Category Archives: Environment

Changing Routines

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We all have our routines and in many instances they serve us well for a variety of reasons. However, nothing is ever set in stone and it is worth being flexible and adaptable to changing circumstances. Retirement certainly brings changes in routine – for instance, we no longer set the alarm and get up at 5am to get ready for work. Those days are long gone.

A few weeks ago we changed our electricity plan to take advantage of the ‘Free Three’. That is, the 3 hours of free electricity being offered between 11am and 2 pm each day. The rationale behind this is, where possible, to encourage people to use electricity in the middle of the day instead of during the peak hours of demand between 3pm-8pm.

Our decision was primarily to facilitate charging our new EV using 3 hours of free electricity. However, we have also made a conscious effort to run the washing machine and dishwasher in the middle of the day, too. Both appliances have a delayed start option which I had never used but it is invaluable if you are not home between 11am and 2pm.

Finally, we have decided to make a habit of having our main meal for lunch rather than in the evening or if this is not convenient to consider preparing and cooking the meal ahead of time. As well as saving power, I believe it is better for our health and I am more inclined to spend time cooking in the middle of the day rather than late in the afternoon/evening when I am tired or otherwise engaged.

This was our lunch today. A baked potato topped with refried beans and cheese. Sides of coleslaw, avocado and fried onion, mushroom and capsicum.

For those of you in Australia. Have you changed your electricity plan to take advantage of the free electricity between 11am and 2pm? Are you at home during the day? Don’t forget that it applies on weekends as well as weekdays. Do you have appliances that have a delayed start option? I am interested in how you can make it work for you.

It’s Here

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Last Wednesday was the day we picked up our new car. We went to Ballarat to collect it.

It is a full EV – Geely EX5.

Apart from the drive home from Ballarat (about 80 km) we have not been too far afield and are gradually getting used to it. One of the biggest differences from our previous vehicle actually has nothing to do with the fact that it is an EV. Like European vehicles the indicators are on the left-hand side of the steering wheel.

Here are a few photos.

The interior.

Oil and Dead Fish

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There has been such a lot going on behind the scenes while there have been no blog posts for just over a week.

Last night was the regular monthly film screening for our local film society. As secretary of the group I am usually occupied making sure that everything is ready for film night. There have also been other community activities as well as some administrative work at home.

The harvest continues with nashi pears to be stewed and I have also dehydrated quite a lot. GMan’s help has been invaluable in peeling, coring and slicing.

However, by far the largest disruption to my preferred pattern of blog posts has been the frightening existential threat posed by the invasion of Iran and the subsequent global chaos. Like many of you, my general mental state and equilibrium has been severely tested as I try to balance my day-to-day existence with the very real spectre of a global conflict affecting us all. The functional closure of the Strait of Hormuz is playing havoc with the accessibility of oil, petrol and other fuels.

Meanwhile, back to the title of this post – Oil and Dead Fish.

A few weeks ago I was the recipient of a substantial platter of excess food from a corporate catering event. It is not unusual to have significant leftovers from these type of events which happen thousands of times every day. Most of the food was distributed and able to used and I was extremely grateful to see it not end up in landfill. Included on the platter was a container of individual serves of condiments for sushi. These were soy sauce and wasabi paste. The soy sauce was in the ubiquitous, tiny plastic fish. These plastic fish were banned in South Australia in September 2025 in a world-first but they are still currently used elsewhere.

I emptied all of the soy sauce from these tiny containers and this is the pile of plastic waste which will literally take hundreds of year to break down in landfill.

The yield was 100ml of soy sauce which I have put in a jar and will use in my regular meal preparation.

There is a very obvious environmental hazard that these small containers, and their even smaller plastic lids pose to wildlife, particularly of the marine variety. They are plastic and where does plastic come from? That’s right……oil. Yes, the very same oil that is required in one form or another for a large percentage of our transport fuel, medical equipment, food, fertilisers and a thousand and one things that are part and parcel of our daily lives.

