thank you okay hey everyone
nice to be here with you all can you hear me in the back loud enough okay cool
well uh thank you for all thank you all for taking the time to come here today you've already
given me a gift of being present i've had a hectic day and actually a hectic couple
months and uh being here with all of you has uh brought me back to uh to presence which
is a very important part of simple living hello so um i'm yeah grateful for you all being
here and excited to spend some time together um i'm actually gonna talk for about a half hour
and then they'll be about a half hour or longer for questions um i have given quite a few talks
but i have to say i'm a little bit rusty you know with kovid there hasn't been a lot of gatherings
so i'm really excited to take the time to hear the questions that you have today in uh your quest
to simplify your life your quest to live more sustainably uh your quest to you know be on a
mission uh for a better society and a better earth am i still talking loud enough for the
back is it a little quiet yeah okay i'll try to talk a little bit louder then
so today's talk is uh simplifying your life and that's the uh the focus is of today is one
to provide some inspiration and two to provide some insight and some information on how you can
actually downsize your life simplify your life in order to live the life
that you're in the pursuit of so in the instagram post how many of you
saw this from the instagram on sans market cool so some of you may have seen um in the
post that said i i own just 44 possessions all that fit into this backpack so actually at
this moment it's not 44 processions for one year everything that i owned did fit in this
backpack until i moved to saint petersburg about three months ago and now i have more stuff
i'm living uh in a small community of people um so fortunately i don't have
to own much because we're able to have things that we share as a community but
indeed i i have more than what fits into this backpack as much as i would love to still have
just 44 possessions uh not the case at the moment but i wanted to start by sharing
my story of simplifying my life and share the place that i came from and where i
got to some people would look at this situation and when i say you know 44 possessions that is
everything every pair of socks every pair of underwear every card that i would have in
a wallet if i had a wallet which i don't every form of identification everything in
that 44 possessions so some people would look at that and i think what a lot of people
do is they feel overwhelmed they would say well that's not attainable for me i have three kids
and i have a mortgage and i have a house or you know i'm i have student debt or i have a
you know a job or these sorts of things and so a lot of people would look at this and they would
just kind of end it there and say i can't do that and then just say then i can't do anything
but by my example being quite extreme the idea is that i act as a counterbalance to the
extreme society that we live in the only reason that i've had to go to this extreme is because the
reality of our society is that it is it is extreme in itself so the united states has five percent of
the world's population but we use about 25 of the world's resources so by definition that is extreme
um to us it feels to many of us it feels quite normal a lot of us have woken up and realized this
isn't normal at all actually but for most of us even myself it still feels quite normal because
what normal is is it's experiencing the same thing day after day week after week year after year
when you experience the same thing over and over no matter how abnormal it is it can start to
feel normal and being around potentially hundreds of millions of people that are living out that
norm as well it makes it feel even more normal but the only reason that what i'm doing seems so
extreme is because we actually live in an extreme time on this earth and particularly in one of the
most extreme societies on earth in this extreme time so my hopes is that by being here today that
you don't necessarily focus on the extremeness of just having 44 possessions but instead it's a time
to self-reflect and to look at yourself you know i serve as a vessel to create self-reflection but
that's where it ends then it comes down to you and so the question is what life do you want to be
living and what can you do in order to pursue that and my focus is uh living in a way that is
beneficial to the earth to our communities and to ourselves and simple living is uh is a big part
of that so to give you an idea of where i came from to get to this point um if we rewind about 10
years to 2011 at that time i was very focused on material possessions on financial wealth i was
striving for the american dream i'm 34 years old now i grew up in northern wisconsin in a
very rural town where everybody kind of was pretty well the same and i was actually i always
felt a little different i was one of only three jewish families up there in a completely christian
catholic area none of my family was from up there we were the only few greenfields my
mom was a hippie my dad was a hippie you know we were different and so growing up in
a society where everything was kind of the same i i've i realized later in life that
what i was trying to do for the first couple decades of my life in many ways was
to be normal i watched the mainstream tv i listened to mainstream society and it created this
foundation of wanting to pursue the american dream largely because i thought that's how i would fit
into this society that i was a part of and so for my early teens into my early 20s for about a
decade that's where i was at i was looking at life through the lens of how will people think of me
by seeing this action the clothes that i'm wearing the items that i own what i say what i do and
i was very focused on fitting into that society in my teens i decided that my one of my goals
was that i wanted to become a millionaire by the time i was 30.
