Basic Health Care Maintenance: Part II

Garlic!

In Part I of this series we looked at the actual current situation with health care in America, the impossibility of purchasing usable health insurance by increasing millions of citizens barely getting by, and what regular people can do to help themselves. Now that increasing inflation is fully evident - mostly due to $100+ a barrel oil - more and more people whose incomes are not increasing as fast as the costs of living will find themselves beneath the floor after “falling through the cracks.”

Thus it is increasingly important for people living on a shoestring budget to take care of themselves - to do what they can to prevent disease from striking, which translates directly into less need for expensive treatment after the disease has them in dire straits. And the best way to do this is to make the healthiest affordable choices for the food you and your family consumes on a daily basis.

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Putting Old Clothes To New Use

As the holiday gifting season approaches it’s time to think about some creative ideas for making gifts your friends and family will treasure but won’t cost you much of anything.

At our house we’ve been getting the winter flannels, sweaters, long johns, excess blue jeans and coats out of the boxes and closets they’ve been hiding in since last spring, and I am once again amazed at how much of this stuff we’ve got. I gave up long ago trying to figure out where it all comes from, since it just seems to show up in my laundry, in 55-gallon trash bags in the shed, piled into storage nooks and crannies, etc. A lot of it doesn’t really fit anybody in my family, and I’ve suspected more than once that old clothes stashed away like that reproduce in the dark just like wire coat hangers do…

I’m usually amazed as well at how much of this excess fabric is frayed, holey or otherwise compromised enough not to be wearable without major repair (and they’ll still look pretty ragged). These are the kind of old clothes the Goodwill doesn’t want, you can’t really use, and would most likely end up taking space in a landfill somewhere if you don’t do something else with it.

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‘Tis the Season: Gift Ideas

Yes, the holiday season is upon us again, just when we are trying to adjust what the government does to our internal clocks twice a year (just to mess with our heads, I am convinced). It’s a time of get-togethers and feasts with family and friends, and the sometimes scary specter of gift-giving that puts such a huge dent in people’s tight budgets these days.

So I thought this is probably a good time to talk about gifts that cost little to nothing, but are always gladly received and mean more than just some trinket you could buy at the store.

Does that sound kind of strange in this era of conspicuous consumerism, where even 5-year olds brag to each other about how much their gifts cost (and how that means Santa must love them more?). Probably not to those of us who have given up conspicuous consumerism and found that we like it. Yet I am talking about gifts that hold enough thought and effort on your part to impress even the richest, most disdainful member of your family, who has always considered you a true failure of Capitalism for your choices in life. In my case that would be Aunt Edna and Uncle Francis.

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Filed under Alternatives, Crafts, Family Projects, Gifts, Holidays, Sewing | Comments (4)

Things to do with Discarded Tubs and Toilets

Deborah over at Simply Thrifty blog offered a great humorous post not long ago entitled 6 Uses for Your Old Bathtub, which speaks creatively for the wonderful world of recycling. Having remodeled and expanded our bathroom not too many years ago and installing a low-flow toilet, it occurs to me that some ideas for recycling your old toilet and sink are in order.

You could make a tub sofa or a nice fish and lily pond for your garden or patio, or just do what we did with our old clawfoot tub - we put it out at the edge of the back yard’s campfire, barbecue, campground and horseshoe area to serve as the 9th hole for the top-nine of our disc golf course. It does double duty for icing down kegs, sodas and juice during our annual extended family gatherings.

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Filed under Garden, Humor, Recycling, Yard | Comment (1)