no appointment needed tarot – Page 5 – Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot

It’s Own Magic

If everything changes in time, doesn’t that mean time is magic?

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. Short Sip episodes are Tarot contemplations for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.

Today’s card is the Magician. It’s nice to see some major arcana cards showing up lately. That in itself is a nice little validation for me, that some of the energy and effort that I’ve been investing into refreshing the website and migrating the shop to a different platform in an effort to keep prices down on readings just might pay off.

It’s also an interesting compliment to the summer energy that’s out there. As a whole, the major arcana has so called “higher energy” That’s kind of a confusing way to say it. Sometimes higher vs lower energy is used qualitatively. Higher connotes something more esoteric, more spiritual, somehow “good” or virtuous while lower is sometimes used to connote something more banal and mundane, perhaps lesser quality or even malicious.

When I think of major arcana cards as having higher energy, it is a quantitative thing. Electromagnetic waves that have more cycles per unit of distance are said to have higher frequencies. There are just plain more waves in the wavelength not that they are any better or worse – unless of course you are talking about radiation and living tissue but that’s another story that we’ll ignore for now, since we are talking about Tarot card symbolism, not hard science & physics.

What I’m trying to say is that major arcana cards aren’t any better or any worse than the minor arcana. There is a surprising amount of overlap between some minor arcana cards and the majors. The minor cards have a gentler touch with the advice. They hand you a cookie and tell you that by the time you are done it will all be right as rain. Major arcana cards are more ka-pow. They are Oda Mae looking you straight in the eye and telling you that you in danger, girl.

I’ve been told by my Lenormand Tarot reading friends that the whole Lenormand deck is a little like that, all no holds barred frying pan to the face type stuff. It’s on my list of stuff to check out, but I have some other oracle exploration to get out of my system first. I’ll tell you more about that when it’s closer to ready for cyberspace.

Meanwhile, back at the Magician, this is fairly blunt. It reminds me of those internet memes from around the time when the movie “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” was released where Wong would portal in, throw down some random weird statement and portal back out again. Today’s card is a little like that. There aren’t any circles here. No sneaking up and nabbing the point from behind like with the Turn Around or Tools of the Inner Trade post / episodes.

The Magician card symbolizes transformation as much as it does manifestation. The only difference between life and magic is our preconceived expectations. The flow of time and life change and transform everything. If you are still alive, you are still magic.

Thank you for reading and listening! Any likes, subs, follows, shares, questions or comments that you can spare are always appreciated. Comments are open on the blog, which podcast listeners can reach through the link in the show description.

Just a reminder that the blog, podcast and socials will be on a short summer hiatus July first to July sixth. Email readings are open on the blog website throughout that time. So is the ko-fi page where memberships, the shop, commissions and virtual coffees all support the creation of this free to access Tarot content. The blog and podcast are not monetized. That let’s me serve up a sip of spirit message without the taste of corporate messaging.

Thank you so so much! See you at the next sip.

Power Prompt

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today: Chariot Power Prompt

Welcome to the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

As much as I am loving the Alleyman’s Tarot, I’m feeling the need to haul the envelope in a little bit and retreat to a more familiar deck. But that’s life. That’s living with harmony with the flow of it. There is yin. There is yang. There are times to push the envelope. There are times to haul it back in again. There are times to just vibe and grind.

Today’s card is the Chariot from the major arcana. It is a good example of just that kind of yin and yang flow. Sometimes The Chariot can be very high minded and conceptual. Sometimes it is a prompt to power ahead and let it all roll.

Remember yesterday’s Tarot reading hack, with its reminder to work smarter, not harder? Today continues that thread a little bit. You know that part about just throwing your own intuition down on a very basic conceptual foundation and just calling it a day? It doesn’t always work.

Sometimes even the best of us need some hard core inspiration.

Most often The Chariot card gives an energy of mindfulness and and being fully engaged in the present moment. It is a place of power, but I would consider it a yin power where taking in the moment and taking in much needed information as well as acting on it.

This morning, however, I got nothin’.

