Off-grid and frugality hacks

We were called to live in interesting times of steeply increased measures of connectivity and uncertainty. This places possibility and opportunity into our hands to an astonishing degree, but also means we never know what tomorrow will bring. The Wheel of Fortune is spinning like a roulette wheel.

In these circumstances simplicity is our friend — as it is in any life circumstances, but profoundly welcome and useful in these.

I have found that simplicity makes whatever resources come my way go further — so simplicity inherently furthers the Gospel imperative of loving our neighbour; the less we need, the easier it is to share.

Another aspect of life foundational to loving our neighbour is Earth-friendly practice. Intensive consumerism generates toxicity; naturally the rich don't want to live next door to the poisonous waste they generate, so they dump it in places where "nobody" lives. "Nobody", in this context, means the poor. Consumerism is political not least because you can be reliably sure it has a social justice component: it disadvantages the poor. The more Earth-friendly our practice, the more we will have taken care of the opportunity of those who have less than we do in the first place — at the very least we will leave them forests and clean water and wild plants, and you can live on that if required to do so.

Some people looking for a frugal and Earth-friendly life have chose tiny-house-dwelling. That massively appeals to me, but I am married to a spouse who wouldn't like it, and in addition I am not over-keen on spiders, rats or damp, and with tiny house dwelling I bet you get plenty of all three. So I have opted instead for sharing — which makes money go further, cuts down on consumption, and is cheerful and friendly as well. Plus anyone who has banisters needs no tumble-drier even when it's raining.

It means (as a tiny house would) my space is limited, and strategic thinking is required.

Here are some of my solutions.

Because UK water treatment companies dump raw sewage into the sea, and Brexit has made this worse because European companies were our sewage treatment partners, and our government has recently given the nod to this noxious dumping practice, I am interested in taking personal responsibility for off-grid sewage processing.

I live in a tiny room (7' x 9') but I have space for an ensuite bathroom.

If, like me, you have a small income, then (also like me) probably you are from time to time the happy recipient of gifts and windfalls — so, low income with occasional boosts. I have used my occasional boosts to buy a Travel Berkey filter for my room and an Outdoor Revolution Nature Calls separator toilet.  I love that the toilet doesn't smell, and the Berkey gives me water on tap. Human excrement is laden with bacteria of course, so (unlike urine) you can't just tip it in the compost heap. It has to be neutralised with bokashi bran or treated with suitable Earth-friendly bacteria-and-enzyme stuff. Once treated, it can be safely composted without risk of spreading disease.

So that's an off-grid hack which is not cheap in the start-up (the Berkey filter and Outdoor Revolution loo are not expensive for what they are but do cost a lot of money), but going forward it is frugal, because the water companies charge per unit, so over time your living costs come down. It's the thing of taking advantage of the occasional money boost to safeguard your ongoing frugality options.

This is my clothes washing system.

This is for making tea in my room — bio gel chafing fuel is made from vegetable waste and has non-toxic fumes.

Another good hack — and I love this — is dried food.

Because I live in a shared house there isn't much space for my food. Here's my larder.

The dried food makes it go way further

It's also great for cooking-for-one, as it doesn't go off quickly like fresh food, and you just put as much as you need into the pot.

My next plan is to take my washing up off-grid. Sun comes strongly through our east-facing kitchen window next to where my food is stored, so I can stand water on the windowsill in the sun, to be warm for washing dishes. I'll use filtered rainwater from our water butts (we have 750ltrs worth of storage for rainwater from our roof, and have a large-size Berkey filter for it in our bathroom). As we pay for tap water but not for rain, even though we had to buy the water butts it will be another instance of using the occasional boost to safeguard ongoing frugality.

I'd rather have a water dispenser with a tap, for convenience and because it would look neater, but they are all either square (or round; either way wider than our window shelf) or have the tap on the short end not the long side (for stability I suppose), so they won't work for the space I have.

Another crucial asset in figuring out a simple and Earth-friendly way forward is slowness. You need time and space to consider all this kind of thing, and gradually sort out what will and won't work for you — it depends on such matters as how well you are, if you are sharing or live alone, if you have children or other dependants to care for, if you have a garden or not, what financial resources are available to you; stuff like that. It's a very individual path; you can learn from other people (I love Jon Jandai's channel on YouTube, and all the videos from people who live in tiny houses or in RVs), but in the end you shape your nest and craft your path according to your own body and soul.

What each tune we hum should have in common, if it is to honour God and further the reach of Christ, is that the whole choir of our singing should work for social justice and the wellbeing of creation. It should be Earth-friendly and part of loving our neighbour.