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this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2025
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The larger streets in my neighborhood have wide sidewalks/bike paths. I can safely cycle to two local grocery stores where I also drop off any plastic bags to be recycled, the post office, our Goodwill (used store), and a strip mall with various shops and restaurants. Florida has a horrendous pedestrian/cyclist fatality rate so bike paths are the true limiting factor. Naples is especially bad. It took time to find a safer neighborhood.
I also have an e-reader, but there's something about seeing physical books displayed and handling them that I love. Learn about all your library's onsite and digital services. Make it part if your weekly routine and get to know your librarians. Solarpunk is community. Here I love the free Consumers Reports when researching larger purchases and interlibrary loans for obscure books. As for the physical ownership, I donated over 1,250 books in 2021 that I could easily own digitally or borrow. I don't miss them. Minimalism is a healthier way to live and a tablet with a backup NAS is a much smaller footprint.
I would love an herb garden, so good for you, but I suck at maintaining plants. So I grow what is easy in the windowsill above my sink for now.
Consider used clothing as well. The quality of new has deteriorated to a point where used is often better. I would love strong consumer laws, but would still likely skew used for environmental reasons. I bought my eldest child a used laptop in 2020 with a chipped case for $250. One $40 new battery last year and a free swap to Linux Mint from Windows 10 and it's still going strong (glad your mom likes it too!). What do you run on your home server?
What helps in general is to think in cost per year owned. In the case if the used laptop, I'm at under $60/year. It both encourages wise buying, repairs, and using things longer. It also helps that I block all advertising I can and never read about new electronics. As a result, I'm satisfied with what I have.
I truly believe sustainability is key to a quality of life that maximizes health and happiness. You are taking great steps. I am a planner so I always make sure I have targets and timetables for the next phases to ensure I hit them. As a result, my life gets better every year.
Sounds like you are able to get quite some things done in a bike trip! :)
Yeah, I agree - I definitely think I will start checking out books I want to read as well, and then perhaps maintain a digital copy I find... ahem.. somewhere.. to bring along if I am going anywhere out of my home. Getting to know the librarians is a good tip - they're some of the most solarpunk individuals out there in the mainstream world :)
Just thinking about donating my books hurts me inside, so I have something to work on here. But at least I'm not continuing acquiring more physical books at the moment, even though it hurts a little to miss the last three books in the Discworld City Watch series in my shelf...
That's in any case a great start. I am certainly no wizard at maintaining plants, but I try to learn and accept that I will fail at some things. But I am also pleasantly surprised at other things, and I am developing a green thumb for every second I spend tending to them. I just planted some new seeds the other day for basil, cilantro and thyme, and waiting for them to sprout now. Also looking forward to pre-cultivate tomatoes, chilis and peppers in late winter / spring so they're ready to be planted on my balcony when the weather allows it.
I buy very few clothes, but my main painpoint is pants and shoes - they literally fall apart in no time, and it is infuriating... Previously my strategy was to buy new, but wear them until they fall apart to avoid having to buy much stuff. But when it falls apart within a single season, it is getting ridiculous.
Nice! A great favor to your child to introduce them to the world of FOSS :)
On my server I run Nextcloud, Jellyfin, Audiobookshelf, FreshRSS, Forgejo, Kiwix (not much used yet, but I have a downloaded copy of Wikipedia early 2024 somewhere that I will put on it) and I am also playing around with some monitoring services (Grafana with Prometheus, InfluxDB and Mosquitto for some custom sensor projects I am working on). I also have a dedicated RPi4 that runs Home Assistant with Music Assistant (which allows me to use my old Sonos speakers that I bought when I was younger and more naive).
Agreed (or in some cases cost per usage) - for me, it makes it much easier to place a proper value on it. When doing the purchases I made (that I described in my original comment), I tried to make a point out of doing proper research and permitting higher cost for higher quality products that should last for a long time or that allows me to repair the device, and avoid any kind of lock-in to some cloud subscription or similar. I most certainly have been fooled in some cases, but I think overall several of the purchases should last me a good while and should minimize that cost per year.
Cheers! Let's continue on and challenge ourselves on what is really needed for a healthy life. My goals for my next phase is at least very clear: pay down my loans ASAP, and this includes hefty cost control. I had porridge for dinner yesterday, and I felt so incredibly stupid for not realizing that it 1) tastes very good when topped with some nuts, fruits and honey, 2) is dirt cheap and 3) is as fast to prepare as instant noodles. I will be having this at least twice a week going forward.
Books were my weakness, but I accepted I had to cull after two moves and the reality that liberty and sustainability require minimalism. Don't deprive yourself though. Finish your series. You'll pry my Calvin and Hobbes and Tintin from my cold dead hands. Whereas I didn't need a physical copy of 1Q84; there's no pictures.
I can recommend heavier weight selvedged jeans if you want pants that last, but they come at a price. Line drying and cutting washing frequency by airing between wears extends the life. For shoes, I am either in AllBirds which hold up well (wool uppers with longer lasting treads) or leather dress shoes with goodyear welts that I have resoled every three years. I haven't bought new footwear since 2023, though grabbed some jeans in Japan for cheap a few months ago.
I love your self-hosting softeare and one day when I have time, I want to build the same. I'm simply time-poor right now between job and kids. I miss RSS feeds.
Eating healthy makes you feel better and saves money. Kill your high interest debt as quickly as possible and the sodium and saturated fats in instant noodles are terrible. Oatmeal, rice, and pinto beans are cheap in bulk (seal the bags well with binder clips), easy, fast (you have to soak the beans for a day but your labor time is maybe five minutes with a pressure cooker like the InstantPot), and healthier. I target <50% of the daily recommended maximums for salt, sugar, cholesterol, and saturated fats, and my blood work shows it works.
I still have my copy of 1Q84, and it does take a lot of space... For now I won't buy new books. I haven't bought much the past two years except for a handful of cooking books (which I do like to have physically). I think books I tend to look up stuff in are where I will draw the line in the future. We'll see about culling - for now there's not really much gain (except maybe some money if I am able to sell them), but if I could reduce it before my next move, that would be beneficial.
I've had a steady journey on this front over the past maybe 3 years - renting a small VPS or getting a SBC like the Raspberry Pi can get you started quickly if you go the route of Docker. I got into this from a privacy point of view. Really disliked being exploited by these big tech companies, and it kinda went from there. I'm my own cloud provider now, my own media streaming service, my own code repository hosting service etc.
My diet is not really that bad, but my main issue has been finding those really quick meals (like porridge has turned out to be). I would find myself too frequently rationalizing buying takeaway. Spent roughly 100€ a month on this. Turns out to be a much lower hanging fruit than I had anticipated.