"...and that was when I realized I was a hippie."

In the chaos of loading all of our belongings (packed carefully away in boxes) into the van that would transport them to our new home, my fiance and I were both repeatedly impressed by how much stuff we have.

We'd already decided to discard or store away the majority of it.  There's not enough room in a trailer for all our junk.  If you've ever seen a cluttered tiny house, you'll know why we're resistant to letting more than what is absolutely necessary enter our future home.

Both of us have remarked at this point on what a cleansing experience it will be to let go of all the material excesses we've been carting around all day.  We don't need this much stuff.  In fact, it's downright embarrassing that we own so much stuff.  What's the point in having boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff, up to the point that we don't even know how much stuff we actually own because it's all been buried under more boxes of other stuff?

So we'll be garage-saling and ebaying and craigslisting away a lot of our excess stuff.  I look forward to this process.  I think my fiance does, too.  At first, it seemed frightening.  Get ride of that leather jacket I've never worn?  Get rid of that electric fireplace that cost me all that money even though I've only used it twice?

And then it just seemed like a relief.

And that was when I realized I've become a hippie.

It's been over a month since I've washed my hair the traditional way.  (Which isn't to say that my hair is dirty.)  My wishlist on pinterest is dominated by essential oils.  Just today I told my fiance we should give patchouli a try.  I want to buy lemon oil to keep away the spiders and lavender oil to spray on my clothes before I go hiking (to keep the ticks and fleas away).

I want to grow my food this summer.  I want it to be organic.  I want to harvest the seeds so I can replant next year.

We want to live off-grid.  Way off-grid.  We want a solar- and wind-powered house.  I want to turn our black water into manure that I can spread in the vegetable garden.  Today, when it rained, I looked at my future in-law's house and thought, "I wonder if they'll let me set up a rain barrel?"

I don't think any of these things (or even all these things in concert) necessarily make me a hippie.  However, I don't think the majority of the conventional/mainstream, non-hippie world will be able to tell the difference.

So that's that for now.  And now I need to read about organic soap nuts.