“5. TV: I watch less and less of the idiot box”

Amen Pam, we agree on something.

Whether or not a car is necessary depends on living choices. I live in a suburban area with no bus service in my subdivision, but buying in that area was contingent on my already having a car. I could have chosen to live downtown, with bus service and a few markets in the neighborhood. So, for my current life, I need a car. But, could I have chosen otherwise? Sure. (The actual choice was based, in part, on having space for a vegetable garden.)

Now, washer and dryer. While I do use my washer regularly, less than 10% of the loads go through the dryer. I have clothes lines, and I’m not afraid to use them. I’m stubborn about putting towels through the dryer, but that’s an aesthetic preference, not a necessity. And sheets go through the dryer in the winter, as my indoor drying racks aren’t large enough for a queen-sized sheets.

Finally, cell phone. It used to be that if you needed to make a phone call away from home, you could find a pay phone, probably even a working one. Now, not so much.

Car, high speed internet, and cell phone are necessities for me, but that’s because I need them to do my job (enough so that my company reimburses me for the ‘net and the phone).  And I’m with you on the A/C thing; here on the other side of the Dismal Swamp, our summers are just a nasty, nasty business.  The sleep deprivation that would result from trying to go without it is daunting.

I’d add dishwasher to the necessity list for me, even though I don’t have one currently, because you should just see the mess my kitchen is (a mess that miraculously disappears when we have a dishwasher…)

On what level does this list begin? When I think about “what I cannot do without”, it starts with things like food and climate-appropriate clothing, a dry place to sleep and clean water, and goes on to friends, a room of one’s own, health care and enough sleep, and before I come to the first item on your list I already have two pages of necessities.

So, six things I would really hate to have do without: computer/internet, books, tea, music, access to a washing machine, and ibuprofen.

I used to have a walkman on that list back when I spend two hours a day on public transport, so I can understand the need for some kind of portable music player.

I’m curious: how many of you have dropped the land line and are using strictly cell phone for every call?  My mother expressed frustration one year when I cancelled my phone service and just kept my cell phone, but it’s saved us money and I’m finding more and more people who are strictly mobile now.

Technically I could live without any of the items on that list. I would miss the TV, because I’d miss playing on the consoles hooked up to it. I don’t have an ipod, though I do use the PSP a friend gave me for a portable music player on occasion. we have a microwave but I rarely use it, prefering other methods for cooking and heating stuff. Nuked food just doesn’t taste as good.

The biggest things I would miss are the Internet and Home Computers - we actually have one per person in this household, which is nice because it means there’s no arguing over whose turn it is. The Internet keeps me from going completely out of touch when I have one of my antisocial phases and probably helps keep me from letting my depression hit suicidal levels.

That said I would love a dishwasher, a washer/dryer and a flat panel TV - that last because they take up less space and are less of an intrusion on the room where they’re located.

I’m curious: how many of you have dropped the land line and are using strictly cell phone for every call?

*Raises hand*  Haven’t had a land line in about 5 years.

Our power went out here two years ago for 5 days, so it became interesting to see what became a luxury and what we really had to have.  I’m surprised that microwave made it on the list but refrigerator didn’t: I would have killed for some uncanned meat (pun intended) by the end of day 3.  I went nearly insane without either TV or internet, but found that playing a small radio while I read alleviated that (guess it has something to do with the comfort of another human voice).

Where I’m at, a car is absolutely necessary: we only have one bus line within walking distance and the buses only run from 5:30-7:00 am and 5:00-6:30 pm.

TV - mine is in use really only to watch DVDs, and it is a flat-screen. Why? My old TV broke down (after 24 years), and I couldn’t find anything BUT flat-screens, so I got the cheapest 720p I could find. I’ve since found that they still have tube-type TVs, but only in very few stores. Microwave I use quite often for reheating. Dishwasher? Never had one, never needed one. A garbage disposal is probably the only real luxury that I would find useful, but I seriously doubt I’d get one. Washer - can’t do without. Dryer I could do without from springtime until late fall, but it would be impossible to dry in wintertime without having clothesline strung all over the inside of the house. A/C - are you kidding? It gets up to 110 here in the summer, and 95 is the average summer temp.

There’s nothing here that I actually couldn’t live without, but the margin varies pretty widely. On the more-necessary list, I’d put my cellphone (since I no longer have a landline, and as af pointed out, payphones are scarce now too.) I strongly prefer to have a dishwasher, since it cuts waaay down on roommate disputes. Home AC is a must in my climate (moreso than heat), and I’d miss my laptop something fierce if I had to let it go.

What’s interesting is there’s not really much distinction given between the things we have a hard time not having access to, and the things we need for ourselves. I don’t need my very own car, but my city has crappy transit, so I need to share one with no more than a few people. When I say I don’t need my own washer and dryer, I don’t mean I handwash everything. No one does, really. I prefer to give friend a couple of bucks a month to use theirs, rather than overpay at a laundromat. Some goes for high-speed internet—I don’t have it at home, but I’m glad I can use it elsewhere. So I’m not sure when people answering this survey were thinking about having their very own of something (cell phone, ipod) vs. having access to something (internet connection, washer/dryer).

Yeah, microwaves are really a waste of space unless you are addicted to Hot Pockets or something. Anything I’ve ever used them for (nachos, for example) comes out ten times better (and faster!) under the broiler.

If all you use it for is boiling tea water, then you should switch to one of those electric kettles like everyone uses in the UK. You can get one for like $15 at Target and they are extremely fast and energy efficient (microwaves are huge power hogs).

I technically have a land line (for DSL) but no phone plugged into it, so I’m not quite cell-phone only.

I currently live without a car, A/C, dishwasher, microwave, TV, so obviously those aren’t necessities.  I have access to washers and dryers in the basement of my building, but I almost always air-dry my clothes anyways.  So I guess I fall somewhere in between on clothes washer—I don’t need to own it exclusively, but I do need to have access to it.  Dryer is optional but nice to have for sheets and towels.

I really, really, really like having a home computer and high-speed internet access, and would be hard-pressed to go without them, though I’m sure I’d do a lot more reading if I didn’t have them.  But the last thing to go would definitely be my cell phone—I don’t talk that much, but I have had to use it in a couple of emergency situations, and I’d hate to be without it.

Top “necessities”

1: Home computer: The center of most of my work and entertainment. Finding work or doing work would be nigh impossible without one.

2: High Speed internet: I can survive on low-speed, but being able to transfer large files once again increases my ability to work from home, and supercharges the computer’s abilities.

3: Cel Phone. I went mobile-only a few years back after a few events in my life that might have been avoided if I had a cel phone, then reasoned I didn’t need both a home number and cel number. Going to the iPhone pnce again pushed my use of the phone to the next level, thanks to net access and useful apps.

Honestly, that’s it. Living in SoCal would have added a car and home AC, but I have lived for periods where those three were all I had.

Top Luxuries:
Microwave: last thing I buy, and first thing I sell when I move though…

Clothes washer/dryer: Laundromats are annoyances, but I’ve lived in lots of apartments with laundry facilities, so I don’t know whether this counts. =/

TV: Games and movies. I don’t have cable or satellite right now and no real plans t get one.

Car: I Rent one about once every 3-6 months for day trips and errands.

I wonder how many of those using these devices which depend on fossil fuel (in their development, in the electricity they use, if not directly using oil or gas, which vehicles and industry do) raged at Palin for her intent and finally success to move gas from Alaska to you?

On a minus 27C day, using natural gas to run the heating system, move water up the pipes, run the computer, boil water for my coffee, give me ‘tone’ not ‘pulse’ on my landline, run the elevator. Lots more I’m sure.

No car, microwave, washer/dryer, home or car air-conditioning, tv, cell-phone, dishwasher, cable or satellite, flat-screen or iPod.

Because I’m somewhat disabled and growing moreso as I age, I reluctantly caved and accepted a microwave for Xmas. It hasn’t arrived yet. It’ll be coming by plane. Something like the one Mr. Palin drives.

Now, I can live just hunky-dory without the washer machine/ dryer, but I fly a lot so without my iPod I’d be sunk.  If you had to do five hours in a seat, alone, unable to read because it makes you sick, unable to sleep, that iPod starts looking less and less like a luxury and more and more like a sanity saving device.

OK, having moved the bare necessities from my mind now and am ready to play useful vs. useless luxuries.

A/C: Necessary in my place of work with a heap of computers stacked closely in a glass box. I used to do without in the previous place, and when temperature goes above 36°C in the room both productivity and hardware suffer badly. Completely unnecessary in my home, which is cleverly built and in a temperate climate.

Car: Not necessary to own one, but to have access to one now and then.

Cell phone: useful, but not necessary.

Dishwasher: Not necessary.

flat screen TV: I hate those things.

High speed Internet/Computer: One of the most useful things ever. But a huge time waster, too.

iPod: Some kind of music player might be necessary, depending on lifestyle. At the moment I do not spend much time traveling, so it isn’t.

Microwave: Useful, but cannot do anything a stove/oven can’t, which is not true the other way round. I use mine mostly for heat packs, which would be a waste of energy to heat in the oven.

TV: Completely useless, but only because my computer has a DVD drive.

Washer/dryer: Access to a washer is a necessity. All the times I needed a dryer I was lacking stuff far higher up the list than any of the above.

Guess it depends on how you define necessities.  I use my cell phone for business, but I’ve been in this business since before there were cell phones, so it can obviously be done; the cell phone simply makes business more efficient.

I guess that I have a different notion of what constitutes a necessity: 150 years ago everybody had to survive without electricity, central heat, gas, running water, indoor plumbing, dentistry, telephones, cars, and all but the most rudimentary medical care, and we still survived.  We also didn’t survive for as long .  .  .  .

This is a little disingenuous. It’s true that there are lots of businesses that didn’t used to have cell phones, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need one now. It’s not just that it makes you more efficient, it’s that business itself has changed. If your management and customers expect you to have a cell phone, then you really do need a cell phone to succeed in your job, even if you wouldn’t have needed one ten years ago.

Not having needed something in the past doesn’t mean it’s shallow and frivolous to say you need it now. Things have changed, and it’s not just lazy, indulgent individuals.

Public transport availability during my time in Boston and NYC are such that having a car was not only unnecessary, but also an expensive nuisance considering the costs of the car, car insurance, and neighborhood parking permits/parking.  Especially when one employer provided free unlimited monthly T passes.

Have had no problem living without a TV for 8 years as time for academics, extracurriculars, work, and hanging out/partying with friends was such I didn’t have time for it.

Never had a washer and dryer as every residence I occupied had laundry machines which was not only convenient, but also saved on valuable space and utility expenses. 

