I recently found an article titled “Leadership Skills Anyone Can Develop.” It outlines five traits of leaders:
Simple ideas, though not necessarily easy to implement. Read more at the link.
The other morning I had a dream. My wife and I were out walking our dog when we saw a family playing together in their front yard. I’m not sure if we knew these people or not, but we decided to sit down on the side of the sidewalk (which was at the top of their lot, dropping quickly down toward their house).
Suddenly one of their children came running up to us and told us their parents wanted us to come hide with them quickly, because something bad was going to happen. This being a dream we quickly complied, and we ended up hiding in one of their storage rooms–and suddenly it was dark outside. We could see police lights flashing outside, and there was some sort of commotion, including gunshots.
I decided to see what was happening and crept over to the window to peek out. I could see a man just out side the window, and I think he was armed. I ducked back down again, afraid he might have seen me. At that point I woke up, and I lay in bed contemplating the dream in one of those half-asleep states where thought is conscious, but not entirely rational. My biggest concern about the dream was that we hadn’t taken a cellphone with us, and we had no way of calling our boys to tell them not to come looking for us and put themselves in danger.
My wife and I have a love-hate affair with technology. I work in IT, but I’m not a gadget guy like so many of my peers. My wife is Finnish, but in spite of her people practically inventing the cellphone, she doesn’t like using them, especially since they became portable time-wasters. So unlike most people, we look for opportunities to leave our gadgets behind. We don’t want to be connected 24/7/365. People have become too dependent on instant communication, and assume everyone should respond immediately to everything and anyone. They can do without us for half an hour.
And yet as the dream pointed out, there are times when communication is critical. We have had several dogs during our marriage, all of them rescues, and all of them older. My wife usually walks them in the morning while I’m getting ready for work, and there have been several times through the years when something has happened and, for various reasons, it becomes questionable if the dog will make it back home.
As a result we’ve many times discussed the necessity of taking a cell phone with her so she can call me for help. We agree it would be a good idea, but she never does.
Similarly, one several occasions we’ve been out walking and encountered a stray. Many times they have collars with a phone number. It would be handy if we had our phones to just call the owners then and there and spare them and us some worry. But we never do.
And there are Saturdays when I spend most of the day outside working on this or that. Sometimes I keep my phone with me, which comes in handy when my wife wants to call me to lunch. Other times I leave it in the house all day and find hours later that someone needed to contact me.
As much as I hate to say it, we would probably be much more self-reliant if we carried those darn phones with us. But the argument could also be made that not having to have them with us is also showing our self-reliance. Are we just being digital hermits, or is it sometimes a good thing to not have the world always a text away? Life is full of such dilemmas.
I’ve heard of Square-foot Gardening, but IKEA now has something new in mind: spherical gardening.
Read more at the link, but the idea is that the design ensures that all levels get air and light, and you can access it from both inside and out. Heck, it might even make a nice little reading nook or a meditation chamber. It certainly looks like the Yoda version of Darth Vader’s meditation chamber:
I like the idea but, seeing as it’s made out of wood, how long before weather and water make it unstable? We’ll have to check back in a few years and see how well it works.
The plans are available online. If anyone out there has built and used one of these, please drop me a line and let me know how it works!
As discussed here and alluded to here, we finally decided to do something about our inadequate water storage. Fifteen gallons just won’t cut it for four people and three pets in any serious situation. I’d been looking into various options for some time, but finally decided to pull the trigger and get something.
I looked at large-capacity storage tanks (ie. 50 gallons + in a single big container). I looked at small-capacity storage. I discussed the merits of Water Bricks with my brother, who has been using them for a while for their storage. And over time I came to some conclusions. When we got water storage containers, they had to be:
I finally settled on Saratoga Farms’ 5 gallon stackable containers. I did consider Water Bricks, as their design allows for taller and more secure stacking, but I’d been warned by my brother that they can leak, and they’re designed to be stored sideways, which only encourages leakage. Perhaps I’ll invite him to do a guest review on his and how they’re performing. Ultimately the biggest deciding factor was price. For the amount of storage we purchased, we would have spent about a third more for the same volume in Water Bricks.
