 Hey everybody, Rob Greenfield here and this is everything I own. Everything I own is sitting on this table right here and fits into this one backpack. So today I'm going to show you what I own and share why I own these things and some lessons to go along with them. Now when I say this is everything I own, I truly mean it. It means there's nothing stored in other places, nothing stored at family or friends and I don't even actually have a bank account, a credit card, many other things. All of my money is also right here on this table. So this is literally everything I own and it's about 43 possessions. My net worth right now is about $5,500 to $6,000. There's $5,000 in this envelope and then everything here is worth substantially less than $1,000. So this is it and I'm going to show you the different things. So I'm going to go ahead and start with my clothes. First I'm wearing two articles of clothing. I have my shorts and I have my shirt on. Along with that I have four more shirts, all the same except one of them is long sleeve, the other four are short sleeve. These are bamboo cotton blend. One of my goals is to be basically biodegradable. My goals is that when I die, hopefully if I can be in the woods or out on the ocean and if I fall into the ocean or I die in the woods, I just simply return to the earth rather than littering as I die by wearing plastic clothing. So one of my goals is really for almost everything that I own to be biodegradable, to be a single or a multiple, a few simple ingredients straight from the earth. Bamboo and cotton is one example of that. My sweater is a wool sweater, thrift store, I think $10, $11. So that's my main source of warmth. I have two pairs of underwear which are plastic, not natural fibers. A second pair of shorts, also plastic. I have a pair of socks and these socks are actually my Boy Scout socks from when I was in high school or middle school, so these are 20 years old possibly, no 15 years old. My clothes fit into this little cotton bag, so this is my clothes bag, I don't think the sweater would fit in here but everything else fits into there. And that's it for clothes. So one thing to point out, I'm in a warm climate right now. I lived in Florida before while I was doing my year of growing and foraging all my food, so I designed my life to be where I am. I don't design my life to be in a cold climate because I'm not in a cold climate. Wherever you are, you have to do things that make sense, apply common sense, critical thinking, problem solving to wherever you are. So for example, a month from now I will be in Western Europe, I'll be in Germany where it's going to be cold, so I'm going to have to get some warm clothes. So right now I own 43 possessions, but that will fluctuate. My goal is one day to have no possessions, so 43 less possessions and at times I'm going to have more possessions. When I'm on a tour in Europe speaking, maybe it'll be doubled to 80 possessions. We'll see. But the point is that wherever you are, whatever climate you're in, you have to adapt to that climate. So my other item of clothing, as you could say, is my sandals. Very simple. I'm mostly barefoot. I try to be barefoot as much as I possibly can, which is a vast majority of the time. And these provide very simple cover to my feet. And these are the soles, but our feet naturally have soles. They're called calluses. And I won't go too deep into that, but to sum it up, I believe that the human body was designed over tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years to really work. So all I do is I believe that my feet work. It's actually not that crazy. So let's see. What do I want to show next? So I have a little towel. If I have a cold, this works as a towel for that, a handkerchief. I use this for washing dishes and things like that. So multi-purpose. One of the keys is for things to be usable for many functions. A lot of the things that I have, I have maybe it's one possession, but I can use it in many different ways. This is probably one of the great possessions that I have. And this is my pot and it's my bowl and it's my to-go container. It's what I can put my leftovers in. So a lot of people who are striving for zero waste, they'll carry a reusable bowl. This is basically that except it's also a pot so that when I'm traveling, if I'm somewhere where there is no pot or pan, I can cook and I can also cook over a fire with it. I wash this with steel wool so it keeps it really shiny, but I've been using this for I'm not sure how long, but probably five to ten years. It's one of my oldest possessions right now. So this is a really important possession in my life. And when I say important, not a single thing here is irreplaceable. I actually don't own a single thing that is sentimental. Every single thing here has a purpose and has value to me in the sense that it allows me to live out things that I'm trying to do, but there is actually not a single item here that is sentimental. If I lost all of this tomorrow, there'd be some issues I'd have to deal with, but it would have no sentimental aspect to it. So another thing that I have is a reusable or sorry, yeah, I mean, this is rather than disposable bottles carrying this reusable water bottle. It's also a thermos so I can carry hot beverages or soup. So this is my cup wherever I go. One