Life

The Art of Living for Free

Want to get by on almost nothing? I'm glad to share some (free) tips.

By Dorothy Woodend, 26 Jun 2009, TheTyee.ca

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Free spirit or freeloader?

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A friend of my brother recently asked if he could come and stay for a little while, or at least until he'd found a place in the city. Since I had a free room, I said, "Sure, on the condition you help me fix stuff." What followed was an education, of sorts, in how to live almost free in the city. With a front row seat on the freeloader world, I thought I should take notes, as you never know when it will be your turn to cadge a meal or a place to stay. Here is some of what I learned.

Rent free

First off, since rent in Vancouver is somewhere in the high stratosphere, it helps if you have someplace to stay that doesn't cost the same price as a college education once did. Many a veteran couch surfer knows the perils attached to camping out in someone else's living room. If your charm and entertainment value begin to wane, chances are, you'll be out on your vagabond bum.

House sitting is another option. The summer is an ideal time to find a place to stay for cheap, or preferably free, since people want to leave the city and need someone to water their plants and feed their fluffy kitty. If you're relatively clean and responsible, you will be passed between people, like a reliable babysitter. Keep your porno habits to a bare minimum, and your best manners on display and you can usually find accommodations.

Free food

Once you have a place to hang your hat, you can concentrate on other things, like feeding yourself. Since freeloaders are deeply opposed to paying for anything they can get for nothing, the key to eating free and well is to identify a good dumpster and keep ongoing tabs on it. At my local grocery store, whenever something is just inches past its due date, the staff places it helpfully, right on top of the dumpster. The savvy freeloader may already have cased the store to see what is just about to pack it in, and then he/or she simply waits. When newly expired stuff is carried out back, he or she simply swoops in and nabs it before real street people do.

The same is true of alleyways, and sidewalks around town. People leave out the most interesting array of free stuff. If you roam around often enough, your chances are good of finding something you can lug home. The key is eternal vigilance, and certain lack of squeamishness. 

Since dumpster food is ostensibly for people who actually need it, and not for people who can afford to buy stuff, a certain lack of shame or embarassment is required. An iron stomach is also useful. Every time I am offered a piece of carrot cake, or some watermelon at my house lately, I feel the need to ask, "Is this dumpster watermelon?" "Yep!"  "The best kind?" I ask. "The only kind," is the answer. 

Some freeloader tricks are pretty easy. If you don't have a car, you can walk or ride your bike to and from work. Others are less obvious. If you peruse the Internet you can find all matter of discounts and bargains. For example: at certain websites someone has typed in all the codes that will get you 35 per cent off all Greyhound bus fares. If you type in the code, presto! Cheapness abounds. 

It is also a good idea to have something to barter with, and I don't mean your skanky body. Everyone can pretty much cook and clean, it's also good idea to be handy. Learn how to do things, whether it's bicycle repair or fixing a leaky toilet and trade upon your skills.

I have to admit my freeloader has earned his keep, through the constant application of repair skills and general fix-it-ness. What he doesn't know, he simply looks up on the Internet. Frankly, I am often amazed at what you can learn about basic plumbing and appliance repair on YouTube. There is a veritable world of free advice out there -- everything from unblocking a sink to tiling around corners.

If you don't mind getting dirty, or bashing your fingers occasionally, you need never feel helpless again. The most curious thing about taking stuff apart, fixing it and putting it back together again is that the mystery attached to stuff disappears. Understanding how things work means you never need fear them again, and that, in itself, is something of a free gift.

Free entertainment

The Park Theatre in Vancouver offered free showings of Shark Water this past week. I went to see the film, and looked carefully around at the audience to see what the freeloaders looked like en masse. They look pretty much the same as everyone else. I suppose that is the point, stealth is a key component of the freeloader, the ability to blend in and not be noticed.

Another friend of my brother, who my brother says is the world's cheapest man, has developed the fine art of getting away with stuff by looking like he knows exactly what he's doing, and then doing it. If he wants food, he walks into a grocery store, preferably something large and anonymous, fills up his grocery cart with every conceivable food item, and then walks right out the door with it, like he's doing absolutely nothing wrong. If affecting an air of complete entitlement does fail, it's helpful to be an extremely fast runner. (Naturally The Tyee does not endorse illegal activity, but acknowledging that it does occur, well, that's fodder for most of the news, isn’t it? And so we shall do so further in this piece.)