So what do you do when the intuition tank seems empty? What do you do when there isn’t anything to throw down on the cards foundation?

You go out and get yourself some inspiration, that’s what. Nevermind the high minded woo woo. Sometimes you have to drive your chariot right over the big empty and go get what you need.

We all stand on the shoulders of giants in the hopes of being someone else’s giant someday. In the meantime, it is perfectly OK to go foraging for your food for thought. If you get stuck reading a Tarot card or doing a Tarot layout for yourself, don’t sweat it. That’s why decks come with little white books. That’s why a library’s worth of reference and guide books have been written. That’s why I and bazillion other Tarot readers post and podcast and reach out to you like this. We can all inspire and motivate each other on those days when we need it.

That’s just what I did today. The usual meaning for the card just wasn’t cutting it, so it was time to fire up the chariot and go looking for inspiration. Went to some of my favorite references like Animal Wise Tarot by Ted Andrews, Magical Tarot, Mystical Tao by Diane Morgan, Heart of Stars Tarot by Thom Pham, Galaxy Tarot by GalaxyTone, and Witches Tarot by Ellen Dugan.

Like all of the major arcana cards, The chariot has a second thread of meaning. Where it usually talks about the yin-power of mindfulness, sometimes it can point to the yang-power of determination, focus, willpower, forward motion and momentum.

Some days the Chariot reminds us to pay the heck attention to what we are doing. Other days it reminds us, to borrow a phrase, to just do it.

Thank you so much for listening! Your likes, subs, shares, follows, questions and comments are always appreciated!

If you are enjoying these posts, podcasts and the companion videos showing the real-world Tarot Card draw for the day, please visit the the Tao Craft Tarot page on ko-fi. Proceeds from the shop and memberships support the creation of this free to access Tarot Content.

Want more than a sip of Tarot? Have a full cup all your own: individual private email Tarot readings are available to order on the blog website, no appointment needed.

Thanks again and see you at the next sip!

Found Family

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today we talk about found family and stray cat royalty.

Welcome to the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

I’m still exploring the Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund. Today’s card is the Queen of Strays.

My first early morning coffee deficient impulse response to the card was my inner three year old yelling KITTY!

But honestly, though, there are worse ways to start a Monday morning than a picture of a cat.

My Aunt used to have an orange tabby with a vibe a lot like the queen in the box on the card. I imagine that if Pumpkin had a human voice she would have sounded like Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey. Pumpkin was a rescue like all the other cats my aunt ever had. She was legendary for bringing home every stray around when she was a kid. To this day, she is the neighborhood cat whisperer.

If we humans have the capacity to form relationships with the strays of other species, then think about how much stronger the bonds between found humans can be.

In that respect, the internet is a glorious thing. I’ve had conversations with people who I never would have met otherwise in more places than I could ever afford to visit. I’ve had conversations in Esperanto with a Japanese doll designer and a German Reggae singer. I’ve built years-long friendships with an energy healer in Albuquerque, a writer and two Tarot readers in Canada plus a voice actor on the entire opposite side of the country (insert Nineth World Journal and Oz 9 fangirling here.)

I’ve done email Tarot readings that started wonderful conversations with lovely people on the entire opposite side of the planet in Australia, India, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.

Meat space can be just as glorious as cyber space if we let it.

Have you ever been to a comic con or a concert for your favorite band? That is a glimpse of how like minds and found family can feel. For some of us that found family, that sense of tribe and community can be desperately important.

I’ve been lucky in negotiating these things. I’ve avoided the land mines that have exploded friend’s families over smaller religious and political differences. I’ve lived in the white evangelical subculture. I grew up in what we now call “MAGA” culture. It isn’t an exaggerated news media trope. The danger and emotional damage of rejection and homelessness and worse is very real especially for lgbtquia teens in the so-called red states and red counties.

We all have to do all we can to protect the vulnerable among us. Each of us must be the Queen or King of strays. Vote. Be kind. Advocate for equality and inclusion. Most of all be your true self when you can.

