I still truly miss the last car I owned that I could self-maintain, though its emissions were dirty enough that it's probably just as well that it's gone. I have a reusable shopping bag which I am disgracefully bad about remembering to bring shopping. I am still working on converting all bulbs in my house to fluorescents, let alone LEDs. My only originally pedal-operated sewing machine (of the four I have in the house) has an electric motor add-on, but could probably be unconverted. I would also miss the zigzag stitch, though I already hand-sew my buttonholes. I suspect a fountain pen in my hands is an accident waiting to happen given the amount of ink I cover myself with just using ballpoints. And I'm not sure I'm clueful enough to run Linux, though I've been thinking about trying.

I do possess and use a hand-cranked flashlight!

When my current car dies I am thinking seriously of giving up car ownership and shifting to a combination of Zipcar (available through my day job) and rentals for my weekend trips. I live where I can walk to work, so on a daily basis I don't need a car, and a little planning efficiency could reduce my driving to once or twice a month on travel weekends and once a week for errands. It would be quite a wrench psychologically to give up the sense of freedom the car gives me, though. And I love driving.

Books written on parchment or pre-twentieth century paper last significantly longer than modern paperbacks written on pulp. I've handled eight-hundred-year old codices that, rebound and stored carefully, remain in far better condition than some novels I bought five years ago.

Then again, sheep died to make those manuscripts.

"The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet." - William Gibson

Susan @1:

We spent many years without a car, renting as required for big shopping trips or houseguests (it averaged about once a month) and taking the bus for everything else.

Thing is, once you have a car, you use it. It's actually taken some self-discipline to do the Saturday recycling + shopping run on my bike every week. It's not the travel time, which is roughly equivalent, nor the weather (it turns out I don't mind biking in snow and rain*). It's the time it takes to load the recycling onto my bike that bugs me. I think I need removable panniers.

Next year, when we have both kids in the same school—one I can shepherd them to en route to work—the car will become an occasional use item rather than a daily tool. But I don't think we'll get rid of it.

Shorter me: good luck going non-automotive; I know how hard it can be, but how rewarding as well.
-----
* yeah, I'm weirded out about that too

The supermarkets I go to are now selling reusable bags, and will give a bag refund if you use your own (including those they sell).
Groceries are easier to carry in cloth and paper bags.

(I'd pay for a treadle sewing machine. I think you should be able to get a zig-zag attachment for them - my mother had one for her old-but-electric straight-stitch machine.)

Manual typewriters.

Pencils. All they need are decent caps to keep them from puncturing your pocket. (Mechanical pencils are okay, but finding replacement leads is a non-trivial exercise.)

Susan --

My husband and I have been carfree since our car died last May. There was a bit of an adjustment period, but at this point we're both very, very happy about not having a car. (If I won one in a contest, my first question would be "um... can I get the cash-value equivalent instead? Because I really don't want the car, actually.")

I highly recommend getting rid of the car to anyone whose circumstances make it possible.

One thing to be aware of is that doing so seems to have a significant Red Pill effect that spreads to other things in one's life. At least, that's how it worked for us: You start by getting rid of the car, and you wind up examining all kinds of things about how you live.

I do my best to avoid being an obnoxious proselytizer for getting rid of the personal automobile, but if somebody mentions they're considering getting rid of theirs, I just can't resist jumping in to say "yes, it's great!"

By the way, did you know that Thoreau "developed for his family's business the finest lead pencil available in mid-19th-century America"?

By the way, did you know that Thoreau "developed for his family's business the finest lead pencil available in mid-19th-century America"?

#1: I overheard a conversation the captain of a Trader Joe's had with a customer. Apparently, the first phase is that you leave your reusable bag at home. The second phase is that you leave it in your car. The third phase is when the bag finally makes it into the store.

I have a hand-crank flashlight too. It's great. When there's a power failure, I know that my flashlight will work. It has its downsides, but I don't ever run into them. (e.g., A hand crank is probably a bad choice if you need steady, continuous light for hours.)

I haven't gone back to Linux yet, though. I really like handwriting recognition. If there were a viable Linux based solution, that would eliminate the only reason I have for using a Microsoft operating system.

As for sewing, I really need to learn how to do that. The extent of my sewing experience is to repair a few tears with needle and thread, using instructions I found on the web.

(I should also invest in a bicycle. Some places are just too close to drive to, but too time consuming to walk to. Currently, I walk anyway, but a bicycle would save time. I don't think there's always a place to park the bike though.)

Lexica @7:
If I won one in a contest, my first question would be "um... can I get the cash-value equivalent instead? Because I really don't want the car, actually."

Right in the middle of our car-free time, we* actually did win a car.

Fuji Film put out a promotional film pack with a number of giveaways: disposable cameras, iMacs, and four people carriers. We bought it for the film, of course, but the ticket inside said we'd also won a car. And it was signed in ballpoint pen (you could feel it on the underside). That's what made it real for us, so real we had to sit down for a bit.

There was no cash alternative, so we took delivery and sold it immediately thereafter. The money paid for a drum kit, a digital camera†, a wooden floor in our house, and more maternity leave time for me after our son was born.

-----
* Technically, Martin won it
† irony: we stopped buying film

Websites of note:

Worldchanging

http://www.worldchanging.com

James Cascio's Open the Future

http://www.openthefuture.com/

Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/

* * *

I keep my reusable shopping bags in my car. I remember them maybe 2/3 of the time.

I love and adore a good Alice's restaurant reference.

There are buttonhole-making attachments that work with straight-stitch sewing machines. My Singer sewing instruction books refer to them, and if the ones I'm finding on eBay are the right kind, bidding starts at 99 cents.

I've got a treadle Singer, unconverted, and it does work, although I confess I use it as a table to hold my electric-powered Bernette 440.

I wish I could go carless, but in my current location it's just not practical. If I lived in the Boston area, I'd seriously consider it, what with the T and Zipcar and rentals.

I have often thought I'd like to have a Mooncup in case of apocalypse.

