Streamlining America

these are times

Why is the average life expectancy in the USA ranked 36th in the world? Now that is a question for the politicians in DC and your state capital! Link to the world life expectancy chart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

I have been away from this blog for several years working on other projects. Way back when, I wrote a little entry about smaller houses being better for many reasons. Taking this idea to a higher level is the Small House Society. Please let me know what you think of their ideas.

OK, you are a good citizen and vote every election day, including all the primaries and any other opportunity you have to exercise your right and obligation as a voter. But as many voters today, you feel frustrated, it just seems not to make much difference no matter how good of a voting citizen you are.

Rejoice with the power you have to change things and vote every day, in fact vote several times a day through your actions and your economic clout. Everyone of us has the opportunity and responsibility to manage our own lives to benefit both ourselves, our family, friends and the community in which we reside. The later you can define as broadly as you wish.

If you feel the price of energy is too high, use less. If you don’t like the impact of big box stores in your community, buy from your little local merchants. If you don’t like processed foods, buy organic. There is a huge number of choices that we make everyday that in the long term effect the kind of world in which we live. Take responsibility for your actions and vote for what you think is right and benefits your community. Some of the choices involve how much you are willing to spend, but that is a choice you must excersise according to your means.

So start voting today for the world you want to live in tommorrow.

When we, the two of us, added onto our little vacation cabin to make it our full time home, we added over 2000 square feet of living space, over 1000 square feet of cellar and an attached two car garage. Actually what we added was a lot of underutilized overhead. The space has to be cleaned, maintained, heated, paid for and is taxed forever.

Recently we have visited two different friends who have purchased in recent years new homes. They are large spacious homes, with lots of wasted space and are not very interesting architecturally. They have made the same mistake we did; larger is not necessarily better.

Please think about this and comment if you have fallen into the same trap. More about this trap in a little while.

Time is our most valuable resource. Once you have consumed time, it is gone, it can’t be saved up and it can’t be recovered. As we talk about Streamlining, let’s never forget the importance and the value of time.

My concept of conservation is not doing with less, but having more while using fewer resources. How can that be?

Where does conservation fit into Streamlining? In an era of skyrocketing energy costs, why do you hear nothing about conservation? In the past this became a national goal and strangely over time did appear to drive down energy costs. Could supply and demand actually work again in our economy? Certainly they do, but why hasn’t the government encouraged energy conservation? Would your lifestyle be better if energy costs were at the level they were four or five years ago?

This is the first in a series of thoughts about Streamlining America and in response to the question I posed a couple weeks ago about streamlining vs. bigger. The choice of the term “streamlining” was made, in my mind, to reflect both improved efficiency and quality in the lifestyle and structure of America. The idea that “bigger is better” is a concept that should have run its course ~ it is more of a marketing /sales concept than a reflection of what is best for the long term. Always Question and your comments are welcome.

In any process, if you had the choice of making it bigger or streamlining it, in general, which would you choose?