January – end of month review

Posted by louisa on Monday 31 January 2011 in goals, less than 12 clothes challenge, meta | 13 comments

Just a quick post reviewing my progress on my various goals/spending, and about tracking other stuff that I may or may not have mentioned.

(I mentioned this on Twitter – I’d had this bunting for a while and John surprised me by putting it up in our dining room. Pretty!)

Goals in 2011 progress

I haven’t really achieved any of my goals for 2011 yet – early days, early cold days. I think we’ve baked something every week so far though and I’ve also started tracking of usage of more consumables (FYI – but possibly TMI too – it takes us 6 days to use a toilet roll), so that’s a start. I also built some things from wood for the garden, which will help me with my piece-of-furniture making goal.

Buy less than 12 items of clothing in 2011

I haven’t bought clothes this month so my tally for the year is still at zero. (More info about the challenge…)

I did look at stuff in the sales online at the start of the year but wasn’t persuaded by anything. And last week, I went into a few shops that sell clothes amongst other things (mostly charity shops) – but I put my blinkers on and went straight for the other stuff – homeware things – instead of looking at clothes. It’s quite a poor area so the vast majority of the clothes are cheap makes – I don’t mind buying some of my items from charity shops but I want to avoid poor quality clothes wherever they are sold.

Growing stuff & the chickens

Since it’s still chilly winter, not much is happening on the growing front. I sowed some winter gem lettuce near the start of the month and they’re still tiny, but getting bigger by the day. We also had some fruit trees delivered – six apples and two pears – and John’s planted those out now. I also bought two blackcurrant bushes – I feel like we’re making good progress in the perennial fruit situation now.

The chickens have enjoyed the factionally longer days and the mostly warmer weather – and the two black rocks both started laying mid-month. Lime is still moulting and Buff is still refusing to give up the goods, but we’ve had a solid five eggs a day from the other five nearly every day for the last fortnight. We’ve had 109 eggs in total for January – not bad going since it was just one or two a day at the start of the month! (Also, in late breaking news, some of the chickens are currently grounded – I let them out to play again yesterday and someone, Ginger I think, led the parade into the wooded bit of our garden – it took me about half an hour to catch them all again!)

How I line dry clothes in winter: my top five tips

Posted by louisa on Thursday 20 January 2011 in frugal, meta | 24 comments

Line drying clothes outside has been a near impossibility this winter – but aside from a load of bedding (including a duvet) that got vomited on (thanks Lily-dog), I’ve line dried everything else inside.

Here’s some of the tricks I’ve used:

1) Get lazier – leave stuff to wash later when the weather is better

Aside from when there have been sick dog incidents, I leave stuff like towels & bedding in the washing basket until they really need doing because our stash of spare clean ones are running low – or until it looks like it’ll be a nice enough day to dry a load outside. Our bedding really needs to line dry outside to blow out the animal fluff.

If heavy things like throws and cushions/pillows get dirty, they just get taken out of use until it looks like there will be a run of decent drying days (even if that means waiting until spring).

If I can’t see myself wearing an item of clothing until much later in the year – some piece of occasional wear like a nice dress or skirt – then they won’t get washed until later in the year either.

I’ll catch up washing everything eventually but in the meantime, it means there isn’t as much congestion for my limited airer space.

2) Get more organised

That congestion on the airer is my main problem so I make sure I wash loads regularly, without too much needing doing at once.

If I do get a backlog – for example when I was ill at the start of the year or when our washing machines pipes froze (then unfroze all over the kitchen), I separate by both colour (light/dark) and by weight of fabric – all coloured t-shirts etc in the first load, then heavier stuff such as jeans & hoodies in the next. The t-shirts will be dry in a day or so, emptying the whole airer for the heavier stuff, which takes three days or so to dry – rather than two mixed loads which would both take a 3+ days to dry. (Another reason to batch wash’n’dry towels rather than doing some in each load.)

