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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025

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I know some women who are like that as well, and can see the appeal. You can use the greywater from the washing machine for the orchard, if you're into that kind of thing.

Those are mostly creative, social kinds of hobbies that are fun to do with children once they aren't absolute babies. I was homeschooled, and basically did 4-H instead of middle school, so we were always keeping animals, sewing, quilting, making fancy leather projects, and so on. My family uses a wood stove for heat, and we have a dead fruit tree that at some point we need to chop and split for firewood, which we plan to do ourselves. My housemate used to do home-brew stuff, and it looked like fun, I would definitely consider it.

But also, those are things men also participate in, more than cleaning, probably because they're more interesting than cleaning. It's extremely hard to keep things clean in a truly equal house with children, where nobody is extremely conscientious. My parents' house is very bad in that way, but many home crafts have been made there.

You can use the greywater from the washing machine for the orchard, if you're into that kind of thing.

I love reducing waste, but a few nitpicks: you probably only want to use the rinse water, and you still want to be careful about what kind of detergent you use, and you're only going to get enough waste water from the family clothes washer to cover a tree or two, so do have additional irrigation plans for anything large enough to call an orchard.

(my parents weren't "into" that, but they were frugal and we lived in a desert, so my dad would often switch the washer drain from a sewer line to a hose-out-on-the-lawn for a load's final rinse cycle)