People Who Live Off The Grid Are Sharing What It’s Actually Like And It’s Superrrrr Interesting
Some people have a full-blown meltdown if the power goes out at home, but others choose to live without electricity, running water, etc. Reddit users in the always discussion-heavy r/AskReddit have asked people living "off the grid" what it's like. The responses were a great, honest look at life beyond the social norms of today's society:
1."I live on a sailboat. I am mostly self-sufficient, with a solar panel and a wood stove. I get the Internet on my cell. The motor burns about 12 gallons of fuel a year. It's a pretty chill lifestyle, though every once in a while, I need to hit town and walk around in the dirt, have a pint, restock the larder, and get some face time with people. I don't miss much about land life at all, and the news just makes me miss it less every day."
2."I lived off-grid for two years in New Mexico. Pumped water from a well 350 feet deep, then line ran about 400 feet to the 10,000-gallon tank near the house, solar panels, gas generator, windmill for power, propane/wood for heat, greenhouse for growing some goods, can walk outside naked worry-free. We had satellite internet if we wanted it, but just living every day and doing some projects and better improving the land we lived on was how we passed the time. I recall we did some nice rock gardens with the different colors of sand and clay about the area plus the sound of nature and nothing else was just great."
3."I live in a van that I turned into an RV. I'd rather live rent-free than constantly have to worry about bills. I live in Texas right now, so the heat is pretty bad during the day, but at night, it's livable. I've got basically a full kitchen, and I sleep in a hammock, so I'm not missing out on much. Plus, it's an interesting talking point once people find out."
"There are a few things that you really have to adjust to, though. The main one is showering at the gym or using public restrooms if needed. Both can be included if you get a big enough van and are willing to sacrifice other aspects of your living space...I've been living in it for about four months now."
4."I remember when I was a kid, my grandparents lived in the house (a double-wide trailer) I'm living in now. For the first 10 years, there was no electricity. We had kerosene lamps but would connect a 4.5" TV to the car battery at night and watch Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. In the '90s, we got a generator. But it kept getting stolen. Eventually, my grandparents came up with the $10,000 for an electric pole. We still pump our water. I just dug a new spring last year. The drought in California has dropped the water level below our spring for the first time in 35 years."
"We harvest our firewood off the property. (Also because of the drought, we get 2-3 trees that just fall over)We have deer, turkey, and quail to eat, plus a large garden that my grandpa has put in. Last year, we had four bears in the orchard. One black and a small brown with two cubs. I'm excited to see who shows up this year. The coyote and fox packs are coming around for the first time in years, but I haven't seen the mountain lion in years. It's a lot less like the glorified version of off-grid and more like the "we're too poor to have all the amenities" life, but I love it."
5."I grew up off-grid in a cabin in the boonies. There was no electricity, no outhouse, and I had to hike to get to the house, etc. It was great in a lot of ways but a pain in the ass in a lot of others (like getting to school every morning). My old man kicked off, and my mom moved out to town, so I moved back to the land after college and other city adventures and have been living here for about ten years."
"I rebuilt our cable bridge across the river so I can now use an ATV to get to the house, put in solar panels, built a micro-hydro system, wired the house, set in satellite internet, and worked on the house a lot, and made it so I could make a living doing Linux geeking/programming from up here. However, the toll (tole?) of maintaining the place has been starting to drag me down a lot lately. Everything is harder. My battery bank needs replacing, and my four-wheeler (ATV) is running rough. The drought here has fucked me for hydropower. I'm constantly trying to get water this summer just for house water. I do so much work that I don't have time and work for money. It's like having another full-time job. The average day depends on the time of year. Every day is different. Some days, we fix the water; some days, we work on digging and the new outhouse. In the middle of winter, watch the flood levels and maybe crank the cable bridge out of the flood. End of summer, we cut the firewood for winter and fix the ditches and road for winter.
What has really screwed a lot of us up here is that our local gas station (18 miles away) ran into some bullshit from the government and had to turn off the pumps. So now I have to drive 60 miles just for gasoline. That is a giant pain in the ass.
But the upside is that I can shoot an elk or a deer off my porch. I walk 300 yards and have some of the best salmon and steelhead fishing known to man. Nobody bugs me, and I can piss off my porch if I want. My dog doesn't know what a leash is.
Power is the biggest issue for me. Need more water or sun, overcast with no rain kicks my ass."
6."I've spent many years off the grid. As a child, I lived in a wall tent, then in a cabin on an island, and then on boats. As a teen/young adult, I spent a few winters in the woods in Alaska."
"When I was a kid, we would wake up, check the rabbit snares picked from the garden, dump honey bucket over a cliff. We would pick fresh moss for our beds. My mother made them out of 2 sheets sewn together. Then, lots of reading stories and running around the woods. Lots of hunting and learning to fix everything. Also, I can chop wood like a motherfucker
As I got older, we moved into a city, and that didn't work well. My father is a wild man and left for the woods or fishing. Often, life was hard, and we were poor parents who split up. I became a drug dealer/criminal but always wanted to go back. I did often for years.