Socks & underwear etc are used to fill up space whenever there is a bit of empty space. They get dried on the peg airer thing (see below).
 

The weekend’s pottering

Posted by louisa on Monday 17 January 2011 in meta | 10 comments

Some of the things we’ve done this weekend:

• Started crocheting a new blanket – I got some “kool kotton” yarn a few months ago and think it’ll make a lovely blanket. I’m doing a granny stripe, about 5ft long — not sure I’ll have the patience to make it 5ft square (it takes nearly half an hour to do each stripe!) but if I get it to about 3ft wide, it’ll be perfect for using on the sofa. (I’ve already doubled the stripe count since I took this picture.)
• Took two boxes of books and misc stuff to the charity shop – they’ve been sat in the dumping ground on the landing for about three months. Would be nice to get that space decluttered and usable!
• Chopped down a sycamore tree – we planned to cut it down about six weeks ago when it lost the last of its leaves but weather & illness stopped us. It’s now cleared the way for an apple tree.
• Bought two blackcurrant bushes – for some reason blackcurrants have been popping up in conversations recently and I felt inspired to buy them. I’ve realised I left a few decorative shrubs in the garden last year – they can come out and be replaced with fruit bushes like these. I’m also tempted by some raspberry canes – it’s definitely going to be the year of fruit this year (or more accurately, fruit year minus one, since things will need time to get bedded in).
• Sorted out my seed box – cor, I’ve apparently got high hopes for this year! Lots o’ seeds! I’m going to try to be realistic about my space/workload – I’ll give away some seeds now and probably some seedlings too, depending on how germination goes. Some stuff needs to be started in January – so I guess I’ll do that next weekend, weather permitting.
• Restocked our spice cupboard after a trip to Pakeezah – been running low on a few things – should be good for a few months now and at a fraction of the cost if we’d bought them at one of the big three supermarkets.
• I was at a drama rehearsal until 10:30pm on Friday and John cooked spare ribs for when I finally got home – they were pretty good and we’ve got some ideas on how to make them perfect. Every now and then I get severe cravings for good ribs and up til now, they’ve been one thing we can’t really cook at home – will be good to crack them!
• Had Kheer for the first time yesterday – sweet, creamy rice pudding with cardamom and pistachios, and John thought some rose water too. Yum! Will have that again – and will see if I can work out a recipe as well.
• Finally caught up on the sleep I’ve missed out on over the last fortnight – woo!
• Got overly proud at finding 5 eggs in the nest box yesterday morning – either Lime is back laying again after her moult (unlikely at the moment) or both of the new batch Black Rocks are laying now. We’ve had 4 eggs a day for the last few days, so going up to 5 was a thrill. Just Buff – who will lay white eggs – to debut now.

Aside from that and some other good eating, it was a lazy one. Was good though :)

Power out

Posted by louisa on Friday 14 January 2011 in meta | 9 comments

3:45pm. I’m writing this using battery power – our electricity blacked out just after I got back from my afternoon dog walk a few minutes ago.

When I lived in my old house in Leeds, we only had one extended blackout in the area – perhaps a couple of momentary power outs but nothing for more than a few seconds, except for a few hours one evening in early 2001 (it was that noteable that I remember it a decade later!). Since we moved here in September 2009 though, we’ve had a few ones of five or ten minute durations and what I would consider a lot (for inside a city) on momentary glitches – almost once a month or more. I suspect due to (not excess but noteable) building expansion in the area over the last few decades, we need more power than the circuits allow and it just can’t cope very well – and who invests in infrastructure these days?

Still, while it’s light outside, it’s not a big problem and it’s a useful reminder to check our own resiliency in these situations.

• Light
  It’ll be light enough to see by for the next half an hour or so – at least in the main rooms of the house which all have big windows. The stairs from the office up into the house are dark though as is the underground storeroom – I had to use the light from my phone to go in there and check it wasn’t an obvious problem with the fuse box.

