Category Archives: Self-reliance

More Shopping

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I do not regard shopping as a pastime and generally do as little as possible.  I also endeavour to combine as many tasks as possible when we go out in order to reduce time, petrol, money and energy.

Since we live in a semi-rural area, it is a bit of an expedition if I do need to go to a major shopping centre.  So, when we went to stock up the pantry on Saturday, I decided to see if I could buy the Christmas gifts for our granddaughters.  I often take them to a show of some sort but this year it was a practical gift as suggested by our daughter.  New beach towels were on the shopping list.  I decided to check out Spotlight and was in luck.  I found these lovely, large towels by Canningvale.

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I decided to wrap them up and then it is all done.  A few years ago I made some reusable Christmas gift bags and I managed to find 2 that would fit the towels.

Adorned with some ribbon that has been reused many times and gift tags made from old Christmas cards and it was all done with next to no waste.

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I have a couple more gifts to buy and some home-made goodies to make and that is my Christmas gift-giving sorted.

 

Warts and All

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I am sure we have all been guilty of only showing the good/perfect/happy stuff online.  In fact, I do not believe we should feel guilty because none of us share everything about ourselves  – either online or in real life.

However, I do try to keep things as real as possible in what I discuss here on the blog and today is no exception.

I have microwave oven which sits in a purpose-built cavity below the bench in my kitchen.

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For a number of years I have had a piece of non-slip mat under the microwave which which works reasonably well.  I remove and clean this mat but over time it has become stained with mould and even soaking it in bleach and scrubbing does not restore it.  This is not a long-term solution as I try not to use bleach.

After some particularly wet weather a couple of weeks ago it was looking awful and I decided that I had to change my strategy.  I decided to make a towelling mat from an old bathmat.

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I cut the bathmat in half.  The next step was to find some fabric suitable to bind the edges.

Bias strips cut and ready to join.

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A roll of home-made bias binding – just like a bought one!  All you need is a ruler and iron.

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The finished product.  No cost and not a lot of time.

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Back to the microwave and the cavity.  Once I removed the microwave it really does look disgusting.  Time to get rid of the mat.

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I cleaned the space and once it was properly dry I added the new towelling mat.

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After cleaning the microwave inside and out, I replaced it in the alcove.

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I have enough bias binding to bind the other half of the bathmat so I will be able to alternate them and wash each week.

Use it Up, Wear it Out……

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……Make Do or Do Without.

So, the saying goes.

It is relatively easy to ‘use it up’ but ‘wear it out’ does not seem to occur very often.

However, today I have an example which caught me completely off-guard.

I have a  black short-sleeve cashmere/merino top.  I have had it for several years and wear it regularly with different skirts and trousers.  It even gets worn with shorts.

After carefully handwashing the top I was placing on the hanger to dry when I noticed a hole just below the underarm.  It was not moth-eaten but simply worn out!  On closer examination I discovered that the other side was in an almost identical state.

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A closer look.

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I am not sure whether there is any purpose for which I can use the remainder of the garment.  Padding of some sort?  Otherwise it will be binned.

Will I replace this?  Probably not. It was mostly worn to work and I only have another 7 months of work and I am also looking at having less black clothes in my wardrobe.

 

Storage Solution – Evolution

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When you read about storage solutions it often involves parting with money at a large department store in a shopping mall.  However, this does not have to be the case.  A healthy dose of ingenuity and lateral thinking will often provide the answer.

I have a mobile hanging rack which I often use for hanging freshly-ironed clothes or to finish off drying clothes.  3 years ago I wrote a blog post about how I used and stored the rack.Here is a previous photo of it.

This proved not to be an ideal solution as it could be tricky to store and remove the various pieces.  However, I persevered and made the best of it.

However, a few weeks ago I managed to rip the bag when extracting the pieces.

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This led me to reconsider my storage method and I realised that I had removed a couple of item which had previously been stored on the floor of the wardrobe and I had some spare space.

A quick dig around in the workshop downstairs yielded results.

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This container was a heavy-duty drum with  tap which we once used for water storage.  GMan had removed the tap and cut the top off sometime ago and it was being used for storing some bits and pieces which I re-homed to another container.  I cleaned this one and it now fits neatly on the floor of the wardrobe and the components of the hanging rack are much more accessible.

Awesome Araldite

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I think many people are probably like me and imagine that the wonder adhesive, Araldite, has been around forever.  In fact, this is not the case.  It was introduced to the mass market in the late 1940s and can be used to fix almost anything.

With an introduction like that, I expect that you can guess what these 2 items have in common.

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Yes, they have both been mended using Araldite.

The first photo is my clothes airer which I have had for about 7 years but it is somewhat older than that as it had previously belonged to my mother.  It is a deceptively simple design but I constantly needed to be careful as the poly pipe could easily come apart at the 4 corners near the top if you pulled the airer to move it.  The design is such that it can be disassembled if required but we decided that since that had not been necessary in the past 7 years that we would permanently secure the joints with Araldite. It seems to have worked perfectly and now I can move the airer easily without worrying that it will all collapse.

