In the Anza-Borrego desert now, enjoying a bit of electricity and Starlink before going back to dry camping for the weekend.

While we're on the subject of ditching pans, I started looking at getting a few baking pans for the house, and it's not cheap, and they are not the quality they used to be. And there are cheap versions the mart sells, guaranteed to not last, and now they have warnings on knives and peelers "Hand Wash Only", lol. If I had a cupboard full of baking pans I didn't use often, but were long since paid for, I'd be very slow to get rid of them.

Because they are going to make everything worse before it gets better. Every necessity of life is under the microscope for the greedy rentier class to squeeze us. I have no desire to grow and make all my own stuff. But I am fearful of deliberate or climate induced shortages, and prices being jacked up on everything. I don't bake much now, but I can foresee a time when the weight is off and I don't need to exclude carbs as much, and commercial breads are all manufactured by some hedge fund, full of garbage, and $10 a loaf. Maybe I can teach friends the mysteries of bread baking, or swap loaves for their tomatoes.

We have all been exhorted to declutter as much as possible in the past few decades, and yes, we need to have less crap in our homes. But I'm starting to have to rebuy stuff I should have kept, at ridiculous prices, and I'm starting to wonder how much of the declutter movement was just a way to get us all to buy again further down the line. I'm not ditching stuff just to have a clean-looking living room, or to delete anything that isn't tied to my immediate areas of interest.