Compost is Life

There is an old saying, "You can't fit 100 pounds of fertilizer in a 50-pound sack."

No, but you can fit 100 pounds of kitchen scraps in a 50-pound compost sack. If you have ever witnessed the miracle of compost, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you have not, please allow me to expound.

When a person places fresh organic material in direct contact with the earth, the earth begins slowly decomposing the material by mechanical and biological means. The earthworms and grub worms that enter the pile chew, swallow, digest, and excrete the material. The result is what is known as "worm castings" or, in street lingo, worm poop. In addition, microbial organisms also begin to consume and digest the material, but only certain elements of it. The chemical reactions the microbes initiate release heat, which is why you may see steam rising from the pile. Or, if you've ever dumped out your lawn clippings in a pile and come back to work with them several hours later, you'll notice the middle of the pile is very warm. That is because of the composting action of the microbes. All of this happens within the pile probably in a different order than I've described, but I know these processes do occur in the pile because I have pictorial proof.

When organic material is finished breaking down, the result is compost. The result is also a much smaller pile than the one you started with. This is because as the pile breaks down the material compacts very neatly. This phenomenon is very interesting because many times I have gone to add new material to a compost pile and stacked it up to the very top of the bin. Then within a few days, the pile has sunk down to just a few inches higher than it was before I added the new material.

Compost, I have found, is a wonderful analogy for life, both in terms of how we manage our space and how we manage our time. Allow me once again to rehearse.

First, in one of my previous posts I discussed time management as a possible solution to the problem of whether to return to college and still be able to manage my household. Current theory holds that if I take a major portion of one day per week to complete the bulk of my work for the week, I will have more time later in the week to work on home improvement and family time. For this theory to work in practice, I would have to identify and eliminate time wasters and start really packing every minute of my day with a meaningful activity.

The second example I have comes from my experience in rearranging things in my house for my new child. I am most proud of what I have done in my bedroom. Before we had a king sized loft bed, under which we kept our dresser and some shelves for food storage and linens, etc. That took up probably 80% of our floor space, and we couldn't use the rest of the room for anything worthwhile except stuffing a baby crib in the corner by the closet.

We decided to move our son out of the one room in our house that was being used as a kids' room and open up the office to become his bedroom. The first thing we knew had to go from our room was our bed. So we went to Ikea to get some ideas. MAN was I blown away by the ideas they had for utilizing space effectively. We found a futon mattress we both loved, and our original plan was to just place it on the floor at night and lay it against the wall during the day to use the extra floor space. We were amazed to find how comfortable we really were on this mattress, which is between full and queen sizes. When we got married, we got a king bed as soon as we could, thinking it was going to be the most pleasant, most comfortable, etc. Typical American excess. This mattress is probably 60% as big and provides 100% of the same comfort. What's more is that we were able to fit a small desk and bookshelf in our room--a two-piece set we also bought from Ikea.

We bought some cloth-covered fiberboard boxes that were designed to be drawer inserts for another bookshelf and moved all our clothing into these boxes. I built some shelves for the boxes in the closet. We both have four boxes now. These boxes provide way more clothing storage space than our dresser did, even though they take up less space in our bedroom. We put all the clothes from our dresser in the boxes along with some clothing that was previously hung up, and we still have room left over in the boxes. Because our clothing boxes are sitting on the floor in the closet, we hung our shoes on the newly created space on the clothing bar using two five-dollar shoe organizers--also compliments of Ikea.

Finally, I hung some hooks and a single shelf on the wall right inside our bedroom door so that we now have a place to hang up our bags and purses and place our keys out of the way of the children and out of our closet.

So...we axed the dresser and the loft bed. All our clothing is now efficiently stored in our closet, AND we added a desk and a bookshelf. The result is that our room feels so much more open and roomy. We are even able to leave the mattress lying on the floor all the time without feeling crowded. It is a combination office and bedroom, and it's only a 14'x10' room!

When I saw what I was able to do with a 140 sq ft bedroom simply by not desiring excessive stuff and making use of all available space, I was shocked! I immediately began to think of the compost pile and how, despite the fact that I keep adding buckets and buckets of material to it, it never seems to fill up the bin after it's all done decomposing. I think of my house now like a compost pile. It may seem full now, but when I get done dejunking and compacting my stuff, I will find a lot more room opened up.

I've been really transferring this thinking to every room in the house. Our bathtub is a huge waste of space. Luckily it's broken, so I removed it today, and sometime in the future I am going to build a standup shower only and use the remaining space to store linens. The bathtub in the hall will one day become two shower stalls, and the four-foot wide sink countertop will become two sinks. Our kitchen is hardly big enough for us to walk around in with the dining table in it--that is with all the chairs we have surrounding it. If I build benches for all four sides of the 4'x3' table, we could fit ten people at that table, and it wouldn't be so hard to walk from the counter to the fridge to prepare dinner.