Because i saw that as
success in this society that we live in and so that was my pursuit through
my early 20s and then in about 2011 i was about 25 years old something happened and
i realized that i needed to really radically transform my life i i needed to change everything
about the way that i was living and for a lot of people they would assume okay well then you know
what was the aha moment or this some sort of like you know big moment of enlightenment possibly
a passing in the family or a near-death moment but for me all that happened was i started
to educate myself i started to watch a lot of documentaries and started to read books started to
spend time around people with different mindsets and i realized that so much of what i was living
was just one big illusion that was sold to me by mainstream government mainstream corporations
mainstream society and i realized that the life that i was living in many ways was a lie i learned
that almost every action that i took was causing destruction to the world from the food that i
was eating to the car that i was driving to the cheap junk i was buying at the store to
the trash that i was creating even the water that i was drinking in san diego was being
pumped across the desert running the colorado river dry and then half of it was evaporating into
the air in the desert before it even got to me so i even learned that the water i was using was
causing destruction and so at that point i could have felt you know total doom and gloom i could
have felt helpless and hopeless but instead i actually felt empowered because the books that i
was reading the documentaries that i was watching they didn't just tell me the problems
in the world which there are many but they also taught me the solutions i learned
that for every way we're doing things that's destructive that's unjust that's un inequitable
there's another way to do it that's regenerative that spreads justice and that is equitable there's
a way of doing it that's not just sustainable but that actually can improve the world around us
and so i became focused on that i became focused on not the problem but the solution i felt that
it's important to educate ourselves on the problem but not get stuck there because it's
easy to get stuck in that situation for me the focus was what can i do to
now to be a part of the solution and so simple living was a big part of that because
i realized that well if almost everything in mainstream society causes destruction then
maybe if i can remove myself from those things by simply needing less living a simpler life then i can decrease the number of ways that i'm
causing destruction that i'm causing injustice in the world and so it really came to
stripping back for me sustainable living and simple living it wasn't about having
more it wasn't about going out and finding more things or necessarily putting like big
solar panels on my roof that cost money my thought was how can i just strip back and this is
also for me about freedom because i learned that so much so many of the corporations that exist
by us being a part of that we are a part of the corruption and the destruction that they that
they embody in order to bring these products to us so for me it kept coming back
that it's about simplifying life and so what i did at that time is i made a
long list of the changes that i wanted to make and i made a goal that i would just make one
positive change at a time i had already learned that goal setting is important writing down your
goals is important verbalizing them and sharing them with other people so it keeps you accountable
and so that's what i decided to do i made a long list of the changes that i wanted to make and i
hung it up in my kitchen not just where i would see it every day but where anybody who entered the
house would see it every day and what i did is i taped a pen to a piece of string and taped that
to the wall next to that piece of paper and then my goal was just to check those things off those
those changes in my life day by day week by week and that's what i did my goal was to make at least
one positive change per week and i did that for about two years and so one positive change per
week for two years that's a hundred positive changes so imagine a hundred things you're doing
right now and then imagine two years from now changing those things that's quite the
revolution in your life and you can do that one step at a time so for me i didn't
feel overwhelmed because i decided that i was just going to tackle it one bit at
a time and so a lot of that came down to my living situation the house that i was
living in and the amount of stuff that i had because i learned that this dream of
the american life which is to accrue lots of possessions ultimately was tying
me down and preventing me from being able being able to live the life that i truly
was yearning for and so i realized that one of my full-time jobs that i was about to
embark on was unraveling the last couple decades of my life all that i had built i had seven or so
credit cards i had some debt i had a three-bedroom apartment that i had lots of stuff in i didn't
have a mortgage or or children at that time so i had much less to unravel than many people do
when they wake up but even still even as a single 25 year old guy i still had a big task ahead of me
to unravel all of these ties to the system because what i found is that the more money that i needed
the more bills that i had the more money i needed the harder it was to actually be
able to pursue what i really wanted which was a life that was in harmony with the
earth with other people and with other species and so i began the journey of downsizing in about
2011 and i just have to say up front it's work like if you're looking to simplify your life set
aside some time because it we live complex lives we are very tied into this globalized system where
everything that we do maybe not everything but most everything that we do has a local implication
and a global implication we are tied into this to the point where our lives are so complex that it's
hard to fathom how our actions the things we buy the services that we use the businesses that we
go to the food we eat there's people all over the world that their lives are impacted
every day because of each one of us here so it's it's complex and so i would just say
open that space because it's a lot of work and you're going to uncover things
that you're not going to be happy about and most of you probably already have but my
suggestion is to take it one step at a time so for me it was you know a lot of people
they look at where they want to get to and that's where their focus is but what i
recommend is setting goals that allow you to get to where you want to be because if your goal
is to live the absolute most simplest of lives but you're living in an apartment or a house with
three thousand dollars of the bills per month and two cars and all of this you're not gonna get
there overnight it it takes time and it takes work so for me what i did is i started with some of
the small things um i had for example a dream of existing without a car at some point but when
i first began this journey that was like a dream i was not able to attain you know existing
without a car at that point but one of the first steps that i made was i i bought a bicycle
and i hadn't done a whole lot of riding the longest ride i'd ever done was when i was in fifth
grade and i was you know that was 15 years prior so i was uh not by any means a cyclist so
