Originally Posted by barbeler:
“I've never had a dishwasher as it always seems more work loading and unloading them than washing up by hand. They take up far too much space and they're energy hogs as well.”
Apparently dishwashers use less water and energy than hand washing does.
I could easy live without any electric items. I could cook on the BBQ while heating water on the mini BBQ . My mum cooked on the open fire, like many did in those days. Why heat the room and use a cooker when you could do both at the same time. Kettles of water, stew/soup were kept hot all the time didn't have fridges and people always just peel more veg and bought more meat and bones throwing them into the pot.. We would all now get food poisoning as we are not hardy any more
I do not have a TV, Radio, microwave, iron . I do have washing machine, dishwasher etc but could easy switch to none of them.
I do a lot of cooking in a pressure cooker and also bulk cooking in a American pressure canner and have a dehydrator so dry food as well as canning it.
If I had the money I would open up my fireplace and get a small cooking/heating range my home is small so would heat the whole home.. I try not to have my heating on too much and only have it at 17 or 18c (off at night) and its comfortable for me and makes me feel ill popping into see the lady next door as her heating is 21 day and night
I have a brick open fire come BBQ in the garden that I could use if the electric or gas went down.
Im lucky as remember before these things become the norm. Some people really would not cope if ever the grid went down.

Most live from day to day without even a small stock of essentials to tide them over in case of a emergency . My grandparents and my parents would have thought we were crazy not to have anything set aside for emergencies. Times have changed a lot