With the way all this is going, I really believe I could raise up to eight kids in this house before we really had to move. This is a 900 sq ft house, mind you. It's a 70'x14' mobile home. Now, I'm not saying I'm going to force fit all those people here if it really doesn't work...but that's just IT! I think it really CAN! I mean, just a couple weeks ago I really believed there wasn't any more room in my house for one more child. Now I'm thinking of doubling the usable facilities in my bathroom. We found a cot mattress at Ikea that would sleep an adult comfortably even though it is smaller than a twin mattress. Hey--it's no different than asking two adults to sleep in a queen bed--do the math! So we could build bed frames for these mattresses, and our kids could sleep on these beds into their maturity. If we put six bunks in one room and three in the other, we could even fit NINE kids in here!

Now I know it all sounds crazy. Emily and I do want a big family. We want to have ten kids. We talk about that number regularly. We may even have more. Or we may have less, depending on what God has in store for us. What I'm getting really excited about is that there seem to be limitless possibilities for me here in this house. I was really worried about having to add on rooms or move sometime in the near future, and in a few years when we're financially able, we will probably do just that. But for now, it is so exciting and reassuring to know that we can invest in some minimal furniture and alterations and still be able to live comfortably here. Our philosophy is that the kitchen and the living room are where families spend their time at home. The bedrooms are for sleeping and dressing, and that's it. Later when our kids will need a place to study or just have a quiet place, we may build a small office in the back yard. But again--all this is exciting because I know I have a lot of time left before I have to do something major. And, I must admit, meeting the challenge of figuring this out and making it work is a lot of fun.

I Love My Work

Years ago when I was at my best friend Jesse's house, I was thinking about how his father seemed to be a machine. He worked in construction and remodeling his entire life, and after he divorced Jesse's mother, he was a single dad. During the days he went to work hauling lumber, framing walls, and installing roofing. Then at night he was making dinner, cleaning house, helping Jesse with his homework, and teaching Jesse martial arts or watching a movie. I was at their house every day after school, on weekends, and sometimes before school in the mornings when Bill would feed my brother Skyler and me his patented two-pan, baked omelette layer cake-a-majigger.

One day when I was helping set the table before dinner at Jesse's house, I asked Bill how he did it. I said, "Bill, how can you work all day and then come home and do nothing but work here in the house?" His answer went straight over my head, but finally, at the age of 30, I have come to know exactly what he was talking about.

He said, "When I come home, this is when I get to spend time with Jesse. I love being at home, so it's not work to me."

I thought he was crazy.

Yesterday I was remodeling my closet when I got to thinking how much work I've done on this house in the last couple months. I have been thrilled as each project has come to completion and my house is just a little safer, a little more comfy, a little roomier. It helps that I like to work with my hands, too. But my kids are here. My wife is here. My dogs are here. The neighbor comes over to talk to me. Emily brings me drinks and sandwiches when she can tell my sheep-dog nature has taken over and I'm going to work myself to death.

I love teaching my children how to take care of their house. They love to take turns vacuuming the living room and helping with dishes. I love watching them and hearing them play in the yard, imagining they're building buildings, cooking food, caring for babies, doing magic tricks. I am ecstatic that I get to spend my days around these people. We all love each other so much. Our love and our efforts all come together to make this a beautiful home.

This isn't work to me, either.

The College Question

My view on attending college has radically shifted in the last year. I once subscribed to the dogma that college was an unofficial requirement for anyone who wanted to amount to anything in this world--that college was the only way to get a good job and live comfortably--that it was worth any sacrifice you would have to make to get through college because college is the only way to become a better (read "educated") person and that you should never give up. I now subscribe to the battle-tested school of thought that college has lost its way in life and is a worthwhile investment only in appropriate circumstances.

First, let's consider the cost. I'm not one of those people who likes to go researching statistics just to prove myself to skeptics, but we all know that the cost of college tuition is rising. It's been in the news as a steady trend for years. Why is it rising? How could it possibly cost so much to transfer knowledge? The answer is that it doesn't cost anything at all to transfer knowledge. What costs money is huge campuses, huge buildings, huge staffs with huge salaries, and huge marketing efforts. Online schools are even more ridiculous--even without the campuses and the buildings! So to get through school you have to be on welfare (which, as a process coupled with the process of obtaining an education, is rather the antithesis of attending college in the first place, isn't it?), be rich (in which case you probably would feel you could do without the degree), get a lot of scholarships, join the military, or slave your way through school as a poor full time student with a part time job and no life. In the majority of cases today, students wind up thousands of dollars in debt, which takes them sometimes ten or more years to pay off. Using what you learned in your basic economics class, think of the opportunity cost of ten years in the work force spent repaying debts versus building wealth and working at something you enjoy! If someone is going to school just to get a degree and get a "good job", it is counterproductive to earn a degree instead of joining the work force immediately.

