I still truly miss the last car I owned that I could self-maintain,
though its emissions were dirty enough that it's probably just as well
that it's gone. I have a reusable shopping bag which I am disgracefully
bad about remembering to bring shopping. I am still working on
converting all bulbs in my house to fluorescents, let alone LEDs. My
only originally pedal-operated sewing machine (of the four I have in
the house) has an electric motor add-on, but could probably be
unconverted. I would also miss the zigzag stitch, though I already
hand-sew my buttonholes. I suspect a fountain pen in my hands is an
accident waiting to happen given the amount of ink I cover myself with
just using ballpoints. And I'm not sure I'm clueful enough to run
Linux, though I've been thinking about trying.

I do possess and use a hand-cranked flashlight!

When my current car dies I am thinking seriously of giving up car
ownership and shifting to a combination of Zipcar (available through my
day job) and rentals for my weekend trips. I live where I can walk to
work, so on a daily basis I don't need a car, and a little planning
efficiency could reduce my driving to once or twice a month on travel
weekends and once a week for errands. It would be quite a wrench
psychologically to give up the sense of freedom the car gives me,
though. And I love driving.

Posted March 31, 2008 3:35 PM by Susan

Books written on parchment or pre-twentieth century paper
last significantly longer than modern paperbacks written on pulp. I've
handled eight-hundred-year old codices that, rebound and stored
carefully, remain in far better condition than some novels I bought
five years ago.

Then again, sheep died to make those manuscripts.

Posted March 31, 2008 3:39 PM by Rymenhild

"The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet." - William Gibson

Posted March 31, 2008 3:40 PM by Evan

Susan @1:

We spent many years without a car, renting as required for big
shopping trips or houseguests (it averaged about once a month) and
taking the bus for everything else.

Thing is, once you have a car, you use it. It's actually
taken some self-discipline to do the Saturday recycling + shopping run
on my bike every week. It's not the travel time, which is roughly
equivalent, nor the weather (it turns out I don't mind biking in snow
and rain*). It's the time it takes to load the recycling onto my bike
that bugs me. I think I need removable panniers.

Next year, when we have both kids in the same school—one I can
shepherd them to en route to work—the car will become an occasional use
item rather than a daily tool. But I don't think we'll get rid of it.

Shorter me: good luck going non-automotive; I know how hard it can be, but how rewarding as well.

-----

* yeah, I'm weirded out about that too

Posted March 31, 2008 3:50 PM by abi

The supermarkets I go to are now selling reusable bags, and will
give a bag refund if you use your own (including those they sell).

Groceries are easier to carry in cloth and paper bags.

(I'd pay for a treadle sewing machine. I think you should be able to
get a zig-zag attachment for them - my mother had one for her
old-but-electric straight-stitch machine.)

Manual typewriters.

Posted March 31, 2008 3:57 PM by P J Evans

Pencils. All they need are decent caps to keep them from puncturing
your pocket. (Mechanical pencils are okay, but finding replacement
leads is a non-trivial exercise.)

Posted March 31, 2008 3:57 PM by theophylact

Susan --

My husband and I have been carfree since our car died last May.
There was a bit of an adjustment period, but at this point we're both
very, very happy about not having a car. (If I won one in a contest, my
first question would be "um... can I get the cash-value equivalent
instead? Because I really don't want the car, actually.")

I highly recommend getting rid of the car to anyone whose circumstances make it possible.

One thing to be aware of is that doing so seems to have a
significant Red Pill effect that spreads to other things in one's life.
At least, that's how it worked for us: You start by getting rid of the
car, and you wind up examining all kinds of things about how you live.

I do my best to avoid being an obnoxious proselytizer for getting
rid of the personal automobile, but if somebody mentions they're
considering getting rid of theirs, I just can't resist jumping in to
say "yes, it's great!"

Posted March 31, 2008 3:57 PM by Lexica

By the way, did you know that Thoreau "developed for his family's business the finest lead pencil available in mid-19th-century America"?

Posted March 31, 2008 4:01 PM by theophylact

By the way, did you know that Thoreau "developed for his family's business the finest lead pencil available in mid-19th-century America"?

Posted March 31, 2008 4:02 PM by theophylact

#1: I overheard a conversation the captain of a Trader Joe's had
with a customer. Apparently, the first phase is that you leave your
reusable bag at home. The second phase is that you leave it in your
car. The third phase is when the bag finally makes it into the store.

I have a hand-crank flashlight too. It's great. When there's a power
failure, I know that my flashlight will work. It has its downsides, but
I don't ever run into them. (e.g., A hand crank is probably a bad
choice if you need steady, continuous light for hours.)

I haven't gone back to Linux yet, though. I really like handwriting
recognition. If there were a viable Linux based solution, that would
eliminate the only reason I have for using a Microsoft operating system.

As for sewing, I really need to learn how to do that. The extent of
my sewing experience is to repair a few tears with needle and thread,
using instructions I found on the web.

(I should also invest in a bicycle. Some places are just too close
to drive to, but too time consuming to walk to. Currently, I walk
anyway, but a bicycle would save time. I don't think there's always a
place to park the bike though.)

Posted March 31, 2008 4:02 PM by John Chu

Lexica @7:

If I won one in a contest, my first question would be "um... can I
get the cash-value equivalent instead? Because I really don't want the
car, actually."

Right in the middle of our car-free time, we* actually did win a car.

Fuji Film put out a promotional film pack with a number of
giveaways: disposable cameras, iMacs, and four people carriers. We
bought it for the film, of course, but the ticket inside said we'd also
won a car. And it was signed in ballpoint pen (you could feel it on the
underside). That's what made it real for us, so real we had to sit down
for a bit.

There was no cash alternative, so we took delivery and sold it
immediately thereafter. The money paid for a drum kit, a digital
camera†, a wooden floor in our house, and more maternity leave time for
me after our son was born.

-----

* Technically, Martin won it

† irony: we stopped buying film

Posted March 31, 2008 4:08 PM by abi

Websites of note:

Worldchanging

http://www.worldchanging.com

James Cascio's Open the Future

http://www.openthefuture.com/

Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/

* * *

I keep my reusable shopping bags in my car. I remember them maybe 2/3 of the time.

Posted March 31, 2008 4:11 PM by Stefan Jones

I love and adore a good Alice's restaurant reference.

Posted March 31, 2008 4:20 PM by dulcinea47

There are buttonhole-making attachments that work with
straight-stitch sewing machines. My Singer sewing instruction books
refer to them, and if the ones I'm finding on eBay are the right kind,
bidding starts at 99 cents.

I've got a treadle Singer, unconverted, and it does work, although I
confess I use it as a table to hold my electric-powered Bernette 440.

I wish I could go carless, but in my current location it's just not
practical. If I lived in the Boston area, I'd seriously consider it,
what with the T and Zipcar and rentals.

Posted March 31, 2008 4:21 PM by Rikibeth

I have often thought I'd like to have a Mooncup in case of apocalypse.

Posted March 31, 2008 4:24 PM by pixelfish

Oh, duh:

MAKE folks do cool stuff with both new and old technology.

http://makezine.com/

Posted March 31, 2008 4:26 PM by Stefan Jones

pixelfish @15:

There is no requirement to wait for the apocalypse, or even a minor disaster.

Getting one and discovering you don't like it is a bit
expensive—there isn't exactly a brisk secondhand market in them. But
getting one and finding out that you love it and would never go back to
anything else works out very cheap.

It's a gamble, sort of. You have to ask yourself if you feel lucky.

Posted March 31, 2008 4:30 PM by abi

It offends me that so many modern things are built to be trashed in
three years. I had a fine digital camera, it stopped turning on, there
was no place to fix it, I opened it up and couldn't figure out how to
fix it myself... Such a waste. I had an inkjet printer, it never worked
well, it was worthless as soon as I took it out of the store... I had a
microwave, it stopped producing microwaves. I had a MP3 player, it
stopped turning on.