Oh, duh:

MAKE folks do cool stuff with both new and old technology.

http://makezine.com/

pixelfish @15:
There is no requirement to wait for the apocalypse, or even a minor disaster.

Getting one and discovering you don't like it is a bit expensive—there isn't exactly a brisk secondhand market in them. But getting one and finding out that you love it and would never go back to anything else works out very cheap.

It's a gamble, sort of. You have to ask yourself if you feel lucky.

It offends me that so many modern things are built to be trashed in three years. I had a fine digital camera, it stopped turning on, there was no place to fix it, I opened it up and couldn't figure out how to fix it myself... Such a waste. I had an inkjet printer, it never worked well, it was worthless as soon as I took it out of the store... I had a microwave, it stopped producing microwaves. I had a MP3 player, it stopped turning on.

I wish companies were required to send out circuit diagrams and repair manuals with all of their electronics. I wish soldering and electrical repair were required classes in high school.

Heck, we have a perfectly good digital camera (only 2.1 megapixels, so not quite state of the art, but fully functional) that we may have to replace because the batteries don't seem to be made anymore. We can only take 3-4 pictures with the current battery before it fails. I bought one online, but it was old too (not used, but these things have a finite shelf life even unused), and we don't get much more life out of it.

Digital cameras are an interesting cleft stick.

On the one hand, the sensors on a digital camera go bad after a while. If enough of them do so, the camera isn't much use any more. And, as Madeline points out, you can't repair it, nor bring it to someone local who can do so.

But it's harder and harder to get black and white film, even 35mm film, without going mail-order. And home darkroom work on color film is space, equipment and chemical intensive, even more than black and white.

Good thing this is just an ideal, not an ideology we're discussing.

Just this morning, I found in a "take me, we're moving" pile a nice SLR camera with filters, cleaning stuff, a remote plunger and two flashes.

A film camera.

Dust in the wind.

I'm going to bring it to Goodwill at lunch.

The Amish have done a lot of adaptations of modern technology to fit their needs. One of those is taking modern sewing machines - at least basic models that aren't computer-driven - and fitting them for treadle or airpower. I would assume those machines do zigzag.

In fact, it's possible to order such a machine, complete with zigzag and buttonhole, here.

Rymenhild @2: Then again, sheep died to make those manuscripts.

Yes but the sheep also fed and clothed the scribe who made the manuscript. An animal that can produce food, clothing, tools and publishing materials is so useful, you'd think it came form some genetically engineering laboratory in the future, rather than from a damp field full of mud in the past.

One of the fascinating aspects of the past is just how much ingenuity our ancestors had when all they had at hand were a few rocks, twigs and livestock.

And we wonder that some stone age McGyver was worshiped as a God. How many of us could figure out, without ever having seen it done before, how to make fire out of couple of twigs, a flat rock and the power of our own lungs?

I've never had a driver's license, and own no car. Fortunately I now walk to work. I also walk to the grocery store and take my huge backpack; I have canvas totes too, but I nearly always forget them.

On the downside, if I have too much stuff to carry home, I have it delivered--and that's done in a bigass van thing.

I have the miniature version of the hand-cranked flashlight, which is kind of the "jerkoff" flashlight (from the motion used to charge it up).

Xopher @24:
"jerkoff" flashlight (from the motion used to charge it up)

You remind me that I have a pocket calculator that you shake in much the same way to charge up.

I bought it because the packaging told me that it worked without electricity (though it doesn't look much like an abacus to me) and without light (I presume it does, but I can't see the results).

How could I resist?

MamaDeb @22:
Your link is munged, and I can't retrieve it. Can you put the URL in plain text, or make sure you use quotes around it if you use the <a href=... formatting?

My mother's hand-cranked Singer sewing machine lasted her about thirty years (she bought it when I was a small child in the late 50s, and it travelled from England to Jamaica in the late 60s; it stayed in Jamaica when she left for good at the end of the 80s).

Some technologies may last even longer, of course. When we lived in rural Jamaica we cooked using a wood-burning stove rejoicing in the name 'Caledonia Modern Dover' dating to around 1900 (possibly older) that was still functional in the 1970s (I certainly had the blisters to prove it). For all I know, it may be working yet.

I haven't made the leap over to Linux, but I have switched from word processor to text editor, so just about everything I write is in future-proof ASCII.

And then there's "Amish computing" and the back-to-paper movement.

I've had the same cheap Black&Decker electric drill since January 1986. It was a parting gift from my co-workers when I left Québec. That thing has seen a lot of use.

Car maintenance is perhaps a bad example. We have a 1997 Saturn that has 112,000 miles on it, and get 30 MPG even when it's way out of tune. I figure it's good for another 50-100 thousand miles. My old Fiats and the like were a lot easier to work on (and in some cases possible to work on), but the flip side is that they had to be worked on. I remember distinctly the point at which I stopped working on cars. It was a Ford Escort that I had inherited from my father (he had won it in a contest), and it needed its timing belt changed. Rubber timing belt is routine maintenance, right? (You changed it religiously at 70,000 miles on the Fiat 131 engine, or you ended up with a valve stuck edge-on in a piston.) Well. I didn't have a garage, and of course it was 45 degrees (always is when you need to really sink yourself in the engine). And here we are, trying to figure out how to get at this thing, and we finally figured out that we had to put a jack under the engine, and loose one of the motor mounts, and lower the engine a few inches. And after all that I swore I would never work on my own car, ever again.

Fragano 27:
Thank you for the reminder of stoves; another good example of simple, flexible technology is the Coleman stove. My parents have used the same one at the cabin for over 35 years; it sits there still.

Avram @28:
The back-to-paper movement? It's a movement now? In harmony, one hopes, and singing loud.

It's why I became a bookbinder. I realised I was done with my Palm V and wanted no new gadget in its place. I just wanted really beautiful blank books, nicer than I could afford any other way.

I still use dial phones bought at garage sales long ago. I have a couple of extras, because they do fail eventually. Western Electric built good stuff, because way back then, you rented your phone from Ma Bell, so she didn't want it to fail. I also have an old touch tone phone for those times you can't access service without one.

