Episode: 1311
Title: HPR1311: Modern Inconveniences
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1311/hpr1311.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 23:22:02

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Hello again, HPR, I had such a good time recording the other two podcasts this morning that
I thought, while my son was taking a nap, I would try to record one more, see if I could
sneak it in.
This one sort of hit me as inspiration struck, it's not really technology related, it's
more about a lack thereof, I was in the backyard hanging clothes on the clothes line and I thought
I would talk a little bit about modern inconveniences.
I like to do things in manual operations, I don't always like to have modern machines and
computers do things for me.
There's something cathartic about doing things with your own hands and I think two few
people spend enough time doing manual processes these days, everything's automatic, everything
happens for us, it's rare to find people that are self-sufficient and it's been nice
to hear some of the podcasts here what people are talking about, how to be self-sufficient
and how to do different things.
Some that come to mind is the television antenna one and the campfire, although I know the
discussion about the campfire was more about social anxiety, I learned a lot about self-sufficiency
in that, so I thought I would talk about a random assortment of things that I do that
are manual processes or that unchain me a little bit from commercial things to some degree,
a better way to put it prior, save a little money by putting in a little extra effort,
so first to talk a little bit about what inspired this podcast was my clothesline.
We always had a clothesline in the backyard when I was growing up and just about every house
on the street had a clothesline and I know in a lot of countries, clotheslines are still
a common thing and at least in my neck of the woods here in Arkansas and the United States
is a very uncommon thing to see them and the clotheslines around here have recently been
taken down in my neighborhood and one day I randomly decided to line dry a pair of pants
on a whim and hung them from my son's playset in the backyard and when I retrieved them
I forgot how much I like line-dried clothes, they're often kind of stiff and they have a very
distinct odor that I quite like and thought that I would invest in a clothesline, so I went
shopping around, there's several options that can be had very inexpensively, you don't
have to hang anything permanent, I mean really any line that is not metal which will rust,
of course an impart rust into your clothing and not a solid cotton because then it may
never dry and it will deteriorate quickly but any plastic coated metal or excuse me, plastic
coated line will strung between two objects will be great for hanging your clothes but there's
several styles you can purchase you can just buy some clothesline and hang some stakes or
there's an umbrella style, the option I went with is a retractable clothesline mounted
on one side of my home and I just placed a hook in my son's playset and I hang the clothing
between the garage and his playset, I also have a collapsible indoor rack that's quite nice and
great benefit of that is that in the winter if you hang at least one load of laundry once in a
while in your home it will help with the humidity quite a bit, will be so dry in the home.
Couple little tips I guess on hanging your laundry, you may want to use some fabric softener in the
wash because your clothing will come out quite stiff, I find that it's best to hang as early in
the morning as possible, some people have their thoughts on direct sunlight, I don't have a lot of
choices to where I placed my line so for part of the day it's in direct sunlight, part of the day
it's not, clearly the drier and hotter the day, the better the clothing will dry but you can dry
in almost any temperature, I stop around 30 to 40 degrees, at that point it's not going to do
you any good, it'll take far too long to dry and your clothing will probably freeze, we've been
drying our clothes on the line also for long because ironically enough as soon as my retractable
line came in our dryer broke and I have just simply not taken the time to fix it because we have
the clothes line and it's working quite well and eventually I will buy a belt and fix the thing,
but for now we'll continue to line dry my clothing. A couple more tips on that, hang your clothing upside
down so hang your shirts by the portion that's nearest your waist and then hang your pants by their
legs, we tend to have heavier materials toward the top of our clothing and when that is mostly
exposed to the wind and not clipped against the line it will dry quickly, you also avoid having
marks from the clothes pins, the clothes pins, if you hang it by the shoulders or by the belt loops
they will of course get stretched out. Speaking of clothes pins, any old clothes pins will do,
I like to use wooden ones, I like to use wooden ones with a spring, I don't like to use the
wooden ones that are simply a dowel with a groove in them, don't leave your, don't leave your
clothes pins on the line, if you leave them on there they are prone to rotting and they'll deteriorate
your line and it's also a little uncouth to leave your clothes hanging on the line, I really
like your clothes pins hanging on the line, if you are worried about people seeing your unmentionables
the best way to handle that is invest in three clothes lines, run them parallel to one another,
hang your normal clothing embedding on the exterior clothes lines and then hang your undergarments
on the middle clothes line and then the neighbors won't know what you're wearing under your clothing,
the added benefit of that is you have more space to hang more stuff,
a trick to conserve clothes pins is to use essentially one clothespin prepare of things,
so if you're hanging a pair of pants and then a shirt beside it you would clip one leg to the line,
clip another leg to the line, so two clothes pins on that one pair of pants, then take your shirt
and unclip one of the legs and clip both the shirt and the leg together and then apply a clip
to or a clothespin to the other side of the shirt so that you are using one clothespin between two
items, this will allow you to conserve at least one clothespin per item and if you're like me and
don't have a lot of clothes pins this is a very handy technique, another technique is if you
have a huge pile of laundry you can do what's crowding you can crowd the the clothing rather than
pulling them tight and stretching them out on the line, allow the top of each item the top which
would be the bottom if you're hanging them upside down to droop a bit just so that the fabric doesn't
touch other bits of fabric and that will give you a few inches of space between and you can get a
few extra things up on your line, talking about laundry brings me into I like to make a few things
around the house to save a little bit of money and one of those things we make is laundry soap,
I also like to make my own deodorant and I make my own mouthwash, the laundry soap is a pretty simple
concept, detergent is generally added as I understand it for a foaming agent and most detergents that
you purchase there's even detergent in toothpaste which is causing it to foam up, we like to feel
clean when we have a foam of soap so or it helps us feel clean so it's added it also gives you a
visual cue for how much soap you've added to something or how you're cleaning something
but I find that most commercial laundry soaps are full of water if they're liquid and full of all
kinds of fillers if they happen to be powdered so we happen to make our own powdered laundry soap
it's quite simple we do equal parts of borax and washing soda now washing soda is not baking soda
baking soda is sodium bicarbonate and I believe that washing soda is sodium carbonate
coincidentally you can make your own washing soda by baking baking soda in your oven I'm sure a
quick internet search will show you that but we just like to buy a big box of it once you have
those two things then you will need a soap of some kind I tend to clean myself with a
a used Castile soap is both a shampoo and a bar soap so we take a little bit of Castile
soap considering it's nothing but some oils we will grate up Castile soap and put just enough
in there for cleaning you're clearly going to have substantially more borax and washing soda
than you have of actual soap and my wife likes to purchase I don't even know what you would call
them a brand called purex I'm not affiliated with them they have these washing crystals that
simply impart odors into the clothing pleasant odors and she likes to throw a little bit of that in
there and we find that by we only use about a tablespoon to two tablespoons of this soap per load
close come out very clean we're using substantially less soap and so we come out quite a
head on money washing soda and borax is is inexpensive Castile soap is generally inexpensive
the most expensive part is the the the scented crystals that are placed in there and
we have a lot of money and one of the buckets that we make will last us for months and months
versus weeks and weeks so I mentioned also that I make my own deodorant this came about because
I was looking for my spray antiperspirant deodorant in bulk one day and found a can of it on an
online retailer and there were comments so one of the comments was from a gentleman talking about
aluminum and deodorant giving you cancer or some other carcinogen persisting and that he makes
his own deodorant and I thought that was a pretty interesting idea was not so concerned about
the cancer portion but the concept of making making my own deodorant really appealed to me so I
looked up this recipe and after some trial and error I settled on making my own deodorant and
antiperspirant did this for cost saving not for any health reasons but it's it's worked out quite
well so my recipe for homemade deodorant and antiperspirant is two parts baking soda to one part
arrowroot arrowroot can be had at most any store I know definitely health food stores I imagine
you can probably find it in big box stores if you can't find arrowroot cornstarch will do in a pinch
I find that the texture of arrowroot is more desirable than that of cornstarch so there you go two
parts baking soda one part arrowroot apply it liberally under the arms has absolutely no odor to it
and you will be left without odor too if you want to have a pleasant scent other than your own natural
scent you know apply some cologne you can also I've heard that you can mix that with coconut oil
and form a paste and then put your favorite essential oil in there to provide a scent to it
I also mentioned that I make my own mouthwash really big fan of the flavor of cloves and
um opted to produce a uh my own mouthwash because I was looking for clove mouthwash and the only clove
mouthwash that I found was very expensive it was about eight dollars for a twelve ounce bottle
and so I began to look around and try to find ways to make my own mouthwash there are some advocates
that feel that xylitol has some of the same properties as fluoride and it may be better for you
but the common ingredient and everything that I found happened to be yet again baking soda
so I figured my toothpaste has enough fluoride in it if that is a dental requirement I ought to be
getting enough for that so I shouldn't care much if my mouthwash has fluoride in it as well
I imagine anything extra is just superfluous at that point so after some trial and error I came up
with my own mouthwash recipe based on several recipes and it wound up being pretty nice
doesn't have quite the punch of listerine or one of the other heavier mouthwash is because it has
no alcohol in it save for what is in the extracts so the recipe I use is I take about a
I've got a and uh excuse me about a twelve ounce mason jar and I place in it roughly a tablespoon
of baking soda and then I place roughly a tablespoon of xylitol in it and then I have clove extract
I place four good I guess squirts for lack of a better word of clove extract in it so it
probably amounts to a teaspoon of clove extract and then I top it off with cold filtered water
shake it up and I have mouthwash to last me for several weeks for very very inexpensive cost
if you don't care for clove you can put peppermint oil in there or any other extract that you like
and it's it's quite inexpensive the baking soda is abrasive and we'll help clean your teeth
the xylitol apparently if you believe the reports will carry the same properties as fluoride
again I am not a doctor or a dentist so I can't verify any of that uh but it'll generally leave
your mouth feeling fresh and clean and you can flavor it as you like and save money in the process
so uh going from cleaning my clothing and cleaning myself moving into cleaning my house
um we have a young child he's almost three years old and he always wants to help out with the
cleaning in the house and we had many many toxic substances under the sink I'm not opposed to
common household cleaning products but I didn't want my son using them so I found that