If fleeing from a Safeway security guard doesn't sound like fun, there are plenty of other forms of free entertainment in the summer. Everything from pick-up soccer games in the park, to Car-Free days (all over Vancouver) with more free music and performances than you shake a stick at.  Douglas Park also offers free family concerts on Thursday nights throughout the summer. 

Free stuff

The curious thing that I have gleaned from a lengthy career as a thrift store shopper is that value is entirely in your head. Ergo: a designer frock only costs hundreds of dollars if you believe that it should do so. The vast edifice of consumer goods is kept aloft by the constant, unending application of this type of faith. (Religion has nothing on consumer culture.) But once you lose your faith, and you leave behind the mall/church, you realize that nothing is as it seems. Once a Pucci or Gucci has been reduced to the racks of Value Village, you begin to see it for what it really is, just a bit of cloth and stitches, stripped of pixie dust and the glamour of marketing.

This culture of free stuff starts to infect you almost without you noticing. It creeps into your brain on little cat feet and says, "This is overpriced, but if you really want it maybe you should just take it." I noticed it the other day, while looking at some moisturizer in London Drugs, "This stuff is too damn expensive." I thought, "Maybe I should steal it." I didn't actually steal it, but the thought was there, turning all moral rectitude on its head.

Another friend makes it a point to pocket at least one small item every time he goes to Value Village. His rationalization is that since they've jacked up their prices, they deserve it. (It does seem odd that when everyone else is slashing prices on consumer goods, the prices at the Village just keep going up.) It's a perilously thin line between cheap and free, but once you step over that line, it's difficult to go back to the straight world.

I've really only stolen a single pair of sunglasses. I just put them on my head and walked out of the store with them. Every time I look at my ill-gotten booty, I feel a singular combination of glee and guilt. It's a feeling I remember well from childhood, when stealing things was a rite of passage. As bored country kids, stealing was something we did for fun and profit. From breaking into our school, wandering the dark hallways, and taking a toy from the Kindergarten classroom, as a token of our criminal activity, or stealing coins out of the wishing well at the roadside attraction a couple of miles up the highway, or breaking into summer cabins to wander around and perhaps, take a soap dish -- stealing was a cheap thrill.

The thrill remains the same, but of course, the cost is infinitely higher when you're an adult. Unless, of course, you steal so much that you become beyond reproach. You need only to look to the financial industry to the south of us, to realize that stealing massively can often have little or no repercussions at all. If you're going to steal stuff, aim high. If you aim highest of all, you may just be able to buy an Island somewhere and live out your days on someone else's money.  

Free your mind

Most social constructs are on built on sand, and if you push, even a little bit, they begin to slide. This is true for love and money. One thing I have noticed about freeloaders is that they do not usually apply the concept of ownership to people. Girlfriends and boyfriends come and go, and sex has few strings attached (unless you're into that kind of stuff).

What to make of the fact that free thinking freeloaders do not apply many rigid rules to relationships? The entire architecture of marriage, family, et cetera, often requires a tacit agreement to respect the rules. But if you suspend all normative models of behaviour and make up your own, is complete societal breakdown very far off? Probably not, since it takes a certain amount of concentrated effort to live this way. For most people, it's simply easier to do things the way they've always been done, the same way that everyone else does them. Social squeamishness is often so deeply ingrained, that it makes eating out the dumpster seem like a cakewalk. 

Freedom

The free life is not without its pitfalls, but in an age of dwindling resources and growing demands, the ability to live lightly in the world may become an increasingly useful skill. The free life requires you to be resourceful, helpful, useful and above all thankful. Which doesn't actually sound all that bad. 

In the immortal words of Neil Young, "Keep on rocking in the free world."

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[Tyee]

Dorothy Woodend writes about film every other Friday for The Tyee, but this week felt free to try on a different subject.

13 Comments:

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  • nele

    2 years ago

    my way to get stuff for free!

    Recently I joined a few bartering websites to get rid of my old stuff and gain "new" things for free. My favorite site is http://www.barterquest.com ! I love to swap with them. you can find almost everything there, goods, services and real estate and the best it's totally free.

  • southdeltawalker

    2 years ago

    "Garage sales-dumpster diving in the suburbs..."

    I love that quote. Every Sat there are bargain hunters galore scurrying around the suburbs-some even have their own hand made maps to strategize how to get to the most sales in the least amount of time.

    Anyways-i try to not buy anything new except for food {and toilet paper!}. I try to get things for free or at the thrift store/garage sales.
    I can't believe what a throw away culture we have. At any garage sale or thrift store there is a lot that is new.
    If you have patience you will find what you are looking for.

