Time is money

This will be my last rant-n-rave for awhile here. So many ads and things claim their product is "eco-friendly". I was at home depot a few weeks back (I know! we aren't going there again. we needed sand for a sandbox) and a sign there said "Improve your home. And the environment." Ok, look. You can't IMPROVE the environment by buying anything. Ever. All you can do is make things less bad for the environment. No car is environmentally friendly. Some are just less horrible than others. I think we like to think our hybrid vehicles are "good" for the planet. But we need to remember that they aren't. They are bad. Just not as bad as a Hummer.

My next idea I've been thinking about lately is this: to live, one needs to work. I don't mean like drive to an office and do a job. I mean "work" as in, make food, clean clothes, repair dwelling, get water. That kind of thing. Many of us go to a job, and then buy convenience items because we "don't have time" to do things the "hard way". For example, people who have young children and work use disposable diapers. They don't have time to wash cloth diapers, dry them, fold them, etc. (it takes like no time, but that's not the point). They don't have time to cook from scratch, so they buy a $3.49 loaf of organic bread. They don't have time to take the bus, so they own a car and spend money on it to drive to work. When you don't have a job, you can save a lot more money (and you know, a penny saved is a penny earned). Of course you need some money. I'm just looking at the facts that our generation works more hours than any other generation in history. Almost all families have two income-earners. We also have more "convenience"-items than any other generation. And we have less free-time. Our kids are more scheduled.

So...less time, more stuff, more disposable stuff, more stuff with planned-obsolescence so we have to buy it again and again, more work, less family time, more time in a car, more stress, more choices that are bad for the environment...

I wonder if more frugal, simple-living could eliminate the need for a second income (unless you make like six-figures or something, in which case you probably aren't too interested in simple-living). Like, I was thinking about working 2 or 3 days a week substitute teaching starting next fall. Its like $150 a day! That would come in real handy! But wait, if I am working, then I need to pay somebody to watch my kids. So that's like $60 or $80 a day right there that i don't earn. Then I need to keep owning my car. That's $400+ a month that i could save if we get rid of it. Then I am not meal-planning and cooking from scratch and we are spending more on food, so that's money not saved. Then I'm too tired to hang up my laundry, so I use a lot of energy and money drying my clothes in the dryer. Then I buy a lot of over-packaged convenience foods from Trader Joe's that cost a lot so I don't have to cook. And on and on. So, like, am I actually going to come out ahead if i work part time? It doesn't really seem like it. If I am baking my own bread right now, cloth diapering, not buying new stuff, working on going without the car, etc.

What if we did even MORE of our own work? Who has time to, for instance, make your own clothes? Do their own repairs? Make their own soap? Who has time to not have plumbing, but draw their own water and live off the grid? Who has time to take the bus, walk, or ride a bike everywhere? Who has time to grow their own food? Make pasta from scratch? Eat dried, bulk beans instead of buying them canned? Who has time to even hand-wash their clothes in a basin? Who has the time to not own appliances of "convenience" such as a microwave, salad tosser, washing machine, dryer, or vacuum, etc.? A person who doesn't have a "real" job has the time to do these things. And doing these things would probably save you $20,000 a year or more. Enough to be, well, a full-time job! This is the kind of work people used to do to live. The kind of work you need to do to maintain a life...before there was such thing as a "job" or "office" to go to...

I'm just thinking out loud. I'm not saying we should do these things. It just strikes me how we buy things to make our life more "convenient." But if we didn't work so much, we wouldn't need to try to "save time", so we wouldn't need to buy things, so we wouldn't have to work to buy them...
How many hours do you need to work to buy a dryer? Or for the electricity to run it? How many hours of work do you need to do to buy a big TV? Or a microwave? Or a fancy laptop? Or a Blackberry(TM)? Or a car, and the gas and maintenance it needs to run? Or somebody to fix your roof? Or a new hot-water heater? Or new clothes for your job? New shoes? A new lawnmower?

I don't know...it just seems like less work and more free-time and less stuff is all intertwined.