The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen
I picked up this book on a recent library journey. Of the stack of books I brought home, this was definitely one of my favorites. It appealed to me both because it's packed with useful information, but also because the voice is a little bit different -- kind of hip, sort of edgy, and missing that self-congratulatory goody-two-shoes tone that often creeps into some of these books.
Of course, "urban homesteading" has its own connotations that differ from other types of frugality or self-sufficiency. The thing that appeals to me most about urban homesteading is that it's sort of a rebellious act. Urban homesteaders want it all: We want to embrace the arts of our forefathers without giving up the things we love about the city. Urban homesteading is all about developing self-sufficiency skills while staying connected to the world, and this book very much touches on that.
The Urban Homestead is an overview or entry-level guide. It covers a broad spectrum of topics but doesn't go into great detail for any one of them. You'll need to find another source for really in-depth information, and I wouldn't recommend running out to start any project in here based on the information within these pages alone. But as far as a guide that introduces you to the realm of "what's possible," this is one of the very best I've read.
A few of the things it talks about:
Gardening
Composting
Foraging
Growing livestock
Canning/preserving
It has two authors, and though they generally present a unified narration throughout the book, they're not afraid to give opposing views when a second voice is warranted. Another feature that I really enjoyed is that they bring in other people's life experiences, with anecdotes scattered throughout. That adds a lot of voices and different perspectives.
Anyway, if you're looking for something lighthearted, inspiring, a little geeky, a touch irreverent and very much full of ideas, this is definitely a book worth looking into. If you're already living a sustainable lifestyle or are looking for more advanced suggestions, this probably won't cover any new ground for you -- but you may still enjoy reading it just for the tone and personality. I give it two thumbs up for sure.
For many years, I've been involved in rat rescue. Once, I had the pleasure of meeting a fellow rat-enthusiast (a rare event) and we had a long talk about our rodent friends and how much we loved them, what it was that made them so special.
My new friend made a point that I had never considered: "Rats are just such a bourgeois pet. In other places in the world, people have to try hard to keep rats out of their homes. It's a matter of survival. Here, we're so far removed from that, we can actually keep them as pets. We can afford to feed and love and cherish something that other people are threatened by."
That stuck with me. He's right, of course: Keeping rats is the epitome of privilege.
And, in many ways, frugality is also a position of privilege.
What is Privilege, Anyway?
Privilege is a term that gets used frequently in discussions of race and gender, but it's not limited to those spheres at all. Privilege is something all of us have, and all of us need to be aware of. Essentially, privilege is something that you have that makes certain things easier for you than others who do not have it. If you are privileged, you're operating on "easy mode," while people without those same privileges are operating on a harder setting.
There are several privileges that can make it easier to live frugally:
Having some extra money in the bank so you can do things like stock up in bulk when you find a good sale.
Experience with handling money, such as learning money management skills from your parents.
A working spouse with a good enough job to enable the other person to stay home and home-make.
Good health, enabling you to complete projects around the home or simply avoid spending so much on medical bills.
Access to resources that can teach you new skills -- the internet, library books, community classes.
The space to grow your own food.
For that matter, the space to store and cook meals at home, and the knowledge of how to do that.
In a lot of cases, these are things that can be learned -- and that's one of the things I hope I can achieve through blogging, is helping people learn some of this stuff so we're all on even footing. In other cases, they're situational problems: You have to solve something else before talking about it is even an option. If you're living in your car, it's not going to do you a bit of good to learn about how to can tomatoes. You've got a bigger issue to deal with. Once you find a way out of your crisis, then you can get up to the next step.
Owning Your Privilege
Privilege isn't something you need to be ashamed of or guilty about. It's not something you need to apologize for. Often, it's something you have no control over -- your gender, the part of the world you were born in, the socioeconomic status of your parents.
But it is something you need to be aware of, and it's something that you need to realize not everyone shares. That's the crucial part: You cannot dismiss people who do not share your privilege as being "stupid" or "lazy" or "unworthy" because they are working with a different set of skills than you are.
