The Great Turn Around

I am feeling the morning sun coming in from the window. I have a lot on my mind these days thinking about what is wrong with our world.

My last blog post was to take a chance to see if I could put my concerns out there to see if I could figure out if what I was feeling is as bad as it feels to me.

Thank you for your participation from my last blog post and responding in the forum and emails with your wonderful and informative comments.  Due to the forum responses, which anyone can go there to read,  I am now getting an understanding that this is a global problem.  Is this the same feeling that you are having?

 We cannot blame our government for our many problems if this is a worldly problem.  So are we in the early stages of a Depression?   The very wealthy have a much bigger grip on our countries than we realize and never think that they do not use people in harmful ways to become this kind of wealthy.  If things fall apart they will be the first ones to come in and scoop up foreclosed homes in a foreclosed second to get even more wealthy as they did during the great depression so they can get even more control of wealth.  

Small businesses are trying their best to stay afloat, and it seems to us there are more businesses closing again.

This is a large cattle trough full of ginger.  Only a few things did well in our garden due to drought and heat but we keep trying.

The turn around.

What we need to do is stop, turn around and go back to a point that we can do what we need to do to control the things we can. Learn how people survived difficult times, this is not like the 1930's and 1940's, we have disadvantages because our world is very different than it was back then.

Today we do not have as many people living on farms. Technology has now gotten into the wrong hands and this should have been thought out before it became this big.  

A business can go back to the old way of doing business if only they would.  Grocery stores should have spare check out counters with the old hand crank registers so they can still operate when systems are down and pads with carbon paper to write purchases down so they can check up at the end of the days as they did long ago.  There is no reason for a complete shut down when the old methods work perfectly well.  

We cannot play follow the leader because many of our leaders are not stable. We play follow our ancestors and learn from their successes and mistakes that have already happened.

This picture was not this summer but a couple years back. Wanted to show you different methods we have tried to grow food in a small space with more shade than sun.

So while people are struggling to find affordable housing when there is none and struggling to put food on the table with every single item out there with inflated prices, I feel that it is time for people that are not wealthy to make the Great Turn Around and do what is necessary as those generations did before us.

In the forum here on this blog,  Rachael M and QBC discussed multi-family living.  

In the past, especially during the 1930's and 1940's when times were extremely difficult, families had several generations living together. Charles family had three generations living in one household for many years.  They lived here in our town that we live now. Charles Great Grandparents, his Grandparents, His Mother, a Great Aunt, and a few other family members.  His Great Grandmother had the largest house so they all lived there. They lived together until the economy was better and they could manage to start over in their own homes.  They did what they had to do, and put their money together to get through this difficult time.  During rationing it was actually better to have more people in a household since each person received their own rations.  It did not matter if you were wealthy and had the money to pay, you would not get a rationed item without a ration stamp.  

It was not all roses and beautiful but they made it through and made memories they talked about the rest of their lives.  Charles came into this world when they lived in a old chicken house.  It was actually a small block building that they turned into a place to live because that was all they could afford during this time.  The family has always told stories about living in the chicken house.

Madge talked about the long walk they had to get to the grocery store and back. Charles uncle wrapped his tires during the rationing years because they needed the rubber that made tires to fight the war and tires were rationed.  I read in the old newspaper during the war that people would jack up their cars and remove their tires at night  so no-one would steal them. 

During the great depression some people put cardboard inside their shoes because of the holes in the soles of their shoes.  We can see that this went on for many years but everything changes eventually, we have to learn how to ride the waves to float when necessary.

In todays time it is difficult to understand what you can do when you need to.  Throw out the ego and just do it.

When things get difficult it is time to dig in and figure things out.  I have written and re-written the budget.  I have thought of everything I can think of to cut back and plan for.  But we cannot predict the future, right now we have a fast developing hurricane just below us to our southwest. There are acts of nature we cannot control.  But we can be optimistic  because worry leads to nothing but more worry.  I have turned this into a challenge and now I am setting in place everything I have learned from our history studies to live like my generations that made it through the tough times.

My daughter use to have a booth, actually two booths in a very large antique mall. She would find things at yard sales and thrift stores and put them in her booth.  She would paint and repurpose things and had many dishes and items from the past.  Each month was different with sales and some months it was difficult to pay for the booth rent.

The surprising thing though, she sold stickers.  Yes, small stickers, those cute stickers that children like and she sold them for a small price but she sold so many stickers that she would make her booth rent.  So we started saying to each other that the small things add up to be a big deal.  The place went out of business due to hurricane damage and ceiling damage.  My daughter was sad to lose her booths and the social aspect of going up there and talking to the other vendors and people she met.

Since then I have never forgotten how the smallest of things add up.  The water dripping at the faucet, unsealed windows that let cold air in or lose the heating and cooling inside. Unnecessary trips to the store, wasted food, leaving things plugged in or turned on.  Charles and I unplug most everything during a electrical storm because of the cost to purchase a new lamp or router or something more major that can be ruined by a close lightening strike.