I wish companies were required to send out circuit diagrams and
repair manuals with all of their electronics. I wish soldering and
electrical repair were required classes in high school.

Posted March 31, 2008 4:30 PM by Madeline F

Heck, we have a perfectly good digital camera (only 2.1 megapixels,
so not quite state of the art, but fully functional) that we may have
to replace because the batteries don't seem to be made anymore. We can
only take 3-4 pictures with the current battery before it fails. I
bought one online, but it was old too (not used, but these things have
a finite shelf life even unused), and we don't get much more life out
of it.

Posted March 31, 2008 4:34 PM by Jen Roth

Digital cameras are an interesting cleft stick.

On the one hand, the sensors on a digital camera go bad after a
while. If enough of them do so, the camera isn't much use any more.
And, as Madeline points out, you can't repair it, nor bring it to
someone local who can do so.

But it's harder and harder to get black and white film, even 35mm
film, without going mail-order. And home darkroom work on color film is
space, equipment and chemical intensive, even more than black and white.

Good thing this is just an ideal, not an ideology we're discussing.

Posted March 31, 2008 4:38 PM by abi

Just this morning, I found in a "take me, we're moving" pile a nice
SLR camera with filters, cleaning stuff, a remote plunger and two
flashes.

A film camera.

Dust in the wind.

I'm going to bring it to Goodwill at lunch.

Posted March 31, 2008 4:39 PM by Stefan Jones

The Amish have done a lot of adaptations of modern technology to fit
their needs. One of those is taking modern sewing machines - at least
basic models that aren't computer-driven - and fitting them for treadle
or airpower. I would assume those machines do zigzag.

In fact, it's possible to order such a machine, complete with zigzag and buttonhole, here.

Posted March 31, 2008 4:42 PM by MamaDeb

Rymenhild @2: Then again, sheep died to make those manuscripts.

Yes but the sheep also fed and clothed the scribe who made the
manuscript. An animal that can produce food, clothing, tools and
publishing materials is so useful, you'd think it came form some
genetically engineering laboratory in the future, rather than from a
damp field full of mud in the past.

One of the fascinating aspects of the past is just how much
ingenuity our ancestors had when all they had at hand were a few rocks,
twigs and livestock.

And we wonder that some stone age McGyver was worshiped as a God.
How many of us could figure out, without ever having seen it done
before, how to make fire out of couple of twigs, a flat rock and the
power of our own lungs?

Posted March 31, 2008 4:43 PM by Keith

I've never had a driver's license, and own no car. Fortunately I now
walk to work. I also walk to the grocery store and take my huge
backpack; I have canvas totes too, but I nearly always forget them.

On the downside, if I have too much stuff to carry home, I have it delivered--and that's done in a bigass van thing.

I have the miniature version of the hand-cranked flashlight, which
is kind of the "jerkoff" flashlight (from the motion used to charge it
up).

Posted March 31, 2008 4:47 PM by Xopher

Xopher @24:

"jerkoff" flashlight (from the motion used to charge it up)

You remind me that I have a pocket calculator that you shake in much the same way to charge up.

I bought it because the packaging told me that it worked without
electricity (though it doesn't look much like an abacus to me) and
without light (I presume it does, but I can't see the results).

How could I resist?

Posted March 31, 2008 4:53 PM by abi

MamaDeb @22:

Your link is munged, and I can't retrieve it. Can you put the URL in
plain text, or make sure you use quotes around it if you use the <a
href=... formatting?

Posted March 31, 2008 4:54 PM by abi

My mother's hand-cranked Singer sewing machine lasted her about
thirty years (she bought it when I was a small child in the late 50s,
and it travelled from England to Jamaica in the late 60s; it stayed in
Jamaica when she left for good at the end of the 80s).

Some technologies may last even longer, of course. When we lived in
rural Jamaica we cooked using a wood-burning stove rejoicing in the
name 'Caledonia Modern Dover' dating to around 1900 (possibly older)
that was still functional in the 1970s (I certainly had the blisters to
prove it). For all I know, it may be working yet.

Posted March 31, 2008 4:58 PM by Fragano Ledgister

I haven't made the leap over to Linux, but I have switched from word
processor to text editor, so just about everything I write is in future-proof ASCII.

And then there's "Amish computing" and the back-to-paper movement.

Posted March 31, 2008 4:59 PM by Avram

I've had the same cheap Black&Decker electric drill since
January 1986. It was a parting gift from my co-workers when I left
Québec. That thing has seen a lot of use.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:02 PM by Serge

Car maintenance is perhaps a bad example. We have a 1997 Saturn that
has 112,000 miles on it, and get 30 MPG even when it's way out of tune.
I figure it's good for another 50-100 thousand miles. My old Fiats and
the like were a lot easier to work on (and in some cases possible to
work on), but the flip side is that they had to be worked on. I
remember distinctly the point at which I stopped working on cars. It
was a Ford Escort that I had inherited from my father (he had won it in
a contest), and it needed its timing belt changed. Rubber timing belt
is routine maintenance, right? (You changed it religiously at 70,000
miles on the Fiat 131 engine, or you ended up with a valve stuck
edge-on in a piston.) Well. I didn't have a garage, and of course it
was 45 degrees (always is when you need to really sink yourself in the
engine). And here we are, trying to figure out how to get at this
thing, and we finally figured out that we had to put a jack under the
engine, and loose one of the motor mounts, and lower the engine a few
inches. And after all that I swore I would never work on my own car,
ever again.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:02 PM by C. Wingate

Fragano 27:

Thank you for the reminder of stoves; another good example of simple, flexible technology is the Coleman stove. My parents have used the same one at the cabin for over 35 years; it sits there still.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:04 PM by abi

Avram @28:

The back-to-paper movement? It's a movement now? In harmony, one hopes, and singing loud.

It's why I became a bookbinder. I realised I was done with my Palm V
and wanted no new gadget in its place. I just wanted really beautiful
blank books, nicer than I could afford any other way.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:11 PM by abi

I still use dial phones bought at garage sales long ago. I have a
couple of extras, because they do fail eventually. Western Electric
built good stuff, because way back then, you rented your phone from Ma
Bell, so she didn't want it to fail. I also have an old touch tone
phone for those times you can't access service without one.

And I *like* dial phones. It's how I think of using a phone, and the sound quality is great. I also prefer watches with dials.

I've been trying to use shopping bags for a long time. The local
food co-ops used to pretty much require it, also your own jars and
such. Now they have bags available, but give you a nickel back if
you've brought one.

There was a time in my life I used flannel pads. Cups never worked
for me; gave me cramps. I bought enough pads to get through my period.
When it was over, they were tossed in the wash in cold water with a
long soak. Now that I don't need them, I don't know what to do with
them. But they gave several years of excellent use, much softer and
more comfortable than disposable.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:11 PM by Magenta Griffith

Random thoughts on sustainability and technology.

---My uncle has a lovely singing voice. About 25 years ago he gave
us recordings....on 8-tracks. Unfortunately, that was the only format
he recorded. Which leads us to Unfortunately #2: a couple of years ago
someone in the family wanted to convert the recordings to some other
format (ah, but how durable??), but it appears that all of us have
gotten rid of all of our 8-tracks.

---when spinning wheels were first introduced, they were often
vilified as potential job killers. Interesting how perspectives on the
advantages of technology can develop.

---I wonder about tasks that are apparently efficient. Take
cooking. In my experience it really doesn't take that much time to cook
'real' stuff, as opposed to buying things prepackaged and/or
microwavable. Not to mention that my food processor's parts aren't
dishwasher safe; it's less hassle to use other more 'primitive' tools.

