Thursday, May 10, 2007

Extreme Simplicity


Great book... a million and one great ideas. Two things, however, were very clear... #1. These two live in South Cali... where it is hot and dry and you need to conserve water above all else. and #2. They don't have children.

Overall, I would give it a good rate of about 8 out of 10. Very effective, and they have some wonderful ideas that can really help. I loved their bit on pets, food, and gardening. The different ways they studied gardening (they basically have identified everything in their large SoCal yard and taken out things you cant eat (except the Castor Trees, which they said they just couldn't move from the spot... they were too rooted there, and it felt like an invasion) and added things that they can eat. Even a type of apple they found that grows in SoCal, but mostly citrus. And then they let the wild take over. They use compaion planting for their yearly annual veggie beds too... two ideas that I have been employing for a while and just love the way it makes my yard maintainence really easy. They talk about eating wild, pickling (the easiest and longest lasting canning way), and ways to cook with no power. They also talked about having chickens, pigs, ducks, and a bunch of other animals in a city setting. Along with water conservation, recycling, dumster diving, energy conservation, how to live with no power, solar pannels, and much much more. I loved reading it... but some of their suggestions made it very clear they had never lived with children (bring your dity clothes into the bathtub with you anyone? lol...)