>> One family’s buying local for a year. The Levitch family in Scottsdale, Arizona, has pledged to shop and eat only at locally-owned spots for all of 2011. So far they’ve discovered a stash of 26 white tank tops from Old Nany in their closets, found local free range chicken — and located a “local” gas station. (via The Green Life)

>> A Re-Nest blogger’s started a Living with Less project. The 10-week program begins this week, so you can actually join Landis for the decluttering task.

>> Green fashion designers can sketch for a cause — and a prize. The Red Carpet Green Dress winner will get to walk down the red carpet at the Global Green pre-Oscar party in Hollywood — as guests of Suzy Amis Cameron and James Cameron, no less! (via Ethical Style)

Photo by Eugene Peretz

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There’s a bittersweet poignancy to reading “Possum Living.” On the surface, the book, first published in 1978, has a plucky, can-do attitude that puts a festive panache into the idea of simple living. Subtitled “How to Live Well Without a Job and With (Almost) No Money,” “Possum Living” is like a manual for the bon vivant homesteader, written by a happy-go-lucky 18-year-old who goes by the pen name Dolly Freed.

The mood of the book is unabashedly cheery: Quit the rat race, free yourself from consumer culture, enjoy lots of free time, and live off the land — all while drinking homemade moonshine! “Possum Living” outlines one way to quit the rat race — complete with fresh local recipes, money-saving DIY tips, and a lot of common-sense knowhow.

Read between the lines, though, and “Possum Living” tells a more worrying story — of a girl raised in poverty by a father who seems to like his drink too much to be able or willing to hold down any job except the most impermanent of gigs — who was so lonely that he let Dolly quit school at the age of 14 to play badminton, help with the chores around the house, and drink moonshine with him.

Dolly puts a cheery, matter-of-fact spin to the story, but the reason she ended up homesteading with her father in a small property outside Pennsylvania is because her mother left with her brother. Why? Her parents fought all the time about — you guessed it — money. And while Dolly makes bunny raising, carp fishing, moonshine distilling, and dilapidated home rehabbing sound like a lot of fun, a reader can’t help but wonder if all this “not working” on Dolly’s part got to be a real grind after a while.

Homesteading and country living’s often idealized, but reading “Possum Living,” I really wondered if I could handle the serious amount of repetitive manual labor involved in living “simply.” Of course, perhaps it’s that different people experience different tasks as “work” or “play.” There many be those who look forward to chicken defeathering and degutting as a natural part of Sunday dinner. Others might enjoy learning how to do the task once but cringe at the thought of digging out poultry innards with their hands on a weekly basis, while yet others are vegan specifically because the thought of poultry innards makes them puke. If you’re in that latter category, “Possum Living” isn’t for you — because Dolly’s homesteading experience includes lots of eating of meat — including fresh roadkill!

Whatever your diet though, and however you feel about homesteading, “Possum Living” will make you think long and hard about “work,” “play,” and time well spent. “We tell people who have the Protestant Work Ethic and might resent us that we have to go fishing whether we want to or not, for food,” Dolly writes. “But the truth is, we always do want to.” The real question is, would you want to too?

That said, many tips in “Possum Living” don’t require you to wrestle with existential questions — or even change your lifestyle drastically. So you many not be ready to move to a dilapidated fixer upper out in the middle of nowhere, start hunting for your meat, and raise rabbits in your basement. But maybe you’ll enjoy shopping at thrift stores, bicycling more for travel, and preserving extra veggies from your backyard garden — ideas readily embraced by many an urban environmentalist today.

The 2009 edition of “Possum Living” comes with an afterword from Dolly, now more than 30 years older and wiser. Not too long after “Possum Living” was published, Dolly quit possum living and went to school — and became an aerospace engineer for NASA, later changing careers to work as an environmental educator. A mother of two in Texas today, Dolly says she’s since rethought some of her advice — like the sly suggestion to perhaps consider slashing neighbors’ tires to avoid the cost of hiring a lawyer to settle a dispute. She also reveals that — because of his worsening alcoholism — she cut off all contact from the father she spoke of so lovingly in “Possum Living,” not speaking to him for 14 years until his death by crashing a car into a tree while intoxicated.

Though I picked up “Possum Living” because of my interest in simple living, the book actually was more helpful in helping me appreciate my life as is — and appreciating life in general for all its strange complexities, even for the would-be anti-consumerist homesteader. Curious about Dolly Freed’s life today? Read a feature on at Paige Williams. “Possum Living” is available in bookstores now for $12.95.