---Jen Roth @19, we had the same thing happen to our telephone. We
replaced the phone a few weeks ago before the battery gave up entirely.

---on the other hand, some appliances like washers and dryers have
gotten very energy-efficient. I'll be sad to see my 20-year-old washer
go, but will feel better about saving power and water with a new one.

---My 1910 edition of The Harvard Classics is in fine shape. My
'70's paperbacks (Science Fiction Hall of Fame, waaaah!) are crumbling.

--- re: the Amish. I recently linked to an article describing some of their innovations. Here it is again.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:13 PM by Debbie

My sewing machines are long-lived - the two I use most often
(fraternal twin Singers) are both 40 years old and have never needed
any repair other than a single gear under the bobbin case that seems to
be a chronic weak point on that model. That's about a $30 repair every
couple of years. My serger, which I rarely use and which really ought
to be a candidate for disposal, is about 15 years old. My converted
machine, which I almost never use, is a 1920s model of some sort, and
works just fine provided I only want to do straight stitch. I consider
it a backup in case I manage to munch the gears on both my main ones,
as has happened occasionally, always at the most inconvenient possible
moment relative to some costume deadline.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:16 PM by Susan

Diva cups -- better than moon cups in that they have no latex! I
think they are not used so much in the US, though. US undergrads seem
to be very squeamish about some things, and not at all about things
that squick me no end.

I think most of those things are really obvious -- I started with
the bags when I lived in Europe, and have lots of lower-tech stuff. But
for a lot of people here in the US, non-car transport is difficult.
There are lots of spots between my home and work, for example, where
there is no pavement and the cars do not look out for bikers and
walkers.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:17 PM by Another Damned Medievalist

On older books: My 1923 copy of Government of the West Indies
is still in excellent condition for what is, after all, a Wrong book.*
Quite a few of my 60s and 70s paperbacks are, shall we say, very
fragile.

*I treat it gently, on the other hand I have marked up my first American edition of Froude's Bow of Ulysses.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:20 PM by Fragano Ledgister

The use of disposable things, or short-lived things, can have its
own complicated ecology. Maybe ecology isn't quite the right word. I
mean a network of processes that depend on each other. I usually have a
reusable (as in luggage) bag with me when I shop. When I need paper or
plastic bags, I get one from the store, and put it inside my reusable
bag, to take it home. Why? Because if a person wants to recycle paper,
the local recyclers require it to be packaged in paper bags and taken
to one of their drop boxes, conveniently located every 1/4 mile or so.
(There's an exception for newspapers, which I don't read on paper at
home.) I use plastic grocery bags for trash. I've seen plastic trash
bags made for the purpose, but they're much thicker plastic, so if the
idea is to minimize use of plastic it doesn't seem like a good use of
money.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:21 PM by Adrian

I overheard a conversation the captain of a Trader Joe's had with
a customer. Apparently, the first phase is that you leave your reusable
bag at home. The second phase is that you leave it in your car. The
third phase is when the bag finally makes it into the store.

If you're walking, you'll make the mistake of forgetting your bag
once or twice, tops. And if you're walking and you forget your bag the
second time, odds are good that you'll buy a second bag rather than
endure another walk with plastic ones.

Cars are very good at enabling some kinds of wasteful behavior.

Giving up the car was a lot easier than I thought. It started when
my partner and I figured out that we could do all (and I do mean *all*)
our grocery shopping on foot. Then he realized he could take the bus to
work and save himself an annoying drive every day. 18 months later, we
moved and decided to get rid of the car as it hadn't been used *once*
in that time.

We now use bikes for quite a lot - we each picked up one when we
moved. Mine is scheduled to be replaced, since I'm better at handling
cargo than it is! I know it's possible to get a bike that works better
than I do, so I'm comparison shopping for the replacement.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:22 PM by Emily

Pixelfish #15: you don't need an apocalypse to appreciate a mooncup!
I use the Diva cup (silicone, not latex) and I couldn't be happier with
it. It's comfortable, it can be worn all day with no leakage and no
changing, and you never have to worry if you've run out of menstrual
supplies. I've had mine for several YEARS now and it's more than paid
for itself in the supplies I haven't had to buy. Also, I think it was
the only thing that made having my period at Warped Tour a
manageable situation. I would not have wanted to deal with disposables
and Porta-potties -- something I could leave in and ignore until I got
to better facilities was ideal.

I've also used the Keeper (latex, while serviceable, can kinda smell
funny after a while) and the disposable Instead cups. Disposable
doesn't address the environmental or deep-value concerns, but there are
certain situations where the design of the Instead (it's like a
diaphragm, the Keeper and Diva sit lower down) makes it the optimal
choice.

Mooncups RULE.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:25 PM by Rikibeth

Another Damned Medievalist @36:

Several of the cup anecdotes were American; that was when I found out
that they weren't simply a British phenomenon. I suspect many women of
my daughter's generation (she's currently 4) will use them as a default.

I confess, on the biking, that I have an obscenely, viciously unfair advantage. I live in the Netherlands.

When I show American bikers around, it takes me several hours to get them to relax and believe
that the cars are really going to give them the space that they need on
those few stretches of road that don't have a bike lane.

I've only been here eight months, and it still blows my mind. Dutch people don't even see how fantastic it is.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:27 PM by abi

Susan @ 35... My serger, which I rarely use and which really ought to be a candidate for disposal

I gave you the best years of my life and this is what I get.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:29 PM by Serge

I've only taken a cursory look at the thread so far (I should have
left work by now), so I apologize if anyone's already posted this, but
the Group News Blog has this post about "The Real Deal" a couple of months ago that touches on just this topic.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:35 PM by Chris Quinones

I've only taken a cursory look at the thread so far (I should have
left work by now), so I apologize if anyone's already posted this, but
the Group News Blog has this post about "The Real Deal" a couple of months ago that touches on just this topic.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:35 PM by Chris Quinones

Rats! Double posts do not have deep value!

Posted March 31, 2008 5:37 PM by Chris Quinones

I am surely not the only Making Light reader who has a conflict of
values pertaining to reading choices. Too many things in new-book
stores are book-shaped objects, printed on very real paper. Ick! So I
end up reading and enjoying books from second hand shops and libraries.
That is very economical with the book-making energy, but tends to give
the book-makers (authors, editors, designers, publishers, etc.) short
shrift.

I'm hoping that an economic model will turn up that will make it
possible to pay the makers regardless of the distribution chain I
choose. And while distribution is important, I have no love for
particular distribution chains and no wish to support them; I wish
there were some reasonable way of rewarding/repaying authors and
publishers for their work even when I choose a different distribution
channel.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:37 PM by Dena Shunra

Debbie #34, on dishwashers: My parents recently got a new one,
despite my father's skepticism, but he tried handwashing a medium-full
sinkload of dishes and measured how much water he used, versus how much
the dishwasher would have, and apparently the dishwasher won out by
quite a bit. It startled the hell out of him, and me, and won him over
to the dishwasher side of things. Sadly, I don't have a functioning
dishwasher, and judging from the two years I've spent trying to get my landlord to do something about it, I might never.

On mooncups or diva cups or whatever: most of my ladyfriends have
switched over to them over the past few years, and unanimously report
satisfaction. They seem a dramatic improvement.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:41 PM by ethan

abi @ 41: you may be optimistic about your daughter's generation using mooncups as a default.

My daughter is 12, and although she was eager to try one, she can't
wear it comfortably right now. I advised her to hang onto it and try
again later.

I'm sure she can figure out the likely preconditions for "later," as I've also given her Our Bodies, Ourselves, but if I brought it up directly I'd just hear "Mo-om, you're embarrassing me!"