For we adults, it’s usually easy, safe and cheap. You never know when letting your true self show might make a younger found family member feel a little less alone. Letting your true light shine might throw a some encouragement into a dark corner where it is needed. A little kindness and a little authenticity can make you stray cat royalty.

That’s why I love this card today. Families of heart are just as real and valid as the genetic kind. They feed your soul. I’m old and lucky and privileged, but I still remember going to a U2 concert in the 80s and feeling like I found “my people.” I still remember the giddy joy of watching the Reason Rally in 2016 and seeing the Ron Reagan unabashed atheist commercial. It is one thing to intellectually know you are not alone, but it is another thing altogether to really feel and experience that there are others “like me.” I remember doing Tarot readings at a theater after party one time and feeling ridiculously happy in that diverse, accepting, loving group of people especially after getting a quick hello hug from a seven foot tall drag queen. It doesn’t matter how your stray-ness is defined, be it race, religion, gender identity, sexual preference, or what have you – strays of every type nurture and care for each other because we all know what it feels like to be the only one.

Thank you so much for listening. All very best wishes to all of you, my found Tarot Tribe. See you at the next sip!

Are you enjoying these free to access sips of Tarot? If so, please visit the TaoCraftTarot ko-fi page. Shop and membership proceeds support the blog and podcast. The link is in the episode description for podcast listeners. Want a whole cup of Tarot all your own? Private email readings with the blog author are available to order 24/7, no appointment needed on the blogcast website.

Announcements: MSTBT

spring/summer 2022 schecule, announcements and MSTBT (meat space throw back Thursdays)

Spring and summer are starting to take shape.

It is looking like Thursdays and Sundays are the days where meatspace has my attention and the blog/socials will be mostly if not totally quiet. When time allows, I’d like to do MSTBT…MeatSpaceThrowBackThursdays. I’ll pull something out of the TaoCraft archives to post here on the blog. Modern Oracle archives are going to close on April 30. That’s the plan, anyway, but you know how THOSE go around here.

The podcast definitely won’t be happening Thursdays and Sundays unless it is some sort of extra special bonus episode.

That being said:

EMAIL READINGS NEVER CLOSE! Order 24/7/365 no appointment needed. Delivery times are less than 12 hours on a typical business day, but may take a few days if you order during nights, weekends, US holidays, or announced vacations etc.

The NEW Ko-fi shop never closes! Ebook are always available for instant download. All proceeds from the sale of PeaceTarot through the k0-fi shop in 2022 will be donated to Doctors Without Borders, USA

The OLD Etsy shop never closes! Meditation beads and bead jewelry designed and handmade by me is still there and will be for the foreseeable future.

Scheduling by email never closes! In-person Tarot for both individual and parties require advance appointments (sorry – no same day appointments) BUT you can schedule any time by sending an email to TaoCraftTarot@gmail.com

The phone number never answers! Due to changes in the voip service I use, the phone number on the contact page only accepts voicemail and text messages. If you schedule an in-person reading or party, I will provide a number where you can call me the day of the appointment if needed. Call it more cost cutting so I don’t have to raise prices.

Meanwhile, I got meatspace stuff I gotta do so here is a YouTube video. See you at the next sip!

https://youtu.be/zpjgz4Qqbjs

Wait a minute

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today, The Wheel – if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the Wheel of Fortune from the major arcana.

Have you ever watched the card’s namesake game show? It’s fun. I especially like watching the YouTube channel “Game Grumps” when they play. It seems like everybody always watches the big blace bankrupt wedge on the wheel.

It’s a perfect example of what the card is talking about. Watch sometime. The black bankrupt or the shine big prize moves away from the contestants and back to them again as the wheel spins.

And spin it does.

The card is talking about exactly that. Everything changes. Dead bodies decay, mountains were once under seas, and it is springtime.

Like I was told when I first moved to Pittsburgh, if you don’t like the weather – wait a minute.

If things are good cherish them. They can and at some point will change. If things are bad, they can and will change too. What goes up must come down, but that means what goes down must come up too. Given enough time life and the universe will find its own balance.

Thanks for listening!

