primitives discuss frugal living

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11281493

Oh my.

Kaleva (9,599 posts)  Mon Aug 27, 2012, 09:08 AM

My efforts at frugal living

My natural gas water heater has been on pilot only for over 2 1/2 weeks now and I haven't run out of hot water yet. I wash my clothes in cold water only (edit: which I started doing at the end of last month or beginning of this month), take a shower every day and wash my dishes with about 7 gallons of water every couple of days. The pilot flame alone puts out enough heat to heat the water and keep it hot.

All the lights in my house are cfl types and I make sure they are turned off when I don't need them. The only two things I have in this house that have power to them 24/7 is the fridge and charger for my cordless phone. The coffee maker, tv, Netflix & DVD player box, wireless router, microwave and laptop are all unplugged from the outlets when not in use. I stopped using my electric dryer the last time I did laundry. I really need to get one of those clothes dryer racks as i hung my clothes off of nails in the basement to dry.

I cleaned out the pantry in the basement, washed down the shelves, and put up insulation in the ceiling and interior walls. I'll be using that as a cold storage room this winter for the apples I get from my apple tree.

Been working on my garden of 160 square feet to get it ready for next year. I have the bins ready for my worm composter but as i donated to DU this month, I put off getting the worms till next month. In the meantime, I've been cutting up cardboard boxes, heavy brown paper, flyers and any other non-glossy papers I have into very small pieces to use as worm food and to work into the garden beds. I've also been saving kitchen scraps for the same. I have three big maple trees in my yard and I'll use my mulching push mower to chop the leaves to work into the garden bed and put the rest into a pile for use as a mulch next year.

Since yesterday, I've been collecting my urine to use as a fertilizer for the lawn, the shrubs I have and for the garden bed. I'll also use it on the few indoor plants I have.

Going to have a small indoor garden this winter and I'll start small with radishes and with the chives I'll transplant from outside to ice cream pails I have saved to be used for indoor growing. I cleaned out enough room in my spare bedroom and set up a table for the plants to be set there.

The water I have saved from taking a shower has provided more then enough to be used to flush the toilet. I put in a plug in the tub drain before taking a shower and then bail the water out of the tub into a 13 gallon plastic container after the shower. Following Fumesucker's suggestion, I'm going to save the rinse water from washing my clothes to be used as wash water the next time I do laundry. doing that and with using grey water to flush the toilet, I ought to save about 400-500 gallons a month. Next spring, I plan on using a bio-compatible detergent so I can use the excess water from showering not needed to flush the toilet, the water from the bathroom sink and the wash water from the clothes washer to water the garden, shrubs, apple tree, and lawn as needed.

I'm hoping that by using an indoor worm composter, collecting my urine and by using grey water, I'll be able to water my garden, fertilize it and have compost for it without any extra cost on my part and use the excess on the rest of the yard.

Next month I'm going to do much of my grocery shopping on line. I have no vehicle and the nearest stores that have decent prices are over 40 miles away. I'll continue to use the local store for fresh produce, bread, and dairy products.

As for tv, Netflix alone has been fine. $7.99 a month provides me with all the movies and tv shows I care to watch and I haven't rented a movie in months.

Things to do in the near future:

Quit smoking. That alone would save me $80.00 a month. I'm smoking the cheapest stuff I can get but quitting would provide me with the money to pay my property taxes, fire insurance and still have money left over for other things for the house.

Purchase a reel push mower. My gas powered mulching mower is near the end of it's long life. I'd like to keep it around for many more years to use to mulch up the leaves in the fall.

Put in a flue pipe for the woodstove in the basement. The old flue was rusted out and I threw it away. As my ex wants to replace her current fuel oil furnace with a high efficiency LP gas furnace and wants me to do the job (it's the work I did before I went on disability), I'll use the flue and elbows from that fuel oil furnace for my woodstove so that wont cost me anything. I have a bunch of scrap wood left over from remodeling my kitchen after it was wrecked from water damage last winter after my then wife's relative who was living here turned the heat off without telling me about it. The wood is in my garage so I can use it to burn to help cut down heating costs this winter.