Posted March 31, 2008 5:42 PM by Rikibeth

Going meta for a moment, I'd say that -skills- are very much one of
the deep value items. I'm always surprised to find people don't all
have some rough idea of how to weave, or make paper (or ink), or
sew[0], or butcher, (more recent) how electricity works, even in
general terms, or all sorts of remarkably basic ideas that underly
modern technology.

"The magic just happens" is a spectacular form of ignorance.

[0] Sewing... I'm beginning to think that (at 5 sewing machines (one
treadle, one hand-crank, one convertable power/handcrank, and one
powered) and a serger) I might have a problem... (but I've sewn with
all but the most recent of them - and that because the most recent was
found lonely on the curb yesterday, and needs a belt)

Posted March 31, 2008 5:44 PM by xeger

Rikibeth @48:

Perhaps, if cups gather momentum, they will come in more sizes. Have you fed back to either company?

Posted March 31, 2008 5:46 PM by abi

Thing is, once you have a car, you use it.

This is why I resist every suggestion that my life would be easier
with a car (and given the sad state of public transport in small-town
Lincolnshire maybe it would). I enjoy travelling by train, meeting
interesting people and getting to know new stations along the way. But
if I was running a car, I wouldn't be able to justify train journeys
and I'd miss them.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:51 PM by Nick Kiddle

abi 50: no, I haven't yet. I probably ought to. I wonder just how
small they could make the things, though, before they started losing
their advantages? I suspect that one made the size of a slender/junior
tampon wouldn't be very effective.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:52 PM by Rikibeth

The first "Our Bodies, Ourselves" contained instructions for using a
diaphragm as a menstrual cup, which was my first introduction to the
concept, but which indicates it's been around for a while. Even though
I turned out to be incompatible with them, I love the idea and always
beam with pleasure when I see a new brand name on the market.

As for variations, the Keeper had a 'no child has passed through
this cervix' style and an 'at least one child has passed through this
cervix' size/shape. (I forget how they phrased it, but that was the
gist.) I *think* the Diva cup does too. For more variation yet, one can
return to the diaphragm which (as I understand it) is individually
fitted. More expensive, but it's not like one needs dozens of them.

Posted March 31, 2008 5:55 PM by Calluna V.

Xeger @49 - I second that.

Moreover, skills are fun (well, probably not the butchering): make
tofu from beans & sea water... you may have to fight off the
paparazzi. Or knitting, spinning, crochet, and cooking. Etc.

I've found that not only is cooking fun, it helps keep out
ingredients I'd rather avoid. (I've been known to make muffins,
pancakes, and cakes without any of the following: eggs, wheat flour,
oil, sugar, and milk. Good muffins and pancakes. Ingredient-free
cooking - whee!) But I still find it surprising that cooking is
something that counts as a skill, like all those other ones. I mean,
how do people eat without cooking?

Posted March 31, 2008 5:57 PM by Dena Shunra

Instead cups aren't compatible with an IUD-- which is in itself a
Deep Value contraceptive, not requiring daily pills or other small
disposable objects.

(TMI warning for guys who would just as rather not engage with this sort of gynecology)

I've bought and tried all three types of reusable cups. So far, the
Keeper has lasted the longest; this may be an unfair judgement in that
I lost my Divacup within a few months of purchase, although I was not
unhappy to do so-- I had a lot more trouble wrangling it into place,
because of the shorter stem and slightly larger size (the cupmakers'
size recommendation is partially based on age, but this didn't seem to
work for me).

My Mooncup eventually developed some small holes/fissures in its
main body, which may be attributable to a brief but intense interval
when our two then-kittens decided that it was the Best Toy Ever; more
than once, after I'd pitched it into the bathroom sink before settling
down for a good read, I'd looked back up to discover that the Mooncup
had disappeared somewhere in the direction of an ominous set of little
red pawprints. It bounced real good.

I *have* had leaks with the cups due to overflow, even past a backup
flannel pad. But they've still served me better than even the largest
pre-toxic-shock tampons, which IIRC were once described by a comedian
who said that every time she jumped into the pool with one, the water
level went down.

And finally, there is the fabulous site http://mum.org/ , the online Museum of Menstruation.

Posted March 31, 2008 6:06 PM by Julie L.

The Keeper and Diva Cup both swear that if you've had a child, you
NEED NEED NEED their larger size to prevent leakage. The Diva Cup even
says you need the larger size if you're over 30, child or no child,
because of natural loss of muscle tone.

I'm here to tell you they're WRONG.

I'm over 30, I have a child, and the larger size was frickin' unwieldy. The smaller size is comfortable and leak-free.

Posted March 31, 2008 6:12 PM by Rikibeth

I got to play with an old treadle Singer sewing machine when my dad
was fixing it for my aunt. (Inherited from her mother or grandmother.)
Once you get in the rhythm with the treadle, it goes at an impressively
fast clip! It had a box full of attachments that let it do dozens and
dozens of kinds of frills and furbelows. I don't remember if there was
a buttonhole attachment but I would be surprised if there was not.

One of our fundamental problems right now is that we have lots of
ways to put materials together, and very few ways to take them apart
again for reuse. If we can figure out how to make something that does
*that* the green revolution will become immensely easier and more
popular. Plastics, metals, and so on do certain jobs that natural
materials just can't, so people are not going to give them up.

Posted March 31, 2008 6:15 PM by Bronwyn

For those forgetting their shopping bags at home, a recommendation. I use one of these
that I picked up at a co-op. It folds up wallet-sized and fits in my
purse, so I don't forget it (unlike the five string bags and the big
canvas bag that lives in my back seat). If I didn't have a purse, it
would snap around my belt loop. Since I got it, my disposable bag
consumption is down to what I need for my recycling and my lunch.

On sewing machines: I have an electric sewing machine that's a
couple generations old (human generations, not tech generations) and
much sturdier than the modern ones. I love it, but if I didn't have
electricity I think I'd just go back to needle and thread. Whereas I
would probably have to invent a treadle-powered word processor rather than go back to either manual typewriter or pen & paper.

Posted March 31, 2008 6:25 PM by R. Emrys

This is only a placeholder for what I hope will be longer comments tonight or tomorrow.

I am troubled by how much deep value apparently depends on labor I can't add.
There are presumptions going on about what kinds of disabilities and
limitations apparently don't exist in people who'd like to be good
stewards of their chunk of the world's resources. There's lots I would
do, both physically and mentally, if I could, but it simply isn't going
to happen. It wouldn't happen even if I sacrificed all of my chosen
work and entertainment, in some cases, thanks to learning disabilities
rising from nerve damage.

Some of this, to be sure, is spillover frustration at healthy young
(generally male) bloggers who've done yeoman work analyzing the
screwing over that the working and middle classes have gotten and then
turn right around to enthuse about hiking the price of food and
transportation, knowing damn well that nothing like sufficient aid to
the needy will be forthcoming. And those who have even more trouble
holding onto gainful employment or finding healthy food will...what?
Blow away? Hire themselves out to each other laborers?

It's not that I disapprove of making things both lasting and
repairable. It's that I get leery of too much endorsement of solutions
calling for more physical labor and mental training without a good
sense of what kinds of burden that can be, nor any real sense of what
to do about it.

More later, though; this is not (in my intention) a completed thought.

Posted March 31, 2008 6:27 PM by Bruce Baugh

I don't use a cup, as it is incompatible with the IUD I currently
have in place, but I do like my cloth pads and sea-sponge tampons
vastly better than their disposable alternatives. Right now, I can just
toss the pads in with my son's cloth diapers, which is very convenient.
Cloth diapers also seem to be making a comeback, and while we don't use
them exclusively, I now look at a disposable diaper and think "I'm
throwing out this big hunk of plastic and chemicals to take care of a
little bit of baby pee that would just wash out?" I guess that's more
of a "sustainability" rather than "deep value" argument, but they're
related.

