This is the story of my neighbor who collects storage buildings. Here’s a little about this family followed by the lessons I think we can learn from them.

The Family On The Corner

They live up the road for us in a three-section manufactured house (the housing-industry term for a mobile home) on just over an acre of property. It’s a corner lot visible to everyone in their neighborhood and everyone passing on the road.

We immediately noticed the home when it was installed because it is at least twice the size of any other house in the area. Then we noticed that when the moving truck backed up to the front door, it stayed there — in the same position — for over a month. How much does a month-long U-Haul rental cost?

Now it’s several years later, and their property is littered with storage buildings. One is a simple metal shed. Four or five are nice wooden structures with porches and windows. They installed an electric poll and meter box at the back of the property near these nicer buildings, but they never put in the meter nor a power line to the pole.

When they leave the door open on a building, boxes and piles of nothing in particular are visible inside each one. Nothing is organized, so nothing could ever be located. That blows my original theory that they might run a salvage or resale business of some kind.

The latest building addition is a bright blue one placed in their front yard up on blocks to make it level. It’s the largest one so far. Cinder blocks are stacked up to the door to form crude steps.

When I saw one of the women from the house entering this new building a couple of weeks ago, I saw a washer and dryer inside. There’s no electrical connection to the building, however. It’s near their water well, but there’s no water pipe going into the building either.

There is also a camper trailer and the trailer portion of an 18-wheeler permanently installed on the property.

Amazingly, the riding lawnmower sits outside like mine does.

What Can We Learn?

This is a true story, and the only conclusion I can reach is that this family lives a life out of control. How could I reach any other conclusion?

I could be wrong, but the life I observe up the road serves as an example that teaches me at least five important life lessons. Here they are:

1. Accurately assess your needs. Some of their buildings aren’t completely full, and I haven’t actually seen anything inside that trailer in months. They have a mess, but they have more space than they need. Do you?

2. Clean up what’s yours. They also have piles of dirt and rock all over their property from digging into or building up their land to make it level for each building. In addition, they accepted a property with an old road running through it and some other flaws, and they have never cleaned up any of them.

3. Finish what you start. Why would they pay to put up a utility pole and then never connect it to the any utility? Leaving things half done is costly, wasteful and calls your judgment into question.

4. Be kind to one another. If they’re outside, the family with the storage building graveyard up the road from me always waves, and we wave at them. They’re strange — like the couple that rarely mows their yard (that’s us) and the family with too many security lights (that’s the one across the street from us) — but they seem like nice people. Even those with lives out of control can be nice, can’t they?

5. Mind your own business. I really feel a bit guilty writing hundreds of words about a family I don’t know, and I’m wondering if minding my own business might be a good course of action for me. They may not be good at minding their business, but the family that collects storage buildings hasn’t shown any interest in my business.

I wonder, however, if this family up the road from me is living the kind of simple, deliberate life they could be enjoying.

Still, I don’t want to make any value judgments. I just wonder if there is a better way for them. I’ve found a path that gives me some peace and comfort, and I wish everyone could.

I’ll probably never know how things are really going for the family up the road with the storage building farm because I don’t plan to stop and talk to them. I don’t imagine they want me to.

Based on the story I’ve told you about the family up the road, what do you think of them? Does their life teach any kind of lesson to you? Does mine?

So come on now, own up: Which of you found So Much More Life that way?

It’s a bit funny and also a bit amazing that Google knew where to send these searchers who were just a little off. At least the searchers spelled my name right, and that’s probably how they found this blog.

As I was cleaning the little pieces of paper from my desk in December, I found a note about this unusual search term and realized that lots of people live lives that aren’t quite as good as they could be because they’re just a little off.

How could you refocus your life to make it just a little better?

Whether you’ve been on the journey to a simple, deliberate life with me for a long time or only for a little while, there’s something you may not realize: In many areas, you’re almost there.

In many ways, your life is just about right. You may be only a little off.

Maybe you don’t need to dump a dozen bags of unneeded clothes and two dozen boxes of kitchen clutter. Maybe your desk and your hall closet are already well organized. Maybe you already do meaningful, fulfilling work that doesn’t consume your whole life.

Maybe you just need to slightly tidy up and minimally rearrange what you have now into the life you always imagined possible.

Maybe the disorder that once held the place in your brain where your passion should be is almost all gone, and the passion could come flowing again if you’d just deal with a few more outstanding issues.

Do you get the idea?

