Category: low-footprint living

Tasks around the house can feel drudgey and Sisyphean. Some big ones that come to mind are constantly trimming back vegetation, constantly dealing with laundry and dishes, managing water levels in rain-tubs, mending screens.

In a nature centered household where things are done mainly by hand and with DIY fixes rather than off the shelf store-bought stuff, tasks can feel exhausting unless we troubleshoot why this is.

Here are some factors that came to me:

• Having to do a task alone. Humans, even the introverts among us, are social animals. Big tasks such as large loads of laundry and dishes, are best done with friends and/or kids. And yes, the kids actually help! Or they’re just playing together nearby, which is helping you too. The modern capitalist society pattern, where each parent has to watch their kids in solitude — and hope the kids will let them alone long enough so they can maybe put in a load of laundry etc. — is just exhausting.

• Always being the one who has to do a certain task. Unless it’s your specialty that you love, and you have an agreed-upon division of labor, this is a quick recipe for burnout.

• Living with people who are fundamentally not aligned with your values. Of course, household members will always have different priorities, but ideally everyone can at least find alignment around a shared set of basic values.

• Not connecting the task with collective/community goals. If it feels like you’re only doing something for yourself or your immediate household, that’s not always a powerful enough motive. At least for myself, I find it easier to be diligent with tasks if I also see them as gathering data and improving processes for the collective good.

• Not obtaining a yield. When I say yield, I mean a benefit beyond just “this task is done.” For example, constantly trimming back vines can just feel so drudgey and relentless, unless I am thinking of it also as gaining a benefit such as harvesting basket-weaving materials, opening up areas of air circulation, opening up areas of sun for fruit trees, etc. Sweeping and mopping is a daily thing, but I usually don’t mind it because I enjoy the opportunity to exercise and stretch certain muscles that only get worked from sweeping in mopping. It’s also an opportunity to introduce pleasant scents to the house via essential oils. Mending towels and washcloths can be a pleasant meditative task and allows me to practice different types of stitchery.

• Having to work a “regular job.” By which I mean a job in the mainstream economy, 40+ hours a week, particularly one outside the home with a commute. Many of us are finding our way out of the stranglehold of having to work such a job, and are trying to help others do the same. But while you’re in transition it’s just going to feel exhausting to have to work somewhere outside your home all day (this also includes working fulltime enriching someone else even though you’re working from home), and then basically have a day’s worth of work waiting for you back at your own house. Ideally we would all be able to make our livelihoods from our homes and neighborhoods (and/or work itinerantly / nomadically with few or no constant household chores).

• Being very project-oriented as opposed to process-oriented. In other words, wanting to do a task and have it be complete and stay done. As opposed to needing to keep being done on a daily or weekly basis. Many of us just don’t have a lot of patience with tasks that don’t stay done. But we can train ourselves to be more process-oriented; in other words, less focused on getting some sort of big result. More appreciative of the flow. I’m not sure, but I think that being project-oriented, and not patient with process and flow, may be an artifact of colonizer culture. And as we are learning, we can dismantle our colonialist programming.

• Feeling like you have to do it perfectly. This is definitely an artifact of colonialism / white supremacy culture. Perfectionism is one of the 15 pillars of white supremacy culture. Read about the 15 pillars here: https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/characteristics.html

• Your house and yard are too big for the number of people living there. Move to a smaller place; or add more people.

Is there anything else you can think of that makes tasks feel relentless and exhausting?

Housework, and our whole lives, need not and should not feel like a Sisyphean grind. Of course there will always be some tasks we like less than others. But there’s no reason why we can’t experience things mainly as an iterative playful flow; and take a childlike delight in our continuous and steady refinement of processes.

Did I say repetitive? I meant constant constant constant. It could feel drudgy and Sisyphean but it doesn’t have to be; I will go into that in another post.

Here’s just a short list of the very very constant tasks:

• trimming back vines & other vegetation
• lowering & lifting shade-curtains
• managing rain-storage tanks/tubs: the tanks themselves as well as the water in them
• putting out solar oven, repositioning as needed
• mending (clothes, window-screens, etc.)
• maintaining shade-trellises
• and of course all the same tasks a regular household has, including laundry, dishes, sweeping and mopping. But in a nature-oriented house, I find that the laundry and dishes are actually much lighter load because we know we don’t have machinery to rely on. So we work smarter, and without even thinking about it we generate less of a load in the first place. A little bit of Jevons paradox in reverse there!

