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Digital Decluttering – Part 2

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I am having a break from sorting photographs but my focus over the past 48 hours has been the emails.

A few things had conspired to ensure that my emails were out of control.  Not the least of these was the change in format of Gmail.  I kept putting off finding out how to effectively use the new format and although I had deleted many emails as soon as they hit the inbox I am ashamed to confess that the total emails was in excess of 1500!

The first thing I did was to unsubscribe from several sites which sent frequent emails that we really do not need.  My mantra is, “If I want something, I will go and find it.  I don’t need to be constantly bombarded by offers.”

Then it was a matter of deleting the old, unwanted and irrelevant stuff and finally creating folders for the ones I wanted to keep.

I have promised myself that I will keep my digital mail filed and tidy just as I would ‘snail mail’.  This is particularly important as we try to receive as much correspondence as possible via email to reduce the environmental impact of posted mail.  There are often emails with critical information that we cannot afford to lose amongst a pile of ‘junk mail’.

As with all of the organising projects I have undertaken, I hope to have made the email filing simple and effective so that I can maintain it with the minimum of effort while moving on to tackle other projects.

My project for tomorrow is to finish a linen blouse that I started making during the week.  I will post a photo of it when I finish it.

5,000……….and counting

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Today the inverter for our solar panels recorded that we have now generated over 5,000kWh since the system was installed 12 months ago.  Ours is a 3.7kW system made up of 20 panels.  The upfront cost was substantial and the calculations were that, based on our usage, we would wipe out our electricity bills and receive a credit of around $2,000 per year.

Our savings are difficult to calculate due to the continuing tardiness of Origin – we have yet to receive our statement from the meter reading at the end of August!!  I have given up stressing about that because I am secure in the knowledge that we are in credit.  I do not think our credit will be much more than $1,500 this year due to the very wet and cloudy summer at the beginning of the year.

While I was doing some paperwork today, I had occasion to write the byline for this blog – “An organised, sustainable life”.  I started thinking about what this means and how the two facets are inextricably linked.  Once you start looking critically at your organisation and how you are living sustainably there are many, many examples.  I will discuss more of these in future posts but for tonight let us consider the electricity.

During the day the generated power goes firstly to our usage and then the excess is exported to the grid.  The tariff we are paid for this is 50c/kWh but what we draw from the grid at night is charged at 19.4c/kWh.  Therefore, there is a 30c/kWh benefit if we use the power at night.  This has necessitated some changes but being organised means that I have been able to change and do the washing, vacuuming and most of the ironing in evenings rather than on the weekend.  This saves us money and exports the maximum amount of power to the grid.

What examples do you have of being organised contributing to a sustainable lifestyle?

Seasonal Storage

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My last post really sparked some interest!  Welcome to those of you who have become subscribers.  Thanks to everyone who responded by sending a little bit about themselves.  Although I know there will always be many unidentified readers, it is nice to be able to connect with my regular readers.  I hope you keep coming back and please let me know your thoughts on the content and direction of the blog.

Now that the holiday is over is is time to re-focus on the organising aspect.

In my reading the other day, Carol posed the question, “Where do you store your Christmas tree?”  When Carol was clearing out the main bedroom in readiness for it to be painted, she pulled the box containing the tree from under the bed and found it covered with dust and felt that it could not be healthy to have a collection of dust under the bed.

I do not store anything under beds for this very reason.  In fact, the base of our bed is only about 5cm off the floor so storing anything under it is impossible.  I regularly enlist The Duke’s assistance and we remove the ensemble (mattress and base) from the frame and I use the opportunity to vacuum the floor and damp dust the metal bed frame as well as the skirting boards.  I also wipe down the window sill and about once every 3 months I clean the windows and insect screens, too.

Back to the storage dilemma.  I have a storage bag for Christmas tree that I was lucky enough to find on Freecycle.  You could easily make a similar bag from an old sheet.  My storage bag has a zipper but it would be just as effective to make a drawstring opening at one end.  Before I acquired my storage bag I had always kept the tree in its original box, but like so many things, it is a challenge to fit it back into the factory packaging.

Since there is only the two of us at home we have the luxury of plenty of storage space, so I keep the Christmas tree in its bag on a shelf in the wardrobe in the guest room.  I have recently rationalised and re-arranged the Christmas items that we keep from year to year.  These are now all in a plastic tub which is next to the tree.  My tree decorations are fairly minimal and I have a wreath for each of the external doors plus a small table centrepiece.

I have added the wrapping paper, cards and gift tags that I have accumulated, to the tub and am determined that I will not buy any more until all of those are used up.  That has been my line for about 3 years and still I have plenty.

I have a balloon pump and 4 stands for making “balloon topiary trees” for festive table decorations.  I have had these for over 10 years and have used them for 18th, 21st and 50th birthday celebrations as well as a school reunion.  I will use them again in a couple of weeks for an 80th birthday celebration.  I will probably recover the stands to refresh them for their next use.

We do not really have any other things that are specific to certain seasonal celebrations.  However, there could be Easter items or Halloween costumes.  How do you store and keep track of things that are perhaps only used once each year for a few weeks?

