Jen

With energy and housing prices soaring in many places, I think now is a good time to talk about living with less stuff and less energy at home.

I’m going to tackle “stuff” first, because this may have an impact on how big of a home you need and/or how much of that home actually needs to be climate-controlled.

Most people in developed countries own too much stuff. Stuff costs money both directly (to buy and maintain it, and to buy duplicates hen you can’t find something because you have so much stuff) and indirectly (by requiring a larger home, more land or outbuildings, or a storage unit to keep it in as well as more higher energy costs to keep it at an acceptable temperature and humidity level to prevent molding, rusting, warping, or other deterioration). It also often costs money to dispose of (landfill or garbage collection ruin fees), which you can avoid by not buying it in the first place. There is also a great deal of embodied energy in stuff which might have been put to better use elsewhere, depending on the stuff!

Stuff also costs time, attention, and focus. You have to maintain it, clean it, move it around, look for it when it’s lost, worry about how messy your house/garage/desk is, berate yourself for being too fat to wear it or spending money you didn’t have on it every time you see it, and look at draining visual clutter. Bleh.

How much stuff you need and how much stuff you can maintain before diminishing returns take over depends a lot on your lifestyle. I have much more stuff now as a homesteader and regenerative rancher than I did during the years when I was living a nomadic lifestyle in my truck. Much, much more! Chances are, though, that you still have too much. So, how to get rid of it?

I must confess that I am a fan of the KonMari method developed by Marie Kondo in Japan. People love to mock the KonMari trend, but honestly I think her books are really good (haven’t watched the show), although her style isn’t for everyone. Basically, you gather and sort through all your possessions by category (not by room), touching each thing and making a decision about it, keeping only those which “spark joy” or are obviously essential. Then you store them, sometimes in particular ways. You do this in one big, marathon stretch (it might take months, but you aim to get it all done, not to do a little at a time as with “donate or throw away three things every day” sorts of methods. If you’re interested, I recommend her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. For a more severe, urban type of minimalism, you might check out Fumio Dasani’s book Goodbye, Things.

Other popular approaches are setting a timer and decluttering for 15 minutes per day (as recommended by Martha Cilley, the “FLYLady”); doing a 30 day challenge in which you get rid of one thing on day one, two things on day two, and so forth for a total of 465 things in one month; putting everything you own in a particular category (say, dresses or hand tools or coffee mugs) in a box and donating anything you haven’t taken out of the box in three months; getting rid of anything that you did not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful, and many others.

You don’t have to actually become a minimalist, but reducing your possessions to the point where you know what you own, where it is, what needs to be done to or with it, and what you lack will create physical space and financial slack as well as improving your focus and reducing your stress. You’ll probably also find that you put what you do keep to better use and take better care of it. Decluttering also helps you see what physical possessions might be advantageous for you to acquire and can even help pay for them (by selling your excess via a yard sale, a consignment shop, Craigslist ads, or an eBay store, for instance). You can also dispose of unwanted items via local “buy nothing” groups and, of course, thrift stores and charity shops.

Now that you have less stuff to store and manage, let’s take a look at energy use at home.

The most impactful thing you could do in this regard is probably to downsize, if your decluttering and your life situation makes this possible. This could mean moving into a smaller house or apartment, moving into a vehicle or RV, clearing out a previously cluttered room or suite to turn into a rental, or closing off a portion of your dwelling so that it no longer requires heating or cooling (beware of creating mold problems or freezing your pipes, however!) You could also consider buying or building a home with passive solar orientation or other passive heating/cooling methods built in, but this is of course difficult for most people.

Next, consider improvements that would allow you to maintain the same level of comfort with less energy. This might include such modifications as extra insulation, an attic fan, energy-efficient windows with reflective and/or insulative covers, rugs for cold floors, weatherization and sealing, solar hot water of the “black tank on the roof” variety (not photovoltaic), installing a rocket mass heater, adding a passive solar greenhouse for heating, planting shade trees or deciduous vines on trellises, installing geothermal pipes, energy-efficient appliances, washing clothes in cold water, etc. John Michael Greer’s Green Wizardry book is a good resource here, as is permies.com, and many power companies or cooperatives and local governments offer energy audits and even discounts and grants for this sort of work. One drawback of this approach is that it can require synthetic and to some degree toxic/off-gassing materials, so be aware and look for alternatives and mitigation measures if necessary.

Next, if necessary, consider measures that may reduce comfort or convenience (although not beyond your ability to tolerate). This might include turning the thermostat up or down while adding or removing clothes, reducing the temperature of household hot water, using a clothesline or drying rack instead of a clothes dryer, making do with less light at night, reducing the size of your refrigerator, turning things completely off or unplugging them when you’re not using them, reusing clothing or towels before washing, or replacing electrical appliances with manual ones. Some of these gains are fairly significant; others are marginal at best. It’s best to have a few of these tricks up your sleeve for hard times even if you don’t practice them on a daily basis.

Finally, consider alternative sources of energy. This would, for most people in conventional houses, be a solar photovoltaic system, although in some circumstances wind or micro-hydro or on-site biogas or biomass generation might be appropriate (and preferable). Photovoltaic systems and their batteries only make sense once you have drastically reduced energy use; even then, there is a lot of toxicity and environmental destruction involved in their manufacture and the mining of materials, and they tend to be fairly expensive and need periodic maintenance and replacement. We do use some solar PV, but I think the idea of slapping up solar panels sufficient to support “normal” energy use is a terrible idea even if you can afford it. Reduce usage first! Also consider that grid-tied solar, while it may make you some money in some locations, will likely be shut down in the event of a power outage.

A final note: if you use energy sources such as propane/natural gas, or anything that requires a tank, consider upgrading to a larger tank and filling up when that energy source is cheap (for instance, propane is usually cheaper in summer than in winter).

That’s all for this month, folks! Happy Independence Day, for those of you celebrating, and may we all become a little more independent of the unsustainable systems surrounding us in the next year! See you August 4th!

(On a personal note, the baby and our little family continue to do well, and any prayers, blessings, and well-wishes sent our way continue to be appreciated!)