i started out just instead of driving to the grocery store that was a mile away biking
there instead or you know just little by little i would start by doing a few miles starting to run
errands that were a few miles away eventually my uh i guess she wasn't my girlfriend but someone
that i was was dating at the time lived about seven miles away and there was a bridge and one
day i crossed that bridge over into pacific beach from ocean beach and that was a step forward and
then you know eventually did 30 miles in a day and so it was a gradual thing so some of the
you know the early changes that i made a big one was food i think in simple living food is the
center of of this food is the center of our lives it's the center of our social lives the way
we interact with others it's the center of our health and well-being it's the it's the
center of our existence without it we simply would not exist anymore so for me so
much of it was was food so a big thing was giving up the big box stores like walmart and
starting to go to the local farmers market i was fortunate to live next to a food co-op which
there's no food co-op in saint pete but there is rolling oats for example where you can buy foods
in bulk unpackaged i started to pay attention to the foods that i was putting in my body another
early thing was thinking about not just what i was putting in my body but what i was putting on
my body and that's something that's represented well here at sans market i realized that i
was just covering my body with toxic chemicals my shampoo my conditioner my face wash my toner
my deodorant or antiperspirant my body wash my listerine my toothpaste the list goes on in
the number of ways that i was covering my body in toxic chemicals all because some companies had
told me that that's what i needed to do to fit in and i started to think about it and i
thought okay humans have existed forever without deodorant and antiperspirant surely i can
exist today in 2011 2012 with without deodorant so that was about nine years ago and i haven't
put on deodorant since then and if any of us get a chance to hug you we'll you will see that
a human does not need deodorant to be a happy healthy contributing member of society so as far
as simplifying goes that was a big one thinking about my the way that i was eating and realizing
that i didn't need all these extravagant pre-made meals but i could eat simple ingredients and cook
healthy meals with those and the things that i was putting on my body well i realized that about
90 percent of them were completely unnecessary i was wearing old spice because there was a really
good multi-million dollar advertising budget that convinced me to wear old spice that's the only
reason i was i had old spice on and i realized i didn't i didn't need that anymore so for a lot
of it it was asking do i really actually need this that's a good foundational question when it comes
to simplifying life simply asking do i need this do i want this or what is influencing me
to make me feel as if i need it or want it and simply by asking that basic question before
purchasing something or accruing something you can really tame that need for consumerism right
back by asking that that very simple question and so that became a foundational question and
everything both in downsizing my life but also in interacting in what i was or was not going
to bring into my life because there's two big elements of simplifying and downsizing there's
dealing with all the stuff you already have and getting rid of that and then keeping all
the stuff that's trying to force its way into your home and into your life at bay so there's
two you know there's two big elements there so after about one year uh
well yeah to stay within that what i decided is that i was going to remove my
life of all the things that did not serve my best interest and serve the mission that i decided that
i was going to pursue and so i had at the time the biggest bedroom in the three bedroom apartment and
a closet full of stuff and a balcony or a patio so i had to deal with all the stuff that i had and
so i'd like to share some of the strategies that i used in order to get rid of those things that
i think could be useful for you as well so the first you've all probably heard of
marie kondo uh the question she asks about possessive possessions is does this
spark joy and the question that i learned to ask myself prior to ever to prior to
having heard of the wonderful woman was does this bring value to my life so what i
decided to do was i was i had to go through every possession in my house and ask myself does this
bring value to my life so when i say that it's work it's real work you know imagine everything
that you have right now and having to go through a lot of those individually and ask those questions
so there were a few main questions i would ask does this bring value to my life or on the
other hand does it actually take away value from my life does this actually take away time
and freedom to be able to pursue what i want does this cost me money to own so is this
something that forces me to stay within the rat race by owning it there's some things
that you own that actually help you to live in a self-sufficient or community sufficient
manner where it allows you to live simply there's other things that you own that have
a bill attached to them or have a constant maintenance attached to them that actually keep
you stuck in the trap so for example my iphone which back then i think it was probably like an
iphone 6.
Well i was updating that thing all the time you know the software it was trapping me into
this constant updating of apps and software and then there's the constant updating of the devices
themselves which means that device in a way it's an asset but in a way the way they designed it
it's a guarantee that you're going to be spending a couple hundred dollars for a lot of people every
year so that question of is this something that um costs me money and time or is
it something that creates freedom and saves me money in having it and then
the other big question that i like to ask is when was the last time that i used this and so
what i would do is i would love to say it's just one question that would be simpler but it was
more like three questions and it wasn't always that i needed three questions because for a lot of
them i could just look at it and say i don't need that or i could look at it and say i absolutely
want that without having to ask those questions but i would look at the item and i would say does
this bring me value or does it take away is this costing me money and keeping me in the rat race or
helping me to be out of it and then when was the last time that i used it and as far as the last
time that i used it the strategy that i would use and that i recommend is for me it would be have
i used this in the last six months to 12 months and if i hadn't used it then the general answer
would be that i would get rid of that and so you have two ways of going about this you have
going diving in deep and just immersing in it for you know a full-on weekend a full-on week a
full-on month depending on your situation and just going through everything and and downsizing that's
an option for some people who have the free time uh right now and then the other option
is to do it a little bit at a time i do recommend if you are really trying to
simplify to take the time to do some immersive sessions of it where you can really get into the
