Things I’m get unduly excited about at the moment

Posted by louisa on Friday 18 November 2011 in meta | 2 comments

The lovely people who have been reading this blog for a while may be aware that I get unduly excited about strange things. Like freshly cleared out chicken coops. And stupid puns. And graphs. And really obscure references in post tags for others in the small set of people who like both cartoons & mycology.

ANYWAY. It’s Friday afternoon (singalong Friday afternoon in our office) so I thought I’d think about some of things that made me all happy-happy-joy-joy. This is what I’ve been getting unduly excited about recently:

1. The pointy bit on, say, tomato puree tube lids that you turn upside down and use to pierce the foil on the top of the tube bit. (I wonder if they have an actual name because that’s kinda long winded.)

I used one the other day and was reminded of the genius – it does the job perfect and safely. I don’t have to hunt around for a knife or similar – and risks stabbing myself when said knife inevitably slips. It probably doesn’t add much, if anything, to the production time or costs (since the lids are just formed plastic anyway), and doesn’t impact the level of waste or whatever. Plus, if it’s a shaped spike, it makes the tomato puree come out in the fancy pattern, like a considerably less gross version of these. (Warning: link contains poo humour and a waste-of-plastic “gag gift”.)

2. How much quicker it is to defrost stuff in a bowl of water than just on the side

A 1lb/500g pack of diced lamb fully defrosted in about an hour the other day, versus probably all day if I’d not put it in water. Woo. And then I turned that lamb into a lovely casserole thing with lots of veggies and chickpeas. Double woo.

3. The thread slicer on a sewing machine.

I like to jump right in when it comes to crafts and rarely plan ahead enough to remember to grab a pair of scissors. And even if I do, it’s time consuming to pick them up whenever I need to make a quick snip. So the little (shielded) sharp bit of metal on the side of the machine is wonderful for me.

4. Seam/stitch rippers

And similarly, seam or stitch rippers, whatever you want to call them. So small yet so useful!

5. The fact that we might get to see the sea tomorrow

Great on two counts: 1) the sea, weeeee! and 2) dog in sea = hilarious.

6. That when I came to search for a picture of a tomato puree tube for the picture up top, by completely coincide I ended up on Recycle This and a photo I took two and half years ago.

I thought, “oh, I’ll use that, we use Morrisons tomato puree after all – oh! that’s our tomato puree!”

I heart internet coinky-dinks.

What are you getting disproportionately giddy about at the moment?

Stuff hangovers and aspirational buying

Posted by louisa on Thursday 17 November 2011 in bad buys, decluttering, personal finance | 5 comments

In this, the Decluttering season, I’ve been thinking a lot about stuff and about how it comes into our lives. My intention was to write this post about the idea of a “stuff hangover” but after reading an article on Get Rich Slowly, I think it’s about more than that.

I suffer from a stuff hangover in several different areas – I’ve changed who I am and what I do but I’ve got stuff hanging over from previous versions of myself. For example, when I moved into our last house in 2000, I was straight out of university and I brought over all my uni notes, books and accoutrement. We brought a large proportion of those books and notes over here when we moved too even though I have long ago abandoned my post-grad plans in that area of study. Another thing: about five years ago, John wrote a comic strip that was quite popular in its incredibly nerdy niche and we sold t-shirts, stickers and badges based on the “characters” and in-jokes. The comic eventually wound up and when shirts sales reduced to a tickle, we took the shop offline too – but we still have a couple of boxes of stock leftover. Together the books/notes and t-shirts take up a fair amount of our storage space and because I see it regularly, I know I need to be brutal and get rid of it.

But there are smaller things that I’m blind to – the twenty pairs of trainer socks I cleared out from my sock drawer the other week were a smaller example, as are the various bits of jewellery I decluttered during last week’s mini-challenge. The jewellery hardly took up any space at all but it was there – in a jewellery box I didn’t use except to keep that unused jewellery in. It all adds up.

So that’s stuff from past-louisa still cluttering up life for present-louisa – the Get Rich Slowly article I mentioned at the start is, in part, about accumulating clutter/wasting money on things present-louisa wants to buy in order to be the perfect possible version of future-louisa: aspirational buying. The article (and comments) talk about things like when people buying exercise equipment because it’ll “force” them to keep fit, or buying the perfect dress or winter coat just because you like them, even though you never go anywhere nice or cold. The main focus of the article is about “buy for every day not special occasions“, which is something I’ve thought about before in terms of not getting use out of things because they’re saved “for best” but in this circumstance, it’s also about choosing a home or car that suits your every day needs not the once a year family get together, or camping trip (in both cases, it’s usually cheaper to pick something smaller and rent a hall/camper van when you need it, rather than having to pay for the extra cost, insurance etc).

