They had a wood furnace, and a wood stove for cooking. Do you know how much effort it takes to haul and split enough wood to warm a house and cook with? I do, because my brother and I did it one summer. It took the two of us a solid week (8 hour days) to cut and split (no stacking) enough wood for one winter. Except for a brief period where his son and soon to be sons in law had done it, my Grandfather and a friend had done that every year, and for a significant number of those he used a handsaw to cut lengths from the logs, while we had a chainsaw. And we were working from logs that he'd ordered delivered, instead of having had to go fell and transport them ourselves the way he had done 20 years earlier. And that's just the beginning. When you're burning wood for heat and cooking, there's additional effort devoted to hauling wood from wherever it's being stored to where it's going to be burned, and loading the furnace, and hauling ashes away, and…

I push a button on my wall or turn a dial on my stove for heat.

And it went on in that vein: Grandma had a wringer washer that she refused to replace, and dried laundry on a 50' clothesline (they get heavier as they get longer, it turns out). They lived in a rural area, the mailbox was a half-mile away, and they walked to it every day, because gas was expensive, and cars were less sturdy and tires cost a lot to replace. They traded vegetables from their kitchen garden (because having a garden was a rational decision when stores only had a limited and slightly wilted selection of the things that grew in your climate) for milk from a couple on the next 10 acre lot who had a couple of milk cows. The floor covering in their entire house was linoleum, and Grandma washed it – on her hands and knees – twice a week – no Scooba or vacuum for her. She made bread a couple of times a week with no mixer, much less a bread-machine.

It just went on and on, the parts of everyday living that required so much more energy than it takes me to do their contemporary equivalents.

They had a wood furnace, and a wood stove for cooking. Do you know how much effort it takes to haul and split enough wood to warm a house and cook with? I do, because my brother and I did it one summer. It took the two of us a solid week (8 hour days) to cut and split (no stacking) enough wood for one winter. Except for a brief period where his son and soon to be sons in law had done it, my Grandfather and a friend had done that every year, and for a significant number of those he used a handsaw to cut lengths from the logs, while we had a chainsaw. And we were working from logs that he'd ordered delivered, instead of having had to go fell and transport them ourselves the way he had done 20 years earlier. And that's just the beginning. When you're burning wood for heat and cooking, there's additional effort devoted to hauling wood from wherever it's being stored to where it's going to be burned, and loading the furnace, and hauling ashes away, and…

I push a button on my wall or turn a dial on my stove for heat.

And it went on in that vein: Grandma had a wringer washer that she refused to replace, and dried laundry on a 50' clothesline (they get heavier as they get longer, it turns out). They lived in a rural area, the mailbox was a half-mile away, and they walked to it every day, because gas was expensive, and cars were less sturdy and tires cost a lot to replace. They traded vegetables from their kitchen garden (because having a garden was a rational decision when stores only had a limited and slightly wilted selection of the things that grew in your climate) for milk from a couple on the next 10 acre lot who had a couple of milk cows. The floor covering in their entire house was linoleum, and Grandma washed it – on her hands and knees – twice a week – no Scooba or vacuum for her. She made bread a couple of times a week with no mixer, much less a bread-machine.

It just went on and on, the parts of everyday living that required so much more energy than it takes me to do their contemporary equivalents.