So we ordered them online, only to find they would be shipping from a local company not more than a few miles from our house. We prefer to shop local, but had already discarded that business, as their prices were too high by comparison. I wasn’t sure why they’re so willing to undercut themselves on Amazon, but that’s their business model, I suppose. Since then I’ve found another company selling the same containers on Amazon, also at a lower price, so I guess they needed to be competitive. But why they couldn’t lower their local price accordingly, I don’t know. They offer free shipping on Amazon, so had they sold at a similar price locally I would have saved us some time and them some money.
The order arrived earlier than expected–always a plus. We had another order scheduled to arrive that day, so we thought it was the other order until a few hours later when the expected order arrived. That evening we unpacked the containers and put them in their expected destination until we had time to fill them.
That time was this weekend. My wife and one of my sons helped. I had heard that the containers seal better if washed first, and since they ship with no lids on it was probably safer to at least rinse them. Someone in the comments recommended filling a separate container with warm water and dish soap that you could then pour into the containers to swish around to clean them, as putting dish soap directly into the container itself would cause lots of foam and take a lot longer to rinse out. I may have put too much dish soap in the bucket I filled, but every container created a lot of foam when I started shaking it around. It did rinse out without much trouble, though.
It might not have been the best idea, but for rinsing out the soap before filling I added some water, swished it around again, and then dumped it out on the lawn. My front lawn isn’t the greatest to begin with, though, so it it probably won’t make a difference.
To fill the buckets, I bought a fresh, clean hose just long enough to reach from the faucet to the containers. I intend to use this hose for nothing but filling water containers in order to keep it as clean as possible. Our house is on city water, which is chlorinated. Though the company that makes the containers suggests buying their water purifier solution, all the sites I checked (FEMA, ReadyUtah.org, etc.) all say that chlorinated city water is sufficient and should last at least six months to a year.
Filling the containers didn’t take as long as I expected. We were able to fill one in a couple of minutes. From there we put on the cap. The caps that came with them have extra bands around the outside that ratchet against the opening on the container to keep the lid on tight. To open the containers you’ll have to tear the band off, similar to the caps on milk jugs.This implies the lids are not intended for reuse, though I can’t imagine there being any problem with it. The containers we already have been using are reusable and have given us no trouble.
Once each jug was capped I tested them to check for leaks. Here we ran into trouble. The very first container I tested dripped from the cap at a pretty steady rate. The second sealed just fine.
As it turned out, close to half of them leaked. I had read in some of the reviews that the caps had to be really tight before they would seal, but other reviews insisted that you wouldn’t need the wrench they sold as part of a starter kit (which they were out of when I ordered them) and most people could hand-tighten the caps without any trouble. I’m only 135 lbs, and don’t lift, so I guess I don’t qualify for “most people.”
After several attempt to hand-tighten the caps (often I could go back after I’d already tightened the first time and tighten them a little more) I decided to see if by any chance my channel lock pliers would open wide enough to fit the caps. The fit–just barely–and I found I was able to tighten each lid at least another five or six clicks beyond what I could do by hand. That seemed to be tight enough, finally, and I didn’t have any more containers that leaked.
Finally I was able to place the containers in the location I had prepared. I’ve heard from several sources that plastic containers react with concrete floors, leeching chemicals into the water. I’ve also found sources contesting that assertion. In my case I chose not to take chances, plus it’ll keep the containers cleaner if they’re not right on the floor. I laid down some two-by-fours and a section of old wall board on top of that to provide a slight base just wide enough to stack two containers next to one another. The containers are 10″ x 11″, and 14″ tall, and designed to bear the weight of additional containers on top.
When stacked like this they really to store efficiently. I’m not sure I’d trust the caps enough to store them on their sides, at least not in an area that doesn’t take water leakage well, but upright like this they should be just fine. It’s recommended you store them in a cool, dark place. I’m not sure that’s as critical with the right containers. Sunlight encourages algae growth, and cooler temperatures tend to preserve most things better, but we’ve stored water in the containers on the left in our garage before, and the water was fine for several years at least.
The key is when you go to use the water, check for two things. First, is there anything floating on top the water when you open the cap. That’s bad; the water grew bacteria. Second, smell the water. If it stinks, don’t use it. If it just smells stale it’s fine. The air in water tends to separate out over time, so when you go to use it you might want to add air back in by pouring it into a sealable container and shaking it up, stirring it well, or some other means of aerating it.
