Decluttering “challenge” for November

Posted by louisa on Monday 24 October 2011 in decluttering | 14 comments

I’m going to set myself a decluttering “challenge” for November – and I’d love it if some other people joined in.

It seems a good time to do it – the season has definitely turned now (to cold up here in the northern hemisphere, to warm down on the flip side) so we can sort through our summer/winter gear to put it into storage and clear out the surplus at the same time. In the northern hemisphere as well, we’re retreating into our homes more – more time to get annoyed with all the junk and more time to deal with it. And for people who celebrate Christmas and other holidays, it’ll help with the pre-family-descending tidying preparations and a reminder about how this year’s new gifts can be next year’s clutter if not chosen with care.

The “challenge” will be a pretty simple one: get rid of one thing every day In practical terms for me that’ll mean consigning one thing every day to our “to go to the charity shop” box, actually giving it to someone else in person or, for the odd thing, list on eBay/Gumtree.

I’m calling it a “challenge” rather than an actual challenge because, to be frank, it shouldn’t be too hard. I’m going to set myself mini-“challenges” each week too, in addition to the main one, to focus my attention in a few specific areas – but even still, it’ll probably be quite easy. The reason I still want to do it though is to help start to form a habit – to change how I look at things around our home. I don’t know about you guys but I get really blind to certain things around the house then suddenly I see them and think “why on earth have we left that there for so many months?”. Instead, I want to be see everything and think “do we need or even just want that in our lives still? could someone else make better use of it than we do?”. That change of outlook has to start somewhere.

I also want to actually do it every day, rather than just saying “get rid of 30 things in the month” because I think that’ll be more useful for building the habit. With the mini-“challenges”, it’ll probably be about 50 things in total – and if I get my partner John on board, he has to find his own dang 50, no sharing ;)

Anyone else up for it?

Had your first frost of winter yet?

Posted by louisa on Friday 21 October 2011 in growing | 7 comments

Yesterday I was thinking all autumnal thoughts but for some reason, I’m in winter mode again today – possibly because I’m off to the yarn shop with a winter woolly in mind and when I come back, I need to start work on that winter to-do list… The garden is my biggest worry in that respect as gloves can be worn without being washed & we survived last winter without decent curtains in some rooms etc, but plants will die & (terracotta) pots will be ruined if I don’t do something about them soon.

Which leads me to thinking about first frosts…

We were down to about 2C/36F in our bit of West Yorkshire on Wednesday night but it’s supposed to be a bit warmer for the next few nights – only about 8-10C/45-50F – and long term forecasts, which admittedly aren’t as accurate, say similar, so we might not see our first frost until November at this rate.

How about you?

Autumn morning

Posted by louisa on Thursday 20 October 2011 in chickens | 2 comments

It was so lovely this morning that I rewarded myself for finalising my accounts (October mini-goal, tick!) with some garden play time with my furred and feathered friends. The cats were sunbathing on the top of the wood store, the chickens were digging through fallen leaves, the dog was making sure everything smelled ok in the garden & the field next door and I started cutting up some logs for the stove.

It wasn’t long though before I had visitors in the woodstore. Fluffy bummed visitors.

Saw horse, I HAVE CONQUERED YOU.

But as soon as she’d surveyed one level, she craved more exploration….

That part of the woodstore doesn’t have a roof and it’s under a thick holly tree, so I had visions of her jumping up and scampering through the branches — and me getting very scratched trying to get her back out again. So I lured her & the others to the other side of the patio, to do a little weeding for me while I got on with cutting some kindling.

I left them under the watchful eye of Carla-cat (who had relocated from the woodstore to another equally sunny spot away from the noise/dust) …

But they didn’t respect her authoritah and were soon off exploring again. Blue didn’t think much to John’s coop – too few perches, not enough nest boxes – but did poo on the window sill to leave her mark.

They also explored the greenhouse and were rather excited to find a few dropped tomatoes:

I do hope we get a few more of these sunny and fresh mornings before muggy winter kicks in :)

Are you still as frugal and green when you’re away from home?

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 19 October 2011 in frugal, green | 9 comments

This question has been buzzing around in my head for a few weeks but a comment on someone else’s blog has driven it to the surface:

are you still as frugal and green while you’re out & about or on holiday as you are at home?

