A Brief Explanation Of Why I Am On A "Self Sufficiency Forum".
Really it's because the subjects included here are of interest to me (and the company's entertaining
),
not because I would say that I am actually Striving For Self Sufficiency in any recognizeable way. I'm not trying to live off the grid, nor preparing for the total collapse of society or for the end of days, nor am I a-feared of the commercial food supply, nor am I trying to get back to some romantic old-timey ideal.
I just think that certain things are practical, sensible ways to live, and certain other things (like most of what tv and magazines and stores and Madison Avenue are so desperately, and so effectively, pushing) are not.
I don't want to live like a scaled-down-to-Walmart-budget copy of the turn-of-the-last-century Rockefellers or DuPonts. Keeping up with fashions and trends does not interest me in the slightest. I think it is just morally wrong to buy something new when perfectly good (often BETTER quality) secondhand ones are otherwise gonna be thrown in the trash.
I'd rather cook stuff the way I want it than buy prepared meals or eat in a restaurant. I'd rather grow some of my own food, at least the easy stuff like tomatoes and beans and lettuce and herbs and eggs and chicken meat, than get substandard and sometimes inedibly bad stuff trucked in from the other side of the continent. I'd rather learn to build or fix something myself than write a check to have someone else do it for me, leaving me just as ignorant and useless as before I wrote the check only a good deal poorer
Part of it is probably being raised by a Pennsylvania Dutch mother; part is probably having lived on very little money during grad school and for a while thereafter; and part I dunno. (My sister is very different from me, despite same parents same upbringing. Go figure)
On the other hand, once I know how to do something, I don't really see anything wrong with farming some jobs out to others
Like, I *can* sew pants and blouses, but I dislike the fiddly bits of blouses and require a lot of time and Vocabulary to produce a decently-fitted pair of jeans-type pants, so I buy them (usually at a thrift store) rather than making them. You know? Call it lazy if you want, maybe it is, but I have only a certain amount of time and energy and do not feel that I get any bonus points for doing
everything all myself when a reasonable alternative exists for something I hate.
Anyhow, that's why I am here - to get more good ideas about stuff that IMHO a sensible person should darn well be able to do for themselves
Oh, and also, apparently, to become the forum's unofficial Crazy Cat Lady <vbg> (gee, I only have four, that's not SO bad. Although the only thing limiting it to that is the fact that we take them to my parents' house in PA twice a year for vacations and can't fit more than 4 carriers in the car now that we have kids...
)
Pat