And I *like* dial phones. It's how I think of using a phone, and the sound quality is great. I also prefer watches with dials.

I've been trying to use shopping bags for a long time. The local food co-ops used to pretty much require it, also your own jars and such. Now they have bags available, but give you a nickel back if you've brought one.

There was a time in my life I used flannel pads. Cups never worked for me; gave me cramps. I bought enough pads to get through my period. When it was over, they were tossed in the wash in cold water with a long soak. Now that I don't need them, I don't know what to do with them. But they gave several years of excellent use, much softer and more comfortable than disposable.

Random thoughts on sustainability and technology.

---My uncle has a lovely singing voice. About 25 years ago he gave us recordings....on 8-tracks. Unfortunately, that was the only format he recorded. Which leads us to Unfortunately #2: a couple of years ago someone in the family wanted to convert the recordings to some other format (ah, but how durable??), but it appears that all of us have gotten rid of all of our 8-tracks.

---when spinning wheels were first introduced, they were often vilified as potential job killers. Interesting how perspectives on the advantages of technology can develop.

---I wonder about tasks that are apparently efficient. Take cooking. In my experience it really doesn't take that much time to cook 'real' stuff, as opposed to buying things prepackaged and/or microwavable. Not to mention that my food processor's parts aren't dishwasher safe; it's less hassle to use other more 'primitive' tools.

---Jen Roth @19, we had the same thing happen to our telephone. We replaced the phone a few weeks ago before the battery gave up entirely.

---on the other hand, some appliances like washers and dryers have gotten very energy-efficient. I'll be sad to see my 20-year-old washer go, but will feel better about saving power and water with a new one.

---My 1910 edition of The Harvard Classics is in fine shape. My '70's paperbacks (Science Fiction Hall of Fame, waaaah!) are crumbling.

--- re: the Amish. I recently linked to an article describing some of their innovations. Here it is again.

My sewing machines are long-lived - the two I use most often (fraternal twin Singers) are both 40 years old and have never needed any repair other than a single gear under the bobbin case that seems to be a chronic weak point on that model. That's about a $30 repair every couple of years. My serger, which I rarely use and which really ought to be a candidate for disposal, is about 15 years old. My converted machine, which I almost never use, is a 1920s model of some sort, and works just fine provided I only want to do straight stitch. I consider it a backup in case I manage to munch the gears on both my main ones, as has happened occasionally, always at the most inconvenient possible moment relative to some costume deadline.

Diva cups -- better than moon cups in that they have no latex! I think they are not used so much in the US, though. US undergrads seem to be very squeamish about some things, and not at all about things that squick me no end.

I think most of those things are really obvious -- I started with the bags when I lived in Europe, and have lots of lower-tech stuff. But for a lot of people here in the US, non-car transport is difficult. There are lots of spots between my home and work, for example, where there is no pavement and the cars do not look out for bikers and walkers.

On older books: My 1923 copy of Government of the West Indies is still in excellent condition for what is, after all, a Wrong book.* Quite a few of my 60s and 70s paperbacks are, shall we say, very fragile.

*I treat it gently, on the other hand I have marked up my first American edition of Froude's Bow of Ulysses.

The use of disposable things, or short-lived things, can have its own complicated ecology. Maybe ecology isn't quite the right word. I mean a network of processes that depend on each other. I usually have a reusable (as in luggage) bag with me when I shop. When I need paper or plastic bags, I get one from the store, and put it inside my reusable bag, to take it home. Why? Because if a person wants to recycle paper, the local recyclers require it to be packaged in paper bags and taken to one of their drop boxes, conveniently located every 1/4 mile or so. (There's an exception for newspapers, which I don't read on paper at home.) I use plastic grocery bags for trash. I've seen plastic trash bags made for the purpose, but they're much thicker plastic, so if the idea is to minimize use of plastic it doesn't seem like a good use of money.

I overheard a conversation the captain of a Trader Joe's had with a customer. Apparently, the first phase is that you leave your reusable bag at home. The second phase is that you leave it in your car. The third phase is when the bag finally makes it into the store.

If you're walking, you'll make the mistake of forgetting your bag once or twice, tops. And if you're walking and you forget your bag the second time, odds are good that you'll buy a second bag rather than endure another walk with plastic ones.

Cars are very good at enabling some kinds of wasteful behavior.

Giving up the car was a lot easier than I thought. It started when my partner and I figured out that we could do all (and I do mean *all*) our grocery shopping on foot. Then he realized he could take the bus to work and save himself an annoying drive every day. 18 months later, we moved and decided to get rid of the car as it hadn't been used *once* in that time.

We now use bikes for quite a lot - we each picked up one when we moved. Mine is scheduled to be replaced, since I'm better at handling cargo than it is! I know it's possible to get a bike that works better than I do, so I'm comparison shopping for the replacement.

Pixelfish #15: you don't need an apocalypse to appreciate a mooncup! I use the Diva cup (silicone, not latex) and I couldn't be happier with it. It's comfortable, it can be worn all day with no leakage and no changing, and you never have to worry if you've run out of menstrual supplies. I've had mine for several YEARS now and it's more than paid for itself in the supplies I haven't had to buy. Also, I think it was the only thing that made having my period at Warped Tour a manageable situation. I would not have wanted to deal with disposables and Porta-potties -- something I could leave in and ignore until I got to better facilities was ideal.

I've also used the Keeper (latex, while serviceable, can kinda smell funny after a while) and the disposable Instead cups. Disposable doesn't address the environmental or deep-value concerns, but there are certain situations where the design of the Instead (it's like a diaphragm, the Keeper and Diva sit lower down) makes it the optimal choice.

Mooncups RULE.

Another Damned Medievalist @36:
Several of the cup anecdotes were American; that was when I found out that they weren't simply a British phenomenon. I suspect many women of my daughter's generation (she's currently 4) will use them as a default.

I confess, on the biking, that I have an obscenely, viciously unfair advantage. I live in the Netherlands.

When I show American bikers around, it takes me several hours to get them to relax and believe that the cars are really going to give them the space that they need on those few stretches of road that don't have a bike lane.

