I would like to know if there are many people who live without a
refrigerator by choice. That is not just the number of homes in the US
that don’t have a refrigerator—(I found that already) but do any of
these people have no refrigerator by choice? Is there any movement for
refridgeratorless living? How can I contact such people?

Related to this, I would like to know the number of American household
with no television, again not because they can’t afford one but
because they simply don’t want one.

If in both of the above instances it would be possible to also omit
Amish people or other people who live without certain modern machines
for religious reason that would be ideal.

I’m most interested in people who live in large urban areas who use
modern technology (such as computers and whatnot) but who do not
own/use refrigerators and/or television.

Thanks!

Dear Futurebird, 

You asked avery interesting question. I found out from a Harris Survey
(1999) (http://www.harris.com/view_pressrelease.asp?act=lookup&pr_id=680)
that there is a large percentage of the population that *thinks* they
could "live comfortably without 20th century technology" (41% of the
nation, 52% of Californians). However, fewer actually live by choice
without these appliances.

Living Without Refrigirator: 

It seems that there are significantly less people who choose to live
without a fridge than people who live without television by choice.
Actually, 57% of the people surveyed by the AHAM (American Home
Appliances Manufacturers) listed the fridge as an object they could
not do without (see:
http://www.aham.org/infobytes/infobytesitem.cfm?Item_ID=81). I also
found no research done on the subject.

As mentioned before in the notes, these people
http://www.outyourbackdoor.com/OYB8/fridge.html promote living without
television. It mentions the publication Kokopelli Notes, which I found
out, is published by the Kokopelli Council (c/o Patrick Clark, P.O.
Box 8186, Asheville 28814; 704/683-4844), and "Promotes and explores
self-propelled lifestyles" they also conduct public events, where you
can contact the people you're looking for (I guess that if you'll
publish an ad in their "Notes" asking for people who live without TV
out of a choice to contact you, you'll get responce). This is another
eco-minded person living without fridge -
http://www.newint.org/issue251/endpiece.htm

Another type of people, related, are Y2K people - a bit suspicious of
technology and prefer to live without it. You can also contact the
woman featured there, who ditched her fridge because of Y2K fear :
http://www.sonic.net/y2k/nogrid.html (contact details are there - I do
not give personal contact details). The magazine where this story was
published is http://fic.ic.org/cmag/ and you may also want to
advertise there to seek people who prefer to live without a fridge.

This person had eating disorders and decided to live without a fridge
so she can't raid one -
http://www.something-fishy.org/reach/otherside_julie.php From what I
understood, once she was a bit recovered, she got one.

I also found non-Americans, Australians, who live without a fridge
(http://members.ozemail.com.au/~beverleypaine/bungala/lwaf.html).
These people are also promoters of ecological life. They live in a
remote farm, but actually note "Not having a fridge is made easier by
living within twenty minutes walking distance to the supermarket and
butcher." (i.e. living in the city). More green-minded non-fridge
owners are featured in this story -
http://jerrapark.com/mysite/my_site-anita.html (they are also
Australians :-).

From an economic perspective, I can tell you from my experience that
some apartments in Tokyo have no fridge because it takes so much space
and the rent is so high. You may also add people who live in hotels -
some hotel rooms do not contain a fridge: "Americans living in hotel
rooms or boarding houses have the least access of all...[to
telephones] (Belinfante 1989)" (in Reina-Schement's (1996)).


Living without TV: 

In the case of television, there are much more people living without
the machine, some of them (as you noted) of religious reasons, but
surprisingly - that's not a main charcteristic.

According to a non-academic, popular *religious* web-site (Mujahid,
2002), the estimation of families living without TV (out of choice) is
3 million. There's no breakdown as to the reasons of living without TV
(religious, economical, etc.). See
http://www.soundvision.com/Info/parenting/tvalternatives.asp

tvturnoff.org organization provides facts and figures on Americans
living without television sets. Specifically, according to a survey
conducted by Brocks (2000), the families who live by choice without
television have higher education and upper-middle class lifestyle -
you can read the whole charachteristics here -
http://www.tvturnoff.org/brock1.htm, for copywrite reasons I don't
copy it all, but it is very interesting (for me, at least). According
Reina-Schement's (1996) interesting research (discussing Americans
living without telephone),  "...people living without television or
radio might appear rebellious, or to be adopting an alternative
lifestyle." (see: http://www.benton.org/Library/Universal/Working1/working1.html).

