When Your Dad Lives in a Dumpster (Voluntarily)

Some might chalk it up to a classic mid-life crisis, but I would argue that it’s more complex than that. I wanted to challenge the limits of my life in a big way. True, I bought the stereotypical, post-divorce convertible (a Volvo — my mom always had one), but that’s where the stereotype ends. When my apartment lease ran its course, I decided I still had more space than I knew what to do with, so I sold everything I owned for $1 apiece and illegally moved into my office at the university where I was a professor (an untenured one, at that).

Selling everything I owned and secretly living in my office was pretty out there, but it was tame compared to what I did next. About nine months later, I moved into a used dumpster.

Jeffrey Wilson is an environmental science professor and a divorced dad who is living life like it’s one big experiment and writing about it for xoJane.

He insists he is just as comfortable in his 33-square-foot reclaimed dumpster as he was in his 3,000-square-foot home. He has Wi-Fi. He appears to have some sort of mailbox. He can look at the stars? His wife does not let him spend visitation weekends with his daughter in the dumpster, but his new girlfriend doesn’t seem to mind.

P.S. / OMG: His girlfriend the three weeks in Europe on a first date with no baggage girl! IT’S ALL COMING TOGETHER.

In better news, it’s Free Cone Day at Carvel!

Some days, that’s all there is.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

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