I've only been here eight months, and it still blows my mind. Dutch people don't even see how fantastic it is.

Susan @ 35... My serger, which I rarely use and which really ought to be a candidate for disposal

I gave you the best years of my life and this is what I get.

I've only taken a cursory look at the thread so far (I should have left work by now), so I apologize if anyone's already posted this, but the Group News Blog has this post about "The Real Deal" a couple of months ago that touches on just this topic.

I've only taken a cursory look at the thread so far (I should have left work by now), so I apologize if anyone's already posted this, but the Group News Blog has this post about "The Real Deal" a couple of months ago that touches on just this topic.

Rats! Double posts do not have deep value!

I am surely not the only Making Light reader who has a conflict of values pertaining to reading choices. Too many things in new-book stores are book-shaped objects, printed on very real paper. Ick! So I end up reading and enjoying books from second hand shops and libraries. That is very economical with the book-making energy, but tends to give the book-makers (authors, editors, designers, publishers, etc.) short shrift.

I'm hoping that an economic model will turn up that will make it possible to pay the makers regardless of the distribution chain I choose. And while distribution is important, I have no love for particular distribution chains and no wish to support them; I wish there were some reasonable way of rewarding/repaying authors and publishers for their work even when I choose a different distribution channel.

Debbie #34, on dishwashers: My parents recently got a new one, despite my father's skepticism, but he tried handwashing a medium-full sinkload of dishes and measured how much water he used, versus how much the dishwasher would have, and apparently the dishwasher won out by quite a bit. It startled the hell out of him, and me, and won him over to the dishwasher side of things. Sadly, I don't have a functioning dishwasher, and judging from the two years I've spent trying to get my landlord to do something about it, I might never.

On mooncups or diva cups or whatever: most of my ladyfriends have switched over to them over the past few years, and unanimously report satisfaction. They seem a dramatic improvement.

abi @ 41: you may be optimistic about your daughter's generation using mooncups as a default.

My daughter is 12, and although she was eager to try one, she can't wear it comfortably right now. I advised her to hang onto it and try again later.

I'm sure she can figure out the likely preconditions for "later," as I've also given her Our Bodies, Ourselves, but if I brought it up directly I'd just hear "Mo-om, you're embarrassing me!"

Going meta for a moment, I'd say that -skills- are very much one of the deep value items. I'm always surprised to find people don't all have some rough idea of how to weave, or make paper (or ink), or sew[0], or butcher, (more recent) how electricity works, even in general terms, or all sorts of remarkably basic ideas that underly modern technology.

"The magic just happens" is a spectacular form of ignorance.

[0] Sewing... I'm beginning to think that (at 5 sewing machines (one treadle, one hand-crank, one convertable power/handcrank, and one powered) and a serger) I might have a problem... (but I've sewn with all but the most recent of them - and that because the most recent was found lonely on the curb yesterday, and needs a belt)

Rikibeth @48:
Perhaps, if cups gather momentum, they will come in more sizes. Have you fed back to either company?

Thing is, once you have a car, you use it.

This is why I resist every suggestion that my life would be easier with a car (and given the sad state of public transport in small-town Lincolnshire maybe it would). I enjoy travelling by train, meeting interesting people and getting to know new stations along the way. But if I was running a car, I wouldn't be able to justify train journeys and I'd miss them.

abi 50: no, I haven't yet. I probably ought to. I wonder just how small they could make the things, though, before they started losing their advantages? I suspect that one made the size of a slender/junior tampon wouldn't be very effective.

The first "Our Bodies, Ourselves" contained instructions for using a diaphragm as a menstrual cup, which was my first introduction to the concept, but which indicates it's been around for a while. Even though I turned out to be incompatible with them, I love the idea and always beam with pleasure when I see a new brand name on the market.

As for variations, the Keeper had a 'no child has passed through this cervix' style and an 'at least one child has passed through this cervix' size/shape. (I forget how they phrased it, but that was the gist.) I *think* the Diva cup does too. For more variation yet, one can return to the diaphragm which (as I understand it) is individually fitted. More expensive, but it's not like one needs dozens of them.

Xeger @49 - I second that.

Moreover, skills are fun (well, probably not the butchering): make tofu from beans & sea water... you may have to fight off the paparazzi. Or knitting, spinning, crochet, and cooking. Etc.

I've found that not only is cooking fun, it helps keep out ingredients I'd rather avoid. (I've been known to make muffins, pancakes, and cakes without any of the following: eggs, wheat flour, oil, sugar, and milk. Good muffins and pancakes. Ingredient-free cooking - whee!) But I still find it surprising that cooking is something that counts as a skill, like all those other ones. I mean, how do people eat without cooking?

Instead cups aren't compatible with an IUD-- which is in itself a Deep Value contraceptive, not requiring daily pills or other small disposable objects.

(TMI warning for guys who would just as rather not engage with this sort of gynecology)

I've bought and tried all three types of reusable cups. So far, the Keeper has lasted the longest; this may be an unfair judgement in that I lost my Divacup within a few months of purchase, although I was not unhappy to do so-- I had a lot more trouble wrangling it into place, because of the shorter stem and slightly larger size (the cupmakers' size recommendation is partially based on age, but this didn't seem to work for me).

My Mooncup eventually developed some small holes/fissures in its main body, which may be attributable to a brief but intense interval when our two then-kittens decided that it was the Best Toy Ever; more than once, after I'd pitched it into the bathroom sink before settling down for a good read, I'd looked back up to discover that the Mooncup had disappeared somewhere in the direction of an ominous set of little red pawprints. It bounced real good.

I *have* had leaks with the cups due to overflow, even past a backup flannel pad. But they've still served me better than even the largest pre-toxic-shock tampons, which IIRC were once described by a comedian who said that every time she jumped into the pool with one, the water level went down.

And finally, there is the fabulous site http://mum.org/ , the online Museum of Menstruation.

The Keeper and Diva Cup both swear that if you've had a child, you NEED NEED NEED their larger size to prevent leakage. The Diva Cup even says you need the larger size if you're over 30, child or no child, because of natural loss of muscle tone.

