down to earth

Showing posts with label The Value of Work. Show all posts

I like to think I’ve got a pretty good grip on the work I do here in my home but now when I sit down to write to you, I can’t think of what I did this past week. Luckily I have photos I took along the way and after seeing them it all comes back to me. I’m still sorting through drawers and cupboards and getting rid of things I no longer have any reason to keep. It’s part of my general housekeeping now - a couple of times a week I bring in a little trolley, fill it with things I once thought I’d keep forever. Now my priority is to have a home that encourages me to be the person I am now, not the other Rhonda who was part of a couple. Every week life moves slowly away from the home of a happily married couple and towards a place when an independent woman lives. I hope I find the same level of satisfaction I had back then but it’s still early days and the practical work of rebuilding needs to be complete before I can make any judgements about contentment and happiness. Will the glass be half-full or half-empty?

This is the area where I sit and think with Gracie at my feet. Sometimes I read here and sometimes I just listen to the radio and potter around. Gracie follows me everywhere now. If I go inside, so does she, if I wander outside, she follows. And if she’s sniffing around the yard and doesn’t see me go inside, she stands at the door and gives one loud bark and I know she wants me to open the door for her NOW.

Waiting for the postman. She doesn't bark at him, I think she just wants him to know she's there. 🙄

I’m building a flower, spice and herb garden on the sunny corner of the front verandah. It’s always nurtured ferns and tropical plants in the past, and I still have them, but I’m introducing flowers - roses, nasturtiums, foxgloves, yarrow, lavender, pansies and penstemon, as well as green onions, chilli, parsley and ginger.

This area changes almost every day. I used to be able to make instant decisions, now I have to look at my changes to decide if they suit me. 🤔 😵‍💫

That's a digiplexis foxglove in the pot. It's a soft orange colour with several flower spikes. I'll take a photo for you when the flowers are open.

Plants waiting to be put somewhere. This area is a little further along the verandah.

Like most of you, I'm always trying to save the food I buy from being wasted. Now that I'm single this is more difficult. I bought a long cucumber last week, had one salad and knew the cucumber might sit in the fridge and waste away. So I grabbed the vinegar and pickling spices to make bread and butter cucumbers. The idea with this is to remove as much water as possible from the cucumber so I sprinkled a tablespoon of salt over thinly sliced cucumbers and left it a few hours. Then I washed the salted water away and squeezed the water off with a cucumbers in a clean tea towel. Don't forget to do this because if you add your pickling liquids and spices to the cucumbers in the jar, they'll release their water into the pickling liquid and will dilute the pickles.

They'll taste wonderful if you let the flavours develop but you can eat them straight away if you want to.

To make the pickling liquid, add the following to a small saucepan: 1 cup vinegar, ½ cup sugar, pickling spices, pepper and little pieces of onion or chilli if you have them on hand. Bring to the boil, simmer for 30 minutes and let it sit on the stove until slightly cooler. Taste it and if liquid is a bit strong for you, add ½ cup water. Then add the cucumbers and the still-hot pickling liquid to a sterilised jar and store it in the fridge. I have one serve of pickled cucumbers left but I'll buy another cucumber to pickle on my next shopping trip. I don't like oil in my salad dressing so I always make enough of this so I have some for salad dressing. I use the leftover liquid as salad dressing too. It keeps well in the fridge.

Parsley salt and dried parsley

Two other quick herby tips for you here - parsley salt and dried parsley. I harvested most of my parsley on Tuesday, washed it thoroughly and removed the stalks (they're bitter when dried). Preheat your oven for the dried parsley now - 180C/350F and when it reaches temp, turn it down to 120C/250F. Make the parsley salt while your oven is heating up.

This is what the sink full of parsley looks like now.

Parsley salt

To a food processor, add 1 cup salt, I used pink Himalayan salt but rock salt or pure cooking salt is also good.

Add two cups of parsley with no stalks.

Process the mix until the parsley is flecked through the salt but don't overprocess because the salt will be too fine. Lay it out on a plate to dry for about an hour then add it to a jar. Store in the fridge and give it a gentle shake every couple of days so it doesn't clump together.

It's great to use in scrambled eggs, sprinkled over the top layer of lasagne or any pasta, mashed potatoes, salads, roast meats, steak and, of course, fish. You can do this with a variety of herbs - oregano, sage, bay leaves, coriander/cilantro, fennel, rosemary or finely grate lemon or orange zest and add it to the salt. All of them store well in the fridge.

Dried parsley

Then go on to your dried parsley. Dry the leaves as much as possible, preheat eat your oven to 180C/350F and when it reaches temp, turn it down to 120C/250F.

Lay the washed, dried parsley, with stalks removed, onto baking paper in a baking tray, place the tray in the oven making sure you have your temps right. Leave it in the oven for about 25 minutes then remove from the oven. When it cools down, crush the parsley with your hands and add it to a jar. Two well loaded large oven trays gave me the amount you see in the small jar. Store this alongside your herbs and spices in a cupboard.

