Self-Sufficiency In the city or where ever we live.
I have put my big girl boots on since my last post, I cannot say that I am no longer distressed about what is going on in our country and the world, but I am now determined in what I am personally going to do about it.
I am going to get back on tract living as our generations before us did before I got us off track.
The 1942 history study teaches us that people had to make many changes and learn new skills, to learn to do without due to rationing and shortages. We can see the differences in the things they had during 1942 and the things we have during 2026.
In this time that we are living we have a lot of conveniences they did not have in 1942, and those conveniences cost to use. It cost to buy them and then it cost us to use them. This has to do with electricity and fuel.
Charles and I have discussed this and I want to say that I am very happy to be married to a man that is willing to try new old ways and he even comes up with some of his own, not just mine. We enjoy our history research and learning new skills.
Charles said this morning that we need to become more proficient in what we do if we are going to be less dependent on the grid. A lot of this thought comes from the cost to replace things when they break.
The balance scale is broken.
When I started out as a young adult keeping a home, and I look at our budget what the percentage of our income was going to food, rent/mortgage, electricity etc., It was difficult but doable, and we lived frugal.
Today we can live frugal but our options are different. It is more difficult to find housing that is affordable. We could find a small apartment or house with low rent but those type of places do not exist today as they did. They do in some places here in the U.S. but not like they were then.
Places with affordable rent were more available in the past and few of them today. It was common for people that owned homes to build a place onto their home to rent out for extra income. There were boarding houses where someone could rent out a room, not like today when people have roommates.
In a recent post I wrote about our apartment above an old house, many people lived like this, Charles parents lived in a small apartment above a house when they started out. It was easier for young couples to get a start in their life together and today things are just too expensive for many if not most young people.
First rise then into the fridge to ferment overnight...
Thankfully we did not have the options of credit cards back then. This is a option that young and old people have today.
Cars were made different and we could most often change our own parts. There were no computers on vehicles back then and just like many things people often could repair their own items that broke. If they could not repair them themselves there were independent repair people most anywhere and they worked with you.
Saying all of this I am trying to explain that if we want to be more self sufficient then we need to purchase things that are easy to repair, have affordable parts that we can buy. Appliances today are just too costly to repair or replace and many people are going into debt doing so.
Charles and I want to go from using our appliances for convenience to using our appliances only when we "need" the convenience due to a sickness or emergency. The cost of electricity is so high that we have been "swapping out" such as if we need to use the heater we do not use other things. The same with air conditioning. We live in the deep south of the United States and at our age we can get sick if we do not have air conditioning to use when it gets extremely hot.
Rolled them out the next day...
Some may think that we have very little money. Certainly, we are not wealthy, but we have savings and a tight budget. We would have very little if we did not watch everything closely. We were frugal when we did not have to be so to have the money to buy things to help us become more self sufficient. By continuing being frugal and saving all we can, we continue to add to the garden items that help us to be able to grow vegetables and fruits here in our yard.
Charles and I both need raised garden beds to be able to continue to grow a garden, so what we save on reducing our bills, we use that money to buy things that help to be able to work in a garden. Once we have the right tools, once we have things set in one area we move to the next to be able to have the things we need and ability to grow more food.
As it is now, social security is set to take a cut in a few years down the road and that cut will hurt. We are trying to get ahead of that cut so we can manage keeping our bills down, including our food bill.
Cooking Naan bread on outdoor cooker/oven at 500 degrees..
We are saving enough from our electric bill to do even more and this year adding metal arbors sides and top for the climbing vegetables, shade cloth so our vegetables do not burn up like they have the past several years. Frost cloth to keep growing through the fall and some things through the winter.
This is helping us to be more self sufficient. We could not do these things if we did not pinch everything very tight.
Now we need to make our home and garden functional to do things the old way so that we do not need electricity to be able to cook, as Charles said to become proficient in doing it as our generations before us were. We cannot afford a wood cook stove as they had in the past, some of you do have one but we do not. However, we do have other ways to cook without electricity because we are figuring it out how to accomplish the old ways in this new age.
The same with washing our laundry. It does not have to cost anything to wash our laundry other than soap and water. I hope in the forum page that is attached to this post some of you will let us know how you do these things without using electricity because I know that you are out there. :)
I did it before I can still do it today.
When I married and started keeping home I did not get a washing machine until the 1970s. I alternated between handwashing the laundry and going to a laundromat when I needed to wash bedding. Sometimes I handwashed our sheets due to not having the money to use the laundromat. Today the modern laundromats are very expensive to use with big machines.
I handwashed baby clothes and diapers because they needed to be washed often. I was good at getting our laundry clean because I knew how to do it.
This is a problem today, many people just do not know how to do things without machines. Handwash the dishes, the laundry, hand wash rugs. We have a vacuum cleaner but we mostly use our push floor and carpet sweeper like Mrs. Hall uses on All Creatures Great and small. These little changes add up.
I hang out the laundry, Charles has started helping me when my balance is off and when he is busy and I cannot, then I wash more often and hang them in the house or on hangers on the back porch. I also have folding racks. Mrs. Hall used the pully system where she hung them on the rack and hoisted it up to the ceiling. Yes this is a tv series, but true to how they did things.
This above is when there is a need for a laundromat or a at home washer but a clothes dryer is not necessary.
In the United States the clothes dryer is very common but in other countries many people still hang out their laundry and do not have dryers. Where you live do many people have clothes dryers? A long time ago when I watched my electric meter while running the clothes dryer I stopped using the dryer and went back to hanging the laundry. Now I only use the dryer if we are ill or the weather is bad for days.
For the 1942 history study, there would "not" have been a clothes dryer to use.
We control what and how we do things here and it makes a big difference. This is part of household management. Once we take back our control of what and how we do things it is empowering to keep at it. I like having the money that is leftover in our budget to do things that are helpful to save even more money by having the right tools and equipment to do things without electricity.
We need to think about the what if's. What if things do get more expensive? What are we going to do? What if there are shortages? My suggestion is to see what you can turn off, what can you not use and use something else that does not cost anything to do by hand or to cost less. Build up your pantry stock with the money you have saved by cutting other expenses.
If someone lives in an apartment you may not have another option to cook other than your stove, but there are many other things that you can do by hand that does not cost to run. There has been a myth that it does not cost much to run a computer or television but these things do increase our electric bill. Long hot showers increase our electric bill if the hot water is electric. Same for a gas hot water tank, everything we use adds to our bills. We are not depriving ourselves, we are saving money for other things we "need".
Use your public library if there is one near your area or possibly a book mobile for reading material. Take advantage of these free things.
Today this is called loose meat sandwich which is beef, onion, mustard over Naan bread.
We can make healthy meals with less ingredients. We can bake other things when we are using the oven and have them the next day or freeze them. When it is hot weather make meals that do not require the oven, and If it is cold weather and you need to use the oven then make sure to open the door after and let that heat supplement the other heat. These little things add up.
We can be working towards our self sufficiency while others are out there trying to make our lives more difficult and the surprise can be on them.
We can be more proficient if we want to be self sufficient by learning the skills of living before electricity. This does not mean that we cannot use electricity, this means we only use what we "need".
We can be more proficient by learning how to do hand work such as sewing, mending, knitting, crochet, quilting, canning food, fermenting food, dehydrating food and learn how to repair the things that we own.
Our Oregon snow peas are up and starting to climb.
We can also be more proficient by learning how to grow food and how to save seed. Learn how to collect rain water for the garden, learn how to make our own compost and make our own food for our plants. If you live in an apartment find out if there is a community garden where you live.
If gardening is not possible for you, or something that you do not want to do, there is much more that we can learn. While there are many things that we cannot do anything about today, we can do these things, because this is something that we can do something about and that makes me more empowered.
Charles is adding a frame over this garden area as well because for the past three years we have had hail damage to our garden and so we are putting frames up with wire to help bounce off the larger hail. We cannot stop the storms we can try to lessen the damage. I will post pictures after we finish this area.
I hope to see you in the forum to discuss and share your ideas how to be more self sufficient and if you are learning new skills to stay ahead of the possible changes?
We can talk anything but politics.
Grandma Donna
