so neither is my story. From every adversity thrown at me I have learned lessons and grown as a human so I am not posting a" woe-is-me" story but sharing how hardship is shaping my life.

I am not going to get into all the nitty, gritty details of " he said this" and "he did that" but our relationship with our landlord has completely deteriorated. People weren't paying their rent on time, new bills were being presented by the landlord that David had no idea that he would be liable for and the stress levels were mounting daily. It got to the point where David couldn't handle the insanity anymore and so relinquished his water lease back to the landlord. At that point, having resolved his responsibilities here, David went back to Ontario for a well needed rest. The landlord took his absence as an opportunity to shake things up here. His first order of business was to tell me that he had never had a lease with me himself and wanted me and my home off of his property ASAP.

Another tenant here had managed to convince the landlord that he could make him more money by filling the marina with boats in the space that my house was taking up, so the landlord hired him as the new caretaker (or "Harbour Master" as it was described in the notice we got) and made it his sole job to get rid of us. The first order of business was to cut off our power and water and to tell our neighbors that if any of them got caught helping or even talking to us, they would be evicted as well.

So since October 1st, I have been living off-grid, so to speak. People are always asking me "how do you do it"?

 I wasn't at all ready for that scenario. It has been my long term goal to be self sufficient, but at the time this happened, my reality was that I was hooked up to 30 amp shore power which ran a few lights, a portable electric heater in my bedroom, my computer and charged various batteries. I had cold running water to flush the toilet and run in the kitchen sink. That was it!

 I showered and did laundry at Davids house ( next door to me). I ate all my meals at his house and washed all the dishes there. The landlord told David, that if he disconnected his house from the property, that he would turn my power back on. David did ....and the landlord didn't.

Now we were totally screwed as my house didn't have any facilities built or hooked up and we couldn't access Davids house anymore. His house ended up sitting badly on the hard at low tide, cracked in half and within a few weeks, sank with all the furniture etc still in it.

So this is what my life has looked like for the last three months:

Cleaning:
 I shower at local rec centers and occasionally a friends house.
 I take my laundry twice a week to the laundromat.
 I use buckets of water from the river to flush my toilet.
I use a broom, mop or carpet sweeper for the floors.

Cooking:
I buy large jugs of bottled water to drink and do dishes with.
All cooking/water heating is done on a propane stove and BBQ, outside in the rain and dark on the front deck.
 My unheated kitchen is my fridge. Meats and perishables are kept safe in a cooler.

Heating:
 I have 2 indoor propane heaters to heat the two bedrooms upstairs, which we basically live in, the rest of the house is whatever temperature it is outside that day.
 I take hot water bottles to bed at night and have flannel sheets, 2 cotton quilts and a feather comforter to snuggle under.
I wear lots of clothes in the house and to bed.

Power:
 After our first generator was sabotaged, I bought another smaller one which is brought indoors each night before going to bed. It's a small 1300 watt which powers 3 lights, a combination tv/vcr which is our entertainment and my computer and modem. We also use the generator to charge up car batteries which we use to run things like the answering machine and the computer late at night.

Light:
 We use flashlights a lot to move around the house at night, a propane lantern for the kitchen, LED stick-up battery lights, which are motion-activated, for dark spots like stairs or the attic hallway. Sometimes we light candles and oil lamps for added ambience.
We have a few lamps which run off the generator when it's on.

Right now my costs are pretty high. I am paying for lots of bottled water, approx 60 liters of propane/month, 100 plus liters of gas/month, $40 plus a week in laundry costs, not to mention all the extra fuel and time it takes to go to the showers, laundromat, water selling places etc.

 I am quite proud of the fact that I hunkered down and made the best of the situation. It's not ideal, but we are warm enough, well-fed, clean and dry. Now the trick is to lower my living costs.