🌿 💚 🌿

The creation of my new life is a slow process. I could sit back and let it make its own way but I want my life to include diversity and creativity as the the main building blocks; and I want moments of joy liberally mixed throughout each ordinary day. I'm so thankful that Hanno and I prepared well for this part of life because if I had to go from what we had five years ago to what I'm capable of now and in the future, I'd be in a worse space. I guess I've done the difficult part of working out what I want in my life now. It's important to me to continue with the housework I've done in the past. I will still cook from scratch - for Gracie and me, preserve, bake occasionally, keep a small stockpile, make my own cleaners and laundry liquid. I will continue to look for opportunities to be kind and generous. Those ordinary everyday tasks help define my life giving each day structure and purpose and a reason to get up every morning. Of course, family is a significant part of my life and while my family has changed, it's still on top of the priority list.

What fits into the rest of my life is what I'm focusing on now. It will be made up of creativity, productivity, sharing what I know and being grateful for each new day. It's a complex model of a simple life but I guess every life is complex in its own way. I'm glad I have the freedom to create life in the way I want it to be and I have the time now try different things to fit into the mix I already have.

Kerry and Jamie bought Gracie a dogie donut (with bacon topping) and a bone biscuit. She wasn't sure what to make of it first but she didn't hesitate in eating both of them.

My main new thing will be painting and drawing. I used to be quite artistic when I was young and I want to examine that again. I also want to do some final getting published/writing workshops. Of all the workshops I've done, I enjoyed the writing ones the most. I need to earn some money to build up my nest egg again after I spent so much during Hanno's final months. I want to have some workshops here, maybe with lunch included, and maybe some on Zoom. If you're interested in this, let me know because it will help me make the decision on whether to go ahead or not.

But that's all in the future and today is just as important. When I finish here, I'll tidy the kitchen, harvest chard, set some aside for lunch and freeze the rest. My bed is made but I have to put away yesterday's washed clothes and sheets. Two toilets must be cleaned and I'll finish off reorganising the laundry. After lunch Gracie and I will be out in the garden fertilising, cleaning up, weeding and repotting. We're expecting rain this afternoon so I want both verandahs clean and tidy before the wind and rain starts.

And that's it for me, another ordinary day done and dusted. I hope things are going well for you. Home life is usually busy when seasons change. What are you doing? I send my love across the miles. xx

My computer problems have been resolved so I'm back with you. There'll be no Weekend Reading today because I haven't been reading but I hope this post on time management and routines will interest many of you, especially the new readers.

One thing we all deal with, and sometimes struggle with, is how to organise our time to do everything we need to do and want to do. Most weeks can be similar for those who have retired or are ill but when you’re raising a family, caring for loved ones, working outside the home or living on one income with outside work and work at home existing along side each other, organising time can be difficult. In all those situations, however, when you create routines and organise your time effectively, life is easier.

I get a few emails about this from readers who can’t create routines that work. I think the best way to organise home life is to do it in bits and pieces, never all at once. Each part of your life and every bit of housework you do requires focus so you have to be thorough and do it one step at a time. Slow is best.

I think the best way to start is to work out what you’re having problems with right now, and start with that. You have to be prepared to give time to the things you want to happen and for most things, each process will have many steps, not just one. For instance, if I want to feed my family nutritious food then I have to make time think about what I want to cook during the week, then more time to create a shopping list, go to the supermarket to buy food, go to the butcher, baker and fish market, or to the weekend markets. When I come home with the shopping, I need time to refrigerate or freeze the food, or store it correctly in a cupboard, before I cook it every day. As you can see, there are many steps and it takes time but when you set up your routines, it will help you a lot.

There are a few processes that could be part of your kitchen routines - cleaning, organising, cooking, baking and preserving. Another process that will fit nicely into your kitchen routines is to batch cook. I want to eat food cooked from scratch every day. You could cook enough food for the week on the weekend but I prefer a two day method. When I cook, I make enough for two days so we eat home cooked food every day but I only cook 15 days, not 30 days a month. We eat the same food two days in a row but when you’ve done this for a few weeks, you can freeze the second batch and build a store of frozen meals - so you have the choice of what you eat on the second day. Make sure you label your meals well so you don’t leave food sitting in the freezer or waste it. This post, Three key ways to save time and money, is about stockpiling, green cleaning and batch cooking for beginners, I hope it helps you with motivation.

