Double Duty

People start doing homesteading-type activities for many reasons. A couple of the main ones are frugality and a desire to simplify life. In these bizarro-world economic times, no one can argue that frugality (especially if it's virtually painless) makes for a nicer number when looking at your bottom line at the end of the month, after paying the bills. When our family started taking things back to basics, our main reason was to disconnect from being consumers only, and to begin being producers, specifically producers of the things we were going to use.  But after a few months we noticed a marked increase in our savings, so frugality was a nice and very much appreciated side effect.


Outside right now, I have a lasagna cooking in the solar oven and a load of wash on the clothesline, meaning the sun is currently acting as both my stove and my dryer.  We have a lot of different sized mason jars laying around that see duty as canning jars and drinking glasses.  They're also food storage containers.  In the refrigerator, I use them instead of Tupperware containers, to preserve a cut up onion, a half-used jar of tomato paste or leftover spaghetti sauce.  I use them in the freezer, saving chicken broth, limoncello and peach syrup for making sodas with. In the pantry, large half-quart jars hold all our flour, pasta, rice, etc..  Don't get me started on the mason jar thing.  I'm fairly obsessed.  And my point is that the mason jars can do many things successfully, which increases their value to me, as well as their cost-effectiveness.  


Many things can do double duty, if you're willing to get creative. I just ate an orange and now the leftover peel is sitting on the stove simmering, along with a half stick of cinammon and some cloves, to freshen the air in the house. I like it better than any air freshening crap they sell in the store, and I'm sure breathing in the scent of real oranges and cinnamon is probably better for me than whatever's coming out of the spray can or the  liquidy goo plugged into some power outlet.  


Occasionally I peruse the Sunday ads and am amazed at the number of appliances which 1) serve no other purpose than the one advertised and 2) are so easily done by something else -- something most of us already have around the house.  Two great examples are appliances I saw advertised last Sunday.  One was a self-contained cupcake maker, and the other was a quesadilla maker.  These were both stand-alone devices, using their own supply of electricity and taking up either valuable counter or shelf space in the kitchen, 365 days a year.  


I know now why modern man keeps needing bigger and bigger houses -- it's not because we need more space in our bedrooms or family areas -- it's because after a few years we run out of space to keep all our cupcake maker, quesadilla makers and other assorted -makers that have accumulated through the years.


I have a cupcake pan that goes into either of my ovens (solar or conventional) and a Lodge pan that does the same thing.  With these, I can make cupcakes, muffins, quesadillas, and about 100 other things.  


People might say I'm sounding preachy about this, and maybe I am.  So I'll preach it. Do we really need this much stuff?  What might life be like without cupcake makers and canned air freshener?  Damn good, I'll tell you.