There was a little devil on my shoulder when I decided about the title of this post. Nowadays everything in this world seems to spin around money and being successful, which is mainly measured by money. I don’t know if it’s me or what my behavior teaches the algorithm, but my social media feed is full of different online job and “get rich easy” -posts. Where are all the cosy and heartwarming birthday party pictures or funny cat videos? When did we started to consider only financial side as an important indicator of success, instead of having a good, loving relationship or upbringing kids to be happy, independent adults?

But actually that wasn’t the original idea that I wanted to talk about. I’m diving into that topic of money later, when I have had more time to dig into hard numbers and background information of monetary use of social media, but now back to the title. Have you ever wondered where do all your time disappear? One day you realize that it’s been a week, a month, a year, and all of these things are still on your to-do list? Surprise, surprise: I have! Having so many things going on and living in an old farmhouse… not a surprise that I haven’t had much time for myself or my hobbies. This winter one of the biggest time consumers was relieved: malfunctioning or breaking of normal routine.

I already talked about this crazy cold weather we had this winter. What it showed is that even a short moment or a small incident may take hours of your day just in order to get things back together. During this coldest time, a fuse got broken in my smaller cottage where the water pump is due to excessive heating needed. It took only about 8 hours, while I was out working, to freeze the water pipe completely and damage the shower blender. So, because of that small part to get broken, I spent 5 hours in de-freezing the pipes and repairing the damage. You may believe, that I’d rather had spent that time by doing something else. And as I talked with my friends and neighbors, I wasn’t the only one having this kind of problems. Just imagine how many hours of work this extremely long cold period caused worldwide only by freezing waterpipes!

After all these troubles I experienced in maintenance during the cold weather I was reminded about the opposite. What kinds of trouble you face when it’s very hot and your electricity isn’t working. If power plants are not producing enough of electricity or if the power grid is not maintained, and you stay out of electricity for a week or so. How much food goes bad, when the storage gets too warm? How you can take care of sanitary without water? How much time and effort it takes only to survive and live for another day? And how much it costs to have a backup plan and use the generator instead of relying on power lines?

All of these problems made me think of how rarely we are thankful for a system that works. When everything goes smoothly, according to plans and we can live our normal life without extra efforts, do we actually appreciate all the work that was needed to take us so far? Are we happy to wake up into a lovely morning, get clean water from the tap to wash our face and while eating our fresh food from the cool fridge we watch latest news before catching the bus or train that follows the timetable? I would say no. Human being is such a tricky creature, that we take things for granted so easily and when something goes wrong we become so mad. And if we are not facing any problems with water, power or internet connection ourselves, we don’t believe that someone could have problems with those. I tend to think that it’s nowadays the main difference between first world countries and developing ones: in the third world nations so big junk of time of people’s lives go into daily life and simple house chores.

My whole point with this posting is to remind how valuable it is to create a sustainable system around housing. When everything works easily and reliably at home, we save so much time and money. And even if something unexpected happens, we have a system to replace the normal system and we don’t need to stress too much. Do I need to remind you, that this house was built 50 years before power grid was introduced into this area? I have my own well to get clean, fresh water, I have two wood burning ovens and a stove downstairs and there are always plenty of candles and flashlights in the storage. Big, old cellar is in the garden and own forest produces plenty of firewood. Most of my basic needs are taken care of by the planning done by previous inhabitants. Few additions are demanded by modern life, like some solar panels to create electricity for communication, but the essential is there already. And do I remember to be grateful when everything is fine and effortless? For my shame, I must admit, that is not the case all the time. But I’m working on it.

Thankfully, yours,

Joana