Replace windows and doors as I can. The front door pretty much just keeps the wild animals out and prevents snow from drifting in during the winter. The windows, other then the new ones I put in the kitchen, are single pane. This winter I'll be putting on that 3-M plastic window insulation on all the old windows.

Learn how to preserve foods. I can borrow a pressure cooker and my ex knows how to do it. As we still get along quite well, maybe we can work together on such a project.

Things I've learned so far:

Frugal living can be labor intensive. Ten years ago, I could have done all this with no trouble at all but some of it now really kicks my ass. But truthfully, I'm having fun doing it. I look at it as a challenge. To be able to live well on $1071.00 a month (plus the $19.00 in food stamps I get).

Being single and a person who enjoys the simple things in life, my costs aren't that high and the savings I get from what I'm trying to do aren't that much. My food bill is averaging out to be about $4.50 a day. My water bill for this month was $16.00 and that's before I started using grey water to flush the toilet. My electric bill for this month is $19.00. I haven't got my gas bill yet but for last month it was $13.52 so that was before I turned the gas water heater to pilot only (edit) and before I started washing clothes in cold water only. Those costs don't include the standard costs for having the services provided to the house. Costs I can't do anything about unless I decide I can do without fancy dancy water, electricity or gas all together.

Edit: While some of my expenses are quite low, money is still very tight as I'm paying off bills. All of which were incurred when I was still married. We had the money to pay the bills but she wanted to buy other things. She still has those other things and I still got the bills. Shit happens.

Curmudgeoness (8,154 posts)  Mon Aug 27, 2012, 01:32 PM

2. You are right, frugal living is more labor intensive than just wasting everything. Luckily, there is a great feeling from doing things that save money and the Earth. And we are better off when we are doing some labor....good for the body as long as you don't push it too far.

A few suggestions. You may not want to use urine on indoor plants---but you will find out soon enough if that is not a good idea.

If you have a chest freezer, preserving foods is easy. If you don't have one, that is something that I would put on my "to do" list. I will not be without one ever since I have gotten used to it and learned how to use it. The freezer works for less labor intensive preparation of food.

I have hooks in the beams of the basement to use to stretch a clothes line back and forth. I have lots and lots of line space to use for drying down there, and all it cost was the heavy duty hooks and a couple of standard clothes lines. And the lines are up out of the way while not in use, unlike a drying rack that takes up floor space.

Kaleva (9,599 posts)  Mon Aug 27, 2012, 11:19 PM

4. Took your advice about the clothes lines in the basement.

Spent some time down in the basement looking to where I could put up clotheslines and one corner near the washer and dryer will work. Cleaned out the area and found a roll of 30' of 14-3 wire in the garage which I removed the sheathing from. Tomorrow, I'll hand twine the three wires together after cutting them to the lengths I need. I should be able to string up 4 rows of wire at a length 6' each about an inch to 2 inches below the joists using material I have on hand so that they'll be below the joists but still high enough that I'm not hitting them with my head as I walk below them. The only thing I'll have to buy is the clothes pins as everything else I have already.

The basement has a musty smell to it but I'll continue to clean it as best as it can be. I've read today on line how some have used charcoal briquets put in nylons hung from the basement ceiling or containers filled with white vinegar placed around the basement to absorb odors. I like the white vinegar idea as when it needs to be replaced, I can use the old vinegar to cycle thru the washing machine to clean that, to put into sink traps to help keep them cleaned out and/or to kill weeds in my walkway. Basically, I'll be getting two uses out of the vinegar. Frugal and efficient living!

Edit: To clean sink traps with vinegar, get it to a boil on the stove (be aware your house is going to smell very strongly for vinegar so have the windows open) and pour a few cups in each drain. Let it sit for a few hours at least so the vinegar can do its job dissolving gunk in the traps. For cleaning a top load washing machine, first take the drain hose and lay it down as low as possible so that as much water as can be will drain out of the pump. Place the drain hose back to where it should be and then fill the washing machine with hot water at the small load setting along and add a gallon of vinegar. Allow the washer to go thru the wash cycle but shut it off before it begins to drain. Let it sit overnight and then turn the washer on so it can drain and go thru the rinse and spin cycle. Run the washer again with fresh hot water at full load to flush out remaining residue and vinegar.

