On the Road (and Maybe Not Again)

Last weekend the girls and I headed down south a ways to visit family. This would be the first time we saw these particular family members since January and this trip was planned nearly two months in advance (scheduling around the new job and kids' activities gets a little tricky).

We almost didn't make it.

Not because of time conflicts or mechanical problems (knock on wood), but because we almost didn't haven enough surplus miles in our ration to make the trip.

Each week we have a ration of 193 miles allowed between the two vehicles. Any unused miles go towards our mileage surplus, up to a maximum surplus of 530 miles.

The trip down to see family would, according to online map sources, require 300 miles round-trip.

Now, for most of the rationing year we've kept the mileage surplus right around (or above) the 300 mile mark (the benefit of not having a real summer vacation, sigh). But a busy summer of swim lessons, out-of-town swim meets and plenty of errands had chipped away at that surplus - even when we were being careful about combining errands and such.

Five weeks before the trip our mileage surplus was at 256 miles - not enough to make it there and back but not so low as to make us nervous since we still had plenty of time to save up miles. The following week our surplus bumped up to 273 miles and, after another week of miserly driving we had a surplus of 357 miles three weeks prior to the scheduled jaunt. Things were looking good.

But then two very busy weeks of shopping and running errands and chasing down home repair parts took the surplus down to a total of 291 miles just one week before the trip.

I started to get anxious about the trip - would we have enough miles? I let TMOTH know of my concerns - this trip was important and it was crucial that we have enough miles. He suggested that maybe we could (theoretically) trade some coffee rations for extra miles on the (imaginary) black market. I didn't like this idea since, ultimately, I like to follow the rules.

So for the next week we did very little driving. Unless it was desperately needed, all shopping was limited to one trip to the grocery store just a few miles away. When we went out to dinner one night we chose the mediocre neighborhood option over one of our house favorites that would have consumed an extra 10 or so miles. Swimming practice was over, so that would help, too.

By the end of the week we had saved up a total of 383 surplus miles. Whew!

So off we went to visit family (and even managed to sneak in an extra few miles to drop supplies off which saved some friends their own 300 mile business trip).

And how did the surplus fare?

A week after the trip our surplus is now only 104 miles, which doesn't get us too far. But, it's still a cushion which (hopefully) we can get back up to its maximum before the holiday season rolls around.

Otherwise, we'll definitely be home for Christmas.

--Rational Mama

A Traitor in Our Midst

It is hot. Hot. Hawt.

For at least the past week the heat index has been at or above 100 degrees. For the next five days or so it promises to be the same. When I walked home from work yesterday the heat index was 107 degrees.

It's hot.

Gone are the glorious days of getting by with only the attic fan. Those were good days - we could run the attic fan for an hour in the morning and let it suck in all the cool air. Usually we could drop the household temperature down to nearly 74 degrees just by running the attic fan for an hour in the morning. Then we would shut the windows and close the curtains. By late afternoon it could be in the lower 90s outside, but the inside temperature of the house would rarely break 80 degrees. And then again in the evening we ran the attic fan for an hour to once again pull outside air in to cool down the house.

But you can only get by with that pattern if the nighttime temperatures drop below 75 degrees and the daytime temperatures and humidity aren't ridiculously high.

Friends, the daytime temperatures and humidity are ridiculously high. It's air conditioning time.

When we first caved in and decided to use air conditioning we agreed that we would keep the thermostat set at 85 degrees; cool enough to not suffer but warm enough to feel like we're still making sacrifices for the rationing program.

In retrospect, that was kinda a bad idea. See, the thermostat is on the main floor but the bedrooms are on the upper floor - and they typically run four to five degrees warmer. This means that we were sweating it out at near 90 degrees some evenings.

Research says that the ideal sleeping temperature is between 65 and 68 degrees. Friends, it is virtually impossible to sleep well at 90 degrees. You toss and turn, rotating body parts to expose to the nearby fan. You are cranky the next day. This is not good.

So we compromised again and decided that while the daytime thermostat temperature would still be set at 85 degrees, the nighttime thermostat temperature would be set at 81 degrees.

This definitely made for a slightly less cranky household. Still a little uncomfortable, but less crabby than before.

In the meantime, we were anxiously awaiting the monthly electricity bill. This summer and last summer started out very similar - a slightly cool May and June, with the exception of one week that was near 100 degrees. This similarity allowed for an apples to apples comparison to determine how much the attic fan was saving us in electricity (and money) during most of that period.

