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Creature Comforts
If you decide to opt out and go off grid, walking away your everyday creature comforts will be one of the hardest things you will do. For the past forty years I have been able to keep my food cold in a fridge, flush the toilet and turn all the lights on in the house without even thinking about it. There are so many things that have been made convenient in our lives, and you don’t even realize how much you take them for granted until they are gone.
The thing about these creature comforts is that each and every one of them costs us money and each and every one of them ties us to a control system. Water, power and food are all readily available to anyone that is willing to open their wallet and give up their freedom. This may sound a little extreme, but taking into the account that you can easily supply all three of these resources yourself, it seems almost lazy to become reliant on a corrupt system just for the sake of having these comforts.
Don’t get me wrong, it has not been easy for me to accept this, and it has been ever harder for me to walk away from them after a lifetime of living the “comfy” life. I have found it helpful to take one step at a time and focus on how to create new creature comforts in my life using self sustaining systems that over time have started to become the norm, just like opening the refrigerator.
Although it was hard to adapt, I have learned more about myself in the past year then ever before. Walking away from your creature comforts is what it takes to gain your freedom and creating new and improved comforts is what it takes to gain your happiness. As convenient as it was to drive to a grocery store to buy a weeks worth of food, it is so much more satisfying to grow a years worth of food in my own garden. As easy as it was to turn on a light switch, it is more relaxing to light a candle or know that my light is being powered by the energy of the sun. Sleeping in a bed always seemed like the best answer, but I have never slept better then I did sleeping in a hammock under the stars!
The point I am trying to make is that transitioning from any one thing to another always has it’s pain points. I often hear from others that are too scared to walk away from their creature comforts and the advice I always share is that they are only comforts because it is all they have ever known. What I also share with them is that their may be more comfort for them to sleep under the stars then in a bed, but they won’t ever know until they try it!
When we first started staying in the old trailer on our off grid property, I would long for the comforts of home. It would make me homesick every time I had to walk outside to the shower house or wait for the fire to get hot to brew a coffee. But overtime, I started to enjoy these things and even look forward to them. I started to find comfort in spending my mornings by the fire watching the sun come up while waiting for my coffee and taking a shower while among the pine trees. It started to become the best parts of my day. My creature comforts started changing.
Now, when I am at my home, I consider going outside to start a fire to make dinner instead of turning on the stove, and I often choose to light a candle in the evening instead of turning on the lights. I am slowing transitioning into becoming a more reliant person and finding the simple pleasures in the small things.
What are your creature comforts that will be hard to live without? We all have them, and being aware of what they are and having solutions for alternatives will make the transition to becoming self reliant that much easier!
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