Moving Home to Live the Good Life

What Does it Mean to Live The Good Life?

The majority of people will move home for a better life, in search of the good life, whatever that means, because for each person the good life, or a better life, will mean something quite different.

www.merriam-webster.com defines the good life as ‘a happy and enjoyable life’.

Whilst www.collinsdictionary.com defines the good life as ‘living in comfort and luxury with few problems or worries’.

Most people move home to improve their lives, whether that be their quality of life, to have more space, an easier commute, to release equity, or to save money, amongst a myriad of other reasons.

But, for the purposes of this post, I want to take you back in time, to April 4^th, 1975 when a TV show called The Good Life first aired.

Why? You may ask.

Well, today we are experiencing economic hardships, the planet faces the rapid onslaught of climate change, and we are looking at our lives through very different eyes than we did just a few short years ago.

Now we are asking what we can do differently to be able to afford just the basics like feeding or clothing our family, keeping warm, and keeping living costs down.

How we can live a more sustainable lifestyle and how we wean ourselves off of the commercialised lifestyle we have all grown so accustomed to.

Maybe Tom and Barbara Good were on to something all those years ago but we were all too busy chasing the materialistic good life to see what having a good life really meant.

In this week’s home moving blog, we look at ways that will enable you to live a more sustainable, eco-friendly, simpler, frugal, and perhaps more satisfying way of life.

You may also like to read: UK Home Blogs to Follow. In this guide, we recommend some of the best UK Blogs out there for people who have recently moved home, are in the process of moving home, or want to improve their home and lifestyle. There are some great gardening, home efficiency, and sustainability blogs included in this guide.

The Good Life TV Show

If you are too young to know about the TV show The Good Life it is the story of a couple, Tom and Barbara Good, who live in an affluent area of Surbiton.

Tom has a career as a draughtsman, whilst Barbara looks after the home, and for all intents and purposes they seem to have a ‘good life’.

But on his 40^th birthday, Tom has a mid-life crisis, he seeks to find what is missing from his life, the ‘IT’.

In a moment of eureka, he realises that living a self-sufficient, off-grid style life is what is missing from his life, what the ‘it’ is.

The following 4 series followed their journey as they turned their suburban home into a farm, how they learned to make do and mend, and, through many hardships and many successes, find the good life they were searching for.

You ay also like to read: How to Downsize Your Home For a Better Life. In this guide, we look at the advantages of downsizing your home and how doing so can lead to a much better quality of life.

Chasing The Good Life

Just as Tom Good was searching for ‘IT’, many people try to define what the good life is and then spend their life chasing it.

Many will regard a good life as having wealth or possessions, a large home, and a fancy car.

So they dedicate their life to working, continually trying to advance up the career ladder, to earn more money so that they can buy newer, better, fancier possessions.

But surely that just brings more worry, more stress, less time with loved ones, and the result that you are working so long and hard that you have no time to actually enjoy the life you have until it is too late.

Others would say that having a roof over your head, enough food to eat, and being with loved ones is living the good life.

Yet others would argue that living a good life is one where you are satisfied and content no matter how many or how few possessions you have, how many friends you do or do not have, or how much you have or have not achieved in your career.

For our purposes here, a good life will mean how to live sustainably, to a certain extent become self-sufficient, move away from commercialism towards a lifestyle and way of living where we learn to be happy with what we have, and more importantly, to be happy without those things that we don’t really need.

Whilst most people would not go with the full-on off-grid lifestyle, there are plenty of ways in which we can improve our quality of life by abandoning the ‘must-have’, materialistic lifestyle.

Ways that we can have a more fulfilling life, where we can get back to the basics of having a frugal, healthy, satisfying, and happy life.

Few will look back and regret the times of contentment and satisfaction spent with loved ones, and living a life with few stresses, whilst few will remember with that same satisfaction and contentment the gold-plated taps, personal number plates, or being the person who worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.

You may also like to read: Pros and Cons of Buying a House with a Garden. Having a garden to maintain is a big responsibility, so in this guide, we look at the pros and cons of having your own outdoor space.

Small Steps Towards Living the Good Life

Most people have to work, and few of us will have the opportunity to live a totally sustainable lifestyle or be in a position where we need no income at all.

But we can all take small steps to lead a more frugal life or one where we can live a simpler life.

