Our Right to Self Reliance

     Pretend you are twelve years old and want to live in your treehouse.  After the loaf of bread, jar of peanut butter and your most important comic books, what do you need?  A flashlight!  Maybe a radio?  Other than a best friend or two, a body could stay up there for a while and feel pretty well equipped.  Um…better not forget the sawdust toilet .                                                                                

  Keeping a focus on our scalable approach, look around and figure out what in your abode and lifestyle incorporates of the above basic concepts.  Lights, audio/visual input, biological input/output.  What of those types of things you’re seeing can you take off grid?

     Lights are pretty easy.  The simplest approach there might be to simply acquire some of those small solar garden lights and place them in your windows to charge during the day and provide “mood lighting” at the very least once the sun goes down.  Kind of like turning your window into a moon jar.  With a little jockeying you could get some pretty good indoor light by figuring out how to pass the wiring through the wall or window on a solar flood light.  You might be able to get it to charge fully just by placing the panel on the inside of the window, but the interference of the glass might cut down on the panel’s ability to gather sunlight and change it into electricity.  Try it in different windows.

     While a huge flat screen television being the focal point of the house has gotten more and more common, you’d probably have to ask yourself how much of that is based upon need.  Unless you’re a serious movie theatre attendant, I’d lay long odds that the cost of a flat screen television is considerably more than adding up every movie you’ve ever seen at a theatre.  Do you need it?  If the goal is to watch a movie (because surely you can’t need to see Katie Couric life sized…) then a 12v portable DVD will get that done.  Seriously. Or, you could support your local businesses by continuing to attend the theatre…right?

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