Decluttering, downsizing, affluenza – words that most of us had never heard of, even a decade ago, are suddenly the catchcry of much of the Western world.
Why?? Because we have more ‘stuff’ than is good for us. Yet still we keep consuming. We need it………..or do we?
Think about what you really need.
Here is a short video that may help put our ‘problems’ into perspective. Just skip the advertisement at the beginning. Thank you to Susan who shared the link on Facebook.
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section.
It is now 8 days until we leave home on our overseas adventure. The last 5 months of planning and preparation are now coming to fruition. In that time I have streamlined my wardrobe, looked critically at the pieces I own and considered how they fit with my lifestyle and activities. I have kept in mind what I expected to take on this trip and now it is all laid out on the spare bed and ready to go.
Trousers – 2 pairs of travel pants which have zip-off legs so I essentially have 2 pairs of shorts as well. They are lightweight, easy to wash and dry quickly.
Singlet tops – These can be worn as a layer of underwear or as a tank top on hot days.
Summer tops – 2 basic coloured tops for warm days. These will be useful for layering as well.
Short-sleeved tops – a couple of faithful items that have seen many years (and holidays) wear.
3/4 sleeve tops – Red striped top shown here and I will also take an identical black striped one. Great for slightly cooler days and fitted so they can easily be worn under another layer.
Rugby tops – These are both in excess of 12 years old but in good condition and perfect for at home and travelling.
Polar fleece jacket – I bought this especially for this trip. It will go over other layers and will be good if we encounter colder weather towards the end of the trip when we head further north.
Spray jacket – this will keep me dry in case of inclement weather but is also windproof and will be useful if worn over other layers.
Thermal tops – 2 synthetic thermal tops do not take up much space but will add warmth if needed.
Socks -2 pairs for my shoes and 1 for the boots.
Shoes – I am taking 3 pairs of footwear – walking sandals, hiking boots and general purpose shoes.
Hat – for hot, sunny days.
Winter accessories – scarf, beanie and gloves in case we encounter cold weather which is definitely possible, especially if we go into the mountain areas of New Hampshire.
I still need to add my underwear. I have kept everything to a minimum, made sure everything mixes and matches and chosen items which are easy to wash and dry.
We will be taking a pegless clothesline with us and will wash out things every day or two as required. My holiday mantra is, “No-one is every going to see us again so it simply does not matter whether I wear the same clothes every second day”. In fact my holiday photos for the last 10 years feature many of the same clothes as I am packing for this trip!
The wind blows
The show begins
Sneezes, sniffles and coughs abound
I dodge and weave
Sip more lemon
Hope to escape
Mid-August is eternally predictable – the Royal Show begins for 10 days where the country comes to the city and the seasonal cold/flu seems to catch up with everyone who has not succumbed so far. To fuel this we usually experience one last serious flurry of a sub-tropical winter. The westerly winds blow in with a vengeance and this year it has been right on cue.
Last night I pegged the sheets on the clothesline using 5 pegs on each sheet. The clothesline is under the verandah and just outside our bedroom and I was awakened several times by the flapping of the sheets as well the creaking of the fixtures on the line.
This year seems to have been a particularly bad one for some serious viral infections as well as more than the average number of cases of influenza. Doctors are snowed under by the workload as are hospital emergency departments. Several of my colleagues and extended family have fallen victim to the illness with some having up to 2 weeks sick leave.
It is now only 10 days until we leave on our holiday. I am doing everything I possibly can to avoid being ill on a long-haul flight at the beginning of our adventure. This time of year is generally a show-stopper but I am determined not to let it be a holiday stopper.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to comment on my post about the kitchen bin. Today I remembered to chop up some of the bacon scraps and put them out for the chickens. I have not checked to see if they ate them but if they do I will gradually give them the rest over a period of time and that will be another thing that will not go in the bin.
When I next emptied my kitchen bin I took a couple of photos of the contents which I would like to share with you.
This is what 2 weeks worth of rubbish looks like. There are 2 adults in the household. I placed it next to a dinner plate so you can get an idea of the size.
Here it is on the scales. It weighed 411g.
So, what was in the rubbish bag for the week? An empty toothpaste tube, a foil sheet from medications, a plastic bag from the carrots, plastic packaging from a block of cheese, packaging from razor blades, plastic bag from frozen peas and elastic from several pairs of worn-out underpants. There were other items that I have not identified as well.
Next time I do this I will be a bit more specific about exactly what it contains.
Obviously our rubbish varies from week to week as some thing are only discarded a couple of times a year. It is a worthwhile exercise to check what you are discarding each week as a way of considering whether you can change habits to reduce the amount of waste.
I have been making a gift for Izz for her birthday. She has a doll’s bed which has been passed down to her but no bedding.
I bought 2 u-shaped pillowcases recently from the op shop. Here is one that I have unpicked ready to use. Note the roll of fabric which is the dismantled and pressed frill.
The Duke bought a piece of foam cut to size for the mattress and I have covered that using some of the pillowcase fabric.
The next step was to make a patchwork quilt. I worked out the size and number of pieces I would need. The plain pink is more of the pillowcase, plain mauve from a piece in my stash of fabric, Dora pattern is a few leftover scraps from the doona cover and curtains that I made for Miss O last year and the pink patterned fabric is from a blouse I picked up at the op shop. The frill is the one I unpicked from the pillowcase. The hemmed edge remained intact so I simply regathered it and reapplied to the quilt edge.
I bought a large piece of cotton/bamboo batting for a bed quilt I am working on for Izz’s bed so I used a small piece for this quilt. (I think this is a rather spoiled doll!) The backing is more leftovers from some op shop fabric. I quilted it by simply machine stitching along the seam lines which is nothing fancy but seems effective.
The finishing touch was to make a matching pillow. A couple more fabric scraps and some salvaged filling from an old cushion and I had a complete set of bedding for the doll. Here is the mattress with the pillow.
The total cost of things I bought specifically for this project was $6.60. This is a gift which I know will be loved regardless of the cost. I am looking forward to seeing Izz’s face when she opens the gift.
Now I need to work on the the bed quilt I am making as well since her birthday is in 2 weeks and I want to be able to give her the present before we go on holidays.
Tonight’s post is in response to a question posed by Jean in the comments of my post a couple of days ago about Zero Waste. She asked about alternatives to using plastic to line a kitchen bin.
I have read about using newspaper to make an origami-style bin liner and one day I might do that. In the meantime, I find that despite my best efforts, I always seem to have plenty of plastic bags for the purpose.
I line my small kitchen bin with whatever plastic bag comes to hand. I do not knowingly bring any extra plastic bags into the house but some is simply unavoidable at this stage. Any bag that looks as though it would be useful for this purpose is saved. I keep them in a ziplock bag in the laundry cupboard.
For example, I buy frozen peas so I carefully slit the top of the bag and then use that in the bin. Often, it does not tuck neatly over the edge but I am prepared to accept that. I use a rubber band to tie it off before throwing in the bin. If I get any plastic bags in packaging of items such as small appliances these are kept for the bin as well. They usually have a few air holes to avoid accidental suffocation but that is not a problem as my waste is usually just confined a small number of non-recyclable items which need to be contained rather than necessarily sealed in plastic.
I do not put any meat scraps in my kitchen bin. I generally buy meat that has no waste eg: skinless, boneless chicken breast fillets, premium mince etc. The exception is bacon as I trim the fat off it. I put the meat scraps in a bag in the freezer and occasionally add them to a kitchen rubbish bag immediately prior to putting the garbage out for collection.
Anything which can be composted is collected in the compost bucket – this includes all fruit and vegetable scraps as well as eggshells and butter wrappers.
Finally, here are the bins in a pull-out drawer in my kitchen. Each bucket lifts out for easy disposal and cleaning. On the left is the small one I line with my rubbish bag and on the right is the recycling.
I will do another post soon and examine exactly what rubbish we have for a week.
Let me know how you manage your various waste streams. Have you made a conscious effort to reduce the amount of rubbish you send to landfill?
I have been busy with work recently and so not much time for my creative pursuits – gardening, cooking and sewing. However, I have been making an effort to finish off some jobs that have hanging around.
Many have been things that I keep meaning to do such as reviewing our phone and internet plans with the current providers. I wrote about this project a couple of days ago and you can read it here. I have decided that the exit fees for our mobile phone contract are too high so we will stick with what we have for the moment and be more vigilant about reviewing the SMS messages that we receive advising that we have used 60% and then 80% of our data quota. I did discover that we can negotiate a new plan once we are within 3 months of the end of our current contract. I have made a note in my diary for the end of December to do this.
Despite not getting quite the outcome I had hoped for, I am certainly not naming and shaming our telephone or internet providers. I am saving that for our electricity company!!
I have written several posts about my battles with Origin Energy since I began this blog in March 2011. I will not bore you with links to them all here but if you put ‘electricity’ or ‘Origin Energy’ into the search function on the right-hand side of the page you will find most of them.
Yesterday, I made yet another phone call to Origin regarding the non-appearance of our latest bill/statement. The meter was read on 28th May which is almost 2 months ago. This has happened every quarter since we had the solar panels installed in November 2010. Despite numerous assurances about ‘the system’, ‘a block on your bill’ and other nonsense being sorted out it never happens and I am just about about breaking point.
As usual, the people who answer the phone copped my wrath, always prefaced with “I know it is not your fault directly”. This time I have the name of the person who took my call initially as well as the contact in the Solar Billing Department. I have advised that I will be sending a letter to the General Manager with a copy to both of the people with whom I spoke directly yesterday.
We have been receiving electricity bills for over 30 years and they have arrived in the mail, as regular as clockwork, within 3-5 working days of the meter being read. This has been the case year in, year out without fail until we had the solar panels installed.
Suddenly, when we are in credit rather than having a bill to pay, we do not receive any notification until I ring up and beg/plead/argue/debate the issue every 3 months. Initially, we were advised that credit would only be paid every 12 months or if we wanted it more often it was up to us to ring Origin and request the payment. Previously, I had an automatic direct debit set up to pay our electricity bill. It is clearly far too difficult for Origin to set up a simple direct credit to my bank account every 3 months when my electricity account is in credit!
I have to battle to even find out how much credit is owing to us while Origin get interest-free use of money which is rightfully ours. Shame on you, Origin!!
Things have improved marginally in the past 18 months. I discovered yesterday that I can now make an online request for payment of any credit balance into my nominated bank account. All I need now is to receive the statements for our electricity account in a timely manner so that we can use the money which we have accrued through the purchase of solar panels and judicious use of electricity.
Origin Energy – lift your game and get this sorted out – NOW!!
I suspect that I am not the only person with billing issues since installing solar panels and I am very keen to hear if anyone else has a similar story to tell. Please leave a comment at the bottom of this page or on my Facebook page. Alternatively, you can email me. The email address is at the foot of this page.
I am particularly in the experiences of other Origin customers, but please feel free to comment, regardless of which provider you have.
To my overseas readers – do you have similar problems?
I have most of our regular expenses set up so that receiving and paying them requires the minimum amount of input from me. This means that we receive as much as possible via email and many of the payments are direct debit.
One downside of this ‘set and forget’ arrangement is that it is easy to lose track of exactly what you are paying for. It is important to regularly review plans and contracts and make sure that they are still meeting your needs. Telecommunications is one area where plans are constantly evolving and being upgraded, however, if you do not ask you will be left on your existing plan. It will still be as good as when you originally chose it but may be lagging behind newer options.
Yesterday I looked at our home broadband, mobile broadband, home phone and 1 mobile phone. Both our home and mobile broadband are with one provider while the telephones are with another. Our telephone provider had contacted me several times about bundling our broadband as well, however, I did not capitulate to the sales pitch and decided to research it all on my own terms.
Firstly, I contacted our internet provider and although the plan I had was the best available for us I discovered that they could upgrade us to a faster speed (about 6 times faster) at no extra cost. Naturally, I agreed to that suggestion. I also confirmed that I could maintain the mobile broadband even if I happened to choose to change my home broadband.
Next, was some research about the bundled products from our telephone provider via their website. I discovered what a good deal I had with my existing provider as I had more download and greater speed at the same price as their bundled offering.
My other concern was that our most recent telephone bill showed that we had exceeded the data allowance on our ‘smartphone’ so had incurred some additional costs. I rang the company and discovered that the $29 capped plan advertised on their website is superior to the one we have had for about 15 months. The call and data caps are $300 and 400Mb per month whereas we are paying the same price for an ‘old’ plan which includes $150 of calls and 200Mb of data – exactly half of the service for the same price!
I am in the process of finding out how much time we have left on our contract and what the penalty would be for breaking it because I think it is likely that the penalty will be less than the risk of exceeding our data cap again for a month. If that is the case I will accept the penalty and upgrade the the newer plan.
It definitely pays to spend some time reviewing your regular expenses and seeing whether you have the best arrangement for your circumstances or simply if the current plan offers value for money.
Do you check what you are paying for from time to time?
What do you spread on your sandwiches? Butter, margarine, something else or nothing at all?
I used to buy margarine without giving it a great deal of thought, however, about 18 years ago I changed to spreadable butter that I make myself. My reasons are several:
This is the recipe.
SPREADABLE BUTTER
500g butter
250ml oil
150ml water
3 tablespoons skim milk powder
Allow the butter to soften but not melt. Beat butter using a mixer or food processor. Combine the other ingredients in a jug and stir well to dissolve the milk powder. Gradually add the mixture to the butter while continuing to beat. Beat for another 1 – 2 minutes until white and creamy. Spoon into containers and refrigerate. This made almost 1500ml so it is really quite economical. Actual costings would depend on the type of oil that you use.
I generally keep one container in the refrigerator and freeze the rest because we do not use a lot of butter and it will go mouldy/rancid if stored for long periods in the refrigerator. I use Pyrex glass containers as they can be put in the freezer and I am constantly trying to minimise the amount of plastic that I use for storing food.
This mixture can be used instead of butter in cooking and baking. The only exception I make is pastry as I prefer to use ‘real’ butter for that.
The type of oil you use is entirely up to you. I choose to use locally grown and produced organic olive oil which I buy in bulk at the Co-op in Maleny. Olive oil does have a distinctive flavour so you may prefer something more bland such as rice-bran oil. I do not consider canola oil as an option as most of the commercial crop is genetically-modified and I prefer not to use foods that contain GM products.
This is not a totally zero-waste exercise but it is certainly better than all of the margarine containers that you would otherwise use. I take my glass bottle to be refilled with oil. The butter wrapper is used to grease baking trays or line cake tins and then goes into the compost. I buy skim milk powder from Aldi in a 1 kg non-recyclable bag, however, I have recently discovered that I can buy this in bulk from Simply Good so will be doing that in the future.
organised castle 