TLC

Not much spinning has been done around these parts lately. When I moved blogs I expected to be doing a lot more spinning and a lot more blogging about it. The name Freya's Rainbow comes from my spinning wheel - Freya - and well, the rainbow was supposed to be all of the lovely yarn that we would be producing together. It didn't happen.

When I bought my wheel, she was in good condition, merely requiring a drive band to get going. I had a full few months of spinning happily away before I forgot to put her up out of pingling range; and walked into the dining room to find Elsa had pulled apart the scotch tension mechanism, stretching the small springs well past the point of no return.


Last week I finally got around to ordering an Ashford spinning wheel maintenance kit (I bought mine from handspinner.co.uk). This had the scotch tension springs and enough other spares to do a full wheel service.

I started out by disassembling the easy to strip parts and washing the whole wheel down. There was actually quite a lot of grease, dust and rust to remove when I got into it. As I went, I polished each piece - it turns out that winter balm makes for a very good wood conditioner.

I replaced the leather strap that connects the treadle to the conrod (the baton that connects the treadle to the crankshaft and makes the wheel turn every time you put your foot down). I assumed mine would need replacing in the future, but I couldn't believe how worn it was when compared to a brand new one:

As I stripped it down, I realized a little TLC had been in order for quite some time. All of the hooks and metal fixings were tarnished and in need of replacement:

A new scotch tension (the only thing that really needed to be done was, of course, the most finnickety and difficult):

 A final coat of polish:

We are up and running again:

I am a little out of practice, it would seem.

Springtime iced tea

The living is easy in spring! The back door is open and we flow in and out of the house as the mood takes us. Yesterday I managed to get through a lot of housework, cooking and washing up. The weather has been lovely - warm and breezy. I smoked through 5 loads of laundry and I have another two under my belt this today. The first, crisp, line dried bedding of the year will be going on the bed this evening. Bliss.

 

 
Spring and summer are months for mooching off of mother nature. No extra energy (money) need be applied to warming the house, drying the laundry...or making tea. The herbs in the back border are springing up with no effort on our part. Yesterday was also Earth Day, time to celebrate its gifts! Our patio is a sun trap that is usually several degrees warmer than the street and yesterday it was warm enough to brew sun tea. I stumbled upon this concept on an American blog a few years back and have since made a few different versions and read lots of different recipes and methods. Always on the lookout for ways to reduce our fuel use and keep our kitchen cool in the summer, neither of these methods require use of the kettle. Also, you get tea!

There are a few hard and fast rules. Consistent direct sun and warm air temperature are required. Alternatively you can brew tea in the fridge if you leave it to steep for long enough - that method is actually considered safer, as lukewarm water left for several hours may be a breeding ground for bacteria. The jar should be cleaned thoroughly to reduce the chances of nasties ending up in your tea. I have made few different versions, but today's is very light. When summer is in full swing I will be making a huge jar that lasts through to the next day. The larger the quantity, the longer it will need in the sun.

* * * * * *

 Springtime Sun Tea - 2 servings

1 pint cold water

1 1/2 tsp loose leaf black tea

2 large sprigs each of fresh mint and lemon balm

Sugar and ice to serve (optional)

Place your tea ingredients into a lidded glass jar and place outside in direct sunlight for at least 4 hours. Alternatively place in the fridge for at least 6 hours, until desired strength is reached. Shaking the jar occasionally speeds up the process.

Place the jar in the fridge until cold. Strain into glasses and serve.  

* * * * * *

This is a very different tea drinking experience to hot tea. Lukewarm and cold brewing draws out different compounds at different rates to boiling water. I hate hate HATE chamomile tea with a passion - or at least I did until I made it in a jar in the fridge. Lovely stuff! I will never ever make iced tea from hot brewed tea again. That method brings out the bitter tannins and roastiness -  this one draws out the delicate summery fruity, floral flavours.

I also happen to know that a tot of whiskey or rum and some soda water doesn't go amiss in this after the kids are tucked up in bed. Ahem. 

Life is maintenance

In these bodies we will live,
in these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love,
you invest your life

- Mumford and Sons 

Why did it take me so long to embrace this? I rallied against the day to day details of life maintenance for so long - and I never did achieve the freedom from ordinariness that I was striving for.

We live in a world of outsourcing. From the cradle to the grave, we have an endless stream of services to take care of us and our loved ones, from the TV babysitter, through nightly dinners of preprepared carrots and ready-seasoned chicken, to the heart specialists that put us back together when we have consumed too much, burnt through too much cortisol and not moved enough. If they fail? We have the undertaker to take care of our dead. The maintenance of humans has been outsourced.

The most frugal among us have so much 'stuff' - and the means to acquire more - that only the wealthiest of households would have had 60 years ago. For all our household conveniences - we have just upped the level of day to day maintenance actually required to run our lives. We don't produce it ourselves much these days - we have a whole country of cheap labour east of here to do that for us. And when we take delivery of it, we do our best to avoid maintaining it - by throwing more money and stuff and time at it.

The things we have, inspite of all our mod cons, seem to require much more maintenance. My great grandmother didn't have wall to wall carpeting, and a worktop food processor complete with 48 hard to clean attachments. She had wood or stone floors and a broom, mop and a rug beater. A knife and a whisk are sufficient food processors if you have to work 40 hours to buy a kitchen aid that you rarely use because you hate to clean it. Her laundry day was hard graft - but I suspect she actually washed a lot less stuff and she wore an apron daily to reduce the number of clothes she got through. We have a hoover, a steam cleaner and biannual use of a carpet washer. All of them are ugly and take up a lot of space. And all of them need to be wiped over and cleaned themselves occasionally. Meanwhile, I still make use of a mop and broom and rug beater for other areas of the house.