If I want to reduce the number of chemicals I have in my home, ONE of the things I do is to make sure I always have soap, borax and washing soda on standby in the laundry so I can make my homemade laundry liquid. This not only gives me a very effective way of cleaning our clothes with few chemicals, it also saves money and helps me cut down on the amount of plastic I bring home. But it’s not one step, it’s many and it takes time. If I have the ingredients here, making laundry liquid takes about 15 minutes, then it lasts a couple of months before I make it again. Shop-bought laundry liquid costs about $9 - $10 per litre, homemade laundry liquid is $2 a litre which is a huge ongoing saving. Click here for my recipe for laundry liquid as well as a number of other uses for it.

And as you can see, these two common household processes have multi-steps and take time. It’s never instant, you have to work for it.

The reason they need multi-steps and time is that when you go to the supermarket to buy your weekly groceries, if you buy already cooked food, premade cleaning products etc., you’re paying for convenience. If you buy ready made meals, you’re paying for someone else to buy the ingredients, prepare and cook the meal and when someone else does the work for you, you pay for the ingredients, plus the work they do.

However, buying convenience means you have to earn more to pay the higher price of convenience products - the laundry detergents, shampoos, snacks, fizzy drinks etc. By cutting back and going back to a more basic kitchen, you’ll reduce your use of plastic, you’ll know exactly what is in the food you eat, you’ll live with fewer chemical and you’ll have more money in the bank.

So how can we get back to that basic nourishing food and healthy life? Routines will help you with the tasks you repeat over and over again.

Before you do get into routines you must organise your work areas - kitchen, laundry, bedrooms, sitting/lounge room, outside areas, but do one area at a time. Start with the kitchen, because you’ll be preparing food and cooking almost every day. Take a good look around and move things to suit how you work there. If you drink a lot of tea and coffee, make a tea and coffee station with your cups, teapot, kettle etc. near by. Make sure your glasses, plates, bowls and serving dishes are within easy reach for every one and are close to where they’ll be used. I have three big drawers under my induction stove. They contain all our plates, serving and mixing bowls so they’re close to where the food is made and when I finish cooking, all plates and serving bowls are right there. Clean and organise the fridge and freezer. Make sure you knives are sharp, it helps you a lot. Clean and organise your cutlery and gadget drawers - this will save you time when you don’t have to look for the things you need. Give away or donate everything you don’t use. Clean and organise all the drawers and cupboards you use every day, it will help you later when you're busy cooking, baking, making lunches or cleaning.

I know how much time paid work takes - I worked for a living until I was 56. I know how much time children take, especially when they’re very young. I’ve had my own children and looked after three grandchildren, so I get it, it’s time consuming. But once you’ve set yourself up with routines, a stockpile of groceries, green cleaning and delegating chores, simple life will help you to live well, consume less and hopefully be healthier. And you’ll have a feeling of self-reliance, freedom and satisfaction that will help you carry out your house work and build your own simple home.

January, week 4 in The Simple Home

This is the final post for January, so let's recap what we've done so far. This month has been all about planning and organising the year ahead as much as we can. Hopefully you've been able to set up a home admin area - it might be a dedicated office or it could be the kitchen table with box of your admin things that can be used on the table then put away. Much of your home organisation can be done in your home admin area where you have what you need at hand. If you need to write something down or look something up, it's right there. Your calendars should be set now with all the known 2018 appointments and events, your food planning should be done and, if you're doing them, menu plans created. It will help a lot if you have a list of 2018 gifts organised and you've written a list of home maintenance that can be carried out during the year. These lists, menus, calendars and plans can be stored in your home folder and left in the admin area so all your bits and pieces, the things you need to run your home, are in one place. I hope you've had time to organise a drop zone, charging station and your work spaces to better suit how you work because that will be very useful as you progress through the year. Some of those places might have to be modified in the coming weeks, so don't be afraid to adjust as you go.

ROUTINES

Now it's time to think about how you do your housework, what works and what doesn't, and when is the best time to do your work. A routine is a sequence of actions that are performed in the same way and at the same time. Routines will help you develop the habits of a working home and will make life easier. There are many ways of establishing your routines. For example, my morning routine is to have everything - breakfast, cleaning the kitchen, getting the lunch ready, making beds, laundry and watering the garden finished by 9am. Then I go on to do other things like craft work or writing until lunchtime - our main meal. I try to get the active tasks done in the morning because I get tired in the afternoon. If you go out to work or work at home, you could make up a list of tasks you want to complete before you leave for work or start work at home. These might include breakfast, packing the dishwasher or washing up, getting the children off to school and workers off to work - with lunches packed the night before, and having something either in the slow cooker or defrosting for dinner that night. And while everyone else in the house is getting ready for the day ahead, they should be doing their routines too. Children should make their bed, dress for school, put PJs away, have breakfast, pack their lunch and homework in their school bag and clean their teeth.

Part of the routine is that everyone knows what they have to do and you don't have to prompt them to do what they have to do.

Here at our place Mondays are the same as Thursdays, Thursdays the same as Sundays; each day we get up and usually know what we have to do. If you don't live this way, you'd probably think it's a bit slow and possibly dull. But when I tell someone what I'm doing on any given day they're usually surprised and I think they wonder why I bother.

