Price increases and shortages

[ducks4you]

If we had adequate battery storage, solar and wind power would be cost effective, but we do NOT.
The technology will come in the future.
It is the large businesses that create products that use batteries who will probably discover How to store a lot more energy that we can store today.
Products like power tools and elecrtic lawnmowers, Roombas, solar powered speed limit signs.
THIS is where new technology comes from.
It is a sore point with me that OUR taxes pay people to Let Fly-By-Night companies, mostly from China build these heavy pinwheels and promise the moon. I should keep track of how many days I look south and NONE of the 48 windmills blades are even moving and THESE are as tall as the St. Louis Arch. They cannot Store any of the electricity that the Make, either.
I don't like copying rumors. I understand that 3 years ago, some (other) WindFarm company was paying their landowners $60K/month for renting their land. I don't think the landowners 1/4 mile south of me get less than that.
That's 1/2 a $million/year and mulitiply that x the number of pinwheels, and it's YOUR tax money being given away.
That's what it Means when they use the word "Subsidies for Clean Energy."
People that didn't vote for them or Ask for them, but have to live underneath them suffer from the low groans and vibrations. Some get physically ill and end up selling a property that they/their family has lived in for many years at a loss.
Our town joined people from the county to the south in sueing to keep them from being built. We didn't Just complain about it.
The dirty judge let them begin building before the suit was settled.
The people in charge of the State of Illinois are chin deep in the corruption and money grabs.
I pray that one storm will take out the 5 that they built just south of town and less than 1/4 mile from out town's water pumphouse. It they are damaged by lighting, usually nobody bothers to repair them.
I met a gentleman recently who used to live in Lichtenstein and he told me that where he lived it was the same, they break and nobody repairs them.
What a racket!

 

[flowerbug]

If we had adequate battery storage, solar and wind power would be cost effective, but we do NOT.

it's being built now and will be so into the future.
and actually wind and solar energy are cost effective enough now that they are retiring coal plants and even some natural gas plants and nuclear plants because the costs are better for solar and wind. with battery storage it makes it even better if a bit more expensive. i'll take a bit more expensive and clean energy generation anytime over coal, natural gas or nuclear, but with the last one at least it can be cleaner if they'll get the storage situation for waste figured out.

 

[ducks4you]

You can compost old cotton clothing, ya know.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

@Pulsegleaner , it's certainly Your call re: clothes, etc.
I realize that not everybody here has a 2 story house, with a full basement and with several attics (one is the cubby hole that I floored,) a 4 car garage, a barn and 2 outbuildings and 5 acres in which to store items.
I got to thinking about creating storage space for those less building/land fortunate than me.
My hay man delivers winter hay to people who keep horses and don't have space to store hay.
I Do wonder if some of them could buy a small building and pick up some free wooden pallets if they stayed home for a single horse show season, but THAT's not my call, either.
It was the LAND and the outbuildings and, especially the barn and it's storage that sold me on this property, and that was 1999, when the economy was good.
I DO think that most of us here have become very frugel and we can All learn from each other.

Well, we DO have a 2 story house with a basement and (one) attic. The problem, of course, is that both the basement and attic are already crowded with tons of, both the remnants of our own past property and the remnants of both sets of my grandparents (since my mom's parents held a rather important position in their field, and were both heavy world travelers and eclectic collectors, most of their stuff was quite valuable, and not the kind of things one just throws away when liquidating an estate. Mom is theoretically OK with selling it of, but just doesn't have the time to go in and see what is what. Plus, I have to train my parents in online selling.) Getting rid of junk is fine, but if you KNOW that something you have is currently worth $10-20,000. you don't just toss it in the trash.

There is also the fact that I AM losing weight currently and so AM re-using the clothes I sent up in previous years, which greatly cuts down on my new clothes budget (I have never tried to be fashionable, so my old clothes and my new clothes are more or less the same.)

But you are right, we DON'T have land. In the event of social collapse, we'd HAVE to move, since there is neither the space nor the soil here to grow enough food to keep even ME fed, let alone me and my family.

I also should have mentioned that, if you ARE a fancy pick eater, a lot of the closeout stores are great places to pick up discount gourmet food. It'll still often cost more than discounted really basic staples (let's face it, there is no one who is going to be selling something like black truffles for $1 a pound.), but considerably less than if you bought it from the fancy markets you would have originally found it in. I can usually find large bottles of premium olive oil for $5-10, as opposed to $20+. Pickings are a little slim at the moment (due to the shipping issues) but it still sort of works.