It seems the whole of modern life is an attempt to escape the maintenance to get to the fun. But the 'fun' comes at a huge price, if it comes at all. Only the super rich who can outsource everything with no care for money or paid employment have a hope of escaping this. For the rest of us - the adverts lie. And none of us can escape the environmental costs wrought by our increasingly disposable, frantic lives. More stuff, more disposable, cheaply built stuff, is wreaking havoc with our planet and our quality of life. 

Over the last few years I have taken back that which is mine to maintain. I love maintaining my humans and I love the beauty of a garden in full bloom - healthy allotment produce for the win. Laundry is much easier when you love the clothes that you are laundering. Keeping your home tidy is much more enjoyable when you think the furniture is beautiful and the textiles are worth looking after - especially so if you have poured your creativity and time into making them or refurbishing them. None of this has to cost a lot of money. I like doing a little handwashing now and again so a few delicate hand knits only add to my enjoyment of life. I love sweeping and I hate hoovering - guess who won't be having wall to wall carpet in our forever house.

I think this sums up simple living in a nutshell. The motivating values for everyone may be different, but the result is the same - the taking back of the day to day maintenance of our lives and fully embracing it, appreciating it and aligning it with our values as much as is possible - and realising that there is more room for fun and excitement when you spend less time running away from life. Life is maintenace, so you might as well make a life worth maintaining.

R&R

Well, sitting in the garden didn't work - I have spent the best part of three weeks off of work with what appears to be a post viral syndrome. Two weeks of that I was mostly housebound - and unable to do  anything that would ordinarily make that a pleasant experience - no crochet, no gardening, the barest minimum of housework before muscle fatigue set in and I sat down, tremor wracked. Even reading for long periods was impossible through the soupy haze that has been my brain.

Things are a little better and I can now leave the house without my legs collapsing under me after just a few paces - all good. But this disconcerting experience has left a lasting impression. With far too much down time to mull things over, I realized that my basic level of organisation in this little house isn't good enough to carry us through periods of incapacity or extreme stress. Which is a little irksome as I had had an inkling of this before and had just begun my spring cleaning when forced idleness struck. My Beloved did his very best to corral the kids and keep on top of things, but we are still playing catch up now.

Our decluttering efforts of the past few years have worked wonders and we still regularly reassess our possessions and delete as needed. We are left however with a marked lack of beauty and coordination, which is very noticeable when you are staring at four walls for days on end. Especially the bits of wall with subtle never before noticed crayon scribbles. And the slightly chipped skirting boards...that connect to the very chipped door frame. Also that annoying frayed carpet edge that the cat keeps pulling. And what is with those CURTAINS?

In the absence of action, I have begun reading Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson - it is a fabulous book, a bit like an intensive home economics course for those who were born into a time of food technology GCSEs. Everything you need to know about keeping house is in here and whilst much of it is advanced finickety housekeeping I will never use, all the basics are covered - routine setting, cleaning, menu planning, pantry stocking and laundry techniques are all in there.

There have been bright spots too. The Kalanchoe that we were given when we discovered we were expecting Gus 5 years ago has flowered once again - for the second time ever. I have cut it back to its base, watered it, de-aphided it, cut it back again; and finally a few months ago moved it from the dingy east facing kitchen window to the last chance saloon that is the west facing living room. It flowered last week and has earned its keep.  If everything else has got on top of me, the fact that I have managed to keep a houseplant alive for five whole years - and that it sits on a windowsill amongst several other very much alive houseplants - is a symbol of my ever increasing domestication.

I bought a cyclamen to celebrate.

Homemade laundry powder, finally!

I haven't made laundry liquid in such a long time, partly because I so rarely go into the city centre to purchase Borax substitute - it really does make all the difference. Instead I have been using all kinds of things - the odd box of cheap commercial powder from the corner shop, grated soap and soda crystals and even bottles of shampoo and shower gel I received for Christmas that I can't use on my body for whatever reason. All quite frugal, but they lack a certain...homeliness. I loved making my own laundry detergent; I loved washing Gus's nappies with it. Such a silly thing to feel empowered by, but I honestly think that making the things we need from basics is good for the soul.

In a fit of enthusiasm I ordered a box of Borax substitute at extortionate price (£2.55, most of that is postage) from Amazon yesterday - only to walk into our local hardware store and find it sitting on the shelf, a freshly stocked new line, at a very reasonable £1.30. I have emailed to cancel the Amazon order, I bought two boxes for that price and supported a small family business at the same time.

Laundry powder makes so much more sense than having gallons of laundry liquid stashed away in our tiny kitchen and so I will be making that in future. There seems to be one recipe on the Internet that has done the rounds since the dawn of time homemaking based blogs. I have no idea where it originated. This is basically that recipe with a little more washing soda added - we live in a very hard water area. I used two bars of homemade olive castille soap for this which made it even cheaper and gives it a pleasant scent. 

* * * * * *

Laundry Powder (hard water)

6 cups (loosely packed) grated soap
3 cups soda crystals
2 cups Borax substitute

Mix the ingredients together in a large bowl. Use a stick blender to pulse the mixture to break up the soap a little. Mix thoroughly with a spoon and store covered in a cool dry place, shaking occasionally to ensure thorough mixing.

Use scant 1/6 cup per load

 * * * * * *

After Christmas this bread tin was full to the brim with a fraction of the chocolate we received - far more than our healthy annual family quota (not that we keep an official tally or anything - it's just this years haul was particularly monstrous, added as it was to the tail end of the Halloween treats. Roll on Easter!). We have used as much of it as possible in hot chocolate and cooking, palmed some off onto visitors and now the rest is hidden away in a small bag

Which means I now have a fancy, if a little large, laundry tin. I will probably double the recipe next time so that it is at least half full!

