Very, very low tech, but maybe interesting info dump from the bog creature's farm life:

Water for my garden comes through a gravity system from a smallish reservoir that refills from a permanent water source, but the source slows to a trickle in summer and so the water level is going down gradually now. I have to coordinate planting and watering to not only have sufficient water for the next day, but also throughout the whole summer. Also, if I ever left the garden tap on and the reservoir runs dry I'd have to wait months for it to refill again. To know how much water the plants need and how much I can take out of the reservoir takes a lot of experience (which I don't have, wish me luck).

Water in my house comes from a well (same problem as the water source, limited supply in summer), and the house has a water toilet with a leaking mechanism (I know, I should either repair the damn thing or switch to a compost toilet, haven't had the time). So far the solution is to keep the tap of the water tank of the toilet closed and just turn it on to flush twice a day. If a guest found my unflushed toilet they might think I'm a filthy bog creature, and they are not wrong!

My AC is a system of curtains, blinds and windows which I open and close or even soak for evaporation cooling at certain times of the day - if I get it wrong my rooms overheat and I have to go hide in the cellar during the hot hours. I still want to add a 5l bottle on top so the curtains soak gradually during the day - that would be my automatic AC then, yay! If I had to explain to an AC junkie how to work this system it would be a challenge.

I actually like it when my half broken and fragile system slows me down and forces me to be mindful and respect the passing of the seasons, because that is what I'm after in my life. If unlimited water just came out of a tap I'd spend it without thinking. Same with electricity everywhere. I'm on the grid now but lived here on 1 solar panel and a car battery in winter and it made me painfully aware about my energy use. Switching on the light without having to count Ah still feels like xmas and also slightly frivolous!).

Seasonal living used to be way more common, we just lost this in the factory age and following the clock has become very normalized. Harsh new climate quirks force people to either tech up or return to systems that honor the seasonal differences (or a bit of both). By adjusting yearly, monthly, weekly and daily schedules to outside temperature, water availability, sunlight availability, etc., life becomes less resource-intensive. Most of my home systems and 'life-research' have to do with this topic, about re-discovering how to fit into external conditions gracefully with a smallish footprint.

Lately I have been tending towards dropping more complicated tech in favour of really basic solutions. For example, I once built a stupidly complex solar cooker with tracking system and motors. These days I'd just paint a pot black and leave it in the sun all day next to a couple of mirrors leaning against a few rocks. Because with resources, money and time running short nobody needs to fiddle around with a sun tracking system.

That describes my life living on a sailboat full time pretty well haha

I love my systems. It's like I have my own spaceship that is built in a way that sustains me well but it easily becomes unsustainable once you have someone join you unless they know all the intricacies.

Even things like keeping an eye on the forecast and switching to my propane stove instead of the induction ome because I won't be generating much power from few rainy days.

It's definitely something for people that actively love the significant challenges it brings.

Feel free to ask any followup questions!

Well, a simple and common example is a solar-thermal water heater where you need to tell people visiting to only take showers in the evening and preferably on sunny days.

A good one is 100 rabbits, which is a couple working on low tech games living on a sail boat.

https://100r.co/site/knowledge.html

Oh and you know the early retirement movement. Turns out one of the pioneers of what is now a hardcore capitalist idea did it, because he believes in peak oil and the need to reduce energy consumption. His blog is really interesting, as he took saving to another level, by living in a trailer with a lot of hacks.

https://earlyretirementextreme.com/

Another one would be Tyler Disney living in hut in the desert:

https://tylerjdisney.com/

LowTechMagazine has a lot of this sort of stuff:

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/

Wanted to swing in here with a disability perspective if that's okay - while it's not exactly off-grid living, a lot of people with disabilities have homes that are optimized for accessibility which can be confusing for visitors! We also tend to need stuff to be done a specific way which, while not technology related, is really important and can add a learning curve.

Some examples off the top of my head: Computers might have screen readers, trackballs, alternative keyboards, accessible buttons, etc. Stuff like light switches, thermostats, door handles might be modified to suit limited mobility. Appliances like microwaves or coffee makers can be voice activated or have larger/more grippable buttons (which aren't always intuitive in today's touch-screen world).

The smallest personal example I can think of would be cooking with food allergies, which I know is not an unusual thing these days, but a lot of my friends are still confused about how cross contamination works, e.g. if you use a butter knife for butter you can use it to spread that butter on your toast but you cannot dip it in the jar of jam, because that would contaminate the jam with dairy and gluten. Or, a personal example, I was teaching my partner how make a mug cake using only one tablespoon measurer and explained that you must add the ingredients in a specific order (such as flour last) or you'd be successively contaminating each ingredient for my little brother.

My household also just does a lot of things very specifically for our needs, like we vacuum instead of sweep because of my allergies, and I go around and shut curtains in various rooms throughout the day because our AC isn't strong and we try to use it as little as possible. I wash laundry on cold to protect the fabric but dry it on hot to kill the dust mites. We use soap bars instead of soap dispensers for hand washing which often throws off guests, and I keep the liquid dish soap in a hair conditioner pump bottle (it's what I had, can't afford a fancy decorative one, also it works really well anyway) which also throws off guests XD And the left side of the sink is always clear and we do not put dirty dishes in there, partly so we can refill water bottles without them touching dirty dishes and partly to accommodate my partner's autism.

My balcony garden has a weird system of jars underneath the plant stands to catch any water that drains out of the pots after I water them, plus there's currently a bunch of soup pots and random containers on the roof to catch rainwater. There's no spigot on my balcony and I don't have the energy to go back and forth a bunch for water XD And my "watering can" is an old vinegar jug.

Not sure if any of that is helpful for what you're looking for, just some thoughts c: