- Jun 4, 2012
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Okay...now you have to explain how you came to be living in your van and washing in a creek
There's not much to tell, really. It was a transitional time in my misspent youth. I moved from Texas to Illinois (to follow a girl, obviously) and I was staying with some friends on their couch. Everything I owned fit in a duffel bag, more or less. The friends moved out of that apartment and the landlord jacked the rent, and I didn't have enough saved to get into anyplace else. It was all no-notice to me. I actually had a job at the time, just nothing saved. So I spent a few nights in the van while I got things together, and I started thinking it wasn't that bad. It was only missing a few things, and I was pretty sure I could solve those problems. So I put an air mattress in the back, figured out the washing thing, and viola, rolling apartment. I worked at a pizza joint and lived on that for free food, and I figured why pay rent?
It only lasted a few months before I got bored with it, and the girl I had followed wanted to come see me, but she didn't get the bohemian charm of van-life. I married her; we'll be ten years next month, but that's a whole other story.
What was more interesting than the van was the next place I got - an apartment in a divided Queen Anne that I shared with Juanita, the half-Mexican, half-Cherokee paranoid-schizophrenic former commodities trader. I swear I couldn't make this stuff up.
If only we could keep ourselves more naturally. Here we're getting better at it all the time, and the chickens are just one step in that process. I'm fairly dying to get a bigger yard so we can do more. :-D
We dry as much as we can on a rack in the basement or out on the line. We have a dryer but we use it as little as possible. We make our own laundry soap for pennies on the dollar, and it's hypo-allergenic and possibly bio-degradable, although I haven't checked into that part.
Perspective is the greatest gift that hard times can give you, as long as you learn to roll with the punches. Sadly, many people are so traumatized by the process, then never learn anything but fear.