The second photo is my jewellery box which was a wedding gift from GMan so it has significant sentimental value.  The lid is hinged and some years ago the glue on one side of the hinge came loose so it always just sat in place.  A bit like the airer, it was not a major problem – just a niggling annoyance.  GMan had to clean and remove the old glue before fixing the hinge back on using the Araldite.  He was not convinced but it appears to be successful and I can now open the lid of the box as it was originally designed.

These are simple repair jobs that can be undertaken by anyone.

What have you repaired lately?

 

Something for Nothing

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Remember those pavers we salvaged not so long ago?  You can read about it here.  Apart from saving them from landfill, we had a couple of projects in mind.  Once the builders realised that we were serious about salvaging and re-using as much of the materials as we could, they even collected the spent crusher dust (about a cubic metre) and left it in a neat pile beside the driveway.

Last weekend GMan used some of the crusher dust as a bedding for the paving under the new walkway.  He then cleaned and relaid the pavers.

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The edges are yet to be finished but we are really pleased with how it has turned out so far.

The fresh mulch was the other piece of work GMan did.  He dug up the last small area of turf between the end of the native verge planting and the walkway and mulched it.

There are still plenty of pavers and crusher dust left and we have other plans for those so watch this space.

Meanwhile, I was not being entirely idle.  I finished transplanting the beans which had come up self-sown in the bed where I grew them earlier in the year.

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Here is the corn I planted 3 weeks ago.  I think all but one of the seeds have germinated.

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Two of the other garden beds have been sown with seeds – one with cucumber and the other with rockmelon and a sprinkling of lettuce.  No photos as there is nothing to show yet.

Gone

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Decluttering and streamlining what we own is a recurring theme here.  I have never had a huge cleanout but have tended to gradually reduce what we have by not replacing things as they are used or removing things that no longer have a purpose in our home.

However, I want to share a couple of things that we have re-homed in the last week.

The first was actually at work.  It is nearly 18 months ago that I wrote this post about a bulk amount of paper clips being discarded.  Unfortunately, I received very little support from the sustainability team so the bag of paper clips was still languishing in the cupboard beside my desk.  Every time I opened the cupboard I was bothered by the thought of what was going to happen to them.  Last week I noticed a small bag of assorted paper clips/bulldog clips in the ‘Mail Out’ tray.  These were being returned to the mail room so I asked the courier from the mail room if they could take the bag of paper clips and she was delighted and said they would be so useful.  The quantity did not daunt her in the least!  YAY!!!  The rescued paper clips now have a new home.

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Today my sister and brother-in-law came and collected a pile of old broken pavers.  This post from 3 months ago was about removing the old pavers from an outdoor staircase.  We gave some of the salvaged pavers to our neighbour to make an outdoor path and kept the remainder for a small landscaping project we have to do.  Of course, in the process of lifting them some broke and others had been cut to fit the space.  We did not want these but my brother-in-law was happy to take them for solid fill at his place.  Today was the day that they went to their new home so that is something else gone.

These are some of the good used pavers but the pile of broken ones have been moved along.

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More Purple

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The lavender flowers are not the only purple in my life.  Today I was ironing one of GMan’s shirts which happens to be purple.

This shirt is one of his favourites and the cuffs had worn out some time ago so I cut the sleeves off to turn it into a short sleeve shirt which continues to be worn, albeit, not as frequently as when it was a long-sleeved business shirt.

I was ironing it today and I caught the tip of the iron against the edge of the back yoke seam whereupon the stitching gave way across about 2/3 of the back.  After my initial shock, I examined it closely and realised that the cotton thread had simply worn out.

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The fabric is faded and I know it will not last forever but I have restitched it and there is quite a bit more wear in it yet.

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It makes good environmental and economic sense to repair items and retain them for as long as possible so I am very pleased to have been able to extend the life of this shirt.

Blooming Garden

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It has been cool and raining most of this week here so I thought I would share a couple of photos to brighten your day.

August 2017

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September 2018 – last weekend

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I am loving the dark wall backdrop and the contrast it creates.

Lavender is a bit tricky in our high rainfall climate.  It seems to last for a few drier than average years and then when we get really wet seasons it just curls up its toes and dies.

However, a decent sized pot is only about $12 so it is a relatively inexpensive way to enjoy one of my favourite flowers.

Something New

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Just when you think you have pretty got this organisation game sorted there is something else.

I have several lightweight cashmere/merino cardigans and jumpers which I handwash and then put on a very short spin cycle in the machine.  I generally hang  them on specially designed hangers on the line, however, the past couple of days have been cold and wet here so there was not a lot of point in hanging them outdoors.

So, I decided to hang them inside and was wondering where to put them when I noticed the inside of the door of the clothes dryer and had a lightbulb moment.

Here they are hanging from the door of the dryer.

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And a close-up view.

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The laundry is a small, enclosed room so by turning the dehumidifier on for a few hours I was able to easily get these dry.

You may not necessarily have the same opportunity but this is a reminder that there are many possibilities if we allow ourselves to think outside the box.