Earlier:
>> 5 Simple living bloggers show downsizing can be smart-sizing
>> Book review: The 100 Thing Challenge — Unclutter a path to happiness

Image via possumliving.net

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When I wrote about my low electricity bill, most people responded positively. Some asked curious questions about my apartment, others shared their own efforts to reduce energy costs, and yet others left encouraging messages to keep up the good work.

Then there were the haters.

Now, I generally resist writing back to unnecessarily negative commenters, trolls, and flamers — but I thought you might find it amusing to read about how angry people can get about other people saving energy. One confident but misinformed reader who went by the handle “itsme” wrote:

every electric company in the usa has a minimum charge, it is impossible that you only had a $5.00 bill, you may have lowered it somewhat, but you lowered your standard of living to that of someone on the street along with it.

A Nicholas Maniatis was equally incredulous. He wrote on Facebook:

I… call SHAM on the $5… you haven’t referenced any blogger or website and have given NO data… Your posting is WORTHLESS without credible documentation. MNN is a sham when it comes to credibly documenting their assertions. Siel Ju… yes… this is a BS call. Show your bills for a 6-month period.

Well if you read the post, Nicholas, you know that I don’t have bills for a 6-month period because I only started getting bills when I moved a few months ago. At my old apartment, electricity was included in the rent — so moving finally gave me a chance to see how much energy I was really saving.

In any case — Without further ado: Here’s another snapshot of my last electricity bill.

Top photo by AZAdam

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If you’re like many Americans, you’ve made efforts to unclutter your home or life — perhaps even made uncluttering your New Year’s resolution. Maybe you’ve gotten so frustrated with your messy desk, crowded kitchen, and inaccessible garage that you’ve started dreaming of getting rid of all your belongings and starting over from scratch.

Then perhaps you might like to try the 100 Thing Challenge. That’s the name of the year-long feat achieved by a San Diego native called Dave Bruno, who managed to whittle down his belongings to fewer than 100 items — and lived to blog about it. That book’s now been turned into a book published earlier this month: “The 100 Thing Challenge: How I Got Rid of Almost Everything, Remade My Life, and Regained My Soul.”

Now, before you get too excited, Dave’s 100 things didn’t count up a lot of objects that you and I may consider individual things. For one, the guy lives with his wife and two daughters — and anything that could be construed as shared property, be it the bed or eating utensils, were not entered into the count. Then he counted whole groups of items — most notably, books — as a single object.

That meant Dave’s 100 things mostly consisted of adventure gear for surfing, hiking, and camping — plus his everyday clothes. (more…)

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How are your green New Year’s resolutions going so far? I’m proud to say that so far in 2011, I’ve saved money, time, and the environment by not shopping — except for food!

No, I haven’t joined The Compact. I’ve simply signed up for the week-long No Impact Experiment — a crash course of sorts in happy eco-living. Each day tackles a big green living topic — and the experiment kicked off yesterday by tackling “Consumption.”

Consuming less can sound like deprivation — but unlike many eco-challenges, the No Impact Experiment’s goal is very happiness-centric. The goal for “Consumption” day, after all, is to “live a fuller and happier live by buying less stuff.” And now, just after the holiday season spent fighting for parking spots in the malls and getting craptastic cheapo gifts from acquaintances, is when many people kind of want to consume less anyway.

So I tackled “Consumption” excitedly! Each day comes with a list of a few homework assignments, and for “Consumption” day, I was to write down a list of everything I planned to buy this week — and whittle it down to just the stuff I really needed. Thus, I was able to shorten my list down to a single item — Food!

Then I hit a snafu: I got sick yesterday afternoon. So I ended up also having to buy drugs at CVS.

Still, I’m proud to say that one day into my No Impact Experiment, the only things I’ve bought are honest necessities — food and drugs. Of course, reducing consumption for a single week is quite easy; I could just save my binge shopping trip for next week. That’s why the tip to write down everything I plan to buy at the beginning of the week — so I can take a moment to evaluate what I really need and resist impulse purchases — is something I plan to adopt for the rest of the year.

Luckily, I live in a teeny-tiny apartment that pretty much makes it impossible for me to buy a lot of stuff. That, plus my general abhorrence for clutter, helps me avoid buying crap. What do you do to smart-size your life?

Earlier:
>> Get happy by spending less: Buy tomorrow, moodle today
>> Book Review: Get Satisfied — with simply enough
>> 5 Simple living bloggers show downsizing can be smart-sizing
>> An Anti-capitalist video guide to happiness
>> My tiny life: Downsizing my kitchen for simple, healthy living

Update, 1/10/11: Don’t miss the rest of the No Impact Experiment series! Here’s Day 1: Consumption, Day 2: Trash, Day 3: Transportation, Day 4: Food, Day 5: Energy, Day 6: Water and Day 7: Give back.

Photo by Quinn Dombrowsky

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