Posted March 31, 2008 6:28 PM by dana

abi @41:

In 1990, before and after ConFiction, I spent some time bicycling in
the Netherlands (and Denmark) (including a circumnavigation of the
Ijsselmeer). One of the problems I had, as an American cyclist was that
I was too cautious for the Dutch drivers, I'd slow and check at an
intersection. They were expecting me to fly right through. It didn't
help that I was extra wary since the bike trip was financed by the
settlement from having my collarbone broken when me and my bike were
hit by a car making a turn across traffic (Mass Ave, Arlington, MA).

I wanted a sign saying "Let Op! Amerikaanse Fietser".

Not only was there a bike path from the airport, it went in a separate tunnel from the auto traffic.

At one point on my long ride, a drawbridge started to go up in front of
me. The bridgekeeper saw me and gave me priority over the bridge (I
assume that he didn't actually have to slow the cargo ship down).

Posted March 31, 2008 6:49 PM by John Houghton

Rikibeth: Thanks for the heads up about the larger/smaller size
issue. I currently am on the Ring, which I adore, and I assume that
inserting a cup will be no more strenuous than inserting the Ring?

Posted March 31, 2008 6:56 PM by pixelfish

I'm posting this before reading past #20 -

Abi: I prefer a sewing machine that zig-zags, so that I can make buttonholes.

and

#5 ::: P J Evans :::

...(I'd pay for a treadle sewing machine. I think you should be
able to get a zig-zag attachment for them - my mother had one for her
old-but-electric straight-stitch machine.)

and

#14 ::: Rikibeth :::

There are buttonhole-making attachments that work with straight-stitch sewing machines.

I use a treadle sewing machine with a late-50's head that can do not
only zig-zag, buttonholes, double-needle, but a wide variety of other
built-in stitches and also takes cams for bigger/more elaborate
patterns. I own two of those heads, both of which came from Canada. The
second treadle cabinet I got from a company whose main business is catering to the Amish.

There are two versions of the clamp-on buttonholer, one for
straight-stitch and one for zig-zag machines. They make an extremely
nice buttonhole.

re: Mooncup

I used a version of these in the early 70's, until they stopped being
made (or, at least, marketed in Kansas, where I was living at the
time). If I were young enough to still need these, I'd buy a Mooncup in
a heartbeat.

Back to reading this thread -

Posted March 31, 2008 6:57 PM by Carol Kimball

I definitely agree with the sad disposable nature of so much of what
we have, but I find that a lot of truly good choices are
counter-intuitive (ethan @47's story is a good example). Reusing bags
is good, I will agree, but plastic shopping bags are apparently not the
demon that everyone thinks they are, see here,
and the cost of banning/taxing them might actually be counter
productive (leading, for example, to an increased use of trash bags
which, as pointed out above, are much thicker and less eco-friendly
than shopping bags).

I think it's interesting how eager we are to focus on a problem, any
problem, and totally ignore others (like, oh, the end of life as we
know it when the oil runs out)--it's one of the reasons I tend to be
skeptical whenever a people start cheering the latest environment
saving fad (like Nuclear power as the answer to our prayers) .

It is important to think about taking steps to reduce our impact on
the world, but deep meaning calls for deep analysis, I think. It might
be beyond some of us ( though the guys at Freakonomics do a good job of the kinds of analysis I think we need).

Posted March 31, 2008 7:02 PM by Jim

Tying in with what Bruce said above, there's sometimes an annoying
pain-in-the-ass factor that goes along with these old-timey Deep Value
items. For example, I notice that two of the items in that "Real Deal"
article Chris linked to -- the Pendleton shirt and the Hudson Bay point
blanket -- are dry-clean-only.

Posted March 31, 2008 7:07 PM by Avram

I am troubled by how much deep value apparently depends on labor I can't add

I have some bone deformities and a rotated hip. I've had arthritis
since I was 16. Exercise helps thankfully. Living 2 miles or less from
everything also helps. If I did things the way the average American
biker does, I'd be in terrible shape. Someone with more severe
disabilities might not be able to bike at all. Or WALK. So I don't tell
people to go car free, and I talk about the problems I've had. I talk
about the solutions too, since someone else might learn from me.

It's important to do what is sensible and maintainable for *you*. It
probably will not be the same as what I do, nor will it be the same as
what Abi does. And it won't be the same as what my sister does (similar
disabilities to me, and very different enviroment).

Posted March 31, 2008 7:07 PM by Emily

Pixelfish: I've never used the Ring, but seating a DivaCup is
simpler than positioning a diaphragm, at least for me. It's sort of an
intermediate complexity between tampon and diaphragm. It's basically
fold, insert, rotate (to make sure it's unfolded). Very simple.

Posted March 31, 2008 7:09 PM by Rikibeth

A gadget to carry plastic bags

And if you're not shopping, you can go fly a kite.

Posted March 31, 2008 7:13 PM by Carol Kimball

Hudson Bay Point blankets were invented considerably before dry
cleaning. It's my experience that a wool blanket doesn't need washing
very often -- and it's got to be possible to do it the old-fashioned
way when it's actually necessary.

I wouldn't throw it in a modern washing machine and tumble dryer,
but a washtub, and mild soap, and spreading it flat on the grass to
dry? I'd be willing to risk it.

Posted March 31, 2008 7:28 PM by Rikibeth

This seems to be today's conversation. I've already had it with two
friends. We all seem to be thinking along the same lines -- if things
go pear-shaped for a while, how can we make sure we can survive?

Having stuff that lasts and can be repaired is a big part of that. A
rumor about a truckers' strike led me to make a shopping list last week
of all the stuff we'd want stocked in case there was a temporary halt
to shipping. We ended up with a lot of dried beans, peas, and lentils,
canned vegetables, rice, and plenty of frozen veggies and meats -- and
also plenty of shampoo, conditioner, soap, toilet paper, and paper
towels. Because I have a Diva Cup, I did not have to put tampons on
that list, and I thought that was pretty cool.

(I will evangelize for menstrual cups to anyone who will listen,
actually. I've found that mine works a good deal better than the
disposable alternatives, and it's darned convenient to never worry
about buying stuff, because I'm always prepared.)

I would like to state for the record that those rumors were just
rumors, and I have no credible source. We figured it was a good excuse
to get a stockpile going, though. Turned out that it didn't cost much
more than a regular shopping trip -- beans and canned goods are cheap.

I really want a sewing machine, so that I can repair, alter, and
rework clothes as necessary. I have, in the past, stretched a pair of
jeans that were a size too small by opening the side seams and adding a
panel of colorful fabric on either side of the leg -- I got compliments
on those in high school. That was with my mother's sewing machine. Not
having to ditch clothes and start over when I go up or down a size
would help a lot.

And I am planning to switch to reusable grocery bags just because I
get extremely annoyed by dealing with the plastic kind. They pile up
and fall out of the closet, and then the cats get hold of them and lick
and bite them, and I have to take them away to prevent damage to the
cats, and then I get fed up and just put them in the trash anyway,
after which I feel guilty. A set of reusable bags is going to save me
so much irritation.

Posted March 31, 2008 7:30 PM by Caroline

Rikibeth, you're not making a good case for those blankets being
easy to care for. Carting a wet blanket out to Prospect Park and
watching it dry for a few hours is hardly less work than just dumping
it in a washing machine and then a dryer. Leaving aside the question of
what to do if I need to clean it in winter.

Posted March 31, 2008 7:41 PM by Avram

Back when I was on active duty at DLI, I had the usual problems with
strings (the various pockets, flaps, gussets, etc. are prone to
unravelling; this is frowned upon).