A few miscellaneous ideas that created the initial buzz:

• At home, I rarely use hot water to wash my hands/face (the boiler takes a few minutes to heat up) but away from home, in semi-public toilets, at work or in hotels etc, I almost always use the on-demand hot water every time, whether I really need it or not.
• At home, we have a recycling bin and a compost bin in the kitchen, so recycle & compost as much as possible. Away from home, where there aren’t convenient recycling/compost bins such as at work (we borrow rooms so can’t made demands) or in hotels, I just use the regular bin.
• When I’m staying in a hotel, I take more, longer showers/deeper baths than I do at home – before we got a good shower at home, hotel showers were a luxury activity, not just about getting clean!
• When I’m on holiday/having a day trip somewhere a bit different, I’m more likely to buy something I don’t need as a treat or souvenir (not a tacky plastic Eiffel Tower per se but, for example, the £17 of yarn I bought in Whitby the other month or similar amount of yarn I bought in Madrid when we were there for a conference in 2009). This is also the nature of the comment I read on the other person’s blog: essentially “frugal goals be damned, you were on holiday”. I don’t generally have a problem with proper holiday treats – especially of this productive rather than purely novelty nature – but if it extends to all days out, which it has done with me in the past, it can get very expensive for little reason.

I find it strange how careful am I concerning energy/water usage at home etc, then I leave home and I’m Little Ms Wasteful! I’m not all bad – if I have a choice in the matter, I don’t leave lights/heating/air-con on when I’m out of a room at work or in a hotel etc – but my naughties are definitely something to address now I’ve consciously identified them though.

Are you as good away from home/on holiday/visiting friends & family as you are in your normal day-to-day home life? If you are, how do you deal with the lack of recycling/composting facilities etc?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and/or examples of this!

This year’s winter preparations

Posted by louisa on Monday 17 October 2011 in meta | 7 comments

Yesterday I picked up my crochet hook for the first time in six? seven? months. I can’t stand the feeling of yarn between my fingers during the summer, and the early warm spring this year meant my crochet embargo started earlier than normal this year. Yesterday though, I found my favourite bamboo hook and grabbed a misc selection of DK yarn to crochet a stripey draught excluding snake. Flames flickering behind the stove glass, cats liberally applied around my lap/feet and yarn in my fingers — forget autumn, winter feels like it’s already here for Team Peach.

Due to meh-ness and illness in September, I’m a bit behind on my winter preparations – still a few things to do before the season really sets in. Some people are saying it’s going to be as bad as last year, some people are saying it’s going to be worse and start earlier. I have no idea but I’d rather prepare just in case.

Us & the animals

1. Wash all our winter coats, scarfs & gloves I’m really kicking myself that I forgot to do them during that heatwave week last month, when I washed absolutely everything else in the house made from fabric. My coats (my everyday winter coat and my really big heavy one) might have to be dry-cleaned, I’m not sure. I hate dry-cleaning for many reasons but if I get another year or so out of the old coats, it’ll be worth it.

2. Check we have sufficient quantities of warm socks etc I think we do, and John tells me his vests (which nearly all predate our nearly 10 year relationship) are fine too – worth checking though. I might get a pair of long johns/leggings for under my jeans for dog walking rather than just wearing tights (I hate tights).

3. Make a giant bean bag for the office So the spoilt, spoilt cats & dog can sit near the stove in comfort ;)

4. Make sure we have good supplies of our store cupboard essentials & animal food Supplies being cut off further upstream is always possible in bad weather but a more likely issue is us being too lazy/cold to fancy going to the shops.

House

I wrote a list of house “to-do”s before last winter and while big renovation things have taken a LOT longer to do than I thought (and some not happened at all), we did most of the things on my list. Most recently, we’ve replaced our old falling down single-glazed sun-porch so it’s now less draughty, better insulated & not leaking — it’ll now provide a really useful “air lock” for the front door to stop lots of cold air shooting around the house.

1. Curtains for bedroom One thing from last year’s list that I still haven’t done. We don’t use curtains in the bedroom for most of the year – it faces east into a wood so isn’t overlooked and the morning sun is lovely – but really need decent ones in the winter for heat retention.

2. Check if the thicker duvet needs washing & if so, wash We’ve got an “all seasons” duvet (a thin duvet & a thicker one that click together to make an uber-one). The thin one is still warm enough for now but won’t be for much longer.