Five things

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 16 November 2011 in chickens, frugal, making | 3 comments

ONE. Two of the chickens are in moult – Ginger the Black Rock and Ms Mauve, an ISA Brown. There have been a lot of feathers about in the coop and run but neither have gone too bald (… yet?). Both have lost their tail feathers so look strangely round and last week both lost neck/head feathers, but Ginger’s have pretty much grown back now, so only Ms Mauve is left looking bit funny.

(I’m not keeping them/her in a separate run from the rest of the crew during the moult, just some of the others had just wandered outside of the run while I was taking photos. She followed shortly afterwards when she realised that there were leaves to scratch in out there, weeeee!)

TWO. Sticking to chicken related things, we’ve discovered that if chickens eat achocha, it taints their eggs like onions or (wild) garlic. I’ve been feeding the chicken some of the many, many achocha fruit we’ve had this season in an effort to get through them before the frost turns them all to mush. They weren’t sure about them at first but now om-nom-nom them up. We discovered the tainting issue – which isn’t unpleasant, per se, in savoury food but definitely there – on Monday, just after I’d taken them the remains of the entire 15ft tall wall of achocha to pick through. Monday’s eggs have been quarantined so they don’t accidentally get used for a dessert!

THREE. One of the reasons why I’ve not been writing much here is #NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month. All my spare (and not so spare) time has been sucked up by that, so not only have I not been blogging much, I’ve not really been crafting or playing either. But on the plus side, because I’ve been so focus, I’ve written over 60,000 so far and I’ve not been idly browsing the web or eBay so I’ve saved money by avoiding temptation. Woo!

FOUR. Despite #NaNoWriMo getting in the way of my crafting, I have had a couple of evenings off from writing (when I was too exhausted/distracted to write the day we found Kia and after a busy day in the garden at the weekend) and I’m only about four rows off finishing the back of one of my crochet tops. If I hadn’t been writing, it would be long finished by now – and I’ve got an idea of how I can make another one which is just as nice but even quicker. Because I don’t already have enough WIPs…

FIVE. A little paranoid perhaps but I’m rather aware how quickly we’re getting through our wood pile. I cut a load of wood on Sunday but we’ve already nearly got through the ones for the “big” stove in the office. I think we might start using the central heating more until the winter properly kicks in, so we can see what it holds: I’m worried about racing through all our wood supplies now, then finding ourselves without heating for a fortnight during a super cold spell like we did last year (our boiler broke at just the wrong time). I much prefer our free heating from wood than our expensive gas, but I think I’d rather have a few weeks of expensive warmth than risk having no warmth at all!

What’s going on in your life this week?

Declutter November mini-challenge week 3: the kitchen

Posted by louisa on Monday 14 November 2011 in decluttering | 8 comments

Our kitchen is just about smallest proper room of our house but is also the most tightly packed: all the usual food, utensils, crockery etc but also the more specialist stuff for our cooking-related hobbies such as John’s wine making and my preserving. I’m sure that’s not an unusual situation for simple living-type people.

At the start of the month, I was thinking about what needs to be in our store cupboard but in order to keep that full and productive, I think I need to sort through our pantries and clear some space: be realistic about what we won’t use at all or something we just need a bit of encouragement to use up (and not replace).

So the mini-challenge: in addition to your one-a-day decluttering, get rid of five extra items from your kitchen. They can be food, tools, pleasantly chintzy but impractically small chicken-shaped egg holders or whatever.

(I’m personally also going to take the opportunity to think about making more space the kitchen – even if it just means moving things to other parts of the house. We’ve got a mini-utility room now and I think more under-the-sink stuff could go down there. And used-once-in-a-blue-moon spare cups etc can go into storage somewhere else. That won’t be as satisfying as just outright getting rid of things but it’ll help us use the kitchen better so will be a step in the right direction.)

What can you get rid of? Can you move anything to somewhere else to make more usable space?