Trying to find this blog by searching for Gip Plaster There’s More To Life Blog isn’t quite right. But a few people got to this place — their destination — even though their original focus was just a little off. It’s amazing that you can be a little off but still reach your destination, isn’t it?

Are you nearly there in one or more areas of your life?

And by the way, there’s more to life than you’re experience now. There must be. There’s much more to life than you ever imagined. So much more.

Deciding to live in a way that doesn’t depend on stuff requires focusing for a while on your own needs. You must decide which so-called needs are really just wants and eliminate from your life everything that doesn’t fit in.

Those of us who choose simple living often choose a minimalist approach to work too, and that sometimes means making less money than those who willingly sell their lives.

Still, the world is overflowing with people and causes that need help. No matter how little you have today, there are those who have less, and you’re in a position to help — if you want.

In my developing list of the five priorities that shape simple, minimalist living, there’s no mention of charitable giving. Point 5 suggests being a well-rounded, complete person, however, and giving to charity could be considered part of that priority. What do you think?

Here are three things about charity for minimalists that I think I are worth considering:

1. You must give something, mustn’t you?

I think we all have an obligation to give time, money and other resources to those worthy people and causes that need help. Don’t you?

That said, I make very few charitable donations these days.

In the past, I’ve supported museums, political causes, animal welfare groups and public television, but none of these causes get money from me anymore. I’ve lost interest in politics, and while I sometimes benefit from museums and public TV, they aren’t a crucial part of my simple life.

If I give anything to anyone in 2012, it will be to animal welfare causes or directly to the people who the help.

2. Direct giving makes sense.

While donating through a non-profit organizations allows you to combine your gifts with others to make a big difference, directly giving to someone who needs help is often a better way to make a real, quantifiable difference in someone’s life.

Direct giving isn’t necessarily tax deductible, but it’s often rewarding in other ways. It can be as simple as helping your friend who has fallen on hard times or using your gas and time to feed the hungry, take people where they need to go or get things for people who couldn’t get them any other way.

3. Limiting the number of organizations to which you donate reduces waste.

Some non-profit organizations spend an appalling among of the money they collect trying to get more money. They bombard those who already give to them, insisting that they give even more.

Limiting the number of non-profit organizations to which you give limits the amount of junk mail you get. Donating a small amount to an array of organizations, as I once did, keeps you in touch on many different fronts, but it’s terribly inefficient. Have you tried this approach?

Of course, true minimalists are vigilant about limiting the amount of postal mail and junk email they accept from anyone, including their favorite non-profits, so all this waste is really an unacceptable byproduct of well-intentioned actions.

Final Thoughts

Whether you have a lot of resources at your disposal or not, I’m sure you sometimes give some of them away.

As I’m writing this today, I don’t have many resources available. Money is tight because I’ve been dropped from an agency that was providing me a lot of writing work and because I wasn’t making that much anyway. While my old bookselling business is showing some signs of new life, there won’t be much extra money coming this week or next. I’m not in a position to help anyone else, am I?

Yet I’m writing today with little hope of financial gain, mainly for the benefit of myself and my readers. And I’ll be spending time in the next few days with people who enjoy and perhaps even need my love and attention. That sounds charitable, doesn’t it?

Perhaps the simple, minimalist approach to being charitable is to live a charitable life. Being charitable means being devoted to the assistance of those in need. Are you?

To start 2012, I’d like to refine a list of what it means to live a simple, deliberate life. Here’s my first attempt. I hope you’ll offer your comments below and help me perfect this list.

If you’re a simple, deliberate person, you:

1. Mind your money.

You cut your spending on nonessential items, eliminate unnecessary bills and simplify your financial relationships to eliminate wasted money and excess in as many forms as possible.

2. Tend your time.

You balance your time between work your enjoy and entertainment that adds value to your life. You know when to limit your entertainment, when to limit your work and when to stop either of them to be with real people who have meaning to you.

3. Get rid of stuff.

You don’t own things just because you can afford them, and you don’t own more cars, clothes, gadgets or gear than you need for the kind of simple life you desire. You loosen your attachment to things and cut clutter from you home, your brain and your life in general.

4. Think about food and health.

You take actions that improve your health and eating habits when you can. You aren’t necessarily a fanatic about health and fitness, but you strive to improve every area of your life, including how well your body works.

5. Are a complete person.

You don’t allow your life to be dominated by any one thing, person or situation. You recognize your emotional, physical and spiritual needs and act to fulfill them all. You understand that denying yourself something that your soul, brain or body finds essential is a poor choice.