flow of it if you do just a half hour or an hour at a time it can be difficult to get into
the flow that is the release because often it takes a little bit of energy and work to get
into the relief the stage of releasing each time so if you can start by setting aside an entire
weekend if you're really striving to simplify and downsize that is something that that i would
recommend but if all you have time for is a little bit of time here and a little bit of time there
every bit is more meaningful than doing nothing so what i did is i went through everything
in the house and i asked those questions and i got my life possessions down by
about half so the average american owns there is no definitive statistic on it but
one of the ideas is about 30 000 possessions it's a lot of stuff that most of us own so it
took me quite a bit of work and i got my stuff cut by about half and then what i did
for the first couple years is i would do a session like that every six months and i
would ask those same questions and this gave me the opportunity because i'd remember six
months ago those same possessions and okay now that one possession that i i held on to because
i thought i'd use it in the next six months well i didn't now it's been a year or 18 months
since i used it now i can release that one and so for a for a period of a couple years that's what
i did is went through and i did these large purges and then i did smaller ones in between in order
to get rid of the items that i didn't need so there are many ways to do that sans market is a zero-waste store so obviously
our recommendation is not to rent a dumpster and fill it up with all of your stuff to put in the landfill so there's a lot of
recommendations i have as far as downsizing how to downsize that that come before the landfill one of
the simplest things to do is share the things that you have with other people and i think one thing
that i want to mention before getting into that this is a very important foundational aspect
of simple living you know a lot of people look at the life that i'm living and they think wow he
goes without so many things like so much sacrifice you know how does it it must be
difficult to exist without all of those things and i'm sure that's that's
a mindset that many people here tonight might have as well but what's so important to
remember about simplifying and downsizing is it's not about getting rid of it's about
making space to have the things that you want so so many of the things we have actually are
distractions from being able to live the lives that we really want our stuff gets in the way
the time that it takes to clean our house when we have so much clutter in it the time it takes
to organize it the bills that are involved in it the uh the maintenance that is involved with it
it's an incredible amount of time and energy that goes into into this stuff and so what's really
important to realize and to remember is it's not just about it's not it's really
not about what you're giving up it's about what you're making space for so a lot
of people feel like okay they're you're creating a void there you know there's possibly going to be
a hole in your heart or in your spirit because you don't have all of this stuff anymore but the
reality is what it is it's it's an immersion in making the space to be able to pursue what it
is that you want to be pursuing whether that's crafts or hobbies or whether it's spending time
with your loved ones your partner your friends your family um whether it's pursuing skills
hobbies passions that's really what this is about wow i've been talking for 30 minutes
already okay it's a good thing we left an hour okay so as far as some of the some of
the strategies for actually getting rid of stuff there's quite a few ways to do that what
i some of the things that i recommend are looking at these items and well i'll get to
the sentimental aspect of it the first thing is start with what's easy don't start with your most
sentimental possessions and try to get rid of those start with what is going to be really
easy decluttering the stuff you don't need i mean maybe you're saving yogurt containers and
you're never going to use those and you have like 60 yogurt containers get rid of those first unless
yogurt containers are actually your attachment then deal with those later but start with the
things that are easy start with the low-hanging fruit and that's the same recommendation i have
with with sustainable living and you really can't separate simple living sustainable living
it it's all you know deeply connected but my recommendation is always to start with what's
easy start with what you're excited about if if you if you feel like organizing the garage
is your worst nightmare but you feel like your bedroom is something you'd be super excited about
working on then start there so start with both what would be easy and start with what you're most
excited about and there's a strategy behind that the strategy is that creates momentum so
action creates more action and so if you can start with the things that are going to
get you into a flow the things that are harder will actually become easier and to give you a
little reference with my journey and going back to the idea of not having a car at the beginning
again that idea was largely unfathomable not just because of that's how you get around it's also
ego owning a car you know for so many of us our car is so much of our our image and where i grew
up if you didn't have a car and you were an adult it was kind of like what's wrong with this
person like that was the idea that we had in northern wisconsin like why wouldn't
you have a car and to see an adult man riding a bicycle not in like the speedo clothes
but in you know clothes like we're wearing the assumption would be oh that person must have
gotten a dui and that's why they're riding a bike as an adult otherwise they'd be driving a
car so there's the social stigma around all of it so at the beginning i i wasn't i wasn't
ready to deal with that social stigma i hadn't gotten to the idea that i could
exist without a car logistically or egotistically and so that took a year and a half
about a year and a half but after i rode my bike a little more and i rode my bike a little bit
more eventually i got rid of my car and it's been i think about seven years that i have
existed existed without a car so i can say whether it's florida or wisconsin or southern
california as many people know it is indeed possible to exist and be a happy healthy
contributing member of society without that and i think that's one of the really important
things also to address is that so much of this that you'll find is that it's not necessarily
the item itself that you're trying to get rid of or the way in which you're trying to simplify
and downsize it is the way that it is perceived by society so so much of our our persona
so much of our possessions our financial situation is based on social stigmas and how
we will be perceived by society and so more so than the act of actually getting rid of something
it's the act of having the self-confidence and strength to say it doesn't matter what people
think about me based on material possessions and coming to a place of having the self-worth
that what matters what people think is based on your actions who you are what you
say and what you're doing for the earth and so what i started to do was rather than asking how do my material possessions and my
financial status reflect upon myself from society i would ask myself when i was going to purchase something
