Sodium really is a culprit in restaurant food. I can go days or weeks watching healthy levels as I enter meals into the food diary in My Fitness Pal (I use the free version and in particular use it to keep track of my daily intake of calcium and sodium) but once I add a fast food sandwich or commercially prepared dish, the sodium levels soar.

I have trash at the curb this morning and agree, that fresh water, electricity, trash pickup, and having a washer and dryer really make a civilization civilized. :) I've gone through spells of having to use the commercial laundromat and find it very efficient and a time to read while I wait for machines. I fold everything I take out of the dryer so it's ready to put away when I arrive home. But being able to walk into the smallest room in the house and put a load of laundry in to wash - that is luxury. I've lived places where we didn't have trash pickup; in those days I was recycling things at a center on campus and we had a burn barrel, and a neighbor who had a pig farm would stop by for the kitchen scraps, so there wasn't much to go into the "trash" per se. If someone was going to the dump they'd stop at neighbors and ask if they had anything to go. Social welfare on a different scale. (When I hired a 30-yard dumpster to work on clearing out my dad's estate every so often someone would knock and politely ask if they could add an old commode or some broken screen doors to the bin, and that was fine with me.)

The latest batch of muddy towels (line them up inside the dog door at the back of the house) has gone through the laundry. Even with those down to catch the worst I have a lot of mopping to do to clear the tracks off of the tile. In many ways life would be easier without that dog door, but the dogs would sure miss it.