Could there possibly be a more wasteful and frivolous use of a finite resource upon which our very civilisation depends than making single-use plastic containers to dispense a mere 3-5ml of soy sauce onto your takeaway sushi?

Plastic is made from oil. Oil is finite. Oil is expensive. Perhaps now is the time to stop and consider everything that we take for granted that is made from plastic in some form or another. Is it necessary? Is there an alternative?

Time to buy a glass bottle of soy sauce?

I’m Back

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After 5 weeks on holidays we have returned home. The change in weather has been quite a shock to the system. After 5 weeks in Europe where the temperatures were mostly below freezing we have come back to a heatwave in the middle of an Australian summer.

The risk of bushfire is ever-present in these conditions and unfortunately disaster befell a small community quite close to where we live while we were away. This weekend and next week are extreme fire danger conditions with a total fire ban across the entire state where we live.

While I had a pretty fair idea of my evacuation strategy, we decided to be a bit more proactive with our plans.

This is what we did:

Identify what we would take if we needed to leave
Prioritise immediate ‘grab and go’ stuff
Add things if time permitted
Locate as much as possible together in an easily accessible spot
Create checklists so that you are not relying on memory in a time of high stress

Ready to go.

Checklists

There are a few things that we would need to add but most of what we would take is set aside in the spare bedroom. It will remain like this for the next couple of months. Even after that most of it will not all be dismantled but stored in the top of the linen cupboard and reviewed well before next summer.

The other question is when do you leave and where do you go. The general guidance from the authorities here in Australia that it is best to leave early. As for where, it really depends on where the risk is coming from. It is important to be prepared to amend your plans as required.

In line with the theme of this blog, my task today was made considerably easier because my home is mostly decluttered and organised. I know what we have and where it is located.

Are you in a fire-prone area? What about other natural disasters? Do you have an evacuation plan?

Kitchen Upgrade

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Our home is only 4 years old and we have lived here for a little over 2 years. While it was in almost pristine condition when we bought it, there were a few things that we wanted to change.

One was to extend the pantry which we did and you can read about it here. The other change which we wanted to make to the kitchen was to replace the freestanding stove which included a gas cooktop with a built in oven and induction cooktop.

The original stove was 900mm wide which is really much too big for our needs and drew an enormous amount of power to heat it for GMan’s breadmaking adventures. Additionally, we were keen to eliminate the only gas appliance from the house for both environmental and health considerations. One of the complicating factors was the engineered stone benchtop which was going to need to be replaced and it is no longer in use in Australia. We chose to match the bench to the Laminex bench in the pantry and keep the engineered stone on the island bench.

This is what it looked like before.

Work in progress. The drawers were all removed and the kickboard made slightly narrower the compensate for the additional thickness of the benchtop or otherwise the splashback tiles would have been disrupted.

And in a matter of a week it was all done.

The cabinetmaker cleverly made 2 narrow cupboards on either side of the new oven which is 600mm wide. This means that the oven and cooktop remain centred under the exhaust fan. We are just awaiting the arrival and installation of the door handles but in the meantime you can see how useful they are going to be.

I no longer have to rifle through a jumble of baking trays in the bottom drawer.

The whole process went extremely smoothly in less than a week and I am very happy with the result. I am loving the instantaneous heat from the induction cooktop.

GMan’s Handiwork

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Tonight I want to show you a couple of recent projects that GMan has been working on.

First, a rack of hooks for our walk-in wardrobe. These were in the wardrobe when we moved in but we removed them before the recent remodelling of the pantry and wardrobe. I decided that I wanted to retain them but in a slightly different position. They are very handy for half-worn clothes as well as the occasional belt or scarf. GMan removed the hooks from the original backing board as it was damaged, bought a new piece of timber and did all of the necessary preparation and painting before reattaching the hooks. This was quite difficult by all accounts. Today it was replaced in its new position. The only thing left to do is filling the screw holes but that can wait for another day.

The other job was creating a permanent barrier between the shed and the back fence. It had previously been blocked up by a piece of metal which is needed for some other garden landscaping so it was time to attach an offcut of Colorbond sheeting which had been set aside for the purpose.

The photo does not do it justice but there were several steps, including attaching a timber support to the back fence as well as adding a timber baseboard to account for the slight slope. The sheeting was cut to size and screwed to the timber support and the corner of the shed.

The reason for needing this area blocked off is to prevent the dog gaining access to the driveway and front garden. Her domain is restricted to the backyard.

Speaking of animals, I will finish this post with a photo I took this evening as we were coming home for our walk. We live in the town but the local wildlife are frequently in evidence around the streets. This has been particularly so in recent times as it is very dry at the moment and the kangaroos are looking for reliable sources of water.

Upcycling Inspiration

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This is a follow-up from my last post about buying secondhand in preference to buying new wherever possible.

Of course there are items of our own and that are donated to thrift shops that are really not saleable for one reason or another so a lot of it does unfortunately end up in landfill.

However, when we were shopping for the champagne flutes, I noticed a large piece of patchwork displayed on a wall behind the counter.

This is the note that was pinned to it.

What a great reminder of the possibilities that upcycling affords. I love the design and will definitely consider trying it one day. It reminds me of stained glass.

Frighteningly Fruitful

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There are plenty of posts on this blog about bargains I have scored at op shops (thrift shops). However, sometimes I ponder how easy it is to not only find a surprise bargain but actually to go shopping with something specific in mind and find it secondhand. There is so much secondhand stuff yet so many people seem to still be consuming and buying new things at unprecedented levels.

A couple of days ago we were in a medium-sized town near where we live. There are at least 4 op shops and GMan decided to begin his hunt for some champagne flutes. These are not for us but for the local film society. He was hoping to source 12 glasses and was not particularly concerned if they were not absolutely identical.

Anyway, the first shop he tried yielded 7 suitable glasses and her found another 5 at the next shop he tried. They were all 50c each so for the princely sum of $6 we are able to give a dozen champane flutes to the film society to use.

Last week I picked up this cute tank top which will be perfect for hot days. A bargain at $2.50. I have white shorts but felt that it would look better with black shorts.

My last pair of black shorts were worn out and discarded last summer after about 12 years of wear. At the first shop I was idly glanced at the racks and spotted a pair of black shorts that turned out to be my size and look as though they have been barely worn. $5 and I now have exactly the addition to my wardrobe that I needed.

There is so much quality secondhand clothing and household goods available that I would encourage anyone to consider taking a look at secondhand goods through a variety of sources before rushing out to buy something new. You will be saving things potentially ending up in landfill, almost certainly be saving money and the planet.

Forest Bathing

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Welcome to 2025 and a gentle introduction to the new year.

We are currently on holidays in Queensland for a few weeks and spending time with family and friends.

Today we went for a drive to take in some sights and included a short walk at Mapleton Falls National Park. It was a delight to spend some time enveloped by nothing more than silence and the beautiful surroundings.

I hope you are having a pleasant start to 2025.

Saved and Salvaged

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Sometimes it is necessary to buy something new but there are plenty of instances where you can reuse or repurpose something you already own or purchase it secondhand from a variety of sources.

Here are a couple of examples.

Today GMan put up a hanging rail in the new pantry.

It was the one that had been on the end wall previously but it was removed during the renovations. While the rail was in prefect condition, one of the tiny locking screws had been misplaced during the renovations. It seemed a shame to buy a whole new rod so GMan found another screw in his collection that was suitable apart from being far too long. He managed to modify the screw and the rail is now up and functional. It is a small addition but I am so pleased to have it.

I decided a couple of weeks ago that I needed a hook on the back of the laundry door. So, the next time I was in Bendigo I popped into the salvage yard at Eaglehawk and found exactly what I wanted for $2. The cost is not really the issue but more a matter of not buying something new when there are plenty of perfectly good items that can be reused. GMan cleaned it up and attached it to the door.

Now there is somewhere for GMan to leave his clothes that he wears in the yard. They are generally too grubby to put in the clothes hamper with everything else and are often going to be reworn the next day so this is a perfect solution.