when i was going to make a change when i was having interactions with society i
would say is this beneficial to the earth is it beneficial to my community and is
it beneficial to myself not how will it be perceived and what people what will people think
about me and that is what set me free more than anything that i have done because you know one
way to think about it is when i was younger and you know high school and university i would
spend up to an hour per day um making my hair making my clothes my my my outward
appearance i would spend a good hour per day designing life based on what other people would
think and if you think about one hour per day it doesn't really seem like a lot but when you
actually do the math you realize one hour per day is three entire years of your life and if you take
into account the amount of time you're actually sleeping it's actually five years of your waking
life if you just spend one hour per day wondering what people are going to think and acting based
on that and so when i decided i'm just gonna be done with that and instead again ask is this
beneficial to the earth my community and myself that's what set me free i mean it gave
me five extra years of existence in a way but it also changed my entire lens of the way
that i perceived my interactions with society and freed me up because when you think about it
if the stuff that you own and the things you do are really based on the way people perceive
you then in a way you're living sort of a lie because it's not really who you are
you're creating this thing that you're not actually that you aren't actually and so
there's a saying that i heard i think it was possibly mahatma gandhi and it's uh when your
actions and your words and your beliefs are in alignment something's effective that's freedom
i don't remember but we'll say that's what it is to me that is freedom that's what i that's what i
consider flow when you can align your actions and your belief system and your thoughts into one that
allows you to get into a flow where all of these like details of how to simplify your life kind
of fall by the wayside because you are in a flow of being in an alignment with your your existence
so and another part about it is that you'll see that a lot of things happen when you start to
simplify your life that you never thought about or realized or expected and you see that things
are really deeply connected so for example getting rid of my car that was kind of one of the you know
big pinnacle things for me was not owning a car because of the insurance the registration the
maintenance the the time that i would spend in there angry like yelling at traffic in in so many
ways it was toxic for me and toxic for the earth but there was one thing i never thought about
once i started to ride my bicycle i realized i didn't have a trunk anymore and by not having
a trunk it meant i didn't have a whole bunch of space to put stuff at the store if i went to the
store i could only carry what fit onto my bicycle and that was you start to see as you start to
make these changes and you you make another one and you make another one it all starts to
come together and all the things that seemed disconnected all you start to see are
actually quite connected and so that was one of the biggest things with getting rid of my
car is that it forced me to buy a lot less stuff and it made it easier to live more simply because
well i couldn't drive i couldn't go somewhere that was 30 miles to buy something that i didn't
really need and the same with not having a credit card i got rid of my last credit card i think
in 2015 and that meant not being able to just buy what i needed at any moment because instead
what it meant is i'd have to ask a friend hey can you buy this and i'll pay you cash and it
took effort and so one of the other important parts about simple living is the things that you
don't want to do make them hard and the things you do want to do make them easy if you turn
the things you don't want to do into a burden it will become much easier to not do it and
if the things that you really want to do you design your life so that it is designed in a way
where those things naturally flow and are easier you will do those things more likely so as
far as some of the ways to get rid of things you can make it fun one way to do that is to do
it with friends it can be lonely and it can be emotional so to have a support and do this as
a team with other people whether it's family that's living in the same house or roommates or
you have a friend that's on the same journey and you take time take uh take turns going to each
other's apartment or home and doing it so i do recommend when you have that if you feel that
doing it uh with with a partner with friends some of the ways to get rid of things my first
thing was selling a lot of items because when you sell something that you don't need that means if
you end up needing it you can you can buy it again so one way to do that is to try as much as
possible to buy used items rather than new items because then you buy a shelf for 40 bucks
you decide you don't need it you sell it for 40 bucks and then if you need a shelf again you buy
another one for 40 bucks you haven't lost money in doing so so selling things is one way to get rid
of things my recommendation if you're trying to downsize your life pretty quickly is don't worry
about selling the things that are 50 cents in a dollar selling the higher dollar items that might
allow you the funds in order to get things that you might want uh to pursue your passions um so
for example i sold like my stand-up paddleboard or uh i don't remember it's been quite a while but
things that i could actually get get some money more for and it was worth my time you can always
donate some things to thrift stores one thing to keep in mind with that is that a lot of stuff
we donate to thrift stores actually gets thrown in the dumpster so do be conscious of that some
thrift stores do a much better job than others also some thrift stores just dump it on other
countries that don't actually need the stuff clothing for example a lot of a lot of
countries have the clothing dumped on them in uh the parts of the caribbean in caribbean and
parts of africa southeast asia and what happens is it destroys their local clothing economy
because now they got this cheap fast fashion that's been dumped there and then people don't
need to support the local businesses so i just like to give that disclaimer with thrift stores is
do a little research and find thrift stores that are actually valuing the items um you can have uh
clothing exchanges with friends one thing that i really enjoyed was basically like a giveaway party
so everything that i didn't want that wasn't junk i i made it easily accessible in my apartment and
then i had a party for all my friends where they could come take the things beautiful because it
was going to a good home it saved me a lot of work because they came and got the stuff and i was able
to feel the value spreading to in to my friends um and then another thing on that
note is well after like trying trying to find a home for things and use things
is important but what's also important is to not become so overwhelmed trying to make sure
everything has a home to the point where it makes it too much to be able to deal with the stuff
so be reasonable with yourself and so i think one thing to remember is that in downsizing you're