Organising seeds

Today I spent an hour organising the seed tin. The tin starts every year beautifully ordered and usually ends it in a state of utter disorder. This year as you can see, it isn't too bad - showing just how much time it spent resting on the shelf, untouched, last year .

I am ashamed to admit that many of the packets have been mistreated. Almost all of the flower seeds are spoilt after the tub they were in was left out in the rain. Millions of years of genetic heritage and hundreds of generations of horticultural tradition and I leave them out in the rain to sprout and decay in their packets. These were obviously the first to be culled from the collection. Of the seeds that escaped being left out in the rain many were half open, spilling their contents into a unique seed mix in the bottom of the tin.

Next to go were the out of date seeds. I've previously kept 'expired' seeds for a couple of years past their sow-by date and have had some success germinating them.  This year I have kept a single out of date packet of Purple Calabash tomatoes - a very ugly but delicious tomato that is my all time favourite. I shall try and germinate the five or six seeds that are left and save some of the seed for next year.

Thankfully, 2 packets of flower seeds survived. Firstly, sunflower seeds collected from our biggest sunflower head last year. Secondly:

The seed sachet survived intact even if the sowing and growing information is lost. I love this plant. I bought one the year we moved in, planted it in deep shade (I really had green thumbs back then) and watched it struggle valiantly on for a few months before it succumbed to mildew. I have never seen a plant for sale since and finally invested in the seed last year. The two seedlings I managed to germinate were killed in the slugpocalypse of 2012. I feel I owe it to this pack of seeds to pass on it's genetic line.

This year I have gone back to organising the seed sachets by family followed by earliest sowing date. As first sowings are made, the sachets can be moved to the back of their family until we come full circle next January, or moved forward a month or so ready for a second sowing. Each family currently has it's own tub - all of those Chinese takeaways dishes stretched to full value.

Despite repeated promises to the contrary every single year, I know that I will be buying more seeds. Browsing the catalogue that arrived last week (self sabotage in action - why did I ever open the thing? See how I could never live up to my promise?) I stumbled across a plant that promises to solve a several decade long lifestyle shortcoming (more on that when the seed arrives) - and well, it would be wrong to order just one packet of seed wouldn't it?

We are going to need a bigger tin when the new seeds arrive, but everything is now in order. And so tomorrow the very best bit begins.

The future mosaic

We tolerate a chipped mug in this house. Chipped plates, bowls and ovenware also pass muster. When things break into more than two pieces however, it is usually time to replace them. It has been a mixed year for pottery in this house. Above are a few charity shop wins - a stoneware biscuit barrel (£2.00), a salt pig (£2.50) and one of two Mason Cash no 24 pudding basins (£1.50 the pair), all picked up over the last few months. Much of my life is furnished with secondhand stuff and it isn't slim pickings. I usually manage to find beautiful, useful or salvageable things even in our tiny local charity shop.

The losses began with a near death experience in early December. The kitchen crockery cupboard launched itself from the wall, tumbling the full 2 metre width of the kitchen. It dented the sink, sheared the oven door off and glanced my elbow. The casualties were surpsingly few, no humans thankfully, but all the other good bits - the 'forever' pottery, were lost. One of a pair of Hornsea salad bowls we inherited when we moved into our first flat together. The beautiful blue pouring bowl we dug out of the seconds at Made in Cley on holiday. The cheap tide-us-over ugly mugs remained (of course!) chipped but intact. One day later, the other Hornsea bowl met with a freak accident of its own.

Fast forward to the beginning of January. There is a beautiful blue pie dish, a gift to me from my beloved and also rescued from the seconds basket of a potter, this time in Derbyshire. The beautiful pie dish is on the kitchen side, the remainder of the christmas nuts contained within. Also in this house is a cat. This adorable but dizzy/disobedient cat has a habit of getting up onto the worktop and on this particular day in January, launched herself at the worktop, skidded across the worktop and off of the other side, taking the pie dish with her. Nice crocks, won't you agree?:

Finally (at least I hope so) the  deep stoneware casserole dish cracked as it came out of the oven last week. This was particularly annoying as just the week previously I had been admiring the nicely seasoned finish I had managed to build up with my diehard lasagne habit - deep dish lasagne, a revelation! This was another seconds that was in turn gifted to us - secondhand seconds - and we really can't complain after a solid two years of use can we?

I priced up a little shopping spree to buy brand new replacements and realised just how good we have had  it all of these years on cast-offs, seconds and hand me downs. Reaaallllly good.

I now have quite the hoard of pretty, coordinating, broken crockery pieces, so expect a mosaic project at some point in the future, when I have finished mourning my losses.

Flying

For the last fortnight I have been following Flylady to get my housework done. I have tried this before and couldn't get on with the system at all. Three years later with a greatly decluttered house and slightly older children we are making progress - almost flying, you might say. Much of it is gold - housework is so much easier when you have someone telling you exactly what needs to be done in manageable bitesized chunks; and it includes a daily inbuilt decluttering regime if you require it. However...

I find the main Flylady site a little unwieldy (especially on my phone) and the pace a little plodding. You can adapt the routines as you see fit, but if it's anything like my attempts at meal planning, then I will be writing and rewriting my plan come February. And then I remebered one of my almost forgotten favourite haunts and the helpful folks who have had a FlyLady weekly thread running for some years now. Everything is written out in the first post, there are different levels of domestic mastery to attain on a daily basis and by the end of the week your house will be looking much better. By the end of the month, gleaming, I imgaine. So from next week I will be following that plan. This will do nicely until my work rota is simplified in January and I can come up with one that is all my own.