Lived 4 years without A/C on a top-floor 1880’s era apartment building in the Boston area which retained heat so well that it was always 20 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the outside temperatures in the apartment.  The high humidity only added to the perception of high summertime temperatures and made fans effectively useless.  Though my roommates and I were fortunate to be healthy enough to withstand such conditions during the late spring, summer, and early fall, I wouldn’t recommend it if one could avoid it, especially with the serious dangers of heatstroke and other excess heat-induced conditions. 

The high heat conditions of my apartment was such that a microwave was an actual necessity if one wanted to prepare food at home as using the stoves at anytime other than late fall, early spring, and winter meant turning the apartment into an effective roast furnace.

Computer/internet access are a necessity for professional as well as for communications, especially before I succumbed to getting a cell phone 4 years ago.  Since then, I found that cell phones are quite convenient and a necessity as professional expectations of contact accessibility changed.

As for the ipod, it may not be a necessity….but it is very nice to have, especially on long hour+ commutes on jam-packed subway/bus rides to/from work/school.  With rock or other faced-tempoed music, also works as a good coffee substitute for the morning commutes. 

About six months ago I was unemployed and had to make some hard choices about what I could live without.  In the end it was my cell phone(my only phone) and my dog that I couldn"t give up, other than that most the items on that list are somewhat optional.

Of this type of list, I only really need internet. I don’t watch t.v., so internet has become my primary form of entertainment, and a great way to find out what’s going on in this area. Plus, it’s absolutely necessary for my job.

I could live without the cellphone, but that would suck.

I’ve lived without A/C, washer and dryer, ipod, landline, and dishwasher for years. Some of that sucked, some was no big deal.

Oh, I need a good stove and adequate counter space. I’m an amateur artisan baker and I would go insane if I couldn’t make fresh bread.

Even in Philadelphia we need AC now in the summer (horribly humid, very polluted, we are in a mini-basin trap like LA), but restrict it to my bedroom so I can sleep. Never owned a car, which has been an absolute lifesaver in times of under and unemployment (like now). Never bought a dishwasher. Never bought a washer/dryer. Have a very old, cheap clunky microwave that still works like a charm. Gave up the land line 5 years ago, too, for a very cheap, basic Nokia still going strong (someday I will be able to sell it on eBay as a relic!). Mom bought me a nice but inexpensive TV a few years back, one of those with a VHS and DVD player.  I have no cable; I just watch TV online and read the papers there too. Never owned a home (thank god for this too, given what has happened). If the bottom truly falls out not being able to secure gainful, full-time employment and run through my savings, I can easily pick up and go somewhere, but I hope everybody has a better new year in 2009!

Having not owned/purchased many of things listed by Pam or others, I never begrudge or tsk tsk anyone for having or wanting to. Our public transportation blows, it is a national disgrace, and, having lived in countries where I had to do without things like washers and dryers, you bet I would purchase them if I ever bought a home.

I have to admit the only things keeping me sane are my new MAC (big splurge last year), as it has helped me with applying for jobs and staying connected, and doing a little freelance consulting. Don’t think I could live without it and DSL (compensates for lack of cable TV too). My guilty pleasures that I could give up but can’t bring myself to just yet are Netflix and my magazine subscriptions. I know I should until better times come along, but they provide an enjoyable escape for now. Still feel guilty though…

Air conditioning.  I live in Florida, so this isn’t really negotiable.  I prefer opening the windows and letting the breeze do it’s thing when I can, but the summer heat here is an absolute killer.  I got by without having a car with a/c for a long time, but I had to borrow a car with a/c from an understanding friend whenever I needed to run to the vet’s.  Without that option, I’d have been pretty hosed.

Car.  Right now I can get by without needing one of my own so long as the household has one for things like grocery shopping, vet trips, doctor visits, etc.  Going carless entirely isn’t doable without some pretty serious sacrifices; the public transportation here sucks and shows no sign of getting significantly better anytime soon for anyone who isn’t using it to commute along the main highway or go downtown.

Washer/dryer.  Now that I have a yard I could put a clothesline up in, the dryer is less of a big deal.  The washer is a pretty big one, though, given the relative lack of laundromats within reasonable driving distance.

TV set/Home computer.  It’s kind of an either/or thing, given to what extent they can fill in for one another at this point.

Cable/satellite tv/High-speed internet.  Same as above.  If you have one, you can use it as a substitute for the other in a lot of cases.

MP3 player.  I pretty much only use it at work, but I’d go bonkers if I didn’t have it or couldn’t use it there.  I find background conversation intensely distracting, and I’m in a cubicle-type environment with a couple of people who are extremely chatty.

Cell phone.  I don’t use it very often, but I use it more than the land-line, and I’d sorely miss it in those instances where I do use it.  If I had to pick between a landline and a cell, I’d go with the cell.  They’re also very comforting to have in case of emergencies.

Dishwasher.  Having one is awesomesauce, and I’d miss it if we couldn’t have one.  There are only two of us, though, so it’s not like hand-washing the dishes would be some herculean effort.

Microwave.  One came with our house, but we hardly ever use it.  The toaster oven reheats leftovers more quickly and with better results.

A flat-screen tv seems like it would only really be on the list if you a) already viewed tv as a necessity and b) did not have room for a CRT set.

AC/heat (it’s one unit) - Definitely need it 3 or 4 months out of the year.  The rest of the time I might need it or not, but it’s good to have it.

Computer and high speed internet - I LIVE on my computer.  I order pizza from the computer.  I talk to my parents an ocean away via the computer.  I complain to customer service if a package is late via my computer.  I keep in touch with friends on the computer.  I lived without internet for about 3 months after I moved here and went INSANE.

Washer - I can’t imagine lugging my laundry down to the first floor and then dragging it to the laundromat.  Well, I assume there’s a laundromat SOMEWHERE.  But no dryers ... people in Japan just don’t use them that much.  I kind of miss the smell of dryer sheets though ...

Ovenly device - I have a machine that’s a microwave, toaster, and oven all in one.  I had to survive about 2 weeks before I bought it eating only food that could be boiled on the stove, food that was heated at the convenience store, or food that could be eaten cold.  It was tough. 

Entertainment - I too get motion sickness from reading, so iPods and such are lifesavers.  I’d say just in general I need something that can entertain me, especially on the go.  iPod, DS, or just my cell phone.  I commute a lot, and there’s only so much staring out the window I can take.

What I don’t need ...

Car - nowhere to put one, nowhere to park one, drivers here are insane, etc. etc.  But back home they were a necessity, as we had absolutely no public transportation and bicycling everywhere was hardly safe.

Cell phone - technically I need one for work and so people can contact me if I apply for a job or something, but in a month I probably spend less than 5 minutes talking on the phone.  Mostly I use it to send text messages to my friend while we’re at work.  I literally only need it to call work once a week and in case they need to call me for some reason while I’m not at work.  I could probably live without it if not for that. 

Dishwasher/dryer - Take up space, and while they’re nice, I can easily live without them.  And do. 

TV - I haven’t had a TV in a year and a half.  I like TV (not Japanese TV though), but it’s more for noise than actual entertainment.  I can generally get the shows I watch regularly through various other means.

I’d also say under necessities, a nice mattress.  Which I don’t have right now.  Ugh.

As others have said, I could live without all of those items, and have at certain low points of my life.  The part of town I chose to live in allows me to not own a car (with or without air conditioning), my household does not have a television (flat or otherwise) nor do we have dishwasher or I-pod.  We just got a microwave in November.  That is not to say that I am some kind of luddite, my current lifestyle could not be enjoyed without my computers, high speed internet connection, and the precious, precious air conditioner (I installed one in our back bedroom, so we could have a cool spot in the house, without waisting large amounts of electricity during heat waves).

I’m proud to say that i have very few of those things on the list.

Most essential thing for me is the computer. It is my primary source of entertainment.

I do require a car for my present situation but used to get along fine without one when i lived in DC, and hope to be that way again soon.

I don’t have a washer/dryer myself but the house i live in shares one which is nice.

The thing about the car that I don’t get is this. People act like the availability of public transportation is set in stone, not based on demand. If more people demanded it and used a car less, more public transportation would become available. The more people use public transit, the more routes their are and the more frequent they are. Now, I know that some rural areas are never going to get public transit and people who work in agriculture need vehicles for very specific purposes. But if you live in any sized metropolitan area, there is no reason why a good public transportation system couldn’t be fought for and won. As a blind person dependent on it, I have lived in small, medium and large-sized towns. You don’t need a car for any of them, although obviously large metro areas with good public transit are filled with more opportunities and benefits. We have fought to maintain and keep transit in all of these places, and it really all is based on demand.

Computer/internet. As a parent of small kids: washing machine/drier and dishwasher with a sanitize cycle. (I handwashed in superhot water until our first was a few months old, and that was crazymaking.) TV: not so much. Some kind of music player: necessary. With a washer/drier we could almost get away without a car, although that’s obviously a matter of choice in residence. We managed without AC (northern new england) until the offspring arrived; a couple nights of sleepless infant changed that decision, and new we use it a couple months a year. (A lot of the things on these lists aren’t daily necessities, but when you need them, oh gosh do you.)

Don’t be so quick to dismiss the iPod as sheer luxury. I do not need a car, but the tradeoff is that I do need an iPod to block out street harassment.

heat
bike- particularly the one that folds up and travels with me
dishwasher - we did dishes by hand for four months of a kitchen renovation, and all but I got belly bugs (I grew up with sometimes sketchy sanitation when visiting family that still did the outhouse thing so I don’t get these as bad)
intellectual stimulation
refrigerator with icemaker - good lord do I pine for this when I travel

I’m sure I’ll think of others - I’m getting pretty spoiled in my affluent old age

Dana, I get what you’re saying. I think my daughter would spend a lot more time on the playstation if she didn’t have her own computer and an obsession with writing.

After reading Inge’s list, I’ll add coffee and ibuprofen to mine ...

I should point out that if you have 4 or 5 or more people in a household, dishwashers should count as a necessity because they use far less water for the number of dishes they clean than hand washing, and they sanitize by heating the water to a high temp.  At our water and energy rates, the reduced water and water heating costs alone pay for the dang thing in about 3 years.  Single folk don’t see these kind of savings - let alone the time and effort issue and the sanitation issue with multiple people.

I always have a very hard time with questions like this because I lived without electricity or running water for two years in the Peace Corps. As a result, I have a hard time not taking the word “essential” very literally. I know that sounds really snobby and that’s not how I mean it. My life here in the U.S. would be very severely impacted without most of these modern conveniences. I couldn’t do my job without my car and a computer, and having a computer and Internet connection at home means I can finish work at home, which is a huge benefit to me, especially as the parent of a young child, so in a lot of ways those are essentials. And I really enjoy many other modern conveniences. My son is watching a DVD while I type this, and I enjoy watching movies at home. And all those people I lived with would have loved to have many of these modern conveniences. When electricity did come to the village, many people bought televisions and free from worry about running out the battery, they played the radio from dawn to dusk. Several more well off people bought refrigerators and started selling ice and storing meat and everyone benefited.