The long-term viability of these containers is yet to be seen, of course, but so far I’m satisfied with the investment. The difficulty in getting them to seal was frustrating, but otherwise they function pretty much as advertised. They are a little heavy to lug around, but the handles are comfortable, so getting them from their storage location to our kitchen to use shouldn’t be an issue. Even I’M not that wimpy!
I will test the water quality in about six months, and then a year, and see how it goes. If there’s a problem I’ll write a follow-up review and/or update this post. But I will admit that I feel better knowing we have a good amount of water on hand should we have any more quality issues with the city system or should we get hit with a worse earthquake (though that in itself might reveal some other issues, such as whether the containers are durable enough to handle falling over without rupturing or compromising the seal).
All in all, these containers seem to be a good storage solution at a decent price. Most containers seem to sell for at least $20 – 25 for a 5-gallon unit. With some bulk pricing these came to close to $17.75 or so. It’s a little pricey for something so simple, and there may be cheaper solutions (like the larger barrels or tanks), but over-all I don’t think it’s too much to spend for peace of mind.
UPDATE – May 8, 2020 – I got some more containers from another source that included a wrench. I also got a back-ordered wrench from the first source that I didn’t realize was coming. It’s time for the Battle of the Wrenches!
When most people think of self-reliance, when they think of it at all, they tend to think of emergency preparedness, homesteading, or living off the grid. True self-reliance, however, encompasses much more than just the external factors in our lives. It’s as much an internal state of being as an accumulation of physical resources.
This was reinforced for me by an article co-authored by Trudi Griffin, LPC, MS on “4 Ways to Be Self Reliant.” I’ll probably revisit this article more than a few times; there’s a lot there, and it covers a lot of ground. The article begins, however, with emotional self-reliance, or avoiding relational dependency:
Although being in a committed, bonded relationship can enrich your life, feeling unable to function without another person could lead to a problem like Relational Dependency.[1] Relational Dependency is a progressive disorder, meaning that the relationship may start off healthy but one person becomes gradually more controlling of or dependent upon the other, which can lead to an unhealthy relationship. Furthermore, self-actualization is needed for personal growth and is thought to be an essential need that motivates our behavior.[2] In general, those who are independent and self-reliant typically survive and function better in society than those who are dependent on others for happiness and sustainability. Taking control of basic tasks and life skills will not only help you stay in control of your own life but will ultimately contribute to making you a happier person.
Some of the steps Griffin recommends:
There is more–much more–to this article. I suggest you read the entire thing…or hang around. I’ll more than likely come back to it again.
I’ve been studying some of the material I have available about all the areas covered under the header of self-reliance. It started to fit into a mental diagram that, the further I went, looked more and more familiar. It finally dawned on me that I was describing Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, or at least the lower 60% of it.
For those of you unfamiliar or having forgotten, Abraham Maslow posits a hierarchy of needs or motivations any normal person needs in order to achieve their full potential. While his theory is open to debate, it’s hard to argue that a person can achieve true self esteem when they spend each day scrambling to obtain enough food or water to sustain them for another day. It’s difficult to provide any long-term safety for oneself if your health is so poor you can barely move.
Having made this connection I decided to redraw the pyramid from a different perspective, establishing the foundations of self-reliance. Not all areas of self-reliance are created equal. I’d argue that if you’re not already providing for your daily needs you stand little chance of providing for your more long term needs. Having an awesome exercise regimen when you have no water only means you’ll die that much more quickly.
Similarly, in comparing this hierarchy with Maslow’s, self-reliance can only take you so far. It may help with your relationships, but it is much less applicable to establishing self esteem or self actualization–though it can at least contribute. But helping you find your true purpose for living? That’s quite likely beyond the scope of self-reliance.
Philipp Guttmann re-conceptualized Maslow’s hierarchy as more of a continuum, which demonstrates some interesting ideas:
Most notable about this chart is the interplay between physiological needs and safety needs. While safety is never completely ignored, initially it doesn’t matter nearly so much as meeting our basic needs. It’s only as we start to regularly and predictably meet our physiological needs that we feel the need for safety more acutely. We’re starting to get somewhere in the daily struggle for survival, and we now worry that someone or something will come along and take it all away, dealing us a serious setback at best, ending our life at worst.