This is giving me an excuse to lurk around the Old Style MoneySaving board over at Money Saving Expert, which delights me no end. I frequented that board often back when we were taking small, frugal steps and really wish I had more time to spend there. If I am going to procrastinate over my domestic duties, there are worst places to do it. The whole board is geared up for home produced frugality, homecooked meals and also a great thread about prepping for TEOTWAWKI on a budget. What's not to like?

So, does anyone fly with FlyLady? And I know there must be a few MSE Oldstylers out there amongst you?

Busy busy...

The great pumpkin/haribofest of 2012 has been and gone, birthdays, anniversaries, bonfires, barbeques (yes, you can get away with that sort of thing down here in October), fireworks, playdates, commitee meetings and more overtime than I ever care to do again.

Most of these things are good things. I literally look forward to halloween all year. Electronic zombie door chimes on sale in August? Well there's a form of gratuitous consumption everyone should get on board with! I like bonfires and fireworks too. But good god did it all get a bit much these past few months. I feel like I have lurched from event to housekeeping crisis to event to work crisis, day in and day out since September. The clocks going back just after a run of night shifts brought things to a head and I still haven't quite recovered my rhythm. The ridiculous thing about all this? It was partly by design.

Money is time for most people, me included. For every hour of overtime I do, the wispy threads of my daily routine snag and break. The rest of life falls apart. I have written entire posts over at The Simple Green Frugal Co-op encouraging others to manage their time wisely and to see that paid work can actually cost money not only  in terms of transport and other overheads, but how much you spend trying to catch up on all the cooking, cleaning and domestic productivity. 10 days straight and I am spinning, and not in a nice producing yarn sort of way. £40 in taxi fares where I failed to wake up at 5am and get my rear into gear on time for the bus. £15 in nice comforting food for my shifts, beacuse I sure as hell couldn't turn my bodyclock around enough to prepare anything from scratch.

Still, I can do better; and in the light of all of these fails, I am grateful. I have  job to go to, many others don't. I have a job where I can take on a few extra hours as needed, again many people would dearly love that opportunity. I have family and friends still with me whose birthdays and anniversaries are to be celebrated whilst we are all still together on this earth and for that I am truly grateful. This past halloween, I lit candles for the few who have left us during this past year; and those who vanished long before whose influence reverberates down the years as is they have merely stepped out of the room for a moment - and once again my habit of losing touch and not quite getting round to sending that email has left me smarting. A lesson for this year.

For those of you across the pond who are celebrating  Thanksgiving, I wish you a lovely day and hope you have much to be grateful for. I hope the same for all of you home here too.

Wombling again.

I hate buying things new when there is a whole world of other people's cast offs to furnish my home and life with. I pull things out of skips, friends know to give me first dibs on their unloved belongings and I love trawling eBay and charity shops for bargains, but I rarely get the time to do it these days. My children's tolerance for shopping is quite rightfully low in the best of circumstances (toy shops), they appreciate trawling around looking at old furniture and bric-a-brac even less.

Usually I have to stay close to home, the only charity shop within quick walking distance. I dropped in on saturday and returned home with a set of bright cheerful curtains and some dining plates. The curtains cost  £3.50 and are handmade linen blend fabric, fit my windows perfectly and replace the horrible thin nylon drapes (£20 in a sale and not worth a fraction of that) that I bought in desperation from Wilkos last year. One of those curtains now temporarily covers a nursing chair that I acquired from a friend and am looking for time to reupholster, so has not gone entirely to waste. At some point I will add a lining to these new curtains in preparation for the winter, until then they are a huge improvement on the old.

My womble nature does need to be reigned in. Following the great declutter of 2011, new rules apply. I have a list of things that we need and buy only from that list. At the moment, the list does include room for some pretty, decorative items, though my preference is that they are functional too. Our nice decluttered house needs to be turned into a home. As it is my birthday today, my request was that we went a little further afield and looked around secondhand shops - wild thing, I know. My day was a success, though I am still looking for a 4mm crochet hook and a cutlery drainer, I did tick off a few items of clothing from the list.

Occasionally I come across something that I only realise I need in the moment I find it:

Gus is off for his first ever solo trip away from home with Gran and Grandad in a few days. It was only when I stumbled upon this I realized we don't have suitably sized luggage for him. It should be adequate for all the adventures he will have in the next few years; and in between trips can store out of season clothing. A sprinkle of bicarb to freshen it and a rub with some oil and it will be as good as new. I didn't think I could top my delight at the curtains, but this is one of my favorite finds ever and Gus seems pretty happy with it too.

What thrifted treasures have you found recently?

Fun

I am sorry for the slow replies to your lovely comments. I am not getting in front of a PC much at the moment. I am in awe of people with babies and toddlers who are organised enough to blog everyday! I am reading your blogs through the wonder of mobile technology in the quiet moments when I am sat with a sleeping baby on me, but commenting is difficult on such a tiny screen.

Instead of screen time, we have been having lots of other types of fun. Allotmenting, foraging, walking, baking, gardening, painting, play-doughing, crocheting, eating - all of which I hope to find the time to tell you about this week...

Though I think this picture tells you everything you need to know. That's what happens when you pile a whole week of fun onto the dining room table. That and TV dinners.

When we're cleaning windows...

Thank you for all your lovely messages regarding The Girl. Still just peachy and easy going. Hope it stays that way! 

In a feat of extraordinary organisational ability (for me, anyway), Monday turned out to be quite a productive day. My biggest fear was that being alone all day with two small children, my relatively new-found and quite fragile grasp of routine housekeeping would fall apart completely. Whilst the influx of new 'stuff' that comes with a new person has left us space challenged once again; the untidiness isn't catastrophic.

The windows at the back of the house have required cleaning for a while and Monday was a gloriously sizzling day. Whilst The Girl slept, The Boy and I knuckled down to righting the wrongs inflicted on our windows over the year (yes, a whole year since I last tackled them, slovenly I know) by salt and dust laden wind and rain, sticky fingers, kitty paws and more recently, wax crayon doodles.

The last time I tried to clean them I used a generous dose of Ecover washing up liquid and a terry nappy to wash the worst off, followed by a vinegar and newspaper buff. Unfortunately the dish soap had no effect whatsoever on the salt deposits and I gave up and just left them at that. Turns out the secret to clear unsalted windows is a tiny amount of Ecover (less than a teaspoon in a few litres of water) with a good slug of vinegar added at the washing stage. This even, with a little bit more elbow grease, got rid of the wax crayon doodles that I had expected would need to be scraped off.

If you can enlist a willing toddler to do most of the hard washing work for you, and just rewipe any bits that they miss, so much the better - though perhaps reserve their slightly sloppy efforts to the outside of the windows, unless you want a soaked carpet. I have been trying to get The Boy to take responsibility for the messes he has a hand in creating; and whilst it can be a running battle to get him to pick toys up or tidy away his laundry, he will engage happily in any household task that involves bubbles.

After washing down the windows thoroughly, a generous spraying with a 50/50 cooled boiled water/vinegar mix (we have very hard water around here, hence the boiling), buffed vigorously with crumpled sheets of newspaper, left them gleaming:

The ink from the newspaper did run and smudge on the plastic window frames, but it was nothing that a damp cloth and the vinegar solution couldn't remove.

We spend around £25 on cleaning 'ingredients' every year, excluding the laundry - about £14 of which buys a five litre bottle of washing up liquid (the current one has done a solid 18 months and is just running out), the remainder going on soda crystals (which also go in with the laundry), bar soap (any hard soap will do), bicarbonate of soda, citric acid, vinegar and a bottle of thin bleach (used very sparingly it lasts a few years), along with the odd replacement scrubbing brush/broom head. All of the cloths are re-purposed from old socks, t-shirts and terry nappies.These simple ingredients, used in the right way, allow even lazy me to make things sparkle with relatively little effort. Also, if you are smearing your windows with expensive chemical laden commercial cleaners that carry a room ventilation warning, toddler labour is something you just can't engage, another great reason to invest in a few cheaper, greener cleaning basics...

How do you clean your house?

Preparing for winter part 2

Whilst we don't regularly suffer extreme weather conditions in the UK (last year being an 'extreme' winter for us), we do have four 'proper' seasons. I like winter weather, as long as I am prepared for it. I like the cosy feeling of being wrapped up and impervious to the gales and to the drenching rain. I like being swathed in layers of fabric and hats and gloves and scarves, big chunky boots and socks.

I am shockingly under prepared in the clothing department for winter this year. The dull winter coat that I have sported for the last two years, that I bought out of desperation just as cold weather set in, was never really that warm and never fitted my long top heavy frame properly. Last year's snow and slush was a miserable experience as the icy winds went straight through me - one of the reasons that I couldn't wait for spring to arrive this year. My lovely winter boots that have seen me through the last few years fell completely apart this spring - zip and soles - and the quoted cost of repairing them was astronomical. This year I need to replace almost everything and don't want to succumb to desperation and part with more cash for less value than I have too. 

Whilst Operation Preparing for Winter Part 1 isn't going so well (as you can see from all that still naked glazing and wispy curtains), clothing us is going rather better. I rediscovered the joys of eBay this week and for the princely sum of £21.78 (inclusive of P&P) I have bought my own and the kids' winter coats.

I didn't expect to find a full length wool coat, in my size and in mint condition, within 5 minutes of beginning to look - a coat I actually lusted after brand new a couple of years ago but that was way out of my budget, so this was obviously (obviously) meant to be. It certainly made the frustrating hour I spent recovering my long abandoned eBay and Paypal accounts worthwhile. The Boy is delighted with his faux-sheepskin hooded coat and has been parading around the house in it for much of the day. The Girl's coat is in the post and I am just hoping that she likes purple.  Buying second-hand clothing makes some people squeamish, but when it comes to expensive garments like outerwear that you want to last a few years, it makes perfect sense. It is also the way to go for children - The Boy's first coat cost an arm and a leg new, for just four months of wear. This coat should see me through several years - at least four or five, hopefully more - if I look after it. It is warmer, longer and more attractive than anything I could buy on the high street for the same price, if I could buy anything for the same price. It is definitely worth the time and effort of searching regularly (out of season) for whatever you need.

There is still plenty to be done. I need to dig out and launder the winter accessories. Gloves need to be strung together so that when they are inevitably lost, they are lost in pairs and won't feel lonely. The Girl won't be old enough for shoes and I feel a woolly-bootie craft project coming on. The adults in this house could probably do with some nice warm woolly socks too, though I have never actually finished any of the knitted pairs that I have started and there is no reason to suspect that this year will be any different. I am even considering giving primitive crocheted socks a go as I imagine that they grow faster and less complainingly than their knitted counterparts. Pyjamas and slippers and robes need to be sourced too as we are determined to keep the heating off as much as possible this year. The to-do lists are getting ever longer, but actually this one is much more manageable than the house prep - and the thought of being wrapped up in swathes of warm fabric when this lovely warm weather fades makes me almost excited about the prospect of a cold winter.

And yes, I understand that Sod's law dictates that this will be the mildest winter on record. Better to make hay whilst the sun shines, however, just in case.

Information is power

I have begun recording our gas and electricity meter readings again, on paper, once a week, in the hope that we will be able to set a realistic usage reduction goal. I have finally found a use for the 'set reminder' alarm function on my phone and now it beeps at me every Wednesday and tells me to read the meters. You can of course do this by looking at your bill statements - though if they are anything like ours, they probably appear to be deliberately complicated and misleading and it will be simpler to do it yourself.

