Converting a school bus into a permanent residence is a bit like a coming-of-age story. You take a school bus, probably one very similar to the one you rode in elementary school, gut it entirely, and …
5 DIY Composting Toilet Ideas And Details To Consider
Most of us were raised on flush toilets. You go in the bathroom, do what you’ve got to do, and then the press of a shiny lever flushes all your unpleasantries into oblivion, never to be thought of …
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Getting Started With Off-Grid Water Systems For A More Self-Reliant Homestead
In my experience, it seems that discussions about off-grid water systems only take place in niche communities of homesteaders or preppers. If you were to bring it up in “normal” workplace …
20 Dutch Oven Camping Recipes for Your Next Outdoor Adventure
I’ve always loved camping, and one of my favorite parts is the outdoor cooking experience. Food cooked over a campfire is something you just can’t replicate at home in your kitchen.A lot of times, …
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Hand Water Pumps: A Guide
"So let me get this straight. You want me to pull the electric pump out so you can put in a manual pump?"My husband and I nodded at the man who had come to remove our broken electric pump. He …
Moving from City to Country: The Long-Term Transition
When we moved from a city of 200,000 to a homestead in a hilly, Ozark town of 2,000 residents, my husband and I fully anticipated there would be an adjustment period. As I wrote in my first article …
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Caffeine-Free Coffee Substitutes That You Can Forage In The Backyard
Coffee is something I really used to enjoy. In my memories, that roasted, dark liquid is synonymous with warm cafes, good conversation, and air perfumed with delicious aromas. But now that I'm more …
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Why You Should Start Using A Clothesline
When I think of using a clothesline, I think of a conversation I had when I still lived in the city. While hanging my laundry, my neighbor’s little boy poked his head through the fence.”Whatchoo …
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Rainwater Harvesting: The Basics And Why You Should Start Today
Lead contamination. Chlorine and fluoride. E.coli. Fracking pollutants. Toxins and pharmaceuticals. There are so many things that might be mixed in the water that flows from the faucet, that turning …
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Frugal Living: Everything You Need To Know
It’s no secret that modern living is a bit of a morass of consumerism, waste, and debt. In a world where the latest smartphone debuts less than a year after its previous iteration, where the Joneses …
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Living Off-Grid: What It’s Actually Like
When people learn that my husband and I moved our family to the Ozarks to go off-grid, we sometimes get interesting responses. Living off-grid evokes images of end-of-the-world preppers stocking up …
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Wofati
There's a charm to underground homes and so-called 'hobbit homes', but many former owners of such buildings have moved out due to problems with moisture and related conditions. But, earth might be the …
Eating Acorns: From Foraging To Cooking & Recipes
This summer, my family and I moved to our homestead. We were not able to get a garden into the rocky, wild ground, but somehow we’ve had a fantastic fall harvest and have started accumulating jars of …
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15 Earth Homes
Some earth homes take advantage of something called thermal mass, which basically means that the mass of a structure has some capacity to store heat. So the mass of a home can stay at a more constant …
Living Off The Grid
Living off the grid might seem like a dream come true for some of us. No longer tied to electricity or natural gas coming for a utility, we have greater choices for locations and saving money over the …
This Tiny, Off Grid Cabin Was Built for Just $300
Building an off the grid, tiny house style cabin is a dream for many Americans, but money is always a huge obstacle to putting up any building. At least, that's the conventional wisdom. Derek …
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Planetsave Considers the Benefits of Living Off the Grid
Despite all the benefits that easy access to electricity allows many of us to enjoy, here at Insteading, we tend to think of "the grid" as an oppressive sort of thing. Instead of glowing light bulbs …
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Living in a Dumpster, For a Full Year – Meet the New 1%
Environmental science professor Jeff Wilson believes that American homes have gotten way too big, and way too wasteful, giving people something they don't need at a price that- often- they can't …
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California Passes Neighborhood Food Act
As surprising as it may seem, you actually don't have the right to grow your own fruits and vegetables on your own private property.In some states- Florida, namely- people have been fined …
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How To Grow Microgreens in Tupperware
Lightweight, waterproof containers are a miracle of modern technology. You might never know how much you'll need a bucket, or a water jug, or a few dozen little plant pots until you don't have them, …