I looked into putting a wood stove in, but to have all the legal clearances from the walls, the stove would have sat right in the middle of my kitchen. I have three doors in the kitchen which makes that set-up totally impractical. I need $2,500.00 to get a licenced gas fitter to come and hook up our propane fixtures. Once that is done, I would have a propane stove, fridge, dryer and hot water on demand system as well as a propane furnace which would heat the whole downstairs. If I run gutters down each side of my 60 foot roof, I could collect rainwater in barrels for showering and washing up. Some solar panels would offset the cost of the gas generator.

I am learning to live with less appliances, less water and less waste when it comes to power. I'm still not sure how I can produce enough power for all my eventual desires though. These are the bare necessities but I have things like an infra-red sauna, a Jacuzzi tub, steam shower and a bunch of beautiful light fixtures that I would like to be able to use now and again.

 I miss having an oven ( although the pressure cooker has made some nice roast meals), I really miss running water. I would like to have at least one room with a heater that is thermosatically controlled so I can keep my plants alive over the winter. All in good time I guess, I just have to keep upgrading my system as funds come in.

I did have a spot of luck while all this was going on. For about 2 months, a friend who is a jack-of-all-trades came and did 2 hours of work a day for room and board. My wiring in the house was a total gong show. Before I got the house, someone had stolen the power box and left all the wiring cut. I had managed to get a few things hooked up in the beginning but most of it hadn't been sorted out yet. Dan managed to get a good chunk of it rewired and hooked up a bunch a light fixtures for me and set up all the connections in the bathroom for my spa units. He also framed in my bathroom doors and got the sliding door installed from the bathroom to the massage room. The steam shower unit is mostly set up, we just have to connect the water before putting the last few pieces together. The bathroom is about 75 percent complete. It's such a shame that I finally got thisclose to a bathroom but can't use any of it with no power and water. Still, progress is being made even admidst all the chaos in my life.

As if all this wasn't fun enough, my van did its usual balk at winter weather and spent 5 weeks at the mechanics. I had to bus it to work which added a lot more strain to my already very full days. I bought a bunch of water proof clothes and bundled up for the one km daily walk to the bus stop. The good part of this was: saved lots of money on gas, got to read books again on the one hour bus ride and got some sorely needed exercise. The bad part was trying to run all my fuel buying errands on my days off. Luckily good friends chipped in to lend me vehicles when needed. I finally got the van back, five hundred dollars later and it still runs like shit. Never when the mechanic drives it of course, only when I am alone and on the highway. Every engine light comes on and I sputter down the road for some time until mysteriously, they go out and all is well again. Oh well, beats walking!!

This whole time, I have been scrambling and looking for somewhere else to move the house. It has not been easy at all. My biggest drawback is my size. Most floathome communties have berths set up for something in the 20x20, 25x30 type of range. I am a collasal 28x66. Its like looking to park a bus in a smart car parking stall, not going to happen! After spending months phoning every single marina in BC and knocking on strangers doors with river front property, I decided to try a different method. That is another post in itself, so stay tuned for the story of how I manifested a berth for my home.

Updated: here is the link to that story
http://eclecticark.blogspot.com/2011/12/piece-of-history.html

Thoughts on Simplicity

I was reading the "We Live on a Boat" blog the other day.

http://www.weliveonaboat.com/

They had a post about living simply with a link to another blog about a young woman who had given up her job and home to buy a sailboat and practice simple living.

http://sailingsimplicity.com/.

She in turn had a link to another girl who is living in her van in a effort to opt for a simpler life.

http://www.faliaphotography.com/

All these people and their ideas of what was and wasn't simple living got me thinking about my own experience. Now first off, I have to admit that I am thrift store addict and a serial pack-rat. Neither of these two attributes bodes well for me. My biggest claim to fame so far, is that I have not paid more than $350 a month for rent the last 10 years in six different locations in the most expensive city in Canada.

I guess first of all you have to define your idea of living simply. Is it living with very little possesions? Is it using very little energy resources? Is it having no technology, very few responsibilities, or is it making everything from scratch?

I have had a number of occasions to simplify my life in the last 10 years. Basically my philosphy has been "if there is room, fill it full of stuff". I am a master of tucking things away and like a seasoned magician, can vanish many truckloads of stuff into a stunningly small space.