Since we didn't have the attic fan last year we didn't have an efficient way to pull in the nighttime air to cool down the house and avoid running the air conditioner during the day. So the kilowatts used this year should be noticeably lower, since the air conditioner (with it's big compressor and frequent cycles) was used more last year.

The electricity bill finally came this week. The results?

Kilowatts used in mid-June/mid-July 2009: 970 (32.3 per day)

Kilowatts used in mid-June/mid-July 2010: 1008 (32.3 per day)

Aack! Barely a difference - and actually a marginal, statistically insignificant increase! What gives?

True, we've been running floor fans when benefiting from the attic fan, but we still ran some floor fans last year when the air conditioning was on (although not quite as often).

True, the attic fan uses electricity, but surely running the attic fan for two hours a day uses less electricity than having the air conditioner on for 24/7?

Why, oh why, wasn't the electricity bill lower?

Floor by floor we reviewed the electricity being used, eventually ending up in the basement. And there, friends, we found our traitor: the dehumidifier.

Dehumidifier are notorious energy hogs. We knew that when we were shopping for a dehumidifier several year ago and chose an Energy Star model as a result. Unfortunately, even an Energy Star rated dehumidifier can still be an energy hog. And we think ours went a little wild in the last month.

While we were saving electricity by using the attic fan rather than the air conditioner, the result was higher household humidity levels. The higher humidity levels caused the dehumidifier to run more often than if we had instead run the air conditioner (which is, by itself, an effective dehumidifier).

Two steps forward, one step back. It was like we were sabotaged by an often-ignored appliance. Sigh.

So now what do we do? Keeping in mind the seemingly never-ending 100 degree heat wave, we basically have six options:

1. Screw the air conditioner and use only floor fans and the attic fan. Turn off the dehumidifier.

2. Screw the air conditioner and use only floor fans and the attic fan. Change the setting on the dehumidifier so that it does not run as often.

3. Run the air conditioner, but set the thermostat at a higher (80 to 85 degree) temperature. Because having the air conditioner set at a higher temperature means it does not run as often this, in turns, means the household humidity is a little higher. As a result the dehumidifier runs more often.

4. Same as above number 3, but change the setting on the dehumidifier so that it does not run as often.

5. Run the air conditioner, but set the thermostat at a more traditional temperature (78 to 80 degrees). Keep the dehumidifier setting as-is, with the understanding that it will still run frequently, but not as frequently as in the above scenarios.

6. Same as number 5, but adjust the dehumidifier controls so that it does not run as often.

The first two options are basically out since they would most likely result in a complete destruction of the Rational Living household (really, how did people survive the summer in the 1940s without becoming The Incredible Hulk?). I don't like the idea of higher humidity levels in the house, since this is an old house and it can get a good "old house funk" thing going when humidity levels get too high. But we still want to save energy.

So what would you do?

--Rational Mama

Six Month Mileage Update (by TMOTH)

I have missed my half way update and was hoping to do some major catching up but to finish all the ideas I have jostling for position in my brain would probably make me more than just a little bit past deadline. So how about we just stick with a single topic for now?

We haven’t talked much about how the gasoline ration has affected our lifestyle and how we are doing with our goals. We don’t have long commutes and are centrally located so we get done what we need to within our established limits fairly easily. I began carpooling about a month before the project started - once the idea was in my head there was no reason to wait until rationing began. Initially, a co-worker who lives a little over a mile further from work than me picked me up and dropped me off on his way to and fro. This saved us about 42 miles a week and helped to fill up our reserves quickly. It also allowed for a few modest out of town trips without running out of fuel.

Then sometime around February this co-worker's car broke down and I started doing the driving. Since then we haven’t been saving the 42 miles but have actually been traveling an additional 15 miles each week to go get him in the morning and drop him off at the end of the day. I really am not bothered by the extra travel because in the grand scheme of things (ya know, reality), we are still keeping one vehicle off of the road so what does it really matter if our miles go up “on paper?"

Actually, for the past three weeks another friend/coworker nearby had a temporary schedule change and was on the same shift as myself and the above coworker and we actually did three cars worth of driving in one car. This past week the temporary car pool buddy drove. This turned out to be a great relief because…we are running short on miles!