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention

• harvesting food and medicine!

• refilling outdoor hand-wash / foot-wash stations

• managing compost, recycling, and trash

• negotiating trade-offs between shade, privacy, and airflow (this item actually spans multiple of the aforementioned categories including trimming back vegetation, pulling shades and so on)

I will add more as they occur to me but these are the big main ones.

Even on my tiny urban homesite (1/10 of an acre house and grounds included), these tasks are constantly ongoing. Especially as they are done with hand tools.

This is why I mostly advise people to resist buying a bunch of acreage. For many reasons – our own energy, and also saving room for other people and other species. Those of us steeped in colonizer culture tend to compulsively acquire and hoard a lot more space and other resources than we need. We can unlearn this, and must. For our own good as well as everyone else’s.

Terminology notes:

• A lot of us in doomer/prepper/permie circles use the word “homestead.” But Black and indigenous educators I trust deeply have pointed out that this term has racist and colonialist antecedents. I therefore prefer homesite, or smallholding.

• Our house is not off-grid, nor do we aspire to be. Rather, even while being on-grid we simply choose to minimize use of resources, including electricity and consumer purchases. According to my research up to this point, staying on-grid but minimizing consumption is actually the simplest, lowest-footprint, and least expensive option for most of us.

In the permaculture community, it seems like a lot of people think making a livelihood on site has to mean farming. That is very much not the case. Not only is not everyone good at farming; there are many other categories of human needs besides growing food.

A related issue is that people feel like they need to own 10 or 20 or more acres. Again, very much not the case. And it’s a very harmful misconception. Because it encourages hoarding and scarcity thinking.

Every homesite is different, as are the needs and resources of its surrounding communities. So the livelihoods that are possible will vary from place to place.

So this is just one example of thinking about how many ways there are to make a livelihood on one’s own homesite. Example given here is Starshine House, my home and permaculture headquarters which is on 1/10 of an acre in our coastal small city.

Writer and content creator is always an occupation, possible almost everywhere.

Artist, same.

Teleconsulting; virtual educator. (I conduct my death Doula services almost exclusively by phone and zoom. And I know people who teach English to students in China and other far away places!)

Basket-weaving – we have so many palm fronds and vines and other materials that I haven’t even started to experiment with even though I have taken a basketweaving class.

Sewing. In particular, living by the beach, I often find good sturdy canvas from discarded chairs and umbrellas. A person could make a whole livelihood just from stitching bags.

Sewing machine mechanic. I can’t keep it tuned, and anyone who can would likely have lots of other business from the surrounding community as well. I believe we lost our sewing machine mechanic in town a few years ago. At a shop where I had a part-time job a few years ago, we used to have to have a mechanic visit every year from the Carolinas just to keep our machine tuned.

Bicycle mechanic. The closest bike shops are 7 miles away in either direction.

Matting and framing. There are a lot of artists around here and there’s getting to be a critical mess of galleries downtown.

Candlemaking. I started getting good at making new candles by melting down leftover chunks of old candles, and making wigs from old T-shirt material. There’s a knack to it but I seem to be getting better at it. A person could probably make a whole business out of this.

Yogurt making, kombucha, sourdough — really any cottage food industry.

These are just what I can think of off the top of my head, on a little 1/10 of an acre home and yard.

Of course there’s no need to make one’s entire livelihood on one’s homesite. A person could get a job nearby. My thinking is that the job wouldn’t have to take over all of one’s waking hours, because we always have our home livelihood.

Neighborhood lawn-mowing and landscaping business, neighborhood delivery business, all manner of neighborhood-based businesses where a person draws their entire customer base from just a few square blocks.

If you’re trying to live within the default settings of the mainstream economy, the aforementioned occupations will sound like they wouldn’t provide enough money. But, coupled with the lifestyle of thrift and mutual aid, sharing a home and either sharing vehicles or not needing a vehicle at all, it becomes more and more viable.

Never underestimate the power of peer pressure.

That’s it, that’s the post. Peer pressure is an unbelievably powerful force. Use it for the good.

And possibly even a more powerful force is intergenerational pressure. Old people don’t want to be seen as uncool by their grandkids or other younger relatives.

It works in reverse as well. My grandparents had a huge influence on me. They were huge forces for mindfulness, thrift, dismantling entitled attitudes.

Use peer pressure and intergenerational pressure to nudge people to prioritize the good of the planet, all species, marginalized peoples.

