Life Without Common Electric Household Appliances
I used to love electrical appliances. In my childhood, I liked to see advertising inserts of electronics stores which were delivered with newspaper. After becoming aware of the comfort of life with less electrical appliances, however, I started to get rid of them in my home one by one.
Now it's been more than 10 years since I started the life without TV. No problem at all without such a time consumer. I can catch up with news on the Internet, and as a matter of fact there are very few programs which really attract me. When I want to watch a program, my car navigation or mobile phone do it ―although their displays are very small, they suffice for me.
I'm sometimes told that I must have a plenty of time after dinner if I don't watch TV. That'r right. When I was living with a TV in my dining room, watching it was the only thing I could do during and after dinner time, except for preparations for going to bed such as taking a bath and brushing my teeth. Without TV, on the other hand, I have much time left for exercising, reading books, listening to music, and writing a journal.
What I used to keep in my fridge was milk, cheese, meat, fish, vegetables, and so on. Now I do not eat meat, fish, cheese, and other animal foodstuff and not drink milk (I'm not a vegan as I eat honey.). I grow vegetables in my field, so I can eat them fresh without a refrigerator. The vegetables grown in field without using pesticides or fertilizers don't go bad easily, so I don't need to keep them in a fridge.
Interestingly, food in my home rotted more often when I had a fridge as I forgot what I had kept in it, and out of the sense of reassurance given by the fact that they are kept in a cold place I didn't feel the need to make food inventory in my mind. Without a fridge, on the other hand, I need to keep an eye on foodstuffs that can easily go bad, and I try to do justice to them by eating them while they are still fresh and good.
Especially in summer, things can easily ferment without a refrigerator, so I've got familiar with fermentation and leaned the difference between fermentation and decay. In the beginning, it was sometimes scary to eat something that has unknown mold on it or smell unfamiliar, but I gradually got confident to eat something that has changed from its original tastes and smells. One of my favorites is a soy milk yogurt. It can be made just by keeping pure and organic soy milk with not many raisins in it at room temperature and wait for a few days in summer or a week or so in winter. I like it better than ordinary milk yogurt and eat it three times a day in summer.
I usually don't buy something that need to be kept in a fridge, but when someone gives me such a thing, I go to a supermarket nearby to get ice cubes for free (by shopping and buy something cold like tofu) and put them in a cold box at home, thus creating a makeshift fridge.
When I started to go without a microwave, I felt it a little bit miserable to eat cold rice, but as I accustomed to eating it cold it became normal. I've learned that cold rice actually tastes good, although freshly boiled hot rice also tastes good. As a matter of fact, we eat rice cold when we eat it in a lunchbox (obento) or as a rice ball. It is strange and interesting that cold rice in a ceramic bowl tends to look less attractive to not a few of us. But it really is just a matter of accustomedness, I guess. When I was not accustomed to it and wanted to eat it hot, I used an earthen pot to steam it. Pouring little water, putting a bowl of rice in it and putting it on fire for about 15 minutes ―that's it. We can easily warm up rice without risking our health with electromagnetic wave.
Aside from rice, we usually cook etuvee of fresh vegetables for only one meal, and don't need to warm then over. In winter, we also like to make soup, and needless to say, they can be rewarmed on the stove (I use a portable gas stove.).
I don't like to cook with a microwave ―it isn't comfortable and I believe that things get taste better when cooked with flame.
Useful functions of an electrical appliance gives us a benefit, but it can make people neglectful. If I get hungry and need to cook something quite quickly, I don't have to necessarily cook rice. I can prepare a meal more quickly if I cook pasta or somen (thin wheat noodles).
I had a mindset since my childhood that rice is something that should be cooked with a rice cooker. Therefore, I thought it was incredible when I cooked it with an earthen pot for the first time. When I started to cook rice with a soil pot, it wasn't always successful, but practice makes perfect. As I continued doing it everyday, I gradually got better at it, improving my visual, olfactory, and auditory senses at the same time. You need to see the steam and hear the boiling sound, and if you smell something burned, it is usually done or you need to reduce heat.
Polished rice and brown rice requires different quantity of water as well as heating period and timing of turning up or down heat. You need a little bit of practice, but it is a fun, and I guess it may be quite a rare case that you end up with a big failure with spoiled rice.