Yesterday I moved our energy monitor from the dingy corner of the kitchen where it has sat virtually ignored for a year to a prominent spot on the living room mantelpiece. You don't actually need one of these gadgets to monitor your usage (I would never have bought one as they cost the best part of a weeks food budget) but if you can borrow one or get one free from your electricity company,  it is a conspicuous reminder that you are using energy constantly - and therefore spending money constantly. I had great fun going around the house turning everything off at the wall, trying to get the reading down to zero (yep, that is fun to me). In a few weeks when it has become second nature to do so, we won't need it any more and will save the money (admittedly pennies) that it costs to run.

My thrifty instincts are in overdrive at the moment - I don't know if it is the drop in income (though bouts of thriftiness do not necessarily coincide with bouts of necessity), or that I desperately want to get started on saving up for my little house in Norfolk, or just my utter contempt for a system that thrives on parting me from my life energy in the form of earned money - but it is good to be on the wagon. Many people may think that studiously tracking consumption is a waste of their time, but personally I find that it keeps me on track and usually opens my eyes to something I have previously missed that may cut our expenditure further. It is the first step to recognizing where your energy and focus actually goes - as opposed to where you think it may go.

House proud

Now that my house is fairly uncluttered, keeping it tidy and clean has become easier - and more of a priority. I notice things now that didn't really bother me before - or if they did, they were dwarfed by the much larger piles of clutter and chaos looming in the background. One particular bugbear of mine? Kitty footprints. We seem to have the grubbiest footed cats in the neighborhood - rain or shine they bring dust, soil and other muck into the kitchen and across the lino. This is where we put their food bowls, so it gets particularly grubby particularly quickly. Or it did, until this morning.

I finished this rag rug last night - it is cheap, cheerful and recycled - all of my favourite things. I simply cut inch wide strips of old sheets and fabric offcuts and crocheted rows of double crochet (that's single crochet to those of you in the US) with a 7mm hook. With hindsight, 1 inch is probably excessive - it was quite hard work pulling the loops through which made my hands sore. If I were to make a bigger one I would use thinner strips and a larger hook - though it has made a substantial rug that doesn't slide around and will stand up to frequent washing. Did I mention it was cheerful?

OK, I have a long way to go before anyone could describe me as house proud. But caring about kitty prints is a start, yes? And doing something about it - even better?

Upcycle this

I tend to agree with the statement that most of the best things in life are free. That dish marked 'Free' that comes with your Indian takeaway order, the one that is probably the ends of several different dishes mixed together? Quite often the tastiest one. This is my 'Free' of the month, pulled from the top of a neighbour's rubbish collection:

My friends and I used to derive great pleasure as children from pulling perfectly serviceable items out of the huge walk in skip that was placed near to our house for the Sunday market traders to dispose of their waste. To this day I have no idea why most of it found its way straight into the skip instead of a reduced pile, as this was the early to mid nineties when the majority were struggling economically (oh my how times change!). Amongst the cardboard boxes and rotten fruit we quite often found brand new items of clothing from the clothing stalls, slightly dented trays of juice drinks and even entire boxes of fresh fruits. I found a  plastic laundry basket once that was slightly scuffed - it served as our laundry basket for at least the next 10 years. I was most proud to take that home as the red colour matched our kitchen. For a good few years, we made a good living out of that skip, though our parents were tinged with more than a little shame at our activities.


I am still a Womble at heart and hate seeing perfectly good useful items go to waste. Unfortunately, many people balk at the idea of even donating their unwanted things to charity shops, let alone buying from them. No matter how many magazines and TV programs advocate 'upcycling', vintage living and thrifting - there is still a whole world of difference in many people's minds between those trendy pursuits and being seen to actually take something out of a skip or buy from a charity shop (and I am not suggesting that anyone needs to wade around in rotting garbage here). I haven't actually been criticised or looked at pityingly yet for this particular piece of scavenging, but previous instances loom large in my mind and there are plenty of people I know who wouldn't share my enthusiasm for it.

Shame shouldn't come from making good use of something discarded, something free for the taking - it should come from sending enormous quantities of useful things to landfill and sneering at those that would want to divert those things from the waste stream, whether out of material necessity or just because they hate waste. I live in a street where, luckily, vanity doesn't get in the way of common sense. People commonly leave unwanted items outside of their property for twenty-four hours with a 'free to a good home' notice, before they attempt to dispose of them elsewhere - and other people generally take them.

I suspect that the ongoing economic problems that swathes of the western world are experiencing will humanize us a little. I hope that the quite frankly vile lust for money, bling and superior social status that has been exalted by our culture for the last few decades will give way to a kinder, less wasteful society. A lot more people seem to be  reassessing their needs and just trying to get by - which in turn will lead to a greater respect for thrift and creativity and the conservation of precious resources. I hope, but then, I am a dreamer.

Anyway, two tester pots of paint and a few hours waiting for paint to dry and this is as good as new - and usefully storing all those little things that seem to clutter up surfaces for want of a better home. My year long  decluttering mission is now 'complete' - the rooms are relatively clutter free and now it is just the small task of finding the best place for our remaining possessions. T'is done. 

Preparing for winter part 1 - gimme shelter

Yup, you heard right. The nights are drawing in once again and the days are getting shorter... I should have started preparing days ago : )

Which actually, I did. In one of the weird bursts of energy that punctuate these last few weeks of pregnancy, I finally nailed the replacement draught excluder to the bottom of the front door. I only chose this particular unfinished task of many because The Boy had taken to using said draught excluder as a rather expensive and sharp edged toy sword and I thought it better that it was nailed to the door rather than embedded unproductively (and expensively) into something rather softer - say, a cat. As the tool box was out I also filled a substantial hole underneath the door knocker and replaced the internal letterbox flap. So far, so self-satisfied.