    My little niece was totally outfitted for daycare in "designer "clothing by her auntie.
    She is wearing baby gap, baby roots, oshkosh, even her socks are from roots/gap.
    The total cost of a big shopping bag stuffed full? Less than $6.
    Everything from garage sales and the thrift store.

    Oh-my Christmas gifts? Pickled beans made from beans from the garden and lovely vanilla scented pears from a friends pear tree. Oh i did have to buy the vanilla and it's fair traded. Gee-what are the chances I'll find that at the next garage sale....?

  • Bob Watts

    2 years ago

    The Free Life

    Yes there are people going hungry in BC, my very ill friend does not get served at food banks, he is judged as unworthy, who can see PTSD in a person, his hidden disability means hunger to his children as well. Our society loves to judge others in the blink of an eye. We are very cold and cruel animals. There are many others that are house bound that don't have the luxury of crawling around dumpesters to feed themselfs. The following story is true.

    "Food banks started as a well-intentioned gesture of kindness but it has gradually become a way for the province to off load welfare payments and redirect cash flow to a few large corporations. Here is how it now works. In 1975 the poor had the funds to purchase their own food. Stores in 1975 that had dented cans, out of date breads and dairy products, meats and over ripe vegetables, would depose of these items in dumpsters. Today these once waste items are literally turning into gold. Waste is now sorted by trained employees and are scanned at the cash registers, and 80% of the value of every item is now considered as a tax-exempt donation, valued in the multi millions of dollars."

  • margot

    2 years ago

    parking lot gourmet

    A wild smoke is free for the gathering where I used to live in Mt. Pleasant.

    Coltsfoot leaves (cured stems make divine tea) from down by the traintracks. Very mild. Pearly Everlasting leaves, used to be called "Lady's Tobacco", sometimes provide a ring around the head, usually not.

    Sweet Melilot (aka sweet clover) both the yellow and the white-flowered kind, smell gorgeous when added in tiny quantities to a rollie.

    I used to tie these treasures to thumbtacks in my kitchen ceiling. They dried quite quickly. Great tobacco stretchers.

    Wild lettuce is said to provide a mild opiate. My experience was limited to a few tries because I felt it made me unpleasantly muddled and silly. There's lots of it though.

    As for food, I never passed a dumpster without poking around, amazed at what people threw out. Where I live now, accessible dumpsters seem to be locked, although for a while Safeways enabled people to carry bags and bags of perfectly good fruit and due date meat etc. off to their friends. Now I think it all goes in the one truck, someone said to a pig farm.

    There is so much to forage I'm amazed so few people do, just for the joy of it. Dandelions are too bitter now for most people, also a tad too laxative, but earlier in the year the leaves, the crown, the buds, the flowers are excellent nutrition and really delicious.

    My big treat right now is Indian Plum, a plentiful fruit that isn't a plum at all. Look it up. The fruit is thin on a large stone, but the flavour makes a little seem very grand indeed. It's a suck and spit routine, bunch after bunch. So sweet.

    The hydrogen cyanide rumour/warning is silly. A plum type plum's stone might be the culprit here, definitely not Indian Plum. So find some, suck and spit with your similars, preferably by a river, and fear not.

    Day lilies are beginning to bud. Try a bud or two. The flowers vary from heavenly crisp and sweet (pale yellow kind Asians grow)to OK with cream cheese or battered/fried.

    I'm pretty sure it's the right time for lamb's quarters, yum, but I haven't actually run across any. There's one kind that looks like a GM monster, with nubbly red blotches, gourmet version. They're cousins of quinoa.

    Watch for discarded fig trees. Lots of people thought the cold phase last winter killed them. Only sloth and distraction kept me from cutting mine down. Lo, it now has little leaves on some branches and five figs, one of which will surely be a giant by late August.

    Unlike dumpster-diving, which can become overwhelming, a major addiction, a house-filling bad dream, but oh how I loved it, foraging provides immediate satisfaction, and truly useful finds. Nowadays, I'd much rather sit down with a handful of Indian Plum than somebody's Moulinex.

    Ah, but I loved dumpsters. Sixteen years later, I still eat with, wear, hang on the walls, and read stuff I found in dumpsters in Mt Pleasant.

  • margot

    2 years ago

    Watts, where did you get

    Watts, where did you get that information, what a gem it is:

    "Waste is now sorted by trained employees and are scanned at the cash registers, and 80% of the value of every item is now considered as a tax-exempt donation, valued in the multi millions of dollars."

    This has been a suspicion of mine for a long time. More details, please.

