Home Built

Well before we bought our home, I had always wanted to build my first house.
I had plans drawn up even though I had yet to do a reality check.
When I did look into how to go about building my first house,
it was instantly apparent that the cost would be prohibitive.


Instead, we bought what we could afford.
Fortunately, what we could afford was mostly not a house,
but a basic building that could offer us shelter.
The advantage has been that we could still build our own, but doing so by adding to and improving what we started out with.


Eight years later and we have accomplished a great deal.
As each year passes, the house grows and changes with us.
It feels like something that we have built, and much of it we have.
There's a long way to go,
but that's something we always have to look forward to.


Of the current house projects underway is a new room.
We only have two bedrooms right now, and we're overdue to have a spare room available for guests.
It's a small room, but it has a window and will be cozy.
This is the first real room to be built in the basement.
There are two other framed in spaces, but their purpose is temporary utility and will be changed eventually.
The newest addition has a well insulated floor and walls, and is a prototype for the remaining rooms that are part of the grand plan.


You may think it would be nice to do the whole job at once in order to live in a finished house,
but I believe it is better to accomplish this slowly.
That allows ideas to be digested and discarded if you find they don't work out.
The floor plan for our basement has been set for a few years, but now it has been changed to accommodate a different plan for the space available to us.



When our house is finally complete, it will be a reflection of our changing lives over the period of many many years.
The design features will have been very well thought out and tested.
Customizing your home is a form of creative self expression.
You can follow the norm or you can make your space suit your personality and lifestyle.
And as much as I look forward to the completed product,
it is the act of building that I find most satisfying.
So to be honest,
I'm in no hurry to finish it up.

The Evil Appliance

Appliances are a scourge.
They have become so much a part of the western lifestyle that they are virtually impossible to abandon.
Appliances save us an incredible amount of work.
Yet they consume a great deal of energy in return for the time they offer.
And they work well; until they break down.

We have several appliances.
Each of them contravene our ideals regarding sustainable living.
There are three:
The dishwasher.
The clothes washer.
And the dryer.
When the weather is warm or the stove is hot, it's easy to skip the dryer.
But when it's damp everywhere and the kids are wetting the beds, and the cloth diapers are being filled and Daddy's work clothes are running out,
the dryer fills in where time simply cannot.

Lots of people do dishes by hand.
But when all of the food is made from scratch, including the bread,
the dishwasher makes the difference between a loving mother and well...
...I shouldn't say.

I couldn't imagine what our life would be like without a washing machine
And that's why it's a scourge.
There should be a better alternative, but I don't know what it is.
If it was just Kira and I, we could be easy on clothes and wash by hand.
But with three kids?
It's hard enough to keep up on laundry with the machine let alone without.

Our washing machine isn't perfect either.
Granted, it has seen some serious action.
But there's weakness in the drain pump.
First of all, it will accept a quarter.
You know, the coin.
It will fit into the pump only one way.
The coin will only come out the same way it went in, which is virtually impossible to replicate.
So after shortening my life removing quarters periodically,
I put a spring in to catch some of the overlooked pocket fodder.
The catch is that it picks up hair and makes the tub foam with soap during a wash cycle.

Out of all of the problems that we try to solve,
the appliances hit closest to home, and have proven to be the most difficult to resolve.
Most of the world does without, so why is it that we cannot?
Is it our climate?
Is it our standard of living?
Is it our lack of cohesive community?
Help me out here, because I don't plan on replacing them,
once I let them die in peace.

















 
 
 
 

Bringing wood in.