My first downsize from was from a huge house where I had a basement studio for a clinic as well as two stories upstairs filled to the rafters. It wasn't too painful. I moved into an apartment and just deleted all the multiples of things that I had, kept the best stuff,and donated things I rarely used. I had moved a block away from two malls with all the shopping I needed and three blocks from my clinic. I was able to walk everywhere, recycle in the garbadge room and work part time from the apartment. That was a sweet deal. The place was small but very well laid out with everything you could want, in-suite laundry, dishwasher, balcony, small storage room and enough space in the living room for me to set up my massage table when needed.

Life shifted for me when the medical plan stopped covering massage therapy and I was forced into bankcrupcy. I closed my clinic and went to work for a summer at a fishing resort in the wilderness. My thought was I would bring what I needed to entertain myself indefinately, leave it there over the winters and go travelling. With that in mind I packed wayyyyy too much stuff to take with me. All my massage gear, craft supplies, a couple of hundred of my favorite books, a bookcase to store them, a desktop computer, a huge teachers desk, my favorite mattress and bedding, on and on. I showed up with a good size truckload of stuff. I was so embarrassed when I saw everyone else with just a duffel bag of stuff. I got it all in my room anyway and enjoyed playing with it. The job unfortunatly didnt work out and I had to take it all out again at the end of the summer. If I had known that, I would have brought less, but enjoyed having it all regardless.

The resort produced its own power from a turbine in the nearby waterfall. They had a state-of-the-art system that purified the black and grey waste water back into pure drinking water. All the buildings were built on floats or stilts so there was no damage done to the surrounding land. All garbage/recyling was taken back to civilization for disposal on a regular basis during the weekly shopping expedition. TV, internet and communication in general was accessed through a satalite dish and radio phones. All our food was cooked from scratch. Homemade bread, desserts, gravies, sauces, ice cream, you name it, nothing pre-packaged at all. Activites included non-polluting things such as:kayaking, hiking, rafting, catch and release fishing, rock climbing, spelunking(exploring caves)and swimming.

It was awesome to live like that. Such a healthy place and lifestyle. It still had all the comforts of home but I have to say, they didnt come cheap. That being said , if your going buy a house and install furnaces etc, you might as well make it off the grid as much as possible and save on the hydro bills and the hassles when the power fails. Producing and cooking your own food is a nice choice too if you have the time and space.

I've had the power go out for four days straight in the dead of winter at a time when I wasn't prepared in the least. Not even a candle. That freaked me out to realize I could die in the middle of civilization just because I couldn't use a light switch. I resolved then and there to never be in that position again. I took many courses in primitive living skills. I learned how I could be naked in the woods and still find ways to keep warm, feed, clothed, medicated and entertained. It was liberating to know that I could take care of my basic needs without snivilization's help if need be. Its as simple as a life as you could think of but not neccesarily easy. It takes a lot of time and energy to get enough food and nourishment in the wild. Still once you get your basic needs met, somewhere dry to sleep, something warm to wear, a supply of fresh water, the rest of your day is yours to explore and work on things.

Once I was done at the resort, I went travelling to Asia and New Zealand. I ended up travelling around New Zealand for three months in a van with three other people. We towed a medium size trailer filled with gear to set up stalls selling crafts and services at crafts shows. It's funny, when I got to NZ, I arrived with one suitcase, by the time I left I had enough stuff to fill a good size trailer. Most of it was a fairly complete market setup that I had added to as I was working around the country. I left most of it behind thinking I would go back the following summer and do it again, but never did make it back there.

I found it quite liberating to live in the van. I had one suitcase of clothes, some toiletries, a few books and a drum. I stopped at internet cafes when I wanted to check in with the world. I spent an hour a week in the laundrymat. We had a two burner stove, one large pot, one large frying pan, a kettle and a set of dishes each. We ate twice a day. Dinner was a whole chicken cut up in the pot with chopped potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, some rice and lots of tabasco sauce. The whole thing was boiled into a chicken stew. Left-overs were added to whisked eggs to make a large omlet for breakfast. Simple but tasty with fresh and dried fruit for snacks.
Showers were obtained at local gyms, hotels, campsites, homes of friends or even in rivers. We didn't neccesarily stay in all the above places but could often for a small fee or even free be allowed to shower.