  We do have torches but I only know where one of them is – on top of a kitchen cupboard near the garden door – and the batteries in that died a couple of months ago.

  If the power out continues through the evening, we have candles – but only tealights – in the storage cupboards in the porch. (And I’m going out anyway.)

• Heating
  Our boiler is gas-powered but needs electricity too. It’s mild today – we’ve not had any heating on all day – but if it gets cold later, John could light one of our two wood-burning stoves to provide heat in either the living room or office.
• Food
  Our oven, grill & microwave all need electricity, but our hob is gas and doesn’t need electricity to spark so we could still cook on that. Our kettle is electric too so water will have to be boiled on the hob. (If needs be, we could also use the top of the woodburner as a hob replacement.)

  We have a fridge & freezer which will only keep food cool for so long. We’re not due to eat any time soon so can leave them closed which will lengthen the coldness window somewhat. If this continues all night, we’ll have make some alternative arrangements – making meal plans to use things up ASAP and possibly driving some over to a friend’s/John’s mum & dad’s for temporary storage.

• Hot waters for baths & showers
  Our shower is electric so that’s out of the question. The bath is fed from the gas-powered boiler – but as I said, that won’t work without electricity. Annoyingly, I’d planned to wash my hair about now ahead of going out tonight but unless the power comes back on soon, that’s not going to happen. I can boil some water to have a body-wash but my hair will have to wait.
• Entertainment
  We spend a lot of time on our laptops or playing computer games – my battery is going and John’s won’t last forever either so they’re out. We also like reading and I like doing crafty stuff but it’s 4:15pm now and the light is starting to go – and I fear for our eyes if we do those by tealight light! If it continues and I was around this evening, we’ve got some board games which we might be able to manage in candlelight (hurrah for contrast on Scrabble tiles ;) ) but I don’t know what John will do on his own – he might end up going out too I guess. Right now, I’m tempted to go for a nap – that doesn’t need any light!

I guess we’re not in too bad of a state – lighting is the main problem as not only will it be difficult to move around the house soon (dogs and cats with better eyesight but less brains constantly under our feet) but it also limits our entertainment options. We should get more torches (and replace the batteries in the ones we have got) and I should find out where they live! (And keeping one next to the fuse box would be very useful too.) I think I’ve also learnt that I shouldn’t leave washing my hair until the last minute when I could have done it this morning ;)

6:00pm
The power came back on at around 5:30pm so was out for about two hours. John called around 5, stuck in traffic, saying the street lights and all the power were out through the whole area – not just our little block but back to the Leeds ring road.

The power came back on *just* as I finally found and lit the tealights. In hindsight, I should have used the dwindling daylight to find the tealights as they weren’t were I thought they were!

I had a very quick shower as soon as the power came back on – in case it went off again – serenaded by the neighbourhood’s burglary alarms. ;)

Will we regret our frugalness?

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 11 January 2011 in frugal, meta | 7 comments

At the weekend, I was catching up (online) with the Saturday papers from during my no spend period. We only buy the paper on Saturdays and not ever week – but I very much enjoy it when we do get it. I know I can read it all on the internet for free but every now and then it’s worth £1.90 to force me to get off my laptop for a few hours and it encourages me to read articles I wouldn’t seek out online.

So anyway, I was catching up with what I’d missed when I came across an article trying to be the opposite of every new year’s article: “How to be a better person in 2011: Abandon resolutions. Stop looking for a soulmate. Reject positive thinking“. The paragraph that caught my attention was, unsurprisingly, the one on frugality (about half way down the page):

I’m not sure I’d agree with the idea that “the most efficient way to save money, obviously, is to cut out big expenditures, not small ones” (because “an overpriced latte [and] breakfast croissant” each day is, say, £4, which is £20 a week, £80 a month, nearly £1000 a year — I don’t make any easily avoidable £1000 purchases a year) but I think the rest of the section is interesting. I think it’s especially interesting that the reason I came to it a week late was because I’d forfeited a small pleasure with a decent cost-to-happiness ratio for the sake of frugality ;)

What do you think? If your frugality requires present-time denial (and whose doesn’t?), do you think you might regret it in the long run?