What you can do is listen to people who have different experiences, and try to appreciate where they're coming from. And you can use your privilege to help make things easier for others -- whether that means teaching someone a skill that you have, or participating in a grass roots program to make changes to your community.
We all have voices. They all deserve to be heard. And flaunting your privilege silences the voices of the people around you. So next time you start to lose patience with the way someone else lives, or the questions they ask, or the mistakes they make, try to take a step back and remember that they might not have what you do. Instead of degrading them, listen to them -- and then think about what you can do to make the world a better place for people like them.
It got me thinking again about a question I've always wondered: Just why is it that poverty and squalor seem to go hand-in-hand? Why is it that a low income leads so inevitably to deplorable living conditions in terms of sanitation? On the surface, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense: Why would being poor make it harder to clean your house?
But the connection is certainly there, so much so that it's intuitive: When we see a run-down neighborhood, we immediately associate it with poverty. We have a strong association in our minds between "poor" and "dirty," and I think that's one reason why there's such an instinctive reaction of disgust or disdain toward people living in or near poverty. There's a huge stigma, an oroboros of filth: We're afraid of being perceived as poor, in case people think that we're dirty, and we're loathe to be seen dirty, in case people think we might be poor.
So what's the deal?
Squalor and poverty collide for a number of reasons. Like most things in life, it's not really simple:
Poor people can't afford nice things, and they can't afford to replace what they have when it breaks. Stained clothing, broken-down cars, household damage etc.
Poverty quite often coincides with mental illness. Perhaps being poor has led to depression, or maybe mental illness has made it impossible to find work. In any case, people who are struggling with mental illness might have a hard time maintaining their homes.
Similarly, many of the nation's poor are elderly or physically disabled. These people are not physically able to maintain their homes and can't hire someone else to come in and do it for them.
The "working poor" are probably too busy handling multiple jobs to spend a whole lot of time maintaining their homes. And if they have small children and/or pets, those homes can get messy quickly.
Poverty and substance abuse sometimes intersect, for various reasons that deserve a post of their own. Like mental illness, drug use can inhibit your ability and desire to maintain a home. It also tends to be a social type of lifestyle, so the user might have frequent "guests" coming and creating a mess as well.
There's a lack of infrastructure in truly impoverished areas. Things like trash pickup and sewer line maintenance tend to require the help of a municipal service. If that doesn't exist for some reason -- lack of funding, extremely rural location -- then the task may not be completed.
Regardless of how the mess came to exist, once it gets set, it's easy for it to snowball. And thanks to our cultural perceptions of wealth and filth, it can be extremely difficult to get out of this position: You feel ashamed, which leads to depression, which makes it hard to get out of bed, much less tackle an ever-growing mountain of filth.
What if it's YOUR House?
Thanks to all the baggage associated with it, most of us without much money don't want to admit to being poor, and we definitely don't want to admit to being dirty. But the fact is, sometimes you look at your kitchen and realize that you have a towering pile of dishes, or trash that hasn't been taken out, or that your puppy shredded a role of toilet paper all over the hallway and you haven't had the heart or the energy to deal with any of it.
Maybe you even have a mean little voice in the back of your mind saying You are poor and live in squalor. That's just who you are now.
And so maybe you believe that voice, and maybe you get overwhelmed, and maybe you put off the hard work because it's exhausting and depressing and your life is already really hard.
Fortunately, there are a few resources to help people who have slipped into this position, providing actual solutions without judging you for them. One of these, a project I really appreciate and respect, is Unfuck Your Habitat (UFYH). The thing I love about UFYH is that they're totally non-judgmental and recognize that people are coming from different backgrounds or might have different limitations. Yes, it's a little vulgar and irreverent (two things I happen to appreciate, but your mileage may vary), but it's also got some very solid advice.