If you like the short sip and longer format blog posts with companion videos and podcast audio version, please visit the new, expanded ko-fi page and become a patron of the Tarot arts.

Your likes, subs, shares, follows, no appointment private reading orders, Tarot Table memberships, questions, feedback and comments are always, always appreciated.

See you at the next sip!

Anarchy Ducks

Cue the Sex Pistols.

It doesn’t always look like it, but I do try and keep my ducks in a row as the saying goes. My ducks, it seems, are a bunch of rampant anarchists on meth.

So, if you’ll indulge me, I’m going to keep making announcement posts every now and then. It helps me get organized and keep track of those overly caffeinated metaphoric ducks. Although I have to admit, it is better than it used to be.

In any case, here is the latest. I hope something of it will catch your interest. You are welcome at TaoCraft Tarot and among the Anarchy Ducks. I’m glad you are here.

So are the ducks.

March 2022

THANK YOU to all new social media followers and especially to new Tarot Table members
E-mail Tarot is still the fastest way to get a reading that contains the exact SAME things I would say to you if we met in person. Order 24/7 NO APPIONTMENT NEEDED
TaoCraft Tarot Table membership tier on K0-fi is $5 per month and gives you members only content including a 3 card “pathway through the month” Tarot reading in the ko-fi blog, newsletter (mid-month) and random special offers and giveaways.
IN-PERSON individual readings are BACK!! Scheduling by email at TaoCraftTarot@gmail.com is fastest contact. Get the details HERE
Party Tarot is back on a very limited basis. Appearances will only be accepted on a case-by-case basis with a much smaller service area. Email is best contact for that, too.
I’ll be wearing a face mask for in-person sessions indoors, at least until the summer months.
The Clairvoyant Confessional podcast is fully changed over to the TaoCraft Tarot format. It’s pretty much an audio version of the blog, but after listening to some podcasts during road trips lately….podcasts are a good thing.
“Short Sip” blog-cast episodes are Tarot guidance for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Weekend Tarot Turnover episodes let you exercise and develop your own intuition, with YouChoose Interactive Tarot, behind the scenes, and Q&A randomly sprinkled in.
Spiffed up the home page. What do you think?
Comments are OPEN. Ask me anything for an answer in the blogcast! (It’s moderated and spam will still be obliterated in a flash of hellfire – so don’t worry. It’s all still good energies here.)

Making donuts

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.

Today’s card is the Knight of Pentacles.

One of the best clues that your wrinkled backside is getting older is when you get the references that old an old commercial made when people younger than you don’t remember the ad making the reference.

Way back in the 1980s, a certain very popular and rather delicious donut chain had a tv ad where a hardworking and longsuffering baker would plod out of the front door ridiculously early in the morning because it was “time to make the donuts.” This repeated until one time he opens the door to find – himself coming home.

Never mind any jokes about him “finding himself, ” I don’t know how many people remember the “Time to make the donuts” commercial much less the visual reference to the phrase “meet yourself coming and going” which is an old school way of saying that you are so busy and bothered and working so hard and moving so fast that well,you meet yourself coming and going. Which is pretty sci fi violate-the-time-space continuum notion for the ancient before times if you think about it.

But anyway – donuts.

Beside the fact that donuts are a pure soul-level goodness in and of themselves especially when paired with a cup of coffee, the making the donuts thing speaks to the knight of pentacles and today’s Monday morning energies.

Some days are mystical and magical and ideal for contemplating the spiritual. Other days are for just doing, focusing purely on the physical. Some days are for frenetic effort where you meet yourself coming and going. Other days are for regular, reliable and routine donut making. Today feels like the latter type to me. Pentacles are earth element, focused on practicality, the physical realm, work and career. Knights are symbolic of action and activity. Put them both together and you have a reminder that it is time to make the donuts.

Sometimes the simplest donuts are the best. They all don’t have to be jelly filled with sprinkles on top. Some days there is nothing better than a no-frills sour cream old fashioned.

