My headphones. I just love listening to music way too much.
Well luckily for you, apparently it’s now acceptable to just blast your music out loud in public.
Literally, depending on where you draw a line between luxury and important but not mandatory for most people, it’s air conditioning. We have three people in this household that do very poorly once heat and humidity starts to climb, including myself. Plus, uncontrolled humidity in the south ruins things, so there’s an increase in costs associated with whatever decrease in power usage would save. For us, AC is right on the edge of being a necessity, as in a medical thing.
But in a more literal luxury that serves only pleasure or want, chocolate. No nutritional necessity, and it isn’t like we all can’t do without it. But gods damn, it would hurt. A nice piece of good quality dark chocolate is the ultimate mini reward for me. Do something incredibly painful and time consuming, that bit of chocolate is enough to turn it from something that I’m weeping in pain trying to finish into something I’m able to get through before I break down. That’s a luxury, but fuck me if it isn’t something I lean on heavily as a crutch. I really don’t know what I would use to coax myself through really bad days where I’m barely functional but still have to function.
Man, I year you. In tropical Mexico, whatever semi-dry goods we didn’t use up by the end of spring will be ruined and moldy within three days of summer starting. Must seeds won’t even germinate in like two months.
Meat, specifically ground beef
Just keep your beef in the fridge like a normal person.
por qué no ambos?
None that would “break me” if I didn’t have them, but I spend the vast majority of my free time on my computer (by choice, I have friends and outside activities I can go to if I want), and whenever I’ve had to be away from it that’s always been the toughest part.
A/C
Contact lenses. I know I could use my glasses, but I put them down and can’t find them half the time. I am blind enough to be absolutely useless in most situations without corrective lenses.
If there is a luxury whose absence would break you, then I would suggest you do a little “fast” from it, occasionally.
100%. For caffeine, I drop it on the weekends (much to the annoyance of my gf) and that monday morning coffee makes all the difference in the world. For cheese, I’m usually okay without for a few weeks.
Indoor plumbing and summer time AC
Private Space. My own private Bedroom Especially. Also, a good bathroom. Especially a good toilet and shower. Make them clean too.
Sharpening stones and files. I can’t imagine using dull knives. I can’t stand knives duller than hair popping sharp. I have excellent knives that hold a crisp edge and I sharpen those every 30 minutes of super fast chopping (10 seconds on a 9k stone).
Not just knives but scissors, trowels, shovels, cooking spatulas, dust pans, vegetable peelers, can openers, toenail clippers, all need to be sharp. Not being able to sharpen all of those would be a tragedy.
If you are delaying getting into sharpening, just do it. It will serve you for the rest of your life, and I sharpen every single day (I’m a woodworker). Its truly a luxury to have sharp tools, all the time. So satisfying.
Aside from that, chocolate. The cravings will never go away.
Air conditioning, but I would argue that is a very expensive necessity.
Do you have some suggestions for a novice sharpener on how to get started?
Coarse diamond stone and a thin cheap knife. The coarse stone is fast so you get immediate results and feedback, which is crucial for learning. You want to use a cheap knife since you can damage knives with bad technique. Cheap knives are also softer and sharpen faster
Diamond plates are much more straightforward than waterstones. You dont need to soak it, water it, flatten it, etc. They aren’t necessarily better, but they require much less maintenance
Also I highly recommend freehand. Youll always encounter a knive that doesn’t work with this, or that system, but you can sharpen every knife, tool, scissors, etc, on a normal sharpening stone.
and I sharpen those every 30 minutes
I’m sorry, what?
If I sharpened my knives after every 30 minutes of use I wouldn’t have any steel left after a couple of months, tops. My knives are shaving sharp, I use them for several hours every day.
If your knives hold an edge and are profiled correctly, sharpening every 30 minutes (even a quick touch up) is entirely unnecessary. Professional meat cutters and fishmongers annihilate cutting for 10 hours a day and require razor sharp tools, and they don’t spend even close to as much time as you’ve claimed touching up their edges.
Don’t get me wrong, I love sharp knives, but either you’re exaggerating or doing it wrong.
I use a 9k stone and sharpen for like 10 seconds, so its not that much material. I have an extremely high standard of sharpness.
For the first 30 mins to an hour of work, the edge absolutely flies through food. (Hair whittling/hair popping)
Afterwards its still very sharp and cuts very well ( clean shaving)
Then it starts to struggle with tough skins and delicate foods (bell peppers, tomatoes, etc) this is usually where it stops shaving.
I like to keep my knives so sharp that it flies through everything.
Soap and clean water
Spices. Very much spices. If I was limited to like 5 good ones I’d make do but I have a drawer with like 50 spices in it I use regularly and it’s my happy place.
Same, one of the things that influenced my decision to buy my house was a long cupboard next to the hob that would be perfect for a 48 jar spice rack. The rack is now full and there’s a small crate of miscellaneous spices sat on top of the cupboard.
The only time I agree with the people going on about how we live like Kings in the modern world (absolutely fucking not) is about how many spices we can just have for cheap and not the cost of a horse.
100%
It kills me when I go to someone’s house and the only spices are black pepper and cinnamon. Salt does not count.
Clean and well-tasting tap water. It sucks when I’m going to another country and they have chlorinated tap water
Where in the world?
PC world.
I haven’t thought about that jingle in years (decades?) but it came back instantly. And now it won’t leave.
Oh fun, here’s another:
There’s a magical place, we’re on our way there
With toys by the million, all under one roof…Another banger. Millions of Jeffrey
It’s got some pretty dark Edgar Allan Poe vibes:
“There’s millions” says Jeffrey, “all under one roof…”
If he’s a toy himself, then he’s selling out his own kind by cramming them like sardines in inhumane conditions and selling them off to the highest bidder. Despicable.
You probably wouldn’t know it, but “There’s a funky little place down on bayside drive”
We have clean water in Austria, directly from the mountains without adding anything (just cleaning it with UV light to kill potential bacteria in most regions, nothing else. Not even that in some regions).
Some of the best and cleanest water worldwide, so whenever I go to another country I’m disappointed by their water quality.
Don’t tell Nestle, lol
Swede here who frequents Austria. I agree, and I love drinking the water while hiking in Austria.
If you visit Sweden, our water is mostly as good as the one in Austria. Some exceptions are Gotland because of high chalk (so? “Kalk”) levels.
In the US. I feel the same about our well water. Completely untreated and so good.
Not all well water is untreated…
If it’s that important to you then an RO filter would be a cheap solution
Electricity.
If you lose electricity most people lose access to:
Hot water
Running water (if you have a well)
Air conditioning
Indoor heat
Television
Internet
Indoor lighting
And hot meals if you don’t have gas.Losing electricity would cut you off from almost all of your luxuries as we’ve become completely dependent on it over the last century or so.
it sounds like a necessity
Not necessarily, you could absolutely survive without electricity, I live in a predominantly Amish area that proves that.
It just wouldn’t be any fun.Hah, that’s fair
It’s a utility and so I agree it’s a necessity. A luxury would be some of the things electricity allows like Internet.
The Internet access should be classified as a utility but good luck getting ISPs to stop lobbying against that
Yeah in the modern age internet access should be considered a necessity. There are a lot of things you can’t do without the internet (like get a job or pay bills).
Yeah but no electricians no more electrocution… Think of the positives lol
Chocolate.
Proper chocolate, not the shit that Cadbury turn out since it was bought by the cheese people.
No wonder they lost their royal warrant. That’s the first thing that Charlie has done since the Prince’s Trust that has really impressed me.
That’s super interesting, I actually like him a bit now because of that