Curmudgeoness (8,154 posts)  Tue Aug 28, 2012, 08:20 PM

5. I like the vinegar idea. You will have to let us know if it works.

But it sounds like the vinegar will only work to reduce odor and will not fix the primary problem, which is dampness. I have never heard of the vinegar as a help for a musty basement. I was told to use the nylons filled with calcium chloride hung above a bucket, and it really did absorb water. But I didn't like the idea of it and got a dehumidifier instead. Since I get at least a gallon of water per day, I figure I really do need it. And I don't have that musty smell as long as I use it.

I do like the suggestion for cleaning the washer. I think that I would wash some clothes or towels or something in that vinegar water though, and especially when I run the washer again.

Glad you found the clothes line in the basement to be a good idea. I love having mine---it is strung up back and forth all along the basement on one side. Since I am short, it is definitely out of my way. Another suggestion for if the line starts to sag---store hangers at one end out of the way and that will tighten the line. I do that all the time instead of constantly restringing the line. I don't have suggestions for clothes pins----mine are at least 50 years old.

Kaleva (9,599 posts)  Tue Aug 28, 2012, 09:46 PM

6. Got the clothes lines up today.

I don't have much space done there but it's in the corner by the dryer and woodstove. By spacing the lines 8" apart, I was able to string up four lines for a total of 26'. They are an 1 1/2" below the joists but me being over 6', they are still above my head so I have no trouble walking under them. Now I just need to get some clothes pins and I'm in business!

I don't have a dampness problem in the basement but it does have a musty smell. With WD-40, I got the latches on the two windows to work and I had them open all day and also did some more cleaning down there today.

Fumesucker (27,024 posts)  Wed Aug 29, 2012, 11:37 AM

9. If you are going to have a chest freezer full of food put a temperature alarm on it..

A neighbor just lost about three hundred pounds of frozen food because the breaker tripped to their freezer and no one noticed it wasn't working for about two weeks.

All it takes is one incident like that to negate the savings from having a freezer for quite a long time, if you have a bunch of homemade stuff in there it's even more traumatic to lose it..

Curmudgeoness (8,154 posts)  Wed Aug 29, 2012, 07:08 PM

10. Very good suggestion.

I have never heard of a temperature alarm before. I do worry about it, since my freezer is from the 60's....I always expect it to die any day but it keeps of going. But since it is so old, I do check it every day. A temp alarm would save me the trip to "visit" it every day!

Phentex (6,882 posts)  Wed Aug 29, 2012, 10:13 AM

8. This is awesome!

For a while we flushed our old toilets with water from the shower. It wasn't too bad overall. I think this is when the drought was really bad and we were doing all we could to conserve. Eventually we got new low flow toilets and I love 'em!

The window replacement was one of the best things we ever did. Before, the windows would sweat and you could feel a draft around some of them. Some of them had been painted shut and they were a pain to clean. Now, the whole house feels better. When you walk upstairs, you don't feel the air change the way it used to feel. We went with vinyl and cleaning is so easy.

Kaleva (9,599 posts)  Sat Sep 1, 2012, 03:58 PM

11. An update

My gas bill came in and not including the standard charge just to have gas to the house, it was $4.16 which is a little over a dollar less the then last month's bill. As I've had the water heater on pilot only for some time now, I don't think I can get the gas bill down any lower then it is right now although I can't recall exactly when I stopped using warm water to wash clothes and set the water heater gas valve to pilot only.

I think my utility bills are about as low as they can be. Even if I cut my water consumption in half, that's a saving of $8.00 a month. Then with winter coming, the gas and electric bills will go up as the lights will be on more with fewer hours of daylight and the furnace will be running.

There is an old woodstove in the basement and today I cleaned that out. I cleared out an area by the property line which overgrown with wild grape vines and lilac shoots from the nearby lilac tree. There's a pile of wood scraps in the garage from when I remodeled the kitchen which I began today to cut into pieces that will fit the woodstove. I don't know how much wood I'll get from the scraps but I have enough from to pile maybe 2/3 of a cord. There is an old shower curtain in the garage too which I'll use to cover the pile to keep the rain and snow off the pile. That's not much wood but I'll only use it for very cold stretches of days so the furnace doesn't run near steady during those times.