Second, college has lost its way in life. By that I mean that in my experience, and in the experience of many of my friends who have attended college, earning a degree requires far too much non-academic effort. I'm talking a little bit about paperwork, counseling requirements, etc, but mostly about these strange appendages to academic work that seem to have attached themselves to real academic work. This instructor wants papers formatted in her own special way despite what the handbook says and didn't bother to tell anyone until after the paper came back a B+. That instructor won't take assignments late even though there was a server outage that was the university's fault. The point of attending college is to obtain knowledge and skills to improve character and ability. That really only requires reading and personal experience. However, because a college degree is a certificate that shows the world what you have done, you have to be able to prove to others that you have gained the knowledge and skills. That's why we turn in assignments. Assignments should fit the criteria given by the instructor, yes, but far too often students get caught up in a dog and pony show trying to figure out exactly what little bells and whistles make the instructor's little ego soar or some other college official.

Third, let's examine intent. I would say most students pick a major because they have to or because they believe that training will make them a lot of money--not because they really want to study that major. In this way, students end up spending a lot of time, money, and effort chasing a certificate for something they didn't really want in the first place. I believe that a college degree in this day and age would really be worthwhile if you wanted to study that major because you are passionate about it or wanted to have a career based on the training you would receive. But without such a good reason, it is absolutely batty to go to such great lengths and incur such great expenses to earn a degree just because your parents told you to.

I'm not saying that if you are not passionate about any subject in which universities offer degrees you should throw in the towel knowing you will be a gas station attendant the rest of your life. Well, first, let me clarify that I AM a gas station attendant, and the company I work for is a Fortune 100 Best, so I can think of worse places to be in life. Second, being a gas station attendant or a cashier in a grocery store or quick-serve restaurant is good work. Some people are really cut out for that, and it's work that allows a person to be social, serve others, and often, remain physically fit. What I am saying is that if you don't REALLY want to be what you're studying to become, is it really worth the cost? What would be worth that cost to you? You may find that what would be worth any cost to you might not cost that much in the first place. There are vocational certificates available for many careers people find interesting--cosmetology, auto repair, and massage/chiropractic just to name a few. So find out what kind of work you really want to do, THEN determine whether a college degree is necessary to do that work, THEN go to college. After all, education is a process, not an event.

Home Improvements and The Conundrum

I have been on a rampage lately. I think what it is really is that I'm nesting. Or co-nesting, I should say. Emily is due to deliver Rachel on December 31, so she has been doing a lot of cleaning and organizing lately. I got started a couple months ago with a fence building project and haven't stopped since. After I built the fence, I built some stairs for our back porch, erected a new compost bin, started on a straw bale dog house, moved our office into our bedroom and moved our son into the old office, overhauled our bedroom and closet, built two rocket stoves (neither of which has done any good rocketing, unfortunately) and, just today, removed my old bathtub and razed the rat apartment complex underneath the tub.

I have done a lot of soul-searching in the last couple months because I truly feel like I'm in my element when I'm working with my hands. I continually read magazines, watch YouTube videos, search the internet, and read books, all on "how-to" subjects. The latest vein I've been riding is about green building, and natural living. This is the stuff that really gets my motor running. I mean, when I'm reading about or working on something that I feel will improve my life by making it more sustainable, simple, or "off the grid", it's like I'm in my own personal church. This is where I feel close to God. The soul-searching comes in because right now I'm on a break from school.

College is great for me for a few reasons. I really am learning a lot about business and about the world we live in and the people we live with. But the most motivating payoff is the money I'm getting from the GI Bill. This is money that we've been using to get out of debt as well as pay some other bills. College is bad, however, because it takes a lot of time, and the team assignments cause an undue amount of stress. Also, when I was spending a lot of time reading about big business technology, competition, corporate culture and human motivation, etc, I could see myself starting to think and feel very "corporately".

As I've been doing all this wonderful reading and all these wonderful home improvement projects, the thought has been in the back of my head that I will soon have to start school again, and play time will be over.

But it's more than playtime. It's time for me to clean the rat mess out of the house my wife and children live in. It's time for me to erect a fence to keep my children safe. It's time for me to put my house in order so that my newborn child will have a place in our home. It's time for me to obtain knowledge and skills that I feel I must pass on to my children for them to be happy and successful. I'm doing one of the things I really want to be doing with my life, and I don't want to give that up.

On one hand, I could argue that temporarily setting aside my desire to be doing the things I want to do on a daily basis will yield more long-term freedom because I will be making additional money to get out of debt faster. Living debt free will dramatically enhance my ability to start a business of my own doing what I want to do. On the other hand, I could argue that a person could spend his entire life "temporarily" setting aside his true desires for long-term gain only to find that his "best-laid plans" have been frustrated by lack of passion and focus.

I have been kicking around this one idea that I could start school again and still have time left over for the fun things by managing my time better--a LOT better. My classes come in five-week blocks, and I have a syllabus at the start of the class that tells me exactly what I will be doing during the class. If I treat school like a part-time job, I could work on school one day a week for ten hours, then do minimal maintenance throughout the rest of the week for a total of about 12 hours per week. Sounds easy in theory, but I know from too much experience that when the time comes to work on school I've been up all night working or Emily has a doctor's appointment. In short, trying to have a family, work full-time, attend school full time, and become a successful self-sufficient homesteader is rather like a living hell. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the work. I love the work. It's just hard trying to fit 100 pounds of poopy in a 50-pound sack. Something's gotta give, and for now, school goes.