Declutter November – end of week 2

Posted by louisa on Monday 14 November 2011 in decluttering | 5 comments

So we’ve reached the end of Declutter November week 2 and I don’t know about you guys but our “out” pile is getting pretty big!

My items for this week:

• two works diaries from 5 and 6 years ago. I disliked the jobs then, and have no interest in who I had to call at 10am on 5th February 2004 now. (counted as one item)
• a complete ball of blue novelty yarn (I hate working with novelty yarn, not sure why I have this)
• 3 little baggies of beads (counted as one item)
• two books
• a couple of dead plants, that I’d been unsuccessfully trying to revive (not pictured) (counted as one item)

I was stood with all of the above, bar the plants, in the middle of our spare junk room last night, a little annoyed that they wouldn’t really make an impact on the clutter up there, when I realised two things:

1. The act of looking for & selecting those things is, at this habit-forming stage, more important than clearing lots of space, and
2. I was leaning on a big bag of “storage limbo” clothes that I had cleared out shortly after we moved here over two years ago and not looked through since.

So the big bin bag of clothes became my seventh item and lo, it also cleared a good amount of space!

And speaking of clothes…

Declutter November mini-challenge – the overlooked bits of your wardrobe

John and I had an evening of going through our wardrobes last Tuesday. John did the equivalent of my shirt sort through earlier in the year: trying on all his shirts and trousers to see what actually fitted him well/comfortably (answer: not very much as he’s changed size over the last couple of years and nothing really fitted his tall/broad frame properly before then either). I got rid of the shirts that I’d put into storage limbo back then, and also went through the overlooked bits of my wardrobe as defined by the challenge.

For the challenge, I needed five things but in the end, my get-rid stash included: six bras (which all have only been worn once or twice max because my boobs didn’t like them), three pyjama tops, four silky camisole sets, two jumpers, sandals, (nearly new, too big) trainers, (too narrow) cute starry flats, a belt, a messenger bag and three little handbags, some jewellery and a little jewellery box.

Between us, the result was seven (small-ish) bin bags, plus two carrier bags of stuff – and more importantly, much easier to navigate wardrobes. Win!

How is everyone else doing? Are your “out” piles growing too?

Like clean sheets on a bed

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 9 November 2011 in chickens | 2 comments

My favourite thing about cleaning out the chicken coop: the flat layer of fresh wood shavings always gives me the same good juju feeling as when we put clean sheets on our bed.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

A found hound

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 8 November 2011 in meta | 11 comments

Anyone who follows me on Twitter (particularly my @louisa_ account, which is where I do my non-simple living wittering) will know that most of my yesterday was swallowed up by finding a dog.

We were just coming back from our Lily-dog walk when this little hound came hurtling up our road towards the very busy A-road at the top. We stopped her just before the junction and found she was shaking with fear. We didn’t really notice until an hour or so later but she was bleeding from the mouth – she’d either been hit by something or run into something very hard and snapped one of her fangs.

John ran home with Lily and we used her lead to bring the little dog back to the safety of our front garden while we tried to find her owner. The dog calmed down a lot when we popped her on the lead and walked well beside me, making us think she’s used to that and not free-roaming.

We found her tag: her name is Kia and there was a phone number on it too – but when we dialled the number, the line was dead. I spent the next hour walking her around the street (and calling in the woods) to see if anyone was looking for her, and asking every person with a dog who walked past if they recognised her. As I’m sure is the case in most areas, everyone with a dog is at least on nodding terms with everyone else with a dog, and many can link dog and human. While I was doing that, John phoned the (non-emergency number) police and the dog warden, but no one had reported her missing and the dog warden wasn’t available to pick her up from us “until tomorrow”.

By five ish, I hadn’t had any luck finding her owners on the street and I was very conscious about the blood around her mouth – bloody saliva rather than dripping blood at this point, so I took her up to the vets for a quick checkup (which is where we found out about the broken tooth) and for a microchip scan (there wasn’t one). Unfortunately I had to wait for longer than expected for a lift back from the vets and Kia got stressed out waiting: the traffic, the dark… She jumped on my knee but my hugs weren’t calming enough and the anxiety aggravated her bleeding tooth – it started dripping with blood, big dark drips all over my jeans and the floor. We were both very grateful when we finally got home.

