scroungetech

Greetings All!
Yesterday I finished reading this thread. I started at the beginning, with the first post from 2006, and have read the entire thing. This discussion has helped me in many ways. I stumbled onto this discussion back in spring of 2014, and got about 75% of the way through it by fall of 2014, reading a few pages a week when I had time. I used to do most of my bike forums reading in the Touring and Utility Cycling sections. Just this past week, I picked back up where I left off, and got to the most recent post yesterday.
The reason for the long pause in the middle of reading this discussion is that i moved in with my (then) girlfriend in June of 2014 and my free time mostly vanished. Just as I was getting a lot of useful pointers from everyone here about how to simplify one's life, I went and complicated mine. I'm 38 now, and had never embarked on the cohabitation adventure before, and didn't quite know how it would go. But I was excited that another human being had seen fit to tie up her future with mine, so I went for it.
Without going into too much gory detail, what I learned is that moving in with a partner is the worst way to attempt to simplify one's life. It does quite the opposite. At least it did with her. I'm hoping there's a lady out there somewhere that shares my relatively recently acquired interest in doing more with less. Fingers crossed! It probably didn't help that we also brought in a single-parent sibling of hers and their 3 young kids into our 4 bedroom, 1200 sq foot modest city row-home. It was cramped. I had never not had my own space before. And there was no room anywhere for a work bench or similar such man cave of any kind. One major sticking point was that I wouldn't store my Surly Troll outdoors, and there was no other place for it than the living room. Cro-Moly bike with SON dynamo hub, VO fenders, Dura Ace bar end shifters on Paul Thumbies and nice racks for touring! Outside! I think not! (and yeah, I'm smirking as I write that cuz I know I would in the long run survive just fine without it... but would have preferred to keep it running smoothly) That bike became my refuge when I really needed to get out of the house, in any kind of weather. We shared a car, which means she drove my car to work while I took the bus, and she picked me up afterwards. No space = no peace/solitude/reflection which are necessary for my sanity, and after about 8 months I dumped her and moved out. I continued to pay my third of the rent for the remainder of the year lease after I left, and had the landlord transfer the security deposit that I paid into her name, or she would've been homeless. I landed back at my parents house for 4 months, because my old room in the shared house that I had previously lived in was going to be available again in August of 2015.
It was worth the wait. My parents and I got reacquainted with one another in a way that we had not been previously, and I'm back in my old apt. It's a 3 bedroom, which I share with 2 relatively sane housemates. I have the largest room at 240 sq ft with 9 foot ceilings. And it's only $310/month with utilities and high speed internet. I'm a CNC machinist, so that expense works out to about one eighth of my monthly net. Bargain! Way cheaper than customizing, making payments on, and living in a van. And I do have the luxuries of indoor plumbing and room to entertain company of the female variety. Having moved 3 times in the last 18 months, I have had to personally deal with each and every scrap of stuff I own. The first time, when I moved in with her, I got rid of nothing, and stored a bunch of extra stuff in the basement. With her and her sibling the basement was packed to the gills. When it all fell apart, I had by then spent some more time reading this thread, and the ax fell swiftly when I had to decide what to keep.
It was all going to have to fit into one half of my parents 2 car garage. I didn't have the time to sell anything on Craig's List, it all went to Goodwill. Even my leather motorcycle jacket, with 90's style airbrushed tribal artwork! And most of my goth club clothes! And large-group camping gear like giant stew pots, fire grates and massive tarps. I hadn't used that stuff in 5+ years so it had to go. I also got rid of the volume of about 6 footlockers of other random stuff, as well as 8 milk crates of books and 6 milk crates of VHS tapes. While living with my parents, I put all my burned CD's onto an external hard drive. 3 days of typing artist name, track name, to get rid of a phone book sized binder of burned CD's. The books that remain have sentimental value or are sufficiently rare that I want to hold onto them. I've read Kurt Vonnegut's "Fahrenheit 451" too many times to go to all digital format e-books. In the event of a coronal mass ejection or electromagnetic pulse weapon, my (now rather small) library would be gone. Not cool!
I moved back into the shared house 8/15, and now everything I own fits in my 240 sq ft room, other than a few kitchen items as well as a window air conditioner and a few 5 gal plastic buckets which are in the bottom of the bathroom linen closet. I've even simplified my preferred bike, and switched to a 1990 Schwinn High Plains, 23" seat tube c-t-c, 24" top tube, (I'm 6'3") and have stripped the Surly to probably sell. I found the Schwinn at the Classic & Vintage bike swap at Trexlertown this past fall. The Schwinn is for me the best-fitting frame I've ever ridden, and I went from a 34t large cog on the Surly to 28t on the Schwinn, which has made me faster, that along with a lighter frame set. I also switched out my 48t large ring for a 50t. It's also the 1st bike I've ever ridden that is lugged and has a tapered, raked fork. I feel like it "planes," in other words, transfers my cycling motion into a harmonious blend with the imperfections of the road so as to feel smoother and smoother as my pace increases. I've liked this Schwinn so much that when I saw another frame set just like it on CL, I picked it up so I have a backup. It totally looks like a banged up beater, with many paint scrapes, which is an anti-theft plus in my urban environment. The back up will either get stripped and rattle-canned, or maybe sent out for powder coat if I can cope with a week or two of overtime to cover the cost.
I will freely admit that I am not car-free. I am car-light. I drive the car my grandma could no longer drive after she had a stroke in 2006, and I will continue to drive it into the ground. Work is only 3 miles away, and weekly errands even closer. But I do bike commute when the weather isn't horrendous, and will either not replace this car when it dies, or maybe pick up a 4x4 off road contractor-size van that I could sleep in. And ditch the apartment and 90% of my remaining stuff... Pipe dreams? It wouldn't be a cost savings as far as I can tell but it would be much more mobile. We'll see...
Thanks for taking the time to read all this, and thanks to all of you who have participated in this thread. You've been a touchstone and a source of inspiration in my efforts to live more simply!
~scroungetech