This article, Chasing Utoptia, Family Imagines No Possessions, somehow passed us by when it was published in the NYT back in May. It's all about the voluntary simplicity movement that has young couples trading in their possessions for light living and sometimes even the freedom of the open seas...
Some of those trading in their piles of things are in transition from high-paying careers to, say, organic farming or living in a sailboat with their spouse and toddler.
Read the full article here. And check out one of the families featured on their blog: Cage Free Family.
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Comments (8)
Are they even getting rid of their Toro tissue ring??
My folks did a similar thing a few years ago when they retired - they sold their homes and everything in them to live in a 40' motorcoach and travel the country - they couldn't be happier now that they've rid themselves of all the stuff.
Living simply began in Seattle in the '80s? Please.
Nice for those who choose to do it, perhaps not so nice for those who are being forced out of their homes due to forclosure.
The article is written in a manner which does these people a disservice and seems oddly full of disconnected information (e.g., the lineage of one of the women back to Roosevelt and the Pilgrims). The comment about no drugs also seems shoe-horned in pointlessly (as if all "hippie" lifestyles are full of drugs).
The lives discussed here are people who seem to live extreme lives, not simple ones. They either have an ultra-materialistic lifestyle or an ultra-simplified, granola one. I think real simplicity does not lie in extremes but rather in working with your needs rather than your "wants" and having an awareness of how much you're consuming and damaging the environment.
One woman mentions that they are getting angry responses to their blog as if people feel threatened by their choice. I think that the anger is more about extremism and the nature of these changes being one where people are giving things up freely while so many others have things taken away from them. In other words, these are examples of affluent people's "simplicity".
Orchid64: Right on.
Why is it that only annoying affluent white people and their toddlers named Jack or Zoe get this kind of attention?
I'm sure there are plenty of single, black mothers out there that live pretty "simply", but NYT and Apartment Therapy aren't writing about them so fondly.
Would you like to know why? Because being advantaged and making the choice to shuck everything is romantic, even noble to some people.
It's as if these people do these things because they know newspapers will pick up their stories , photograph them, and they'll be famous for a short while, be asked to speak at White People Design Meet-ups at Crate and Barrel in Chicago, earn money from doing so, and move into a nice, cozy pre war walk-up in Willimasburg, get a book deal, and have another kid.
:)
www.thebitterfoodie.blogspot.com
Oh wait...they probably wouldn't get paid for speaking at the White People Design Meet-ups, just garner huge amounts of self-satisfaction from having people listen to them extolling the virtues of affordable green design.
The place in Williamsburg would actually be financed by daddy, and the second kid would be called something really yuppie anti-establishment and vanilla like Sam or Marcia.
www.thebitterfoodie.blogspot.com
Why do I picture these people as characters in a Wes Anderson film set 10 years hence? Anjelica Houston plays the disaffected wife who realized she missed all her things & comforts, and bought a foreclosed McMansion in suburbia (including a free, repo'd Hummer to seal the deal), using all the money they earned but never spent during their possession-free life?
Are they really gaining anything or just doing what's trendy now?