Until I took a step back. The front door, now draught sealed, still comprises two panes of single glazing - and sits under a huge window extending from the top of the door to the ceiling. Draughts are the least of my hallway's worries. A glance around the rest of the house shows just how lax we have been about heat conservation the last few years. We have replaced thick-but-ugly-and-too-big curtains with flimsy-but-pretty ones. The cat flap in the back door blows open at the slightest breeze since our bruiser of a cat decided to crash through it when it was locked and break the mechanism two years ago. There are little cracks and crevices around the window frames that really do need to be sealed. The uninsulated kitchen extension has a concrete floor that you could spray with water and skate on in winter. All of the internal doors in the house have massive gaps underneath them or around them. The old fireplaces are not as amply stuffed with newspaper as they could be.

This is not to say we have been profligate with our space heating, our bills are well below average. What it does mean is that we have allowed the heat to dissipate faster than it needed to and made ourselves more uncomfortable than is really necessary. Both OH and The Boy 'run hot' and I grew up in a freezing cold old house with no central heating, draughts everywhere and no running hot water - I have a high tolerance for discomfort in this area. Except of course, I don't actually have to tolerate the discomfort any longer, I am in a position to do something about it - we just always seemed to have other priorities. This year, a combination of reduced income, energy companies making record profits and still raising their prices; and far too much reading about peak oil and economic turbulence; have inspired me to action.

We have had some genuinely uncharacteristic cold snaps (as you can see above - and yes I know that most of you, especially you North Americans, laugh in the face of such a light dusting). Late last year the country was brought to its knees by unseasonably cold weather and snow that persisted in some parts for months. I live on the south coast and in previous years, thanks to the Gulf Stream, have been able to venture to the corner shop on a December evening in a T-shirt without feeling too much discomfort. Besides, I know from experience that when we move to Norfolk, winter weather will be less clement, so I might as well get some practice in with the insulating and conserving.

We are lucky on several fronts- we have double glazing and there is loft insulation in the main part of the house. The carpets are underlaid. We rent, so the changes we can make are fairly superficial. Now is the perfect time to begin, not least because the costs of projects like this tend to increase with the urgency of completing them. A five month head start is good enough to get something done.

So, in the next five months I need to:

• Line or replace existing flimsy curtains, or install window quilts throughout the house. This will also help with the light pollution - and would actually be useful now in keeping the house cool during this mini heatwave we are experiencing.
• Install curtains or quilts at the front door and window - these must be removable in the day to allow daylight into what is a dingy passageway and living space.
• Install a magnet operated cat flap that will stay closed.
• Make draught excluders for the front door and for the door leading from the kitchen to the living room.The kitchen, with its lack of insulation and heating, is always going to be a weak link, so cutting it off at night seems like the best option. 
• Do a feather test and replace missing sealant around the window frames.
• Find a hard wearing washable rug for the kitchen floor.
• Pack the old fire places tightly with newspaper to stop draughts and convection currents - and try to make peace with the fact that the hollow chimney breasts are funneling heat straight from the walls and  out of the house anyway. Sigh. 

I think that I need to acquire a sewing machine. I think I should have started two years ago. I think that one day I will learn important lessons about not putting off till tomorrow what you could do today. One day.

Anyway, some useful resources I have stumbled upon in my quest for inspiration:
Preparing for Winter I and  Preparing for Winter II  forum threads over at Money saving Expert. Very long and chatty, but some good lists of things to do to prepare and lots of resources relevant particularly to the UK.

Draught proofing  information from The Energy Saving Trust

Make Window Quilts with these instructions from Many Tracks.

How to make a draught excluder from the Guardian of all places.

The Integral Urban House - worth borrowing from the library, this American 'Appropriate Technology' book explains in simple terms how heat moves and is lost in buildings and some ways to deal with it. Also lots of information about growing food, composting, rainwater harvesting and related self reliance topics.

Letting go and making do

I have always been a sucker for stationery. My favorite time of year was always September - the start of the new school year, the time of fresh exercise books, brand new pencil sets and tins - in essence, a chance to turn over a new leaf. I have a truly deep attachment to writing papers and implements and objects that aspire to 'organize' stuff - files, labels, highlighter pens and journals. Long after I left university, the obsession with fresh notepads and office notions continued, to the extent that you could probably run Whitehall from my dining room, so well stocked is it for bureaucracy.

I estimate that we have got rid of around one third of our possessions since late last summer, which is when the decluttering began in earnest. We have made a fair number of journeys to car boot sales, the recycling centre, charity shops and friends houses with stuff that we no longer needed. Things that I never thought I would let go of - books, craft equipment, personal mementos - have gone without a pang of regret. Today was the day to purge the 'office' - the scattered corners of the dining room that host the computer, books and stationery. The purge that I thought I would struggle with more than any other.

The first item on the agenda:

 
I bought this old teacher's desk for a song a few years back and spent two days stripping it of horrible yellowed varnish. I sanded and oiled; and I thought that it would be my forever desk. It fitted perfectly in our flat. I had plans to eventually re-oil or paint it and line the drawers with brightly coloured paper. I had plans that the top of it would always be uncluttered, bar some beautiful items of stationery. I had plans that great things would be written from this desk- university assignments, journal entries, letters, perhaps one day a blog.

