Anyone Can Help!

Homemaking, gardening, and self-sufficiency resources that won't radicalize you into a hate group

It seems like self-sufficiency and homemaking skills are blowing up right now. With the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis, a lot of folks, especially young people, are looking to develop skills that will help them be a little bit less dependent on our consumerist economy. And I think that's generally a good thing. I think more of us should know how to cook a meal from scratch, grow our own vegetables, and mend our own clothes. Those are good skills to have.

Unfortunately, these "self-sufficiency" skills are often used as a recruiting tactic by white supremacists, TERFs, and other hate groups. They become a way to reconnect to or relive the "good old days," a romanticized (false) past before modern society and civil rights. And for a lot of people, these skills are inseparably connected to their politics and may even be used as a tool to indoctrinate new people.

In the spirit of building safe communities, here's a complete list of the safe resources I've found for learning homemaking, gardening, and related skills. Safe for me means queer- and trans-friendly, inclusive of different races and cultures, does not contain Christian preaching, and does not contain white supremacist or TERF dog whistles.

Homemaking/Housekeeping/Caring for your home:

Making It by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen [book] (The big crunchy household DIY book; includes every level of self-sufficiency from making your own toothpaste and laundry soap to setting up raised beds to butchering a chicken. Authors are explicitly left-leaning.)

Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair by Mercury Stardust [book] (A guide to simple home repair tasks, written with rentals in mind; very compassionate and accessible language.)

How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis [book] (The book about cleaning and housework for people who get overwhelmed by cleaning and housework, based on the premise that messiness is not a moral failing; disability and neurodivergence friendly; genuinely changed how I approach cleaning tasks.)

Gardening

Rebel Gardening by Alessandro Vitale [book] (Really great introduction to urban gardening; explicitly discusses renter-friendly garden designs in small spaces; lots of DIY solutions using recycled materials; note that the author lives in England, so check if plants are invasive in your area before putting them in the ground.)

Country/Rural Living:

Woodsqueer by Gretchen Legler [book] (Memoir of a lesbian who lives and works on a rural farm in Maine with her wife; does a good job of showing what it's like to be queer in a rural space; CW for mentions of domestic violence, infidelity/cheating, and internalized homophobia)

"Debunking the Off-Grid Fantasy" by Maggie Mae Fish [video essay] (Deconstructs the off-grid lifestyle and the myth of self-reliance)

Sewing/Mending:

Annika Victoria [YouTube channel] (No longer active, but their videos are still a great resource for anyone learning to sew; check out the beginner project playlist to start. This is where I learned a lot of what I know about sewing.)

Make, Sew, and Mend by Bernadette Banner [book] (A very thorough written introduction to hand-sewing, written by a clothing historian; lots of fun garment history facts; explicitly inclusive of BIPOC, queer, and trans sewists.)

Sustainability/Land Stewardship

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer [book] (Most of you have probably already read this one or had it recommended to you, but it really is that good; excellent example of how traditional animist beliefs -- in this case, indigenous American beliefs -- can exist in healthy symbiosis with science; more philosophy than how-to, but a great foundational resource.)

Wild Witchcraft by Rebecca Beyer [book] (This one is for my fellow witches; one of my favorite witchcraft books, and an excellent example of a place-based practice deeply rooted in the land.)

Avoiding the "Crunchy to Alt Right Pipeline"

Note: the "crunchy to alt-right pipeline" is a term used to describe how white supremacists and other far right groups use "crunchy" spaces (i.e., spaces dedicated to farming, homemaking, alternative medicine, simple living/slow living, etc.) to recruit and indoctrinate people into their movements. Knowing how this recruitment works can help you recognize it when you do encounter it and avoid being influenced by it.

"The Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline" by Kathleen Belew [magazine article] (Good, short introduction to this issue and its history.)

Sisters in Hate by Seyward Darby (I feel like I need to give a content warning: this book contains explicit descriptions of racism, white supremacy, and Neo Nazis, and it's a very difficult read, but it really is a great, in-depth breakdown of the role women play in the alt-right; also explicitly addresses the crunchy to alt-right pipeline.)

These are just the resources I've personally found helpful, so if anyone else has any they want to add, please, please do!

quick protip: if someone is crying or freaking out over something minor, eg wifi not connecting, can’t find their hat, people talking too loud, do NOT tell them how small or petty the problem is to make it better. they know. they would probably love to calm down. you are doing the furthest possible thing from helping. people don’t have to earn expressions of feelings.

diet culture is so fucking sad.

i once played the asking game with my mom when she was talking to me about her diet plans.

why are you dieting? because i've gained loads of weight recently. who cares? everyone does. i don't care. but i do. why? because i don't want to be fat. why don't you want to be fat? because it's embarrassing and i don't want to be an ugly pig. is being fat hurting you? not especially, but it's not nice for other people to look at.

at this point i looked at her and said "don't you think it's sad that you're spending your whole life putting these rules upon yourself, rules that naturally skinny people aren't expected to abide by, all for the effort of trying not to be fat?" and she looked back at me with suddenly wet eyes and said, with an amount of difficulty, that yes, it is sort of sad when you think about it.

