apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I love this topic of discussion! The first thing it makes me think of is television...

The prevalence of TV's makes them seem like an essential for most people. I have a TV right now and growing up I think everyone I knew had one, but today it seems like many of the people in my life choose NOT to have a television. It makes me think twice about turning mine on...thank God for NPR!!

I grew up without a tv.

I'm a poet / singer-songwriter and my brother's a fine art / graphic designer / musician. I swear it's bc we had to make our own everything instead of letting our imagination be run by a machine.

I didn't
Yay for the brain.

As for my house, I'd say washing dishes can be pretty theraputic, but I'd never wanna wash clothes by hand....drying's another story.

Though we could live w/o the dishwasher, it sure helps keep the kitchen cleaner with less stress. My 3 teens and their friends are good about putting their things in the dishwasher, I suspect compliance might be a little more challenging and costly in terms of water use, if we dispensed with the appliance.

My dryer, however, broke several months ago and I've yet to fix it. I put up 3 lines in my basement. The teens, who have to do their own laundry, are so much less likely to just toss their clothes into the hamper now that it's a little more work and planning to do laundry, they wear their clothes more than 1x, thereby balancing out the water and electricity used by the dishwasher. :)

I like having a dishwasher, simply because I do all the washing-up in our house - my fiance is 6'6", and bending over the standard height sink does horrible things to his back (can't wait until we own our own home, then we're having a tall person kitchen, with all worksurfaces raised - I'm 5'9"). There are various things that still don't go in the dishwasher of course - Le Creuset, knives, wooden chopping boards, the too-large pans, and some of our glasses (crappy rental dishwasher has a tendency to wreck glasses, so the precious ones don't go in), but doing those isn't too onerous.

I don't see a clothes dryer as any kind of necessity, in fact I see it as a complete waste of time, money and energy, as well as being not environmentally friendly. My belief is that anyone with space to hang clothes should do so (even if that space is on a clothes rack inside). And this is especially so if you have outdoor space - I look forwards to summer each year, when I can go back to sun-dried clothes - bliss! The exception being those who don't have a washing machine at home, and have to go to a laundry - whilst it is technically do-able, I don't think anyone should have to lug wet clean washing home from the laundry, that's several steps too far!

Can't live without a good stove, preferably gas (I've been known to choose homes based on availability of gas), and I need a shower as opposed to just a bath, or one of those dodgy rubber tubes you plug onto the bath taps. I've also discovered that I need some greenery around, whether it be private garden, or simply nice trees & public green space outside - either way, I need to see green regularly or I go a bit nuts. Oh, and a safe space to park my bicycle!

We don't turn the air conditioner on much in the summer, even though we live in super hot in the summer, oklahoma. we turn on a fan or two if needed. we mostly live outside when we are at home. but i do like the heat on in the winter. I am very cold natured. we just moved into a new house with a wood burning fireplace that i am hoping will heat up our whole house. then we won't have to turn on the heat much either. I just visited a friend yesterday that lives outside of the city that goes to the extremes of sustainability. he has an amazing home that he built his self out of almost all recycled steel and other material, has a beautiful vegi garden, outhouse, solar panels, recycles his water. It makes you realize the "stuff" you really can live without.