Over the holidays I was discussing people going "off-grid" and my interest in learning more about it and how they are faring at it. Later, a friend wanted to know if we were going anti-government. At first, I laughed about the misconstruction but over the next few days I was still puzzled over what I had said to make them think that in the first place.
About a week later, while cooking supper, I was going back over the conversation in my mind once again.
Then bing, bang, BOOM!
Words came in a thread. I began piecing them together. Off grid, grid, coordinates, location, off, off the map, hidden, bunker, survivalist, radical, BINGO!
I was talking about going off the power grid and they were picturing off the map, as in can’t find a trace of me, hiding in a bunker with enough ammo to start a small militia! Then I did laugh, at my ignorance. It took me that long to come to that conclusion! I could see clearly in my mind's eye what I meant when talking to our friend, but conveying it was a little murky.
We aren’t environmentalists, extremists, or even greenies, though I do tend to think of myself as an accidental greenie, of sorts.
I’m not seriously going off-grid. We aren’t set up for it. We do not live in an area with constant wind, so a wind mill would be out of the question. We don’t have a creek with a constant flow of water so a water wheel wouldn’t work . But it would be so neat if it would! Could you imagine having that as a backup in a power failure instead of a gasoline powered generator? Because with a generator we would always be caught without gasoline at eleven o’clock at night. Trust me on this one.
Actually I was interested in off-grid on a more subtle basis instead. Using a spoon to mix batter as opposed to using it’s electric counterpart. Hand kneading dough instead of using a dough paddle on a mixer or a bread machine. Little things.
Why, when it seems like a penny is all your saving,? Well a penny adds into a dollar sooner or later. You’d be surprised how much appliances pull on the meter. And this is one area I can control.
Let me give you an example on the control factor: Let’s say I go to our bank that holds the mortgage on our house, walk right up to John, our loan officer, and say, “ You know John, our house this past month has kept itself neater it seems. I only had to dust occasionally, that creaky floor board didn’t creak as much , and that leaky faucet seems to have healed itself. I’d say that deserves a reward. So how about lowering our house payment this month?”
John of course is standing there blinking at me. One blink, two blink, three…..mentally he is wondering if they changed the date of April Fool’s Day without telling him.
“Ok,” I say, “then how about waving our interest on it this month?”
Again, with the blinking. John is now pondering what fishing hole would yield the most fish this afternoon, having tuned me out after my first suggestion.
What I’m getting at here is you can’t change that mortgage payment. It’s set. As is your car loan and any other loan you have out there in the ether. They do not fluctuate. But we do have expenses that fluctuate. Variable expenses. Namely utilizes. Anytime I can do a manual operation of a task as opposed to the electrical operation, I am saving electricity. Which translates into lower electric bills and less money going out the door.
One other reason, personal reason, for wanting a backup, is that our service isn’t what it used to be. Twice last year our power was off for over 20 hours at a stretch, that’s twice we had to restock the refrigerator for food safety. The eggs, mayo, and meats had gotten warm, had to be thrown out, and that is a waste. Most of the smaller outages happened when there was no weather factor to increase the problem, like high winds, rain, or lightening. Right before Christmas the power went off twice in the same week at the same transformer!?! The company is no longer independently owned and things that are worn out aren’t getting replaced; they are getting patched instead. Apparently there just aren’t enough funds to get things back to the quality they used to be. Which brings me back to off-grid. Whether to have it solely as your supply or just as a back up seems to be not such a "radical" idea after all.
Have a great week!
Kristi.
PS. Every time I think of a bunker, I picture the Teletubbies house.......
Just saying..........
Moving forward in 2012!