(The following is my repeated personal experience, I’m sharing it here in case other people who get around by foot, bicycle, public transport, or other method besides private automobile are dealing with the same phenomenon.)

Sidenote for people who have known me for years and still always ask me when they see me out & about or at events etc, “HOW DID YOU GET HERE?” I have, on more occasions than i can count, had people bellow it out across a crowded room. Yikes.

The answer will be the same no matter how long you know me, no matter how many times you ask — so you can stop asking the question. Please. I’m not here to be the center of attention or focus.

Anyone feeling called out, please don’t feel called out, there are so many many many many people who do this. For years and years, I think mainly in Florida, I don’t remember it happening in DC or Tokyo or California or New Mexico or other places where I lived, with bicycle and foot as my primary mode of transport for most of my 60+ years.

It’s really exhausting and I sometimes feels like people are trying to indirectly emphasize that I’m making a weird choice that’s not really proper. And that I’m subtly an imposition on people, because then people are burdened with having to worry about my frail elderly self refusing to own a car and stay put in it lol

Or acting like it’s some great feat of strength and athleticism like doing the Ironman triathlon upside down on a pogo stick. Stahhhhppppp!!!

How I got here was either on foot, or bicycle, or occasionally bus, Or very occasionally rideshare (if it was not out of the person’s way and if I felt confident that they respected my transportation choices).

I don’t ask you that question. I take as a given that you are a grown person who is capable of arranging your own transportation.

Me too!

I am an activist, I am trying to make the streets and communities safer for ALL AGES and ABILITIES/CONDITIONS, including the nondriving public.

My personal choice is also related to factors such as health (mental as well as physical), and preferring to spend more money on stuff such as books & classes.

But I am not seeking attention for my personal choice, and in fact the attention can be really problematic.

Also don’t ask me if I’m OK getting home, as if my transportation is inferior to yours. I could always ask if you’re OK getting home in your car, because cars and roads are very dangerous particularly at night. But I prefer not to put out that kind of negative energy. And if I feel concerned for someone I say a prayer or send positive energy. I trust that if you have your license, you know how to drive. I tell you though the roads really are dangerous, and cars can break down anytime. But it’s no use us sitting there obsessively worrying about each other’s transportation choices. Let’s instead push for better infrastructure so that everybody can get their needs met.

Also, on a related note: For the umpteenth time, I wish that the we the Boomer environmentalists had channeled our considerable social capital, monetary wealth and other resources into pushing hard for safe sidewalks and public transportation as the norm everywhere. Instead we became shills for cars and suburbs.

This post was originally prompted by a local organization’s survey of use of its recreational cycling paths: “Please fill out survey re. cycling path. The Loop runs right through South Daytona and Daytona Beach and all along the East Coast from NSB to St Augustine. We need more support on the East side.”

My comments:

Unfortunately I was not able to conplete the survey, because I literally never use any parts of the loop except the little bit that runs along the Halifax river in Daytona Beach. Between Beville and ISB or Main. And it won’t submit without the ranked answers completed. [The Loop is a series of recreational trails, they might be able to be used by people getting from point a to point b but I think it’s mainly used by people driving and parking and getting on their bikes for recreation.]

Probably no one who lives in Daytona Beach and cycles for transportation will be able to complete the survey. Is there a way to change it so we don’t have to rank each of the five parts of the loop? Or just have an N/A answer?

I ride for transportation, and find that people treat this transportation like it’s some stupid eccentric hobby that I stubbornly persist in doing. As opposed to a practical and less-expensive, less cognitively draining alternative to car ownership. I understand that it’s hard to get along without a car, and I don’t blame people for having cars; I just want more respect and infrastructure for other modes of transport.

I am also done with people telling us to “be careful” on foot or on bicycle. Please, we know all too well that we have a target on our back at all times 24 seven. And that we are not welcome in most places, on some roads there aren’t even sidewalks or shoulders at all. And maybe never will be. Please instead tell your motorist friends to BE CAREFUL while insulated behind the windows of their very dangerous multi-thousand-pound metal boxes that can kill them OR us in a heartbeat.

Owning a car is something I have felt I had to do in the past but never wish to do so again. I’m in my 60s aspiring never again to have to drive, so i really won’t be aspiring to drive in my 70s, 80s, etc. I wish no seniors were forced to drive just to get their daily errands done.

I also want better infrastructure and more support for people who don’t have the option to drive. Many do not have the option to drive, at all, as you well know. But there’s so little acknowledgment and support for that reality.

