Just want to add my 2 cents here, I smoked Camels for 20+yrs, and while I didn’t try to quit a lot—I did try a good handful of times of more (like 6-8 times probably). “Try” being the key word, I didn’t get very far (I have quit other things too considered “highly addictive” but I’ve never been able to stop smoking,…

greasy paper goes with the compostables.

I have been doing this for years. I just reuse the foil over and over again. Its already shaped to my stove and I keep it in the oven on a lower rack when not in use. When the foil gets little dirty I simply fold it in half and I have a new section to work with. I also use them for the toaster oven.

RamBoard might be just what you’re looking for. Cheap, readily available, and designed to protect floors during construction. Doesn’t crush like cardboard.

Great post. I agree fully, but also want to add that for storage, an old filing cabinet will hold a lot of mass and will be easy and cheap to buy. I just bought a house and there was an old filing cabinet in the garage. I looked into selling it on craigslist but realized that because the rollers are shot, I’d be lucky…

entertainment: bluetooth adapter and an old boom box work great on a budget. Alternately, a cheap tablet and the aforementioned old boom box (streaming ftw) is my setup.

Yes, I agree, food, warmth, etc., are the main things. But there is an element of trying to keep a chin up despite all odds which I guess I attributed to not giving in to the slippery slope of bottom barrel despair; holding on to the dignity of being a human being and deserving of kindness and courtesy. There was a…

I do not want to trivialize the experiences of other commenters, but it should be made clear that—when you’re living it—there’s a colossal gulf between sleeping in your car or a friend’s basement and having truly nowhere to go.

My grampa used to say “the harder I work the luckier I get.” Once I realized that was true I never had another such problem. It’s scary to me now, though, how close I came to total ruin, either by ending up in the prison system or just dead. Good to know I’m not alone in that.

Yes. I was a complete and total piece of crap in my early twenties and lived in the woods eating off of food stamps. I did it voluntarily and stayed drunk and high most of the time. I didn’t even realize how close I came to killing myself, and when it came time to move back inside (winter in Montana is not outdoor…

“But why limit to so few models of car? ... And wouldn’t it just be easier for the thieves to just take the whole car, instead of painstaking disassembly on site?”