About 6 months ago I decided that I no longer enjoyed owning furniture and other such expensive things that people who are less transient than me spend many years acquiring. All the furniture that I had was IKEA type stuff that doesn't travel well and was never intended to be moved. Therefore the journey from one house to the next almost always resulted in the deterioration of said items.
I'm living in furnished rooms now
This choice didn't come lightly because we all enjoy the gathering of stuff. It was a tough choice to decide what to keep and what to give away but at the end of the day I just took inventory of the things that I truly use and mostly they were related to my dog or my computers. The hardest thing for me to do was to let go of my monstrously powerful desktops and downgrade a tremendous amount even though my laptop is mid-range at $1000 it is nowhere near as graphically powerful as my previous rig which was called "The Cube of Power" for very good reasons.
The thing about living in a room is that you don't have privacy outside of, you guessed it, your room. Thankfully in my situation, I am the only person staying here and that will remain the case for another month. Therefore, the entire top floor is mine (and doggo's.)
This setup worked particularly well because the room that I have is the only room that had a rather uncomfortable "living room" of sorts which has worked out nicely for my fluff bunny (you can see her guarding the entrance with her fearsome incisors the size of grains of rice).. Make no mistake, she WILL bite your toes with a fury if you make her angry.
One thing i would definitely not be keen on if i weren't the only person staying here is the fact that the bathrooms are in the hallway and it would be necessary to share them if anyone else were here. Also the dog would be problematic because just like most ferocious guard dogs, my Shih-Tzu definitely will bark at people that get near her quadrant.
One of the best aspects of living in a room, rather than a house (other than the obvious financial benefits) is that the common areas are cleaned by the staff who have a different business downstairs. I am not a particularly dirty person but I do enjoy that someone else is taking out the garbage and cleaning the toilets.
For this luxury I am paying about $150 / month. Which compared to the economy of the area that I live in, is a very good price.
For me personally, the dog is the only caveat, because many places are not interested (understandably) in allowing you to have a pet stay with you, regardless of how well-behaved you claim said animal is.
The main reason behind all of this was the avoidance of accumulating more bullcrap in my life. As much as I enjoyed my collection of Ron Burgandy action figures, they didn't really serve much purpose in my life. I suppose I have kind of negated my "travel light" philosophy by having a dog that I absolutely REFUSE to part with, but for me anyway, it is a step in the right direction.