How did I do?

This is my first attempt at this five-point definition of a simple, deliberate life that I hope will become an important part of this blog’s future. With your input, I’ll refine it, and we’ll discuss it in more detail in future posts.

Is this list of priorities too specific, too extensive or lacking some essential elements? I look forward to your opinions.

Here’s a bit about what I’ve been doing the last two weeks, then I’ll tell you my commitments to you for the coming year.

My Christmas Project

In December, I made a commitment to myself to clean up the little pieces of paper that clutter my desk. These scraps contained lots of useful information and lots of blog post ideas, but they existed in a form that was nearly useless to me.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve cleaned up almost all the pieces of paper, eliminating the useless ones and rescuing the good ones by putting them into a digital format I can work with.

I created a text file with line after line of things I want to research and bits of information I didn’t want to forget — like that I need a 10-millimeter wrench to change the air filter on my car and that my pupillary distance is 63 if I need to order custom reading glasses.

I also started files for more than 30 blog posts rescued from these scraps of paper. Many of them are for So Much More Life, and several are for my catch-all blog Gip’s Front Yard. A few are for other projects, and a couple don’t seem to fit anywhere yet. Some of these files contain hundreds of words and don’t need much more to make them ready for you; others contain only a line or two of notes.

My desk looks better now, but better yet, I have a great head start on 2012.

My January project is a bit more mundane and boring: I have to type up some information for my taxes that’s missing from my bank account details because of my quibbles with Quicken, but I should have plenty of time this month to do that along with the much more interesting work of finishing all the posts I started — and starting many more, I hope.

My 2012 Commitments To You

In 2011, I committed to bringing you useful, entertaining and interesting posts that are different from the kind you find on other simple living, minimalist blogs. Did I succeed?

I also promised you two posts per week and short, direct posts that don’t waste your time. By the end of 2011, I was only offering one post per week, and many of my posts were flabby and long. Still, I think I offered a unique perspective that you couldn’t have found elsewhere.

In any case, my 2012 commitment to you is one post most weeks. I’ll skip a week when I have nothing to say or no time to say it, and I’ll offer a second post on weeks when I have more to say than I can say in one. I also recommit to offering uncomplicated posts with as little flab as possible. I won’t stop telling my story along with my comments, however.

I also commit to staying on topic much better than before. When I have something to say that doesn’t directly related to simple, deliberate living, I’ll post it on Gip’s Front Yard instead of trying to contort the message to fit here.

Let’s Get Started

I’ll be back next Tuesday and most Tuesdays in 2012 with an interesting, entertaining and useful post about something related to minimalism and simple living.

For this blog to be a continued success, however, I need your help expanding the conversation. Closed systems are dying ones, so I’m flinging open the doors to new readers and new ideas of all sorts.

Will you help me stay on track and help me find others who would enjoy subscribing to and contributing comments to this blog? Will you make any commitments to me and to So Much More Life in 2012?

I’ve also successfully restarted my writing career, changed a toilet flapper and sort of fixed my front steps.

I’m presenting this brief year-end post a bit early because I won’t be bothering you again on So Much More Life until after the first of the year. On January 3, I’ll return with new blog posts and a new commitment to serving our needs better than ever before.

Before I wrap up this year, however, I have a few more things to say.

First, if you’re wondering what I want for Christmas, you can be sure that I don’t need any more things. You probably don’t either.

If you’re inclined to give me a gift, however, please send a quick email to three of your friends who may not know about So Much More Life and tell them about our conversations here. When I return on January 3, I hope some new commenters will join those of us who are already devoted to this project’s success.

Many bloggers offer holiday wishes in their year-end posts, but I already did that last week. If you believe in a simple, deliberate life, please re-read last week’s post and behave as if you believe in those things.

If you want to know what else I like to talk about, I’ve relaunched an old and forgotten blog project called Gip’s Front Yard. It’s a place where I put things I write that don’t belong anywhere else. The topics are diverse and some of the opinions are controversial, but the posts are sometimes worth reading. Sometimes, they’re just leftovers warmed up. Post are irregular in every way and infrequent, but I want you to know about this project if you don’t already.

If you follow me on Facebook, you already know about Gip’s Front Yard because I’ve mentioned some of the posts to my followers. If you don’t follow me on Facebook and would like to, visit Facebook and friend me. I don’t really use Twitter and I haven’t bothered with Google+, so Facebook is my only social networking vice.

