The ideal situation for living off grid would be to own your own land with acerage, good soil, a well or spring, and the resources to raise animals and grow and process lots of food. This is obviously something that most people will have to work up to, homesteading definitely takes time, patience and resources.
If you’d like to start living off-grid in your daily life now, however, whether you’re beginning to homestead or still living “on-grid”, there are some simple steps you can take to remove yourself from the grid.
“Off-grid” technically means off the municipal electric grid, but it’s come to have a broader meaning of self-reliance and separation from the mainstream. If you’d like your lifestyle to be a little more self-sustainable and independent, here are some simple steps to take:
- Try to actually get off-grid: if you are in the position to change your living arrangements, try to buy land! Consider going partially off-grid at first, for example being on the electric grid but with well or catchment water, or using county water but a simple solar set-up or no electricity at all. It’s amazing how much less we really need electricity in this day and age than we think!
- Ditch your cell: OK, OK, so pretty much everyone considers a cell phone a necessity of life these days, but you don’t really need it anywhere near as much as you think. For example, if you have internet at home, do you really need a data plan? Do you really need it on all the time, or can you turn it on airplane when you’re not using it? It wasn’t too long ago that everyone got on just fine without cell phones, and we never know when the grid will crash, so don’t lose sight of functioning in life without a cell.
- Look into solar: you might be able to get solar power at your home now, and not only save some money but use a renewable source of energy to power your home.
- Raise animals: you can raise chickens in even a small yard, and they provide fresh manure for your garden and eggs for your table! It’s a very small step towards a self-sufficient lifestyle, but it will give you a sense of what raising animals is like
- Get off social media: much like #2, how much do you really need social media? We get so plugged in to the internet these days we are forgetting how to form real relationships and connections. Yes, there are valuable networking opportunities for homesteaders that can’t be overlooked, but like your cell phone, are you really using social media as much as you need to?
- Collect books: the internet might not be around forever! If you want to really rough it and get off-grid, invest in some physical books on homesteading, gardening, construction, home improvement, etc.
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