And as we begin to achieve more and more safety, we feel secure enough to start letting people into our lives, building relationships and collaborations that in turn increase our security, reducing the intensity of our need. Now, I’m not so sure we don’t start experiencing a need for companionship and belonging so far down the progression, but that’s just details. The hierarchy is not a empirical, data-driven model. It’s a psychological model of human development.
The underlying concepts, however, apply well to self-reliance. Anyone living day to day undoubtedly starts to desire the means to break out of that cycle. From the first cave man who killed a bison and ate like a king for a day or two only to have the rest of the carcass rot, to the average college student who waits tables to pay tuition, rent, and still eat, everyone longs to have enough of what they need to not have to wonder each day where their next meal is coming from or where they will sleep next. Self-reliance is knowing your needs are covered for a reasonable period of time, so that if something happens to threaten that, there’s time to set things right before your resources run out.
That’s not to say self-reliance is easy. It’s not. Nor is it automatic. Success in breaking out of the lowest level of needs into the second or third. On the contrary, as the above diagram shows, the intensity of a need may decrease, but it remains a need. Just because you’re making enough money to get you through a month with money left in your checking account doesn’t mean you’re not one pandemic or job-loss away from starvation.
That’s the position I nearly found myself in this year. I’m making good money. Our needs are covered every month. I have investments I can tap into if things get tight. But the COVID-19 showed me that sometimes it’s not the lack of money that’s the problem. If the stores are out of things because everyone is panic buying, money isn’t going to solve that problem so easily.
Self-reliance takes work, planning, and sustained effort. It takes focus, and there will never come a time when you can dust off your hands and say, “Done!” It’s not a task, it’s a way of life. But hopefully it’s a rewarding way of life.
“But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it.”
– Rudyard Kipling, “Gunga Din”
A little over a year ago we got a text from our son at the high school basketball game: the local news was reporting that our water supply was contaminated and the city was instructing residents not to drink any of it until further notice. It turned out at one of the pumping stations the machinery that added fluoride to our water had malfunctioned and dumped a whole bunch of it into our water system. That, in turn, may have stripped the inner layer of the pipes, putting potentially dangerous levels of metals in the water. All residents in the affected area (which included us) were not to drink the water under any circumstances until further notice.
As it turned out they had the problem corrected within a couple days, but in the mean time we became aware of just how much water we use–and just how little we had stored. We had three 5-gallon containers to go around for five people and four pets. Had it gone on a couple days more we would have been in trouble.
We vowed then to get more serious about water storage–but we never got around to it. Fast forward a year, and the COVID-19 outbreak came along and revealed more deficiencies in our emergency preparations. Remembering our experience the year before, water storage got moved to the top of the list. We decided to use our government stimulus check to start improving our circumstances.
After some research and some calculations we ordered enough containers to put us in a much better position should water ever become temporarily scarce again. They should be arriving in a couple weeks. By then I hope to have a few things reorganized around the house so that we’ll have places to put all that water.
When we get everything settled I’ll post a review. My brother and I were discussing water storage a week or two ago, and he’s going a different route with his. Perhaps I’ll solicit him for feedback as well.
It’ll be a relief to have that particular deficiency resolved. Water is not something you want to be without. I don’t want to be lickin’ anyone’s bloomin’ boots, thank you.
Over the weekend I participated in a long and noble tradition: cleaning the garage. If there was ever a clear example of entropy it’s the typical garage. You work hard for a day to get it clean, and for a day or two it looks great! Then some leaves blow in from outside. Some mud on one of your car tires falls off. Someone decides to store something there, but doesn’t know where to put it. Someone uses something from the garage, but doesn’t put it back where it came from.
Then one day you realize: This garage is a mess!
Actually, I’d say maybe 50% of all garages even hold vehicles anymore. Most of them get filled up with other things until the vehicles have to park outside. I have fought that battle all my homeownered life. Occasionally I fail. Like a few weeks ago when we decided to sell the kids’ bunk beds and I stored them in the garage until they sold. My car had to park outside. Or sometimes I’ll have a woodworking project in there that takes more than a day or two.
Anyway, it’s a miracle for a garage to stay clean and organized for more than a week. And so it is I’m holding my breath and crossing my fingers. This most recent cleaning job has to make it at least two weeks!