The word “plodding” comes to mind. Pamela Smith uses the posture of the horses to communicate the energies of the knight cards. This guy is standing still, as opposed to the full gallop you see on the knight of swords card. This is another reference to the solid, rooted, balanced, grounded energy that the Pentacle cards posses.

Not every moment has to be joyful. Not every moment has to be tragic. Some moments you just make your donuts without any drama. That resonates with the Taoist notion of wu wei, accomplishment without undue effort. Just because it isn’t a big struggle doesn’t make it lesser. Donuts that were easy and routine to make taste just as sweet.

By the same token, it’s not about doing nothing at all. It’s not about being neglectful and careless and just phoning in the bare minimum. Bakers who make donuts like that won’t stay in business for very long. The Knight of Pentacles today captures an energy of wu wei, of doing what needs to be done and doing it well but without a lot of unnecessary fuss or bother. It’s a day of making easy but excellent donuts.

Thank you so much for listening! Your support for this blogcast through Tarot reading purchases, likes, subs, shares, follows and Tarot Table memberships is always, always appreciated.

Just a reminder that things are going to be a little chaotic this week on the blogcast and on social media. For example, if I do a “You Choose Interactive Tarot” reading at all this week it will probably be tomorrow. Maybe. It’s spring break 2022 at our house so social media is low on my priority list. Email Tarot readings, however, are the same always. Email Tarot is open and available to purchase 24/7 without appointment.

Thanks again. See you at the next sip!

Follow the Feels

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for today in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today: Ace of Cups and following the feels. Private email readings are OPEN.

Thank you so much for listening, watching and reading TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot. It’s a Tarot reading for your day in the time it takes to sip from your morning coffee. Or afternoon coffee. Or whatever beverage you enjoy.

Today’s card is the ace of cups.

Ace cards carry the essence of their suit of cards. In many ways they are the most abstract cards of the minor arcana. Being the first card of the suit, there is also a trace of connection to the Fool card, the first of major arcana cards. All of them connect to the idea of beginnings and newness in one way or another.

While cups cards are often read as symbolizing romantic relationships, they also include other inner circle relationships, both our family of birth and our family of heart. In the abstract, cups are connected with water, intuition, and emotions

Deep running emotions are sometimes a double edged sword. They can get us through our most difficult moments in life. Lau Tzu, writer of the Tao Te Ching is credited with saying that being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

Strong emotions can also be paralyzing instead of strengthening. Frank Herbert describes fear as “the little death that leads to total obliteration.”

Either way, emotions have real world implications and effects. At a minimum, emotions affect our experience of life. They aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Emotions can be difficult to face, and difficult to experience, but that isn’t to say they should be suppressed with stoicism to rival Mr Spock from Star Trek. Emotions don’t have to take over and run the show, either.

I’m not sure who first said it this way, but my first encounter with the notion that “the feeling is the power” was in a book by Scott Cunningham.

In a middle way approach, we can have a relationship with emotion that empowers life. Emotion can motivate and enrich. Emotion can work in balance with logic and intuition.

Whatever day you are reading or listening to this, whatever day this card crosses your path, this may be your clue that it is a day to listen to your emotions. If you can’t follow your heart 100%, at least give it a listen. Allow your honest emotions to be heard and they may help you to begin something new and wonderful. Follow the feels to find the power.

Thank you for reading, watching and listening to TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot. If you can spare a minute, please like, subscribe, follow and share these nano-episodes. Your support for the blog and podcast through the virtual coffee mug / tip jar and membership tieris always appreciated.

See you at the next sip!

Reminder: in-person readings are on hold again but no appointment email readings and live online readings by appointment are wide OPEN. Please click HERE to order email or click HERE for live online reading information.

Fall & Winter Schedule

If you’ve followed the blog on the main website, you’ve heard most of this before, but there is some new stuff sprinkled in like the colored sugar on holiday cookies so I hope you’ll give it all a read anyway.

I’m SO grateful for the chance to say hello and welcome to new followers, new ko-fi supporters AND new members to the Reading Room membership tier (also on ko-fi.) Please be patient if there is a lot of repetition here. I just want to make sure I have all of my proverbial ducks are in a row before the annual Elfcon 1 season.