important possession. I often just have a simple glass jar too, which is better. Well, I got this because someone lost it and I found it and there was no owner to claim it. So that's why I have this, but usually I just have a jar, a Mason jar. Another eating utensil, spoon. Sometimes I have a spoon and a fork. You don't need awesome bamboo forks and spoons. They're cool, but go to a thrift store 25 cents or open your drawer. You have spoons and forks to travel with already. Normally one of my possessions is a Leatherman, a multi-tool, but I don't have that because this year I'm traveling using planes and everything's carry-on so I can't carry a knife. Otherwise that would absolutely be one of my key possessions. So next I will show, this is a reusable bag as well. I keep using the word reusable. Of course it's reusable, but what I mean is for a lot of people who are getting plastic bags at the store, you can use a reusable shopping bag. Now this can be used for grocery shopping, for day, this is basically like my day pack so that I don't have to take everything out of here, I have this small pack that I can carry as well. Both of these backpacks were given to me by a friend who gets backpacks that are going to be thrown away and he repurposes them and makes things out of them and instead I actually took these because they're still good. So I have my computer and computers can be expensive, this would be my most expensive item but I buy them used on Craigslist. So this was I think about $300, it's a 2014 so it's 6 years old and so if I break this or it gets stolen then I just need about $300 to get another used one of these. So there's the charger to go with that. I'm counting the charger and the computer as one possession at the advisement of many of my friends who say that is one possession, but if you want to call it two, you know the 43 is a little bit subjective. You can decide what you want. I'm going to show you one possession, my earplugs to help me with sleeping, there's six pairs in there. I'm going to call it one, part of me wants to call it six. So you could say I have anywhere between, depending on how you do it, you could say I have between 30 and 70 possessions, just depending on how you want to count it. And then my earplugs. So these are headphones. This is at this moment literally the only electronic items that I own. This is it. I usually have a headlamp as well, but right now I'm not carrying a headlamp because I'm really enjoying the simplicity of this being the only electronic items that I own. This is a little cotton bag that I put my headphones in the charger in and that is another possession. So I've got my notebook which is an important possession for me. I do a lot of writing and I try to minimize my time on technology on the computer. So this notebook is a great tool for me to be able to write by hand rather than on the computer. My goal is to move away from technology as much as I possibly can. But so lots in here, I have my to-do lists and things like that in there. So got this at a thrift store, I think it was a dollar and ten cents, which is a little expensive for a notebook actually. Let's see, reading. My goal is to generally be carrying one book at a time. Right now I'm reading The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. One of my favorite authors, one of my favorite books, I'm reading it again. You can see in here just all these earmarks. There's just so much I'm learning from here, so much, so much important information. And then I have my bookmark. This is a postcard of Gandhi that I got at the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta four years ago, and I keep this with me. Just a nice remembrance of someone that I love very much. I also, oh, one thing I didn't count as a possession is on my computer. I always forget about this possession. It's a bumper sticker that says we must be the change that we wish to see in the world. And technically that's a possession. So I guess I'm up to 44. I always forget about that one. 44, actually that's a great number. Thanks Gandhi. Okay, so a couple other things. Let's see, I'm going to go into my hygiene now. For me, I practice a very simple hygiene. I think that this body functions, just like I think my feet function, I think my body functions. I don't believe old spice. I don't believe that I'm better off because of it, and I don't believe that I need it in order to be an important member of society. So I haven't used deodorant for about eight years now. And I hugged thousands of people a year, and sometimes I smell a little bit, but I also think a little bit of smell is just fine. So I won't go super deep into that, but all my personal hygiene items are on this table. I've very much simplified it. Again, as a man with very little hair, it's different than as a woman or a man with long flowing, beautiful hair. So everybody's different. But the point is that there's so many ways we can reduce. Do we need swag in order to be contributing members of society? I don't think so, whether we have long hair or short hair. And there's plenty of women out there who are examples of that, who have said, I don't need that system. I can stand outside of it as well. So we'll start with hair, actually. How do I cut my hair? So as I said, I try to use as few electronic items as