The default solution was to burn them. After I'd lost my third, or
fourth, lighter one month, I said screw it, and bought a zippo.

It's been 15 years, and I still have the zippo. It was ten dollars as a lump, vs. a serial expenditure of 99 cents.

I wear the same knife today I bought 21 years ago. I'm planning to
buy a scythe. No more hassling with the mower. It'll be a couple of
hundred dollars, but it's less than a mower costs, has very little in
maintainence costs (maybe the snath gets damaged, or you hit a really
big rock; other than that, a new stone every ten years or so it about
it, that and polishing the hammer and anvil), makes no noise and
impresses the neighbors. One can clear about an acre a day; of wheat.
Grass is a bit quicker.

Posted March 31, 2008 7:42 PM by Terry Karney

Madeline@18: I wish companies were required to send out circuit
diagrams and repair manuals with all of their electronics. I wish
soldering and electrical repair were required classes in high school.

Moore's law is a pain in the arse. By the time many electronic
devices break, they're also obsolete. And soldering a 200 pin surface
mount chip isn't exactly easy, or cheap.

digital camera: sensors keep improving, storage keeps getting denser. the technology hasn't neared an asymptote yet.

inkjet printer: The cost of new black/white plus color cartridges
for my printer nearly equals the cost of the printer with small
cartridges included. They give printers away at cost or at a loss, and
then make it up selling ink like it was a subscription service.

microwave: Well, I never felt comfortable monkeying around with radiation.

MP3 player: I'm surprised someone hasn't made a generic MP3 player,
with a USB port built in for the actual storage of music. As the price
of storage goes down, you can upgrade the memory, but keep the player.
Then the interface would be almost zero dollars to build, and the cost
of memory would be separated out. Of course, that just makes it more
replacable, not repairable.

The main problem is the economics of electronic products push for
more integration, which obsoletes older parts quickly. Combine that
with ever plummeting costs for chips with more features, and it ends up
costing you more to buy the old chip than to get the new one. I don't
think it's going to settle out for a while yet.

The other problem is that the NRE to make an asic is like a million
dollars, which makes it bloody hard for a mom and pop operation to come
in and make a generic MP3 player that anyone can build or repair.

Posted March 31, 2008 7:49 PM by Greg London

Avram, I wasn't exactly saying they'd be EASY to care for. Just that
if dry cleaning disappeared, they wouldn't become entirely unusable. I
have to admit I was thinking with my re-enactor brain -- the blankets
are popular among Colonial re-enactors, and the house museum where I've
volunteered in the past has done laundry demonstrations. Children seem
to find it fun to play with the tub and washboard and the paddles for
stirring the linens -- I'm sure they'd find it less so if they had to
do the washing for a whole family, week after week.

I know that if my cat threw up on MY wool blanket (not a Hudson Bay,
just a common blanket from probably the middle of the last century) in
the wintertime, I'd sponge it off as best I could and drape it over the
shower curtain rod while it dried, rather than trying to wash the whole
thing.

Posted March 31, 2008 7:52 PM by Rikibeth

Abi@26:

Sorry. Here.

Posted March 31, 2008 8:07 PM by MamaDeb

Dena@46: Your mileage may vary, but personally I'm not particularly
concerned about using up paper when I'm buying new books. Yes, there's
an environmental cost to paper, but books use so small a portion of the
paper-stream (1/2 to 1/3 of one percent of paper usage, according to
Walt Crawford in the latest _Cites and Insights_) that I'm not that
worried about it. The cost to me, as I see it, for forgoing books in
the name of paper is higher. (We do buy used books more often than new,
actually, but that reflects our interests and budgets more than a
concern for paper.)

Seeing how much junk mail some other houses get, I'm pretty sure we
save far more paper than we use in books just from having put ourselves
years ago on the DMA's junk-mail opt-out lists. (It doesn't completely get rid of junk mail, but it reduces it substantially.)

Posted March 31, 2008 8:11 PM by John Mark Ockerbloom

Sometimes I think the most sustainable thing I can do is move
elsewhere. Hawai'i, for me, has meant having to own a car (even though
I prefer the bus) and eating mostly food grown in California, among
other things. On the other hand, I don't have to heat my house with gas
or oil.

I'd buy a treadle sewing machine without a zig-zag function - I
prefer to sew buttonholes by hand. It doesn't take me any longer, since
sewing them on the machine usually requires that I redo them.

When I lived in a town that had free recycling pickup (and charged a
fee for trash pickup), I had stopped using plastic shopping bags, and
didn't want to buy small plastic trash bag liners. I took the trash out
of the house more frequently and scrubbed the bins at least once per
week, which worked okay, but was really annoying to have to do during
the winter when I couldn't just use the hose in the yard.

Posted March 31, 2008 8:20 PM by mk

This reminds me that I ought to order a replacement set of the
replaceable parts for my pressure cooker (see also: fast way to deal
with long-storing grains and beans).

Posted March 31, 2008 8:37 PM by clew

Try finding resole-able shoes. They aren't common at all anymore, especially for women.

I can get my Birkenstock sandals resoled until the cork actually
breaks apart, but I haven't found a way to get my El Naturalista shoes
done. It's frustrating, because they're both good shoe brands, and
expensive, but one lasts up to five years, and the other doesn't.

Posted March 31, 2008 9:01 PM by neotoma

Second for Chico Bags @58

We're carfree here in our little suburb of Seattle. Three years now.
We walk and bike and take the bus. We rent a car once in a while. More
often we borrow a car from one of our neighbors. Good neighbors are
about as deep value as you can get.

To improve bicycle carrying capacity there's Xtracycle, a bolt-on frame extension that radically increases a regular bike's utility. Here are pictures of the more improbable loads I've carried on mine.

Another old technology that's still wonderfully alive is woodworking
tools. For remarkably little money you can buy vintage human-powered
drills, saws, and planes that surpass anything manufactured today for
quality and utility. A good eggbeater drill is a joy to use--silent,
safe, fast, and the batteries don't run down until supper time.
Outrageous amounts of good information and help on this available on
the Oldtools mailing list.

Posted March 31, 2008 9:04 PM by Jeff Youngstrom

Any loss of the machine culture and we all starve.

Sure, some people will survive, but to a first approximation, none of us are them.

Deep value... I think this messily conflates two things.

One is that actual human utility innovates a whole lot slower than
consumer products allege that they do; there are a great many things
that are simpler, less expensive, better for you, and so on. Having
stuff to do that has real, tangible results, of obvious or immediate
value, is a goodness.

The other one is that the machine society runs as an open loop --
there are inputs, stuff, and garbage -- rather than a closed loop --
there are inputs and stuff -- and this has to change to the closed loop
form as a matter of some urgency.

Me, well, no car, and have never owned one. Driver's license, and I
use it occasionally, for 'not the last calendar year' values of
occasionally. Linux since I got a computer that could run it, in 1997
-- I can claim no virtue for this; I learnt to use a computer on a VAX,
and only unixes seem natural -- and heavy reliance on large reusable
bags. (One of them has wheels.)

On the other hand, new digital camera I like very much; some things
are better, more effective, expand the realizable choice space
available to people. The problem isn't that consumer digital cameras
don't last; the problem is that the question "what eats those?" doesn't
have an answer.

(All that lives is food. Technology needs to live, is all.)

