Bedrock

Phase 1: Enlightenment

Phase 2: Survival

Phase 3: Stealth

Phase 4: Comfort

Bedrock

Untethering Yourself

The idea might be to challenge what you truly need and touch the absolute limit of required comfort. Or maybe it’s to set yourself on a path of escape – unhook from the death grind of modern life by carrying minimal expenses.

You will give up or sell anything that won’t fit in a car, you will replace materialistic sentimentality with the time and space to sit with your spirit, you will preclude the inane overstimulation of city life with the simple daily rigor of survival.

Living Lean on the Fringe

Perhaps the tendencies that motivate us to live so lean are ingrained in our personalities: efficiency, self-reliance, and a scrupulous rejection of: norms, conspicuous consumption, rent-slavery and overindulgence in hedonic “experiences”. These tendencies are strengths, and you’ll need them to accomplish this without becoming overwhelmed or simply destitute.

It Will be Wonderful

You will still read and meditate and have sex and do sports and play music. Your diet will become congruent with your values. You will go to the gym – yes, now sometimes out of necessity – but shouldn’t physical activity be mandatory as a human being?

Not being beholden to a landlord or roommates, and not dealing with noisy neighbors, latent building maintenance and the real-estate racket is worth an order of magnitude more than the hundred of extra dollars you’ll pocket every month. Glorious. You’ll be surprised to find out what you miss about materialism and what objects and activities you completely forget about.

You will embrace the rhythm of the city – the daily cycles of the street and sky, the weather, the seasons. Your dating and social life will change but won’t suffer. Where you expect to fight social stigma, you may find admiration or non-judgmental fascination.

Phase 1: Enlightenment

Moving Slower

The feeling of overwhelm in and through your body recedes. All of what follows is unnecessary to simply make it. Limited time is the illusion that will lead to anxiety.

We tend to set goals and arrogantly shoehorn them into whatever timeline we had previously partitioned – better to acknowledge a proper rigging will take several weeks. The urban shores are still in their busyness, agape, waiting.

Lighten

What do you need? Is that true? What if you dropped:

Entertainment: sports, TV, news, video games, porn, web browsing

Diet: artificial requirements you’ve accumulated

Vanity: beauty, hygiene products

Chemicals: alcohol, weed, adderall, SSRIs, birth control

Socializing: validation, company, message boards, online chat, social media

What are your notions about not having a home? Could you leave them be:

“This makes me a failure”

“It will set me back professionally”

“My family will think less of me”

“This is disgusting, dirty, antisocial”

“I’ll never be able to get laid”

You decry capitalism but have enjoyed your cozy role in our violent, heartless machine. You don’t need those books as trophies, you don’t need those video games for your future living room, you don’t need those records to prove awareness.

Sentimental objects: take photos and toss

Furniture: Craigslist

Quality clothes or hobby items: eBay

That sting you’re feeling – that loss of your identity via loss of the material – that’s the truth of life. And like all of life, it fades and is replaced by nothing – and sooner than we foresee.

Assume that your car will be broken into and everything stolen at some point. Plan from there and release that material stress. Marie Kondo may help.

Animals with Tools

If you have these, keep:

Sleeping bag

Small tools

Tape

Batteries

Minimal multi-use, multi-climate clothing

Phone

Laptop

Essential hygiene items

1 bowl, 1 knife, 1 fork, 1 spoon

Hobby accessories that can fit under or behind the seat

Backpacks and duffel bags

Small food cooler

Costs Removed

You will save tremendously on housing costs, however, expect to pipe some of that into car repairs, extra gasoline, oil changes, a higher wireless bill, and prepared food.

Phase 2: Survival

Albeit with no stealth or comfort, you will feel the burden and requests of your body amidst modern insanity and you will quietly and deliberately rage against it.

The Prius

Any Prius produced after 2004 will do – the V provides negligible benefits, the C will have a height upper limit.

You don’t need to pay more than $5K

Priuses need hybrid battery replacements – $900 salvage – between 150K and 250K miles

Procurement

The mattress fits perfectly and lays on the right side, as the backseat pulldown width is asymmetrical. The sleeping bag should only be needed if under 50 °F. The clothes organizer lies to the right of the mattress. Seasonal clothing and rarely-used gear will go in the trunk hatch.

The cooler goes behind the driver’s seat and can be reached for a snack. The storage bins function to hold oft-used tools and toiletries, but also will be stacked behind the passenger seat to prop up the mattress.

For males, the urine bottle should have a narrow neck and wide body to allow for use while laying on your side. Regardless, limiting liquid consumption before sleep will save you.

Food as Utility

You’ll eat cheap, single-use or re-sealable, easily-opened non-perishables.

Bread rolls

Granola

Cereal

Nuts

Rice cakes

Apples

Citrus fruit

Sardines

Tuna

Protein bars and drinks

Applesauce packets

Peanut butter

Cold brew coffee

Eating clean, low-fat, and low-dairy will help keep your digestive schedule predictable.

Filtered cold water can be requested at any corporate coffee chain.

Next to Godliness

Travel toothbrush

Natural deodorant

Nail clippers

Tweezers

Alcohol wipes

Hand sanitizer

Tampons – if female

Small scissors for beard – if male

Condoms

First-aid kit

Intentionally not on this list: shaving cream, razor blades, toothpaste, cologne, hair gel/wax/cream, makeup, face soap, moisturizer, sunscreen. All superfluous.

Get a cheap gym membership with a nationwide 24 hour gym – they will have soap and towels available. Alcohol wipes are a viable alternative.

