Changing habits to meet changing society

Excellent post M0nica.

Well-balanced and thoughtful.

Those living in flats with no outside space cannot function in the same way as those who live in houses with gardens. Ditto those living in rural areas as opposed to others living in urban spaces.

Disabled people cannot necessarily live the same way as able-bodied individuals.

I have a house built from Cotswold Stone. The temperature can vary from room to room, depending on the sun's position. I have the heating on still at various times and in various rooms because it can be icy cold in one room, and warm in another.

As long as we all try to do our best to cut down on waste and preserve our environment... and I think Grans are quite adept at that. Some of us are of the generation that took shopping baskets with us, and accepted a "pound" of dried rice in a brown paper bag, or a "quarter" of loose tea!

Shinamae

I Turn the microwave off at the wall because apparently on standby that can use quite a bit of electricity over the year. I don’t drive and I don’t fly so I think I’m doing my bit…?

That's helpful, thank you!

My kettle (unaccountably) sets itself to boil if let plugged in, so gets plugged out when not being used.

You win Gransnet today MissAdventure! ??

MissAdventure

I boil myself in a bucket with some pieces of old cloth, then throw in some lentils to turn it into a nutritious soup when I've finished.

Thank you so much.

That has made me laugh hysterically. My husband has had to come in to check I'm OK. My dogs are startled.

Best comment I've ever seen on Gransnet

I keep the waxed bag inside the
cereal box and find it keeps food fresh when used instead of plastic bags.

This way of life is exactly how my parents lived their lives .
It was known as Thrift, Waste not Want not, Make-do-and- Mend, the only difference being people didn't find it necessary to boast about it.

Nothing is going to make me give up a daily shower, and a second shower after working in the garden. But I don’t go on foreign holidays so don’t do air travel or cruises.
I wonder how many of the people who take a ‘holier than thou’ attitudes towards having a daily shower then go and wreck the environment by travelling by airplane or cruise ship?

I do all my food and household and even garden shopping at our local community store apart from gin! It's a social enterprise.
I also volunteer there because it couldn't operate without volunteers.
There's a re-fillery, milk in returnable glass bottles,
fresh local fruit and veg in season.
It was hard work and the vision of my late DH which got it started but I would like to think that every town could have something similar.

I know we all have to do our bit as I’m sure we all are, and I am most certainly not saying that’s what’s happening here but….. I can’t help being reminded of a tv comedy sketch years ago which had three men of a certain age reminiscing about their alleged deprived childhoods.
They ended up determined to outdo each other on the deprivation front!
It was very funny.

Not having the cold water running in the basin while cleaning my teath was a practical change I made some years ago.

When you’ve lived off grid for 20 years, as we did, you are very aware of all power and water you use.

I thought of that sketch,too , JenniferEccles. Virtue signalling taken to a very funny degree.

Mollygo
You win with this post MissAdventure!
I boil myself in a bucket with some pieces of old cloth, then throw in some lentils to turn it into a nutritious soup when I've finished.

! ??
Have you read Chewbacca’s post on showering? I see a future for the funniest (not vs) posts.

Such a good post M0nica. It’s great that people are more aware of what they can do to help but we need posts like yours to remind us that not everyone’s circumstances are the same and that what is a meaningful saving for one is an impossibility for others. We shouldn’t make others feel guilty for not being able to do everything that others do.

MerylStreep we haven’t lived off grid but we have lived in developing world countries and that certainly makes you look twice at what you consume. We often didn’t have power or water - it’s amazing what can be done with just a bucket of water and how you can mitigate periods of no electricity.

You learn how to produce decent meals with limited, locally produced, ingredients. Imported foods were available but no way was I going to pay the equivalent of £20 for an iceberg lettuce or a punnet of strawberries. Local salad leaves were fine and no one is going to die if you don’t have strawberries.