I'm here to tell you they're WRONG.

I'm over 30, I have a child, and the larger size was frickin' unwieldy. The smaller size is comfortable and leak-free.

I got to play with an old treadle Singer sewing machine when my dad was fixing it for my aunt. (Inherited from her mother or grandmother.) Once you get in the rhythm with the treadle, it goes at an impressively fast clip! It had a box full of attachments that let it do dozens and dozens of kinds of frills and furbelows. I don't remember if there was a buttonhole attachment but I would be surprised if there was not.

One of our fundamental problems right now is that we have lots of ways to put materials together, and very few ways to take them apart again for reuse. If we can figure out how to make something that does *that* the green revolution will become immensely easier and more popular. Plastics, metals, and so on do certain jobs that natural materials just can't, so people are not going to give them up.

For those forgetting their shopping bags at home, a recommendation. I use one of these that I picked up at a co-op. It folds up wallet-sized and fits in my purse, so I don't forget it (unlike the five string bags and the big canvas bag that lives in my back seat). If I didn't have a purse, it would snap around my belt loop. Since I got it, my disposable bag consumption is down to what I need for my recycling and my lunch.

On sewing machines: I have an electric sewing machine that's a couple generations old (human generations, not tech generations) and much sturdier than the modern ones. I love it, but if I didn't have electricity I think I'd just go back to needle and thread. Whereas I would probably have to invent a treadle-powered word processor rather than go back to either manual typewriter or pen & paper.

This is only a placeholder for what I hope will be longer comments tonight or tomorrow.

I am troubled by how much deep value apparently depends on labor I can't add. There are presumptions going on about what kinds of disabilities and limitations apparently don't exist in people who'd like to be good stewards of their chunk of the world's resources. There's lots I would do, both physically and mentally, if I could, but it simply isn't going to happen. It wouldn't happen even if I sacrificed all of my chosen work and entertainment, in some cases, thanks to learning disabilities rising from nerve damage.

Some of this, to be sure, is spillover frustration at healthy young (generally male) bloggers who've done yeoman work analyzing the screwing over that the working and middle classes have gotten and then turn right around to enthuse about hiking the price of food and transportation, knowing damn well that nothing like sufficient aid to the needy will be forthcoming. And those who have even more trouble holding onto gainful employment or finding healthy food will...what? Blow away? Hire themselves out to each other laborers?

It's not that I disapprove of making things both lasting and repairable. It's that I get leery of too much endorsement of solutions calling for more physical labor and mental training without a good sense of what kinds of burden that can be, nor any real sense of what to do about it.

More later, though; this is not (in my intention) a completed thought.

I don't use a cup, as it is incompatible with the IUD I currently have in place, but I do like my cloth pads and sea-sponge tampons vastly better than their disposable alternatives. Right now, I can just toss the pads in with my son's cloth diapers, which is very convenient. Cloth diapers also seem to be making a comeback, and while we don't use them exclusively, I now look at a disposable diaper and think "I'm throwing out this big hunk of plastic and chemicals to take care of a little bit of baby pee that would just wash out?" I guess that's more of a "sustainability" rather than "deep value" argument, but they're related.

abi @41:
In 1990, before and after ConFiction, I spent some time bicycling in the Netherlands (and Denmark) (including a circumnavigation of the Ijsselmeer). One of the problems I had, as an American cyclist was that I was too cautious for the Dutch drivers, I'd slow and check at an intersection. They were expecting me to fly right through. It didn't help that I was extra wary since the bike trip was financed by the settlement from having my collarbone broken when me and my bike were hit by a car making a turn across traffic (Mass Ave, Arlington, MA).
I wanted a sign saying "Let Op! Amerikaanse Fietser".
Not only was there a bike path from the airport, it went in a separate tunnel from the auto traffic.
At one point on my long ride, a drawbridge started to go up in front of me. The bridgekeeper saw me and gave me priority over the bridge (I assume that he didn't actually have to slow the cargo ship down).

Rikibeth: Thanks for the heads up about the larger/smaller size issue. I currently am on the Ring, which I adore, and I assume that inserting a cup will be no more strenuous than inserting the Ring?

I'm posting this before reading past #20 -

Abi: I prefer a sewing machine that zig-zags, so that I can make buttonholes.

and

#5 ::: P J Evans :::

...(I'd pay for a treadle sewing machine. I think you should be able to get a zig-zag attachment for them - my mother had one for her old-but-electric straight-stitch machine.)

and

#14 ::: Rikibeth :::
There are buttonhole-making attachments that work with straight-stitch sewing machines.
I use a treadle sewing machine with a late-50's head that can do not only zig-zag, buttonholes, double-needle, but a wide variety of other built-in stitches and also takes cams for bigger/more elaborate patterns. I own two of those heads, both of which came from Canada. The second treadle cabinet I got from a company whose main business is catering to the Amish.

There are two versions of the clamp-on buttonholer, one for straight-stitch and one for zig-zag machines. They make an extremely nice buttonhole.

re: Mooncup
I used a version of these in the early 70's, until they stopped being made (or, at least, marketed in Kansas, where I was living at the time). If I were young enough to still need these, I'd buy a Mooncup in a heartbeat.

Back to reading this thread -

I definitely agree with the sad disposable nature of so much of what we have, but I find that a lot of truly good choices are counter-intuitive (ethan @47's story is a good example). Reusing bags is good, I will agree, but plastic shopping bags are apparently not the demon that everyone thinks they are, see here, and the cost of banning/taxing them might actually be counter productive (leading, for example, to an increased use of trash bags which, as pointed out above, are much thicker and less eco-friendly than shopping bags).
I think it's interesting how eager we are to focus on a problem, any problem, and totally ignore others (like, oh, the end of life as we know it when the oil runs out)--it's one of the reasons I tend to be skeptical whenever a people start cheering the latest environment saving fad (like Nuclear power as the answer to our prayers) .