with some simple ingredients you can clean up most anything so for us we use baking soda to
as an abrasive substance a little bit of baking soda and water we'll clean our cast iron tub
quite well it will clean most counters if removing stains removing um any buildup on them find
that vinegar makes it wonderful window cleaner and it's also great for washing your floors vinegar
by itself smells pretty terrible so um often if I am mopping my floors with vinegar and hot water
I will add a little bit of lemon juice to it so uh if I needed disinfectant and I generally keep
bleach around but since we've been doing this I've been purchasing white distilled vinegar
baking soda and lemon juice in bulk in large quantities it's very inexpensive and it is replaced
90% of my uh cleaning supplies and the bonus is that my son can clean with it and he really
loves to clean the house so he feels like he's part of the family unit and he's definitely helping
out and enjoying himself so after we've had a good time cleaning the house it's time to relax
so this section is probably a little less put together compared to the rest of this podcast
but I wanted to talk about a few things and I think people do not really focus on much anymore
and it's sad um namely public resources for things um I find that you know we have Barney the
Ferrell the neighborhood Ferrell cat talking to us again I guess he's interested in public services
it anyway um I mentioned previously the podcast about television antennas they're in most places
there is a bevy of channels that you can access for free that it often are provided as a service
to the public all you need is a television antenna um if you enjoy making things please listen to
the episode on antenna making otherwise go out you can purchase inexpensive antennas these days
they're not eyesores um you don't have to have a giant antenna mounted on your roof there are
several options I have a small indoor HD antenna it's just a little black square that I set up
near a window uh guests don't ever notice it we cut the cable as it were several several
years ago and have relied on internet streaming services for some time um I don't really watch
much television but I found that we were able to cut out some of those services simply by putting
up an antenna um and my my wife and son can watch all kinds of things that they enjoy the only
downside is it does bring advertising into the home if you don't like that sort of thing uh you'll
have to limit your time with it uh long lines television is the radio I I really I maybe it's my
location I may be ignorant but um I really don't catch very many people listening to the radio
these days um given the advent of podcasts and things things I suppose they're more convenient
but there are still dozens of radio stations in almost any town um a little transistor FM radio
is an inexpensive way to enjoy yourself uh my favorite things with my son is on Saturday mornings
we go out in the backyard and I take my tiny transistor radio that I've had for years out there
and um he'll tune around on it while I drink a cup of coffee and read a book and he just kind of
serves the radio waves and when he finds something he likes he places it on the table and goes and runs
around the backyard and has a good time um it's a good way to convey information um and it's still
a little bit unplugged and it's free uh with the exception of the purchase of the hardware
beyond that shortwave radio is a good time you can purchase a very small you know shortwave
radio is a hobby is not something that you have to uh go off the deep end with uh used to be an
amateur radio operator and I used to have quite a bit of equipment for shortwave um but these days
I just have a small uh radio shack shortwave radio I've gotten rid of most of my radio gear
and a long wire antenna and I can pick up broadcasts from all over the world as public services
I can listen to news from all over the world I can listen to interesting radio shows
interesting music um the fidelity you know is not quite that of internet radio but
there's something curious and wonderful about picking up radio transmissions from thousands of
miles away as opposed to simply pulling up a web browser and listening to them online
beyond that uh visit your public library um a lot of folks read a lot of folks spend a lot of time
in Barnes and Noble and uh and uh other bookstores a lot of folks spend a lot of time on amazon
in larger cities libraries are really stepping it up library in my in a neighboring city to
mind where I work will now let you rent uh check out ebooks which is very wonderful they will let you
check out music electronically uh through various services and they have piles and piles of
books and movies and there's always entertainment things happening at the library that are little
to no cost um my local library in the neighboring library will often play movies or have plays or
have events for children my son loves going to the library and participating in their events um so
yeah please support your local libraries it's one thing to amass a book collection for collecting
but we'll go to the books if you're not sharing them and one place where books are shared quite
frequently of course is our libraries get out and read more uh and one last thing is public
parks I feel like not enough people spend time in the public parks and that's one thing that my
family really likes to do is just visit public parks to place where you can be out and free and roam
around places are a little different we've got a large backyard but my son still likes going to
the park to see all the other kids and interact with with people and um roam around look at streams
and uh most cities will have this and and if you're in a rural area you're at a better advantage
uh you have the whole world around you as a public service so anyway uh i believe i'll wrap it up
there this was another long and rambling podcast of mine uh with inspiration sort of struck i hope
that um hope that some of these things will if you decide to take them up save you money and and
be enjoyable and i hope you see the cathartic nature of some manual processes and and see that
you can have a great time with public services and uh not worry too much about um spending a bunch
of money where it doesn't need to be spent so once again hpr thank you so much for your time
if you'd like to talk about any of this you can contact me at cmhobbs at acm.org and please
uh record a podcast for hpr i'll catch you guys on the next one take care
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