But I keep thinking of essential as “die without it,” and nothing except food, water and shelter can really make that list. I assume most people take it a lot more casually, as in “Oh God, I love my iPod. I couldn’t live without it.” Which is kind of how I feel about my iPod. I love my iPod. When our car was broken into and our iPod stolen, we bought a new one within a week we missed it so much. But I remember life before it, and it was a fine life.

As for washer and dryer, I, too, hated the laundromat, but I could do it again if I had to. About a year ago our dryer broke and we decided to give line-drying a shot because money was a bit tight. I occasionally miss the dryer, but we continue to live with line-drying and it’s fine.

Of all modern conveniences, I’d probably say the refrigerator is the most essential. As I said, I’ve lived without one and I know how to do it, but refrigerators really are very good things. Here’s something you don’t think about until you don’t have one - without a refrigerator, there is no way to store leftovers. You have to try to cook exactly for how much you want to eat and everything else pretty much has to go, with a few exceptions. Now, if you have pigs that will gladly eat your slops, this is less of a deal. But I suspect most of us don’t.  So refrigerators = good.

The thing about the car that I don’t get is this. People act like the availability of public transportation is set in stone, not based on demand. If more people demanded it and used a car less, more public transportation would become available.

This is true to a point, but when I say I need a car for my job, I mean having a valid driver’s license and my own vehicle is a condition of my employment. If I didn’t have both, I could be fired. So that makes it pretty essential. That may not be true for everyone on the list, but I bet that’s how some people meant it. If it was just for getting to work and the store, I wouldn’t need it, even though the public transit in my area is fairly mediocre.

Chigona, some of what you would think isn’t necessary is actually important if you factor in how many women die from breathing solid fuel stove exhaust and how many people suffer and die from cholera and other diseases of poor sanitation - not to mention fires and burns.

I don’t think some things are so very negotiable as necessities here.  Maybe I just hang out with the global burden of disease types too much ...

I’m lucky enough that I don’t need a car for daily living; I found an apartment one block from my campus in a city with decent public transportation that’s at least not terrible for going to places like the supermarket or the mall.  It’s led to some interesting logistics problems, like choosing to go to a supermarket that’s two towns over because it’s easier to get to than the one in the next neighborhood, but I’m getting along well enough so far.

My apartment has a microwave and a dishwasher, but I don’t use either; I don’t have enough dishes to merit running a full load in the washer, and I’ve been successfully trying to get away from buying prepackaged microwaved foods.

I have an MP3 player and a fancy cellphone, and I’m sure I could live without them; they just make daily life better enough that they were worth getting.

The thing about the car that I don’t get is this. People act like the availability of public transportation is set in stone, not based on demand. If more people demanded it and used a car less, more public transportation would become available.

Again, this is kind of unfair to the individual. If taking the bus adds two hours to your commute right now it’s a bit harsh to ask an individual to give up that two hours so that the city or bus company will recognize that they need to run more buses or more express lines. Even if it’s just thirty minutes, if that’s thirty minutes you would have to otherwise find daycare for, or have a neighbor get your kids on the school bus . . .

And we’re frequently talking about people who don’t have a lot of power to make demands.

Necessities?  My! My Metrocard!

Everything else pales in comparison.  Bed.  Tea-making supplies and equipment.  Internet.

Lexie: “fought for and won”—word on that. Availability of public transport in a given place is not immutable, but neither is it something you find in your stocking on christmas day. Demand often needs to be expressed in years of letter-writing and local intiatives before it can be expressed in using the public transport your efforts have given you. And it’s not a fight than can be won in a atomized society where everyone is content as soon as they have theirs, and those who need a thing most are the ones with the least influence on decision-making.

Add me to the list of people without a land line.  Don’t need it unless we want a pizza.

My partner and I have structured our lives around needing less, so here is our list:

Things we can’t live without:
1.  Clothes washer - We don’t have one in the apartment, but there are laundry facilities in the basement.  It would truly suck to do all our laundry by hand.

2. Home A/C - We live in Southern Ontario ( read 99% humidity and 30 C + in the summer) so our little plug in unit is a must. 

3. Home Computer - We don’t actually have a television, so our computers form the basis of our digital amusement at home.  As I am deaf it is a godsend, why listen when I can read?

4.  Cell phone - no land line and again, am deaf so texting is a joy.

5.  High Speed Internet - absolutely.  I don’t watch tv on the tv, so my high speed net again, forms the basis of entertainment in our home.  (especially when it breaks down)

6.  iPod - most people with hearing issues will tell you that as you lose your hearing, you become hyper-sensitive to sound.  My Zen (Creative’s answer to the iPod) keeps my sane by blocking out the little sounds that no one with hearing would notice.

Ms Kate:

In other words, there’s the “you’ll die right now if you don’t have it” versus the “you’ll die a lot sooner.”

Refrigerators are certainly a necessity, but in the rich world we also end up refrigerating a lot of things that only need it because of our consumption patterns. (Eggs, jams, jellies, salted and smoked meats, for example.) Of course, I’m spoiled living in a cold-temperate area with a 20x20-foot walk-in refrigerator during four or five months of the year and a near-infinite walk-out freezer for three of those…

Well, I lived with it, too. There was hardly a home that didn’t have a dead baby buried in the front yard, with its tiny little shrine. And one of our projects was building stoves with chimneys that took the smoke out of the kitchen. The women where I lived cooked on open fires on the floor, but inside an enclosed building, and breathing all that smoke was a big problem, not to mention toddlers who trip over firewood and fall into the fire.

But with a lot more careful attention to things, you can prevent a lot of those diseases even without things like, well, dishwashers. Running water makes it immensely easier to practice proper hygiene. I don’t know that I can emphasize how important running water is to the general level of public health we enjoy in the United States. But it is possible to practice good hygiene without it.

It’s possible, but it’s so hard that people screw up pretty regularly.  Running water is an amazing public health improvement.

To whomever praised the toaster oven over the microwave—agreed!  I live alone, so when I cook it’s one of two scenarios: either a giant pot of soup or casserole or something that I eat for days, or a single serving at a time.  For the latter option, a toaster oven is wonderful, especially during the summer when I don’t want to add a ton of heat to the house.  I would choose a toaster oven over a microwave every single time.

If we are allowed to add things to the list, I would add “heat.”  I’m not terribly bothered by hot weather, but I hate hate hate being cold.  Luckily, heat is included with my rent in my current apartment.  I really do not function well when my environment is too cold. 

And thanks for the tip, Incertus.  I’ll call AT&T;tomorrow!

Ms Kate: Interesting points on dishwashers, energy and sanitizing—back when we had the occasional stomach bug making the rounds in our (shared with too many people) flat I put all the dishes in the oven after washing up (saved drying, too) and put them away hot. Not the most energy-efficient way, but to the best of my knowledge they had to be bug-free after that.

chinoga: I experimented with simple living and historical re-enactment in my teens and twens, so I see where you come from. Reading the discussion, it becomes very clear that “what you need” is a function of “how you live”. Living in a mediterranean climate and not having one’s day structured around a five hour siesta in the warm season means you need A/C. If your job is to see that the servers are running 24/7, you need a cell phone. If you have no laundry within walking distance you need a washing machine or a car. So there are basically two questions here, one is “what you need to stay alive, healthy and sane”, the other is “what you need to live the life you have right now”. I suspect that mixing those two up too much is a road to useless debates.

I could live without a car, washer/dryer, AC, TV, internet, phone. It would be a major pain in the ass, but I could do it.

@ Inge, I think you pretty much have it right. It really depends on how you define essential.

I do want to clarify my earlier point, for the public health-minded in the crowd, though not derail the entire thread. I didn’t talk about potable water or proper sanitation (both of which I would put above a refrigerator) because the discussion seemed oriented toward items that we purchase and use as individuals, not toward large-scale, social good, infrastructure type stuff. Earthquakes that kill dozens of people in the U.S. kill tens of thousands in other countries because of our building codes. But no one has listed non-corrupt building code inspectors among their “essentials.” That’s not really what we’re talking about.

I didn’t actually say potable water isn’t an essential. I said having lived without running water, it’s hard for me to view essential the same way others do. As I’m sure Ms. Kate knows, running water and potable water often go hand in hand, but are not actually the same thing. I would drink 10 glasses of the water from our hand-dug shallow wells in our village (even though technically it was not “potable”) any day over the running water in several of the cities in the country I lived in (where the running water came from an intake valve located downstream from where the sewage entered the river untreated). If you live in a slum and get your drinking water from the gutter that runs past your shanty, you’ll have a different perspective on the mildly questionable water that comes from a communal tap.

If that’s the kind of stuff we’re talking about, of course, I’d put potable water and proper sanitation pretty much in a tie, with the current source of your drinking water determining which edges the other out for first place. But they are so closely tied, it’s hard to think of one without the other.

But even with all that said, many, many people who have neither still live to ripe old ages, provided they make it to their fifth birthday.

I think the questions that this question raises are: (a) to what degree is something that’s essential to your job essential to you, and (b) when we say something is essential, do we mean it’s essential that it exist and that I have it, or that it’s essential that I have it if it exists? 

For example, on one level, nothing on that list is truly essential to me; I’ve lived without them all at one time or another and still don’t have a car or flat screen TV (or clothes washer or clothes drier of my own, but I use the public machines in my condo’s basement, so that’s hardly a sacrifice).  On another level, computers and high speed internet access are borderline-essential to my job as a researcher: I still have enough memory of the pre-THOMAS Library of Congress to do research there in person, but I doubt my employer would be understanding of a sudden desire to work out of a carrell on Capitol Hill, or a substantial downturn in my productivity caused by switching from Lexis/Nexis to dusty paper copies and microfiche.  Unless, of course, question (b) is in force and everyone has been forced to do without computers and high-speed internet access, in which case my employer would no doubt be thrilled as all get out to have a researcher under the age of 40 who still remembers the old analog ways.

Essentials:

1) Cell phone (really).  I don’t have my own land-line connection, so the ability to communicate and call for help is pretty high up there.

2) High speed internet/Computer.  I’m kind of surprised myself how high this came up on the list, but honestly, I don’t think I could imagine not having a connection to the world like this in my current life.  Think about it- I’ve got an option to telecommute when the weather sucks, I can keep in touch with virtually all of my friends and family, I can look for jobs, manage my finances, find other essentials… I could live without a computer, but it wouldn’t be pleasant.