It is important to think about taking steps to reduce our impact on the world, but deep meaning calls for deep analysis, I think. It might be beyond some of us ( though the guys at Freakonomics do a good job of the kinds of analysis I think we need).

Tying in with what Bruce said above, there's sometimes an annoying pain-in-the-ass factor that goes along with these old-timey Deep Value items. For example, I notice that two of the items in that "Real Deal" article Chris linked to -- the Pendleton shirt and the Hudson Bay point blanket -- are dry-clean-only.

I am troubled by how much deep value apparently depends on labor I can't add

I have some bone deformities and a rotated hip. I've had arthritis since I was 16. Exercise helps thankfully. Living 2 miles or less from everything also helps. If I did things the way the average American biker does, I'd be in terrible shape. Someone with more severe disabilities might not be able to bike at all. Or WALK. So I don't tell people to go car free, and I talk about the problems I've had. I talk about the solutions too, since someone else might learn from me.

It's important to do what is sensible and maintainable for *you*. It probably will not be the same as what I do, nor will it be the same as what Abi does. And it won't be the same as what my sister does (similar disabilities to me, and very different enviroment).

Pixelfish: I've never used the Ring, but seating a DivaCup is simpler than positioning a diaphragm, at least for me. It's sort of an intermediate complexity between tampon and diaphragm. It's basically fold, insert, rotate (to make sure it's unfolded). Very simple.

A gadget to carry plastic bags

And if you're not shopping, you can go fly a kite.

Hudson Bay Point blankets were invented considerably before dry cleaning. It's my experience that a wool blanket doesn't need washing very often -- and it's got to be possible to do it the old-fashioned way when it's actually necessary.

I wouldn't throw it in a modern washing machine and tumble dryer, but a washtub, and mild soap, and spreading it flat on the grass to dry? I'd be willing to risk it.

This seems to be today's conversation. I've already had it with two friends. We all seem to be thinking along the same lines -- if things go pear-shaped for a while, how can we make sure we can survive?

Having stuff that lasts and can be repaired is a big part of that. A rumor about a truckers' strike led me to make a shopping list last week of all the stuff we'd want stocked in case there was a temporary halt to shipping. We ended up with a lot of dried beans, peas, and lentils, canned vegetables, rice, and plenty of frozen veggies and meats -- and also plenty of shampoo, conditioner, soap, toilet paper, and paper towels. Because I have a Diva Cup, I did not have to put tampons on that list, and I thought that was pretty cool.

(I will evangelize for menstrual cups to anyone who will listen, actually. I've found that mine works a good deal better than the disposable alternatives, and it's darned convenient to never worry about buying stuff, because I'm always prepared.)

I would like to state for the record that those rumors were just rumors, and I have no credible source. We figured it was a good excuse to get a stockpile going, though. Turned out that it didn't cost much more than a regular shopping trip -- beans and canned goods are cheap.

I really want a sewing machine, so that I can repair, alter, and rework clothes as necessary. I have, in the past, stretched a pair of jeans that were a size too small by opening the side seams and adding a panel of colorful fabric on either side of the leg -- I got compliments on those in high school. That was with my mother's sewing machine. Not having to ditch clothes and start over when I go up or down a size would help a lot.

And I am planning to switch to reusable grocery bags just because I get extremely annoyed by dealing with the plastic kind. They pile up and fall out of the closet, and then the cats get hold of them and lick and bite them, and I have to take them away to prevent damage to the cats, and then I get fed up and just put them in the trash anyway, after which I feel guilty. A set of reusable bags is going to save me so much irritation.

Rikibeth, you're not making a good case for those blankets being easy to care for. Carting a wet blanket out to Prospect Park and watching it dry for a few hours is hardly less work than just dumping it in a washing machine and then a dryer. Leaving aside the question of what to do if I need to clean it in winter.

Back when I was on active duty at DLI, I had the usual problems with strings (the various pockets, flaps, gussets, etc. are prone to unravelling; this is frowned upon).

The default solution was to burn them. After I'd lost my third, or fourth, lighter one month, I said screw it, and bought a zippo.

It's been 15 years, and I still have the zippo. It was ten dollars as a lump, vs. a serial expenditure of 99 cents.

I wear the same knife today I bought 21 years ago. I'm planning to buy a scythe. No more hassling with the mower. It'll be a couple of hundred dollars, but it's less than a mower costs, has very little in maintainence costs (maybe the snath gets damaged, or you hit a really big rock; other than that, a new stone every ten years or so it about it, that and polishing the hammer and anvil), makes no noise and impresses the neighbors. One can clear about an acre a day; of wheat. Grass is a bit quicker.

Madeline@18: I wish companies were required to send out circuit diagrams and repair manuals with all of their electronics. I wish soldering and electrical repair were required classes in high school.

Moore's law is a pain in the arse. By the time many electronic devices break, they're also obsolete. And soldering a 200 pin surface mount chip isn't exactly easy, or cheap.

digital camera: sensors keep improving, storage keeps getting denser. the technology hasn't neared an asymptote yet.

inkjet printer: The cost of new black/white plus color cartridges for my printer nearly equals the cost of the printer with small cartridges included. They give printers away at cost or at a loss, and then make it up selling ink like it was a subscription service.

microwave: Well, I never felt comfortable monkeying around with radiation.

MP3 player: I'm surprised someone hasn't made a generic MP3 player, with a USB port built in for the actual storage of music. As the price of storage goes down, you can upgrade the memory, but keep the player. Then the interface would be almost zero dollars to build, and the cost of memory would be separated out. Of course, that just makes it more replacable, not repairable.

The main problem is the economics of electronic products push for more integration, which obsoletes older parts quickly. Combine that with ever plummeting costs for chips with more features, and it ends up costing you more to buy the old chip than to get the new one. I don't think it's going to settle out for a while yet.

The other problem is that the NRE to make an asic is like a million dollars, which makes it bloody hard for a mom and pop operation to come in and make a generic MP3 player that anyone can build or repair.