Fast forward a year or two and we had moved into a small terraced house. The forever desk has sat awkwardly in a corner of the dining room, at right angles to an alcove it is infuriatingly millimeters too big to fit in to, a tangle of cables trailing across the top and down the sides (and across the dining room for that matter), the drawers barely opening before they hit a wall. The only thing to be written from this desk, apart from this blog, was the occasional bill payment. All of this of course was a recipe for clutter, frustration and down right ugliness, not to mention backache as our dining chairs were too short for the height of the desk.

Enter this much despised oak dining table:

I have hated this table with unswerving passion since the day we inherited it from family, but it was only last year that we felt we could let it go - though luckily it never made it from the garage to the car boot sale. It didn't fit anywhere in any room and wherever it was, it was too tempting a spot for dumping clutter on. Today it came back from the garage to temporarily serve as a desk. Because it sits in another alcove, right next to the Internet connection and plug sockets, there are no wires across the desk or floor. The flap comes out for extra work room and folds back down. Our dining chairs are the right height to use at the desk without crippling us. I love having a desk next to the window instead of a dingy corner. I don't despise this table any more. This table rocks. This table is in fact my new forever desk.


The lack of storage underneath the new desk is not a problem. My new improved stationery store is one third the size it was this morning. I no longer feel the need to keep 3 boxes of paper clips, 2 pads of graph paper, a second hole punch, a tub of drawing pins (we don't even have a noticeboard), a wad of report files, 3 set squares or 3 different 50 packs of envelopes - amongst many other things. I know I don't need these things, because I haven't needed them since the day two years ago they were stuffed into the old desk's unopenable drawers never to be retrieved until today. My new stationery store is a small shelf in a sideboard, cut down to size with a little bit of everything that we might need to run a household, not a government. The worst part of the decluttering is done and it really wasn't so bad.

Laundry weather

Today has been the sunniest, warmest day of the year so far. The patio was positively baking - perfect weather for hanging out the laundry, especially as there was a slight breeze blowing. Not the kind of day that I wanted to spend hanging around the house loading and unloading the washing machine.

Most of the western world is accustomed to being able to access (relatively cheap) concentrated forms of energy at the flick of a switch. Whilst line-drying is 'normal' in the UK, most of us never really have to arrange our lives around the intermittent availablity of energy or the passage of day or night. We can choose to do all of our work at night thanks to 24 hour electric lighting, we can dry our laundry whenever we want thanks to radiators and tumble dryers. Hot water increasingly comes from on-demand boilers. Any physical commodity we need can be produced far away and transported to us quickly over long distances with little effort on our part. I can't see this happy state of affairs continuing for much longer. Certainly in the short term I think we will see energy shortfalls that will force us to rearrange our lives around an intermittent energy supply and resource constraints. We will have to consider what use we want to put the energy and resources we do have to - and we will start to look at 'ambient' energy - the warmth of the sun, daylight hours - as an actual resource to work with.

As it turned out, I managed to get two full loads of laundry washed and dried. It smells lush - that faintly burnt but fresh scent that cotton sheets take on when they have been hanging out in the sun. It also gave me the opportunity to use the peg bag I have been crocheting for the past few evenings out of the ends of last years balls of dishcloth cotton. Every year I seem to buy new pegs as the old ones gradually go astray or I leave them on the line to get mildewy, rusty or brittle. Last week I bought some new wooden ones and vowed they would see me through more than one year of laundry hanging. Their new home is a little garish, but sturdy. I saved money, enjoyed some quiet crochet (and ensuing sense of accomplishment - small things, I know) - and, I hope, saved my pegs to see another summer.

My perfect dishcloth

I think I have found it. I spent a few months back last year experimenting with a crochet  hook and knitting needles and some spare DK cotton that I had lying around. I never chanced upon a pattern that I particularly preferred, but the texture and ease of crochet definitely won over the slower growing, smoother, knitted ones. I also learnt that I favour a square cloth, not rectangular, and no more than about 8 inches wide. Finicky I know, but conditions have to be just perfect if I am even going to contemplate washing up, sigh. Perhaps that was the beginning of the end of my love affair with two pointy sticks?

Most of last year's experiments are looking a little worse for wear, but considering the abuse they have been subjected to, they are doing remarkably well. Still, many are too large or small; and I want to introduce a little colour to the kitchen sink. Last week I opened my stash, took out a ball of 4-ply cotton and began to experiment again. The stitch pattern I settled on this time is called 'spider stitch' according to part 13 of the Art of Crochet, though I remain sceptical, because to me spider stitch has always meant a filet lace background with a large spider like window motif in the centre. Whatever its actual name, worked in 4-ply on a 4mm hook it gives a nice open fabric (quick to dry) that still has some texture too it. The edges are tidy and firm, straight at the top and bottom and slightly scalloped at the edges, which means it doesn't require edging.

So, now for my own (current) favourite 7 inch(ish) dishcloth:

*Nb - these instructions are written using UK crochet terms*

Using 4-ply cotton and a 4mm hook, chain 36 stitches (or any multiple of 2 to achieve preferred size - if you must mess with perfection : ) )

Foundation row: 1 dc, 1 ch, 1 dc into 3rd chain from hook. *Miss one Ch sp, (1 dc, 1ch, 1dc) into next chain, repeat from * to last ch, 1 dc, turn. 

Next and all subsequent rows:  Ch 2, *(1 dc, 1ch, 1dc) into next ch sp, repeat from * across row to turning chain, 1 dc into back loop only of turning chain.

Continue until cloth can be folded exactly in half, corner to corner - this should give you a square dishcloth.


I am going to try the same stitch pattern out in DK to see if the results are the same, but at the moment 4 ply seems to be a winner. The texture is very soft, worked in a bamboo or soya cotton mix yarn it would make luxurious face cloths. Nice, quick gifts to work up and keep around just in case. Bring on pay day, I want some nice bright colours to experiment with.