One of our daughters is a bottled water freak and refuses to give it up. She say's it's ok because she recycles - whatever.....

We've been on well water every place we've lived for the last 42 years. As for back-up water, I keep about 2 dozen milk jugs (yes, they're plastic) filled with water mostly for when electric goes out. I change them out, using them to water stuff, to keep the water fresh.

I buy bottled water whenever we travel or visit anyone as I can't drink city aka fluoridated water. Makes me sick.

I was able to find 1 gallon canning jars and I use them for ice water in fridge, orange juice, my smoothie, etc. We have a second fridge in the garage and I keep a quart canning jars in there of water for when I'm working in the garden.

Shoe - that might be Oncoba spinosa aka 'Fried Egg Plant'

As for the quart canning jars of water, I have the old metal on the outside, white glass on the inside, screw top lids for them.

I use those quart Mason jars for everything!!

Sharon, You are such a wonderfully talented writer. Thank you so much for writing this thought provoking article. I had forgotten as well.

Hi Joy,
Thank you! Maybe the article will jog a lot of memories.

It's nice to hear from you! I hope you are all settled into your new home. I've been enjoying all the plants you've added to our Database.

Vic, I'm with you, I never drank much water when I lived in the city. Only when I escaped and moved back to well-water country did I realize my water intake increased. Go figger, eh?

As for using plastic milk jugs, they're a part of life...might as well use them over and over and over. If we look around us at all the plastic items we have I wonder how much we could do without.

Hetty, I googled Oncoba spinosa...it looks a little different but I'll ask my friend who grows these, she'll definitely know that botanical name. (*grin. I like that "fried egg plant" name though!) :>)

Back later...gotta go rustle us some grub.

Shoe

We lived off the land until our children left home in the mid 80's. I am so guilty of becoming lazy about the source of our food. We don't use bottled water and we are careful about the thermostat in the winter, we just bundle up a little more. I remember the our children were pre-school age, I had a littel washing machine that sat on the table and you turned a handle to agitate the clothes, a little hose emptied the water the you added fresh water to rinse and agitate again. Had to hand ring the clothes before hanging on the clothesline.
The cellar was full of canning jars by the time growing season was over.
We had our own chickens for meat and eggs, our own beef and pork and even several milk cows. Heated with wood most of our married life. Fire wood gathering was a family activity.
Those were the really good old days. I miss them, but don't think I could hold up to that routine now.

Thanks for reading the article, Lynn.
Just remember, the little things count too.

I still have blueberries, apples, plums, gooseberries, walnuts, hazelnuts and raspberries. I received to wonderful Nanking Cherry bushes last year and look forward to eating their fruit when they get old enough. We still grow tomatoes, basil, peppers, some eatable flowers and love harvesting the wild blackberries and huckleberries. Makes my mouth water just thinking about the fruit to come this summer and fall.

See!!!!!! You do so much more than just a few little things.
Good for you.

Thanks for adding your list, you just made me hungry!

Great article, Sharon. I hope it makes people think about even a few little things they can do.

I still have one of those old wringer washers, a 1913 Thor. It's stored in a shed but still in working condition. I use it occasionally to wash throw rugs, and if I am going to fill it up to do that, I start by washing something else first. I've got 2 square galvanized tubs on a wheeled stand to use for the rinse. Ah yes, the toilet plunger/bathtub method. I've used that too, when we didn't have a washing machine and couldn't afford one. We dried clothes on a rack by the fire, or outside on the line, things I still do. We do have a washing machine, a farily new one that is "smart" in it's use of water. I don't use hot water, only warm or cold.

My garden feeds us for most of the year. I freeze, can and dry a lot of it. No chemicals of any kind are used there. It is fertilized with manure and buried kitchen trimmings. We have our own well, and a spring. Together they water the garden. The spring water is gravity flow so I use it as much as possible. I make our bread, and cook everything from scratch. Recently when I cleaned out the pantry, I threw out 2 packages of jello that were years past the pull date!

We heat with wood which we cut ourselves. Air conditioning consists of fans and open windows at night.

Paying full price for clothes and household items doesn't make a lot of sense to me, so I shop at thrift stores whenever possible.

When my neighbor needs to be away, I milk his goats and keep the milk, frozen in jars, for making bread. He gives me eggs. I bring him bags of produce trimmings from the co-op where I help out on produce delivery days. Bones are saved for his dogs since we don't have one.

We sort our garbage and take a lot of it to the recycle center. They take magazines, newspaper, mixed paper like cardboard, tin cans, glass, aluminum, milk jugs and some other things. Free. After recycling all of that, and burying my vegetable and fruit trimmings, there isn't much left.

We try not to make unnecessary trips anywhere, especially with gas prices so high. There's no such thing as a leisurely Sunday drive anymore.

I could learn a lot from you, Mary. And I wish I could do all those things. One thing that I do have to give in to is the heat. Days of more than 100* send me straight to the a/c. I can deal with it fairly well, but when humidity is added to it, I just can't breathe.

You live like I grew up and wish I still could.
I so admire that.

Frugal, I am.
And I am not wasteful. But there is more that I can do.

Thanks for your comment. You love the land, and the land loves you right back.

I love this thread.

me too

Well, not meaning to go TOO far off-topic about what we can all do...but I must confess this is the truth...

I remember as a 6 years old kid bringing home the offspring of a cross between a Great Pyrenees dog and female peacock. His tail was so huge, being a cross between all hair and all feathers (beautiful feathers!) ya see and very long, that I was instructed to bring him in the living room, stick his head out the window so he could lick the peanut butter off the suet/bird feeder. Turned out just right. He licked peanut butter and was so happy he wagged his tail nonstop, that HUGE beautiful tail, and it cooled off the whole house! My Grandmother was so proud of my new friend! And in the winter we discovered that by putting some of Corie Jones' Jalapeno jelly in his peanut butter he gave off so much heat, what with all the extra fur he had from being Pyrenees, we really cut down on the amount of firewood for the woodstove.

If we could all just go back to those days we'd live happily ever after.

Shoe ( ) ( )

Shoe.

Wow.

Speechless.

No way. Speechless? :>) Then again, I could never say anything to discount that rediculous story either. For shame for shame.

Lynn, I remember those little hand-cranked washing machines. And also the wringer-roller types, too. (And being told what those rollers would do if I wasn't careful.) Mary, you're still living the good life. And it sounds like you have it down pat, too.

Shoe (up too late again but enjoying this article and input from all!)

It's like a trip down Memory Lane, isn't it, Shoe?

Yeah. Speechless. No words could ever top that story!!

Well, maybe. But they haven't been written yet.

Great article Sharon.
I am a child of the depression.Not only didnt we spend money we didnt have, we didnt waste anything.
That is an art unto itself.
Its odd how the Green concept returns every decade.
The 60's and 70's were great "green living "times.

Here we are again.
Thanks for the article.\