If you have access to large amounts of something like butter (via having a cow or massive sales) it may also be worth learning how to clarify it and make ghee. regular butter lasts a few weeks before it goes bad; properly made ghee lasts MONTHS, YEARS if you jar it. It's sort of the same thing as the saving lard thing, or tallow, or schmaltz. once you learn to clean and purify it, it lasts a lot longer.

 

[flowerbug]

You can compost old cotton clothing, ya know.

if it is 100% compostable. sometimes the threads are not or some elastic a tag or other parts and then you keep finding them later as you're trying to get things done in the gardens.

i did bury an ancient cotton thin dish towel with some tomato bits the other day, it was more holes than towel, we'll see how much of that comes back up again later, but generally clothes here get worn until they're mostly gone and then i trash them.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I used to wear T-shirts to work outside but switched to button up shirts. I sweat like a pig at hog killing time so the shirts get soaking wet. Even as a kid putting up hay I'd get teased about how much hay stuck to me as I was so wet with sweat compared to other people.

Wet T-shirts can be hard to take off as they tend to stick to my body and can sometimes tear as I try to take them off. So I switched to button up short sleeve shirts, they are easier to take off and generally last longer. It has nothing to do with people seeing MY body in a wet T-shirt, that's their problem.

The button up shirts are either the ones that are suitable for wear in public (my day-to-day shirts) that have worn out or ones I pick up from a thrift shop. Most of my day-to-day shirts are from a thrift shop too, my few nice-enough-to-wear-when-we- go-out don't get worn or washed enough to wear out for years. I don't worry about what colors or styles are current, by the time I'm ready to switch them to day-to-day they might have come back into style.

I try to get 100% cotton shirts, even back when I was wearing T-shirts. When I'm ready to retire a shirt, if it is still in good enough shape and 100% cotton or with some linen, I tear it into strips and use those strips to tie up tomatoes, beans, roses, and such. A lot of those strips wound up in the compost. The parts I could not tear into strips usually went into the trash.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Even when I DO throw out a piece of clothing (which is usually only when it is torn beyond repair, things that I know I can never wear again (like shirts from before I stopped growing) get donated. I try and make sure I remove and save all of the buttons, as it is handy to have replacements when the ones you are wearing lose one, or those rare occasions when you have to replace ALL of the buttons to make the shirt presentable again (this only usually happens when the shirt's original buttons were something out of the ordinary that is hard to match, like the one I use to have with steel ones.) Snaps I ignore as I don't know how to sew them on correctly (and I only ever had one flannel shirt that closed with snaps.)

The way fashion is going, I should really also learn to pick out, save and be able to sew on breast pockets, as it is beginning to look like there will be a point where I won't be able to buy shirts with them.

 

[ducks4you]

It's great to hear how everybody uses stuff until it wears out. I end up burning a lot of stuff when I have a lot to burn, and then the cold ashes get put out under pine trees or fencelines.
I keep 8 levels of clothing:
1) dressiest for special occasions
2) dressy, for church, or something better than...
3) business casual, for signings
4) restuarant nice/5) go to the store nice/for the gym clothes
6) stained and good for outside work, soimetimes I buy new for this, like heavy duty jeans, always on sale
7) wearing out, but good for dirty jobs
8) ready to be worn out and Great for the occasional FILTHY job as their Last job

 

[Alasgun]

@ducks4you; i have two levels of clothes, clean and dirty!

 

[Pulsegleaner]

It's great to hear how everybody uses stuff until it wears out. I end up burning a lot of stuff when I have a lot to burn, and then the cold ashes get put out under pine trees or fencelines.
I keep 8 levels of clothing:
1) dressiest for special occasions
2) dressy, for church, or something better than...
3) business casual, for signings
4) restuarant nice/5) go to the store nice/for the gym clothes
6) stained and good for outside work, soimetimes I buy new for this, like heavy duty jeans, always on sale
7) wearing out, but good for dirty jobs
8) ready to be worn out and Great for the occasional FILTHY job as their Last job

It's been so long since I went to anything really dressy that, if I ever did get invited, I'd basically have to get everything from scratch, new blazer/suit new, dress shoes, new white dress shirt (the most "dressy" shirt I currently have has tiny checks on it. It'd be fine for office wear, but not for a dinner or a wedding) About the only "old" stuff I could use would be the socks and the tie (fortunately, I take good care of my ties now, and since I have always been conservative when it came to subject matter* few have gone out of style.)

*I'm so conservative that, when my parents got me a millefiori inspired necktie from out of the Museum of Modern Art collection, I rejected it for being too loud and tacky! I may get a little free on colors, but when I comes to designs, I stick with basic repeating geometric patterns (the one below is a favorite of mine), Same as basically all my shirts are either solid, plaid, or striped, no pictures (not even on my T-shirts).