I also learnt from local people how it is perfectly possible to keep good standards of hygiene with just one cleaning product. A bar of old-fashioned green or pink soap can be used as soap for washing oneself and as shampoo, grated to make laundry flakes and dissolved to make a liquid for washing up.

ok, hard hat on ! as MNers would say.
i don't consider any of this.
i try to survive with spending as little as possible, esp as my income has dropped to less than £50 a week since being sanctioned for not reporting something soon enough 3 years ago.
i do drive but only every 15-18 days, 7 miles there and back to get to Lidl. apart from the petrol, if i went every week, i would spend more. don't have a freezer, so am limited in what i can buy.
but i consider myself fortunate; i am not hungry through lack of food, only incompetence in organising sometimes. i have just heard a working man crying on the radio, he is literally hungry often, goes 48 hours with nothing to eat. followed by a cabin crew woman, widowed, who steals food from the aircraft which is going to be thrown away.
if she is discovered not only will she be sacked but they insist on prosecution and urge imprisonment, as being a breach of trust in a safety critical role.
she has £2 a day to feed herself after paying bills.

I heard a radio programme recently that said the figures banded about for electricity consumption if devices are left on standby are all grossly over estimated and the actual cost is much lower than those generally used.

I have tried to locate the programme, but cannot, but this link has some intersting figures that perhaps justify my query about the cost of stand by www.daftlogic.com/information-appliance-power-consumption.htm

I’ve been doing most of what had been mentioned for a long time. We recycle as much as possible and are economical in our use of appliances. It’s difficult to completely avoid food waste as we lead quite an unpredictable life and would never stay at home so we can use up something that isn’t going to last much longer. We’re sticking to daily baths and showers and are still watering the garden. No point in having a nice garden if you can’t keep it looking good!

Miss A ? ?.

Really though, is it right that people should be made to feel guilty if they have foreign holidays, breaks in this country or enjoy a run down to the coast for the day?
I think not, but judging from some comments on here, even something as basic as a daily shower is in danger of being frowned upon.
Like I said earlier, we all want to do our bit, but at our stage of life we should feel free to enjoy the time we have left by doing things which make us happy, even if that does include, horror of horrors, flying or going on cruises.

I completely agree with you Jennifer Eccles. Some of us have struggled in the past with stressful jobs and demanding family lives. Now we’re older and have more leisure time ( if we’re retired) we should be able to take holidays and go on trips if health and finances permit. Otherwise we’ll be living in a different type of lockdown go what remains of our lives.

MissAdventure

I boil myself in a bucket with some pieces of old cloth, then throw in some lentils to turn it into a nutritious soup when I've finished.

????

Reusable shopping bags
Vegetarian diet and no cows milk
Unplug everything i can
Very rarely buy new clothes
Recycle
Cut down on heating
Most of my furniture is vintage mid century 2nd hand

Use tumble all thru winter ( hate wet washing round house)
Love to holiday abroad so won't be cutting down on flights
Shower every day..sometimes twice

There is a balance to be aimed for. Fewer holidays, fewer disposable items, but as JEccles says we should be able to enjoy our last years.
It's easy for me to give up cruises. Never been on one. Easy to give up meat- not eaten it for 30 years but I love to soak in a hot bath, and so on.

I’ve just spent a few minutes tearing up an old flannelette sheet into squares for cleaning cloths. It was bought originally for my niece’s cot. She is now 51yo. It’s been on the cots of my own four babies and some of the GC, been used as an under sheet on beds and as a dust sheet but now it’s almost of pension age, it’s being repurposed yet again.

Bathing/showering. This has become an obsession in the modern world. 50+ years ago, showers in homes were not that common and people bathed less frequently.

I really don't think stepping into the shower once a day which is I think what most people - or many - do, can really be called an "obsession".

Of course people bathed less often, they didn't have the resources to do anything else. And they quite often stank too because of it.

My grandmother had no running water and drew it from the communal pump in a galvanized bucket. I carried her walking stick - which she used as a weapon to whack the rats that congregated and scurried around the slimy pool of mud, grass and water at the base.

Now we have efficient systems delivering water into our houses and the ability to have a shower in about 4/5 minutes. So to equate using this facility with an obsession just boggles my mind.

If you feel clean and fresh enough then don't shower. But those with differing needs and lifestyles will continue to do it and not feel that they are indulging a fetish.

People didn't wash often in the past because they simply couldn't. There was no virtue in the necessity.