A Family with One Car, In Los Angeles: It’s been surprisingly easy!
When my family embarked on the one car experiment, we agreed to give it a solid try of 3-months before we threw it out the window as impossible. We figured that would give us enough time to really see if it’s a feasible option for us.
Here is how we make it work for us:
- We schedule our car time: I get it Monday, Wednesday and every other Friday and my husband gets it Tuesday, Thursday and every other Friday.
- We schedule our appointments in advance: I schedule my appointments on the days I have the car and my husband carpools on the days he doesn’t have the car.
- Every Sunday we discuss our coming week’s schedule: this way we can juggle our car schedule if need be. This has only happened a handful of times in 5-months.
- My child and I use our bikes for transportation: on the days when we don’t get the car, we bike the 1.5-miles to school. It’s amazing how much more aware our little has become about street safety, and it’s been great for my waistline!
- We use car-sharing apps: if we absolutely need a car, we use a ride-share app. Most months we spend about $20 on ride share. February was our highest month with $50. We used this a lot during the rainy weather.
- We borrow a friend’s car: We have two really good friends who have agreed to “rent” us there card if we need one. So far we haven’t had to do this, but it’s another option.
Finally, the last 3-weeks we’ve had a round-robin of colds in our house. It was nice to not be paying for 2-cars when one of them would have literally sat in the garage the entire 3-weeks. We aren’t sure yet how much longer we’ll be a one-car family, however, I can tell you that we no longer feel as though we need 2-cars, and that’s been a huge mindshift.
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