Now that I have video game mania, books are piling up at an even faster rate than normal. Therefore it’s time for some “Compulsive Vowing”:
It’s gonna be five-out-one-in until I have read twelve physical books. I.e. I can only get two more physical books until I have read twelve; and the first of those two has to wait until I have read at least five and the second has to wait until I have read at least ten. Once I’ve read twelve books I’m released from the vow. I’m gonna try to make some sort of page in my Techo that I can fill in with stamps or something to track my progress towards the vow with those three milestones at five, ten, and twelve.
My FOMO around books (most of my ways to get books are time-limited, for example in the freeshop there’s only one of each of a handful of books and the first person who gets it gets it) is usually stronger than my ability to keep vows so I’m really going to have to put effort into keeping the vow.
I have no buffer at all for them right now and as soon as one is finished I usually have to scramble like mad to find a new one. And they don’t clutter the apartment since they are digital.
My apartment has dozens and dozens and dozens of books with bookmarks in them that I have started and not finished. I love starting new books because my dream of how awesome the book is gonna be is usually better than how the book is while reading it. So if I find a book at home that has like 600 pages read and only thirty pages left to read, then reading those last few pages is 100% legit and encouraged in counting towards the twelve books I’ve got to finish to end the vow. It’s not a “get literate” kind of vow, it’s an “unclutter the apartment” kind of vow.
I just said I love starting new books. The vow concerns getting new books. I have plenty of books at home where I haven’t read a single page and if I, in spite of my overwhelming amount of ongoing books, get in the mood to start reading one of these unread ones that’s okay. That doesn’t void the vow. It’s at the risk of being a little bit counterproductive towards getting to twelve, unless the book I just started is so awesome that I finish it pretty soon.
I can get new e-books, no limit at all there, as long as I don’t start reading them. Reading already started e-books is allowed (I wanna finish Queen Mab’s Palace and I have about half a dozen other ones going) but does not progress towards the goal. Starting reading any new e-books is strongly discouraged. I decided that that is going to count as one fourth of getting a new physical book. I.e. until I have finished reading five physical books, I can not start reading any new e-books, and if I do start one then, that is in lieu of getting one physical book but I am then allowed to start three more new digital books. In other words, the two slots that open up during the vow (one after I’ve finished five books, and one after ten), can either be two physical books, eight e-books, or one physical and four e-book. I don’t have to use slots right away, they don’t expire, I can save them, but I can not use them in advance. So it’s okay if I use the first slot for two e-books, then once the second slot arrives I use it for a physical book, and then I still have two more e-books I’m allowed to start before the vow is over.
And, repeating myself: for physical books the prohibition is against acquiring them (while starting reading already acquired books is 100% unlimited), while for digital books the prohibition is against starting reading them (while acquiring them is 100% unlimited).
All in service of simultaneously decluttering my home and making it more digital so I don’t trip over stacks of books when cleaning, while in the short term rewarding paper time over screentime.
Finishing e-books don’t count towards the vow at all.
Most of the books will go into my storage library after I finish them and others will go away entirely (sold or gifted). But some books are bound to stay on the shelf here in my home because I like having them around so much as decoration, self-expression, and to be able to look things up in them. I am acknowledging that this is counter-productive to the decluttering spirit of the vow but deciding that that’s gonna have to be okay this time around. I won’t make any special rules for this but I’ll try to track it. Then if I ever do finish the vow I can evaluate how many books actually left this room and maybe make changes for future iterations of similar vows.
This is hard to explain so I’m gonna give two examples and extrapolate from that:
I needed to make rules around gifts because we have such a great freeshop for books here and I’m gonna have to just not even look at it until I’ve finished five books.
Ouch, I didn’t think of this! I had this essay all written and ready to publish until I realized that I hadn’t thought about comics. I read lots and lots and lots of comics both digital and paper.
Okay so off the top of my head I’m gonna have to come up with some rules for comics:
Digital comics don’t count at all. Starting new ones is fine. It’s going to have to be “it’s own thing” akin to choosing to watch TV or playing video games or playing guitar or something instead of working on the book goal. It’s not really because it does compete more directly with reading books than other hobbies do but this compromise is the only version of the vow I could actually live with.
Getting single issues is okay. Reluctantly. I have maybe 10% room left in my longboxes. My pull list is down to Monstress, Saga, and Knights of the Dinner Table.