Here's their mission statement:
And our homes aren’t the only things that need to be unfucked. Our
finances, our jobs, our relationships: there’s no end to the things we
can fuck up. The important thing to remember is that there is nothing
that can’t be unfucked. You just have to do it.
No, I'm not being paid by these guys to write about it. I just genuinely think it's a cool resource.
If UFYH is a little much for you, you can also check out The Flylady, who's also very practical but a lot more "domestic" and traditional. Either way, the great thing about these sites is that they offer you some practical steps for dealing with the mess and finding your way out of it. Part of owning your income -- even when it's minimal -- is being proud of what you have. You might not have much, but if you learn to take care of it, people will treat you differently and you will feel differently about yourself.
As you learn new domestic skills (making your own cleaning solutions, minimizing your possessions, composting your trash and reducing your waste), you'll find your home easier to maintain. But right now, today, if you're standing at ground zero -- don't let the shame take over. Take a deep breath, and make a plan, and decide once and for all that being poor doesn't mean you have to be dirty.
We've recently been blessed with a run of good fortune and an opportunity to rent a house from my parents, which allows us to get into a better neighborhood and larger space than we could otherwise afford right now as well as allowing us to live closer to my own aging parents. Win-win for everyone.
The move more-or-less coincides with our upcoming wedding as well, which means that we have a very busy, hectic time ahead of us with all the packing and planning, not to mention how quickly your social calendar tends to fill up at times like this. I've been loving every minute of it, of course, but it is definitely exhausting.
Anyway, I decided to kill two birds with one stone this week and invited a friend of mine over to stay for a few days. We don't see each other often, so having a couple of days to really catch up was nice. While she was here, I recruited her to help me do some packing and purging, in preparation for the upcoming move. Together, we jammed out to some Irish punk music and sorted through boxes, making "keep" and "donate" piles and clearing out lots of trash. (At one point, I found a day planner from when I was in high school, and a syllabus from one of my college classes -- weird how things can hide and multiply in the corners when you're not looking).
My cat thought he would help with the sorting, too
All told, we reduced the contents of the hall closet by about a third.
My fiance and I had toyed with the idea of holding a yard sale, but I think we ultimately vetoed the plan for a few reasons:
It's overwhelmingly hot here -- it's hit upward of 105 by noon every day this week.
We're in an apartment complex that's not very well-suited to stranger traffic.
We don't necessarily *want* to attract stranger traffic -- this is not exactly a great neighborhood, and I don't know that I want to advertise to the area that I'm moving and may have some nice things.
So it looks like I have a few trips to the thrift store in my future over the next couple of days.
All of this packing and purging has been sort of fun, but it has caused a bit of inner turmoil at the intersection of "non-consumer" and "zero waste" when it comes to some items -- namely, the things that I can't donate as they're in poor condition. I tend to wear my belongings into the ground, and once I'm done with them, I'm never sure what the best way to dispose of them might be.
Presently, that list of items includes a couch and two recliners -- all of which were either free or purchased cheaply from a thrift store. All are very old-fashioned. All also happen to have a number of tears from heavy use and bite marks from a certain mischievous puppy who shall not be named.
Who, me?
I'll be posting an ad to Craigslist, Freecycle and the local swap meet page on Facebook, but if I don't get any takers, I'm not quite sure what I'll end up doing with these things. Any suggestions?
There's a simple economic principle that affects all of us in our day-to-day lives, though we might not realize it at the time. It's called "economies of scale," and it's one of the mechanisms that helps the poor stay poor while the rich get richer.
In microeconomics, economies of scale
are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to size,
throughput, or scale of operation, with cost per unit of output
generally decreasing with increasing scale as fixed costs are spread out
over more units of output.
This is why, for example, a huge factory is able to secure greater profits than a mom & pop handmade crafting venture. Despite the high operating cost of the factory, its capacity for sheer volume ultimately gives it an advantage -- and the reason for that is that some costs are fixed.
The same principle applies to wealth inequality and the fixed costs of living.
