Homestead mailing list

["Lisa K.V. Perry" <lisakvperry AT gmail.com>]

On 11/17/06, Gloria Morris <gloriamorris59 AT gmail.com> wrote:
> ... I suggested that he go to Good Will or Salvation Army, or an upscale
> resale shop. ...
It was a completely new and foreign concept to him.


It is for most people. We've shopped at GW forever (my kids have sometimes
called it "The Will of the Good People"), sometimes out of necessity but
usually by choice.

We gave away our microwave several years ago, when cooking in a mw comes up
in conversation once in a while, people are amazed that we live without
one.  How do we do it?

Many people don't use their oven at all, or just rarely. It takes an hour+/-
to bake a potato, how many people that fit the consumer lifestyle mold will
take that much time? I had a co-worker friend when we lived in Chicago
(1990/91) whose heat didn't work well in her apartment. In the middle of
winter, she'd turn on the gas oven and open the door--until I explained to
her what she was doing and why she had headaches in the a.m.  That was the
only time she used her oven.

You all know I'm not the best homesteader--but our family thinks my husband
and I live a Little House in the Prairie lifestyle simply because we manage
to get a homesteader-type chores done and live on our farm in the country.
We've got them fooled.

In our poorest times, we've eaten a delicious diet of rice, beans, pollock
(when it was $1/lb) and free veggies from our neighbor's garden or our own.
It seems to me that if it takes effort, most people would rather cry about
hunger than take the time to make dinner.  Home Ec classes have often been
renamed for today's generation of teens and left basic skills like cooking
and nutrition behind to teach things that are important now i.e. fashion
design.s

Around here we have big green dumpster boxes throughout the county where we
dispose our garbage. People put their cast-offs beside the boxes, and some
disappears but stuff often ends up at the landfill. Our county has a
Landfill Day, when you can take home stuff without being stopped by the guy
at the gate or having to pay a fee.  Still, the landfill would make a great
hide-out for the homeless.

Lisa