The summer schedule of kids activities involves a lot more driving than just to school and back (which is only about 20 miles a week when we didn’t walk). The big hit to the mileage reserve has been swimming practice. This is the girls' first year on a summer swim team and they have practice four times a week. Tuesday and Thursday practices are actually pretty close - it’s the Monday and Wednesday morning practices at the Shawnee County North Aquatic Center that have been adding up. At 13 miles round trip, or 26 miles each week they account for over 10% of our weekly allotment of 193 miles.

Then there are the weekly swim meets, which alternate between home and away pools. The first two away meets were roughly 80 and 130 mile round-trips and required us to use a sizable portion of our mileage reserve. This past week the away meet was schedule in a town 176 miles round-trip from our house (thank you web-based map information). We checked our mileage reserve...enough but not by much. Then we checked the weather the afternoon of the meet - storms were expected an hour before the meet started with a lull just long enough to do some swimming and then followed by another wave of storms - that is IF the forecast was right on. I don’t know about where you live, but around here the storms don’t carry wristwatches.

So we had finally reached another point where the Rational Living project had affected our daily decision making. So far during the project year the meager mileage surplus has caused us to delay travel to visit Rational Mama’s family (a 300 mile round-trip), but we're determined to visit them at the end of July and therefore are relying on those surplus miles being available. As a result we decided not to go to the meet.

If not for the rationing project we would have joined many others on the team who went the distance only to find… the storms came like clockwork allowing just enough time for a dandy swim meet. Oh well.

Did we make the right choice? Maybe 176 miles round trip is too far for little swimmers at our level of competition anyway.

How far would you go? How much environmental impact is justified for simply daily activities?

--TMOTH

This Week's Scenarios and Menu (and Premature Spring)

I declared this weekend a "sit on my rear and do nothing weekend," so I'm pulling myself away from the crafting and my self-orchestrated Colin Firth movie marathon to bring you this update.

A few notes about last week...Remember that maximum surplus of roll-over miles TMOTH previously described? Well, with our little mini-vacation last week we finally had to delve into that reserve. In all, we used 264 miles last week, which is 71 miles over the weekly allowance. Thus, our roll-over miles have now been reduced from the maximum of 530 miles to 459 miles. That's still a ridiculously large amount of miles, in my opinion.

Also, last week's menu got a little improvised, between my temper tantrum and other situations. A few meals were cooked on different days and two meals got rolled-over into this week's menu:

Saturday: sandwiches and chips (who wants to leave a Colin Firth marathon to cook?)
Sunday: vegetable burgers, crunch vegetable salad and maple nut pudding (historic recipes that didn't get prepared last week)
Monday: freezer soup (whatever is in the freezer and unaccounted for is going in a soup)
Tuesday: spaghetti marinara and canned green beans
Wednesday: French toast casserole and canned fruit
Thursday: chole saag and rice and Spaghettios (the latter is for the girls)
Friday: beefless stronganoff and baked cabbage

Amazingly, we had no scenarios this week. Sissy was rolling the die for the week and casually said, "We could really use a six," knowing a six means no scenarios for the week. And then she rolled a six. I'm taking that girl to Vegas!

Also, I just realized that I didn't spend all of our ration points last week - we had five spare red points and two spare blue/green points. Beginning in 1944 the OPA started issuing red and blue tokens so that retailers could give change back for food bought with ration stamps. It allowed folks to be more precise with their purchases and created a mechanism by which one could save up a few extra ration points at a time. In the spirit of this, I'm going to consider the left-over points from last week as OPA tokens and roll them over into a future week's allotment.

Otherwise, last week was a lovely early spring week. Lots of sunshine lasting later into the evening, warm weather and the sprouting of many green things. On Thursday evening I took the following pictures...

There were the pretty crocuses:

The girls making mud pies (and muddy knees and foreheads and...):

TMOTH digging out a lilac bush to relocate to a different area so the blueberry bushes(!) can be planted:

And Fat Cat basking in the sun on the encolsed porch, listening for birdies:

Really, it was a lovely weather week. And then on Saturday morning we woke up to around four inches of snow.

Sigh.

At least I know that with tomorrow's highs in the 50's most of the snow will be gone shortly and we can return to our spring happiness.

In the meantime, I'm gonna make some hot tea, curl up on the sofa with a blanket and watch some more Colin.