I was actually not good at cooking rice with a earthen pot, but after everyday practice, now I can cook it even with a bamboo tube and firewood. Without doubt, rice tastes better when cooked with an earthen pot or a bamboo tube ―and you can eat it in the event of blackouts.
I used to have a big one, and it took up space, which was limited in a small apartment.
Instead of the vacuum cleaner, now I use brooms and a paper-made dustpan, besides sometimes waste cloth for wiping floors.
I like the sound I hear when I sweep the floor with the broom. Used tea leaves are useful to scatter on the floor before sweeping in order not to spread the dust into the air. The dustpan made of Japanese paper and coated with persimmon tannin is flexible to catch dust creditably ―and it is more durable than I thought it would be when I fist saw it.
I had thought that vacuum cleaner was indispensable for cleaning carpets, but I found that can be cleaned to some or significant degree by just sweeping them with a broom.
The broom and the paper-made dustpan look good for me, so I hang them where I can see in the room ―not bad for a home interior, and you can grab them as soon as you get an urge to clean up.
It's a kind of fun to wash clothes by hand, feeling texture and the cool water. At first, I did laundry in the garden under the sun, but now I do it in a house as there are many mosquitoes out there in summer.
When I wash clothes with my hands, I can adjust the way of washing according to what I am washing and know when it's done by seeing the color of the water. However intelligent any AI washing machine can get, they are not as good as human hands, I believe.
Besides, I don't have to be bothered by the task of cleaning or washing the washing machine itself.
Life Without TV Sets
In my student days, TV was often on when I had meals or spent time with my family at home. There were some programs which I liked to watch, but it was a problem that even boring programs attracted my attention and wasted my precious time.Now it's been more than 10 years since I started the life without TV. No problem at all without such a time consumer. I can catch up with news on the Internet, and as a matter of fact there are very few programs which really attract me. When I want to watch a program, my car navigation or mobile phone do it ―although their displays are very small, they suffice for me.
I'm sometimes told that I must have a plenty of time after dinner if I don't watch TV. That'r right. When I was living with a TV in my dining room, watching it was the only thing I could do during and after dinner time, except for preparations for going to bed such as taking a bath and brushing my teeth. Without TV, on the other hand, I have much time left for exercising, reading books, listening to music, and writing a journal.
Life Without the Refrigerator
In the first place, I don't like the sound that refrigerators emit. It was when I lived in a small room of a dormitory for students and a large orange fridge arrived and I switched it on that I noticed the annoyance of that sound. For the first few days after it arrived, that noise disturbed my sleep, and I gradually got accustomed to it. Being able to get accustomed to something annoying may be a kind of human ability, but it must have had a negative effect for my sleep and also for my ears.What I used to keep in my fridge was milk, cheese, meat, fish, vegetables, and so on. Now I do not eat meat, fish, cheese, and other animal foodstuff and not drink milk (I'm not a vegan as I eat honey.). I grow vegetables in my field, so I can eat them fresh without a refrigerator. The vegetables grown in field without using pesticides or fertilizers don't go bad easily, so I don't need to keep them in a fridge.
Interestingly, food in my home rotted more often when I had a fridge as I forgot what I had kept in it, and out of the sense of reassurance given by the fact that they are kept in a cold place I didn't feel the need to make food inventory in my mind. Without a fridge, on the other hand, I need to keep an eye on foodstuffs that can easily go bad, and I try to do justice to them by eating them while they are still fresh and good.
Especially in summer, things can easily ferment without a refrigerator, so I've got familiar with fermentation and leaned the difference between fermentation and decay. In the beginning, it was sometimes scary to eat something that has unknown mold on it or smell unfamiliar, but I gradually got confident to eat something that has changed from its original tastes and smells. One of my favorites is a soy milk yogurt. It can be made just by keeping pure and organic soy milk with not many raisins in it at room temperature and wait for a few days in summer or a week or so in winter. I like it better than ordinary milk yogurt and eat it three times a day in summer.
I usually don't buy something that need to be kept in a fridge, but when someone gives me such a thing, I go to a supermarket nearby to get ice cubes for free (by shopping and buy something cold like tofu) and put them in a cold box at home, thus creating a makeshift fridge.