Acquiring TPBs and OGNs do count and take up one slot each. They’d count as half a slot for how quickly I read them but two slots for how big they are (on average) so let’s just say that twice half is one and call it a day.
Finishing comics whether physical or digital doesn’t count at all towards finishing the vow. It’d be too easy to read twelve tankōbons in a day and call it done. So comics only count going in, not going out.
Borrowing books count just as acquiring them. They’re not free passes at all. My “to-read” stack already contains plenty of borrowed books.
I’m going to make two exceptions, both comics-related: This winter I read a lot of Terry and the Pirates and I’m planning to borrow the last three volumes so I can finish reading the run. Those three books specifically, as long as I only borrow them and not buy my own copies, do not interfere with the vow at all no matter how long I take to read them.
Second, I can borrow other comics too as long as I:
In other words, if I fail to read them within one week that’s okay, as long as I really tried, but then I only have three more weeks to actually read it.
In the book reader world, to DNF a book means to decide to not finish it. I’m way more prone to not actually cut ties with the book, instead I usually just leave them in the pile. Twice now I’ve decided to stop reading the book but even then I put it into storage, keeping the bookmark in juuust in case I later can muster the will to finish the book. So for DNF the rule is gonna be based on actually getting rid of the book. If I do, it counts. If I only put it in storage, it doesn’t count. This rule isn’t great because I don’t really like getting rid of unfinished books so hopefully I’m not gonna do it. So note to self: it’s better to do the “storage pseudo-DNF” than the actual real getting rid of the book DNF even though the latter counts toward the vow and the first doesn’t. I don’t really wanna finish the vow just by giving away a bunch of unfinished books, I’m just stating the rule this way as a way to prevent impossible states. (E.g. what if I lose all my books through accident? I could never read a new book again if it weren’t for this DNF clause.)
There’s no time limit on this. If I were to quit video games and working, in order to only read paper books, I could be done in a week (especially if I take advantage of the shortcut that finishing a few of the half-read books around here counts. Like, for Dune Messiah I’ve only got 65 pages left). I could also take it easy with the vow and stick to the games and writing and maybe this vow will linger for several years.
Either way or anything in between is completely fine. With ten books gone I will a least made a dent big enough for me to end the vow and start piling them up again until it’s time for a new vow with similar or different rules.
Vow started: 2026-04-17 08:19:09+02:00
The best part about this method is that you can measure how much water you’re using so you can compare it to other methods so if I’m wrong you’ll find out easily.
I use a bowl, often I just pick whatever bowl or pot I’m cleaning that’s the biggest unless it’s a super sensitive “never scratch it” thing. Sometimes just a li’l glass or jar is fine. Just to have something to get a nice mix of water and detergent.
In my old place I had the world’s smallest sink so I used a wooden cutting board over the sink and placed the bowl on top of the board. In my new place the work surface is instead what’s small while the sink is big so I place the bowl in the sink itself.
I put dish soap and some hot water in the bowl.
Using that to clean stuff, putting the cleaned-but-unrinsed stuff in the sink. In my old place I’d have a gap beside the wooden board so I could put things down there. In my new place I just place ‘em down there beside the bowl.
When I have too much stuff to rinse, I take a break from washing stuff and rinse off things under running water. I rinse into the bowl itself so I see how much water I’m using while rinsing.
For utensils I hold a couple of them in my hand at once so I can rinse several at one time. I sometimes toweldry stuff right after rinsing them, other times I just place ‘em to air dry after rinsing them. Which leaves water streaks but if it’s pandemic times and no-one else is gonna come visit here ever, it’s fine.
Protein, which wheat dough residue is, is easiest to clean with cold water. Fat and sugar is easier with hot water.
If something doesn’t get clean easily right away, I put it aside while I do other stuff, occasionally returning to the difficult thing. Having patience while the detergent works its physics in between attempts often saves me from having to scrub desperately.
I use a brush for most things. For sieves I use a soft rag. I don’t like using a sponge for doing the dishes.
As I mentioned, if I don’t have a big bowl I sometimes use just a li’l jar or glass or empty container, just to get a nice mix of detergent and water in. Those times I lose out on the ability to see how much water I’m using and on the ability to dip things into the bowl which is sometimes a good and timesaving way to get detergent onto them. But I’m OK with that.
If I don’t even have any small things to use, like let’s say I’ve got lots of cutlery but no glasses or cups, I just bring out a big clean bowl just for the purps of washing the dishes.
