Re: Things to do; David M's methods.

At 11:41 AM 9/15/99 +1200, David MacClement wrote:
>but minority of cases: where there are few clothes to be washed, and where
>the house is heated in the winter (so the air is dry enough to get the
>clothes dry in a few days with no sun or wind).

Wow, New Zealand must be more humid than our east coast, which seems so 
miserably damp to me sometimes.  But even jeans will dry within 24 hours 
inside the house in most areas I think. I'm 200 miles inland so its less 
humid and takes more like 12 hours to dry jeans inside, depending how wrung 
out I got them.  I think those neat hand turned roller presses like were 
used on the old wringer washers are still available thru Lehman's and that 
might do the trick for getting the most water out of the wet clothes in 
very humid areas.   What I find spiffy about the inside drying is exactly 
what you mentioned.  The lighter clothes of summer dry fast, yet the 
heavier clothes of winter dry fast enough in a house that would need to be 
heated anyway.

>In my case, I did do my
>washing at the end of my bath/shower, tromping on the clothes to get them
>clean (and later rinsed), but I then wrung them out by hand and hung them
>outdoors - a bit of an effort and extra time, I admit.

Yeah, that's heavy work carrying wet clothes baskets outside.  It takes up 
less room than a Nordic Trac though...  :)

>**  Nowadays, I wouldn't be willing to do the washing for the whole group
>as I do now, if it wasn't for the washing machine.

I know so many people with dinky little washers that hardly hold 4 
different clothing items and end up doing laundry every day.  It would be 
easier I think to do that every day by hand in the kitchen sink.

>**  Absolutely. I've lived that way all my life too; as I think I said not
>long ago, in the '40s Saturday was wash-day; we changed underclothes more
>often, but these days I still wear pants and outer shirt for a couple of
>weeks, though I wash the inner shirt about every 5 days. I only do physical
>effort about once a week now - walking an hour and a half to the grocery
>store, but I washed my shirts only twice a week when I was a physics 
>teacher.

I'm so glad to hear these words.  I get very disapproving looks whenever 
someone finds out that I might wear the same clothes to work more than once 
between launderings.  The clothes weren't sweated in, I'm clean enough, 
yet, you'd think I'd ommitted the crime of the century the way people 
react.  The US has a massive hangup with fastidiousness.  The abject fear 
of "offending" and fear of "germs" displayed in this country would be 
laughable if it weren't so destructive environmentally and psychologically.

>**  Again I agree, though you don't have to go as far as I do now -
>dish-washing once a week since I use bread (sandwiches) only, so I just
>shake the crumbs off.

Wonderfully smart idea.  Avoids much silverware, too, simply a butterknife 
for any spreads you might use.  Burritos also can work that way and the pan 
you heat them on doesn't even need wiping.

>The rest of the family has now gone past the
>once-a-day hand-washing of dishes, and they collect on our sink-bench for
>at least a week, on average; somewhat mad-hatter-ish, i.e. we use so few
>dishes that our store of them easily lasts that long. They eat mostly
>sandwiches too, with the occasional cooked food (potatoes, pasta, rice,
>pancakes). Sometimes (a couple of times a month) some fried meat, e.g.
>ground-beef or sausage. They have fruit instead of vegetables (except for
>raw carrots and cabbage) most weeks.

Sounds like an excellently balanced diet.  You'll live heathily into your 
hundreds no doubt, especially if you can get that attitude of yours more 
optimistic.  lol


>**  We get milk delivered 3 times a week, and get bread at the corner store
>about as often, so we don't really need a fridge; we certainly don't need a
>freezer. However, my wife's plans for our retirement home include a small
>top opening freezer, reset to run as a fridge.

What sort of food do you put on your sandwiches.  Peanut butter and jelly 
don't need refrigerating, but I'm having a hard time thinking of what else 
you might use when you don't have a fridge.  I was thinking of digging a 
hole in the ground of my tipi, putting a box insulated on the sides, but 
with a metal bottom in the hole and packing dirt around the box so that the 
top was just a bit higher than flush with the floor.  I suspect that would 
keep some things coolish, like beer...  :)

>**  I'd add: look seriously at pre-heating your hot water with a solar
>water heater; it has a major effect on your (CO2-producing) energy usage,
>and depending on your sunshine-hours, can completely replace
>non-renewable-energy water heating except for (maybe) the 4 months centered
>on mid-winter-day, when you'll probably need some boosting (gas or 
>electric).

A Revereware whistler teapot would heat enough water mixed with cold water 
for a comfortable shower if it didn't run constantly.  I've felt completely 
clean after a shower using a mere two gallons of warm water, when I first 
got wet, stopped the water, soaped up from top to bottom, and then 
rinsed.  Heating such a small amount of water as a teapot can be done very 
cheaply, even over a tiny wood fire in a tipi.  The same can be done for 
dishes, using minimal amounts of hot water.  And now with newer laundry 
detergents, you don't really even need much or any warm to watch clothes.

>**  There's _far_ too much attention paid to bacteria and other
>micro-organisms as threats.

I absolutely agree.  To attempt to clean all dust mites, bacteria, etc., 
out of a home makes it into a "glass bubble" sanitorium, where you *will* 
be sick once you leave it and go into the world.

>All living things constantly live in a sea of
>them; we've developed very effective defences where necessary. The best I
>know of, even able to handle new organisms that didn't exist before, is the
>immune system. It also handles viruses, which antibiotics can't.

Yes, indeed.  All the anti-bacterial cleansers are so needless and I 
suspect are actually harmful, since it does deprive the immune system of 
the "right" bugs, too.  Heaven only knows what those chemicals are doing to 
us anyway.  Keep it natural.

>**  So being generally healthy and never over-stressed (& plenty of sleep)
>should be the focus, not trying to make the house a sterile place. The big
>advances of public health were mainly to do with segregating sewage (though
>it doesn't need a water-borne system), and a certain degree of hygiene in
>food preparation. Taking it further really isn't necessary, and I think is
>counter-productive. We brought up our babies with the expectation they'd
>put stuff in their mouths, soil etc.

More welcome words.  I'm sure you are absolutely right.  But I bet most of 
your words would come as a shock to most clean-freak Americans.  You notice 
how many colds and allergies they seem to get?  I hardly ever catch a cold 
or flu and its hardly worth noticing when I do.  I've never been troubled 
by allergies, though I see the rest of my family beginning to have serious 
trouble there.  Does your family have allergy problems, David?  I don't 
even want to talk about how many dust mites I coexist with.  The nests of 
dog hair that continually find its way into the corners no doubt supports 
abundant crops of such critters.  :)

>**  You don't need to do what we did (outlined in a moment), you just keep
>yourself exposed to the local pathogens, e.g. by letting the cat
>occasionally dig its claws into you, or working in the garden, etc. We
>found it worked even in India, Malaysia and Thailand. Although we boiled
>our water, we bought the local bread and ate in the same restaurants
>everyone else did. When we moved (each 3-4 weeks) to a new town, we
>expected to get a "tummy-bug", "Delhi-belly", so one of us would be the
>"control", eating sterile food (boiled rice, tinned meat/fish, no
>vegetables) for a few days in case all the rest got so sick they had to be
>cared-for by that person (we never actually got that sick), while the rest
>ate the local food. Usually at least one of us was hardly affected (slight
>diarrhoea for part of a day), so the "control" could join-in quite soon.

Wonderful story.  Thanks for passing such valuable info on, David.


-----
tully

 From the soul perspective, meaning is less important than meaningfulness.
    ---Thomas Moore