Lisa Zahn

I dried every load of laundry in the dryer this past week. Every one! My excuse? It was a busy, stressful week and just throwing those clothes in the dryer and letting the machine do the work felt like such a relief. Like a rebellious act, for someone who's been very conscientious about this for the last year or so. And the rebellious part is the thing, because honestly it takes maybe five minutes more to hang my laundry on the clothes racks next to the washer than it does to throw it in the dryer. And the laundry on the racks is already sort of "pre-sorted" so hanging it shortens the folding time, so in a way the time amount is kind of a wash (pun intended). But once in a while, even the best of us gotta rebel, eh? The reason I was so busy and stressed last week was because I've been doing herbal consults. I saw a total of 6 clients last week, and hey that's six more than usual. Because only one or two came each day, the house had to be in a constant state...

On Sunday we used the solar cooker for the first time. It arrived on our doorstep a couple of weeks ago after months of being on back order. Yes, demand is that high, and the company ( Solar Oven Society based in Minneapolis ) is having a hard time getting the recycled plastic materials they use to make their SOS Solar Sport ovens . I like that these ovens are made in Minnesota and were designed with the help of our very own 3M engineers. I decided to buy one rather than make my own because they're so lightweight (less than 10 lbs.) and more dependable than a homemade version--though I know a lot of people are building their own with great success. See my sidebar under "Interesting and Inspiring" for a page of ideas. I also like that for every Solar Sport I buy, some of my money goes to providing Solar Sport Ovens to homemakers in Africa and other needy countries so that the women don't have to ruin their health cooking over an open fire in their tent or hut. Here...

(WARNING: I'M GOING TO GO OFF THE DEEP END TODAY. Knowing full well that you may think I'm absolutely nuts if you don't already, I'm going to talk about Peak Oil . The End of The World As We Know It [not TEOTW, mind you, just AWKI]. And here goes...) So, I started trying to reduce my household energy usage when I signed up for the Riot for Austerity last spring. Honestly, I can't even remember where I heard of it or how I found it online, but I was so intrigued by the idea of it. I couldn't stop thinking of it. Reduce our household energy usage and consumption by 90%. 90%! How was that even possible while still living a "normal" American life? Well, I guess that depends on how you define "normal". But I/we (my family was along for the ride) signed up due mainly to concern for the earth. To do our part to slow or halt global warming. To pollute the air and waters less. To use less so others could have more. Etc. Etc. To do it ...

I got into this blog world after joining an online Yahoo group called the Riot for Austerity last June or so. Some of you have read my posts about that, way on down the list. Funny how trying to reduce consumption has ended up with me spending more time online. One benefit to that is that I now read hardly any magazines. I spend a lot of my reading time online now, which hurts my eyes more but doesn't involve any trees, I guess. Still, I hope someday to cut back on this yet... We have dropped the Riot for Austerity thing--actually I did that several months ago. The email digests I got from the group every day just got too judgemental for me to stomach. It was fun while it lasted. And what has lasted in George and me and the kids are some habits and ways of thinking that we got from the Rioters. (Did anyone ever riot for austerity? Probably not! Our generation is probably the only one looking for ways to downsize.) There are seven areas in which the Rioters are trying to reduce con...