probably going to have to create some garbage and i know we're at a zero waste store so that
may come as a shock to you i practice a lot of zero waste in my own lifestyle but something
that i've come to realize is that if you've got a pile of garbage in your house it doesn't
make too much difference whether that pile of garbage is in your closet or it's in the
landfill eventually that pile of garbage is going back to the earth whether you hold
on to it for the next 60 years or not so i think like i recommend doing you know doing a
good job to try to find new homes and distribute items but not like holding yourself so tight
to the idea of creating absolutely no garbage some things some things are garbage i mean
that's the reality about it is that a lot of the stuff that we've gotten suckered into
buying is cheap it was designed for the dump planned obsolescence was built into it and a lot
of stuff is broken and needs to be removed from our lives in order to be able to move on to the
lives that we desire so in my opinion the landfill or some other creative means not piling i
wouldn't yeah i think the landfill i don't you're not going to be able to just dig
a hole in your backyard and build it and fill it in there but uh the landfill is is i think
a realistic part of your path of downsizing and simplifying your life um but as much as
possible prior to that composting paper cardboard any items that you have that are
compostable i'd recommend composting first um recycling and then lastly the landfill um
but yeah basically don't fool yourself that by holding on to all those plastic forks in your
drawer for the next 30 years that you haven't created garbage and waste their garbage one day
they're going to the landfill or back to nature whether you like it or not even if you
make beautiful art from those plastic forks eventually that beautiful art is gonna get
picked up by a hurricane and end up in our ocean or to the landfill prior to that uh in fact i feel
like it's probably safer in the landfill than in florida that might flood in 30 years your forks
may be more likely to go to the ocean that way so anyway i do recommend not
being too hard on yourself we have all well not all of us but most of us
have bought into a lot of this american dream many of us have woken up to the fact that
this american dream is the world's nightmare we didn't create it most of us here we don't
hold the weight of the whole world's we don't hold the weight of the world on our shoulders uh
so just keep that in mind you know we we are in the situation that we're in and all we can do is
move forward so my hopes is that um tonight has has been and will continue to serve as a chance
for self-reflection so not looking at again this but instead embracing that you are you and you can
only be you you are where you are and you can only be where you are right now and you are in the time
that you are in and that's the only time that you can be in you can't be in your two year from now
fully simplified and downsized life you can get there but you have to take the steps in order
to get there and those steps start right here in your body as you in this time in this place
um so just keep that in mind and be dedicated be hard on yourself some it's
going to be uncomfortable like get uncomfortable it's if you're not getting
uncomfortable you're not going to get to the place of of simplicity and sustainability
and a place of justice and and equity you're not going to get there without being
hard on yourself but also remember we have been thrown into a tumultuous difficult
time and we also need to embrace that and you know love ourselves and and
embrace the time that that we exist in so that's how to downsize and simplify your life so i'd love to hear the questions that you have
and no question is is off the table finances romance personal hygiene here's the
thing about simple living it's everything everything in our lives is simple living as
sustainable living so this is not permission to ask everybody those questions there's a lot of
people who don't want to be asked those questions but this is permission to ask me any of those
questions i highly doubt you can come up with a question that hasn't been asked before but if you
do i would love that that would be fun um and one and so yeah any questions that you have um don't
be shy i will repeat the question after you've asked it so everybody can hear it and before we do
that i just want to say uh thanks so much to sans market and toledo's jungle for putting this
on i would definitely love to do this again it's a wonderful spot and um there's a toilet
paper plant for everyone the genus and species is plecontas barbados oh the legs so this this plant is called uh
placarantes barbados or blue spur flower and if any of you watched my videos from orlando
you will know that i wiped my butt with this this is also called the toilet paper plant
it's a wonderful plant it produces a beautiful blue flower that brings in hummingbirds it's in
the mint family it has a wonderful minty smell it's soft as can be when you come up here and
take a plant you'll see it it's better than i'm not going to use any name brands and
give them any form of endorsement but it's it's really better than any toilet
paper you can buy at the store when you pluck off a leaf it stays both strong
and soft for an entire week literally you could take them camping or you can use them at home
in your compost toilet and for all of you wet wipe lovers which i'm sure there's some in
the room if you have on a dewy morning the dew gets stuck on all these fine hairs and
actually creates a natural wet wipe as well and i'm oh needs very little water needs
very little nutrients you plant one of these one of these in a year's time is a house
supply of toilet paper basically forever so it's it's truly a wonderful plant wherever
you go in the world there is a toilet paper plant here uh the the the best one that i know of
is plecontes barbados or blue spur flower or the toilet paper plant if you want to know
more about this or 10 other ways to wipe your butt for free you can go to rob greenfield.org toilet
paper and all the information you need is is there okay so that was a slight segue i feel but uh
who's got the first question the question was what is it about not wearing shoes why
don't you have shoes on um so for me uh i could uh sum that up in the simplest
way by saying i just don't need them i realize that uh these shoe companies that tell
us that every 500 miles you need a new pair and it costs 120 bucks and you need us simply to exist i
thought about it and same thing with the deodorant what did humans do before shoes we've only had
them for what few hundred to a thousand years and humans have existed for ten thousand or
a few tens of thousands of years so i just it was simply about asking that question of do i
need these and the question that i came to was must not because we existed before them but that
really brought me to a whole lot more than that i think that being barefoot is at the heart of
simple living a couple things when you don't have shoes they don't want you in the mall or the
bars they don't want you in all the places that i don't want to go so it forces me to stay away from
those places it slows me down i truly cannot run as fast barefoot as i could if i was wearing shoes
but what that means is that i actually have less injuries by being barefoot because being
barefoot forces me into a more natural pace that my body is designed for having shoes
