More Thinking

I have had some resistance to the living-in-my-car idea, as expected.  The opposition came from more than one direction, and I couldn't fully justify the meager savings over the inconvenience (and that inevitable dank smell that would penetrate all the fabric in the vehicle).

So this weekend we tossed around the idea of a recreational vehicle.  At this time, however, it wouldn't necessarily be the best move to drop $3-$5K on a crappy 10-or-more-year-old travel trailer and then find a park to put it in.  Plus the work needed on our pickup just to make it up to Atlanta could double that figure.  Chuck the truck isn't so well these days.  We thought we might could use it in the future as we like to travel, but outside of a park where I'd live in it, we don't have the storage space for it.  And would we really use it?  I'm only guessing that most of the people selling on Craigslist thought the same thing and now they're just trying to put it off on someone else.

So yet another thought experiment has dawned on me.  It's another extreme, but a more justifiable and permanent idea nonetheless.  We (my lovely wife and I) have decided we wouldn't mind living in North Georgia, as long as we can have what we want.  And what we want starts with land.  We need space to put all of our shit.  My projects, our house, my shop, farm animals, and nothing.  I think the nothing part is important.  We need a buffer of nothing to surround our place and give us some peace.

On with my mental exercise: I want to think about what I would need to start with, on a bare piece of land, to begin to live on it.  I'm talking about modern times, folks - I'm not roughing it in a tent.  What needs to go in first, before I build a small cabin?  What are the minimums for living?

I have thought a little bit about it and the first two things are whammies on the budget.  After the land purchase, the first two items on the agenda are water and sewage - a well and a septic tank.  I don't have exact figures on what those things cost, but they must be in the several thousand dollar range, each.  And now that I think about it, it will take electricity to run the well pump.  So I might have to look for land with an existing well.

Anyway, with those minimums in place, I could begin to build a small house and finish it to live in temporarily until we could get the main house built.  My dad did this very thing.  To combat theft, I would first build a shed to keep my tools and equipment in, and begin construction on the cabin.

Perhaps I will write more on this later as it seems like a good idea right now.