* Repairing things yourself can cost less than paying someone else to fix them, but it takes a lot of time. The surprising benefit, though, is that you learn why they broke, and how to tell when it’s about to happen. It turns out that a lot of day-to-day things (bicycles, clothes, cars) will last a lot longer if you have enough awareness of them to care for them properly.
* Dollar-store flip-flops (in my case, bought from a wholesale shop for US$0.75 per pair) will break eventually. You can extend their life substantially by buying several matched pairs, so that when they break, you can mix and match. Also, black ones show rubber dust and diesel exhaust less than white ones. Flip-flops are less hospitable to foot fungus than other kinds of sandals, much lighter and easier to pack than any other shoes, don’t require socks, and reduce weight especially on your feet, where it counts most. * Dacyczyn-style tightwaddage places a big emphasis on self-sufficiency and self-reliance. While it’s certainly desirable to be able to make do when nobody else is around, it’s a lot more frugal to take the opportunity to share your vacuum cleaner with your neighbors. There are lots of opportunities for cooperative management of capital goods like these, and a lot of these are newly enabled by information technology. Any durable thing that you use with a duty cycle of under 50% is a candidate, the further below the better. * The difference between garbage and resources is organization. (This is the modern information-theoretical understanding of the third law of thermodynamics: entropy, and thus the uselessness of a system, is a measure of how much you don’t know about where things are and what they are doing.) Organization and discipline can allow you to manage a much larger set of tools and materials. Lack of organization and discipline (as I can attest) can turn working resources into garbage. * Living in a city means you don’t have to buy things until you need them. Country people have to keep a stockpile of spare parts, which soaks up capital that could be invested in something that provides a return. City people can spend their capital replacing only the things that do break, instead of the things that might break. But I still carry an extra pair of flip-flops in my backpack, which came in handy today when I broke one of the ones I was wearing. In a sense, a spare gasket at the hardware store is an investment in rapid recovery from leaks whose up-front capital cost is borne by the whole neighborhood (in the form of retail markup) rather than by each neighbor separately. * Sauces and spices can inexpensively make even beans and rice an endless source of culinary delights. But you’ll regret it if you overdo the habanero sauce. Ow. Also, don’t forget MSG. * Given limited space for gardening, start with herbs, spices, and greens you can’t stand to eat in bulk. Nasturtiums are too strong for me to eat more than a leaf or two a day, but they add freshness, nutrition, and a lot of flavor to a cheese sandwich. 100mg of rosemary can flavor 1000g of rice very nicely; an extra 100mg of rice would go unnoticed. So grow the rosemary and get the rice at the store until you have a paddy. * Given limited time for limited-space gardening, use deep planters and prefer hardier plants. * Bicycles are a lot cheaper to drive than cars and about as fast and cheap as taking the bus, at least until you plow into a taxi and run up a hospital bill. But their real advantage is that they make your time predictable: you rarely have to hunt for a parking space and you never wait for half an hour for the bus to come. Also, they keep you from catching cold from people on the bus, and they improve your health when you don’t get into accidents. * Adapting your body to chilly weather, when it comes, reduces your need for clothing and laundry soap, lightening your backpack dramatically. And it means you can use flip-flops more of the year. * Much ugliness is unnecessary, simply people accepting the defaults and not bothering to create harmony in their surroundings; and the same is true of household and mechanical maintenance. I see walls I haven’t decorated, a dish I haven’t washed, a book I haven’t put away, and a knife I haven’t sharpened. -- To unsubscribe: http://lists.canonical.org/mailman/listinfo/kragen-tol