possible. So I've got this old school vintage handheld buzzer. So how it works is I squeeze it, and then there's blades here. And then it cuts my hair. So I can do it as super short. But I actually took a plastic piece from a newer one. And that's how it works. It just squeezes just like that. And I will have a video on my channel about that, the Off the Grid Zero Waste Hair Cut. So that is a pretty sweet thing. I think this is about 50 years old. I can't find a... I don't think they're made anymore. You can only get vintage ones, and I got this online. And that goes inside of this bag. So that's another possession of the bag, which is hemp, I believe. So I also have these little scissors. These are coming handy so much, since I don't have my multi-tool anymore. These are probably one of my most commonly used possessions. I use it for trimming, you know, the beard, the ears, you know, the hairline. But I use it for so many different things. Just when I'm repairing things, repairing my clothes, things like that. So really great. Also grabbed this from my mom's house. She had like three or four of them. So I asked if I could have one of these pairs of scissors. So nice little memory of my mom. Hi, mom. I love you. So one of the ways that I use this is for my dental floss. So my dental floss doesn't have a plastic container surrounding it. Instead, it's just this little roll, and then I just cut it with the scissors. And now what's really great about this dental floss is this is made out of silk. So this is not plastic, and this goes right into the compost pile as well. So there's very few ways that I create trash. I minimize them ways that I create trash, and you'll see that is a big part of the possessions that I own. I'll turn it up to it. But for now, I'm sticking to this plastic, and to be honest, I don't feel bad about that. I'm not trying to be perfect. I'm just trying to do a really good job, and I think I'm doing pretty good. So I'm happy. So that's the toothbrush. For toothpaste, I also buy my toothpaste. I buy a brand called Jason Power Smile, not because I have any connection to them, just because I've been using it for five years, and I really love it. This... Oh, that's great. I love it. But what I do is I take it out and I put it into a glass jar for multiple reasons. I buy it in six ounces. I'm traveling right now, and you can't carry a six ounce thing. And then also because plastic, when it heats and cools, can release the plastic, and this way it's in glass for its life. So this is another one of those luxuries of life that I am sticking to. I could definitely make my own toothpaste. A lot of people do it, and they like it. I have made it, but it didn't beat this for me. I have my essential oil. This is something that I buy, and I generally have lavender or a blend that is very soothing, and that's what this is, and I use this to help myself relax, so often before sleep. But throughout the day, especially if I'm in stressful scenarios, just being able to smell this really is so helpful. This is a very important natural medicine for me. And the other essential oil that I'm often carrying is tea tree, which is an antimicrobial that I use as a disinfectant, and that's the other one that I'm usually carrying. But for now, I'm keeping life the simplest I've ever had it at 44 possessions, and so I just have the one essential oil. I have a moisturizer, basically you would call it a body butter. This is also store bought. I have friends who make this, I've loved some of their friend makes, but right now I have a store bought one for moisturization, keeping myself young, taking care of the skin, and that's all natural, biodegradable. And speaking of biodegradable, my soap. So most people, a lot of the people that I visit use toxic soap, toxic cleaning products, so I like to carry my own soap. This is pretty much just for washing my hands and my dishes. I actually don't almost ever use soap on my body, because our body has a naturally functioning system with trillions of bacteria that are living in harmony with our skin, and a lot of our soaps and our products actually destroy that, and make us dependent upon that. But my body really functions without that, I've been living without soap on my body for again about eight years, seven years-ish. But I do use it for dishes and for the hands, and it's biodegradable, it's plant-based, so this is greywater friendly, so this can go onto the plants rather than go into a waste-water treatment plant. I have earplugs, which I use for sleeping, or when I'm traveling for leaf blowers and lawn mowers and things like that, so those actually really improve my quality of life. It helps me get good sleep. I would love to exist completely without these, but I had to tricky one. I get much better sleep with these. I have my fingernail clippers, and so that's it for natural hygiene. This is this little bit right here, and it all fits into this natural fiber bag. So natural hygiene is mostly from the sun, from the water, from the elements of the earth, from eating good food. So speaking of food, I carry tea with me. I like to have tea every morning and every night, a nice morning tea and an evening tea. This is chamomile. I really like to have that, to just relax me at night, and I have a... This was a tea ball, but I lost half, so I just strain