New Zealand is quite open to this kind of lifestyle. There are tons of spots in nature that you can use for free with toilets, sometimes showers and no one hassling you for being there. In towns you can park overnight in parking lots, just have to be out by the time the stores open. They usually have washrooms in the parking lots as well. Canada is not so open. Especially in a city, you would have to be quite covert, no hanging around outside in your lawnchair with the doors open and the pop top up. We always sat and cooked outside, putting up a tarp over things if it was raining. You wouldn't get away with that here. Of course all this was possible because it was summertime. Didn't need to stay warm. Could work and eat outdoors, didn't need to pack alot of winter clothes and blankets,etc. That was about as simple of a lifestyle as Ive ever had. My vehicle was my bedroom, kitchen, transportation, worksite, and storage locker. Costs included gas, insurance, repairs, groceries, showers, internet and restocking of material for the craft markets. My work week was two days long, the rest of the time was mine to explore,travel and study. To bad summer doesnt last year round :(

My next stop was Bali where at one point I stayed with a very poor Balinese family for a week. These people really had next to nothing. A shed with no doors or windows, just gaping holes. No furniture except a cupboard that held the dishes, a few rough beds and a donated tv. The only appliance was a rice cooker. No running water in the house, just one cold water hose going into a rough bath house shared by four other households. No vehicle of any kind, not even a bike. A couple of changes of clothes each, consisting of sarongs. They ate mostly rice with some flavorings and sometimes added homegrown fruit, chickens and pork that were only eaten on special occasions. Now that was a simple lifestyle. Dad worked in the rice fields long enough to earn a bag of rice and a few dollars. Mom kept the area tidy and cooked the rice. They mostly sat around after that. Kind of boring for me, if I couldnt afford decorations, I would have used that time to make something at least.I can't bear an empty space lol.

I came back from Bali feeling very overwhelmed by all my possesions. It felt like I had enough crap to feed three villages for a year. ( I had stored all my belongings in a friends basement while I was off gallavanting for the year) I had huge urges to pack it all up save a mattress and a pot to cook with and donate the lot of it. Then I would waver and figure as I had this huge space to live in, might as well have stuff I already owned, decorating it. My clutter bunny took over and the stuff stayed and got added to over the years.

Then came the boat. Again a major downsizing was in order. I have to admit, a part of me wasn't ready to let go of all the wonderful things that had been a part of my life. I stored all my things I might need someday to work and my favorite ornaments and three thousand books in the basement of my old house. I gave alot of large furniture items to David to furnish his floathome with the understanding that "some day" if and when I ever got a bigger space I would take them back. I did manage to let go of four or five vanloads of stuff that got donated or recycled. The rest found its way onto the boat.

For a year I lived with sketchy utilities, a teeny tiny fridge, microscopic storage space and the equivalent of an outhouse. I hauled water and chopped wood. I stumbled over my dishes trying to find room to cook. I made various trips to my storage to pull out seasonal things as they applied. Trying to have exactly what I needed without having too much. My three main complaints were, no room for all the tools needed to live on a boat, no room to cook, no room in the fridge for food once all the condiments were accounted for. I dont know how to make those needs much smaller without compromising too much. Also the fact that my job here is massage and winter living requires alot more clothing, I spend alot more time and money at the laundrymat than I did in NZ.

So I have tried the simple life in many forms; downsizing belongings, working very little, living in tiny places, living off the grid. They all have their charms and disadvantages. Im still trying to decide what is the minimum amount of stuff I need to live a semi-comfortable life. It seems enough to say , well really all I need is a bed and a pot, but then the rest of your life insideously tries to sneak in. "Well of course I should have the laptop, and then might as well have the camera and cell phone. And what about those cute dressy shoes in case I ever get a real date? Might as well bring my drum in case I get invited to a jam and better have something to read in case I get bored and".............well you get the idea. I still have a mountain of stuff and an addiction to fossil fuels. Some days my life is simpler than others.