Hanno and Jamie sorting out the phonecards Kerry used to collect when he was young.

Sunny's birthday lunch on Saturday.

Above and below: a recent lunch - stuffed capsicums/peppers and corn.

When we were in Tasmania last year, Hanno bought a pair of cashmere and merino gloves from the wool shop at Salamanca. They're so soft and light and very warm. Hanno has had a problem keeping his right hand warm since he had an accident a couple of years ago and gloves help a lot during winter.

During a recent clean-up, I found the gloves and noticed they both had a few moth holes. I didn't have wool that matched exactly, but I had grey wool, so I set out to darn the gloves so they could be used in years to come. Darning is simply a matter of providing a surface to work on under the hole - I used a darning mushroom - and then with a darning needle, threading the needle through the threads that are still there and slowly rebuilding stitches over the hole. If you want to learn this valuable skill, there are many videos online but I like this one because it clearly shows the process.

You can see the repaired hole above right in the middle of the glove but you can't see the other five holes I repaired. Finishing off the repair with a damp cotton cloth and a hottish iron, helps the repair blend in a bit more because it flattens the stitches. Now I'm storing the gloves in a plastic bag and hopefully, every time they're brought out to be used in winter, they'll be ready to wear again. And again.

Most people now throw out clothing that might be saved with a small repair. And yes, I used to be one of those people, but now I'm more prudent and I understand the reason for spending a little bit of time to keep using what we have for as long as we can. For me, it has very little to do with economics. It's more about doing as much as I can and investing my time and effort into activities which enrich to our lives here without adding to the increasing burden being shouldered by our planet.

If you visit us on any given day, we'll be repairing things around the house, cleaning, cooking, baking, growing food and generally taking care of ourselves and what we own. We could go to the shop and replace what is broken or torn but there is an exquisite art to life and I don't think consumerism is part of it. I think the art in all our lives is developed by exercising our creativity, developing our techniques and using the talents we have to sustain ourselves, even when the force of modern life tries to break through to disturb the serenity and simplicity of each day. It is an incredibly satisfying way to spend the life hours we have but a great shame that not nearly enough of us are doing it.

I fear there is a dumbing down battle going on. It's there in food - why would we want to cook for ourselves when there are constantly changing, easy products to buy and heat up? It's there in clothes - most of us have lost the dressmaking and mending skills our great grandmothers had. It's there in general daily life where there is a constant buzz from the social media peanut gallery made up of criticism, self-rightiousness, inane comments and fake concern for, well, you name it, just about everything. Busyness and distractions are highly prized, shopping is an entertainment rather than a necessity and there is constant pressure to follow instead of lead. Gone are the days when we were encouraged by our elders, friends, politicians and neighbours to do our best, help out, create community, cherish uniqueness and try to do better and be better. We are now learning you are what you own.

A torrential downpour on Sunday afternoon.

I think simple life is a safe haven for those of us who refuse to be dumbed down and who want to continue learning and developing ourselves all through life. School and university are the launching pads for learning but it certainly doesn't stop there. Once we have our basic education, then we have the abilities and reason to learn about the things we want in our lives. That might be home skills, traditonal skills, craft skills, developing creativity and productivity or nurturing a family, but it could also be a career with an emphasis on calmness and sustainability at home. There are always choices along the way and it is only through building your skills and knowledge that you'll be able to make the best choices for you and your family. If you take learning and self-development seriously and if you use it to enrich your home and career then you're well on your way to living the kind of splendid life that we dream about in our younger years.

The choices are key here. Instead of following a straight and monotonous "normal" path, we can step away from that to embrace learning, independence, daily contemplation, critical thinking and individual choice. Sometimes we take the easy path, sometimes the difficult one, and each day, small step by small step, we move through life. There are times when we stop and reevaluate what we're doing, sometimes small adjustments or huge leaps are made but if we resist the noise of modern life and stay focused on our own life being a work in progress, then these periods of adjustment help us continue along the road less travelled.

Having lived through six decades I'm about to move into the most challenging one. It's not easy growing old but it's certainly better than dying young. I don't want to live a fake life where I buy everything I need and take the path of least resistance. That kind of life is always partnered by the work it takes to pay for it and a huge amount of waste. I want a life that is challenging and interesting. I want to work for what I get. I want to sit in the sun when I feel like it, grow food, take cuttings, mend the things I love and do as much for myself as is possible. I'm slowing down now because of my age but I'm not ready now, or ever, to be non-productive.

What stage of life are you at? What are you doing with your days? Remind me of that exhilarating phase, that lasted many years for me, when I went to bed thinking about tomorrow's plans and wanting the hours to pass quickly so I could be catapulted out of bed to face the new day. I miss that.