--Rational Mama

Energy Conservation

I was planning to write up a nice long post on ways to conserve energy around the house (after all, the war industry needs those resources!) when Kari at Moo Said the Mama seems to have done it for me. Thanks, Kari! Check out her great post here.

During winter at the Rational Living household we keep the thermostat at 62 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and 60 degrees at night (we'll bump it up when company comes over). TMOTH has occasionally proposed dropping it down further but I protest.

I was amused when I came across a newspaper ad in the Topeka Daily Capital from February 24, 1943 with the following text:

We Must All use Less at Home
SO WAR INDUSTRIES WILL HAVE MORE

Even in normal times winter calls for extra volumes of gas, but now that we are at war the demands for gas has increased beyond anyone's expectations. Gas, as a fuel, is used in the making of practically all of our implements of war. The only way these extra demands can be met is by American people using less gas at home. That is one way we can all help meet our 1943 production schedules.

Here is How YOU Can Help on VERY Cold Days

Keep your home at 65 degrees...Closed all unused rooms and turn off the heat...If you have a fireplace, use it for extra heat...Do less cooking that requires high temperatures for long periods of time...Don't turn on gas until it is needed...Turn off as soon as cooking is finished...Use only necessary hot water and save gas in every way you can.


"See?" I asked TMOTH. "Even during the war they were keeping their winter thermostats at 65 degrees!" He hasn't asked to lower the thermostat since I showed him this ad.

In the meantime, we're already making plans for warmer weather. After discussing for many years the merits of installing a whole-house fan (sometimes called an attic fan), it seems like we're finally going to get off of our duffs and get one this year. Does this bend the no-appliance rule for rationing year? A bit, but it is historically-appropriate and since this appliance uses very few resources to produce (as compared to say, a refrigerator or oven *sigh*) we're going with it. I've always been a bit surprised that our 100 year old house never had a whole house fan installed before now. I mean, have you lived through a plains summer? Ugh!

In the meantime, I'm curious to know what the faithful readers set their thermostats on during the winter and summer months. Of course, some of you are lucky enough to live in temperate areas that require little of either heating or cooling. For the rest of us, it's always a balance of finding the right temperature at the right energy-budget price.

For us, it's 60-62 degrees in the winter, and 78 degrees in the summer.

And you, reader?

--Rational Mama

Just Ask! A Matter of Finances

This week's question is from Rational Living reader Rebecca, who asked:

"Do you keep close track of your household finances and, if so, are you seeing substantial savings from all these homemade meals and not eating out?"

Great question!

I consulted the great Quicken oracle for some fast stats on the same period (Dec. 26 through Feb. 21) this year and last year and here's what I discovered:

Dec. 26, 2008 through Feb. 21, 2009
Gasoline: $197.86 (avg. price per gallon $1.87)
Eating Out: $241.72
Groceries: $1019.60
Total: $1459.18

Dec. 26, 2009 through Feb. 21, 2010
Gasoline: $147.60 (avg. price per gallon $2.50)
Eating Out: $106.50
Groceries: $735.01
Total: $989.11

Total savings while rationing (so far): over $470.00

Not too shabby, huh?

I know we had extra miles last February when Eowyn was hospitalized for a few days at a children's hospital around 60 miles away from home, but in general we've been able to reduce our consumption just by being more efficient with our trips. If you divide last year's figure by the average cost per gallon, that equates to 106 gallons, whereas the more recent figure equates to only 59 gallons. Even if you subtract last year's extra trips to/from the children's hospital our current rate of consumption for gasoline is down 39%.

Our eating out tab has reduced to less than half of last year's expenses. We are all surprised at how manageable the transition to reduced restaurant visitation has been.

Finally, our grocery tab is down 33%, even though more meals at home theoretically means more groceries. I imagine it is because we are spending less on commercially prepared items. Our cost per person has dropped from $4.39 per person/per day last year to $3.16 per person/per day during rationing. That figure includes several different occasions of having company over for dinner, so that actual figure is less than that. Now, some bloggers out there will say that it is still too high, but since I work outside of the home 40 hours a week and don't have the availability to prepare certain foods (breads and pastas) from scratch (although I would really love to), I'm pretty happy with that figure.

What are we doing with this savings? Well, our charitable giving is significantly higher than last year. Very significantly. Otherwise, we're trying to set aside the extra for a fabulous family vacation post-rationing.