If I’m doing very many dishes at the same time, sometimes things get too grody and then I just start over with one or all these elements.
For once, Internet was good today instead of just a constant bruising source of pain and misery.
I had a fun conversation with akareilly, who wrote:
If you insist that people learn to code in order to use technology, I’m going to insist that you grow your own flax, do the retting, spin it, weave it, and sew it before you’re allowed to wear pants.
Yes, except not ironically. Knowing how to craft and repair clothes is a pretty good thing.
Absolutely! It doesn’t take expensive supplies to start mending, and there are many resources online now.
I am actually capable of doing all of these things using Neolithic tech. Apocalypse skills, sorted.
There are darning looms, tablet weaving supplies, rigid heddle looms, backstrap looms, spinning wheels, knitting machines, knitting belts and pins, sewing machines, and all sorts of things here.
I never worked with textiles professionally, but in school we were taught braiding, carding, spinning, weaving, knitting, darning, and crocheting. This started before we were taught grammar and multiplication. I appreciate being shown those things because it’s good to not get too abstracted from the levers we’re using to interact with the world.
Things like math and logic and writing and physics and drawing and all kinds of things got way easier after I had started learning to code. The same goes for the spiritual or psychological experience. Coding (probably better known as meta-thinking, thinking about thinking) is an amazing foundation for other fields.
(On the other hand I hate modern, commercial tech 💁🏻♀️)
We didn’t get fiber arts in school but I was lucky enough to have computers at school and at home.
3-2-1 Contact magazine had BASIC code for games that we typed into a Commodore64. Now there are fun, visual tools to get kids started.
Everyone should have the opportunity to code.
It’s also OK if kids find that boring and do something else.
If you also feel that way about writing, reading, math, politics, history, physics then that’s food for thought for me, I’d have to think about to what extent the grown-up world should insist on teaching things. Interesting dilemma 💁🏻♀️
If it’s coding specifically then I’m not onboard.
Kids should have a basic understanding of things that they find boring. With any new skill, there’s a certain level of learning that many people need to reach to know whether they really enjoy it or not. If someone gets to that point and can program something basic, or even reaches professional competence, and decides they don’t like code? That’s fine. The point is to try.
Then, programmers should understand that “can’t be bothered” isn’t “can’t”.
Just like the kids who don’t make all their own clothes. They still get to wear clothes and have preferences.
That’s what I find weird about open source software developers not taking feedback, and responding to any requests with “just fork it”. If you say “OK, stop buying clothes if you don’t like what you have” the answer might be “but I don’t have time to learn this! I wouldn’t have time to code! I could learn but I need to make software instead!”
I hate programming so much 😭
People don’t get that since I’m the world’s best programmer. They’re like “why don’t you program more?” Because I hate it.
As far as open source software developers not taking feedback specifically, I’ve argued against that refusal.
So in that specific fight, I’m with you.
Learning the basics of how code works and how to code simple things is all I’m asking; as you point out, the difference between knowing how it’s constructed vs having the time, resources, skill level to do everything from scratch always.
Code can also be copied so there’s a degree of cooperation and standing on each other’s shoulders that’s possible in code that’s not possible to the same extent in textile.
I thought we were talking about something else. When I’m like “everyone should learn how to code”, it’s not to give credence to your basic GitHub issues sourpuss. I’m with you on that one. Instead, it’s a reaction to the veneer of network path dependent silos like Instagram, Hacker News, Facebook, YouTube, how our infastructure is being gatekept by modern-day Priests of Ra who are stacking their castle walls on layers and layers and layers of abstraction and toolkits, locking everything down and wrapping your basic everyday tools in hard plastic and planned obsolescence. It’s a celebration of how coding can be a foundation for other fields and philosophies, how it can help us reason about our interactions with nature, others, and ourselves. How market capitalism is a broken program and how we need the best minds of our generation to set things straight before we burn the world. 🤷🏻♀️
I have a glass bottle with a silicon coating on the outside that I love; the inside still has more of a glass taste than a plastic taste and the outside has a nice grip and is hopefully more durable than glass alone. At first I regretted buying it because it was hard to clean but I’ve found that a little bit of ACV works wonderfully.
But lately I’ve been regretting it for a different reason because I’ve dropped it on the floor a few times and while it has held up so far, if it ever does break it’s gonna be a 🐝 to recycle, with this coating. And if it doesn’t happen during my own lifetime, it’s gonna have to EOL at some point eventually and that’s gonna be trouble.💔
I need to get better at considering the whole life-cycle of things when shopping.
