Two people, one small home, and a very wide world.

Our story

It started as a downsizing. Home was Bisbee, Arizona (an old copper-mining town turned artist colony), and our friend Mark, who runs “living estate sales” over in the Palm Springs area, came to thin out our belongings. By the end of the weekend, nearly all of them had found new homes. We’d meant to rent the house out; instead a buyer at the sale asked if we’d take a cash offer, and we did. Just like that, we were unencumbered.

For the next few years, the road was work as much as wanderlust. David’s job at IBM kept us moving between client sites all over the world, with a home base on Isla Mujeres, Mexico, long stretches of work across North America, and a two-year project in Perth, Australia. We learned to live well out of very little, and to feel at home wherever we happened to land.

In 2016 we moved to Europe, and we have not looked back. These days we travel in a van named Walden and work for ourselves: remote consulting, built on the careers that first sent us out into the world. Being minimalist has never meant going without: we invest in what serves us well and let go of everything that doesn’t. “New Nomads” isn’t about escaping. It’s about carrying less so you notice more. Our home is small on purpose. Its windows, it turns out, are enormous.

Our year runs a long loop now: the UK and Europe through the warmer months, Turkey and North Africa as it cools, and regular spells further east in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Jogjakarta. Right now, Scotland.