What would you do with the extra savings?

--Rational Mama

True Confessions of a Gas Hoarder

Finally! At long last - the long awaited, much anticipated “TMOTH’s Post on Gas Rationing.” Or, as Rational Mama has implied, my impulse to “hoard.” Of course, I don’t think I have in mind anything as extreme as to be improper or “hoarding.” What I have been thinking of is simply saving some unused gasoline ration for later. I see this no more different than saving up sugar and butter rations for a few weeks to make a cake on a special occasion.

If I started rationing with no fuel in the vehicle tanks, put in my 11 gallons and drive less than eleven gallons worth before the next refueling then next week I will still put in 11 new gallons. In this fashion I would soon have a full 10 gallon gas tank in the car (more than that in the minivan). That would allow me to drive more than eleven gallons worth in one particular week if I had gone less on previous weeks. Now we get to the part where, if there were a real rationing authority, I would probably bend the rules just a little bit. Not a lot mind you, but just a little. I would keep one 5 gallon gas can for emergency (or leisure) trips.

Since we are rationing our mileage instead of actual gasoline I will not have to have a gas can in the garage. Instead, I will put unused miles in an imaginary mileage tank in the garage. Or, for convenience, I suppose we could just keep track of it on a piece of paper. This is, in fact, what we have done. By “we” of course I mean Rational Mama, as she is the great organizer of all things good.

So far we have used a total of 684 out of the 1158 miles that our gas rations could have taken us. That is 59% of our potential driving, leaving us with 474 unused miles so far. Using the storage capacity of the two vehicles plus one 5 gallon back up tank we can save a maximum of 530 unused miles. We call these rollover miles. After that point the miles will be “use it or lose it.” I hope we can resist the urge to drive extra just because we can. After all, one of the points of this exercise is to be mindful of our resource usage. Any unused miles can be happily reported as savings on both the pocketbook and our carbon footprint.

Speaking of mindfulness, I must confess that we haven’t yet had to think much about our driving habits. This is just how much we drive on a regular basis. Some things could be changing, though. My carpool arrangement is in jeopardy as the friend I have been riding with is considering a second job that would take him in the opposite direction at the end of the day. Having to drive myself to work would not put us over the limit by its self. I drove myself last week while he was on vacation and we still had miles to spare. My concern is that when the weather is nicer out I have the habit of heading out of town to “go walkabout” as Crocodile Dundee would say. With the nearest significant “wilderness area” being at least a 30 mile round trip (I’m not exactly sure since I never used to think that much about it), my trips will have to be less frequent and may dip into the rollover miles occasionally. We also will have to plan to save our reserve for visiting out of town family. There is a tradition of making it to a certain nephew’s birthday party that I feel strongly about not sacrificing.

Perhaps I should wrap up as Rational Mama often does by asking questions for reflection. How many miles per week does your household use? How much unnecessary driving do you do? Could you consolidate trips? What travel would you be unwilling to do without?

--The Man of the House

1 Month Check-In

Today we mark one calendar month into our year of living on WWII U.S. civilian rations.

How are we doing?

We used 248 of our 251 red ration points. Assigning these every week is quite a math game - there are definitely never too many red ration points!

We used 538 of what should have been only 192 allotted blue/green points (refer to the "And Then Things Became REALLY Interesting" post from a few weeks ago). The good news is that while I was doing some research I learned that all families were allowed to claim, without penalty, five cans per person at the start of rationing. Assuming that an average can was worth 14 points, that would be an additional 280 points worth of canned goods that I could have credited the family for at the beginning of ration. If we subtract those points from our total, that brings us down to 258 points. That's still about 18 can's worth of points, or 18 cans too many. But there's not much I can do about that now. I have a modest amount of canned goods in the cabinet right now (beets, spinach, corn and carrots), so I was not hoarding during those few weeks of excess point usage. I'm not happy with the situation, but I'm at peace with it.

We've purchased all our sugar and coffee allowances.

I didn't track gasoline/mile usage for that first partial week, but for the following three weeks we used 300 of our 576 miles. I'm really happy about that number. Even if we didn't get the extra gasoline/miles for The Man of the House's job equating to a wartime industry, we would be well within the reduced allotment for families without the added gallons/miles. Of course, TMOTH (as he likes to be called) would like to hoard all those extra miles. There will be a post on that compulsion soon!

