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View Full Version : I'm BayouGirl and it's nice to meet ya'll



BayouGirl
9-19-12, 11:35pm
Well, hello everyone,

My name is BayouGirl and I live in a small town in the boonies of Louisiana. Once upon a time I was a city girl who worked as a public school teacher in the inner city of New Orleans. But I always yearned for a simpler life. Thanks to a major health crisis, hurricane Katrina and the sudden death of a spouse, all in a 5 year span, I ended up having to give up teaching and lost most of my possessions and had to start life all over again. I had little left to lose so I left the big city and went searching for a place to start my new life.

I now live on the outskirts of a small town (population 200?) on a large piece of family property with my fiance (aka BayouBoy or BB). It's a long story how I ended up here but I am so happy to be living the life we have. I have long admired tiny houses on the internet and have dreamed of one. They just make so much sense for so many reasons.

We got lucky and were able to buy a small 2 bedroom wood-frame (20 x 30, 600 sq ft) house for less than $5000 cash. The owners were selling it because they built a bigger, newer house. The house was in almost perfect condition, had a fireplace, new carpet, new paint, etc. The only drawback was there were no closets since it was an older house.

The catch to this great deal was that we had to move the little house to our property. Normally, such an undertaking can cost about $10,000 but BayouBoy said he could move it himself. I told him disbelievingly " You can't do that!" but I was wrong and I have the pictures to prove it. He did indeed move that house from a few miles down the road and up our long dirt driveway to our property. BayouBoy doesn't know the meaning of the word "can't".

Together we have worked to shape our life into a simple life without debt, credit cards or working in a 9-5 job.We wanted a life with monthly living expenses that were well below $1000 a month. We didn't want to be tied to a traditional job, working to support a big house and expensive vehicles.We wanted to be our own bosses and live a relatively stress free life on our own time and not have to conform our lives to the work schedule of an employer.

He is a jack of all trades and can fix anything in a house, car or tractor, does handyman work, works cattle with friends and also has seasonal jobs as well. I work as a writer online, as well as caring for an elderly relative and working with BayouBoy when he needs a hand. Together we have roofed houses after storms, hunted alligators each year during gator season and picked pecans during pecan season to support our life and are very happy with life that way. We decide when we want to work and when we want to play or rest. Alligator season just ended for us, we used all our tags and I got some great picture of the quiet beauty of Louisiana's bayous and swamps.

Our property is family property and our portion is about 20 acres, although we have the use of many more acres. Our nearest neighbors are half a mile away and are BayouBoy's parents. Other than that, there aren't neighbors for miles around. There are thousands of acres of undeveloped property surrounding us, most of it owned by relatives. We live in utter privacy and love it. The closest Walmart, bank or Mcdonalds is about 30 minutes from our home in another small town up the road and we are quite happy with that. We go to town a few times a month and make one big trip to the big city about once a month to stock up on stuff

The only drawback of our property is that our driveway is half a mile long and during a bad rain, it becomes unusable. So we have to use the 4 wheeler to get to the highway or drive the truck thru the pastures. On days like that we park by BayouBoy's parents (aka MawMaw and PawPaw) who live closer to the highway One day we will get rocks on the driveway or pave it but that will cost more that we paid for our house!! But this minor disadvantage doesn't bother me. I love staying home and it's not like either of us has to get to work everyday to punch a time clock. I work from home and a rainy day for him means a day off, since he works outdoors usually.

Everyone who pursues a simple life does so for different reasons. One of my main reasons was because I wanted less stress and less expenses. I also needed a life that I could keep up with and wouldn't leave me exhausted. I have had serious health issues (along with fibromyalgia) and can no longer teach all day and keep up with 30 kindergarteners like I used to do so easily.

I have really worked to get our monthly expenses in line. I refuse to go into debt on a vehicle or to get a credit card and run up the balance. Luckily, we don't have a mortgage to pay. We opted to give up cable and rely on antennae TV and we can also get DVDs from any library in the state. We do have internet service which both of us couldn't live without. We opted out of city water because it was expensive and tasted like chlorine. We have a well on the property which suits us fine.

Our monthly expenses consist of our cell phones, internet, electricity, insurance on vehicles, food and whatever expenses come up. A good estimate for everything would be less than $800 a month which is very reasonable. We recently went into debt for a good cause when we purchased a generator to help us thru hurricane Isaac who hit us a few weeks ago. It was $700 dollars that was very well spent because the power went out for days and we were able to run our entire little house quite cozily with our generator. We bought it from BayouBoy's brother who owns a hardware store so we don't have to pay interest and we can pay it off on our own terms with no due date or minimum amount due.

We are working towards using our property to bring us income. We have pecan trees which produce pecans that we sell each year. BayouBoy is raising a small herd of cattle which he is hoping to add to. I would love to be off the grid but solar panels are expensive and a risky propositions in an area that gets hit by hurricanes.