i believe often gives a false sense of security you're able to just pound those feet and
those knees and those hips into the ground because of the shocks but we know
that in time that harms the body tennis and basketball and running on track
our shoes make it appear that we can do these things but the level of hip replacements
that we have in our society shows that really that's not what the body is designed for
how it's designed to do being barefoot forces me to live within the mean the natural means of
my body that will hopefully allow me to live healthfully for the decades to come so really it's
it's a form of natural health care it's a form of simple living it's also sustainable living i
don't have to buy new shoes made of junk every for some you know every couple months
or every year or even couple years um it's also freedom from finances too the
amount we spend on shoes in our lifetime well i've cut that by you
know thousands of dollars so there's so many reasons but ultimately to me
it's and i it's that i'm simply allowing the body to work as it was designed i believe that the
body knows better than nike i believe that the evolution of the human body over tens of thousands
of years knows a lot better than some people behind the computers and in the factories that
also have the desire to make a bunch of money so the question was when i was in the
backpack stage and i would go to the farmer's market how would i cook things
um so i do carry a pot uh it is one of my favorite and most purposeful of all possessions and one thing i would say a tip to keep in mind
with possessions is have them be multi-purposed the more functions one possession can serve the
less possessions that you need so this is indeed my pot i've had this possession for maybe five
years so i can cook with this if i'm camping sleeping outside or if i'm at somebody's house
it's my um to-go container if i'm at a restaurant it's my um to like taking meals with me on the go
um i've used it for uh a shovel you know scooping sand i peed in it quite a few times like by my
bedside when i didn't feel like getting out of bed this thing's you know has a lot of purposes um
so uh a bit of a sidetrack but that is something that i absolutely recommend is looking at your
possessions and focusing on possessions that have many functions and purposes in your
life so that they're utilized quite a bit um so my life is is actually different quite a
bit from year to year depending on the project that i'm doing when i did my month of living like
the average american and wearing all my trash i was eating what the average american eats
i was eating at mcdonald's and pizza and shopping out for example when i'm biking
across the united states on my bicycle then i'm camping and i'm maybe cooking over the fire or
staying with other people and cooking with them i've lived in a tiny house twice that was easy
you know for shopping at the farmer's market because i just bring it back to my house but
often when i'm traveling uh i think that's one you know important thing is is it does
require some adaptability because things are constantly changing as much as i would love
to have one way of doing things at all times i don't because i live in different scenarios i
live in different climates from time to time i stay with people i travel and stay with
people quite a bit but as far as um grocery shopping without a car or grocery shopping
or going to the farmers market without a car uh a bicycle with panniers which uh panniers
are bicycle bags pena is a french word i believe so they're bags that hook onto a bike rack
on your bicycle that to me is such a pinnacle of living simply is with your bicycle having a
bike rack on the back and having bike bags or simply um melt crates as well but i really like
to have bike bags and then even i've lived with uh a trailer too for being able
to carry large items as well so what he said is that you you know saying
i said that you have to get uncomfortable in order to simplify your life and basically
how to go about getting uncomfortable and introducing uncomfortability to your life well i'm definitely the guy to ask for that because
i have introduced a lot of comfortability to my life now with that being said i want to
acknowledge that i live a very comfortable western privileged life you know i live in
the united states i fit in with the status quo um i've been generally had what i needed in life
you know i i have a lot of privileges and so the fact that i'm able to enter
a state of uncomfortability in by choice is you know is very much a
privilege and i just want to acknowledge that and i think that is a very much an important
thing for for most of us to acknowledge um as far as how to introduce uncomfort into
your life in order to eventually get to a place of comfort because the idea isn't to
live uncomfortably for the rest of your life the idea is to create systems and get into a flow
where what used to make you uncomfortable becomes your state of comfort so i'm not uncomfortable
with most of these things that other people feel as radical because i have made them my
state of comfort in fact going to the store makes me uncomfortable now consumerism affluence having so much while others
have so little that is now what makes me you know very uncomfortable so as far as making
yourself uncomfortable you can do that simply by doing the things like getting rid of your car
and only having a bicycle or trying to bike more and drive your car less or getting rid of
stuff but and that is a practice in becoming uncomfortable but what i'd actually recommend
is exercises and uncomfort and that's something that i have done a lot of that i didn't
realize when i started would be so helpful in simplifying and downsizing and living more
sustainably because again all this comes down to social stigmas and social norms so for example one
of the exercises that i did was that for one week i could only eat with my hands no utensils at all
forks spoons knives or anything whether i was at my house whether i was in public whether
i was at a party for one week i had to eat no matter what it was with my hands in public
that made me uncomfortable but it was some it was a practice that i could take in practicing
getting outside of my comfort zone leaving the phone for leaving the house for 24 hours without
your phone that was very uncomfortable to me 2000 a thanksgiving day i believe it was i left my
phone at home for the first time since really having a phone and that was uncomfortable i
called my friends and said i'm coming over you won't be able to get in touch with me hopefully
i make it i'll be there in 45 minutes hopefully that was uncomfortable but it was one of the
most blissful days of the year as well being free of that um so that exercise of 24 hours with
no phone was uncomfortable but that was something that ultimately led to the point where i now
have existed for seven years without a cell phone um covering myself in trash and walking around new
york city for a month boy was that uncomfortable and the purpose wasn't of that wasn't really to
get outside of my comfort zone but that worked um so doing things that set yourself apart in society
that make you uncomfortable that are within your range maybe it's um singing or dancing in public
is something you can do to get uncomfortable maybe it's wearing your clothes inside out
for a day um you know doing any of these things that get you uncomfortable just these these
practices of being uncomfortable are surprisingly a wonderful strategy that will allow you