Search Terms:
living without refrigerator americans 
living without television americans
life without fridge
"no fridge" own
"no fridge" living 
live without refrigerator

I hope that my answer helped a little, feel free to contact me with
any further questions.

---

Clarification of Answer by politicalguru-ga on 04 Nov 2002 06:15 PST

Thank you for rating me.

Pretty good, though I still felt my question was unanswered.

I don't think there are too many people who live without a
refridgerator by choice. Even people who only eat in restaraunts and
never cook, still maintain refridgerators at home for beverages--you
don't want to have to go to a restaraunt or store every time you want
something to drink when you get up in the morning. I would say the
sans-fridge-by-choice % of people in the world is negligible.
 

Now TV, that's diffrent. I myself went without a TV for quite some
time, by choice. I'm sure there are a substantial number of people who
live without TVs by choice (even though they can afford them), as
opposed to refridgerators. Computers and even stereo systems are a
substitute for TV for many people these days, esp. with large screen
monitors and DVD players with surround-sound speakers.

As for stats on this, I don't have time to work on that right now, but
if it is still unanswered I might try to find out later.

Good luck!

Here's at least one person who has no refrigerator by choice:
http://www.outyourbackdoor.com/OYB8/fridge.html

I have no specific stats to offer you, especially about urban areas. 
However, I can point you to the website of long-time back to the land
magazine "The Mother Earth News."  They frequently publish articles
about off-grid living, which may contain points of interest to you, in
their "Homesteading," "Energy," "Building," and "Do It Yourself"
areas.  These articles frequently include links to other related
material and sites, especially in the sidebars.  I include links below
for some current articles which may be pertinent:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading/home186.offgrid.shtml
http://www.motherearthnews.com/energy/#
http://www.motherearthnews.com/energy/energy172.batt.shtml

Tomorrow, as opportunity permits, I will try to find information more
directly pertinent to your inquiry.

The following organization actively condones a "TV turnoff week",
complete with commercials on CNN to advertise the week and poster
campaigns.  The past year's turnoff week ran April 22-28.
Also included on the site are accounts from previous years' campaigns.

http://adbusters.org/campaigns/tvturnoff/

This is not an *answer* because I could not, for the life of me, find
relevant facts on refrigerator ownership in the US (but a great deal
on developing nations...go figure.) However, I have found television
ownership stats:

Turn off your TV
[http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/]

"By the start of the year 1993, 98% of U.S. households own at least
one TV set, 64% have two or more sets."
-- Advertising Age

TV Basics
[http://www.tvb.org/tvfacts/tvbasics/basics1.html]

Total households in US:
107,400,000

Total households with TV:
105,500,000  

% TV ownership
98.2 

You might be able to find refrigerator stats in Advertising Age or
another trade publication as a matter of fact; I tried the Association
of Home Appliance Manufacturers website (http://www.applicance.com)
but didn't find anything.

I don't have statistics, but I can point to a couple of religious
groups:
Many Orthodox Jews refuse to own a television because of what is
broadcast on TV. They are particularly concerned with children's
exposure to television. Some may have a TV and only use it to watch
tapes or DVDs that they deem acceptable, but many refuse to have one
at all.

The Amish also don't have TV, because it runs on electricity. I
believe that they now have refrigerators, though, since they can be
run on bottled gas. (The concern with electricity is the wires
connecting the Amish to the "outside".)

My friend co-wrote a book called "Get A Life" which posits the
arguement that living without TV is completely feasible and many
people are choosing to "tune out". Check out her website:

http://whitedot.org/issue/iss_front.asp

Likely we can only get rough estimates as some people have multiple
reasons for what they do, and may not be fully aware of their motives.
I've done without TV and fridge several times and hardly missed the TV
at all. Fridge was difficult as I am very fond of ice cream. I think
that much of the TV programming, especially the news, is destructive
to society and tends to make me excessively cynical, producing
thoughts of revenge and other violence. I am moderately religious so I
cannot say my views are independent of religion even though I believe
they stand logically without the aid of religion. Since the electric
power grid is still vulnerable to a large scale disaster, it is
prudent to have a supply of non-perishable food on hand, but that does
not mean we can't keep 2 days supply in a fridge and freezer.   Neil