Along with helping to change the prevailing attitude toward cycling for transport, I want to find ways to promote more support & understanding for getting around by walking and bus. So far I have been wretchedly unsuccessful.

Those are what i would have written as my answers to the survey. Anyway, Thanks for all you do to get people outdoors and moving around by human power.

PS. Sorry to sound negative, but.

Either we get a lot more actual TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE for something other than cars, or I need to leave.

I cannot and will not live and try to grow old in a place that does not respect the validity of people who don’t have cars. And, it’s not just about me; I am an activist FIRST and FOREMOST for the public good, not just trying to navigate & find kludgy patches for my own immediate stuff.

This is not a threat, this is a promise.

I don’t say this lightly, because there’s not really any place where I would be wanted (or the one or two places where I might be wanted, I could not afford to live), and it wouldn’t be easy starting over at my age.

But I’ve started from zero before and I will absolutely do it again — even if all I do for the rest of my life is roam the country on foot helping different people with community prepping etc til im ready to crawl in a ditch and compost myself.

(To be absolutely clear, it would take a lot to make me leave Daytona Beach! I am basically taking the current humanpowered-transportation-hostile social & political climate as a gauntlet to step up my transportation activism.)

Lately I am making a conscious choice to pay much less attention to the arena of what I call “violent and intrusive landscape maintenance operations.”

Not that it’s not loud and disruptive, just that I am making a choice to not focus my attention there. It’s a powerful choice. It’s not the same as giving up; it’s more like freeing up energy and brain space for things that will actually work.

I’ve known for a while that certain procedures are held in place by a variety of factors, and are therefore not likely a good leverage point for trying to make change. (Your mileage may vary, depending on your skills, inclinations, and personality attributes. If you feel drawn to try to make change at a certain leverage point, I say have at it, unless and until such time as you decide that it’s not working and that something else might work better.)

As for me, there are other leverage points I’m involved with that are producing better results (nationwide movements etc.) than my painful focus on extreme mowing, tree mutilation, etc. –so I will stick with those.

People don’t realize that a lot of what we see as policy handed down by government from on high, is actually the trickling-UP of social norms. I have to remind myself of that and focus accordingly.

It may seem impossible for one person to change a social norm. And it is! However, shifting the social norms is an act of transmission, and that starts from one person to another.

Further exploration:

• If you really want to dive deep into leverage points and systems thinking, please read the classic Thinking in Systems: A primer, by Donella Meadows. https://donellameadows.org

Clothes pins. I was actually just pondering this, I ponder it quite a bit really. Because it’s one of those essential items whose production can be localized and potentially give a livelihood to many individual artisans.

And, as so often happens when I am pondering something that seems small and obscure, I found the very thing on the Internet that I was talking about! Right down to his advocacy of a decentralized model with makers in every region.

These clothespins are equipped with sturdy springs. But a local micro-business could just as well choose to offer the kind of clothespins that are made from a single piece of wood and don’t require any springs.

“Classic American Clothespins is a small, home-based business with a big mission. My family and I are bringing the manufacture of high-quality, spring-and-wood clothespins back to America. Our goal is not to be an enormous, centralized clothespin manufacturing company, but to re-introduce a well-made, useful clothespin and encourage the small-scale, decentralized production of these clothespins by entrepreneurial woodworkers all across the nation. …”

http://classicamericanclothespins.blogspot.com/2013/09/home-page.html?m=1

I am nearing the bottom of my stash of clothespins which I inherited from Mom and Dad’s house. Within that stash were many obviously older and sturdier clothespins, as well as newer less sturdy ones. Also included in the mix are clothespins without springs, just made from one piece of wood.

There’s nothing like a clothesline for drying clothes, as far as I’m concerned. Truly I consider a drying machine to be inferior in multiple ways. Even if it weren’t costly in energy terms, it’s a machine that can break down. And all too often the clothes don’t end up truly dry. And also they end up smelling like some chemical product. Nope, it’s line-dried laundry all the way for me!

Also, laundry can be dried in a shady breezeway area. Or even just one of the breezier rooms of your house. The shade option is good for times and places where it’s not sunny for a while, or if you have some garments that are particularly susceptible to fading.

For drying indoors or in small spaces, those old-fashioned wooden folding laundry racks are a goddess-send. They can be made of plastic too. I found a wooden one, and then a bigger plastic one, at curbside years ago and been using them for many years.