  • rangergord

    2 years ago

    living on less

    Interesting expose on being a respectable bum in the city. I draw the line on eating dumpster food and stealing. My best tip? Leave the city completely.

  • Bob Watts

    2 years ago

    Tax Exempt Waste Question.

    Hi Margot: "where did I get that info about waste food being sorted by trained staff and 80% of the value is then a tax exemption?" I got that info on a school field trip to an Overwaitea store. In a storage area in the back of the store was a large stack of dented cans, fruit, veg, broken cereal boxs, etc etc. The staff told us the food was awaiting a trained overwaitea staffer that traveled from store to store, and gave final approval for these items to be sent out to the food bank. Later that day the food bank truck was at the store, I watched as the food bank staff was at the till with shopping carts full of the food items I'd seen earlier in the day. Every item was being scanned. I learned lated that food banks are registered as non-profits and issue tax receipts for donations. I've talked to people in this area that use the food bank and they tell me that about 90% of the food they get goes into their trash cans. They say the food bank will not allow them to sort on site what they get, this is very hard on the sick that must carry all these waste items home. I must admit it looks great to the public seeing the poor walking away with arm fulls of food. The poor say nothing because its better to get something rather than nothing. Like I said I've ask the local health authority to look into this rotten food, they will not because this food is not being sold, or is it? This food bank I talk of is opened only 1 hr per week on a friday, this means whatever was inspected by the stores is now completely expired.

  • gwidden

    2 years ago

    Go Heavy, little sister

    Go lightly, my left foot! You are a bottom feeder and low-class vandal of the worst description. Your existence is totally dependent on leaning heavily on the structure that other more "common" folk work their butts off to create. I always wondered who the moronic kids were who were doing break-and-enters, and taking from others who couldn't afford the loss....maybe some disabled kid's wheelchair, or a bike that some kid had saved their newspaper money for, or and old folk's motorized scooter. Now we know.

  • Jeffrey J.

    2 years ago

    Delightful and Timely

    I just loved this piece. A wonderful amalgam of saucy attitude and real life insight!

    This new world as described will grow exponentially. Many of the events from the 1930's will repeat themselves. We are in financial free fall and based on the evidence, there is no end is sight. So there will be continued deflation where the value of cash will rise, the value of assets will keep dropping. Jobs and income will be scarce.

    So we must open our doors (and hearts) like Ms. Woodend to those in need. There will many such people and there certainly won't be any help from our political elites.

    Lovely coverage.

  • Dreaminofthegoods

    2 years ago

    Creative Energy

    If you want to be an expert at living for free, there are many books out there that can help you do this. The books are not guides to living for free, nor are they advertised as such. But the same rules that are described in these books are the same rules that apply to anyones life, no matter what you do or where you are.

    Developing Intuition, Shakti Gawain
    Creative Visualization, Shakti Gawain

    Some others have described the same information in a different form and they are called. I'm sure there are many more.

    The Law of Attraction
    The Secret
    Etc..
    Etc..

    Keep in mind, I am just showing you what works for me. I don't know if it will work for you. But if it does you will never forget it. What do you have to lose? I am trying to help you.

    B.

  • theodorestinks

    2 years ago

    shifting (and shiftless) lines in the sand

    The article brought back some great memories of living as a student in TO. There is, indeed, a particular delight in finding something sweet, at a fraction of the original price, in a thrift store.

    Learning to be savvy is a fine art, but also one that may lead one to the dark side. Bartering and swapping can be fun, but when it comes to feeling "entitled" to stuff, habitual stealing, cheap to the point of being shifty...well, you get the culture lacking accountability that we have.

    Of course, some people have little choice in the matter. But others do. "Bah! Everyone does it. Why not?" Why not, indeed.

  • North of Hope

    2 years ago

    Run for politics

    These people sound like the BC Liberals to me. Maybe they'll be running for politics or maybe set up a ponzi scheme.

  • dorothy

    2 years ago

    Thank you

    "Understanding how things work means you never need fear them again, and that, in itself, is something of a free gift."

    Wow! But how will we MANAGE all those fearless people this could generate? Our whole socioeconomic structure is built on everybody being afraid of practically everything! Beware of spreading irresponsible anarchist propaganda:

    "These people sound like the BC Liberals to me. Maybe they'll be running for politics or maybe set up a ponzi scheme."

    Exactly. These ideas are only good for the few, if no one gives the game away. You just majorly undermined the social order of our fair province! Woe is us....imagine line-ups at the dumpster...

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