to make these changes in a more fluent way so yeah challenge yourself to find
ways to make yourself uncomfortable there's practical things too like having a five
gallon jug and that's all your water for a day it's a way to learn about how much water
you use it makes yourself uncomfortable i biked across the united states um trying
to and i wouldn't use any water from a faucet boy did i like learn to respect the faucet after
that so finding these ways to intentionally make yourself uncomfortable that are in controlled
experiments and environments can be a you know a very helpful way to do that so what
was the hardest possession for me to let go of i would say actually my cell phone was the
hardest it was a dream okay i can't say it was the hardest there were a lot of hard things
but it was definitely one of the hardest i was uh sitting with my roommate greg radekone and he had
a flip phone this was in 2012 and he had the old school flip phone and i had the iphone and i was
just like man how do you exist with a flip phone and i was just oh how i would love to do that
but how i just could not possibly ever see that and then getting past that to the
point of not having a cell phone at all that was extremely difficult that was one of the
last i think that took me till 2014 or 2015 about three or four years after i started downsizing
and getting rid of that was was was big but that was one of the most beneficial
things because right here you're the only people that i can reach or
that can reach me in this time in this moment we're it and that's the beauty of not having a
cell phone it forces presence in a world that makes it so hard to be present and the
cell phone is one of the greatest tools in preventing deep presence so that was definitely
one of the hardest things and what i did the exercise that i did to eventually get rid of it is
i put it in the drawer i turned it off and i put it into a drawer just for one month pretending
for one month that i didn't have a cell phone and that month went really well so then i got
rid of it so i practiced that you know first as far as the hardest project that i've done
there's really no project that's been the hardest they've all been difficult in their own
way some physical some mental some emotion you know emotional so they've really all been they've
all had their own difficulties and they've all occurred at different times in my life when
i was more comfortable or less comfortable so yeah okay so the question was how effective
is the saint petersburg recycling program this is a question that i've had that
i've been trying to research for the last couple of months i've had the question
of should i recycle plastic or is it more resource efficient just to throw it
in the garbage if you're washing it and drying it and possibly using soap and all of
that and all your time and putting the recycle bin and then they're gonna end up
throwing it away or burning it like i don't want to do that so i've actually had the
question of is it better to is it actually more environmentally friendly to throw it away than
to recycle it what i can say for certain is that nationwide we throw away a
staggering amount of our recycling and i'm confident that saint pete falls into that
as well i could imagine saint pete being better than some parts of the united states but
still there's an incredible amount of there's a lot of corruption in our both
recycling and trash industries still today they were formerly run by mafias and there's
still an incredible amount of corruption in them so i can't say how effective they are what i can
say for sure is that the goal is always to reduce recycling in the first place by
finding a way to purchase things that don't come in packaging in the first place
and then i think composting paper and cardboard as much as possible is better
than putting it in the recycle bin i would say metal and paper and glass are
generally the things that i recycled the most plastic is really kind of a joke to think that
it's recycled at best it's down cycled which means it's not turned into the same thing it's turned
into something of lower quality that is eventually in the next or the next stage going to the
landfill maybe one last question if anyone has one more question yeah she said in my journey
of simplifying my life living a simpler life have i reached the height of simple living or is
there still more i want to do i would say i got i'm not at the height because i've said
i've actually gone a little backwards compared to where i was at one point what's important
to keep in mind is that once you've gotten to sort of the destination you have to maintain
that destination and that is not easy because we live in a society that is constantly trying
to pull you back in and it takes a lot of energy and dedication and self-worth and commitment
to stay at the point of sustainable living of simple living of more just living once you get
there i have an incredible number of friends who got to some level and they're back in
the corporate america so i will say that i i struggle to maintain the way that i look
at it is that under our current system you will generally be going against the grain
of society day in and day out if you are trying to live in a manner that's beneficial to
earth community and self so once you get there and at any point it's about maintaining
it i would actually say right now i am ready to get back into some simplification
i have just spent uh three months i've uh been running an internship i did a work exchange for
a three-bedroom house and there's been nine of us living in the house together as a as a
team working on local projects and um it has been a challenge for me living with so
many people for me a lot of simple living is alone time and i haven't had nearly as much of
that and that program ends april 9th and so i'm feeling uh time soon of of being able to get
back to focusing on simplicity being more inward so i've definitely accomplished a lot of
what i'm trying to accomplish in sustainable and simple living but there's still more much
still work to be done i can say that you you get to a point where you've done you can
have accomplished a lot of what you want and and it's a great it's a great space to be and like
they say it's not about the destination it's about the journey but you can get to the destination
of living the life that you really want to live you can you can get there and then maintaining it
is is definitely the key so um so on that note um i do i am going gonna be hosting a lot of classes
and workshops i live in old southeast neighborhood about three or four miles from here so two things
i have a facebook group where i post things that's just called sustainability in florida
if you want to join that facebook group and then i also just have a simple email
list for people that want to know about our classes and volunteer events and workshops so
what i'll do is i'll put a piece of paper up here with a pen and you can write your email on
there and this is chica and jamison back here sheikh and jamison and i work together and
live together and so if you want to connect uh connect with them and chica will will
you put the paper up here yeah all right well i love you all very much i'm so excited
to be here in saint pete and to see you all more i hope to see you all more and uh thank
you to again to lida's jungle and to sans market for putting this on and let's definitely
do it again on another topic this summer