And how are we doing mentally?

Eowyn and Sissy miss fresh fruit (Eowyn = bananas, Sissy = apples) and both are no longer amused by the increased appearance of soups on the menu.

TMOTH is frustrated with the fact that few people he talks to "gets it" and understand why we undertook this project.

As you are all aware, I greatly miss fresh vegetables - and lettuce most of all. Rational Living reader Kari had a great idea about this which I will be posting about soon. Otherwise, I'm also feeling the time drain of the project: time looking up points, extra time spent making menus and grocery lists, extra time spent cooking more meals from scratch, time spent tracking usage and time spent posting on the blog. But all of these except that last point help make the experiment that much more authentic, so I can't complain too loudly.

And I have to admit that I look forward to Mr. Bowles' Marketplace Scenario Randomizer with giddy expectancy.

And let me add a note of thanks for all those who read the blog and use the comments section to ask questions, suggest recipes (I'm still loving the baked cabbage!) and give us emotional support. This project wouldn't be nearly as interesting if it wasn't for the ongoing dialogue. Thank you!

And what do we think the next month will hold for us? I imagine the reduced blue/green points will become painfully real in the next month, and we will plan our garden. And I'm sure we'll try at lease five other ways to cook cabbage.

In fact, sometimes I think the official title for the project should be: "Rational Living...or...50 Ways to Cook a Cabbage."

--Rational Mama

Rationing is a Gas! Gas! Gas!

...okay, maybe that should just read "Rationing is a gas!" since the whole idea is about using less, not more.

As I type there's around 75 days left until R-Day, the day my family begins living a lifestyle based on WWII rationing, or at least the modern equivalent. And one of the first components of our lives to be limited will be gasoline.

By mid-1942, most family automobiles had an "A" sticker in their window, indicating that their gasoline ration was at the low end of the scale - typically three to four gallons per week during the war. Vehicles driven by personnel considered essential to the war effort were graced with a "B" sticker, earning eight gallons of gasoline per week. Industrial war workers fell within the "B" category. "C" stickers were for physicians, ministers, mail carriers and such whose jobs were considered critical to society. "T" stickers were reserved for trucks and other over-the-road transport while rare "X" stickers were for members of Congress and other elite VIPs. I haven't found specific gasoline allowance figures for the "C" and "T" stickers, but I know that they were higher than the "B" allotment, and "X" stickers earned the owner a basically un-rationed amount of gasoline.

Originally, the aim of gas rationing was to reduce the wear on tire rubber, since this natural resource (which was made from rubber trees now largely under Japanese control) was essential to the war effort. "Victory Speed" campaigns cropped up, touting lower traveling speeds (typically a max of 35 mph) to reduce tire wear and tear. However, most drivers ignored these limits (sounds stereotypically American, huh?).

So gas rationing was originally one prong of a two-pronged effort to redirect rubber away from citizen consumers so that more was available for military vehicles and supplies. How badly the rationing of gasoline effected Americans varied greatly based upon many factors including access to public transportation and proximity to essential locations such as employment and food markets. And while most cars in the 1940s averaged only 15-20 mpg (what we would call a "clunker" today), most individuals were not too far removed from their community centers to feel a dramatic crunch in their lifestyle (remember, this is before the days of urban sprawl and the death of rural towns). In fact, in late 1942 a whopping 95% of workers polled in Wichita, KS still drove their cars to work!

But this sure ain't the 1940s, and urban sprawl is definitely a reality in our modest-sized city (population of approximately 120,000). So, what does gasoline rationing mean for us? Well, first we had to consider some differences between the WWII scenario and today's lifestyle.

The range for miles per gallon in the 1940s was between 15 to 20, or roughly 17.5 mpg on average. Today, in the world of fuel-efficient economy models and hybrids the average is often 30+ mpg, which means our contemporary cars go farther than 1940s cars on the same gallon of gas (okay, not quite the same gallon of gas...ours is unleaded and contains ethanol). That comparison seems to suggest that following the exact same ticket allowances mentioned above might be too generous for our contemporary experiment.

But, you point out (really, I can hear you starting this line of thinking already), modern communities are so much more widespread in their distribution of resources that the sheer sprawl of a city requires one to drive farther for essential functions. For example, an individual in the 1940s typically drove (or walked) less than one or two miles to the grocery store; in today's communities a similar task may require four or five miles worth of travel one way.