3) A/C.  One of the problems with living in the middle of a continent is that we get hot summers and cold winters- and if you have seasonal allergies like me, you never catch a break.  I need an air conditioner, if nothing else, to be able to escape dangerous heat conditions.

4)Washer/Dryer.  I really and truly hate doing my laundry in a public laundromat, and that was one of the selling points of my current apartment.  I could go without one for a few days and I suppose I could suck it up, but it’s really non-negotiable.

5) Car.  I’m really kind of surprised how low on the list this came.  We don’t have a public transportation system here worth speaking of, really- but there’s a bus stop nearby and I could ride my bike to work and the grocery store if the shit really hit the fan.  Long-term, it makes economic sense for me to have a car, but I could live without one in the short term if things came to that.

Luxury

1) Microwave.  If I’m going to have a luxury item, this is the one I’d prefer to have.  I use my microwave quite often to make potatoes and frozen vegetables, occasionally to heat up a pizza or frozen dinner, and I’m a purist and use a kettle for my tea.  I’d probably bump it onto the essentials list if I was aware I wasn’t going to have a full kitchen for some time.

2) Dishwasher: really nice to have, especially with my proclivity toward housekeeping in general But I’ve lived without one for quite some time, and can live without one in the future.

3) TV of any kind.  I turned mine on for three minutes in the past week to watch the new years’ countdown, then promptly switched it off and went to bed.  I get my entertainment over the internet.

4) iPod.  It keeps me sane, but I can live without it.

Of that list I need: car, cell phone, microwave.

All the other stuff is nice but I could do without it if I had to.

Avoiding the semantic debates

Stuff I would REALLY prefer not to live without:
Refrigerator, computer and high speed internet (I need both to get work done from home), stove/oven, sink, shower with hot water, cell phone (I have no land line), washer/dryer in building*. Not in that order.

*Presuming I don’t have a car. If I had a car, it wouldn’t be as bad. But you really have to have one or the other.

Things I would prefer not to live without:
Dishwasher

Stuff I could definitely live without and not miss very much:
TV, DVD player, microwave

Stuff I DO live without (in the Boston area):
Car, air conditioner, cable, land line

True luxuries, by the standards of most people in my world:
Cuisinart, Kitchenaid.  Both were gifts and I feel so lucky to have them. They make cooking and baking way more fun. Good pots and pans.  Also a gift.

tv is an absolute luxury for me. as in i never have purchased cable for myself and rarely watch it at all, usually if i’m staying with my parents and am bored or something. cell phone is far more necessary as i haven’t had a land line in a few years.

oh, and AC can in fact be necessary for life here in texas…people do die every year without it.

My essentials (as a college student)
Computer w/ internet: both for entertainment and for homework, enabling me to not stay at the computer lab until midnight.
Access to a washer: not necessarily my own, but that would be nice
Cell phone: I don’t have a landline, so my cell is really my only way of contacting people
Stove: Would definitely rather have a stove than a microwave
And that’s it. I’ll be glad to have a car next year, so I don’t have to ride my bike several miles to get groceries, but I’ve been surviving without it. I’ve never had a TV, so I definitely don’t miss it. It’s really pointless to have a dishwasher for one person. I’d run out of dishes before the machine was full. My luxuries that I enjoy are my ipod and electric teakettle

i have to say, actually, i find the tv being called a “necessity” while the ipod is derided…very odd. i don’t care or notice a tv most of the time. i’d lose all my music if i lost my ipod, though, and that would be very upsetting.

I could probably live without a car if I had to as far as getting to work and around town, but not having one would cut down on the amount of socializing I could do.  I have lived without cars at different times in my life though.  Living without A/C in Georgia wouldn’t be nice though.  That’s probably the one thing on the list that I consider absolutely necessary, and even then I could get along without one if I had to.  It’s not a real necessity like food or shelter.  I could do without a car A/C a lot easier than without a home one, because I spend a lot less time in the car.

I don’t have a dishwasher or an iPod.  I’ll probably never have a dishwasher, although I may get an iPod eventually.  I have a cell phone, and I feel sort of nervous when I’m out of the house without it, although I got along fine before I had one. 

A washer and dryer is nice too.  It saves having to carry all the dirty clothes to the laundry and back, and provides a place to throw the dirty clothes I have accumulated because I’ve been too lazy to wash them if I have guests over.  If I had a dishwasher I’d probably put off washing dishes too long too, I’d just hide them.

I don’t watch a lot of TV, so I could probably do without cable, but I like watching movies, so I’d hate to give up the DVD player.  If my stereo system broke down I’d probably put getting a new one at the top of my list because I hate not having music, and I’d feel like my CDs and records were going to waste.  I sort of really need a turntable too, because I have a lot of vinyl, but those things aren’t on the list.

I wouldn’t want to do without the computer either, or the internet.  When I’m home alone they seem necessary, even though I suppose I’d find something else to do with my time if I didn’t have them.

I want a Cuisinart and Kitchenaid too, and a really good set of knives, but until I can afford them I have to make do with what I have.  I’d probably cook more, and invite more friends over to eat, and end up needing a dishwasher though.

Fans don’t “cool” a room.  Fans cool a person’s body by causing perspiration to evaporate more rapidly.  That’s why one feels cooler on a windy day of any given temperature compared with a calm day of the same temperature.

The Wiz

I’ve lived without everything on this list, but we’re not set up as a culture to do without them in the US - it would take a fairly dastardly landlord, in my previous location, to rent out a house or apartment with no access to a decent stand-scrubboard (google ‘pila’) and a clothesline, and using one of those really isn’t bad. Here if I try to hang my clothes off my (perfectly decent) front deck, my American landlord sends me a cease and desist letter within a day, and doing hand laundry without a standalone scrubboard or at least a laundry sink sucks.

I’m lucky enough that my car is still a luxury - though doing without it for distance travel is getting increasingly inconvenient as I get used to going places on my own time schedule with zero chance of winos trying to chat me up, like always seems to happen on the long-haul bus (I too am in NC).

I hate to be the eco-whiner, but these lists always depress me, because most of these are things that everybody just can’t have, on an amount of resources consumed / number of people level, and the idea that we can’t possibly live without them bothers my sense of equality.

The mentions of Cuisanarts has reminded me how much I love mine. Because of the season, it’s latkes that I have most in mind, but we do several recipes that involve copious amounts of grating, and I cook them much, much more often now that we have the Cuisinart. I also love my slow cooker. I use my microwave a fair amount for things like baked potatoes and leftovers and cooking a single egg for my kid, but I’d give up the microwave before I gave up either one of those, even though both are relatively recent acquisitions.

Having lived in the northeast most of my live, A/C is one of those “nice to have” things rather than a “necessity.” I can say my life was a lot more pleasant once I got an A/C, but I was perfectly ok without it. However, I can pretty much afford one and afford A/C bills, so it doesn’t strike me as something I would consider going without.

The computer and internet are for me what a car is for most people—a work-related necessity. I could do without my car, if necessary, because I could (in theory) move biking distance from work, if I wanted, but I’d be quite isolated from most of my friends. I did make a good faith effort at finding a job in a walkable city, but that didn’t work out. So the car, computer, and internet all fall into the “necessity” category.

Things like the TV and microwave are like the A/C—such a minor impact on my financial well-being that there’s no reason to go without them. Similarly, in apartments I’ve visited, there’s absolutely no reason for me to bother visiting ones that don’t have a washer/dryer in the building. It’s not that I absolutely *can’t* live without these things (I’ve spent summers in countries where I’ve had to wash my clothes in the sink and dry them outside), it’s that there’s no point in having to worry about *not* having them.

I can definitely live without a dishwasher, but I am single and have no children. If there were 5 people in my household, I’d definitely feel differently: I have better things to do with my time than spend it doing dishes.

I think here’s a layer of things we’re missing: what amenities do we sacrifice, personally and financially, to have? A car is definitely a financial sacrifice, and one we should seriously consider whether it’s really necessary or not. A/C can cost a lot of money over the summer if you have a house or a large apartment. Cable TV and internet access has a definite financial impact on our budgetary bottom line, and we should think about whether we really need those things. A TV set or microwave, by contrast, can be picked up at a local flea market for the cost of a full tank of gasoline.

I need:

1) Cell phone—(no land line, plus I have a Crackberry and am hooked)

2) Computer/high speed internet—seriously, is it even possible to use dial-up anymore on the current generation internet? Ten years ago all it meant was long waits, but now I imagine it prevents you from using at least half of what is now online. YouTube, for example. Forget it with dial-up! Forget Facebook, too, I imagine. It would take eons to upload photos.

3) Television (sans cable) and DVD Player—I don’t watch much on-air TV, but I use the television itself for video games and DVDs.

4) Air conditioning—southern Virginia here, and dangerous heat/humidity conditions in the summer.

I don’t need:

1) Cable TV—I have it but watch a grand total of two channels on it. I only have it cause its cheap when packaged with high speed internet, so I may as well.

2)Dishwasher—Didn’t have one all through college, didn’t miss it. I can see where it would be needed if I was married with children, but for one person washing your own dishes is not a big deal.

3)I Pod—I could go back to the old CDs if I had to and not really be that upset.

4)Car—I live in the downtown of a mid-sized city with a decent bus line. I only use it for the grocery store or when I need to haul something, and really, I could ask friends for that if I absolutely had to. When the weather is bad it would suck, but I could deal.

@ purpleshoes ... Do you think your clothes got cleaner when you washed them by hand? It truly is drudgery (we didn’t have scrub boards or pilas - we just squated over a tub and rubbed the clothes together with our hands), but I never had ring around the color or that weird BO that comes back within an hour of putting on an old t-shirt (or is that just me?). I don’t miss doing it, especially because I don’t have a laundry sink, but mostly because it’s way too time-consuming if you work outside the house, but I do miss how my clothes turned out.

What is necessary and what is a luxury is a function of how you live.  I find the survey stupid, but one thing that is a luxury/way of life for me is my sony prs-500.  Having an electronic library is a bit more useful than most people might think.

Know what?  A toaster-oven is better than a microwave for most things.  A toaster-over reheats pizza better than a microwave ever can.  It won’t work for heating water, of course, but in general.

I’m another cell phone only family.  We’ve got friends and family, and even though 2 are taken by hubby’s work and cell and 2 are taken by my mom’s work and cell, that pretty much takes care of 90% of my calls—at least the ones where I talk for hours (hence the need for my MIL to be the 5th: when you answer her call, you will spend a minimum of 45 minutes listening). 

Funny, since I was just about the last Gen-Xer to get a cell-phone.  As for the lack of pay phones, now that most folks have some form of unlimited calling, I’ve found that they are generally willing to let you make an emergency call on their line. 

Yes, I’m aware I’m probably being granted the privelege of being white and having adorable children in tow.  But in the few incidents that I’ve been stuck without a phone and without a friend, someone’s always been kind enough to let me use his/hers.

