Self sufficiency

This is about becoming less dependent on others to meet your needs. Could get quite deep this topic, but we won't do that here.

Goods: A simple example - build a veggie patch and learn to grow your own fresh, organic, cheap vegetables instead of relying on the supermarket to supply you. There are numerous personal benefits from doing this and you reduce your costs and exposure to toxins into the bargain. You also reduce all that carbon from the farming, fertilisation, pesticides, transport, processing, packaging, cold storing, distribution etc. etc.

Services: Try to provide your own services rather than relying on external contractors. Home maintenance and housework are common examples. Of course, not everyone has good DIY skills, but it is possible to develop them with practice. This is an example of reskilling, learning to do things for ourselves which our parents or grandparents used to commonly do when we were children, including growing food, food preservation, knitting, sewing, handicrafts etc.

Transition Towns is a growing movement around the world and this 'resilience' one aspect of their approach to life with peak oil and climate change.

The common response is 'I don't have the time to do this stuff, better that I pay someone to do it for me'. Fair enough, but this is a bit of a Catch 22 situation. Often, we are short of time because of the demands of our job. It's often quoted that Australians now work the longest hours in the OECD countries. Why is that? Lots of reasons, but the bottom line is we work for money.

We need money to pay for stuff, so the more stuff we want/have, the more we have to earn to buy or maintain it. Where we make large capital commitments to homes or cars, then these loans can lock us into busy jobs where we are afraid to be without employment because we can't make the payments. Lots of the stuff we buy is driven by want rather than need, wants that are generated by slick marketing and advertising campaigns. If we could be happy with more basics than the biggest/newest/best, then we'd save a lot of money and reduce our dependency on earning from a full-time busy job.

Clive Hamilton/Richard Denniss' book Affluenza is all about this and the research that shows that we do not get happier with increased salries, after a certain point is reached . . . And see this recent article on 'time poverty'.

Of course, the more stuff we consume, the bigger impact we have on the environment. The Story of Stuff site has a great bunch of (short) videos on these topics.

What do we do?

Examples:

• Our own house work and gardening.
• Home renovation and maintenance.
• Other DIY.
• Grow some of our own veggies and fruit and herbs.
• Prepare our own meals from basics.
• Try to repair stuff rather than throw it out when it has problems.
• Rarely spend time in shopping malls.
• Generally to live relatively simple lives, not cluttered with consumerist items or any desire to have them.
• Minimise our financial commitments to ensure we only need one earner in a low paid/part time job in order to maintain our chosen 'lifestyle'.

Baby plum tree

Orange bush

Tomatoes and vege/herb garden