In the previous two days, I used some of that scrap wood to build a compost bin which I put in the area I cleared out and the woodpile will be right next to it. The dimensions of the compost bin is 4' wide by 3' deep by 3' high which is pretty close to the what is recommended by various sites discussing compost bins.

For the compost bin I first put in a layer of cut up cardboard and paper that had filled a big cardboard box down in the basement. Cardboard and paper that I had spent alot of time cutting up with scissors for just such a purpose and also to provide bedding and food for the indoor worm composter later on. I still have another big box still in the basement half full of such cuttings. After putting in the cardboard and paper into the bin, i dumped in two ice cream pails of coffee grounds and kitchen scraps and covered that with leaves I had raked up out of the cleared area and chopped up fine with my mulching lawn mower. Then I dampened the pile with about 5 gallons of grey water mixed with a gallon of my urine.

I've been saving my urine everyday (I produce close to a gallon of it daily) and in the evening I mix it about 50/50 and apply it to the lawn. This has also cut down the number of times I have needed to flush the toilet and the grey water I save after taking a shower has been plenty enough to flush the toilet. I haven't had to use fresh water for the commode for about a week now.

The food bill is averaging about $4.50 a day and it's possible I could cut that down but even if I do, I'd like to spend that savings on more varieties of food. I'm getting a wee bit tired of potatoes, cabbage, carrots, rice, and beans. Last night I was so tired after walking to the hospital to have my blood thickness checked and back (my scooter has a flat tire) and spending the rest of the day working outside, I just made toast for dinner and that's all I had for the day. I was too tired and sore to even wash, cut up and boil a potato and cabbage dinner.

As I've stated in a previous post, my costs weren't that high to begin with before I started doing all of this so I can never achieve a dramatic savings. But I am enjoying it and it is keeping me active.

Kaleva (9,599 posts)  Mon Sep 3, 2012, 09:55 AM

15. The interesting things that are available!

The woodstove is located in the basement and I have one return grill and that's in the living room. What I'm going to do is remove the return duct and also the return drop to the furnace. The heat in the basement will naturally rise up the stairs into the kitchen and also thru the return grill in the living room. I could also turn on the furnace blower occasionally to more evenly distribute the air throughout the house.

In the summer, this will be my 'Yooper A/C' as the basement is much cooler then the rest of the house. With the return duct work removed, turning on the furnace blower will suck that cooler air out of the basement and distribute throughout the house. During the hot days here, I didn't mind one bit going down to the cool basement with a cup of cold coffee and scissors and spending time sitting in a chair there while cutting up cardboard and paper.

Lars39 (17,535 posts)  Sat Sep 1, 2012, 04:40 PM

13. Reading that you were burning wood scraps reminded me of something.

One of the best bargains for wood to burn when I was growing up was wood scraps from the local pallet company. A truckload of good sized chunks of wood cost about 60 bucks. Didn't have to do anything to it but keep it dry. Might be worth looking into if you live anywhere near a pallet company or any other kind of wood company.

Kaleva (9,599 posts)  Mon Sep 3, 2012, 10:47 AM

16. I have an illegal (according to code) setup as far as the woodstove is concerned.

My gas water heater is vented into the same chimney as the woodstove would be. I currently don't have a flue from the woodstove to the chimney.

Insurance companies will cancel one's fire insurance if they do find such a setup and it's also a violation of code.

So I'll be only using the woodstove on the very coldest days and I'll be removing the flue pipe and reinstalling the cap in the chimney opening when I'm not using the woodstove.

But for those who can and do burn wood during the winter, you're suggestion is an excellent one.

Edit: For me to use the woodstove, I have to shut off the gas water heater, remove the 3" flue and cap the hole in the chimney with a 3" cap I already have on hand and then hook up the flue from the woodstove to the chimney. When I'm done burning wood and/or need hot water, I have to let the fire die out completely, remove the 6" flue pipe and cap the 6" opening in the chimney and then reattach the 3" flue from the water heater to the chimney. The insurance company doesn't care if I use the same chimney for venting the woodstove and gas appliance just as long as both are not done so at the same time.

Kaleva (9,599 posts)  Thu Sep 6, 2012, 01:50 AM

19. Saving on heating costs this winter by freezing my butt off

I paraphrased a title of an article I read a few days ago and thought it so funny I laughed for sometime but there's alot of truth to it. A generally agreed upon opinion backed up by research is that for every degree lower the thermostat is set at, there's about a 3% reduction in heating costs.

During the winter of 2010/2011, this house was unoccupied and I had the thermostat set at 50. At the setting, the gas bills for the winter was in the $40 plus to $60 plus range. 50 is too low but I'm going to try dressing warmly and give 55 a shot. I may have to settle on a temp in the low to mid 60's during the day and 55 at night but even that alone will be much cheaper then having it at 72 all the time like I did when I lived here full time years ago.

There's loose fill insulation the attic and it was a pain to go up there as every time one opened the access cover, a bunch of it would fall into the house. There also was no insulation on the access cover itself so a couple of days ago, I started work on fixing that and finished the job yesterday morning. I first made a new access cover and then the loose fill away from the opening. Then using left over 3/4 particle board, I nailed that to the area around the opening. As the loose fill had settled over the years and wasn't evenly distributed, I got my leaf rake and went up into the attic and fluffed it back up with the handle and used the rake to even it all out. After that, I layed down three layers of R-11 batt insulation on the particle board and put three layers on the back of the access cover which I loosely secured with nails and two wire hangers. I know there isn't enough loose fill or batts of insulation to get the minimum of R-48 recommended where I live (R-60 is preferred) for attic insulation but what I did is a big improvement over how it was. As I can afford it, I can add more insulation over time.

The relative of my ex-wife's who stayed her for awhile left three boxes of 3-M window insulation kits. Enough to apply to the 9 old single pane windows I have. At the 3-M website, there's a energy savings estimator where one can enter in the size and number of windows one has plus some other info and get an estimate of how much one can save using the product. My results with the temp set even as low as 55, the potential savings is $122 for the heating season. At 65 during the day and 55 at night, the savings is $137. Of course I'll be burning more gas but with the savings, it wouldn't be much of an increase in cost.

I'm also continuing to cut up scrap wood to burn during the sub-zero days in January. It looks like I'll have just a weeks supply of wood but even that will help cut down heating costs. While it often seems like most everyday here in winter is sub-zero, in reality, there's only a few such days a year like that where I live. Being just a short walk from Lake Superior, the nearness to the lake makes it much warmer here during the winter then even just 10 miles further in land.

So, with little expense on my part, it is quite possible that my heating costs could be well under a $100 a month.

[GOBUCKS]

That DUmmy can save his piss for the rest of his life, and he'll still be in the hole on those stupid, murky CFL bulbs.

[BattleHymn]

Oh man.

Pouring piss all over the potted plants, saving dirty bath water, food stamps, disability, etc... this one has it all!  

What a goldmine!  

[franksolich]

Excuse what's probably a stupid question, but I really don't know.

The primitives use bath or shower water to flush their commodes.

One assumes they fill buckets with the used water.

And then.....?

Do they pour the buckets of water into the tank of the commode?

Or do they pour the buckets of water into the bowl of the commode after filling it?

[GOBUCKS]

Excuse what's probably a stupid question, but I really don't know.

The primitives use bath or shower water to flush their commodes.

One assumes they fill buckets with the used water.

And then.....?

Do they pour the buckets of water into the tank of the commode?

Or do they pour the buckets of water into the bowl of the commode after filling it?

How do you get used shower water into buckets? Where do you store the buckets?

The highest rate I pay, for the first 2000 gallons, is a hair over one-half cent per gallon.

So, sloshing around a forty-pound five-gallon bucket of dirty bathwater would save two and a half cents.

I'm sure I can find enough change down in my couch and chair cushions to make up for a thousand pounds of water.

I wonder if the DUmmy gives his guests an empty jar to save their piss in, or maybe one he needs to have topped off.

[Celtic Rose]

I'll admit that I am thrilled that it has cooled off enough here in Omaha to start turning the air conditioner off.  My apartment is on the top floor of the building and the air conditioners are from the 70's, not very energy efficient at all.  When the temperatures stayed in the 90's I had them running all day, and my electric bill was painful to pay.  We finally got some cooler weather and it is now comfortable with the air conditioner off and the windows open.

[Bad Dog]

Brought to mind the movie "The Aviator" that showed Howard Hughes suposedly saving his urine in milk bottles.

[catsmtrods]

What sticks out to me is, I'm on disability and frugal living is hard work!

Then saving piss and taking a shower!

[RobJohnson]

For a person on disability it almost sounds like this guy has the ability to hold a full time job. Especially if he is able to install a furnace for his ex.

Sounds like fraud to me.

"Disability" under Social Security is based on your inability to work. We consider you disabled under Social Security rules if:
•You cannot do work that you did before;
• We decide that you cannot adjust to other work because of your medical condition(s); and
•Your disability has lasted or is expected to last for at least one year or to result in death

http://www.ssa.gov/dibplan/dqualify4.htm

[franksolich]

How do you get used shower water into buckets? Where do you store the buckets?

The highest rate I pay, for the first 2000 gallons, is a hair over one-half cent per gallon.

So, sloshing around a forty-pound five-gallon bucket of dirty bathwater would save two and a half cents.

I'm sure I can find enough change down in my couch and chair cushions to make up for a thousand pounds of water.

I wonder if the DUmmy gives his guests an empty jar to save their piss in, or maybe one he needs to have topped off.

I'm not sure how one saves shower water either, unless one has a bucket directly underneath the shower-head and leans over and stands astraddle the bucket.  A bathtub of course has a plug, and one can bail out the water there, at least until the water-level in the bathtub is too low to flow into the turned-on-its-side bucket.

And then as for the commode, it seems to me one would have to turn off the water-line feeding into the tank, keep the lid off the tank, and then dump the water in there after each time it's flushed.

There's cases where people use a commode and it gets clogged, and they then dump a bucket of water into the bowl, so as to create more pressure, forcing the clog further on, until it meets a part of the plumbery that it can go through.  I imagine here it can also be done just to force the stuff through even if nothing's wrong.

I'm not sure, as I usually don't have problems with commodes.

This all probably entails keeping buckets of water inside the now-empty bathtub or on the floor, and in at least one of the cases above, the lid off the tank.  It doesn't look to be a sanitary, efficient, way to keep a bathroom.

I think the primitive's spending a dollar's worth of effort to save half a cent on water.

The primitive's probably doing a lot of work to save a few cents, when he could do better dropping his drugs, and saving lots of dollars.

[Karin]

As my ex wants to replace her current fuel oil furnace with a high efficiency LP gas furnace and wants me to do the job (it's the work I did before I went on disability),

Yes indeed.  Disability fraud. 

Where do you start with this long-winded gasbag?  I won't, but this one made me laugh:  "All I had all day was toast.  I was too tired to make a boiled potato and cabbage dinner."     It's the gulag!   

Did this start a "poor war" over there? 

[franksolich]

Did this start a "poor war" over there?

No, it didn't.  It's in the "frugal living" forum on Skins's island, and the poor primitives don't hang around forums that offer suggestions on frugal living, any more than the unemployed primitives hang around the jobs forum there.

What I posted here's pretty much the whole thread, although it took me a long time because I have to copy-and-paste twice; one time to get the primitive and its comments, the second time to insert the date and time of the post.

I hope GOBUCKS is happy with the inclusion of the date and time; it slows down franksolich considerably, but I'm sure the more I do it, the quicker it'll get.

<<always happy to accommodate.

 

[Skul]

Shower water? Bath water?
OK, gotta throw a BS flag on that.

[Karin]

BTW Frank, he'd be pouring the grey water into the tank, not the bowl. 

He does his dishes only every few days.  He's "collecting" kitchen scraps that he intends, some time, to turn into compost.  He's going have a very bad insect problem, and soon. 

The illegal wood stove setup does not bode well. 

[franksolich]

BTW Frank, he'd be pouring the grey water into the tank, not the bowl.

I wondered; this isn't a sort of situation with which I'm intimately familiar. 

He does his dishes only every few days.  He's "collecting" kitchen scraps that he intends, some time, to turn into compost.  He's going have a very bad insect problem, and soon.

I get the impression he lives out in the country, as of course does franksolich.

People who live in crowded areas can't do this, but it seems to me it'd be easy for him to do what franksolich does with compostable kitchen scraps--the minute I'm done, it goes out into one of the four "gardens" here to rot and decay into the soil, fertilizing it.  I don't collect it, I just toss it.

You might recall, vaguely, the now-gone hippywife primitive, Mrs. Alfred Packer, and her jihad against white coffee filters; she alleged they wouldn't decompose.

Now, this isn't true in all parts of the country, but I toss the used coffee grounds and white filter out too immediately after the coffee's done, and given the torrid heat and frigid cold of the Sandhills, the things are already decomposed in two, three, months, no problem.  (It doesn't cause a problem with aesthetics either, given that this property and its "gardens" are so vast.)

[Chris_]

My kitchen scraps go in a large bowl in the freezer.  They get dumped outside later.

[JohnnyReb]

Does the primitive have potted plants or planted pot? ...and apparently pissing on your pot plants increase the THC content. You learn something new everyday.

[Chris_]

... collecting my urine ...

omg. That's just nasty.  This story is hilarious.  I need to print it out so I can read it later and show to others.

Wait, $19 in food stamps?  Come on.



"fancy dancy water"

[Undies]

Every time I hear of someone "saving" energy or living "frugal" I buy another gas powered lawnmower and let it idle out on the patio.

[franksolich]

My kitchen scraps go in a large bowl in the freezer.  They get dumped outside later.

Well, because you live in an inhabited area, one can't blame you for doing that.

But if I'm correct in that the frugal primitive lives in a rustic setting, there's no need for him to bother with "dumping later;" he has the opportunity to dump it as it's gotten.

[Toastedturningtidelegs]

I'm not sure how one saves shower water either, unless one has a bucket directly underneath the shower-head and leans over and stands astraddle the bucket.  A bathtub of course has a plug, and one can bail out the water there, at least until the water-level in the bathtub is too low to flow into the turned-on-its-side bucket.

And then as for the commode, it seems to me one would have to turn off the water-line feeding into the tank, keep the lid off the tank, and then dump the water in there after each time it's flushed.

There's cases where people use a commode and it gets clogged, and they then dump a bucket of water into the bowl, so as to create more pressure, forcing the clog further on, until it meets a part of the plumbery that it can go through.  I imagine here it can also be done just to force the stuff through even if nothing's wrong.

I'm not sure, as I usually don't have problems with commodes.

This all probably entails keeping buckets of water inside the now-empty bathtub or on the floor, and in at least one of the cases above, the lid off the tank.  It doesn't look to be a sanitary, efficient, way to keep a bathroom.

I think the primitive's spending a dollar's worth of effort to save half a cent on water.

The primitive's probably doing a lot of work to save a few cents, when he could do better dropping his drugs, and saving lots of dollars.

There is a way to do it but it involves  quite a bit of expense,work and maintenence.....All things that are like kryptonite to the primitives!

[jukin]

First, unlike 99% of the ecofascists of the left at least this Dumbass is walking the talk. So I have to give it some points for that.

Second, if you want to live like it 1894 go ahead, just don't demand that I do.

Third, if these people call themselves progressives and use the word "forward" to describe their thinking, why do they all of their policies regressive and take us backward?

[RobJohnson]

Does the primitive have potted plants or planted pot? ...and apparently pissing on your pot plants increase the THC content. You learn something new everyday.

 

[RobJohnson]

Every time I hear of someone "saving" energy or living "frugal" I buy another gas powered lawnmower and let it idle out on the patio.

I just turned all my lamps on.

[RobJohnson]

Well, because you live in an inhabited area, one can't blame you for doing that.

But if I'm correct in that the frugal primitive lives in a rustic setting, there's no need for him to bother with "dumping later;" he has the opportunity to dump it as it's gotten.

The DUmmy is worn out from trying to use grey water to flush his shit down the toliet. After all he is disabled and must have some sort of lifting restrictions.
The compost will have to wait.