I would be loathe to give up my dishwasher.  I HATE washing dishes—>it’s the silverware that gets me.  It takes so much time and you have to stand.  And I have 5 people, 3 of whom are very messy and least able to clean up after themselves.  When they are bigger, and can do that chore for me, they will be the dishwasher, but till then, I’m grateful every day for mine.

Next year, the middle child will be old enough to ride the bus to school!  CanNOT wait.  We can walk to the local neighborhood school, drop them off and pick them up.  We’ll have to wake up earlier and they won’t get home till later, but there won’t be three 6-mile trips back and forth every day.

Children have made having a car important, and a big car at that.  Yes, I chose to have them, but since they’re here, I need to take care of them.  They need to be shuffled safely from here to there, and a surprising amount of shuffling.  We also needed a bigger place to live once we had them, and that meant moving far enough away from the lake that public transit, while possible, is less convenient.

I love TV and the Tivo-ish dish DVR.  Half of it is taken up by various children’s programs, and since the youngest wakes up at 4:30 regardless of when we put her to sleep, having a variety of “yo gabba gabba”, “tom and jerry”, “doras” and “diegos” makes life so much more livable; baby wakes up, wake us up shouting “‘Mote” we grab remote and produce half-hour worth of harmless or educational cartoon request and nap.

We could probably do without cable/satellite and get our shows off the internet (legally even!) and DVD.  So the satellite dish is a luxury.

Internet is a necessity.  Hubby needs it for work.  He can work out of our bedroom/office running webinars instead of flying all over the country.  Plus, we haven’t felt the pressure to relocate in a few years: companies no longer want to pay for it, and working remotely, especially from a job that occasionally requires much travel, makes sense.

I prefer open windows, but I live in Chicago…we don’t have many days when that makes much sense.  Without A/C, I get really sick in the heat.  Not just miserable, but ill.

For me it’s been very contingent on where I am at a given time.

A/C:  Quite happy living in central Maine, or Portland OR, without A/C but summers in Baton Rouge LA were miserable even with the damned old thing running. 

Car:  Portland was quite workable without a (functioning) car due to great public transit; Baton Rouge involved lots of planning and a few multi-mile hikes (public transit was very limited); current location would be survivable but really limited due to effectively zero public transit, few sidewalks/bike paths (with even fewer of them regularly cleared in the wintertime), and lots of hills. F’rex, the nearest grocery store to my current home is about as far, line distance, as the one I walked to in Oregon - but there it was a mile up a gentle hill to the store and downhill on the way back, whereas here it’s at least twice the elevation change in the same linear distance with the majority of the return trip being steeply up hill.  Not only that, but there are fewer people in this town then there were at LSU-BR when I attended the school, so for a lot of things you have to leave town and private cars are about the only way to get there from here.  (This area would be great for light rail, but I don’t see it happening any time soon unless someone who’s nth-generation Mainah starts pushing for it.)

I neither need nor have: iPod, Cable/Sat TV, Cell Phone, Flat Screen TV. 

Dishwasher is seldom used, it came with the house and we find it faster and more water-efficient to wash dishes for the two of us by hand.  I tend to forget the microwave (lived quite happily without one in Oregon) but he uses it regularly.  Fridge is non-negotiable; chest freezer is technically a luxury but one we use to great efficiency (just got through last summer’s green beans.)

Washer and dryer are nice to have on hand but there are laundromats in the neighborhood and the year I lived in Germany I did all my laundry by hand in the washbasin rather than ask, in my broken German, how the coin-op washer worked (the instructions were worn off.) We have a clothesline and use it, weather permitting; the drying rack gets used indoors in the wintertime, but so does the dryer because in the cold damp weather you can leave towels on the rack a week and they’re still wet.

Computer and broadband are high on my list; they fill the niche occupied by cable tv in others’ lifestyles.  Not absolutely necessary, but without my pay-one-price information-and-entertainment buffet, I’d likely spend a lot more on reading material (newspaper subscription, perhaps?) and watch more tube.  I almost think of internet as a “utility” (like electricity, water/sewer, etc) than anything else.

I’m really fond of heat and indoor plumbing, too.

@chingona: a good-quality pila topper is made out of cement, so my clothes definitely got more worn than they would have in a washing machine, but you might have a point about clothes getting cleaner. It was definitely much cleaner than a bad laundromat machine, which is what I’m using now - I would totally do my stuff on a scrubboard instead if it wasn’t so damn hard to find the space / materials, because that laundromat smell is godawful. Another thing that I liked was how I didn’t have to have enough clothes to make a whole load but could have three decent outfits and wash one / wear one / leave one drying. On the other hand, I would much rather use a washer/dryer than a river rock (I always seemed to land jeans-down in chicken poop when I had to do that) or a bowl on the floor. And if I was using a pila in this much-cooler climate I would probably give my right arm for a crank mangle.

This is how I feel about a dishwasher, actually - though it’s just me and my roommate, and I still get behind on dishes, so I would definitely feel differently if I had a larger household. I hate waiting until you have a full load to get anything clean, and I am filled with resentment when my glasses come out with caked-on grit or weird eggy smells. Moving into an apartment with no dishwasher was a liberation, and yes, I do know that dishwashers are more energy- and water-efficient. I just would much rather listen to NPR and look out the window while I scrub my plates.

Chingona, if you don’t mind me asking, where were you stationed (vaguely)? I’m considering PC, but I also hear some bad things about project effectiveness and it seems like a job that requires a raging extrovert. I was in Honduras, but that was only six months with a private project.

I don’t own a dishwasher, washer or dryer, air conditioning, or a TV. But if you took my computer and high-speed Internet access away from me, I would die. I would go through withdrawal, and I would die.

I’m absolutely flabbergasted that the people in the poll regard TVs as more necessary than computers/Internet. Even the washer/dryer thing is surprising to me. I use a laundromat, and even though it’s somewhat inconvenient, I would go to the laundromat every day rather than lose my high-speed Internet

Ooh, another good question: is it “necessary” to have these things in-house, or just available? Because I, too, flat-out expect to have internet, but I don’t need it in my residence, necessarily - I’ve had an in-building computer lab, or an internet cafe in walking distance, or workplace internet, but my access to in-home internet has fluctuated wildly with no real ill effects.

I was in great shape when I had to walk forty minutes to an internet cafe, though.

Need:
Car—There is no public transportation available where I am currently living, so if I want to make a living and be able to purchase groceries, I have to have a car. However, once our children are grown and gone I think my SO and I could easily do without one if we moved somewhere with a good public transportation system.

Cell Phone—I don’t have a land line (we dropped it a couple of years ago), so my cell phone is my only phone. I do consider being able to call for help and stay in contact with family and friends to be necessities.

Computer with some manner of internet access.—I do everything on my computer.  While I currently have and appreciate high speed access, I could drop it if I had to as long as I had some other way to get online.

Luxury:
Washer & dryer and dishwashers are all awesome, but since I have a car I can get to a laundry mat if I had to (although I’m not sure that is really cheaper over time), and dishes can be washed by hand. However, I wouldn’t want to give mine up if I didn’t absolutely have to.

Air conditioners (car and home)—I went back and forth on this one.  I ended up putting it in the luxury column because, at my age and level of health, I could survive without one.  However, it would be miserable and I wouldn’t want to ever have to try it.

Microwave:  If it didn’t come with my duplex I wouldn’t have one at all.  I rarely use it and would never miss it.

Television & Cable:  Definitely not necessities—especially since I can watch The Daily Show online. I watch very little TV so I don’t think I would miss it that much.  I actually gave up TV for almost two months as a challenge to myself and found that the most challenging part was avoiding TVs in public spaces.

iPod & flat screen tv: I don’t have either of these now, so obviously I can live without them.

Car: Haven’t driven in over 20 years, and yes, I live in L.A., but made sure to move to a walk city part of it, across the street from a bus stop.

2. A/C: The wiring in this apartment building is too old, but near the ocean,  fans work well except for two or so weeks in the summer. Also disconnected the gas heater in the living room because it was wasteful to heat the whole apartment that way. Use a space heater for a room at a time, and bought myself a slanket, snuggie equivalent, like a grownup onesie, which cuts down on the heater use.

3. Washer/dryer: Two washers, two dryers shared by 20 apartments. No place to hang laundry, if I wanted to, which I don’t. It’s hard enough lugging laundry up three flights.

4. High speed Internet/Computer: Need both for work, but can’t imagine living without it.

5. TV:  My addiction, followed closely by the Internet.

1. Cell phone: Didn’t get one until last year. Really, I worked at home. Now, it seems essential.

2. Microwave: Don’t have one. Blew the last one up, (really, you mean that doesn’t happen to other people?) but maybe had a microwave for a couple years of my life, total. I think they make the food taste funny, my holistic doctor doesn’t think they’re healthful, either.

3. Dishwasher: I’m 58 and didn’t have one until about 8 years ago, and now you’d have to shoot me to pry me away from my dear, dear dishwasher.

4. iPod and flat screen TV: Neither, and don’t need or want either.

To whomever praised the toaster oven over the microwave—agreed!  I live alone, so when I cook it’s one of two scenarios: either a giant pot of soup or casserole or something that I eat for days, or a single serving at a time.  For the latter option, a toaster oven is wonderful, especially during the summer when I don’t want to add a ton of heat to the house.  I would choose a toaster oven over a microwave every single time.

I just got a toaster oven for Christmas, and I love it for the same reasons, just after making a couple meals in it over the last week.  I especially like that it’s faster than warming up my hinky electric oven and the results are so much better than nuking it in the microwave.

I live in San Francisco so car, washer/dryer, air conditioning are all luxuries. I don’t have any of them but only wish I had a washer/dryer though I could kiss my $30/month gas & electric bills goodbye. A microwave is sort of a luxury as it’s a water boiling machine for me too.

What’s a dishwasher?

My iPod is a luxury though I use it at least an hour every single day.

Flat screen TV is sort of a dated question. They’re all flat screen these days. I’m counting TV as an essential because while I could and have lived without it, I don’t.

With the rental and new streaming-to-your-TV options cable is luxury that’s getting the axe in my budget this year. It’s a lot of money for a ton of crappy programming that I mostly don’t watch. I’ll be happier with a simple Netflix subscription.

Computer and high speed Internet are essential. You can get rid of the TV and cable/satellite and entertain yourself much cheaper with just a computer and high speed. Plus, I’m in a job hunt and it’s not just key for the hunt itself but for keeping up on software and skills at home and the ability to work at home.

Cell phone is essential for me simply because I need a phone and haven’t had a landline since 2001. I rarely use the phone but try explaining to creditors, employers, etc. that you don’t have a phone.