Avram, I wasn't exactly saying they'd be EASY to care for. Just that if dry cleaning disappeared, they wouldn't become entirely unusable. I have to admit I was thinking with my re-enactor brain -- the blankets are popular among Colonial re-enactors, and the house museum where I've volunteered in the past has done laundry demonstrations. Children seem to find it fun to play with the tub and washboard and the paddles for stirring the linens -- I'm sure they'd find it less so if they had to do the washing for a whole family, week after week.

I know that if my cat threw up on MY wool blanket (not a Hudson Bay, just a common blanket from probably the middle of the last century) in the wintertime, I'd sponge it off as best I could and drape it over the shower curtain rod while it dried, rather than trying to wash the whole thing.

Abi@26:

Sorry. Here.

Dena@46: Your mileage may vary, but personally I'm not particularly concerned about using up paper when I'm buying new books. Yes, there's an environmental cost to paper, but books use so small a portion of the paper-stream (1/2 to 1/3 of one percent of paper usage, according to Walt Crawford in the latest _Cites and Insights_) that I'm not that worried about it. The cost to me, as I see it, for forgoing books in the name of paper is higher. (We do buy used books more often than new, actually, but that reflects our interests and budgets more than a concern for paper.)

Seeing how much junk mail some other houses get, I'm pretty sure we save far more paper than we use in books just from having put ourselves years ago on the DMA's junk-mail opt-out lists. (It doesn't completely get rid of junk mail, but it reduces it substantially.)

Sometimes I think the most sustainable thing I can do is move elsewhere. Hawai'i, for me, has meant having to own a car (even though I prefer the bus) and eating mostly food grown in California, among other things. On the other hand, I don't have to heat my house with gas or oil.

I'd buy a treadle sewing machine without a zig-zag function - I prefer to sew buttonholes by hand. It doesn't take me any longer, since sewing them on the machine usually requires that I redo them.

When I lived in a town that had free recycling pickup (and charged a fee for trash pickup), I had stopped using plastic shopping bags, and didn't want to buy small plastic trash bag liners. I took the trash out of the house more frequently and scrubbed the bins at least once per week, which worked okay, but was really annoying to have to do during the winter when I couldn't just use the hose in the yard.

This reminds me that I ought to order a replacement set of the replaceable parts for my pressure cooker (see also: fast way to deal with long-storing grains and beans).

Try finding resole-able shoes. They aren't common at all anymore, especially for women.

I can get my Birkenstock sandals resoled until the cork actually breaks apart, but I haven't found a way to get my El Naturalista shoes done. It's frustrating, because they're both good shoe brands, and expensive, but one lasts up to five years, and the other doesn't.

Second for Chico Bags @58

We're carfree here in our little suburb of Seattle. Three years now. We walk and bike and take the bus. We rent a car once in a while. More often we borrow a car from one of our neighbors. Good neighbors are about as deep value as you can get.

To improve bicycle carrying capacity there's Xtracycle, a bolt-on frame extension that radically increases a regular bike's utility. Here are pictures of the more improbable loads I've carried on mine.

Another old technology that's still wonderfully alive is woodworking tools. For remarkably little money you can buy vintage human-powered drills, saws, and planes that surpass anything manufactured today for quality and utility. A good eggbeater drill is a joy to use--silent, safe, fast, and the batteries don't run down until supper time. Outrageous amounts of good information and help on this available on the Oldtools mailing list.

Any loss of the machine culture and we all starve.

Sure, some people will survive, but to a first approximation, none of us are them.

Deep value... I think this messily conflates two things.

One is that actual human utility innovates a whole lot slower than consumer products allege that they do; there are a great many things that are simpler, less expensive, better for you, and so on. Having stuff to do that has real, tangible results, of obvious or immediate value, is a goodness.

The other one is that the machine society runs as an open loop -- there are inputs, stuff, and garbage -- rather than a closed loop -- there are inputs and stuff -- and this has to change to the closed loop form as a matter of some urgency.

Me, well, no car, and have never owned one. Driver's license, and I use it occasionally, for 'not the last calendar year' values of occasionally. Linux since I got a computer that could run it, in 1997 -- I can claim no virtue for this; I learnt to use a computer on a VAX, and only unixes seem natural -- and heavy reliance on large reusable bags. (One of them has wheels.)

On the other hand, new digital camera I like very much; some things are better, more effective, expand the realizable choice space available to people. The problem isn't that consumer digital cameras don't last; the problem is that the question "what eats those?" doesn't have an answer.

(All that lives is food. Technology needs to live, is all.)

C. Wingate @30: That reminds me of the time I replaced the battery on my 1998 Dodge Stratus. I figured it'd be a simple operation: disconnect the leads, pull out the old battery, pop in the new one, reconnect. Until I realized the battery housing was not in the engine compartment but in front of the front left wheel. I had to turn the wheel all the way to the left, squat down, reach under one handed and unscrew the splash guard, yank that out from the wheel base, disconnect the battery and then figure out a way to slide it out of the casing without dropping it (still crouched down, fiddling in the wheel well, mind). Once the old battery was out then I had to somehow fit the new battery into the narrow recess with a tire in my face. Ever try lifting a car battery from a squatting position and holding it out in front of you? It really works those shoulder muscles, i tell you what.

In January of this year I moved from Raleigh, NC to Brooklyn, NY because, in short, I felt like I was stabbing the earth - to live somewhere sidewalks hardly existed, public transportation likewise, bicycles had no place on the road, and where I had to drive absolutely everywhere. Also because, even though my car gets good mileage, I felt like gas prices were never likely to come back down.

I am astonished by how little I miss having a car; on the other hand, all the steps up and down to the subway have given me Runner's Knee. So, in these kinds of threads on certain forums, the discussions seems to turn to You Could Do It If You'd Only Try Harder. What, it's ten miles on busy highways after dark? That doesn't mean you can't do it by bike! Be a man!

A person's willingness to make sacrifices turns into a measure of their toughness, even their manliness - which I feel is not only insensitive to older people and disabled people, it also turns the focus to "who can endure the most sacrifices"... when maybe we should be looking at how to change the infrastructure and the systems in place so that you don't have to do those ten miserable miles in the dark to get to work.

mk @ #77, hey, if our illustrious singing mayor has his way we'll have heavy steel-on-steel rail here in another ten years. Throw away that car!

