Why do this?

We have been asked by some people why we are doing this. I can only speak for myself, so Lori will have to weigh in on what is most important to her, but here are a couple of my thoughts:

I am not trying to make some moral or ethical statement that all buying is bad, and I do not plan to go the rest of my life buying nothing new. However, I do believe that we have fallen into a trap in this country. Since we are all so wealthy (compared to the rest of the world), our view of what is normal and acceptable has become grossly distorted.

We are surrounded by messages that having more of this or more of that is “good”, and we start to believe it. A simple example is that just a couple generations ago it would have been considered excessive to own multiple TVs (even when TV was very popular in the 60’sand 70’s). Consider this statistic: Today…half of American homes have three or more TVs, and only 19 percent have just one…Compare this with America in 1975, 57 percent of homes had only a single set and only 11 percent had three or more. Obviously nobody “needs” three TVs, but we now consider that “normal”.

Americans consume resources at an astounding rate compared to the rest of the world. Again – we don’t really notice because we compare our materialism against what we see near us, or on TV. I don’t consume as much as the people profiled in that silly show “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”, but that is not the point.

• Even in my year of living simply, I will consume and live a vastly more materialistic life than 80 - 90% of the world…that is the point!
• If I stopped buying things for the rest of my life and moved into a log cabin in the woods, I will have already consumed much, much more in my lifetime than most people in the world ever will…that is the point!

As long as there are billions of people living on less that $5 a day, my middle class lifestyle with a decent home, a couple normal cars, and a couple TVs is roughly equivalent to the medieval castle on the hilltop overlooking the poor peasants below. All I am really doing is trying to live in a little smaller castle...that's all.

At the end of the day I guess the question for me is will I be just as happy with much less?...I don't know for sure, but I want to try to find out.

- Bob