Need: electricity, warmth, water, food, shelter, medical care as needed, currency
Want: multi-use vehicle, computer/internet, entertainment, walls, privacy, cell phone, fridge, savings
Don’t: television, microwave, extra car, wire phone
Won’t: valet, maid

I’m building a strawbale shed* in the backyard.  It’s an attempt to see if I can live simply, and so far it’s been too hot or too cold or too dark to keep on a good schedule toward completion.  Maybe that’s telling me something.

*It’s not a residence, since that would require a permit.  I have no intention of actually living in it.  None.  Zero.  Nada.  Zilch.  Though it will probably sleep two comfortably in the uh… storage loft.

Hot damn, I would call every one of those things luxuries.

Needs:

Computer.  I do my work on it, at home and in work.  I don’t need much in the way of bells and whistles, though, as I only need the Internet for research and word processing for writing.

Luxuries:

Washer/dryer.  I really, really love having these in my house.

Ipod.  Music for walking and running to. 

TV.  I’ve lived without a TV, more than once when there was no Internet.  The first time, I had a house full of other people to socialize with and didn’t mind not having a TV.  The second time, I lived with one another person I didn’t particularly enjoy and missed TV a lot more.

Stand mixer and food processor.  They make cooking a joy.

Car.  I have one, but I can walk to work and to a grocery store, by living in one of the few areas in my small Midwestern twon where this was possible.  Ironically, I use mine mainly to drive to the organic Co-op, which is in a strip mall.  But if I needed to, I could give up my car fairly easily.  As it is I fill up my tank maybe once a month.

Don’t need:

A cel phone, in any other circumstance than when I’m traveling.  I hate talking on them because only one person can talk at a time. 

A microwave.  I hate these things, and don’t understand their purpose.  Food splatters in them, they don’t cook well, and anything you use these for can be better prepared in a stove or oven. 

Dishwasher.  I have one, and only run it when it’s full, but could easily give it up.

Oh, and A/C, in the summer months, is a necessity, but only because we build really crappy houses in this country.  (I only run mine at night.)  You could easily build houses even in very hot areas that don’t need A/C.

@ purpleshoes ... I’m drinking beer out of a glass right now that has a weird eggy smell. Curses on the dishwasher. It is convenient but not without its downsides. I must agree about hand washing wearing your clothes out faster. I had forgotten about that. With all the twisting and ringing before you hang them on the line, my clothes expanded in size by the end of my service. Also, you must remember to button or zip your pants when you hang them up. Otherwise, they sun-bleach at a different rate and you get a triangle of darker or lighter cloth pointing right at your crotch.

As for Peace Corps, I think it depends on lot on which country you go to. Having talked to volunteers from many countries, it seems like every country is run in a different way and has its own culture (not the country, but the PC program, I mean, also the country but also the PC program). I served in Paraguay, and overall, I consider it a very well run program. Paraguay is not the sort of country that appeals much to tourists, but it has a very unique culture, and I’m glad to have served there. Paraguay has very few NGOs operating there, so a lot of volunteers really have to figure out their own work in cooperation with the community and don’t come in with a clear idea of what their projects will be. I consider this a good thing, but you may not. I have pretty well defined ideas of what constitutes good development work and what doesn’t, though I developed most of those ideas during my service. I entered mostly looking for a cultural experience that someone else would pay for. I definitely got that and a lot more. Taken as a whole, PC is probably a little more on the cultural exchange side of things than on the development/aid work side of things, but in some countries and some programs I think it does better development work than some international NGOs. In particular, I hate Plan International with a fiery hate. I think they come in and hand out a bunch of stuff without talking to the community about its needs or doing any follow-up work or education and half to 3/4 of what they do ends up breaking down or being discarded within a few years and the community feels no ownership of the projects. The training we received in PC focused a lot on what’s called participatory rural analysis (PRA), which focuses on tools to help rural communities where most people are illiterate analyze their own problems and decide what their priorities are.  I consider this very important. Because of the history of authoritarianism there, it was really important to have tools to work on how to make decisions in groups, and because of the level of poverty, it’s important to have tools for thinking beyond your next meal. I don’t think you have to be a raging extrovert - I’m certainly not - but I did have to overcome a certain inherent introversion on my part. The first year is really, really hard, but in the second year, you reap the rewards. The type of development work done by PC depends on developing relationships and cultural understanding that take time and require more from you - emotionally and psychically - than you thought you had in you. It’s slow, and that’s why it’s two years. There definitely were nights were I sat up right in bed, deeply shaken with the question of WTF am I doing here and WTF can I offer these people. But at the end of the day, I do think we were effective (we is my husband and I - we served together). We occasionally talk to people down there (via the miracle of cell phones, which reach even down there via antennas mounted on bamboo poles), and we see ways in which we have had a positive influence. But it’s not cut and dry either.

In most metropolitan or university town areas, there are RPCV groups (returned PC volunteers). Google your area and RPCV. Generally, their meetings are open to the public and you can talk to people about their experiences in different countries. Obviously, the people who join RPCV tend toward the more satisfied, but you’ll learn about the differences between various programs. If you are serious and meet with a recruiter, ask them about ET rates in different countries. ET is early termination, and the higher the rate, the more dissatisfied the volunteers there. There is always going to be some ET - for family or personal reasons - and I can’t tell you what is a “high” rate - but over 25 percent is probably bad. Also, you should know that the application process is a pain in the ass and tends to take about a year. I think this is on purpose, to make sure you’re serious.

My comment was too long. Here’s the rest of it.

In closing, I think a lot of PC is what you put into it. There certainly are countries where it’s more Cuerpo de Paseo than Cuerpo de Paz, but overall, I think if you are serious about doing development work and physically being in your community and committing to your community, you’ll be glad you did it. If you are more interested in hanging out in the capital and getting drunk with other volunteers, you’ll probably still be glad you did it, but you’ll have a very different experience and one that I, in my honest moments, turn my nose up at. (Which is not to say that I did not get drunk in the capital. Boy, did I ever. ¡Viva el Puerto Chopp! - chopp is draft beer in Paraguay and it is a rarity).

Here’s my test: When I look at my pictures, I mostly see people in my community. When I look at some other volunteers pictures, I see mostly other volunteers. That’s a choice you make, not a choice PC makes for you.

Apologies to everyone else, but I assume most of you just skipped these comments.

You could easily build houses even in very hot areas that don’t need A/C. 

This is totally true. I live in Tucson in an old adobe house, and we had a mild summer this year in which it didn’t get over 110 once. We only turned the AC on a few times. Of course, it is a dry heat.

Of course, it is a dry heat.

In the southeast there is no such thing as a “dry heat”.

Let me put it this way, re: air conditioning in the Southeast

When I began renting a new apartment in July of last year, there was no central A/C but the landlord was willing to provide window units—one week after I moved in.

I thought I could do without A/C in southern Virginia in the middle of July. God, was I ever wrong. Not only was it neigh on impossible to get a good nights sleep in 95 degree heat, but I had to drink what seemed like gallons upon gallons of water everyday just to stay alive. By the end of the week, I’m pretty sure I was having heat hallucinations at night.

I really have no earthly idea how people lived here before A/C.

Whether or not a car is necessary depends on living choices.

I really, really hate the sneering ‘choices’ in this, usually said by people who have nobody they’re responsible for other than their own selves and no balancing acts to pull.

i am trying to figure out which of the few things on that list that i need is more important that others that i need. i am failing, but…
Car. i can’t walk very far AT ALL. i cannot walk as far as the closest bus stop. also, and yes i think of this, if something happens and i am homeless i can live in my car
AC. heat is… bad for me. and i live in Ohio and 90+ with heavy humidity… no. i die. maybe not immedietly, but, eventually. not too long.
cell phone. i, too, am one of those without a land line. i consider the cell phone a necessity because i am disabled, and have had to call for help on more than one occasion. also, dr. appts and such. and its my dateplanner.

the rest?
i love the computer/internet. i could use it to replace TV, cable and DVD player. i have all three - and a TiVO. without the TiVO, i would almost definitly not watch tv. before my dad gave me the TV/TiVO, i didn’t.
dishwasher. currently dont have one. and the dishes pile up until i get pissed and pay someoe to do them. i refuse to clean up after the roommates. period.
ipod. dont have, dont want
flat screen tv. dont have, dont want
microwave. i have, and use, but could do without.

things not on the list.
good bed. really needed.
books. my number one addiction - if i had to choose between books and every other entertainment i have, the books win. hands down.

@ Ben D. Believe me, I know. I’ve lived in Houston and Chicago. On the other hand, Paraguay has a climate like Florida, with 95 degree heat and 90 percent humidity and it totally sucked ass, but somehow we lived without AC. Which is not to say AC would not have seriously improved our quality of life or that when we went to a hotel in a city, that we didn’t crank it as high as it would go. Cause we sure did.

Ben D.

Air conditioning in built-up areas is in significant part an inverse free-rider problem. All the energy an air-conditioner takes out of the inside, plus the energy it uses to do so, goes to the outside. Depending on conditions and efficiency blah blah blah, figure about a kilowatt per person heating up the air that would otherwise be pretty reasonable. Same thing for cars and trucks: one horespower delivered to the wheels is a little over two kilowatts. Multiply by 30-100 horse in average use by tens or hundreds of thousands of vehicles, and eeech. It’s not quite that before they had air conditioning they didn’t need it, but it’s close.

Back when I lived in NYC, some buildings still had ground-level HVAC exhausts. Walking by one of those in the summer would bake you faster than going into the subway.

I would need either a car or washng mchine—other wise the laundr couldn’t be done, as the mat is not within walking-while-carrying-laundry distance, and I don’t have a bike trailer.  I need the car to get to school—the buses DO NOT run early enough on Saturdays—and I take class early on Saturdays—to get me there.  I need a cell phone, because I don’t have a land line.  Alternatively, I could get a land line, and then I wouldn’t need a cell phone.  But, as I move at least once a year, a cell phone is much easier.  The computer is pretty much essential, as I am a grad student, and the office with computers available for my use is 20 miles away, and the public library down the road is not open often enough to make solely using their computers realistic.  A good internet connection makes my life incredibly less stressful, but I could do without.

So—car, computer with good internet, and cell phone.  Everything else I currently do not have, or have done without sometime recently and could do so again. 

That said, I’d LOVE to have a washer and drier. Or just washer, as sunshine and a breeze is free.  And a dishwasher, Maude I want a dishwasher.

I really, really hate the sneering ‘choices’ in this, usually said by people who have nobody they’re responsible for other than their own selves and no balancing acts to pull.

