Could you be a nomadic family and live on the road full time?
Mariza and Jorje are planning to, or are currently, heading out on the road to be a nomadic family. Anyone else?
I’m fascinated by the nomadic family and have been following a few that I thought I would introduce you too. All of them have gone through a purge phase to reduce their possessions for traveling. And all of them are showing their children that they value experiences and time with them, over owning things.
Britt Reins recently left on a one year RV adventure with her husband and two children ages 6 and 11. One of her posts that really hit home for me was how they made the dream happen titled, Do What you Love: Where to get the Money. If you want it to happen, you will find a way. Britt goes into more details here about how they are making it work financially, why they’re hitting the road and what they’re end game plan is.
Heather Greenwood Davis is a globetrotting mama. This Canadian travel writer is also embarking on a year-long travel adventure with her husband and two sons. I’m keeping tabs on Heather’s blog for more details about what they’re doing with their house and how they downsized possessions. She’s told me that they are renting their home out partially furnished for the year. Another short term nomadic family to inspire you!
Becoming a Nomadic Family to reduce living costs.
The Toast family of six were spurred onto the road in the face of impending lay offs.What do you do when you know you’re going to get laid-off from your cushy job at some point? Well, if you’re us, you sell your real estate, rent instead, save your money, sell off 95 percent of your possessions, and then move into an RV when the ball finally drops. Melanie has lots of tips on her blog about living in an RV, being a nomadic family, and how she started an online business. Plus this outstanding letters to her 17-year old niece.
Another family of six are traveling the world and detailing their adventures on athomeintheworld.com. I’ve had a few email exchanges with the matriarch of the family and will be interviewing her about what they took with them on their journey. These international travelers have visited Italy, France, Morocco, Spain and Turkey since departing Canada in the fall of 2010. Read all the details why they worked and planned to leave all that was familiar for long term travel.
Courtney Baker has appeared here before with her excellent toybox tips. This mother, wife, photographer and writer is on a year long RV trip with her husband and young daughter (and they’re now expecting baby#2!). Prior to this adventure, the Baker family spent a year working and traveling through Australia, New Zealand and Thailand.
Soon to join the ranks: Alison Gresik. They’re now actively working to sell their home and take the leap as a nomadic family.
Any other nomad/traveling families you can tell us about? Is anyone else planning a long adventure away from home?
hi minimalist mom. i already love just by reading the title of your blog and the little i’ve gleaned so far. we’re currently in the philippines in month 28 of family world travels. we are the nomadic family and love, love, love reading how you highlight these great blogs as travel and minimalism inspiration. i do hope you get the chance to check out our blog and see if it inspires you as well. wonderful work you are doing here. thank you for sharing gabi
My husband and I sold our stuff (house still for sale) and hit the road fulltime two months after our third child was born. We started planning this just before we learned we were pregnant and decided not to let that stop us! Now he’s 9 months and his sisters are 2 and 7. My husband plays music and I sell baby carriers online and we travel in a 22′ motorhome that runs on vegetable oil which we bought from another nomadic family over at theorganicsister.com
Life sure is an adventure! Makes it hard to keep up with a blog, but I try here: http://www.freerangedreams.com
Thanks for the article. I can’t wait to check out those other fams!
Love reading your site, very inspirational! We hit the road full-time in January 2011, living in the Janssen’s original Live Lightly Tour Bus, now the Eco Womb Tour Bus. Sold our home and most everything in it to fulfill this dream. Love hearing about how others are doing it and encouraging to know more and more families are finding ways to make it happen!
I have to admit that I have NEVER tried this method. Way to be unconventional!
What is really amazing is just how many families are doing or planning something similar. Before I joined twitter I thought our family was something of an anomaly but I am now finding many kindred spirits! Our family is now in the process of trying to sell our house and then we are heading to Asia for a two-ish year slow-travel adventure!
I used to think it was a radical idea, selling the family home and going out on the road. Or even just taking a year sabbatical from work and traveling. But, like you, I’ve been introduced to a lot of families that are making it work. Good luck on your travel adventure!
Wow! What a pleasant surprise to see our story listed here! Thank you. 🙂
I’ve been traveling by myself with my 5 children (13 years to 7 months) in an rv for 6 weeks now. My husband is home trying to sell our house so he can come with us and the fun can really begin. We rented the house in the meantime to save money and we’re mostly visiting friends but we’re going to stay in yellowstone for a few weeks because it’s so dang beautiful. Once my husband sells the house he’s going to take an early retirement because we can live on next to nothing while we’re traveling. When we get tired of it we want to settle down where land is cheap and grow tomatoes. The options are limitless when you’re not tied to a huge mortgage payment!