At the End of the Day

Keep the CO detector by your head. Crack each back window about an inch to keep natural air flow. If you’ll be running the air conditioning all night – an option in your electric-generator-on-wheels Prius – be sure to not be in an enclosed space.

You may not want to sleep in residential neighborhoods until we transition into the stealth phase. For now stick to parking lots in industrial districts, hospitals, WalMarts, motels and anywhere in the wilderness.

Earplugs and an eye-mask will help tremendously and you may even decide to penetrate that blood-brain barrier and curry some melatonin to help you get over the jitters and paranoia you have. Worry will fade once you prove to yourself how possible this is.

Phase 3: Stealth

Your hardtop tent roves unattached through the urban tributaries, across the American infrastructure and settles whenever breath may stagger.

You’ve ignored the norms of living, let’s also ignore the dwelling laws. We’re camping in the anomie.

Operative Definition

While sleeping, it is impossible to be accidentally spotted

Transitioning between sleeping and driving does not require opening a door

Quickly transform into a seemingly non-dwelled-upon vehicle for passengers

To deter theft and suspicion, store nothing in the front passenger seat or floor.

One Way Vision

Passenger and rear windows must be covered or tinted. Best to worst:

Professional limo tint 5% treatment

Tint It Yourself

Perforated vinyl

Custom window covers

You may also tint the front windows to the legal limit to provide slightly more cover and limit convection effects in the sun.

The Prius also has a natural advantage for stealth due to the angle of incidence of the sloping front windshield – it reflects upwards light sources and makes it difficult to see in.

Craft Curtains

You’ll need to make your own curtains that stretch behind the seats. You’ll need:

The light-absorbing fabric is Duvytene – used in theatre and photography – and will look invisible at night.

Paint the grommets, the dowel and the clasps matte black – you don’t want any light to reflect – such as from oncoming headlights. Cut two curtains to fit the space. Make holes for the grommets and hammer them into the fabric. The magnetic clasps will snap the curtains together – make holes for them and snap them on. Adhere the velcro strips to the plastic panel behind each seatbelt. Safety-pin the long velcro strips to the curtain – these will serve to both tie and adhere the curtains to the seatbelt panel. You may also want an additional, higher velcro point for the curtains to ensure zero light gets through. Optionally, you may also want to sew pockets into the back of the curtains.

Put the nails into the ends of the dowel and wedge them in the gap just above the plastic panel behind each seat belt- where the plastic meets the ceiling – to keep the rod in place.

Machine for Sleep

Get rain guards for the back windows. You will open the windows an inch at night and this will block both visibility and precipitation.

If you’re going to be running the air conditioning or heat, keep a small opaque towel for covering the dash lights at night.

Use some of the extra velcro to adhere devices where you find them most convenient.

Daily Transformation

The transition to sleeping will be done by crawling head-first into the back – your head will be at the rear. This gives the advantage of using the small nook behind the rear wheel well to hold your night time tools and also a good location to use your phone or electronics while reducing the amount of escaped light. To perform it: lock the doors, crack the rear windows, slide the passenger seat up fully, unfurl the curtains, flip down the mattress and slide between the gap in the front seats

The transition to driving will be done by sliding feet-first into the driver’s seat. Flip and fold back the forward third of the mattress, roll up and secure the curtains and slide the passenger seat back.

Setting Up Shop

You’ll want to keep your car clean and free of any identifying markers. A Prius with no bumper stickers, no vanity license plate, no ornaments and no identifying scratches or dirt will be hard for someone to notice – even if it’s seen in their neighborhood every night. If you have scratches – buff them out with some wax. If you have decals – use a hairdryer and chemical treatment to remove.

Prefer quiet, high-income neighborhoods. Have a rotation of about four to six spots and plan around noisy and noisome garbage-pickup days.

Some cities may have maps where it’s legal, but you can completely ignore laws – just don’t park in a place where you’ll get towed or ticketed.

Non-feral Configuration

The left rear seat is being kept open. The mattress can be lifted and folded into itself and the right rear seat brought up. The sleeping bag or blanket can be rested on top to hide your pillow. You can now sweetly pretend you are a normal human and host house guests with little suspicion.

Phase 4: Comfort

The rawness of the world has started to chafe. Your fantasies of meditating, writing and surfing (somewhere along the practical-metaphorical spectrum) have been occluded by the realities of the ground of the very civilization you’ve seen deconstructing.

Respite

Post-sin luxuries.

A few drop of essential oil can be added to a baking soda container for a natural air freshener. The fan can facilitate air flow through your curtains.

A Mind for Games

Wolves play, humans play. Entertainment:

The portable power strip will allow you to charge multiple devices at once from arbitrary outlets. Parking near a corporate coffee shop may give you internet access. Learn how to make your phone a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Roller blades are compact and facilitate free urban exploration and exercise.

Heart of Waste

Your hedonic adaptation has been beaten down to it’s baseline. Some additional considerations of ease:

Hierarchy of Needs

The time and space you’ve created can now be used to foster whatever you like: spiritual centeredness, genuine relationships, art projects, new businesses.

When broaching the topic with new friends or partners, it is best to present your self, personality and lean philosophy before revealing the car dwelling logistics, otherwise stigma and preconceptions may block their mental conceptions of you. You will never have a problem if done tactfully. Sex and dating pragmatics will simply require a bit more forethought – assume your attractiveness will be unchanged.

The stigma will elicit more jokes than disdain among friends and maybe, one day, they will quietly ask how the hell you do it.

Less Minimal Set Ups

Extra storage space

Solar powered

For female concerns

Built in bucket toilet

Home theater