she's been fat ever since i, her eldest child, was born. she was always super skinny in her youth, but pregnancy changed her body shape and her metabolism, and i only ever knew her as a very fat woman growing up. chances are, she will never be thin again. her lifestyle is no different to how it was before my existence; her body just works differently now. she sees it as a personal failure. she doesn't eat her favorite foods anymore, doesn't go out dating, doesn't make friends, doesn't go to events, doesn't allow anyone to buy her clothes for her birthday because she can't bear anyone knowing her size. she lives a lonely life, unwilling to do her favorite things. she elected for a gastric bypass surgery which, over the last few years, has introduced multiple complications that came very close to killing her, and yet she doesn't regret the surgery because it helped her lose a few pounds. she basically does not have a stomach anymore and she still believes her fatness is because she's been doing something wrong for the last 20something years.

diet culture is deadly not only because of the self-starvation and malnutrition but because it rips away pieces of your life that you're supposed to enjoy. relationships and sex are only for thin people, a glass of wine and some chocolate at the end of a difficult day is an indulgence only allowed to thin people, cute clothes are only for thin people, family photographs are only for the thin relatives, riding a bike on vacation with your kids is only for families with thin parents.

doesn't your soul ache? doesn't it hurt you to see people doing this to themselves, to inflict this on YOURself? you can do all of these things. your life can be lived fully and joyously and with love, but you distance yourself from the things that make you happy because you feel like you aren't good enough for them. it breaks my heart.

fatphobia is something oft inflicted upon people by others, but it comes from inside too. kill the part of you that thinks you aren't good enough. your body is perfect already, my love.

you will live and you will say the wrong things and make mistakes and people will love you anyways.

The BBC is releasing over 16,000 sound effects for free download

Happy Mag

The BBC is releasing over 16,000 sound effects for free download

The BBC have released their incredible, expansive library of bizarre and obscure sound effects, all available for free download.

On Voting in America

So one of the most profound comments on routine chores that I've ever encountered was, hilariously, the Pickle Rick episode of "Rick & Morty," where (after a lot of shenanigans have already ensued) this therapist absolutely lays Rick out:

"I have no doubt that you would be bored senseless by therapy, the same way I'm bored when I brush my teeth and wipe my ass. Because the thing about repairing, maintaining, and cleaning is: it's not an adventure. There's no way to do it so wrong you might die. It's just work. And the bottom line is some people are okay going to work and some people, well, some people would rather die. Each of us gets to choose."

I think about this at least once a week — usually while I'm doing my laundry or sweeping or some other task that needs doing and won't get me anything more than clean clothing or a dog-hair-free floor. There's no Pulitzer for wiping down your microwave or scrubbing your toilet; no one's awarding you for getting all the dishes out of the sink. At best you have the satisfaction of crossing it off your list.

Voting is very much the same (and I'm talking about the US here, as an American). Sure, you sometimes get a sticker; but nobody's going to cheer for you. There's no adventure here, no potential for anything more than crossing something off of a list. It's a chore, something that needs doing in order to repair, maintain, and yes even clean. So I get why people don't like doing it.

And I've decided I don't give a shit.

Do it anyway. Your country takes astonishingly little from you — taxes, the once-in-a-blue-moon jury duty, and a theoretical draft that hasn't been used in over half a century and likely will never be again — but it asks you (asks! not requires! not demands!) to vote once a year. It's not always easy; especially in conservative states, the impediments to vote can be ridiculous. But it is once a year and unlike in our nation's all-too-recent past, you will not die if you do it.

In fact, the worst outcome from voting these days is that the person or issue that you vote for loses — but you won't know if they lose until after the election. Polls are less accurate now, for a whole host of reasons; you cannot know until after the election who or what will win. This makes your vote more valuable than possibly ever before.

Use that power. Not because it's exciting or even rewarding, but because your vote is what keeps our country's metaphorical teeth from falling out and our metaphorical ass from stinking.

Brush, wipe, vote.

This is a big thing that I continue to work on unlearning/relearning

the first day of my hand drafting class in my senior year of college, after the prof taught us how to frame up on the drafting table and went over how to use the tools we'd bought, he had us all take our pencils and make a mark on the top right corner of the vellum. then he walked us through the setup steps - the border, the title block, etc.

and he told us to erase the mark.

when someone - rosie, i think - asked what the mark was for he smiled.

"if you give a novice student an expensive, blank piece of paper, they panic. they think if i start using that i will ruin it. so the first thing i want all of you to do, any time you stare at a blank piece of paper, is to ruin it a little and take the pressure off yourself. pencil erases. anxiety has to be managed."

i hated that man for a myriad of reasons, but that was some of the best advice i've ever been given.

Regretting things is disrespecting your past self… you have to trust that you made the best decision otherwise you’re breaking down your relationship with yourself

From the book Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD:

Putting a coat on the back of a chair by the door is fine, but if you prefer, use coat hooks and a large catch-all basket for dropping keys, hats, gloves.

Small bookcase end-table next to the couch to store craft projects, books, and other things being worked on for easy access.

Add a storage unit near the dining room table to transition between eating and working there.

Daily toiletry items should be stored in a basket that you can move easily

Extra toiletries and medicine cabinet items go in open shelf/basket storage so they can be seen and used easily. If items no longer fit, purge the excess. Don’t obscure the view!

If you disrobe in the bathroom, place a tall hamper in there.

Keep a set of cleaning supplies in each bathroom