My dream is to travel part-time like that. I would love to take our homeschooling on the road like that. Thanks for the links,
Thanks for mentioning me on your blog! Hey, I like your new welcome photo, looks very professional. You mention that you decided to become minimalists in September of last year and that’s exactly when my husband and I decided that we were going to become minimalists, too and move into an RV. That’s amazing! What happened in September that made us come to this decision? I wonder. It’s taking us 9 months to make our dream a reality.
September was a popular time for embracing simple living. I think Faith started her blog then too. I’ve heard that September is a good time to start new projects and set goals – ingrained in us for new beginnings with the school year cycle.
Excited to hear you are on your way to full-time RV living.
A friend just sent it to me – wow. Very cool. First very small home I have seen on it’s own lot and plumbing. No mortgage sounds pretty good to me right now.
You should go visit Sara Janssen’s blog at http://www.walkslowlylivewildly.com They lived in an RV travelling the US for quite a while. It’s a great blog!
Forgot to include Sara – thanks for linking to her here. I actually found WSLW because Sara linked to me in a minimalist blog round up. She is a stylish hippie minimalist – really enjoy her take on living.
Thanks for the post and the links! This is my ultimate dream, to be able to just travel the world with my partner and 3-year-old daughter (and of course, any future kids). We’re hoping to move to the UK by the end of the year, so that’ll be step one.
We’re loving the UK so far. Are you or your partner form here?
Just planning some trips from here now. So much to choose from. Hard decisions.
That’s awesome that you’re enjoying the UK. I can’t wait for finally make it there. My partner and I are from the Toronto area. We’re hoping to get the UK on a student visa. It’d be so much more convenient if one of us were British. 🙂 Ah well. I can’t wait to read more about your adventures!
Thanks alot. As if I don’t already spend enough time sitting in front of my computer…now I have all these new blogs to add to my daily (or weekly) reads. Haha, thanks for the inspiration!
I know! So much out there. I’m trying to reduce my online hours – I follow a lot of blogs and skim or just read occasional posts.
I would love to travel full-time, but my husband is in the military. While he was deployed, I traveled cross-country with our six children in an RV. We’ve spent almost 5 months out of the last 11 months traveling from coast to coast. My kids have been to 45 states. I love hearing about other young families that live on the road. It’s amazing how little of our “stuff” we actually need.
Wow! All those kids and you were on your own with them in an RV. Brave woman. I’ve read your blog before but didn’t realize you traveled – must go back and read up. Thanks for commenting.
My husband and I are currently trying to sell our 5 room house and seriously downsizing. We want to be debt free in a couple of years and take our twins around the world for a year.
It has always been a dream and now that we’ve read of so many people who have done it, we need to make the dream a reality!
From these plans have come a real desire for minimalism!
It was very interesting to me to hear how the on the road for a year families made it work financially. It was a combination of savings and having one partner that could work while they travel. When most people dream of traveling the world for a year, especially with kids, it just seems unimaginable because of costs. Also read a story in the Globe and Mail a ways back about a family that traveled for a year with their teenagers. It was planned for for several years, the parents did it by cutting some costs and pushing back retirement a few years. The teenagers had complete input with their parents on where they would go and the had to decide on skipping expensive countries to stay on the road longer.
Would love to do that some day myself.
We lived on the road full time for one year. We are part time now since we just had a third child but I hope to go back to full timing! We had two kids, two cats and a dog in 270 square feet. We drove 7500 miles. There are hundreds of families on the road. :O)
I’m just scratching the surface of this phenomenon of families on the road. Find it really interesting. Would love to hear from some older kids that have spent a lot of time on the road. How does it impact them for friendships and do they become full-time travelers as adults?
270 sq ft must have taught you a lot about necessities vs. wants.
What an interesting experience your mother gave you. The fact that you’re doing the same for your children is very telling that you enjoyed it. Have to mosey over and check out your blog – thanks for commenting!
I traveled around the country with my family as a kid for two years in a 24 ft. travel trailer…two parents and four kids (five kids toward the end of that time). We had a lot of fun even though we didn’t have a lot of toys and friends were harder to keep in touch with in the 80’s with no internet!! But I still managed to make friends most everywhere we went and we got to see a lot of cool things around the country that most kids don’t. I’m sure that our time traveling in that little trailer over 20 years ago (not to mention the constant mobility required just in being missionaries) is one of the reasons I am so excited to be heading toward our next adventure of hitting the road with my husband and kiddos as early as next summer (and in a bigger, more spacious trailer than the one I lived/traveled in as a kid)!!
Thanks for the mention! I’ll definitely be checking out these links!
We plan on heading out on the road in a year or two. We can’t sell our house till next spring unless we want to pay the government back the new homeowners tax credit (which we used to pay off my husband’s truck)…but we are hoping to sell it then, buy an RV, and head out. When things are a bit more in place then I’ll make our travel blog public (we are keeping that aspect a bit on the down low at the moment because of my husband’s job).