I spent years as a homeless person. I worked high-paying jobs, but I rejected the idea of getting tied down. I've got kids and a house now, but I still spend a great deal of time on my own in the woods. They come a lot, too, now that they're older.
I have quirks. I do not buy new clothes if they can be fixed or much else if it can be fixed. I hate juice/sugary or carby stuff. It's too much for me, and I sleep on floors. I also reject much of society's norms. I didn't bother getting a driver's license until my mid-20s.
I'm currently on an island. I just got done fishing for a bit and am enjoying dusk in the middle of nowhere Alaska."
7."I lived for several months in a tent in Alaska. I did a lot of fishing. My ex went out on some fishing boats, as well. I foraged a lot: fiddleheads, salmon berries, blueberries, low bush cranberries, wild strawberries, huckleberries, gooseberries, cloudberries, fireweed (sort of like asparagus), etc."
"We learned as we went. We had a very basic tent. I got a large piece of foam from one of the cannery boats, put down pallets, and put the foam on top. It was much more comfortable and kept the floor of the tent dry. I also built chairs, a bench, and a "cooking station" from pallets. I had a single-burner propane stove but mostly cooked on/in campfires. There is no electricity, but there are showers at many campgrounds. The campground in Kodiak, where we spent much of our time, had a trailer with showers and commodes. That was the height of luxury, even if the water was usually lukewarm. I spent much time hiking around, gathering wood for fires, etc. I learned to make bread without an oven; that was fun. I did a lot of drawing, sold a lot of sketches of native wildlife and such, and hung out with the puffins. There was no TV, obviously, but I had a radio... handy for knowing when the storms were coming.
A typical day in Kodiak:
When I say campground, I mean a clearing with a tiny one-room cabin (manager) and a trailer with showers. In that setting, you make friends and help one another out. Our tent neighbors were two Italians from Brazil, Peterson and Emerson. First thing in the morning, Petey would poke his head out of their tent and say, "Kim-barely, you want I make some coff?" I'd found an old-fashioned percolator at a yard sale, and he'd make coffee. After coffee, the guys would go down to the docks, and I'd go foraging. Around noon, I'd stop and have peppermint tea with the campground manager. If the guys got on a boat, they'd be gone all day, sometimes up to a few days, so there's not a typical day...but if they were back that evening, we'd gather wood if we needed to, cook, clean up, then play cards or read. It was a very simple life. Which was what I wanted."
8."For the past 20 years, we have slowly moved further from cities. Three years ago, we moved to rural GA on a 160-acre tract of land. I am almost done building our house."
"We lease out 70 acres of our pastures for hay production to a local dairy farm. That provides hay for my wife's horses through the winter, and the payment covers most of our property taxes.
We will soon be installing our solar array, which will result in our only wired connection being internet access. We do have Netflix for entertainment.
We expect to add a power wall once Tesla puts them on sale. I also drive an electric hybrid, but I expect to shift to full electric as the range gets better so that I can get to Atlanta (100 miles) and back for business meetings.
We have a private lake that provides fish. A large garden provides fresh vegetables. We freeze what we don't eat fresh. We have fruit trees, pecans, blackberries, and raspberries. Chickens provide eggs.
Next year, we plan to add a few calves so we can begin harvesting one steer a year for beef.
Our objective is that by the time our youngest (currently 11) leaves for college, we will be effectively 'off the grid' with little to no cash required for basic living expenses.
You may ask why we are doing this. Ultimately it is about piece of mind and stress-free living. Life is short. I have a very high-stress job, and we have done very well financially. We are currently in our early 50s, and within just a few years, we want to start living a more relaxed life for what we have left of it — free from as much of society's ills as possible."
9."I have lived off the grid (electrical) for close to 25 years now. I'm not bragging; I'm just saying. I must have made every mistake in the book, though."
"What is a day-to-day life like? Eat, sleep, and work are the same as anybody else. We have almost all the modern conveniences of twenty-first-century living. Initially, things were rough: no TV, gas lantern lighting, hand-pumping water, etc.
After about seven years, we started experimenting with solar energy. That was when things got much, much better. The biggest obstacles without electricity are keeping food, pumping water, and lighting in that order. Our first solar array wasn't that big, but it allowed electric lights and a small B&W TV. Our current solar array supplies about 1/3 to 1/2 of what a 'normal' home would use. The difference is made up by being frugal. Yes, sometimes we have issues monitoring large electrical loads and ensuring that two big draws don't start simultaneously when the batteries are low, but that is rare. Generally, that occurs in the summer when we have a week of cloudy weather with high humidity and temperatures. The refrigerator and freezer still have to run while the batteries aren't getting enough charge.