So keeping the same amount of rationed gasoline with our more fuel-efficient cars makes sense, no?

Well, this back and for, tit for tat comparison could go on endlessly - or at least until everyone involved has lost interest and chosen to drive 12 miles round trip for a mocha-brownie double scoop to get their minds off of such debate. So I'll spare you much of the conversation (the ice cream is up to you) and let you know the formula we settle upon for our year of rationing. Yup, it's a formula. I'm no math wiz, so hopefully I can explain it to you in a way that actually makes sense.

In our family my car would earn an "A" sticker, which unfortunately does not make me part of the A Team (I pity the fool!) but does mean that my car "earns" three gallons per week.

My husband's vehicle would earn a "B" sticker since his 1940s employment equivalent would have made him part of the war supply chain. Maybe. He works in one of those cavernous retail distribution warehouses that ships consumer goods out to over 60 stores in seven states. While not exactly a war related occupation, in a 1940s scenario his distribution center would most likely be flipped to distribute war goods instead of clothing and home furnishing chotchkes. Thus, another eight gallons of gas per week.

This brings our family total up to 11 gallons per week by WWII standards.

Now, here's a bit of honesty: the idea of going to the gas station each week and filling up each vehicle with its appropriated number of gallons sounds really tedious. I admit it. You're not committed to the experiment, you say. That's not sticking to the 1940s example, I hear. Somewhat true. But if we were in the 1940s there would be at least two gas stations within spitting distance of my house and I'd never have to leave the car to get gasoline because it'd be full service with a cute teenage boy cleaning my windshield to boot. So, yes. We've changed the fine details, but I think we're still within the spirit of the rationing program. As such, here's the first modern deviation from the 1940s model: we're not rationing our number of gallons per week, per se, but instead rationing our number of miles.

Here's how it works: in the 1940s our 11 gallons would have allowed our family approximately 193 miles of travel per week, based on that average of 17.5mpg. Thus, our rationing experiment will allow our family a total of 193 miles per week for the year. Each Sunday we'll reset the trip meters in our vehicles and on Saturday nights we'll record the number of miles traveled that week. We'll have to monitor usage and compare notes during the week to make sure we don't go over. I really hope we don't go over.

On paper, at least, this doesn't look like much of a challenge, since our essential mileage each week (both of us to/from work, girls to/from school, piano lessons, church and routine shopping) totals around 95 miles per week. That leaves us around 100 miles per week for entertainment, socializing and other out-and-about tasks. Sounds pretty easy, right? Right? That's why we're not allowing ourselves any extra miles to accomodate sprawl. But our Quicken records for the past year suggest that our actual usage is closer to 14 or so gallons per week, which is over 300 miles per week. Ugh.

How does this compare to everyone else's gasoline usage? How many gallons per week do you use? How many miles per week do you travel? I have a suspicion that our usage is already a bit lower than many families because we live in a central location in our community - trips for shopping and general errands are relatively short. And, in general, we're pretty decent about trying to make our errand runs as efficient as possible.

But still...Quicken suggest that we'll have to cut a chunk of miles out of our usage to fall within the 193 mile limit. We've already made some changes like walking to work (me - weather permitting) and carpooling (husband) to reduce our usage even further. This is one of those things where our environmental consciousness nicely coincides with the rationing project. I like it when that happens.

On the other hand, out-of-town trips to see family and friends will be challenging, or nearly impossible. Can we save up unused miles from week to week? Maybe so, but I think there would be some sort of limit (after all, during WWII a citizen could only save up as much as their fuel tank would hold). According to Mapquest it is 300 miles round trip to see my mother. The only way that could happen is if we save up gas during the week and head her way on a Saturday, then reset the trip meter the next day (Sunday) for the return trip. Of course, that would leave us with just 43 miles of travel for the remainder of the week if we have exhausted our savings. Hmm...this requires a bit more thought.

So there's your first lesson in WWII rationing and an explanation of how we're working with one of the key rationed resources. We've got to figure out how the "storing" of any extra miles may work and what limitations would be required. Luckily, we still have seventy-some days to figure it out! Let me know if you have any suggestions.

--Rational Mama

P.S. Two really wonderful websites with good information are from the Ames Historical Society and the Plains Humanities Alliance. The latter has links to 1940s newspaper articles highlighting the challenges of rationing in the central plains region.