PS. here is my "simple life packing list for travel" ( this is for hot climates only)

I took only this with me for a 6 month trip

1 pair of long pants that convert into shorts
2 pairs of shorts
4 cotton long sleeve blouses
4 undershirts/tank tops (I dont like to wear bras)
4 underwear
2 pairs of socks
1 pair of light weight hiking boots
1 pair sandals (something like Tevas, waterproof, strap on, some arch support)
- good for walking in dodgy water or wearing in public bathing areas)
1 sarong ( has a multitude of uses- skirt, dress, blanket,sheet, beachblanket, privacy curtain, quick drying towel,or turned into a carry-all)
1 bathing suit
1 fleece Hoodie
1 lightweight rain poncho with a hood
1 Australian Style, lightweight foldable ,waterproof hat
1 pair of sunglasses



I wear the pants,an undershirt,blouse,hoodie and boots on the plane,everything else goes in a carry-on small backpack

A small flat camera, ipod and headphones, a journal, my bankcard, credit card, some US dollars, photocopies of all my documents/tickets, a doorstop( use this to jam your door from the inside to prevent break-ins while sleeping), a flat plastic sink plug, a small travel clothesline, my makeup bag, first aid kit,face cloth and small sample size toilitries take up the rest of the space.

*Note on the first aid kit contents( This is what I took for an extended trip to Asia. I could buy bandages ect as needed, but brought medications I wasnt sure I would find there, and things I could self- medicate with to avoid costly trips to the Dr in a foreign country)

-A couple of sterile packaged syringes ( if you need to get a shot, a lot of 3rd world countries reuse their needles, best to bring your own)

-Tube of aloe vera gel for burns

-Advil ( anti-inflammatory)

-Arnica gel for bruises and sprains

-Tube of polysporain (cuts and scrapes)

-Moleskin for blisters ( I love this stuff)

-Gravol(nausea)

-Tums with Calcium ( Im prone to heartburn/ulcer attack occasionally, calcium calms it as quick as prescription meds)

-Anti-diarrhea aid

- A small container of activated charcol ( this is awesome for any kind of poisoning, venamous bite etc)

-Deet bug spray ( I didnt want to take meds for Malaria as Dengue Fever was also prevalent and there is no prevention or cure for that. Best to avoid the mosquitos in the first place, so long sleeves and bug spray for me)

-A prescription for antibiotics for a bladder infection and some acifidofolous(this is hard as they should be kept refrigerated. Hopefully you can find some where you are, as needed, or have access to live cultured yogurt) to counter the yeast infection you might get from the antibiotics.

- Condoms ( a lot of Asian countries sell cheap, poor quality condoms, if there is any chance at all you might be needed condoms, I highly recommend you bring your own)



I carry a large canvas tote on board with me that has a book to read, a water bottle,a small pillow, a light weight blanket,1 pair of lightweight cotton pajamas, earplugs and an eye mask.

When I get on the plane, I change into the pajamas in the bathroom, get out my pillow and blanket, put on my eyeshade and earplugs and try and sleep my way through the flight. Just before landing, I change back into my bording gear which is still nice and fresh and not slept in.

I did one small load of laundry every 4th or 5th day often by hand in the sink. When I finished reading a book, I would trade it in a local used book store for another.I could carry onboard all my stuff so could always keep an eye on it and carry it easily through town. It made for easy , carefree travel. If I couldn't control myself and did too much shopping, I would mail the stuff home to myself on the slow boat. It was cheaper and I had time to travel and get home before it showed up.

I went on a trip to England for a month another time. It was in the spring when the weather could and would be anything from blazing hot to quite cold to pissing rain. I tried to pack light but with having to pack for three different climates I didn't fair so well. It was a serious pain dragging two suitcases through the London Underground for miles. Never Again! Tahiti here I come!

Bon Voyage!!