Live With or Live Without Conviences
We get so used to modern living with electricity, running water, gas and electric stoves and a store or shopping center close to home that we can't imagine that it's possible to get along without these conviences. My family and I lived for eight months in the Arizona desert, and it is possible to live without modern conviences and even fun.
How many times have you turned on the shower and stood there for 20 minutes while gallons of water flow over you and then disappear down the drain? You may not be paying for the water, but the electricity to heat it costs quite a bit. When water is scarce, you can get just as clean by sponging down with a gallon of water! As a matter of fact, my wife, two boys and I used only 65 gallons of water per week, to drink, cook, and bath in.
Cooking can be fun and save money when your away from modern conviences. We had a coleman stove that used white gas, and by cooking most of our meals, and heating our water over a campfire, we used about one gallon of fuel per month. That fuel only cost about $4.00.
Electricity is probably the most needed convience in modern day living. Without it you can't turn all the lights in your house on, run the dishwasher, watch television or listen to the radio. Being without these conviencies can be terrible, right? WRONG!
A coleman lamp will use about one gallon of fuel a month. You only need it on for a couple of hours each night to finish the supper dishes and read a little. It also helps to take the early morning chill out of the cabin. After all, when you don't have TV or radio, or electrical appliances, night time is for sleeping. You also get up much earlier, feeling more rested.
The boys night-lite was the full moon shinning through the windows, and music to lull them to sleep with was provided by the coyotes yelping on a distant hill.
We came away from the desert knowing that living without modern conviences isn't something that everyone could do, but everyone should try sometime.
Buddy wrote this story for one of his English Journals back in 1986. Costs have gone up some by now but the idea was to live on as little as we could and he had fun calculating those costs then! I also want to add that around Christmas time we had a small tumbleweed as our x-mas tree. We set it up on the top of our stepvan's engine cover inside. We had a visit from one of my sisters and her family x-mas day. That morning the boys also told us they heard BELLS sometime during the night! hemmm???
How many times have you turned on the shower and stood there for 20 minutes while gallons of water flow over you and then disappear down the drain? You may not be paying for the water, but the electricity to heat it costs quite a bit. When water is scarce, you can get just as clean by sponging down with a gallon of water! As a matter of fact, my wife, two boys and I used only 65 gallons of water per week, to drink, cook, and bath in.
Cooking can be fun and save money when your away from modern conviences. We had a coleman stove that used white gas, and by cooking most of our meals, and heating our water over a campfire, we used about one gallon of fuel per month. That fuel only cost about $4.00.
Electricity is probably the most needed convience in modern day living. Without it you can't turn all the lights in your house on, run the dishwasher, watch television or listen to the radio. Being without these conviencies can be terrible, right? WRONG!
A coleman lamp will use about one gallon of fuel a month. You only need it on for a couple of hours each night to finish the supper dishes and read a little. It also helps to take the early morning chill out of the cabin. After all, when you don't have TV or radio, or electrical appliances, night time is for sleeping. You also get up much earlier, feeling more rested.
The boys night-lite was the full moon shinning through the windows, and music to lull them to sleep with was provided by the coyotes yelping on a distant hill.
We came away from the desert knowing that living without modern conviences isn't something that everyone could do, but everyone should try sometime.
Buddy wrote this story for one of his English Journals back in 1986. Costs have gone up some by now but the idea was to live on as little as we could and he had fun calculating those costs then! I also want to add that around Christmas time we had a small tumbleweed as our x-mas tree. We set it up on the top of our stepvan's engine cover inside. We had a visit from one of my sisters and her family x-mas day. That morning the boys also told us they heard BELLS sometime during the night! hemmm???
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