That being said, I am BIG on solar energy! Anyone even remotely thinking about living off the grid had better plan on some solar array. The only downside to solar/off-grid is that you are the repairman. You're also responsible for the small maintenance required to keep it running smoothly. The best advice I can give for living off the grid is what I read 20 ago in a solar supplier's catalog: get the best generator you can afford and use it as little as possible. I hope this was helpful.
10."I live in a tiny house fully powered by solar panels. Technically, I'm off the grid, but my house is currently parked on my parents' property, and I'm still in town. My water comes from a well and is stored within two 65-gallon tanks, and I have a compost toilet, so there's no need for a water connection."
11."Lived off the grid for about a year in the woods in Washington State...Finding food (in the summer, I loved just rolling out of my teepee and munching down on what was ready in the garden), brewing something that resembled coffee (dandelion root is what I had readily available most days), milking the cow (nothing beats fresh cowmilk in your 'coffee') and while I was rummaging around the garden for food might as well do some weeding/watering."
"The afternoon was collecting eggs, moving the cow to a different pasture, foraging for more edibles (often me and Daisey the cow would stop and share some god awful wild apples), chopping wood, checking snares, salvaging from a plethora of old destroyed cabins on the acreage, helping neighbors with chores in return for goods, making cheese (one cow produces so much milk I had to do something with it and you can only barter so much). Night came eventually, and the cow needed to be milked again; more food was found and eaten. If I hadn't seen anything, I could have hit the storage, but I really didn't like to as it would make winter that much harder, listening to the radio powered by solar panels or just hearing the coyotes go at it for hours.
The winter was mostly warm, so stay warm, don't die, and milk the cow."
12."My wife and I live in SW Colorado, where we own and run an organic farm on eight acres. Before we started our farm, we saved up money by living down the road on a 300-acre horse ranch that was off the grid. The ranch had one large solar panel, one wind generator, eight deep-cycle batteries, and power converters...All this ran the 500ft. deep water well pump, house water pump, house and shop lighting, one TV, one computer, the Xbox 360 (for which was the biggest drain), and cellphone chargers. The refrigerator and house heating were powered by propane. In addition, we had a gas generator for power backup, battery recharging, and running power tools."
"One of the biggest obstacles for us was gardening. Moving water can be one of the biggest drains on the battery system. We set up a roof rain-catchment system to help gather and move water around the property, which was then gravity-fed to the garden. The water was then dispensed to the garden using a drip irrigation system. Solar water pumps are wonderful but not all that cheap, depending on the setup.
Now, we use similar techniques for our larger, family-size garden on our current farm. In addition to veggies, we also raise sheep and chickens and have one cow. We produce 75% of our food year-round. We belong to local CSA for dairy for which we skim the cream to make butter and other dairy products."
13."I lived on a sailboat for a decade. I guess you make your own grid with battery power, but it's similar in other ways...anyway. Other than fishing being a part-time job, the biggest difference was water. A limited supply changes your entire perspective towards it in many ways. All your habits change to revolve around not wasting it."
"It almost becomes like money for people to whom that is the most important and life-sustaining thing in the world — you start constantly thinking about how much you have left, how long it will last, and how you can get more. You run on deck and frantically try to collect it when it rains. It's a real mindfuck returning to a civilization where nobody really thinks about leaving a tap on for 10 seconds (or having someone come on board who uses a whole cup to rinse their toothbrush, and you just want to strangle them). Of course, I imagine this is how large parts of the world see most of us."
14."My grandfather lives off the grid. There's no electricity or phone signal (except under a specific tree). He had been using kerosene lamps for a long time, but some years ago, he built a wind turbine using an old motor, which allowed him to use 12-volt lightbulbs. He has many books and uses a car radio for entertainment because it gets a better signal. He uses a kerosene refrigerator, which he modified for natural gas by changing the kerosene burner with a lab burner. The field has historically been used to grow grapes, which were used to make pisco. But now he is starting to make wine with the help of an oenologist."
"For the harvest, he used an old tractor fitted with a relatively modern car motor, which the guy who works for him repurposed. He also uses an old marine motor that is made into a generator to make the wine. He doesn't keep time; he gets up when the sun goes up, eats when he feels like it's lunch, and goes to bed when it's getting dark."
15."I spent the first six years aboard a 31' sailboat. My dad was in the military and bought the boat rather than living on base. When he and my mom got together, it was easier for my mom to move aboard than for him to sell the boat. Then I was born, my parents moored in the Bay Area of California; the rest was history."
"Growing up, I had the same experiences as everyone else, just in a slightly different way. Most kids had a swing in their backyard. My swing was mounted to the mast and swung out over the ocean. I had to wear a life jacket every time I used it, and never while we were underway. I had the same toys as everyone else, just fewer because my 'room' was the V-berth in the boat's bow, and space was at a premium. My mom still had to wrestle me into the bathtub regularly, though my 'bathtub' was a plastic bucket filled from the galley sink.