Posted March 31, 2008 9:06 PM by Graydon

C. Wingate @30: That reminds me of the time I replaced the battery
on my 1998 Dodge Stratus. I figured it'd be a simple operation:
disconnect the leads, pull out the old battery, pop in the new one,
reconnect. Until I realized the battery housing was not in the engine
compartment but in front of the front left wheel. I had to turn the
wheel all the way to the left, squat down, reach under one handed and
unscrew the splash guard, yank that out from the wheel base, disconnect
the battery and then figure out a way to slide it out of the casing
without dropping it (still crouched down, fiddling in the wheel well,
mind). Once the old battery was out then I had to somehow fit the new
battery into the narrow recess with a tire in my face. Ever try lifting
a car battery from a squatting position and holding it out in front of
you? It really works those shoulder muscles, i tell you what.

Posted March 31, 2008 9:07 PM by Keith

In January of this year I moved from Raleigh, NC to Brooklyn, NY
because, in short, I felt like I was stabbing the earth - to live
somewhere sidewalks hardly existed, public transportation likewise,
bicycles had no place on the road, and where I had to drive absolutely
everywhere. Also because, even though my car gets good mileage, I felt
like gas prices were never likely to come back down.

I am astonished by how little I miss having a car; on the other
hand, all the steps up and down to the subway have given me Runner's
Knee. So, in these kinds of threads on certain forums, the discussions
seems to turn to You Could Do It If You'd Only Try Harder. What, it's
ten miles on busy highways after dark? That doesn't mean you can't do
it by bike! Be a man!

A person's willingness to make sacrifices turns into a measure of
their toughness, even their manliness - which I feel is not only
insensitive to older people and disabled people, it also turns the
focus to "who can endure the most sacrifices"... when maybe we should
be looking at how to change the infrastructure and the systems in place
so that you don't have to do those ten miserable miles in the dark to get to work.

Posted March 31, 2008 9:07 PM by Emily H.

mk @ #77, hey, if our illustrious singing mayor has his way we'll
have heavy steel-on-steel rail here in another ten years. Throw away
that car!

I bought a used GEO Metro with 13K on it in 1998. At last inspection
it had 49K on it, ten years later. It's not that I think about driving
less, it's just that I don't go very far when I drive.

Posted March 31, 2008 9:29 PM by Linkmeister

My Diva Cup rocks the house, and I write in plain text because that
way I get the benefit of subversion's merge and conflict resolution
features. I wish I could bike to work. I suggest it every time we fill
up the gas tank.

Posted March 31, 2008 9:54 PM by Katherine Mankiller

Deep value - lasting stuff - good technologies...

*************

Cast iron pans - my mom is using her grandma's - still going strong
after about 70 or 80 years. Can be used with flame or electricity - put
in an oven as well.

Foot powered sewing machines (yes!) - I see them in use in Shenzhen and still a a few in Hong Kong.

Carrying poles - some people in HK still have them. I remember
watching the news a few months ago and a water main burst near a big
apartment block and the water trucks came & there were some people
who were out there w/ their carrying poles to take their 2 buckets
home. Good for carrying lots of things, not just water.

Electric trams - still going strong in HK after 100+ years http://www.hktramways.com/ - double-decked!

Hand-carts - very useful for moving big loads of stuff without a
vehicle or a pack animal - seen more in China now rather than here now

Chinese cleaver & whetstone - you don't really need so many
knives for regular kitchen stuff & it can eliminate need for meat
grinder

Mortar & pestle - can help eliminate need for food processor

Thermos - keeps hot water hot!

Tankless water heaters - will make hot water when you need it.
Electric is nice because you never run out of gas in the middle of your
shower. Gas is nice because you can still have a hot shower if the
electricity is gone.

LPG Cylinders - for the hot water heater or the cooker

Gas hot-plate (hobs) - two rings are great! very easy to attach and get going. Some are automatic, others you light w/ a match.

Posted March 31, 2008 10:11 PM by SK-reader

Gas hot plate -- like the Iwatami burners we use in catering that run off of canned butane? I LOVE those.

Of course, they aren't especially sustainable or deep value, as I
see it -- you still need the butane cans. What makes them better than a
regular modern kitchen stove?

Posted March 31, 2008 10:32 PM by Rikibeth

Deep value doesn't necessarily mean buying different stuff.
Sometimes it's just a matter of researching brands (aka "being thrifty,
not cheap.")

Most people I know abhor toaster ovens because they "break sll of
the time." We've had our (Krups) toaster oven for seven years now,
seeing steady use for both toasting and oven duty, and it's still going
strong. And because there's only the two of us, that means we don't
have to heat up the big oven for a meal.

Same thing with just about anything else— do your research and your
purchase will last you for years. Sometimes this is surprising— I still
get good use out of my high school solar calculator, which has decided
our 100W equivalent CFL is a perfectly legitimate light source.

And (looks around) I actually am still pretty happy with my six-year-old computer. Don't tell anyone, mmmkay?

Posted March 31, 2008 11:03 PM by B. Durbin

Let's see -- my van is 21 years old and I drive fewer than 3K miles
a year. I do have to drive. I'm disabled and I can't even get on buses
here, assuming I could walk to the stop. And how would I get the trash
and recycling out and the groceries and such in? I mentioned a
reclining tricycle to my nephrologist and she said "Absolutely not!"

I only recently moved to reusable grocery bags -- my grocery store
lets you recycle their bags and the WashPost bags and I did that for
decades. I bought two of their bags and had to adapt them some (the
weight would be too low and make me wobble and I'm not a Weeble) and I
always ask the cashiers to balance them weight-wise as much as possible
and some do. The one that refused to not only balance them, but
insisted on putting everything in one bag "because it fit" was
reported. I still put the WashPost bags in the reusable bag and that
reminds me to take it with me that day.

After the stroke/coma, I couldn't use tampons, so I used reusable
pads. I still have them even though I'm in menopause. Maybe I should
repurpose them for rags. (This is also where I buy bras and underpants
and my current ones are now uncomfortably large and I need to get more.)

I have three windup flashlight/radios -- one in the van, one in the
bedroom, one in the office (it's a small condo, I think that's enough).

A lot of the hand/strength powered tools mentioned here are things I
can't use anymore. As Bruce Baugh commented, moving everybody to more
of these tools isn't possible. There will always be people who are not
capable of using them.

If I couldn't use a microwave, I'd be eating a lot of cheese and
bread and fruit. I can't cook anymore. I have about two gallons of
trash every week, and most of that is frozen food packaging (the actual
trays can be recycled). I have compact fluorescents in the bathrooms
that are 21 years old. I do the best I can, but I can't meet an ideal.

Posted March 31, 2008 11:19 PM by Marilee

Oh, fountain pens. I had one from about freshman year of high school
to senior year of college-- the cap fragmented, and I don't know if
it's the kind of thing that can be replaced-- and a Waterman Phileas
filled with Noodler's, and... okay, I was weak and it was purple,
Noodler's has a purple ink that looks kind of purple and it comes with
a pen. I expect it to show up by Wednesday. If I don't like the pen,
I'll pass it on to someone who does; if I don't like the ink, much the
same.

Speaking of, anyone like Noodler's Nightshade? Too red for me. I wanted *purple*.

This post has reminded me to get a damned helmet. I like biking, and
this is a good town for it... but I have hair. I didn't take the bike
out at all last year because I felt people would hate me more for
riding without a helmet than for driving. Time to see how much I'll
have to spend for a helmet that I'll be willing to wear.*

A related question (I am full of them today): what *is* proper
distance for a bike? I see them all the time, but all I know is that
they're very skinny cars, and it makes me so nervous passing them
because it's rude somehow.

And the Divacup is amazing. Tampons gave me cramps for years, and
not always in logical places. My Divacup has some interesting side
effects, but nothing as bad as pads, and once I figured it out, it was
so much easier.

