So What’s It Like Living As A Nomad?

Frequently someone asks, "what life is like living as a nomad?"

We have met very few other full-time nomads, people without a home base like us.  So I can’t speak for other nomads. But lots of people have multiple homes, and in a sense, we do as well. We spent months in the Pacific Northwest each spring and fall, then months on Vancouver Island during the summer, and some winter months in Scottsdale. During this time we rent other people’s homes and everything we take with us needs to fit in our car. We try to rent the same homes, if we liked them. We have a storage unit in Scottsdale, Arizona with our clothes, art, and a little furniture. We also keep some cold weather clothes at our niece's home near Seattle.

I follow a blog from another couple of senior nomads and they seem to be on an endless vacation. Generally speaking, I would say that our life is not like that,  We do go on occasional ‘vacations’ where we do touristy things, (like my recent trip to France), or our annual road trips around Vancouver Island, but most of the time we try to maintain a regular routine and do the same things every day wherever we are.

We try to get a lot of exercise. We go to the gym a lot and try to walk every day. We visit communities with a strong tango community and dance tango as often as possible. We also try to stay in places with a hot tub and take a dip almost every day.  Franklin spends time each morning studying the stock market every weekday no matter where we are, which pays for our travels.  I like to continue my studies of Ikebana (Japanese floral design), travel with vases and floral scissors and study in both Arizona and Portland.

We probably eat out more than most people. But lots of senior cooks retire after fifty or so years of cooking. I am not even sure I would cook much more often if I lived in one place year-round. But it is hard to keep restocking and emptying a kitchen with each rental. In the car, I have a small cooler and a nice basket which I use to store kitchen staples. A friend made a lovely small spice box for me and I bring a teapot, my own knives, and a good selection of teas. Other than that we rent nice houses that sometimes have well-supplied kitchens. Our current rental is terrific with a pool, hot tub, and gym, but not so well stocked with cookware or staples.

We do travel internationally for a few months each year. During those times we try to keep to the same schedule (no Ikebana though). In Argentina, last year and this next year, we do the same things I mentioned above. In fact, that is one of the things we like about Buenos Aires. It is easy for us to maintain our usual activities.

You may be surprised to hear that internationally we usually stay in hotels rather than rentals.  Often a rental abroad has some unpleasant surprise and little or no recourse if it is not acceptable.  Sometimes something needs a repair or is missing. There was loud construction noise every day for two weeks in Cascais, Portugal. On that long trip to Buenos Aires last year, we stayed for months in a new hotel. We had three rooms, maid service, a gym, a hot tub, and a delicious breakfast. We were very comfortable there for the same cost as a nice apartment. When we rent a house or condo in North America we try to see it in advance, which often means a year in advance.

I guess I should talk about packing and unpacking. We spend an awful lot of time doing that. I write lists after every trip of what I took and whether I used it or not. I have been doing this for decades. So before I go anywhere I reread my list from my last trip and try to repack the same items, if I still own them.

Luggage. We have a lot of luggage, probably more than most people, in a variety of sizes, and like everyone else, take different ones on different trips. We started with big ones, 29-inch dufflebags when we thought we might move to Portugal. But we found the size unwieldy and they didn't work well for us, although I know that is what some other people use on their long trips. We are efficient packers and don't really need that much stuff, however, we do need to carry tango clothes and tango shoes which take up a lot of space. For our winter/springs trip to South America last year we each used a 24-inch suitcase and a smaller backpack.

Our car trunk doesn't accommodate two large suitcases so we use lots of smaller soft-sided bags for most things, plus a small rolling suitcase to take into hotels. We try not to carry any luggage in the car cabin. Sometimes that works out, sometimes it doesn't. When we have a car we each have a laptop computer, an iPad, an iPhone, and one small speaker for music. The laptops don't travel with us overseas. This is my real life, not a vacation, so I take a lot of miscellaneous stuff that might surprise you and I may write about that in a future post.

Shopping? Mostly we don't. That said, what we don't do is go to stores or malls and avoid looking for new stuff. However, sometimes stuff happens.
I wish I could say that we follow a strict one-item-in, one-item-out policy, but we don't. I have bought no new household items other than a small teapot in the past two years, but occasional clothes happen.
Shoes? I travel with one pair of athletic shoes, one pair of sporty sandals, one pair of flats plus several pairs of tango shoes and replace as necessary.  Unlike most women, I don't like shoes (probably because I lived on or near beaches or the desert for most of my life) But after 700 days in the same three pairs of shoes I am really tired of them. They are great for travel but now that I am in one place for a few months I recently broke down and got a pair of loafers.

Moving in. If you’ve ever moved you know what a drag is it to move in and find a place for everything. Then you have to remember where you put it, Well, we are doing that all the time. Right now it is particularly challenging because we are in a big condo with lots of closets and have taken a lot of our old clothes out of storage. So we have more stuff than usual to put away. And find again.

Socializing. I attend a lot of Meetups. If you are not familiar with Meetups.com it is an internet site that connects you with communities of people with similar interests. I have met people through meetups in four different countries. They are particularly active in Arizona.

I rely on Facebook and email to keep in touch with people in various communities. I am not a big user of Whatsapp, (an app that allows for free international phone calls that is very popular overseas), because we use T Mobile and they have very liberal international phone plans with free calls everywhere we go. I mostly use Whatsapp in Argentina because that is what locals do to keep in touch.

So what is life like living as a nomad? I guess you could say it is whatever you make it. Same as anyone else's life.