Why Subscribe?

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Hello subscribers, friends and occasional readers old and new.  If you are new to reading this I hope you find it interesting and worthwhile.  Please leave a comment or you can email me.

I have been writing this blog in its current form for a little over 7 months.  This is not long in the blogging world and a I hope to continue with it for much longer.

This is a Word Press blog and so, rather than “followers” as you see on Blogger, the term used is “subscriber”.  I have now reached the dizzy heights of 18 subscribers – thank you to each and every one of you for the time you take to read my ramblings.

If you have subscribed I would love to hear from you and find out a little more about my blog friends.  I would really appreciate it if you could either post a comment or send an email with your general location, your interests, how you found my blog, what keeps you coming back and of course the big one – how I can make it better.  Constructive criticism is welcome.

I will be updating my profile and also profile picture so that will be coming soon.

For those of you who have not subscribed, please consider this option.  You can go to the top right-hand corner of my home page and click on the button labelled “Sign Me Up”.  Once you have subscribed you can adjust your preferences to receive email notifications or not or add to Google Reader.

We have now returned from our holidays so in the next few days I will go back and respond to your comments on previous posts.

Have a great day and I look forward to hearing from you. 🙂

Contributing to Christchurch

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Yesterday we returned to Christchurch for the final night of our trip before flying home today.  This has been our first visit to Christchurch, so unfortunately we have never seen the city before it was devastated by the earthquake in February.

We spent 2 nights here at the beginning of our holiday and on the Sunday we walked around the perimeter of the barricaded city centre.  I found it eerie and quite depressing and did not take any photos as that seemed almost disrespectful.

However, yesterday was quite a different story.  The Re:Start precinct in Cashel Street was humming as people came to celebrate the first tentative steps towards rebuilding the city.  This area has been open for less than a week but the tenacity and optimism were obvious.  The shipping containers which house many of the outlets are unrecognisable once you are inside them.

I know that it will take much more than a small number of retail outlets to rebuild a city but it is a start.  I did my bit by buying some shoes and books.  I bought these ‘Ecco’ brand thongs in Ballantyne’s.  They are really comfortable and will get lots of wear during the summer.  I have other ‘Ecco’ shoes which have stood the test of time.

Naturally, we could not resist having a peek in a bookshop while we were there.  I bought these 2 books at Scorpio Books.  In fact I stumbled on a fantastic bargain as “From the Earth to the Table” was reduced from $60 to $16 and the other one turned out to be from the selection of titles that were free with the purchase of another book.  I will tell you more about both of the books in more detail in a future post.

We will now return home with positive hopes for all of the people of Christchurch.  Here is a final sign of new life and renewal.  We saw this family near the footpath adjacent to Hagley Park as we walked back to our accommodation after our successful shopping expedition.

Digital De-cluttering

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While we have been away I have been working on making some order of my digital photographs.  It is all too easy to simply download them from the camera and go no further.

My earlier feeble attempts had resulted in me putting the photos from each major holiday since December 2005 into their own folder.  I had not made any further progress.

During this holiday I have sorted through each folder and selected those that have some merit and deleted many which simply do not make the grade.

The joy of digital photography is that you can take lots of shots and then choose the best ones.  However, after taking heaps of photos, you do need to actually follow through and complete the process by deleting those that are not worth keeping.  You know the ones – sloping horizons, blurry, too far away, can’t remember why you took it etc.

After culling the excess, the next step was to number them so that they would stay in the order I wanted them.  The system I use is a 3 digit numeral eg:  001, 002 and so on which is followed by a description.  Without the numerals at the beginning the photos will be sorted alphabetically by the title which is not helpful when you want them to follow a sequence.

I have completed the descriptions on the photos for 6 of the trips plus about half of our last trip in May.  I also made sure that I have done the ones for the current trip and kept up to date each day.  This is how I intend to do it in the future 🙂

Once I have done all of the holiday photos I will then need to work on all other the others – children, grandchildren, house, garden etc.  It will be a long process but hopefully worth it in the end.

Inspired by Sandra, I will then scan all of the existing print photos that are in albums and sort them in a similar way.  Hopefully, my children will never have to sort through shoeboxes full of un-named photographs when I am gone.

I have included some of the photos that I regard as the best of what I have sorted through recently.  I hope you enjoy them.

Holiday Eating

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One of the biggest holiday budget killers can be food, especially if you find yourself eating out.  It does not have to be high-quality restaurant dinners either.  Coffee and cake for afternoon tea or a sandwich and juice for lunch – it soon adds up.  $5 or $10 here and there can quickly add up over a couple of weeks.

After our road trip in the middle of the year to NSW and South Australia we decided that it is definitely worth it to pay a little extra for self-contained accommodation where you can cook your own evening meal as well prepare food for travel/sightseeing the following day.  A couple of nights we stayed in basic motel rooms and found that we ended up spending more by the time we had even a basic pub meal.

As I mentioned in a previous post, it has been a little trickier this time as we were travelling internationally.  However, we brought a set of the bare minimum of our picnic set.