On the subject of older cars, I have another: old-people cars. You
know the Buick the little old lady bought for her last car and splurged
on because she was finally going to get a car she liked, and never
drove? I have that car. Seriously. Little old lady and everything. If I
get over my bike issues, I'll be driving Milady Buick to the mall once
a month and out of town... whenever necessary. Why do I love this car?
Because it is made for people who a) are not getting a substandard car
for their last one and b) are arthritic or otherwise not fooling around
with discomfort. It is such a good car.

*Please do not lecture me on why I should wear a helmet. I am fairly
certain I will interpret any comment as lecturing. I know I should.
This is why I haven't ridden a bike I love to things I love to do,
because other people will think less of me for not wearing one. I have
issues, yes.

Posted March 31, 2008 11:31 PM by Diatryma

Speaking of the jerkoff flashlight: my Dad has a wrist watch which
automatically rewinds itself with the normal movements it's subjected
to being worn on your wrist. So whenever you move your arm or walk
around, you wind up your watch.

Posted March 31, 2008 11:37 PM by Daniel Klein

Rikibeth at #87,

No, bigger than that (I think)

Like these:

http://www.tradeeasy.com/photo/seller/6586/lgraphic/windynasty4079.jpg

http://www.tradeeasy.com/photo/seller/4434/lgraphic/twinklestar1040.jpg

The lasting value is:

1) The LPG cannisters can last for up to a month or more at a time
& are re-fillable & recyclable. You put down a deposit for the
cannisters.

2) The LPG cannisters are reasonably portable - one can carry them
on one's back if need be - no need for infrastructure of gas mains.

3)The gas burners are relatively simple to hook up and move around.
If you move house you could carry one in your arms (or on a hand cart).

4) The gas burners are cleaner & easier to deal with than cooking with coal briquettes, charcoal, or wood.

5) The gas burners can last for quite some time - I've seen some that are at least 30 years old.

Posted March 31, 2008 11:43 PM by SK-reader

It's hard to believe that this thread is up to 92 comments and no
one has mentioned Wendell Berry's criteria for adoption of a new tool
or technology:

1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.

2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.

3. It should do work that is clearly anddemonstrably better than the one it replaces.

4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.

5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.

6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.

7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.

8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.

9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.

from WHY I AM NOT GOING TO BUY A COMPUTER

Posted March 31, 2008 11:53 PM by joel hanes

Dena @54 - As a recent convert to home butchery, well, it's fun! And incredibly educational. I can't recommend Merle Ellis' Cutting Up in the Kitchen
enough; it's a practical introduction to what's in your meat counter,
though you can get yourself up to whole beasts with a bit of effort.
Getting closer to my meat has led to tremendous improvement in the
quality of what I put into myself - if you're going to go through the
effort, it's worth investing in free-range, local, and organic. Happier
animals seem to taste better, too.

Avram @65 - They are only dry-clean only if you're lazy. Cold water
gentle wash (or hand wash), and lay out to dry. Yes, you'll lose the
pristine "I just bought it today" look, but you'll trade it for "I love
it and use it", which I tend to prefer.

Greg @73 - The device you want doesn't doesn't really exist because
memory grows so much faster than your connection bandwidth. In
practice, you'd have a 16gig device that took eight hours to fill.
[OB-related-but-not-really-Tech: while memory grows by the square of
the process feature size, the off-chip connection can only grow by a
linear factor, because it has to come out the edge, pretty much
guaranteeing you won't be able to fill it as fast as you want].

neotoma@79 - You might want to track down a shoemaker and have them
*make* you shoes. I had this done about 6 months ago, and I think this
is the first pair of shoes I've had that actually fits right. They cost
more, but they can be resoled and otherwise repaired. Although all the
little nails in the sole set off the metal detectors at the airport...

Posted April 1, 2008 12:21 AM by Paul Lalonde

Oh, in the midst of the long comment, I forgot.

I need grocery bags. Not reusable ones, have a couple of those
bought in a fit of bike-optimism before it became apparent that it is
Not Done. I use paper bags for recycling; as far as I can understand
the recycling rules here, items must be sorted into bags and placed in
the bin... where the bags will stay until a paper day. Plastic bags are
for the bathroom trash can, the cat's litter scoops, and a gigantic bag
in the pantry to drive over to the food bank one of these days.

Checkout people keep asking me if I want my milk in a bag. It's a
gallon of milk. It is in a plastic jug with a handle. There is
astonishingly little that can be done to make that more portable.

Posted April 1, 2008 12:24 AM by Diatryma

Stuff I don't have and seem not to need: microwave, cable tv,
camera, iPod, iron -- none of my clothes need ironing -- food
processor.

I don't own anything that needs to be drycleaned.

I have a cell phone, and in 6 months I've used it only once.

I try to remember to bring my cloth bags to the grocery store, but
sometimes I forget. They are wonderful bags, though; huge, strong, much
easier to hold than plastic ones.

I wish I didn't need a car, but I do.

Posted April 1, 2008 12:31 AM by Lizzy L

One of the best deep value products you can have is your health and doing everything you can to hold onto it.

The better your health the more you can do yourself without fangled
technology, freeing up resources for those that truly need them. We
have become just a bit too delicate to survive without our toys at
times.

Posted April 1, 2008 1:01 AM by T.W

"If you're walking, you'll make the mistake of forgetting your bag
once or twice, tops. And if you're walking and you forget your bag the
second time, odds are good that you'll buy a second bag rather than
endure another walk with plastic ones."

well, my trick is I have a big Ortlieb compression bag with shoulder
straps so it will function like a backpack in which I carry what I need
during the day, generally my computer, power supply, training clothes.
The size of this can be rolled down to a small backpack, when I go to
the store I unroll it to the size of what I need to buy, since it can
hold 50 liters it's seldom I reach that limit.

Posted April 1, 2008 1:08 AM by bryan

abi @ 11: That is a story of wonderful improbability.

Bruce Baugh @ 59: "Some of this, to be sure, is spillover
frustration at healthy young (generally male) bloggers who've done
yeoman work analyzing the screwing over that the working and middle
classes have gotten and then turn right around to enthuse about hiking
the price of food and transportation, knowing damn well that nothing
like sufficient aid to the needy will be forthcoming."

It is a real problem, the extent to which confronting the wasteful
nature of our society is seen as an issue of personal morality, rather
than a problem of collective action. To be fair, though, there are
those who are aware of the extent to which being environmentally
conscious has become a luxury item, and are trying to do something
about it. To grab two random examples from my daily blogs, one of Exra Klein's
regular issues is the utterly bass-ackwards government subsidies on
meat and dairy versus fruits and vegetables, which have the perverse
effect of encouraging people to eat less healthily. Amanda Marcotte
takes environmental issues on from the feminist perspective, addressing
the way that coding earth-friendly action as the domain of middle class
women works to trivialize the issue.

At its best, individual action serves as trailblazing, pointing the
direction for society as a whole by saying "See, this works even
without any social support. So let's make it easier for everyone to
do!" At its worst, it prevents collective action from taking place. I
think it's important not to discourage the former while criticizing the
latter.

Various @ many: The discussion about sewing machines, manual and
electric ought to remind us that there's nothing about modern
technology that is inherently more prone to failure than old-timey
stuff. My parent's KitchenAid is almost thirty years old and still
going strong. It is arguably easier to design appliances and equipment to last forever than it was then--materials technology has only improved.

The fundamental thing that has changed isn't the nature of the
product*, it's the design philosophy behind it. Producers have been
shortening and shortening the lifespan of consumer items. It's just
more profitable that way, and consumers have become habituated to
it--why not force everyone to buy new stuff every five years, or every
three? What alternatives do consumers have?

I like the idea of buying one really high-quality item and using it
for the rest of my life. Whenever possible, I do. But it's almost never
possible--I am frustrated, every time I buy new glasses, because the
frames I got last time around aren't made any more. How can I buy items
with deep value if no one makes them? /rant