Feasibility Update #1

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When I consider living in a mobile homestead, it feels like building a spider web–delicate yet strong, temporary yet sufficient, movable yet stable. Instead of a detailed plan with solutions, we are starting out with challenges with roadblocks. The questions shift from “What will we do?” to “How is it feasible?”.

Initial Challenges

The first two of five challenges have a decent amount of feasibility so far.

Domicile address in Michigan

For many reasons, we want to keep a home base address in Michigan. There are good solutions for mailing addresses, which we will likely use at some point for the majority of mail and packages. My research so far shows that a non-commercial receiving address is best. The Anytime Mailbox service is the most feasible at the moment for our needs but the challenge still exists: How do we get a Michigan address that can be used for State licensing, voting, and medical needs?

My wife mentioned a great possibility that is currently feasible: Rent the upper room in our current apartment. That’s brilliant! We would have an address the same as our current address and a place to store belongings.

Internet fast enough to support mobile work

From my tent camping trips, I have found T-Mobile to have the best connection in both speed and quality in mid-Michigan. Since we currently have T-Mobile plans with a total of 200 GB mobile hotspot data, the connectivity challenge for my remote work is feasible. I can already work remotely with T-Mobile. I’m likely going to add a Verizon hotspot device as a backup.

One great discovery is a digital TV antenna. The old tin-foil antenna’s don’t work any more. But there are many digital antennas that pick up free live TV for sports, news, and weather, plus a few channels with old movies and shows. We’ve tried one for $20 and it works great.

We are also planning to stock up on DVDs and Blu-ray discs for movies and binge watching TV shows. A gaming console like the PS4 or PS5 is great for this but we’ll also likely purchase player device as well.

The challenge however is how to support our gaming and streaming needs? Here’s a summary of what we have found so far…

Posted in Goals.