it. I make the tea in a pot, and then I just pour it through this to get the tea without the chunks in it. Some people, like my friend Cathy, they just love the chunks in their tea. I like a nice, smooth tea with no chunks. So last, but not least, I have my identification. So I have my passport here. I still travel internationally, so this is a very important possession for me. I don't have a driver's license. I don't have a Social Security card. I do have a birth certificate. So these are my only two forms of identification. So that means I don't need a wallet. I also don't have all these bonus cards and things like that. For me, if I had a wallet and it had a hundred different cards in it, that would be a hundred different possessions. But I don't have a wallet. I don't have any of those things. I got rid of all those things over the years. So these are my two forms of ID. The reason that I have these is because with these two forms of ID, I could get other ones if I decide to. I got rid of all the other ones about five years ago-ish. So my two forms of ID, my dream is to one day, again, literally have nothing including this, which would mean no longer being able to legally leave the country. There's ways around that. Maybe I have no experience with it, but I know I know there is. I believe that we are all human beings of this earth. First and foremost, the borders come second to that. Lastly, my most valuable possession is my money. Although I don't actually own this. Technically, the government owns the money. It's not my property. This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private. So that wasn't the exact words I was looking for, but I don't actually technically own this, but I do own this envelope, which I took out of the garbage can. So I'm counting this as one possession. So I have about $5,000 and I make the little bit of money that I make from public speaking for all of 2020. I'm actually not making any money. This is going to get me through the entire year. 100% of my speaking honorariums for 2020 are donated to indigenous and women led environmental nonprofits. So I literally mean this is all of my money. I have no bank account, no credit card. I have no savings account. I have no retirement fund, no Roth IRAs or mutual funds. I have no debt that I owe to anyone else and no debt is owed to me. So this is my financial life right here. And it's not a lot of money. But for me, this is actually a substantial amount of money. And I am very comfortable with this. Now, you can look at this and say, OK, well, what this really is, is he's just dependent upon other people, dependent upon humanity. And yes, I am dependent on other people. I am dependent on humanity. Money makes it appear that we're not dependent on other people. But I believe that is just one big illusion. Every time you spend money, there's someone behind that. There's other creatures behind that. There's our world behind that. But we're able to remove ourselves from that and consider ourselves independent. But the reality is we're not independent. We are completely dependent on our global humanity. And that is what I've chosen to embrace through this way of life, is that I want to stand out against this idea of radical independence and stand for radical connection to humanity. That's what I'm trying to show here, actually, is that we are dependent upon each other and we absolutely do need to work together. At the same time, I think that it is important as individuals that we have skills, that we are resourceful, that we have common sense, that we critically think. And those are all things that I've established in myself. So I know how to take care of my body. I'm not asking other people to do that. I've learned how to be able to take care of a lot of my own needs. So there is that form of independence, but only with the complete embracement, I think that's a word, of the reality that I am completely dependent on humanity. And so are every single one of you, even if you have your own Wi-Fi that you pay for and your own cell phone that you pay for and your own house. All of those things are all dependent on global humanity working together and all of the creatures that we depend on and the environment, the earth that we depend on. So that's really, you know, I'm trying to shake things up a little bit here. I am extreme. There's no question about that. The way that I do things is extreme. But I think that our current way of living, the United States has five percent of the world's population but uses 25 percent of the world's resources. That is extreme. So what I am is I am a counterbalance to that extreme way of life. I only have to go this far because society has gone so far in the other direction. And that is why that is why I'm extreme so that I can stand out and and get people thinking and get people questioning their own lives. So I am extreme, but I also wasn't always this way. I used to be really focused on material possessions and financial wealth. My goal was to be a millionaire by the time I was 30. I wonder what the 23 year old me now would say to a guy who actually only has less than $6,000 as his full financial net worth. So I wasn't, you know, I wasn't always this way. So it was a transition in 2011. That's when I woke up. I lived in a three bedroom apartment at the