Of course, living abroad, I had experiences most folks never got to. Our marina was fairly deep and quiet, meaning wildlife encounters were nearly daily. Most were the usual beach wildlife, sandpipers and grebes and herons and the like, but now and again, we'd get an eagle ray, or a starfish wider than I was tall, or dolphins or porpoises, or one very lost ocean sunfish. Whenever my parents got restless, they'd bring extra groceries aboard and cast off for a long weekend. I learned early how to keep my balance when the waves got up, and to this day, I seem immune to seasickness. (I wasn't as a kid, but that's another story.)
It's been 20 years since I lived aboard, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat."
16."My husband and I live in a 16x16-foot military tent in the Montana wilderness. We are in the process of building a house and will most likely be in the tent until October, when it starts getting really cold! I hope we can dry in the house before that. We just got our foundation walls poured, and we are working on adding raiding floor heating before the slab goes in. It’s been quite the journey so far."
"Let’s see. We have a solar-powered well pump and a solar shower bag for 'warm' showers, but we mostly bathe in the river. We also have solar-powered internet! We stream the Mariners every night with a projector.
Anyway, I love living and cooking outside. It’s 80 degrees today, and I can hear the birds and the river. We have a bear that comes through occasionally if we forget to put the dog food in our Jeep. He really likes dog food. I haven’t seen him in person yet...but I've woken in the middle of the night when our dog barks and know he’s out there."
17."I currently live on a 600' oil tanker. Before that, I lived on a 500-foot training ship. I've spent about eight months of the last four years sleeping on land. I did it for school, and now I do it for work. I love it. Now that I'm working, it's better, because it's a free bed to sleep in, and three meals a day. The longest part of my commute is getting dressed, and then I look out a window for four hours, paint some stuff, and then look out the window again. It's a good life, but it is the 4th of July. I wish I were out blowing stuff up and getting smashed with my friends, but here I am at anchor."
18."I live in an 8'x12' house I built myself in the desert. I've got solar panels, but I haul water in from town as needed. Today, I picked up five gallons on the way home from work. I'm sitting in air-conditioned comfort, playing video games, watching TV, and watching my dog nap. I liked the area; the land was cheap, and I thought building a house would be fun. It took me a month or so to build it, and it's got everything I need. A well would be nice, but I can buy water for the next 30 years for the same price as a well."
"A few years ago, I quit my job, sold my home, and rode my bicycle around the world. After living that lifestyle for over a year, I found an apartment to be just too much space for me when I got home. I slept on the couch in the living room most nights and hardly used the bedroom. So, I downsized to living out of my car for a year. But I'd missed having a kitchen while on my bike trip and still missed it in the car. I watched land sales for a few months until I found something I liked in my price range and then got building. I'm pretty happy with what I have now. I can do neat things like build a solar-powered heater for the house or shoot a trap in my backyard. Not having neighbors nearby is great."
19."I lived on a sailing yacht with my parents for my entire childhood (17 years) before joining the Navy."
"My dad was a surfer. His lifelong dream was to build a yacht and take his family with him to go to Indonesia, surf all the unknown reefs, and live a simple life. So that’s what we did. Dad built the yacht, and it took him 13 years. In doing so, he got a trade as a boat builder.
We would sail until we ran out of money, then stop where we were, and Dad would build or fix some boats for a year or so. Then, we would go off again, searching for warmer climates and better surf.
I didn’t appreciate it as a kid. Felt like we were poor all the time and never had a car. But now I look back and am so thankful for the adventurous heart it has given me!"
20."I live in a 1997 Ford e350 at the moment, and I must say: I’m loving it. I was medically released from the Canadian armed forces and knew I’d move to Winnipeg for my next job. I knew I didn’t want to rent and throw my money away, and mortgages are far too expensive, so I figured the hell with it. I’ll live on a bus. I gotta say I don’t imagine anything better for me."
21.Ans finally, "I've lived in a travel trailer for the last four years. I started working on pipelines six years ago and was always on the road, so I decided it wasn't worth paying rent on a place I only saw an average of four days a month. Now, I can live where I'm working, bank more LOA vs. stay in hotels, and go wherever I want when I have time off."
"I've minimized what I own and wasted less money on non-essential things due to a limited storage space, which further saves money. Sometimes, I do get myself a nice hotel room for a long, hot shower that lasts longer than eight minutes, good Wi-Fi, and cable, though, to spoil myself. I could have Wi-Fi and satellite in my trailer, but I just really don't miss it that much. You learn that YouTube is just a waste of time because it kills your data."
Have you ever considered living off the grid? If so, or maybe you have in the past, share your experiences/interests/questions in the comments below!