Turn things off in the rooms you are not in. Use portieres (curtains at the doorways).  We do this to control our heating and cooling. Use blankets in the winter, hot water bottles, an electric blanket will keep you warm instead of heating the whole house.  These things do matter, they are like the stickers and when the household bills come in they are less because of being watchful and careful.  This modern time we live we are losing the realness of life and existing on expensive comfort where we do not feel the temperature changes and have things in all kinds of convenient ways that is making us lazy.

Buy only what you need. Use only what you need. Take only what you need. Put back what you can. 

Take a washbowl bath in your bedroom as they did in the past if you want to truly experience what it means to live like the past.

In my great grandparents house, they had a bed in every room including the kitchen.  They boarded people that needed a bed to sleep in.  Now this was a time when it was common for people to take in boarders.  It helped them to make a little bit of money and helped the person that needed a place to board.  This type of boarding was normally done when workers were in the area that needed a place to sleep. They did not have apartments and places to live as we do now so this was a different time.  But what they did worked.

Today we are not allowed to live in our home in the city without water and electricity. We must pay for the service but they cannot make us use it. I say use the minimum that you will have to pay for and no more to keep your city utility bills down.

Widows that needed a way to be able to keep their house,  turned their house into a boarding house.  Boarding houses were very popular long ago. Prices are so high now that I can see this being a new old option, with a background check of course.  We have a friend that lives in another state and last year his circumstances changed and he found himself in need of a place to live but everything was too expensive.  He actually found a house that a lady rents out two rooms.  He has a bedroom, a shared bathroom and use of the dinning and sitting room.  He works full time at a grocery store and quite long hours so this is just what he needed.

As mentioned in the forum by commenters, young adults are having a difficult time today finding affordable housing.  It takes multiple people to share an apartment to be able to afford one but from what I am seeing is that is getting difficult to do this because if one or two leave, the others are left with higher part of the rent and getting along and responsibilities seem to be an issue for some. 

Maybe it is getting time to convert the attic into an extra room or even a place above the garage as they did in the past. Many people are already at this point.

Start a small garden as they did during world war 1 and ww2. 

Wear clothing more than once or twice, take it off and hang it up to wear again.  We wash our clothes more than is necessary unless you get extremely dirty.  

Something else brought up for discussion in the forum was the cost of participating in society.  This is something that we need to think about.  We have reached a point to where this is becoming a real problem that we can no longer afford to participate with society. There was an agreement with that comment.  If we combine another comment, "the disparity between the obscenely rich and others seem to be getting wider and wider each year".   

We may not be able to afford to participate in society but there is always room to be neighborly and share some fruit from our trees or a bit of our harvest with someone that would appreciate it.  This is what they did in the past and if they had nothing to share, they did visit one another.  If you have a yard and can afford plant a few fruit trees.  

I feel that the reality of what is happening has not reached the wealthy but if this continues it will become their new reality when no one is able to purchase anymore. If this is nothing but a set back and will get better it is a strong enough warning to wake us up to work towards being more prepared. 

Our medical system is broken and this does not seem to be limited to just the United States from what we have read in the forum. I do not recognize where we have gone with medical care.  We had a wonderful doctor for many years in a simple office and he would talk to us and asked questions during an exam and actually examine us.  One day we received a call that he had died from a blood clot on his first day back to work following shoulder surgery.  He was making rounds in the hospital and simply dropped to the ground in the hallway.  It has been a medical nightmare for us since our doctor died to try and get care.

I don't know what will become of this, but something we should do anyway is to sign up for first aide and CPR classes, stock our first aid, stock our first aid supplies and do the things that need to be done to empower ourselves to handle a crisis. This is something smart to do anyway because if we have a natural disaster or something else we need to know the basic things to do.  We have a first aid cabinet and two drawers of bandages and supplies. 

Also, we need to take care of our bodies, make our homes safe to lessen risks of injuries and falls.  Slow down and be mentally present when we are working on things so that we do not to make mistakes that could cause an injury.

Eating healthy is expensive and to many, this is unaffordable. So try our best to avoid the food that we know is not healthy and choose the things that are healthy.  A bag of carrots, a head of cabbage is much better than a pack of sodas or a bag of chips. 

In other words, get our life as simple as we can to a more affordable point. Try to stay healthy, develop better relationships and help to figure out what we need to do to help our younger generation. 

Most important, once we are as prepared as we can be then relax about life and take the bumps as they come in as practical way as possible. Help one another and be the first to offer. 

I encourage you to read the comments in the forum because they are very informative and give a perspective of what is going on around the world and the situations of many different occupations where we get a better perspective of their issues. We people from all levels of education, occupations and where and how they live.  We have different age groups, I would like to hear from more younger people so we can understand where they are in their journey with this economy.  This is a great study and you can keep your comments coming in this post or the last post about this subject. 

I also want to thank you all for not making political statements, this has been wonderful to discuss such things without political opinions and this has led us to a better perspective. 

We have established that the economy is not great.  Lets put our thoughts together to what we can do should the economy gets worse. 

What would you do if the economy gets worse?  Do we need a better back up plan for just in case?  

Grandma Donna