Finally, I hope you’ll re-read my Christmas day post from last year. Even if you don’t believe in Christmas, the day can be a magical and amazing one for you.

This is a busy time of year, but if you’d like something interesting to do for a few moments, please click some of the links in this post to read and interact with me even more than you already do.

I won’t bother you here again until the new year, then we’ll get on with what we were doing.

Would you be willing to take a moment and reassess how you plan to behave this month?

If you believe in peace on earth and goodwill to all, please behave as if you believe in those things.

If you believe in eating simple meals prepared with minimal fuss, allow your belief system to guide your food choices for the holiday season.

If you believe in making the most of a few possessions and rejecting the materialism that so obviously derails other lives, let those beliefs guide your Christmas shopping.

If you believe in monitoring your emotions and your internal and external chatter so that your life portrays the uncomplicated image of a simple, humble person, work extra hard to portray that image even when you must deal with complicated people during this season.

If you believe in contributing to worthwhile causes, contribute to them this month because those who really believe in them have been contributing to them all year.

If you believe in Christmas decorating, do it consciously and without spending needlessly and contributing to the commercialism that so many people believe detracts from the season.

If you believe in spreading good cheer, spread the word about some of your favorite bloggers rather than spreading around your money.

I don’t want any of your money or your worthless possessions, but I do want your help in making So Much More Life even stronger next year. Other bloggers would also very likely consider some help from you in promoting their good works a great minimalist Christmas present.

Please don’t buy me anything, but offer bloggers like me two gifts: your support in promoting our writing and your commitment to behaving in a way of which you can be proud this holiday season.

New year’s resolutions won’t be necessary if you live a December you can be proud of.

When something important breaks or wears out, buying a new one may be a necessity. And it may not be. It may be good idea to replace things that aren’t yet faulty too. But how can you decide if you’re being rational or just rationalizing?

Food Storage Containers And Crock-Pots And Things

I’d like some new food storage containers and a new slow cooker. While I’m not raking in the big bucks or even always bringing in enough writing income to make ends me, I sometimes have a few extra dollars in the bank. And I’ve delayed replacing some things that need to be replaced.

As I told you in last week’s post about “letting things go” meaning two things, I’ve been a bit of slacker recently, at least in relation to household cleaning, maintenance and decluttering.

Careless, reckless spending saps the soul from a life, and I need all the sap I can maintain. So am I justified in replacing a few things around the house that need replacing but still function fairly well?

Our old plastic food storage containers are scratched and stained, and since we no longer use a dishwasher, glass ones would be easier to wash. I’m also concerned how sanitary the old plastic ones are. When leftover food molds in a plastic container, can you ever really get it clean? The glass containers are a bit expensive and also not completely necessary since the ones I have still work, but would they be a good idea?

My Crock-Pot, as another example, only hold three quarts and the plastic lid is starting to crack, so isn’t it justified to buy a more modern one with a glass lid and a size that makes it easier to actually make a meal in it? Still, the one I have works fine.

Being Rational vs. Rationalizing

Making a purchase has very little to do with whether you have enough money to do it or not. If you don’t have money, you shouldn’t spend, but spending money when you don’t have to or need to is reckless. We all do at least a little careless spending, however, and we all lose a bit ourselves when we do.

Deciding when spending is necessary means reaching a mental compromise between rationalizing and being rational.

Being rational is doing something in accordance with reason or logic. Rationalizing is attempting to explain or justify something with plausible reasons, whether the reasons are true or not.

Deciding you need a new washing machine because the one you have doesn’t work is being rational. Deciding you need a new washing machine and then listing out all the small flaws with the one you have as justification for the expense is rationalization. But what if your washing machine makes a small noise and the spinning sometimes doesn’t turn off. Would buying a new one then be rational or rationalized?

I don’t think spending money for the sake of spending it is an intelligent idea, no matter how much of it you have. Do you?

Here’s a bigger question though: Is most of your spending rational, rationalized or simply reckless?

I think it’s okay to replace things even if they have a little life left in them, but as each new item comes in, its predecessor needs to go out. Keeping something in case you need it when it has been replaced by a newer model is hoarding and cluttering, and those are very bad ideas.

Since it’s Thanksgiving week here in the U.S. and I hope many of you have exciting plans that will take you away from your computers soon, I’ll be brief.

Stop Avoiding

Sometimes, letting things go means letting them go without the attention they deserve. This almost never works.