Take grocery shopping. Regardless of how much money you make, an apple still costs the same price. To make things easy, we'll say the apple costs $1. If you have $10 to spend on groceries to get you through the week, that $1 apple represents 1/10th, or 10%, of your grocery budget. If you have $100 to spend, that same $1 is only 1% of your budget.
This works the same for a number of other commodities -- things like gasoline, electricity, and (until the advent of health subsidies under the ACA, anyway), healthcare.
And speaking of that chart, do you notice what the biggest difference is between the upper classes and lower classes? Upper classes have a substantially higher percentage of their money allocated toward retirement, because they have enough disposable income to invest. And because investment income is the fastest and most efficient way to grow your wealth (just ask Warren Buffet), and because investments are taxed differently from other types of income, rich people are afforded the opportunity to become richer simply by virtue of having extra money.
Okay...So What's the Point?
I mention all of this not to incite you to moral outrage about the vagaries of our tax code (although, if you'd like to be outraged, you're certainly welcome), but because that pesky economy of scale issue just keeps cropping up.
Economies of scale are, by and large, part of the reason why people living in poverty (or near the poverty line) make so many "bad" (or, I should say, short-sighted) financial choices. When you have a limited amount of money, you have to spend that money as best you can -- and since you can't very well put your basic needs on hold until you can afford them, sometimes "the best you can" isn't so great.
So: If you're hungry and have $1, it's easier to buy a McDouble than it is to buy the fixings for a nutritious meal. So you spend your $1 so you can eat, then go hungry for a while, then spend your next $1 the same way. If you get $1 every day for 30 days, you won't have the same options as someone who gets $30 all at once at the beginning of the month.
Similarly, if you don't have money the day that your bills are due, you're going to either pay the bill late (incurring a fee and possible disconnection), or you're going to borrow money (which you undoubtedly cannot afford to pay back).
The examples go on and on.
But this is just one of those things that people with money can never seem to fully grasp about people without money. There's a substantial difference between "not always being able to afford what you want" and "having to make short-sighted financial choices because you are literally starving." And since pretty much nobody who's in position to make policy has ever been in that latter position, it's no surprise that the policymakers clearly don't understand.
Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping
by Judith Levine
This was one of the more enjoyable books I picked up at a recent library venture. This is not a practical guide by any means. It's a memoir, heavily introspective and tied up in politics, and it's fascinating from an anthropological standpoint even if you reject many of the "messages" of the book.
The gist of it is simple: Fed up with Christmas shopping, Judith Levine and her long-term partner Paul decide to embark on a quest of one year buying only the necessities. She documents this quest in a sort of diary format, with each chapter representing one month.
What made this book particularly fascinating for me is that it takes place between 2003-2004, and is heavily enmeshed in the politics of that era. Reading it today is a bit like conversing with a Dickensian ghost of the past. Since so many anti-consumerist, pro-frugality books are reactive, existing in response to the recession, it was refreshing (albeit depressing) to see someone preaching that philosophy at a time when, culturally, we were by and large still convinced of the power of excess.
The writing itself I found to be engaging, although it's certainly not to everyone's tastes as evidenced by the not-very-charitable reviews on Amazon. The "character" of our narrator/author is in turns fascinating and aggravating. She's naive and snobby, but no moreso than any other New Yorker (sorry, guys), and she's making a genuine effort. Although we share a common career, our lives and experiences couldn't be any different...which was, ultimately, the key to much of my enjoyment of this book.
Anyway, it's worth the read, but don't expect to pick up any valuable information from it. This is not a how-to guide, and it's painfully bourgeois for anyone who is actually getting through life on a budget.
Superbowl happened yesterday. I went to a party, but didn't really watch it (as is usual for me). I sat in the kitchen, gossiped with my in-laws and stuffed my face. I read a good chunk of The Golem and the Jinni on my Kindle, made some commentary about the halftime show, and watched a couple of the commercials.
