Simple Living

One day last fall, Paul returned from work and told me his fellow faculty were asking about the various items in the bento box he had taken for lunch. One of them said, "My wife is really into making kefir." The word was slightly familiar, and I thought it was a dairy product, but that was more of a guess than knowledge. "That's interesting. I'd never thought about making kefir," I said before quickly excusing myself to google it. Here's what Wikipedia reported:

Becoming a one-car family may not seem like much to write about.  But it represents an intentional transition to a life style that is relatively rare for a two-income family. When our very-used 1987 Volvo died in the spring of 2007, we decided not to replace it but stay with Paul’s 2002 Ford Focus as the sole family car. There have been work-related changes for us beginning in 2009, but here is how things were at that time. We live in the Philadelphia suburbs.

The last experimental batch of tea cooler was heavy on the lemon and weak on the tea for Paul's taste, so I dropped the sugar to 1-1/2 cups, the lemon juice to 3/4 cup and increased the tea bags to six for the gallon. It was an improvement, but still a bit heavy on the lemon. That was still a little too lemony. We decided to drop the lemon to only 1/4 cup for the next batch, expecting it to be too weak, in which case, I could add lemon juice a tablespoon at a time until I hit the proportion of lemon Paul likes.

One of Paul's staples is Swiss Farm's tea cooler, and he's kept a gallon or two in the fridge for years. We haven't kept records, so don't know how much he actually consumes, but it's at least a gallon per week, and possibly two, especially in the summer. At $2.69 a gallon, tea cooler is hardly a luxury item, but there are some other concerns. First, allthough we try to reuse, we've found no way to reuse the 50 to 100 plastic jugs that we pick up along with the tea cooler each year, so they must be recycled. Second, the quality of the product is debatable.

When we were children, clothes were hung on the line to dry, and sometimes instead on a wooden rack. Automatic dryers were introduced as conveniences, but over time they have become viewed as necessities of modern life. What a shame. Dryers are expensive to operate, increase the temperature in the house, and stress fabrics, decreasing the useful life of clothes. What's more, clothes from the line smell like sunshine, something you can't fake with a detergent or fabric softener.

Giving up disposible pens and relearning how to write with a fountain pen is not likely to result in a great financial savings. The most obvious benefit is that I will be keeping the disposibles out of the landfill, but the greater benefit will be symbolic. Every time I take the pen in hand, I'll be reminded of my resolution to avoid disposible products wherever possible.