I didn’t find it so much sneering as it is simply very very wrong.  The idea that it is a simple matter of “choices” is one the republicans are very fond of.  Choices like “abstinence” and “just say no” to the Horatio Alger bullcrap.  It is unfortunate that the ninny left has picked this up and spewed it just like the ninny right wing.  It is also why I have peer reviewed articles and insisted on the removal of language to the effect of “pregnant women should reduce their air pollution exposure"as a conclusion, as well as “pregnant women should reduce or eliminate car travel time to reduce exposure”.  These both take a societal problem - air pollution exposure and maternal and fetal health - and turn it into a “simple” matter of a woman suddenly finding 100K to move to a less-exposed area and quit her job so she doesn’t have to commute. 

People’s circumstances are contextural in the extreme.  We long ago chose to alter our context so that we could make better use of public transit and not have to drive the kids around all the time, but this was a long-term process made possible by there being fairly well developed transit options in our metropolitan area.  That doesn’t mean the typical person can just “choose” to be car free, and, as Mythago pointed out, the more people in a household, the more constrained the context becomes.  We do have a single car for four people and there are stretches where I don’t drive it or ride in it for a couple of weeks at a time, yet I still need to buy $250 worth of groceries every couple of weeks and that doesn’t even fit in a bike trailer.  On the other hand, our context allows us to only drive that car about 2500 miles per person per year.  Other places don’t permit that level of car independence.

@Paul—

Well that would make sense especially because I live in an urban area. I suppose in a rural area (especially if I had a lake nearby) I could cope much more easily then. I’m sure that’s how people here survived before the 20th Century.

That and trees. Enter a wooded area and the temp drops about 10 degrees.

Living in NYC is a godsend.  I don’t need a car.  Despite problems with the subway, I’ll take the minor problems of the subway over the aggravation of a car. 

I don’t have to worry about gas prices, maintainance, insurance, car paymernts, theft, accidents, and tickets.  And also paying for license plates and city stickers.

That and trees. Enter a wooded area and the temp drops about 10 degrees.
chingona on 01/01 at 08:56 PM

Absolutely! Thinking of necessities, my number one necessity is either to live in a downtown or a rural area. Anything in between makes me nuts for a lot of reasons, and I’ve just added a new one.

Items listed as necessities or which you would have listed as necessary if you had thought of it…which in fact are made “necessary” by the poor design of our infrastructure and the stupid choices we make about where to live:

* car
* air conditioner
* cheap gas and heating oil
* clothes dryer
* medical insurance for life style diseases like most diabetes and cardiovascular disease

Items that should be more important
* food that won’t give you cancer</LI>
* exercise</LI>
* continuous education…in the broadest sense</LI>

Not many of you are thinking very far outside the box here.  Who listed “job” as a necessity?  Who listed “fresh organic vegetables”?

And who has put up a comment here who considers internet access unimportant?  Sampling error!

BTW, books and internet are the same answer and they rate pretty high on my must-haves list.

In the southeast there is no such thing as a “dry heat”.

I spent my teens living in Phoenix and then late twenties living in New Orleans. There’s simply no comparison. I distinctly remember the day it hit 121 degrees in Phoenix when I was in high school. I’d take that over upper 90s in mid-July in New Orleans any day.

Lately I’ve read so much griping about the new light rail in Phoenix and no small part of it has to do with ‘it’s hot here and who wants to wait in the heat for a train’. Um, the streetcars in New Orleans don’t even have a/c let alone shade at the stops. And ever stand on an NYC subway platform in the summer? It’s like the surface of the sun. The humid surface of the sun.

Not that I don’t get that you need shade for people waiting in a desert city for public transit. But the griping makes it seem like the heat in Phoenix is like no other place. It’s about the heat index not just the temperature though. And there are so many places with public transit where the heat index makes it just as miserable in the summer as Phoenix or Vegas, etc. The one thing Phoenix lacks is a comprehensive bus system to compliment rail because yes, elderly people can’t be doing the quarter or half mile walk to the next transit stop. They can make a better transit system happen though. Folks just need to stop expecting it to be perfect (and cheap to build) from the get-go.

I should have mentioned that “but it’s a dry heat” is a little bit of a bitter joke. Up to 105 or 110, it applies. After that, it’s just fucking hot. And Phoenix is way worse than Tucson. I think that’s mostly heat island effect, but some of it just is. I think it’s a lower elevation, but I’m not sure what all the climatic issues are.

My bicycle(s).

Necessities:
My car—-my job moved to the other end of the metro area, so I drive 58 miles a day.  There is no way to get from Florissant, MO, to Fenton, MO on public transport.
Microwave, George Foreman grill—-probably 85% of my home meals are on those.
AC:  People die from the heat every summer in St. Louis from not having AC
Washer/Dryer
Internet
TV

Luxuries:
Cell phone
Ipod
Dishwasher

I’ve been both to Phoenix and New Orleans in the summer.

I’ve also lived in New York City for several summers, and yes, 88 degrees with 90 percent humidity is a bitch (88 degrees is only the temperature of the air, with the sidewalks probably 10-20 degrees hotter.) I also had no airconditioning in New York, but in a building shaded by trees a block in from the street, on the third floor.

However, I thought I would die over a long summer weekend in Phoenix, just hopping between the airconditioned car and meat-locker airconditioned buildings.

New Orleans was like being in a Pizza oven, with a humidifier going, on a spring weekend. We were walking there and every couple blocks I’d need to pop into an airconditioned building, or get a cool drink.

I can’t imagine it there during an actual summer month.

I did survive New York City, no air conditioner for a half-dozen years (but, like most New Yorkers, left for several months each summer.)

I can’t imagine human beings surviving either Phoenix or New Orleans without A.C. (Between Phoenix and Sedona we visited ancient Indian cliff-dwellings—which the ranger said, were only winter headquarters, the sensible pre-historic Native Americans had the sense to move to the mountains in summer.)

Car - I live in NJ. Come on - gotta have it, or you just can’t get by here.
Washer and dryer - have you ever had to wash your clothes by hand and foot in a bathtub? I have. It sucks balls.
Air conditioning - see Car.
Microwave - meh, it does make things easier, but I could just learn to use the oven.
Home computer - Yes. I’m a total addict.
Cell phone - again, meh. I don’t use it for much, but it has come in handy sometimes. I guess my bare-minimum plan is good enough in that regard.
Dishwasher - Absolutely not. Washing dishes by hand is a family tradition, and I find it relaxing.
TV - Between ‘93 and ‘03, there was a set in our home for a grand total of about one year, mainly when my grandfather was visiting and had to have his Jeopardy. I grew up without TV, and I’m proud of it. Besides, the Internet is way better.
High-speed, flat-screen, iPod - STFU. Those are frills.

Air conditioning in built-up areas is in significant part an inverse free-rider problem. All the energy an air-conditioner takes out of the inside, plus the energy it uses to do so, goes to the outside.

Paul, I grew up in very rural North Florida, and I can assure you that life would have been quite unlivable there without air conditioning. Imagine 90 degree plus temperatures with near-100% humidity for 150-200 days a year.

Also, my grandmother likely would have died far sooner without A/C, as she was very prone to heat exhaustion and was in ill health for a long while. I am glad I got those extra years with her due to the availability of A/C.

Anyone who says that those in the Southeast do not need A/C (I know, you didn’t say that), has probably never lived there, though they always come around to tell us how evil we are for using it.

For much of my life, I went without AC in Cobb Co, GA.  I did fine, even if I didn’t enjoy it.  I use AC in the house because people here are gettin’ old and can’t take it anymores.  AC is a luxury until middle age sets in, even for the Southeast.

i just remember something that always made me mad.
i am not acusing anyone HERE of this.
but when i was a kid, for a while, in Florida, we had window units. except, they were only in the living room and my parents bedroom. because they thought “kids don’t feel the humidity”. i got sick as fuck on a regular basis, to the point that i was hospitalized while they tried to figure it out. being in the hospital - sleep in a room with AC, really - fixed the problem. until i went back home to the no AC in my room. finally, after two summers of this (starting when we moved there) my parents “got it”, and i got an AC.
my sister didn’t, until SHE started getting sick.

years later, my (other) sister and her husband rented a house here in Ohio, where it gets as hot and humid as alabama. THEY DID THE EXACT SAME THING TO THEIR DAUGHTER, only made worse because their bedrooms are on the second floor.

can someone explain to me why children have to suffer where adults don’t? i know LOTS of people who have window units in their rooms but not in their children’s rooms. i bought my niece her own window until, and fought with my sister until she let me put it in (not joking. she had told me that my niece didn’t have a window unit because they couldn’t afford it, then when *I* bought one told me that she didn’t have one because THEY, my sister and her husband, thought she didn’t need one, never felt the heat, and needed to “toughed up” to the heat. grrrrrrrr.)

AC is a luxury until middle age sets in.

Luxury in the sense that most people would not (quickly) die without it.

But for most in the Southeast, it’s right behind (or sometimes, ahead of—would be for me) running water in the list of near-needs.

I couldn’t live without a car - I don’t care if there a mass transit stop in my living room.  Solitude, homelessness insurance, singing at the top of my lungs, long drives = sanity.

Laptop & high speed internet can handle TV, ITunes, Skype - efficient way to get rid of other devices if necessary.

I grew up w/o a dishwasher and declared “as God as my witness I will never wash another dish again.”  I’m sticking with that.

AC really helps my breathing, I use it about 9 months a year. 

My microwave has been broken for months and it doesn’t matter.  The only reason I have a flat-screen is the built-in cabinet would look stupid without one.  I’m disconnecting the satellite after Obama is inaugurated.  And my never ending pile of laundry is living testament to the fact that having an appliance doesn’t mean that you actually use it

I consider myself fairly well-off, and I’ve lived quite happily with ZERO of these items for a long time.  I do have about half of them now, but never have had some.  If I currently didn’t have a few of these things that I do have, I can’t say my life would be that much worse or different - laundromats are not the end of the world, nor is cooking the old fashioned way, or being car-free (in a city, that’s not so bad.)  Heck, my house doesn’t even have central/furnace heat on the 2nd floor! 

Honestly, though, I thought this would deal with real necessities that you “can’t live without”, like indoor plumbing, really basic stuff.  Then again, if I had to pick between hi-speed internet and indoor plumbing, I’d happily walk to the outhouse in winter over no internet! 

then when *I* bought one told me that she didn’t have one because THEY, my sister and her husband, thought she didn’t need one, never felt the heat, and needed to “toughed up” to the heat. grrrrrrrr.

Though I understand this way of thinking is partly from the selfishly tinged “adults are more important than kids” school of thought, this mentality is complete BS.  Unless I am mistaken, children tend to be more sensitive to temperature extremes than healthy adults. 

IMO, if parents feel the need for an A/C, their kids should be given at least as much consideration…especially in areas where high temperatures can pose a potential health hazard.