A story: ten years ago, when we were students/young graduates, a then-friend of mine’s dad told her to never say no to a night out – not wild expensive nights out, just a trip to the pub or the cinema – with friends because she didn’t think she could afford it. Sure, he was encouraging her to get into debt but he knew that she’d regret it more in the long run if she didn’t enjoy her youth. I thought it was some of the best dad advice ever and that summer – my only six months of singledom as an adult – I was out doing something or other six nights a week, lots of “daily hedonistic expenditure”, and even though I lived extremely frugally at home, my bank account was in the red the whole time. I don’t regret that in the slightest: it was lots of fun.

I don’t think I’m denying myself too much now – we’re not extremely frugal and still have plenty of treats/fun – but there are ways, big and little, where we hold ourselves back. In ten years time, who knows how I’ll feel about that…?

My Really Good Goals for 2011

Posted by louisa on Monday 3 January 2011 in meta | 10 comments

I have set myself a list of goals for the year ahead – written up on my personal blog because they’re not all simple/DIY living related.

I did the same last year and found it useful – even if I did pretty much mentally abandon some mid-year. The most useful ones that weren’t a specific tick-off-done goal but one’s that helped shape my whole life – for example, I had a goal of “make a meal entirely out of things I’ve grown, raised, caught or killed” and in order to achieve that, I grew veg & herbs, raised chickens for the eggs and foraged for wild food.

My list is very simple/DIY living heavy this year! Here are the relevant ones:

• Increase the food output from our garden and cook a meal using things I’ve grown/raised/caught/killed completely off-grid
• Learn how to successfully take and propagate cuttings from every applicable type of perennial plant/shrub in the house/garden
• Make a piece of furniture for the house (woodworking)
• Make an entire outfit (to include conquering sewing patterns)
• Go fishing in the North Sea
• Buy no more than 12 items of clothing across the year*
• Specific food makery and/or eatery (because if I did them all separately it would take up half the list)
• Bake at least once a week
• Grow a sourdough starter and make bread from it
• Make a hard cheese
• Try ten vegetables (or veggie wild foods) that I’ve not tried before
• Build a cold smoking cabinet, try cold smoking more stuff & try hot smoking too
• Participate more in the real world – engage more with our local community and meet some internet people in real life

(* I’m going to explain this more fully tomorrow)

There were a few things I also really, really want to try but I didn’t think warranted goal status on that limited list:

• Keep records to track our usage of consumables – I mean, I want to know how many toilet rolls we use in a month, how much soap, how long it takes for us to get through a 10kg bag of rice etc. I might record absolutely everything we use for a month or so, and use that hardcore exercise to decide what is worth tracking longer term
• Have regular “eat only from the pantry & garden” weeks in the spring/summer, probably once a month
• Have more conscious “no spend” periods – minimum fortnights, possibly months, throughout the year
• Find a solution to the dog poo problem – something more useful than a cork up Lily-dog’s bum. Probably a dedicated wormery.
Collect and store more rainwater for use on the garden – we can’t use the main gutter at the back for rainwater but could still collect off the greenhouse, from a gutter at the front and possibly off the extension area too. To be explored and implemented.
• Make my own soap – something that’s been nagging at me for a little while
• Make my own vinegar – for some reason, I have a really strong desire to make pineapple vinegar (probably the efficiency of using up the scraps)
• UPDATED TO ADD: Make conscious efforts to reduce food waste at home – probably a period of monitoring it closely to see what we throw out (which I’ll post on here) as well as better menu planning.

It seems like 2011 will be a busy one!

I’m hoping that the last goal – getting to know more people locally and meeting internet buddies in real life – will help me meet some of my other goals — I’d love to find mentors for some of my learning-new-skills goals. If you fancy mentoring me, let me know! :)

What have you got planned for 2011?