It all packed into a small cloth bag.  The bag was the ‘packaging’ from the last set of sheets that I bought.

We brought a few bags, including these ziplock bags which have proved to be very useful.

Avoiding packaging has been a bit of a challenge but I feel that I have done the best I could under the circumstances.  The supermarkets here have bulk bins of various items so we managed to utilise the ziplock bags to buy cereal as well as nuts and dried fruit for snacks.  Bread has been my downfall but I have kept any bread bags to pack our sandwiches in for our lunches as well as finally using them for rubbish bags.  I have also bought meat on styrofoam trays covered in cling wrap from the supermarket.  It has reminded me of how much packaging I actually avoid at home by making our own bread and taking our own containers when buying meat from the butcher.

These are some of the groceries we have bought along the way.  The scrambled eggs, baked beans, chicken and pasta meals have meant that we could budget for some special meals as well.

We have eaten out a few times and really enjoyed the meals.  The Thai meal we ate in Christchurch was excellent and the food highlight of our trip so far was our meal at the Harbour Light Bistro in Nelson.

Holidays are not all about the food, although The Duke may beg to differ.  We have enjoyed being able to take a couple of tours which, although not cheap have been really interesting and good value.  I have already told you about the one to Farewell Spit and yesterday we went on the Mailboat Cruise on Queen Charlotte Sound.

A Recycled Bus

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We generally prefer to choose our own itinerary when travelling rather than going on organised group tours.  However, group tours are sometimes the best (or only) choice.  Yesterday was an example.

When we were planning this trip I decided that I would like to go to Cape Farewell, the northernmost point of the South Island in New Zealand and the adjacent sand spit.   We chose to stay here at Pohara on Golden Bay.  I checked out options for seeing the area and found that while individuals could take private vehicles to the base of the spit (about 30 km in length), the only way to go out along the spit and see the lighthouse was to join an organised tour.

Farewell Spit Eco-Tours have been doing these tours for 60 years and we were lucky to go with John who has been doing these tours for about 25 years.  His knowledge of the geology, history and birds of the local area was amazing and he was an entertaining guide also.

So, what is an eco-tour?  My idea is one where due care is taken of the fragile environment which we are visiting as well as respect for the history.  This certainly fulfilled my criteria and we even travelled in a recycled vehicle.

2011-10-28 01This coach was originally a ‘crash truck’ for the New Zealand airforce.  It has undergone numerous re-incarnations over a period of more than 50 years and was a satisfactory and fun transport for our tour.  Rather than spruik the wonders of the latest and greatest fleet  of ‘state-of-the-art’ coaches, John was very proud to tell us of the history of the vehicle.

2011-10-28 02When we reached the lighthouse precinct we were treated to a delicious afternoon tea of tea, coffee and muffins at one of the  lighthouse keeper’s cottages.  Catering is the area where so many supposedly ‘eco’ events fail but not so here.  The coffee was served from plungers in china mugs, the muffins were most definitely home-made and once we had finished, everything was packed back into the boxes to be brought back on the bus for washing and replenishment.

It was great to see recycling and eco-tourism in action.

Holiday Habits

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We are now on holidays in New Zealand for 2 weeks so the posts will be a bit erratic.  As with our holiday in May I am trying to maintain our sustainable habits as much as possible.

It is a bit more difficult this time as we were flying internationally so customs precluded taking any of our own food.  Nevertheless, we took our own food in reuseable packaging on the flight.

I packed a calico shopping bag as well as some of the mesh bags I use when buying fruit and vegetables.  Our food for the trip was in ziplock bags so those have been washed, dried and reused as well.

Although we could not carry fluids on the flight we did pack our stainless steel flasks and have been using them since we arrived.  I also packed plastic plates and some cutlery in a cloth bag so that we can use them for lunches when we are travelling.

Yesterday I bought an insulated cooler bag with a zip top to carry some refrigerated items in the car as we travel from one self-contained accommodation venue to the next.  The cooler bag is soft-sided and can be folded flat so that I will be able to take it home to use on future trips.

The supermarkets here have a range of goods in bulk bins so I bought muesli, dried fruit and cashews.  I used my own ziplock bags so did not need to add any extra packaging.

Till next time.

Salad, Saving & Sewing

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I finally finished the summer pyjamas for Miss O.  Here is the top.

And the pants.

On Tuesday I went out to lunch with some of my work colleagues.  In the interests of both my waistline and my purse I opted to have the salad.  For $15 I had a full-sized plate of 3 different salads – noodle, green bean and Greek salads.  The flavours were delicious and it was a substantial meal.

After lunch I went to Lincraft to look for some buttons.  I have a piece of linen fabric that I bought a couple of years ago  and I want to make a summer top that buttons down the back so I wanted some really special buttons for it.  I used all the money I saved on my lunch and more when I bought 5 buttons for $2.82 each.

This is the fabric and buttons.  The fabric is pure linen with a pattern embroidered in gold thread.  I think the fabric was about $25 and the buttons were $14.  While this seems extravagant it is still much better value than buying a blouse of similar quality.

I will make the blouse when we get back from our holidays.