Just like last new year, I still say that you have to make a plan before life can blow it to bits. Here’s the general plan for the rest of Fall & Winter. Most of this is going to happen both here and on multiple social media platforms. You can find TaoCraft Tarot content on Ko-fi, Instagram, Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube, Linkedin, Anchor Fm, Spotify, Stitcher and Tumblr, but this main website and this blog is the ONLY place that has EVERYTHING all in one place. I hope you’ll join me here. Follow the blog by entering your email over there in the right hand column –>

OR scroll WAAYYYY down on mobile screens and you’ll get all of the free content delivered right to your inbox.

Distance Tarot is OPEN and available to order 24/7. LIVE online readings require an appointment but email readings are all no appointment needed.

In-person readings are back by appointment on an extremely limited basis. We meet in a public place (I prefer these Panera locations) Touchless prepayment is available HERE. Please contact me through TaoCraftTarot@gmail.com to schedule. Facemasks are required regardless of vaccination status. No exceptions.

Sunday Turnover posts will post on – you guessed it – most Sundays. This is a main blog exclusive intuition development exercise.

YouChoose Interactive Tarot is intended to reach through the noise of the internet and give you a more personal Tarot experience. You choose the card, then get a short reading for it. This is a video reading available on the blog, on the YouTube channel and on the Ko-fi blog

Speaking of ko-fi…the Reading Room is OPEN. This is a premium membership tier. For $5 per month members receive a three card “path through the month” reading (via the members-only part of the ko-fi blog) plus random special offers and giveaways plus a private “year ahead” reading by email when you join. E-books are available for instant download in the ko-fi shop. Any virtual coffees that you donate supports website expenses and creating new content for the blog, the youtube channel and the podcast.

Speaking of the Clairvoyant Confessional podcast…

It is now TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot Podcast: guidance for your day in the time it takes to sip from your morning coffee. It is available on anchor fm and Spotify. The logo and content should follow on other platforms soon.

All of this goes toward making my TaoCraft Tarot readings one of the most affordable. I’m a fan of big bangs for every buck – look at this way: I charge $40 for a 1 hour (ish) seven card reading in all formats: in-person, zoom meeting or email. Compare that to the US national average rate of $99 per hour.*

There are no hidden fees and all of my prices are flat rate per reading, not per minute. You know your whole cost up front before the reading even starts with germ free, safe and sanitary pre-payment, securely processed by PayPal.

Not to mention that I have other lower cost email special layouts starting at $5 each.

The Etsy shop is open. I hope to add more “moments” loom beaded bracelets and mala style meditation beads as Elfcon progresses.

Thanks for reading all the way through this! See you for tomorrow’s short sip tarot.

*https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Psychic/Hourly_Rate

Kitten Whiskers: Box of Science.

You wouldn’t expect a Tarot reader to be into science, but I am.

The two aren’t so mutually exclusive as you would think. We talk about exactly that in the “Test Tubes and Tarot Decks” episode of Menage A Tarot podcast from 2015. That episode along with Shrodinger’s famous feline inspired the blog post (and to some extent my alter-ego character) Zombie Cat.

Sticking with the cat theme, Kitten Whiskers is a series of posts where I go off topic and indulge in a little unpaid, I-got-squat-for-saying-this, spontaneous fangirling.

Today’s kitten whiskers post is very commercial, and frankly me gaming for free stuff (I suddenly feel like Markaplier asking for a Takis sponsorship) but there is something I’ve enjoyed a lot lately: my box of science.

https://giphy.com/embed/fqIBaMWI7m7O8

via GIPHY

That’s what I called my new Force of Nature appliance when it came.

When I was in high school, I did an independent study (foreshadowing for a future dissertation?) about passive solar heating. Since then, I’ve been convinced that the answer to climate and ecological issues is to break from our deeply ingrained utterly ubiquitous pattern of industrial era production and distribution of everything from toilet paper to electricity. Toilet paper I can’t help you with, except to encourage a switch to bamboo (I *heart* bamboo) The solution to sustainable electricity, as I see it, is distributed production.

