Some often overlooked but simple lessons that can make a huge difference when living off grid

Having lived off grid for over 10 years, we have run across some small lessons that I've not seen or heard from many people but can save time and frustration.  So here is a quick list on what we over looked at times but appreciate a lot now that we figured these things out.

When it comes to lighting a fire, I love the strike anywhere matches.  We tried those safety matches that require the match to be lit using the strike plate on the box ... crap.  We have also tried all kinds of butane lighters ... crap.  Paper book matches ... crap.  What I would love to try is a flint.  Perhaps one day I will find one.  But until then, the strike anywhere matches are gold.  Not surprisingly, they are also getting harder and harder to find.  It seems that the stores don't like to carry them much any more.  So if you find them, buy in bulk!

Buying chain saw?  Don't cheep out.  I found that the cheaper models that you get at the box stores don't last that long.  When you are in the middle of winter and need fire wood, you need your saw to work.  So I purchased as Stihl chain saw and have not been disappointed as it runs reliably for YEARS.  I find the same goes with a generator.  I love the Honda generators.  They work hard and long with little to no maintenance required.  

On the topic of chain saws, I sharpen the chain with a stone that can go in a dremel or drill.  Except the sharpening stones break really easily.  I found out that they make diamond bits for sharpening carbide tipped chainsaw chains.  They last long enough to sharpen the life of at least one chain rather than just getting you through a single sharpening.  So even though they are more money, in the long run they work better, last longer and saves a lot of frustration.  

To save our solar system from the phantom power consumption of a lot of electronics, we put switches on our plugs.  That way we can turn off all the power bars, lights, computers, phone chargers, etc without going along each circuit and unplugging everything or flipping breakers at the panel.  Yes, most of those items will consume power even when turned 'off'.  So we just wired our house so that we can turn off the wall plugs with a simple switch.

We keep our deep freeze outside in a shed rather than in the house.  During the winter, our capacity to generate power is really low due to the limited sunlight.  But the good news is that winter can keep our food frozen with zero power ... because it is flippen cold during the winter.  So old man winter does the job, so we turn the deep freeze off during the winter.  When we have lots of power during the summer, we then turn it back on.  Does not make sense to us to run a deep freeze when winter does an efficient job!  

We purchased a front load, energy efficient, water saver washing machine.  I don't recommend them.  If you buy a machine, get a top load as they work better!  When ours dies, a top load machine is what we would be looking to get.

As for drying our cloths, we build a solar and wind powered cloths drier ... yes ... and old fashioned cloths line.  They will dry your cloths even when it is -35C out side.  But in the winter, we hang our cloths in the house as it also helps increase the humidity in the house to keep it from getting too dry.

We heat water on the stove.  We have yet to justify the cost of a hot water heater or on demand heater.  We may eventually make a solar heater ... one day.   Until then, heating water serves us very well.  It is simple and easy.  

We really struggled finding milk filters to filter the goat milk after each milking.  We find that the white coffee filters work fairly well.  We have to make sure we filter the milk right away, otherwise the milk thickens and won't flow through the filter.  Timing is important, but at least it is easy to find filters now.  

If we run low of water in the winter time, we often melt snow to do dishes or shower, saving the clean, potable water to drink.  We will also melt snow for the animals too if push came to shove.  Lots of water around, we just need to find ways to capture and use it.  

With wood heat, we left a 6 inch gap between the top of our walls and the ceiling.  This allows the heat to flow to all areas of the house where it then cools off, drops to the floor and then flows back to the stove.  That way we don't need any fans to move the warm air around the house.  In the days before force air heating, there would be small windows above the doors that can be opened.  This allowed heat to flow into a room if needed.  

We build our wood sheds out of pallets.  They work great as it allows the air flow to go through the wood stack, drying and curing the wood very quickly, even in the winter time.

Our wood shed that holds 8 cords of wood.  I've since put a tin roof on this building.

Did you know that the blade and bottom of a blender will fit on a mason jar?  That way we can make our own, personalized size smoothy.  

For sharpening knives, we have tried stones, the disk sharpeners and other techniques. I find this tool to be the easiest, quickest and best way to sharpen knives.  

When it comes to cooking food, cast iron is the only way to go!  

Yard lights usually consume hundreds of watts of power, so we could not go that route.  What we did instead was string up some LED Christmas lights connected to a switch in the house.  Now if we need to go outside in the winter time, we just turn on the lights so that we can see where we are going.  When we get back into the house we can then turn them off.  The LED light on our cell phones also makes a great flashlight when walking around in the dark.  

To help keep water for the live stock, we keep a 250 gallon tote in the shop which we can then heat up to keep it from freezing.  We don't have a well, so we can pick up 200 gallons of water for a dollar at the local county well.  It is not portable water, but it is well water which is fine for the animals.