Personally, I will never have the time nor money to lead a fully sustainable life, nor do all the things that would save me money in the long run, but here are a few things I do that may inspire you to try them or to think of ways that you could make some changes to your life.

#1 Grow and Preserve Fruit and Veg

We grow the fruits and vegetables that we use the most or are expensive to buy.

The excess produce is then preserved for the winter when those items will be out of season and most expensive, or to enable me to save money on food which is then redirected to other winter bills.

The type of produce we grow are tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, onions, beans, garlic, herbs, squashes, and various fruits and berries.

Herbs can be particularly expensive so a wide variety is grown and then dried.

Where possible seeds are saved, dried, and then used for the next season’s produce.

The local chicken farm is only too happy to give away the chicken waste which is superb compost for the garden.

#2 Forage

The countryside can be a great source of free food and is a great way to spend a free, healthy day out in the countryside.

Nettles make great soup, as does wild spinach, and both are abundant.

Hedgerows are full of berries and fruits, whilst hazelnuts and walnuts are easy to gather once they fall from the trees.

And it is not just food you can forage for.

Look where property renovation or house clearances are happening.

It is unbelievable what people throw away, but always get permission first before scavenging through skips or removing anything.

It is amazing what you can find for free when you look.

#3 Buy Second-Hand

Rarely do I buy new. There are always good bargains to be found, whether that is a tool, piece of furniture, or clothing.

That said it makes sense to invest in a good piece of equipment or an item that you will get a lot of wear out of.

It is often the case that the more expensive items will last longer than the cheaper ones that you need to replace every year.

Also, more expensive items tend to have repairable components whereas cheap items tend to be disposable.

#4 Repair and Recycle Not Replace

Electronics are often more expensive to repair than replace so I buy as few electronic or mechanical devices as possible.

When it comes to tools and gardening equipment I always try to buy hand tools rather than electric or motor-driven ones.

Clothing that wears out is relegated to gardening clothes and then to rags for cleaning when they are totally worn out.

Legs of old jeans are cut off, stuffed, and then used as door draught excluders.

With a little thought, many items can be repurposed, such as old wooden window frames that are now photo frames and a garden cold frame.

And an old oak wardrobe is now a huge dining table.

Most people will throw a garment away if the zip breaks for example, but they are not that difficult to repair, it just requires a different mindset or finding someone with the skills to do those repairs for you.

#5 Install Solar Lighting

Every room in the house has lighting that is solar-powered.

Just a simple garden solar panel, the ones with small street lamps, which when placed on each window ledge charges enough to give ample light.

They were initially bought for use during power cuts but with the rising cost of electricity, they are now the main source of light.

All the outside lights and the garage lights have also been replaced with solar versions.

Solar is also used to charge power banks rather than charging from the electricity, it may be a small saving, but a saving nonetheless.

#6 Wood Stoves For Heat and Cooking

All the main rooms have a wood stove which is fed by wood we collect throughout the year from the local forests and from pruning our own trees.

The wood is then stored for at least 12 months and used in rotation so that only seasoned wood is used in the stoves which burns cleaner than unseasoned wood.

The stoves are used for both heating and cooking throughout the winter.

A wood-fired oven and BBQ provide cooking facilities in the garden during the summer months.

#7 Energy-Efficient Appliances

To cut down on electricity use we have a slow cooker, a bread maker, and an air fryer which means that in conjunction with the wood stoves, the electric cooker is almost never used.

When an appliance is no longer able to be repaired it is replaced with a more energy-efficient model.

#8 Keep Chickens

A few chickens keep us supplied with eggs and often enough surplus that we can use to barter or swap with other villagers for things we need.

They are also an efficient way to keep weeds down in the garden as well as supply compost.

#9 Insulate to Save Energy

All the floors in the house are hardwood so thick rugs cover them in the winter which retains a lot of heat within the room.

Not all the windows are double glazed so in winter they are covered in bubble wrap to trap warm air.

Heavy, lined curtains are hung on every window and door during winter.

It occurred to me that the garage, attached to the side of the house, was where a lot of heat was being lost.

Therefore I insulated the inside walls and the roof of the garage which has made a huge difference to the temperature within the house.

We also make use of heavy blankets on the beds, layers of clothing, thick socks, and fur-lined slippers to help keep us warm.

#10 Barter and Swop

There are often ways to pay for services that you need but cannot afford.