So that is a not-so-short summary of my simple life. I look forward to reading your stories and exchanging ideas and interacting with everyone who is out there living the simple life.

Tussiemussies
9-20-12, 12:02am
Hi bayou girl, thanks for sharing about your simple living and how you got to this point in your life. I enjoyed reading all of the details of how you are living. I know you will enjoy chatting with others here that are pursuing the same lifestyle that you are living already!

Look forward to chatting with you! Christine:welcome:

BayouGirl
9-20-12, 12:30am
Hi Christine!
:) Thanks for the welcome. I am so glad to be in the company of others around the world who also live the simple life. I'm sure I will learn a lot and am always interested in hearing how others are living their version of the simple life.:thankyou:

Taffy
9-20-12, 2:48am
:welcome:Wow, what a story. The pictures in my mind are wonderful. You are at my goal already. I really hope to get there too, but I don't see that any time soon, or far.

fidgiegirl
9-20-12, 7:48am
Hi Bayougirl!! Welcome aboard and thanks for sharing. I look forward to learning many things from you!!

SteveinMN
9-20-12, 8:22am
Great post, BG! Welcome!

Selah
9-20-12, 2:34pm
BayouGirl, welcome! It's so great to see courageous, inventive, committed people like you join us. Congratulations on all you have done...it took a lot of guts, grit, and heart, I'm sure.

catherine
9-20-12, 2:45pm
Love your story! Thanks for sharing it! I look forward to your future posts and insights on simple living..

BayouGirl
9-20-12, 7:39pm
Thanks for the warm welcome everyone. It is so good to be in the company of people who actually get what I am doing. It seems like so much of the world has been caught up in living large, worshiping designer names and pursuing a life of excess. I could never understand that. When people I knew discussed recent purchases and proudly showed off shoes or purses that costs hundreds of dollars, I could only think "Wow, how incredibly stupid and wasteful. How sad to be a person who judges their worth by buying into the false prestige of a designer label". I am much happier with my own frugal purchases.

Float On
9-20-12, 7:49pm
Enjoyed your share and wonder if you blog.
Impressed with moving the house!

BayouGirl
9-20-12, 11:09pm
Enjoyed your share and wonder if you blog.
Impressed with moving the house!


I would love to start a blog but wonder which free blog spots are best. I had a blog in hubpages but then had a moderator mark one of my blogs as "too personal" which was odd because there was nothing really personal in it. It was simply an amusing piece about being an unconventional mom. Apparently they wanted it to be more of a "how to" rather than the unusual ways that I used to amuse my child and his friends (and keep them in line) when they were younger.

Float On
9-20-12, 11:44pm
I've used eblogger off and on for years. Had to stop our blog because we ended up with a stalker that would follow us to various art shows.
I currently only blog a little for my dad's cabin building project on the farm (building a cabin with logs from trees he planted 45 years ago - it's probably where I'll end up).

A lot of people love wordpress but I've never tried it.
You sound like you'd have a really enjoyable blog with your life.

Selah
9-21-12, 12:08am
I use Blogger myself, but "everyone" in the professional blogosphere tells me I should switch over to WordPress. Blogger does have a number of limitations, but you don't really have to be too tech savvy to understand it and work with it, which is why I chose it initially.

BayouGirl
9-21-12, 12:54am
Here is my hubpages blog. I work online as a freelance writer and one of my jobs was to start a blog about anything so my employer could track statistics, algorithms and search engine optimization tactics. So I created a blog about my simple life. Almost every thing I do is with my sense of humor firmly intact and my blog is no different.

The fact that hubpages made me edit an article for being too personal kinda set me back. After all it wasn't a "too much information" kind of personal. I guess they want the readers to gain information and ideas from their site rather that just reading for amusement. "Confessions and advice from a crazy mom" is the name of that article if you are interested.http://michellerobert.hubpages.com/hub/The-MotherSon-and-FatherDaughter-bond

I also have some articles there from when I lived in my tiny house which is wood frame camp built up on a tractor trailer chassis. I lived it alone for quite a while and was very happy. Then BayouBoy bought the big house and we moved the "big house" and my "little house",( aka my playhouse) onto our property. Here are the links to my two articles on the economics of living in a tiny house.

http://michellerobert.hubpages.com/hub/The-Economics-Of-Living-In-A-Tiny-House
http://michellerobert.hubpages.com/hub/Dont-Work-Harder-Live-Smarter


But I am gearing up to begin blogging again

http://michellerobert.hubpages.com/

Synapse to synapse
9-28-12, 2:40pm
Welcome! I love bayous! The environment, the ecosystems, the flora and fauna. I once visited the Atchafalaya Basin, and remember just being amazed at the different wildlife. I had never seen an Alligator in it's natural habitat before, and that was neat, at least to me! But, maybe I'm just easy to please.

:)

Thanks for the introduction!