Though I lived 4 years without A/C on a furnace-like top-floor apartment in an area which gets hot and humid in the summer, I voluntarily did that as a twenty-something….and it is NOT something I’d encourage others to emulate…especially if they are young children, senior citizens, or those with health problems.

Washer and dryer - have you ever had to wash your clothes by hand and foot in a bathtub? I have. It sucks balls.

I have too.  I own a washboard.  There’s nothing like being hunched over the damn thing for 8 hours scrubbing away.  We have a coin op in our building, we’re just too poor to afford to use it.  When people talk about appliances as “conveniences”, they’re really ignoring how much labor women have to cough up without them.

The car.  Soon it will die on us, and since we lack the funds to replace it, it’s likely my husband will lose his job.  Oh, and we live in a food desert, without the car we can’t get to a grocery store. The car doesn’t have AC.  We don’t really miss it because the car also doesn’t have a front driver’s side window.  It is a little chilly to ride in the winter time though.

Air conditioning.  Anything over 70 degrees is very dangerous for me.  Our apartment is heated in the winter by the apartments below us, so I have no control.  I’ve frequently had to open the window in 18 degree weather just to stay alive.

Our oven doesn’t work, so we depend on the microwave, electric wok, and slow cooker to prepare almost all of our food.

In order to stay employed, my husband is required to have internet, a cell phone, and a computer.  Since we have these though, we don’t need a land line, cable tv, or a television.  We have a tv, we use it sometimes, but we could get by without it.  If we didn’t have library cards, however, we’d probably kill one another.  Our library system is fantastic, almost like having a free Netflix account!

@ denelian

Thank you for making up my mind.  We have a baby coming in late July and were trying to decide where to put our second unit.  I think it will go to the baby’s room now.  I can sleep in there if I have to…(and with a new one probably will).

Thanks, Chingona! I am actually halfway through the application - I keep having massive doubts and setting it down for a while, and then coming back. Mainly because damn, does culture shock suck - but it might be nice to be somewhere long enough to work through it, instead of just being miserable and then going home.

Sorry to everyone for the thread hijack, yep.

I grew up in very rural North Florida, and I can assure you that life would have been quite unlivable there without air conditioning. Imagine 90 degree plus temperatures with near-100% humidity for 150-200 days a year.

I’m glad you’ve mentioned Florida and that other people have mentioned Arizona. Before the advent of AC, few people lived in these states, even though they’re regarded as high-growth states in this day and age. It wasn’t too long ago that people regarded those places as unlivable, or at least not worth moving to, without AC.

The advent of NetFlix and well-written TV shows on DVD has made it socially acceptable for many socially conscious liberals to own a TV. It seemed at first that the “I don’t even own a TV!” crowd had moved on to “I don’t even own a cell phone!” However, now that it’s more practical to have a cell phone than a land line, we’ve moved on to heralding our lack of ownership of microwaves and cars. (seriously, someone doesn’t “understand their purpose” with microwaves? Ever think of asking any of the millions of people who have one what they’re used for?)

As other posters have pointed out, the answer(s) to what one considers a “necessity” is hugely context-dependent. For example, my brother and his wife live in Arlington, Texas, a city of about 300,000 people between Dallas and Ft Worth that has the distinction of being the largest metropolitan area in the nation with no - that’s right, absolutely *no* - mass transit. Thus, a car is for them an absolute necessity if they wish to get to work or travel farther than a couple miles from home. By contrast, I’ve lived for months at a time in NYC on temporary business assignments and never “needed” a car at all.

Same goes for A/C. I lived in Dallas during the epic heat wave of 1980, when we had some 60 straight days of record-setting heat. I was 21 at the time and living in an apartment with a balky window unit A/C and I survived. However, many elderly people - even many who had rudimentary A/C such as mine - died during the heat wave. While I was young and healthy enough to take the heat without A/C, assuming that’s the case for everyone would be foolish.

Not many of you are thinking very far outside the box here.  Who listed “job” as a necessity?  Who listed “fresh organic vegetables”?

Jesus, comments like these make me want to kick something.  Could you seriously be any more self-satisfied?  (And yes, I am a vegetarian, an environmentalist, belong to an organic farm share, and have a pretty small damn footprint - no car, no A/C, keep heat set very low in winter, reuse/recycle, etc., etc.  But comments like this make me want to go eat a bacon cheeseburger and buy a hummer.)  Re the “living choices” part of this comment, please see Ms Kate on 01/01 at 08:47 PM.  I don’t disagree about infrastructure and planning, but jeez.

On the matter of choices: Yes, you [general you] do have choices, and you do choose—but the less privileged you are, the more your choices will be between the crappy and the unspeakable. And as no one is all-knowing, you cannot know if any choice is the right one—not after you chose and certainly not before. You might know that they were wrong, though, and if you have money or privilege you’ll get second and third chances or can mitigate the damage. Without money or privilege, you are just SOL.

So it’s generally useful to assume that everyone has done the best they could.

I went through that list twice - once to see what I thought I needed, and then to see what I actually needed. The difference was pretty frightening.

greensmile: Who listed “job” as a necessity?

A job is not a necessity in itself, but as means to an end.
E.g., no job -> no money -> no flat -> dying of cold outside. This chain could be broken at any place, be it by a warm outside, a free flat, or money I get without working for it.

Of course, these chains can be done for a lot of things. Not for food, though…

exholt: Though I understand this way of thinking is partly from the selfishly tinged “adults are more important than kids” school of thought, this mentality is complete BS.

I wonder if it’s a relic from “half of the kids won’t live to adulthood anyway”, or if it’s just bad memory. It’s hard to really remember how bad something was.

We had a dentist in town (one of two) who belived that kids did not need anaesthesia for tooth extraction. Little wonder that half the kids in town got hysterics at the mention of a dentist’s visit…

It wasn’t until the 16th century before there was a significant number of the world’s largest cities in temperate climes and most of the ones that were, were in China.  Most people made do with the heat.  They altered their lifestyle by useing siestas and the like.  They did certain other things to beat the heat such as pools, swamp air conditioners as well.  The essence is that a big part of what an air conditioner is about, is about not having to be intelligent about keeping yourself cool.  The way our economy is currently structured, people cannot adequately protect themselves from the heat for structural (work is 9-5, services available during same) or cultural (always wear woolen suit and ties) reasons.  Pools are not always available, etc, etc…

While there is plenty of truth to the fact that there were few people in Florida or Arizona due to heat, one can also provide counterexamples of Biloxi, New Orleans, and Galveston Bay as places where there had always been plenty of people despite backbreaking heat/humidity.  What was also true about Florida and Arizona was that there was *nothing* there.  The US got Florida in large part because the Spanish couldn’t profitably hold it.  Same with Arizona, at least the Gadsen purchase part.

All of this is not to say that a/c isn’t important.  Heat is lifethreatening, and can make you miserable.  Cars are also lifethreatening and various impacts of car life can make people plenty miserable as well.  However, we *accept* that tens of thousands of people die from car crashes, and we *accept* the anomie caused by car culture.  We don’t have to.  We can promote public transportation and housing density changes—along with changing attitudes about both as well!

shah8: I don’t remember where I read it, and it has been a while, but I read somewhere that AC is what made industrialization in warm climates possible….

Not really true.

In the end, it was a combination of many things, rise of corporations, sea trades, slavery, etc, etc…

but the important part of that was that the first true factories were suger refineries in the West Indies.  Jamaica and a few other islands were once places with actual western type factories for other things, well before textiles really got going in northern Europe and New England. 

What also needs to be pointed out is that there has been extensive Pre Industrial factory-like setup in India and China.  Even in ancient Roman Gaul, there was a huge for-all-intents-purposes ceramics factory that supplied Western Europe.  Industry happens where resources, density, capital, and talent collide.  Not so much climate.

From this list:
Necessity
1 - Car, for the same reasons as most - no reliable mass transit where I ned to go as well as currently using it for my job (employer would provide wprk vehicle though).
2 - Cell phone, as my spouse and I travel, and neither of us nor our children have landlines (which would cost more)
Nice to have, but not necessities:
AC, Dishwasher, Laundry facilities, microwave, all others except below
Luxury:
Flat screen TV
iPod (see no reason for one of these, would get a non-name mp3 if felt need)

Really, even my necessities here aren’t, not really.  Shelter, security, a heat source for cooking, a means of preserving or obtaining preserved food, etc - those are necessities.

exholt - thank you! i am, personally, very much in the school of “your kids come first” (which is why i am glad i cannot have kids - i think i am too selfish to be a good mother. i would never commit to something i am sure i cannot do to the level i think it needs to be done). i really think that, when one has children, the budgeting IN GENERAL should put them and their needs first - they have no other way to get those needs met (not to say that parents should sacrafice EVERYTHING. if it comes down to yet another video game for kid or an actual book for dad, kid already has video games and dad needs something to not go crazy). it drives me nuts when i hear my sister or other parents say “i don’t need a dishwasher, i have a kid” or similar things. and getting a thing like AC for yourself and denying that very same thing to your child/ren is, in my mind, tatamount to cruelty, and tells the child/ren that you feel that they don’t deserve even the things that YOU have.
sorry, this is one of my monster peeves. i mentor young teens (or i did before my leg got messed up and will again when i can reliably walk) and i swear i spend half my time not mentoring, but convincing parents its bad for them to drink expensive things like red bull but not even allow their kids kool aid (and yes, that happens, way too much). or never allow kids “treats” while eating an entire package of Oreos in front of them (also happens way too much)

Mugg - i am very happy you have decided to give baby an AC. it’s actually kinda vital for infants, at least those who live in the hotter areas, in my opinion. i believe that AC cuts down on SID, at the very least. and yeah, you can sleep with baby also, i have noticed that a lot of parents spend a lot of the time they spend with baby in the baby’s room (nursing, changing, play, etc) so i think you really won’t be depriving yourself at all. and congrats on having a baby - i hope everything goes well and that you have a happy, healthy, wonderful and smart kid :D

wait, denelian, are the mothers who are saying “I don’t need a dishwasher, I have a kid” mothers who just cooked the entire meal that the soon-to-be-dishwashing kid ate? Because that just seems like training in simple reciprocity. I sure didn’t appreciate it as a child, though.

purpleshoes:
the only one i am sure of is my sister. and most of the time, the person cooking is her 12 year old daughter.
actually, my niece does most of the housework. my sister does not work.
when i was my niece’s age, i did ALL of the housework, but both my mother and stepfather worked. the only thing i minded was cleaning up after my sisters. it’s different with my niece - there is no reason for her doing essentially all of it (the only things she doesn’t do are clean the oven and wash clothes that have to be dry-cleaned)
in other cases, where it’s one person cooking and another doing the dishes, that makes sense to me.