For example, a rotavator is an expensive bit of kit which is used maybe twice a year.

It makes no sense to buy one when we can swap a day’s labour or some fruit and veg in return for a guy to turn the land for us.

Often we will swap excess produce with a villager who has produce that we do not have, or people will offer things in exchange for the use of a tool or skill you have.

These are just a few ideas that work for us, every community is different so they may not work in your circumstances, the thing is to just look at how you live and how the land and your home could work better for you, how you could save money, and live more sustainably.

And it may just be that a new home and new community will give you the motivation to try a more sustainable lifestyle.

You may also like to read: How to Move House with Chickens: Eggcellent Chicken Moving Tips. Find out all you need to know about moving your chickens to a new home, from preparation to transportation, this guide is invaluable.

Moving Home to Live the Good Life

Moving to a new home presents the perfect opportunity to look at our lives and seek ways to change or improve aspects of it.

It is an ideal time to create good new habits and break bad habits.

So how do we start to make these changes in search of the good life?

Set Yourself Goals.

Without goals, you have nothing to aim for so think about what you want to achieve.

Once you know what your goals are you can tailor your home search and make lifestyle changes to help you reach those goals.

Your goals don’t need to be big, small changes can make a big difference in your life, but they may include:

#1 Growing your own fruit and vegetables – So you will need outdoor space or an allotment

#2 Keeping chickens – Probably a more rural location

#3 Reducing energy bills – Maybe a new build home or downsizing

#4 Giving Up Your Car – A location with good public transport or somewhere nearer work and shops

#5 Spending less screen time – A place where there is plenty to do, or where the internet is not so good

#6 Being Energy Self-Sufficient – Where it is possible to have a wind turbine or solar panels

#7 Bartering and Swopping – A community where you could swap garden produce for example, or barter for services with your friends and neighbours

These are just a few examples of changes you may be thinking of making.

So think about what you want to achieve, what your goal is, then the type of home or location that you need to live in, the life skills that you need to learn, and the change of mindset required in order to reach that goal.

You may also like to read: The Pros and Cons of Moving to the Countryside. In this guide, we explore all the great and not-so-great things about moving to the countryside.

Planning to Live a Good Life

How are you going to reach your goals?

You need a plan, a set of steps, with each one taking you nearer to making your goals a reality.

The plan may span several years or only a few months depending on your personal circumstances.

Your plan may look something like this:

#1 Set a Budget 

Knowing how much money you have or do not have to dedicate to your project is vital as it determines exactly what is achievable, and which goals you can realistically reach.

Even if you have a zero budget, there are still actions you can take to move closer to the good life.

Learning a skill from a friend or neighbour could cost nothing or gardening tools can often be found for free online.

#2 Determine What is Feasible Within That Budget

Now you know the budget for your project you need to decide whether the budget allows you to head straight for your ultimate goal or if you have to move towards your main goal in stages.

So your ultimate goal may be to have an eco-friendly or more energy-efficient home.

Your budget may not stretch to a brand new self-build home but it may stretch to some insulation in your current home, or enough to attend a course on installing a wind turbine.

#3 Plot Short-term Goals

The stages do not have to be physical moves.

It could be that your final goal is to be self-sufficient with garden produce.

So you may need to attend a gardening course, or you may need to learn how to preserve produce.

Each short-term goal is a step closer to realising your dreams.

#4 Set a Time Frame

If you have no end date set for each goal or a deadline for your final goal, then it is easy to never start.

However, the time frame must be realistic and achievable or you will become disheartened and will abandon your plans before you really get started.

#5 Review Regularly

As with any plan, regularly revisit it.

It could be that you reach your short-term goals quicker than expected, or that you realise that you need to learn an additional skill, or that you have saved money quicker than you expected.

#6 Start Today

The best way to start living a good life is to start today.

Set your goals, make a plan, and go for it.

One of the best things anybody can do to start their journey to the good life is to start decluttering their life.

It will cost you nothing to do it, you may even make some money selling the things you don’t need anymore, you will have more space in your home, your home will be tidier and more manageable, and when it comes to moving home, your packing and removal costs will be considerably cheaper.

You may also like to read: The Epic Guide to Decluttering for a Home Move. A step-by-step guide on how to declutter each room in your home.

Good luck in your quest to lead a good life and come back and tell us about your experiences in the comments below.