"The Year Without Toilet Paper"

That's the title of an article just published online at the New York Times. It's about a family of three who live in a normal apartment near Union Square in Manhattan who have chosen to go a year consuming as little and as lightly as they can. The lights are few and dim. The TV and refrigerator are turned off. The food is local only. The transportation is hoofing it. And as things they used to use run out, there are homemade substitutes, or they go without. Hence, the toilet paper.

Treading lightly is a game, of course, but then so are most attempts at living unconventional lifestyles, whether as a yuppie for a year or as a monk for the duration. And let's keep this in context: billions tread lightly in other parts of the world, and hundreds of millions go without toilet paper.

New York is, in some ways, the nation's most efficient city, but again, in context, this family's experiment (we could call it trial) is an extreme attempt at leaving only tiny footprints, a blog and a book deal (so American!). So it's a game. At least it's an insightful and instructive game. It gets you thinking. I recommend the article, which you can see here, for a while, until it's archived in Times Select.

There is a growing stream of readers' comments associated with the "Year Without TP" article, which asks the question, "What would you sacrifice for a more environmentally sound life?"

Here, slightly revised, is the comment I just contributed:

How about choosing, as a teenager (at 17, I think, after reading Walden), to... never cause a pregnancy, much less have children; to never own a television; to never own a new car (used, at least 5 years old, is ok, high mpg, of course); to own only a few electrical appliances; and significantly, I think, I chose to never own stock. I shop, I consume, but I don't invest.

I am 49 now and have held well and proudly to all of these choices.

I am typing on one of those electrical appliances, but now this laptop is my only computer. I own a stereo, which is 10 years old, and have two speakers, not five. I own a clock radio that was a gift. I own a 1950s vintage blender I got at a garage sale for a dollar. And I am using a microwave that my grandmother used back when Nixon was president. Oh, and I have a cell phone I charge from time to time. But no home phone.

I live with a hot water heater, which is always set on "vacation low" and which I turn off anytime I'm leaving the house for more than a few days. And I just received another gift, a new refrigerator. Several times, for more than a year at a time, I have gone without a working refrigerator, and one of those times was some of 2005 and all of 2006. My new fridge is very much me. It's capacity is a mere 4.4 cubic feet, and it's Energy Star rated. If left on, it might use about $24 of electricity a year, but I clean it out and turn it off as well when I'm going away for more than a few days.

Several times, I have gone a year or so without a car, though I traveled with friends. Carpooling is cool. And I have mostly lived in places which had no or minimal air conditioning, even in Texas. I went almost 15 years straight without a/c in Austin, and I now live in a house with one old window unit in the living room that I use as little as I can.

And, as it turns out, I've made so little money that I've kept my contributions to the burgeoning military-industrial complex to a minimum. It would be not only ironic but painful to tread lightly at home but to in any way encourage carrying a big and destructive stick anywhere else.

I write a blog called "A Better Nation" in which I sometimes talk about the "treading lightly" lifestyle, along with other 'state of the world and how's life' stuff, near and far, thinking globally and close to home. I'd welcome your visit.