I’ll explain more later, but we recently made some large purchases toward our emergency preparedness, and one of them has to go in the garage, in the space I cleared this weekend specifically for that purpose. Will that space still be there when it arrives?
Tune in next week…sometime…when the purchase supposedly will arrive!
The other one is supposed to arrive today. If so, I may have an initial product review to post up next week after I take it for a test drive.
UPDATE: The FedEx guy has been a frequent visitor today! First he brought something for my son. Then he brought three boxes which I thought were the shipment I was expecting today (though with considerable assembly required). And less than an hour later he brought the shipment I was expecting today in a single box that most resembles what I was expecting. So, expect some posts next week, if not sooner!
The other day I googled (Okay, actually a Bing search) “self-reliance” just to see what I would find. As I mentioned previously many of the sites I used to link to are no longer in existence, and I wanted to know if anyone else is still out there. What I found was a little surprising, at least to me.
The self-reliance sites I found fell largely into two categories (besides the many, many sites dedicated to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous essay): Living off-grid (also, preppers), and food storage.
I was a little frustrated. Self-reliance is much more than food storage, and it by no means involves going off-grid, building a cabin in the middle of nowhere and living on whatever you grown, make or gather yourself. That’s what I would consider self sufficiency, and while I can understand the attraction, most of us will never get there, even if we wanted to.
So let me be clear: when I talk of self-reliance I mean the reliance on ones own powers, resources, etc. A self reliant person doesn’t have to be able to do everything for themselves, they merely need to be able to provide it by some means. It’s not the exclusion of others from our daily living, it’s being able to secure what we need without having to rely on the kindness and charity of others, even if the normal economy is interrupted.
It’s not necessarily being so well off and secure that we can exist indefinitely on our stockpiles of goods, but being able to weather any immediate interruptions in our normal “supply chain” long enough to find alternatives to sustain us for the longer term.
It’s not a matter of country-life versus city-life, though location can mitigate or exacerbate the challenges of self-reliance.
It’s more of a journey than a destination, and it’s different to each person. It’s not something where you can check off all the boxes and declare, “NOW I am self reliant.” Even the off-grid preppers, if you were to pick them up and deposit them in an entirely different part of the world, would likely no longer be self reliant, at least for a while until they acquired the new set of skills needed to survive in a new environment. No one will ever be perfectly self reliant, and no one needs to be.
And that is why site will never be the cure-all for anyone, either. I can’t tell you how to be self reliant. You define that for yourself based on your circumstances. I can tell you what most likely works for someone living in Sandy, Utah, USA, but even then I’m largely telling you what works for me. There will likely be a lot of commonality on the principles we follow, but the self reliant person in New York City’s solution is going to look quite a bit different from mine. And vice versa.
What I hope this site will become, however, is a community, a resource, a place where we can learn from each other, encourage each other, and improvise, adapt and overcome together as circumstances continue to evolve–and they will, as 2020 has already demonstrated in spades.
What this site will never be is a call to abandon city life and heed the call of the wild. While I love nature and the great outdoors, I really would prefer to live in suburbia where most of my comforts are already established and require only a little forethought and preparation to maintain. To be fair, most of the more prominent off-gridders are not advocating that for everyone, either. They’ve made a deliberate choice that works for them, and the bulk of their experience is useful in any circumstance. So This site will also not be a platform to diss the survivalists, preppers, off-gridders, or rural-lifers. To each his own, and to the degree that makes them happy.
After all, the truly self reliant needn’t feel threatened by what others peaceably do with their time and resources. We all have things to give and receive, to teach and to learn, from one another.
At the risk of getting political, I want to share this article. It’s not really about one person, who happens to be a politician, but a contrast in attitudes that are shaping our country. One is self-reliant. The other…is not.
May I suggest that the way of the Braskem America workers is the spirit that built America into the greatest and most prosperous country the world has ever known. It’s also the animating force by which our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and beyond were able to survive and sometimes even thrive in a world far different and far harsher than our own.
– Adam Ford
The attitude of responsibility and hard work. Sleeves rolled up. Playing through the pain. Standing tall as one on whom others can lean in tough times. Whatever needs to be done — just turn me loose on it. I’ll get it done; I’ll figure it out. And keep your handout! I’ll work for my own. And I’ll outwork anyone here. I’m grateful for my job — and I’ll be running this company in five years.