We fed her – soft food, because of her tooth – and left her to sleep on the sofa in our office yesterday evening (with regular visits & wee breaks), and then overnight. She is very sweet and seems largely house-trained (she weed & did a little poo on newspaper overnight, but that’s possibly because our rhythms are out of sync), but we didn’t want her in the rest of the house because we don’t know how she is with cats (she’s met them and not gone for them but better safe than sorry) and we thought that Lily-dog might appreciate some alone time with us.

John and I always stop for lost dogs, or dogs walking down the road by themselves. We always have done, even well before we could think about having our own dog – I think because there is always the possibility that if we couldn’t find its owner, it would force our hand into keeping it. I think we both felt that way about Kia when it became apparent that there wasn’t a breathless owner with an empty leash just around the corner — we’ve idly talked about wanting another dog (usually when I’ve been looking at spaniel rescue websites – a naughty habit!) but know that everything is pretty settled in the house at the moment, and it would be a bit silly to rock the boat just for another pooch. But when one turns up like this… However, it’s been a really useful lesson: I’ve learnt that I don’t want another dog right now. Lily-dog has separation anxiety and needs a lot of attention, she likes being an only child (she is fine about sharing us with the cats but doesn’t even like sharing me with the chickens!) and I don’t think it would be right by her for us to bring anyone else into the house as anything more than a guest. She seemed jealously mopey whenever we paid any attention to Kia and while she is the most gentle dog in the world normally, I could tell she’d get grouchier over time and that might lead to snapping. That said, she actually got on with her much better than she gets on with most dogs: not as shy as she normally is, even around our friends’ much smaller Westie.

John took the two of them on a short walk together this morning and he stopped more people to ask if they knew her – they didn’t but she got lots of hugs, and even one half-offer of adoption. Then the dog warden arrived out of the blue at our house about an hour ago now. We had been worried about her going to the dog warden since they only keep the animals for seven days, and if they can’t be rehomed then they’re put to sleep. I also have a stereotype in my head of a gruff, angry man – but the guy who turned up here was lovely. He sat down and had hugs with her before leaving, and assured us that she’s exactly the type of dog who the Dogs Trust/RSPCA love to pick up: sweet, house-trained, not too big, very pretty in a scruffy, mad-eyebrows type way and in possession of the second softest ears in the world (jealous Lily-dog’s teddy bear ears still has to have the number one slot or she’ll sulk. Kia gets bonus points though for having actually effective ears, not like Lily’s hard-to-position flaps ;)).

She’s clearly someone’s pet and I hope she finds her way home again, or at least to another loving home (we’ve left our posters up around the area, so we can pass on that she’s with the dog warden or even if that half offer of adoption becomes more serious). A few people – offline and online – have suggested that she might be a victim of the recession: someone pushed her out because they couldn’t afford to keep her any more. That’s another reason why I wanted to track down the owner ourselves – because I don’t want to even think that someone who lives near me would abandon a trusting pet near a main road. But I’ll admit I’ve learnt something a little dark about myself too: I can now see why other people don’t stop to help animals. We had to have/risk somewhere to contain an unknown dog for an unknown period of time, I had to take on a charge at the vet because I couldn’t leave her bleeding (it wasn’t much, just a nurse consultation charge even though I saw the vet, but if she’d needed emergency treatment for a cut or something, I’d probably have paid for that too), and we’ve put in a lot of time trying to find her owners, taking her to the vet etc. If she’d been more likely to potentially face being put to sleep at the end of seven days, we’d have been reluctant to hand her and would have had to find a shelter or someone to take her instead. We’ll still help stray dogs in the future – but I really can see why other people might not feel able to take it on.

Why I’m writing this here: I know that most/many/all the people who read this love their animals dearly but just in case anyone is in financial dire straits and needs to give up their pets, PLEASE contact a shelter about it or re-home it directly yourself. Shelters and rescue places may have a waiting list but they make it clear they don’t judge people about their reasons for giving up their animals. If your pet needs medical care and you get housing or council tax benefit (the actual benefit, not just a reduction), you might be able to use a PDSA for free/very cheap treatment. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don’t just abandon them :(

UPDATE: just as I’m finishing up here, we’ve had a call from the dog warden – her owner has called to claim her! Hurrah! Apparently she got seriously spooked by fireworks (so maybe even over the weekend) and the poor scaredy pooch JUMPED OUT OF HER OWNER’S BEDROOM WINDOW (which may explain the broken tooth). We’re so glad she’s found her way home though :)