If you’re anything like my family, you probably spend a considerable amount of time fantasizing about how you can be more like Peter Gibbons from “Office Space” when he says, “You know, I never really liked paying bills. I don’t think I’m going to do that, either.” Or perhaps you’re like us in the sense that this fantasy is actually inspired by a genuine desire to stop contributing all your financial resources to corporations, and put that money into your family instead.
Maybe you’d rather spend your gas bill in one lump sum on a tipi so you can move off grid and forget about utilities altogether.
Okay, maybe that’s just us. But if you’re still with me, it’s good to know there are options. And, believe it or not, almost any excuse you have for choosing to remain on the grid, when it’s not what you really want to be doing, is arguable.
I had some concerns myself when my husband and I decided we wanted to pack up our four children for the summer and live out of a tent complex we planned to create for this purpose.
They were legitimate concerns, I thought. And everyone out there would have their own, I’m sure. You know, all those really good reasons why off-grid life just wouldn’t work out for you. But honestly, when you break it all down, it’s living off grid that teaches you how to make it work.
Making the decision to live off the grid is like jumping from that proverbial precipice, leaping into the unknown. You can’t plan it all out, because your life from that point on will not be the same. There’s simply not a comparison that can be made. There’s no safety net. I suspect this is often why people don’t consider moving off grid a viable option to begin with.
We have become depressingly dependent as a society. Dependent on convenience, on money, on comfort, on each other. We spend our days working our asses off so we can give our money to people we don’t even like, for services we don’t even need. We are so far removed from reality, in our square, comfy homes, with our 2.5 kids, mini-vans and golden retrievers that we have completely forgotten our connection to the earth. (I can say this because I’m one of them.) We have removed ourselves from being self-sufficient, to the point where even the implication of losing our luxuries freaks us out completely.
While I am still quite the newb to off-grid life, I have done it, and ultimately the plan is to get back there. It does take some planning, but it’s completely doable. And far more rewarding than most people might think.
There’s something holy and empowering about living so simply. You open yourself to experience a relationship to life that is not possible under any other circumstance. Conserving water seems far more important when it doesn’t flow so easily from the tap, but must be carried 1/2 mile home. Fire suddenly becomes more than decor or something you get when you flick your bic, when it’s necessary to keep your family warm at night, or to cook a meal, and when you had to learn this to survive.
It’s time we started considering off-grid life as a genuine possibility and not just something for hippies and dirt-worshiping forest freaks (I’m also one of these). With all the viable options for cleaner energy and sustainable shelter that we have now, this is something we should be embracing as opportunity. Check out some of these links if you want to educate yourself further on the idea.
http://www.yurts.com/what/default.aspx
http://www.homepower.com/home/
And for those of us who still have a streak of Peter Gibbons, imagine the resources you’d free up if you only had to carry a load of firewood to pay your gas bill.