Life Without the Microwave oven
After I knew the risks of electromagnetic wave, a microwave oven in my home started to look like a kind of dangerous monster, I said goodbye to it when I moved to a new place.When I started to go without a microwave, I felt it a little bit miserable to eat cold rice, but as I accustomed to eating it cold it became normal. I've learned that cold rice actually tastes good, although freshly boiled hot rice also tastes good. As a matter of fact, we eat rice cold when we eat it in a lunchbox (obento) or as a rice ball. It is strange and interesting that cold rice in a ceramic bowl tends to look less attractive to not a few of us. But it really is just a matter of accustomedness, I guess. When I was not accustomed to it and wanted to eat it hot, I used an earthen pot to steam it. Pouring little water, putting a bowl of rice in it and putting it on fire for about 15 minutes ―that's it. We can easily warm up rice without risking our health with electromagnetic wave.
Aside from rice, we usually cook etuvee of fresh vegetables for only one meal, and don't need to warm then over. In winter, we also like to make soup, and needless to say, they can be rewarmed on the stove (I use a portable gas stove.).
I don't like to cook with a microwave ―it isn't comfortable and I believe that things get taste better when cooked with flame.
Life Without the Rice Cooker
One of the benefits of using a rice cooker is its ability of cooking rice at a time you set with the timer function, but it often ended up with failure on my side; it is not always possible to eat at a planned time, for life is full of irregular events and happenings. I often got back home much later than I had planned and found that the rice cooker had kept warming rice for many hours, making it taste not so good.Useful functions of an electrical appliance gives us a benefit, but it can make people neglectful. If I get hungry and need to cook something quite quickly, I don't have to necessarily cook rice. I can prepare a meal more quickly if I cook pasta or somen (thin wheat noodles).
I had a mindset since my childhood that rice is something that should be cooked with a rice cooker. Therefore, I thought it was incredible when I cooked it with an earthen pot for the first time. When I started to cook rice with a soil pot, it wasn't always successful, but practice makes perfect. As I continued doing it everyday, I gradually got better at it, improving my visual, olfactory, and auditory senses at the same time. You need to see the steam and hear the boiling sound, and if you smell something burned, it is usually done or you need to reduce heat.
Polished rice and brown rice requires different quantity of water as well as heating period and timing of turning up or down heat. You need a little bit of practice, but it is a fun, and I guess it may be quite a rare case that you end up with a big failure with spoiled rice.
I was actually not good at cooking rice with a earthen pot, but after everyday practice, now I can cook it even with a bamboo tube and firewood. Without doubt, rice tastes better when cooked with an earthen pot or a bamboo tube ―and you can eat it in the event of blackouts.
Life Without the Vacuum Cleaner
I don't like the sound and smell that vacuum cleaners give out. Mechanical motor sounds are irritating and the sound made when the plastic parts slide or bump into corners of the room is annoying.I used to have a big one, and it took up space, which was limited in a small apartment.
Instead of the vacuum cleaner, now I use brooms and a paper-made dustpan, besides sometimes waste cloth for wiping floors.
I like the sound I hear when I sweep the floor with the broom. Used tea leaves are useful to scatter on the floor before sweeping in order not to spread the dust into the air. The dustpan made of Japanese paper and coated with persimmon tannin is flexible to catch dust creditably ―and it is more durable than I thought it would be when I fist saw it.
I had thought that vacuum cleaner was indispensable for cleaning carpets, but I found that can be cleaned to some or significant degree by just sweeping them with a broom.
The broom and the paper-made dustpan look good for me, so I hang them where I can see in the room ―not bad for a home interior, and you can grab them as soon as you get an urge to clean up.
Life Without the Washing Machine
I've been without a washing machine since 2014, and there's no problem at all.It's a kind of fun to wash clothes by hand, feeling texture and the cool water. At first, I did laundry in the garden under the sun, but now I do it in a house as there are many mosquitoes out there in summer.
When I wash clothes with my hands, I can adjust the way of washing according to what I am washing and know when it's done by seeing the color of the water. However intelligent any AI washing machine can get, they are not as good as human hands, I believe.
Besides, I don't have to be bothered by the task of cleaning or washing the washing machine itself.