Simon wondered how I can get away with grocery shopping so seldomly.
Do I have a meal planner? No.
Here is how I do it.
I know a lot of simple (not necessarily delicious) recipes using basically the same ingredients. Flour can make pasta, pizza, buns, or scones. Potatoes can go in the oven or can get mashed or just boiled. Oats can go into overday oats or oatmeal. Beans can go in doughs or as hummus or in stir-fried random. Stir-fried random can go with wheat berries, potatoes, or pasta. Tomato cans can make marinara or pizza or ketchup. Mustard powder can go in a masala or make, uh, mustard.
A couple of drawers of specific spices can give more variety than store-bought masala. Among my fave spices, I also count tamari and vinegar.
I try to have some awareness of what is time-sensitive and what can last a few months. Basically, everything in the freezer (mine is pretty bad) and fridge is time sensitive and needs to be considered every time I’m deciding a meal. “Do I want to use these mushrooms before they go bad?” I live alone and my fridge is small.
I see groceries as either “specials” and “staples”. Staples, in my system, have a long shelf-life. Specials will last a few weeks. Even something I buy and eat very often, like mushrooms, is a “special”, if it’s something I’m gonna have to monitor in the fridge and use in time.
For staples, I have a “buffer”. It used to be two packs. If I open the second pack of oatmeal, time to put a new one on the shopping list. These times all my buffers are larger.
For specials, it’s more whim-based (and looking at what’s in season, what’s a good deal etc). “Hmm, I feel like avocados” or “I wanna get some good celery”. It’s something I have kind of a vague, intuitive idea about how to put together during the next week or so. Is that meal planning? Yeah, kinda… But not written down or scheduled, just whim-based with a lot of slack.
This is good because it means that if my supply line of specials is cut off, I can live for a long time on my staples. (I’m SOL if they cut off the water lines, though. Not currently a good prepper in that regard.)
A lot of my staples can sub in for specials. Like, I only sometimes buy leek but I always have onions. If my potatoes run out, I can make do with wheat berries or I can make pasta.
My “bean” buffer is kind of heterogenous, to give me some variety. It doesn’t have to be all garbanzo all the time, but I don’t need to micromanage myself about it either.
I know my advice is to go single-ingredient over mixes (for variety) but that rule is only for the big buffers. I have a jar of wheat berries premixed with lentils, and I have smaller jars of home-made spice mixes. Saves time.♥︎ Then I refill that jar from my separate wheat and lentil buffers, and put that amount on the shopping list. Everytime I refill it before I get to shopping, I increment the amount on the list by that much.
Specials don’t always mean “is ready right away”; for example, when I do get avocados I get green ones and let them ripen at home over a week or so. It just means unbufferable food, shorter shelf-life, food that can’t be staples.
What I like about this mindset is that it can handle any kind of dish or recipe. I want a taco night or do a cookbook recipe (an old favorite or a new one) or experiment with some new ideas or even have the occasional store-bought, pre-made thing, I can.
Stephen Covey tells this story about a guy putting stuff in a jar. Rocks, then gravel, then sand, then water. Moral of the story: you can’t fit the big rocks in unless they go in first. Your time is as precious as the space in that jar; it over-flowing is a failure state. Schedule the important things first and let the small stuff fill up around them.
Great story. Love it, live by it.
For groceries, it’s the opposite situation. You want to fill up the jar, since it represents your meal-hours. The failure state is not having enough.
So the way to do that is to have plenty of “sand and water”—your staples, your pantry buffers, your rote recipes—ready.
Your “specials” will go bad if you don’t fit them in, so don’t overshoot with them, but since you have the staples, you have plenty of slack so you don’t have to stress with precision planning out day-by-day, meal-by-meal. You can just back-of-your-mind it.
The four things you often hear about are citrus juice, baking soda, distilled (non-fossil) vinegar and (potassiom saponified) soap. Be careful about mixing them because you don’t want to cause any weird chemical reactions. If you want to mix two, look it up on the internet first.
Also. Don’t be overly smug about how great these natural cleaning supplies are. Frankly, they’re kind of frustrating, it’s really hard to get things clean with them sometimes. Not that I’d know whether some proprietary, complicated chemical solution would do a better job, because I want to understand the things that I use at home.