One commercial in particular raised a lot of discussion around the country. You probably saw it. If not, here's what you missed:
It's heartwarming: A multi-lingual rendition of "America the Beautiful" transposed over images of American families of several races, cultural backgrounds and sexual orientations. It's a powerful image, and a beautiful version of the song, and a lot of people started complaining about it instantly.
Maybe your Twitter feed lit up with racist comments. Maybe the people you watched it with looked at each other uncomfortably and said, "That sure was different." Or maybe you didn't give it a second thought.
But me, it made me uncomfortable. Not because of the message of celebrating American diversity. That part is great. We are a culture of immigrants, a nation built uniquely on the promise of new beginnings and opportunities. Anybody who takes issue with celebrating our diversity is a fucking idiot.
No, what made me uncomfortable is that, beneath all of its inclusivity, the real rhetoric of the commercial is this: "We're all people united by a thread of consumerism. Drink Coke."
And seeing that message -- "Drink Coke!" -- plastered around the faces of ethnic minorities rubs me the wrong way because Coca-Cola is a business empire that has repeatedly drawn its strength from exploiting workers and citizens of developing countries.
Coca-Cola's Invasion of the Developing World
Mexico is the biggest Coke-consumer in the world. In Mexico, it's easier to buy a Coke than it is to get access to clean, safe drinking water. Mexicans are spending $14.3 billion on Coke every year and diabetes is the biggest disease in the country and a leading cause of death. (for reference: Americans only spend about $2.9 billion on Coke -- and we're obviously a much richer country). They're also the most obese nation on the planet -- fatter even than the United States. In Mexico, there are little children literally dying of obesity while at the same time suffering from malnutrition.
But Coca-Cola isn't satisfied. See, it can't sell more Coke to the countries where the market is already saturated. Even when we're drinking more soda than anything else, we can still only drink so much. Even when we're pouring Coke into our baby's bottles, we're not drinking enough to satisfy Coke's bottom line. So it's expanding out, and finding more people to preach its sugary message to -- like the folks in Kenya, India and China.
Like missionaries of old, Coca-Cola representatives are plowing their way into the developing world and spreading their Manifest Destiny caffeinated beverages far and wide.
But what's wrong with that, you ask? What's so bad about a brand selling its product to people in another country? It's not like anybody's holding a gun to their heads and saying, "Drink Coke or die," or anything, right?
Tell that to the India Resource Center, who's seeing first-hand how Coca-Cola is devastating its country. Coca-Cola is pulling so much water from the ground to make its product that it's literally creating a water shortage for the people living there This isn't just a problem for drinking -- it's also devastating the agricultural economy there. Oh, yeah, and Coca-Cola is pumping its waste into the rivers and fields, poisoning whatever groundwater there was left.
Oh yeah. And let's not forget the way that Coca-Cola factory employees in Colombia, Guatemala and other nations are literally being kidnapped, tortured and killed for attempting to unionize. And even right here at home, Coca-Cola is widely known as one of the most racially discriminating employers in the country: In the year 2000 alone, Coke was sued two thousand timesfor racial disparities in pay and promotions against African Americans.
My Anger Has Nothing to Do With Language
I can keep going. I can sit here all day and tell you more about how evil Coca-Cola is. None of these evils make it unique in the corporate world, unfortunately. Its behavior is actually pretty par for the course.
But when I see a company whose business model is literally based on invading foreign markets, getting an impoverished and hungry population of young people addicted to an unhealthy product, and systematically destroying that country's infrastructure along the way -- I don't see something to celebrate.
So before you think, "This commercial is so great! Coca-Cola really values diversity! They really care about people!" Realize that you have been taken in by a carefully executed marketing ploy. Because the truth is that Coca-Cola doesn't give a shit about diversity any more than any other corporation on the planet. Coca-Cola cares about its bottom line, and it will do absolutely anything to grow that number -- even convincing a bunch of us sentimental Americans that they value exactly what we do.
The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen
