I hate to admit it, but I am agreeing with liberals on something. We are living an unsustainable lifestyle. I have been groggily pondering this for several years, but I didn't wake up until my iPod Touch died. Rather it suffered from reduced usefulness. The battery is going bad in it and it no longer holds a charge. I had heard that Apple has a program for refurbishing old iPods and then selling them for a reasonable price. Apparently reasonable is a term that takes meaning in the mind of the individual considering its meaning. To me, charging nearly the same price as new was not my definition of the word reasonable. They have purposefully engineered their product to die and be useless after 2 - 3 years. I refuse to do that anymore. And then it struck me that for years I had been joking about planned obsolescence, and now I was clearly seeing it in action. What else do we commonly buy that follows roughly the same pattern? I really don't want to play that game anymore. I don't want to make myself poor in order to make some twit rich, all for the purpose of filling my life with crap that I can easily do without.
The difference between the liberal and conservative method of dealing with the problem is that a conservative will say that it is up to the individual to wake up and stop doing stupid things. The liberal will agree with that but go one step further. They will form a committee which will suggest that a new Government agency be formed that will have the authority to make people stop doing stupid things. Gah!
Now that I am well off of the path I wanted to take for this post, I will try to swing it back on target. What the heck does all that have to do with thinking out of the box? Just this: The other day I was on a forum lamenting the fact that I had just spent close to $400 to buy materials to make the raised beds for our new garden. One person reply to my post and asked, "Why'd you do something so stupid?" That's a paraphrase but his point was that I should have gone to the junk yard and found stuff I could have re-purposed. You know what? He's absolutely right! I could have saved a fortune on lumber, that in 5 years time will need to be replaced. Here's a video link which he sent me. I am looking for free stuff now, on Freecycle.org. I hope I can find flagstone and cinder blocks. I am also re-purposing an old chest freezer. One of my projects is to build a smoke house. This chest freezer will make an outstanding smoke house! And that is what thinking out of the box really is! I could easily have used the old freezer as a root cellar as well. These are simple examples of what we can do. And they can be made to look nice as well, if there is a need to do that.
And now I am off to do some work in the yard!
The difference between the liberal and conservative method of dealing with the problem is that a conservative will say that it is up to the individual to wake up and stop doing stupid things. The liberal will agree with that but go one step further. They will form a committee which will suggest that a new Government agency be formed that will have the authority to make people stop doing stupid things. Gah!
Now that I am well off of the path I wanted to take for this post, I will try to swing it back on target. What the heck does all that have to do with thinking out of the box? Just this: The other day I was on a forum lamenting the fact that I had just spent close to $400 to buy materials to make the raised beds for our new garden. One person reply to my post and asked, "Why'd you do something so stupid?" That's a paraphrase but his point was that I should have gone to the junk yard and found stuff I could have re-purposed. You know what? He's absolutely right! I could have saved a fortune on lumber, that in 5 years time will need to be replaced. Here's a video link which he sent me. I am looking for free stuff now, on Freecycle.org. I hope I can find flagstone and cinder blocks. I am also re-purposing an old chest freezer. One of my projects is to build a smoke house. This chest freezer will make an outstanding smoke house! And that is what thinking out of the box really is! I could easily have used the old freezer as a root cellar as well. These are simple examples of what we can do. And they can be made to look nice as well, if there is a need to do that.
And now I am off to do some work in the yard!
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