time. I lived in the biggest bedroom because I had a lot of stuff. I moved to the smallest bedroom as I started to wake up and and and reduce the amount of stuff. I went from the smallest bedroom to living in the six by six closet of my tiny house, as well as having my friend park his camper in the driveway. And I stayed in the camper as well. After that, you know, I was simplifying my life, simplifying my life, simplifying my life. I eventually got rid of that apartment and I moved into a tiny house, a 50 square foot tiny house in San Diego. At that time, when I moved in there, I was able to bike over with everything that I owned on a bike trailer, the bike and the bike panier. So that was a new, a big step for me. Then I lived for a year in a 50 square foot tiny house off the grid in San Diego. At that time, I think I had around a thousand possessions. After that, I downsized to having just 111 possessions that all fit into my backpack, which I traveled with for about two years. So that was a bigger backpack than this substantially bigger, about twice as big, 111 possessions. And then I moved to Orlando, and that's where I decided that I was going to grow and forge 100 percent of my food for a year. That meant drastically increasing my possessions to be able to be self sufficient food wise. I had a lot of possessions, you know, just the shovels and the rakes. And I built a I built a 10 by 10 tiny house, so much bigger than the last one. And I filled it with a lot of stuff, mostly useful stuff, things that I could use for sustainability, for gardening and such. And then I left Sandy. I left Orlando after two years there. I gave away the tiny house. I gave away most of my possessions, sold some of them, and then have down and then it took me months to downsize my life again. I left Orlando with a huge duffel bag that was so heavy, it hurt my back. They eventually got that down to 80 possessions. And then a few weeks ago in Montreal, I was at a school speaking and I turned that 80 possessions into 40 possessions. I gave away half of the things I owned that day to kids. I was leaving Montreal and coming to Costa Rica, where I didn't need my jacket and my pants. And I wanted to get rid of those things as I'm going to be shifting only to natural fibers instead. So from 80 down to now 44, you can see there was a long transition. It was to get to this point, you know, the most minimalist I've been took from 2011. So nine years. So it was a long transition process. And I know a lot of you might be overwhelmed with the idea of where you are today, maybe you have a lot of stuff, maybe a five bedroom house full of stuff. But just remember that I was there in a similar situation 11 years ago and it was a transition. So again, the way that I've done things is extreme, but you don't have to go that far. And I know a lot of you probably would like, you know, you might be inspired. You might want to reduce the number of possessions you have. You might want to shrink the size of your house. You might want to live in a tiny house. You might want everything you want to fit in the backpack. So I've actually created another video for that, tips on how to downsize your life that goes into that and shares my transition and gives you a lot of the tools and the guides on how to be able to do that. But just keep in mind, it's a process and you don't have to go to this extreme by any means to drastically increase happiness and healthiness and be living in a way that is indeed more harmonious with the earth. And another thing for me is, you know, this is life. Life is complicated. And I can't possibly go into all of the reasons behind this, but it's all based on a deeply thought-out way of trying to live and examine life, live with my actions being in alignment with my beliefs. So for me, this is a practice of non-ownership and instead sharing and being a part of humanity. It's a practice of non-materialism, not focusing my life on what other people think about me based on material possessions or getting my health, getting my happiness from possessions. It is a practice of my impermanence embracing that I am an impermanent person here for which it's just a very short period of time and understanding that's okay. The less that I have, the more okay I am with the fact that I am just one human among over seven billion and that's just one species among millions of species and just embracing that I'm just here for a very short period of time and I'll be gone and being okay with that. So non-materialism, non-attachment, non-ownership and embracing my impermanence. So if you got a lot out of this video and you know you're inspired, then I would encourage you to subscribe if you aren't already, if this is your first time here and if you think this is information that other people need then let's help it get out there. Comment and like this, that's what YouTube loves, that's what helps it get into that algorithm so let's spread this stuff. And then of course share it, share it with friends and family that you think that this would be helpful for. Anyone who's been talking about this sort of thing, wanting it, share this with some information and some practical, some inspiration and practical information. So yeah, I love you all very much and I hope to see you in real life one of these days and get a big hug.