“A persons home should be large enough to be comfortable in, but small enough to force one outside”, (Chinese Proverb).
How Much Is Enough?
Some Pertinent Questions:
What is the average home size in the U.S.?
According to the National Association of Home Builders, the average home size in the United States was 2,330 square feet in 2004, up from 1,400 square feet in 1970 and more than double in size since 1950.
Why this constant expansion, if not the direct result of watching HGTV? What’s to come of the open land space and the surrounding terrain as this phenomenon goes unchecked? Most importantly, is this increased, never-ending expansion of indoor space and subsequent consumption of material items with which to fill and enhance them, adding to our individual, or most importantly, collective happiness quotient?
The American Dream?!?
At 3000+ square feet and counting, plus driveways, garages and all the other accoutrements, we have to be conscious of the amount of resources required to build and run said complex. The largest and grandest of all RV’s will top a little over 400 square feet. Its not rocket science to see that it takes upwards of 10 times or more the amount of resources to construct the average family home compared to the biggest, most luxurious RV on the market today
What about gas consumption is the cry? The average fulltime RV’er stays put for several days at a time, moving a certain number of miles, usually not far. The average American home also has cars for ALL its occupants, most often multiple cars for multiple people. Many of these vehicles are simply commuting back and forth to work to pay for it all, a poor waste of resources compared to driving an RV through Nature, soaking it all in, permanently enhancing the Lives of all the occupants.
Filling Some Space
Maybe I need some more STUFF...
Emptiness of civilization causes us to consume products to fill the void and dissatisfaction of not being able to fill ourselves with pure unadulterated Life-Force. Large walk-in closets, expansive storage buildings and muti-car garages house it all. Our consumption grows in proportion to the emptiness we feel internally in a never ending struggle to satiate our insatiable appetites. Collectively the city sprawls and grows as we cluster alongside each other, eating everyone and everything in its path.
By virtue of the sheer size of their homes, fulltime RV’ers are constantly pruning and refining their possessions. To bring in new things, often room must be made by getting rid of the old. There is a natural tendency to minimize belongings due to the built in storage constraints, and weight carrying capacity of our Micro-homes.
Some will argue we are doing without! Tis so far from the truth. A large Class A, or the large average 5th wheel, has so much storage, its downright obscene, yet not as obscene as even a small apartment or condo in terms of sheer stuff carrying capacity.
The Great Indoors?
The collective "backyard".
In our opinion, the average house exists as it is to house the dysfunctional occupants against the stresses of trying to Live in a society that emphasizes that happiness is indoors, when in fact, the exact opposite is true. Happiness is being fulfilled by Nature, thus an RV is the most appropriate home for nomads as they are a magic carpet transport to the remaining wild open places of the Earth.
Confinement leads to wanting to escape, but in this age of “Neighborhood Watch” programs, and general lockdown, it most often causes a person to expand inwards inside their own house by endless remodeling projects, expansion of wings, TV’s in every room, and other fruitless attempts to find the real expansion they seek, to reconnect with the wide open spaces they really crave.
Fulltime RV’ers by virtue of their chosen location, often have all of Nature as their backyards, and when anchored in their tiny homes, feel they are in the lap of luxury when parked. This isn’t primitive camping my friends, this is the refinement of the best that modern culture provides us, miniaturized, hyper-efficient and on wheels, ready to roll on to the next adventure.
Eliminating The Superfluous
A good use of OUR resources?
RV life naturally, and single handedly, eliminates this waste of both materials to build these monster houses, and the runaway consumption of resources required to run them. The hilarious fact is that even the largest, most monsterous RV, uses a small fraction of the resources required to run the smallest brick and mortar home.
Rv life is conservation itself. There is no water shortage going on, no land shortage, no resource shortage, rather there is a misuse and an unnatural demand on what should be shared resources. When boondocking, our small water tanks of 100 or so gallons of water can sip from the smallest water sources and live happily for several days to a week for the conservative. Even on full hookups, the most wasteful RV’er hardly touches a fraction of the average consumption of any home dweller.
Do we really need to run the multitude of houses, restaurants, motels, grocery stores, gyms, schools etc., consuming large amounts of fuel to commute to them, for cooking and heating them, and the large amounts of water piped around, supplying an unending flushing of inefficient toilets and sinks to flush it all away, or should we save those precious resources to use in our miniature homes? Perhaps the real education can come from Nature, the groceries from the lakes, rivers, forests and fields, the workouts from the mountains, and the restaurant travels with us all the time!
The Greatness in The Smallness
Everything in an RV is in easy reach, convenient by design and purpose. You don’t have to cross a large room to go to the fridge. The bathroom is compact and efficient. Like on a boat, everything necessary is at your fingertips with no wasted space. A bit of time ago, RV’s were not the most comfortable things, god forbid the “feng shui factor”, that existed pre slideouts, but that time is long gone having given way to nice spacious floorplans limited only by our imagination, that also travel extremely well and conveniently.
Despite their mistaken and misguided stigma, when looked at briefly from a distance, upon closer inspection, our micro homes end up taking better care of us, and take better care of our planet at the same time. We will merely sip slowly from the natural resources we all share, leaving plenty for all.
Take an omen and cue from the senior population who upon reaching retirement age realize, all too late, that the lifelong accumulation of all that bulk and fluffy nothingness, was all for naught, and sell it all in its worthlessness, buy a nice RV, and hit the road in an attempt to go and Live for the short remainder of time they have left, often with backs broken from carrying the heavy lifetime load.
Flush?!?