When something like a light switch is broken (as one of mine was last week), letting it go doesn’t solve anything. You have to either solve the problem or place it in the hands of someone who can.

Those piles of clutter and boxes of stuff around your home represent things that have been let go too long. Giving them the attention they deserve means sorting, tossing and moving on with your life.

Start Shedding

Sometimes, letting things go means letting go of them.

Whether those things are tangible items like the boxes and piles mentioned above or intangible but very real things like biases and emotions, letting go of that which weighs you down is the only way you can really get on with your life.

You may also need to let go of a job that takes too much time or a person in your life that drags rather than lifts.

Your Choice

People who successfully live simple, deliberate lives confront those things that need attention and let go of the things that don’t deserve attention anymore.

Rather than worrying about who sits next to whom at the dinner table this holiday season, maybe it’s a good idea to leave other people’s avoiding-and-shedding problems in their hands. I suggest focusing instead on the things in your life that have been left undone and left to sit unused.

This could just be another vague, sappy, silly holiday post that takes a few moments of your time away from things that really matter to you. Or this could be the post that sets the tone for a worry-free holiday season and a worry-free life to follow.

Now, however, my eyes are focuses squarely on writing for money once again — and things are going pretty well.

Is writing part of your life? If not, what’s your thing?

If you want to live a simple, deliberate life without complete dependence on any one employer and without having to deal with business hours and office politics, working from home is the perfect solution. And nothing is more satisfying to me than being a professional writer once again.

Does writing play a role in your escape from working to make others rich?

Writing For Profit

When I launched this blog a couple of years ago, I wanted to use it to reconnect with the writer inside me, refine my rusty writing skills and eventually return to writing as full-time job. That’s what I’ve done.

But until recently, these two years have been a financial mess. With the online bookselling business that supported me for five years failing, I was too slow to return to the writing for profit.

Although I was a freelance journalist when I depended on writing income earlier in my life, I’ve never had a desire to return to journalism. Since I’m much more spiritual than political, most journalism seems destructive or at least useless to me now. While journalism has a real purpose that would be a great topic for another day and another post, I’m happy to allow others to provide that service to the world now.

Thanks to the help of a few private clients, some high-paying content mill sites and the work I’m doing to establish my own stable of online content, I make money each week writing fun and easy Internet content for myself and others.

While my financial situation is far from where I’d like it to be, things have stabilized over the past few months. That’s great progress. And that’s all thanks to my return to writing for money.

An (Almost) Perfect Complement

A career as a professional writer is an almost perfect complement to a simple, deliberate life.

Because I set my own hours and only take the work that I need and the work that interest me, I’m not overburdened or overstressed. My life is my own, something very few people can say.

Of course, this career path comes with a little built-in stress. Some weeks, there’s not enough high-paying work coming my way. Other weeks, I’m too busy dealing with other aspects of life to do as much writing as I my income goals require.

Once I got back in the groove of planning and arranging my life so that I can fit in an adequate amount of work, however, the stress of these uncertain situations has started to fade away. I’ve settled into a pace that I usually enjoy very much.

Not Quite Perfect

The biggest issues with fitting a career writing for money into a minimalist lifestyle are ethical ones.

Many of the clients for whom I write don’t share my lifestyle and are chasing after doomed dreams. Some may even be involved in unethical business practices, but I don’t know that for sure. I’ve caught clients lying to me and avoiding me because they didn’t have good news about our projects, both major ethical breaches.

I’ve managed to work through these ethical issues, however, using a spiritual principle, not a business principle. Of course, I don’t do anything unethical myself, and when I feel I’m being treated unfairly or being asked to do something unethical, I try to simply move on, allowing other people’s nonsense to stay in their court.

To use more spiritual terms, I release my issues to the universe and release my attachment to any particular outcome. Often, things eventually work out in a way that’s favorable for me.

Life would be easier if I didn’t concern myself with ethical breaches, but I do. Don’t you?

What Works For You?

I always knew I was supposed to be a writer, but the genre of writing in which I now participate didn’t even exist when I first started on the writing path. Perhaps for that reason, I got sidetracked for a while.

Now, I’m a professional writer again, and simple living make it possible. I’m having fun, I’m not under the thumb of any particular company and I’m not as worried about how to make ends meet as I once was.

Writing for money fits nicely into my minimalist lifestyle.

What about you? Have you found the perfect way to make money while still having the kind of lifestyle you desire? I hope you have, and I hope you’ll tell us all about it in the comments section below.