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How To Dig a Fresh Water Well
Access to clean water is essential in any survival situation- and an especially critical issue for homesteaders and survivalists who plan to live off the grid for extended periods.One way to …
Cape Coral, Florida: Go Off the Grid, Go to Jail
Robin Speronis lives in a modest home in Cape Coral, Florida- and she's living in a way that many environmentalists and preppers would call ideal: 100% completely removed from the city's electrical …
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DIY Hand Sanitizer That’s as Good as Store-bought
Keeping minor cuts and scrapes clean and avoiding infection is just as important as steering clear of disease-carrying mosquitoes in a disaster/survival situation. More often than not, it's the little …
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How Much Water Do People Need to Drink in a Day? (w/ Video)
Do you know how much water you'll need to survive if you're ever caught truly off-grid? The US government says you need 1 gallon of water, per person, every 3 days, just to survive. Their recommended …
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Families Getting Fined for Growing Food Gardens
More and more people are turning to the "grow food, not lawns" movement for a variety of reasons. Some of us are urban farming revolutionaries, some of us are preppers, and some of us are just …
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DIY Tip: Turn an Old China Cabinet into a Fresh Egg Apartment
We all love the idea of growing our own. Sometimes that's vegetables or microgreens, sometimes it's rabbits, and- on rare occasions- that can even mean grubs and maggots.When it comes to poultry …
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Zeer Pot Refrigerator Keeps Food Fresh Without Electricity
So you've got your homegrown vegetables and yard-bred rabbit yummies all ready to be canned and dried. Some of it, though, you'll want to eat fresh- but you'll have a narrow window to do so, …
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Florida Law Makes Living Off The Grid Illegal
If you're in Florida and hope to live a more sustainable lifestyle free from the influence of energy companies and massive agricultural conglomerates by adding solar panels to your home, harvesting …
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DIY Teardrop Trailer for Camping and Survival
This isn't the first time I've covered DIY teardrop trailers. Over on Gas 2, we even published a how-to manual from Mechanix Illustrated a while back. This, though, is the first time we've seen one of …
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DIY Prepper Project: Build Your Own Motorhome (w/ video)
One of the topics that regularly comes up on the prepper/post-collapse pages I frequent is the bug out vehicle. Almost no other topic brings up more diverse and "energetic" opinions than what the best …
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Camping: the Kahuna Camping Kayak Concept
What you're looking at here is a pretty novel outdoor sporting concept called the Kahuna - a lightweight composite-bodied outrigger kayak that's ready at a moment's to put you up for the night when …
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DIY Worm Composting Solution for Under $20
Living off the grid - whether by choice or by chance - is all about efficiency. You need to learn to make the most of your land, your water, and even your food waste. That's where worm composting …
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DIY How-to: Build a $300 in-Ground Greenhouse (w/ plans)
Farmers have been trying to extend the growing season of their crops for hundreds of years. So far, the greenhouse has been the dominant technology, since it doesn't usually require electricity to …
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Blast From the Past? Las Vegas Home Features Epic Bomb Shelter! (w/ video)
Remember "Blast from the Past", that late-90s cold-war parody/rom-com that starred Brendan Fraser and Alicia Silverstone and told the story of a family that built a lavish underground bomb shelter …
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SunOven: the Ultimate Off-the-grid Cooking Tool for Post-apocalyptic Foodies (w/ video)
Solar ovens are long-lasting, zero-emission cooking tools that use no fuel - making them perfect for both off-the-grid cooking and developing countries that don't have access to a reliable grid to …
Renzo Piano Builds a Haute Shiver Shack For Off-the-Grid Singles
Italian architect Renzo Piano has come up with a small, simple-living home design that is less of a shiver shack and more of a one-person, off the grid castle - and, if you’re in the market for a …
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Sustainability 101: How To Build A Solar Oven
In most homes and apartments, cooking takes place on a stove, in an oven, or, on those nights when you're just too tired to think, in the microwave. But these aren't the only ways to prepare a meal, …
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Off-Grid vs. Grid-Tied Home Solar Systems
When someone mentions living "off the grid," what do you picture? Most people see a remote location with a small, ultra-efficient house and no one else around for miles. For many years, this was …
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