I bought a used GEO Metro with 13K on it in 1998. At last inspection it had 49K on it, ten years later. It's not that I think about driving less, it's just that I don't go very far when I drive.

My Diva Cup rocks the house, and I write in plain text because that way I get the benefit of subversion's merge and conflict resolution features. I wish I could bike to work. I suggest it every time we fill up the gas tank.

Deep value - lasting stuff - good technologies...

*************
Cast iron pans - my mom is using her grandma's - still going strong after about 70 or 80 years. Can be used with flame or electricity - put in an oven as well.

Foot powered sewing machines (yes!) - I see them in use in Shenzhen and still a a few in Hong Kong.

Carrying poles - some people in HK still have them. I remember watching the news a few months ago and a water main burst near a big apartment block and the water trucks came & there were some people who were out there w/ their carrying poles to take their 2 buckets home. Good for carrying lots of things, not just water.

Electric trams - still going strong in HK after 100+ years http://www.hktramways.com/ - double-decked!

Hand-carts - very useful for moving big loads of stuff without a vehicle or a pack animal - seen more in China now rather than here now

Chinese cleaver & whetstone - you don't really need so many knives for regular kitchen stuff & it can eliminate need for meat grinder

Mortar & pestle - can help eliminate need for food processor

Thermos - keeps hot water hot!

Tankless water heaters - will make hot water when you need it. Electric is nice because you never run out of gas in the middle of your shower. Gas is nice because you can still have a hot shower if the electricity is gone.

LPG Cylinders - for the hot water heater or the cooker

Gas hot-plate (hobs) - two rings are great! very easy to attach and get going. Some are automatic, others you light w/ a match.

Gas hot plate -- like the Iwatami burners we use in catering that run off of canned butane? I LOVE those.

Of course, they aren't especially sustainable or deep value, as I see it -- you still need the butane cans. What makes them better than a regular modern kitchen stove?

Deep value doesn't necessarily mean buying different stuff. Sometimes it's just a matter of researching brands (aka "being thrifty, not cheap.")

Most people I know abhor toaster ovens because they "break sll of the time." We've had our (Krups) toaster oven for seven years now, seeing steady use for both toasting and oven duty, and it's still going strong. And because there's only the two of us, that means we don't have to heat up the big oven for a meal.

Same thing with just about anything else— do your research and your purchase will last you for years. Sometimes this is surprising— I still get good use out of my high school solar calculator, which has decided our 100W equivalent CFL is a perfectly legitimate light source.

And (looks around) I actually am still pretty happy with my six-year-old computer. Don't tell anyone, mmmkay?

Let's see -- my van is 21 years old and I drive fewer than 3K miles a year. I do have to drive. I'm disabled and I can't even get on buses here, assuming I could walk to the stop. And how would I get the trash and recycling out and the groceries and such in? I mentioned a reclining tricycle to my nephrologist and she said "Absolutely not!"

I only recently moved to reusable grocery bags -- my grocery store lets you recycle their bags and the WashPost bags and I did that for decades. I bought two of their bags and had to adapt them some (the weight would be too low and make me wobble and I'm not a Weeble) and I always ask the cashiers to balance them weight-wise as much as possible and some do. The one that refused to not only balance them, but insisted on putting everything in one bag "because it fit" was reported. I still put the WashPost bags in the reusable bag and that reminds me to take it with me that day.

After the stroke/coma, I couldn't use tampons, so I used reusable pads. I still have them even though I'm in menopause. Maybe I should repurpose them for rags. (This is also where I buy bras and underpants and my current ones are now uncomfortably large and I need to get more.)

I have three windup flashlight/radios -- one in the van, one in the bedroom, one in the office (it's a small condo, I think that's enough).

A lot of the hand/strength powered tools mentioned here are things I can't use anymore. As Bruce Baugh commented, moving everybody to more of these tools isn't possible. There will always be people who are not capable of using them.

If I couldn't use a microwave, I'd be eating a lot of cheese and bread and fruit. I can't cook anymore. I have about two gallons of trash every week, and most of that is frozen food packaging (the actual trays can be recycled). I have compact fluorescents in the bathrooms that are 21 years old. I do the best I can, but I can't meet an ideal.

Oh, fountain pens. I had one from about freshman year of high school to senior year of college-- the cap fragmented, and I don't know if it's the kind of thing that can be replaced-- and a Waterman Phileas filled with Noodler's, and... okay, I was weak and it was purple, Noodler's has a purple ink that looks kind of purple and it comes with a pen. I expect it to show up by Wednesday. If I don't like the pen, I'll pass it on to someone who does; if I don't like the ink, much the same.

Speaking of, anyone like Noodler's Nightshade? Too red for me. I wanted *purple*.

This post has reminded me to get a damned helmet. I like biking, and this is a good town for it... but I have hair. I didn't take the bike out at all last year because I felt people would hate me more for riding without a helmet than for driving. Time to see how much I'll have to spend for a helmet that I'll be willing to wear.*

A related question (I am full of them today): what *is* proper distance for a bike? I see them all the time, but all I know is that they're very skinny cars, and it makes me so nervous passing them because it's rude somehow.

And the Divacup is amazing. Tampons gave me cramps for years, and not always in logical places. My Divacup has some interesting side effects, but nothing as bad as pads, and once I figured it out, it was so much easier.

On the subject of older cars, I have another: old-people cars. You know the Buick the little old lady bought for her last car and splurged on because she was finally going to get a car she liked, and never drove? I have that car. Seriously. Little old lady and everything. If I get over my bike issues, I'll be driving Milady Buick to the mall once a month and out of town... whenever necessary. Why do I love this car? Because it is made for people who a) are not getting a substandard car for their last one and b) are arthritic or otherwise not fooling around with discomfort. It is such a good car.

*Please do not lecture me on why I should wear a helmet. I am fairly certain I will interpret any comment as lecturing. I know I should. This is why I