bare necessities

1. Just sufficient resources, with nothing to spare. For example, The room was furnished with just the bare necessities—bed, table, chair. This idiom uses bare in the sense of “mere, and nothing else,” a usage dating from about 1200.

Example Sentences

Fam-ma was of a different time, from an era where you can have a beautiful life without being surrounded by fancy material possessions or even the bare necessities at times, as respect in the church was the currency she valued.

From Salon

An unexpected visitor showed up at a Petersburg, Alaska, grocery store looking for the bare necessities this week — a black bear cub.

From Washington Times

Replacing the bare necessities is “all-consuming and exhausting,” Klamm recalls, of the days after the firestorm.

From Seattle Times

“They’re buying pans, crevice tools, ‘snuffer bottles,’ metal detectors, all the bare necessities,” he said.

From Seattle Times

On Sunday night, a bear’s search for the bare necessities saw it breach U.S. military property, specifically the Naval Support Activity base in Bethesda, which provides operational support for the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

From Washington Times