It’s a collective effort thing. Together we are strong. Kune ni estas fortaj. We need a tribe to survive. No man is an island. I don’t have the resources or land to grow my own food much less bamboo for toilet paper. Instead of being dependent on outdated infrastructure we can band together, make things and stuff, and collectively through this.

Until we have solar panels and a small or vertical profile wind turbin (BOTH – when the one’s not active, the other often is) on every roof feeding into a large smart grid, I’ll settle for this one small proof of concept and feel very smug about it in the process: Force of Nature multipurpose cleaner.

Never expected to stan for a cleaner of all things. My homemaking style has always been more akin to a Rod Stewert concert than a Martha Stewert episode. In a nutshell, this device takes water, adds a little salt and vinegar, zaps it with electricity for 10 minutes to scramble the atoms and gives you a bottle full of properly diluted hypochlorous acid and sodium hydroxide.

What THAT means is this stuff is the shizznit and really does kill germs. The only draw backs are 1. you have to wipe it dry because it doesn’t contain alcohol or drying agents (as if you don’t wipe anyway after you have to rinse chemical cleaning agents) and 2. the molecular magic degrades, so you need make a fresh batch every 10 days.

I’ve stopped counting the days because I use it up fast enough that it doesn’t matter. To paraphrase that infamous Frank’s hot sauce commercial, I spray that stuff on everything.

As long as it is hasn’t been allowed to degrade, the solution is an effective disinfectant on hard surfaces including all of the bad-nasties on the EPA list N including viruses. As I understand it, this stuff will kill the ‘rona on your doorknobs, light switches and kitchen counters – you name it. But for goodness’ sake don’t use it in or on you, although it is safe to spritz on stuff that winds up in somebody’s mouth…like binkies, sippy cups and toothbrushes. It’s safe to use without rinsing in the kitchen.

Force of Nature solves its problem of shelf-stability with my high school epiphany – distributed production instead of production and distribution. Rather than it to sit around in a truck or store shelf, they made fast, easy and mistake-proof to make on your own. Instead of producing something to distribute, they’ve distributed the production and we all get a better product because of it.

To my mind, the comparison points are plastic use, efficacy, and overall carbon footprint. Over time, the plastic use is minimal. The capsules are recyclable wherever they take #5 plastics, the spray bottle that comes with the starter kit is reusable (or use your own.) Fuel use to for a one-time shipment the applieance and later batches of capsules is small compared to shipping all of the bottles of water-weight cleaners that you would otherwise use over the lifetime of the appliance. Consider, too, the environmental impact of producing and shipping the constituent chemicals in the first place in addition to the cost/impact of manufacturing the shelf-stable proprietary cleaners that we commonly use now.

Bottom line: If you figure in the costs of producing and shipping capsules and the initial cost of the production unit over its lifetime of use, then you have WAY more math than I’m willing to do. But I’m guessing the Force of Nature product is in the neighborhood of $1 per bottle of safe and effective and versatile solution. That buck-a-bottle at my house has replaced kitchen cleaner, window cleaner, to some extent carpet refresher plus added something that I almost never used before – spray disinfectant. I never used such products because of the chemicals. I don’t care what perfume they dumped in it, it SMELLED like chemical disinfectant and FELT like industrial waste. This is a happy bleach-like clean and fresh as spring air. It reminds me of an outdoor swimming pool in sunshine, which I consider a nice thing (in spite of my preference for cooler cloudy weather.) I almost never used lysol or similar sprays before – but did I mention I spray this stuff on everything?

That’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea.

So if you like dollar store level prices and want to check out my new favorite box of science, I’d appreciate if you’d use the link below. It might get me a few free capsules, and like everyone, I’ve got germs to kill and odors to eliminate.

Thanks!

Force of Nature Clean

**Speaking of Kitten Whiskers and Zombie Cat, don’t forget that yes/no readings are $5 off until Halloween. No appointment needed. Order anytime on the home page.