Not many of us really enjoy housework. I love being in my home but if I look at housework as one big thing - washing, cleaning, cooking, baking, gardening, maintenance, mending etc. - it can be overwhelming and I don't know where to start. My best advice is to organise yourself and do things ahead of time. Most of us don't do all our housework in one day. We organise smaller chunks of work and spread it out over a week, or a weekend with small chores morning and evening. When you organise your work into chunks and do it at the same time each week or day, that's a routine and it usually makes it easier.

January, week 1 in The Simple Home

January in Australia is pretty laid-back. It's summer time, the kids are on school holidays and many people take the opportunity to take a break with the family or sit in a cool room watching test cricket on TV. Cough, cough. 😉 In the northern hemisphere, winter has set in and even though life continues as normal, the weather encourages hours spent by the fire, with some relaxing and others remaining productive with knitting, quilting, mending or other quiet work. It's good for us to sit back and slow down with our family in the one place where we should feel comfortable and secure - our homes. January is a very good time to disconnect, in varying degrees, from the internet too. I have various accounts on social media and even though I visit those accounts infrequently during the year, I make a conscious decision in December and January to step back from them and clear my mind. I want to see my own and my family's priorities rather than have those thoughts diluted with all the noise that goes with social media. I stop blogging then too. I rethink my goals, work on strengthening my values and reconnect with my family and home, with no distractions. I use the time to organise the year ahead, think about what I hope to achieve and put as much in place as I can at this slow time of year. I know that if I use January to think about my year and organise as much as I can, the better off I'll be when I'm busier.

Home is the place where we can be ourselves, kick off our shoes and enjoy every passing hour. Home is important and whether you live in an ordinary house like I do, on a farm, or in an apartment, a caravan, an RV travelling country roads, a mansion or a tiny house, all our homes need our time and energy. They can withstand periods of neglect but all homes function better and support us more if they're well ordered and maintained.

There is no recipe for organising a house, no website you can go to to find the list of what you need to do. We all have to create our own unique list and it's always changing. Every home requires thought, plans, routines and organisation that suit the people who live there. For instance, I have lived in this house since I arrived here at age 49, in a few months time I'll be 70. We've moved things around, changed wall colours, blinds and curtains, installed new energy efficient appliances and lights, we've put up barriers so crawling babies stayed safe, put up fences and took them down again, changed a bedroom into a writing room, then a writing and sewing room and now a writing, sewing and ironing room. All those changes and more have been part of my lists and organisational strategy over the years and helped us do the work this home needs.

It's been comforting to get back to my regular household routines after a few years of intensive writing. Once established, rhythms and routines help you get through repetitive housework. They reduce procrastination that can take hold of us sometimes and they help us work at the same time and pace as we did yesterday and will do again tomorrow. You don't sit at the kitchen table wondering what you should be doing, or staring at the computer screen with another cup of coffee wondering where the day went. When you have your daily routine worked out, you'll have all your tasks done and still have time to do what you want or need to do - be that sewing, gardening, talking to friends, looking after grandchildren, working in your home business or going out to work.

I don't set specific times for my domestic tasks. Instead, I have a list of things that I want done by a certain time. That works well for me but it's not the only way to do it.  We eat our main meal at midday here so my routine is to have a group of tasks completed before I start making lunch. That includes making the bed, tidying the kitchen, general cleaning, straightening the lounge room and doing the floors. My routine isn't the same every day. It's either that exact list or a variation of it, depending on what needs to be done.

The way to start developing your own routines is to make a short list of what you need to do, either on a daily basis, over the course of a week or month.  A list for a daily routine would probably look something like this:

Decide how much time you have to carry out everything on your list. I would expect the list above to take about one hour, or you could do what I do and tell yourself everything on the list has to be finished by 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 or 11am.

When you do your list the first time, you may need to make minor adjustments. For instance, if you have a limited amount of time to get through the list and you can't do it all, you could carry out a couple of the tasks the evening before. Things like preparing lunches or preparing the evening meal could be done after dinner the evening before.  Don't be shy in asking the family for help with this. You are not the only person who should be working in your home. This work should be shared.  Teenagers and older primary school children could load the dishwasher, wipe the benches, change their bed linen or load the washing machine. They could probably make their own lunches too.  They might complain when they start all this, particularly if they haven't helped with house work before, but they will grow into the habit of it, just as you will, and it will become easier and just be a part of their day. And believe me, when they grow up, they'll be able to look after themselves and they'll thank you for it.


After the first day, decide what worked and what needs changing. Whatever needs tweaking, do it after that first day so that on day two you have a clear run through.  If you still have problems, keep tweaking so you can do your list in the time you allow yourself.


Often you'll have at least two sets of daily routines - one morning, one evening. When they're established, work out your weekly and monthly routines. Weekly routines will be for cleaning bathrooms, changing bed linen, vacuuming the floor, menu planning etc while monthly routines will help you deal with cleaning the fridge and dishwasher etc.  It you need help creating your lists, there are hundreds of housework lists here. Just make sure your lists cover all the work you need to do and you set realistic time goals.

You can make up short lists for other areas at other times too, and this is especially helpful for seasonal cleaning or on weekends when you need to get through your housework as well as spend time with your family. But start with daily routines first and when you've settled into them, create weekly and monthly lists as well. How do you organise your housework? Do routines work for you?

Luckily I don't compare my performance to what others are doing. When I look at the forum and see the amount of work some of our members do every day, I think back to when that was my day too and breathe a sigh of relief that my seasons have changed and there is less work to do. I come from a working class family who took pride in the paid and unpaid work they did. In our world, most of what we had we got through hard work. Daily work, and the importance of it, is etched into my soul. Very few of us are wealthy enough to go through life without work and to tell you the truth, if I were in that category, I'd work anyway because of the many non-financial benefits work brings with it. Work helps shape the person you become.

What a few days we've had. Everything was going well with the bathroom renovation until the waterproofers arrived and applied a coat of whatever it is they use. They came back the following day for another coat. That stopped us sleeping in our bed for the next few nights. The smell was overpowering and gave me asthma. Not much housework as been done this week. I've spent a fair bit of time outside, had morning tea with Morag and her daughter in the garden on Friday and I have stayed away from the bathroom-end of the house.  Today the floor will be levelled with some sort of liquid gloop and when that dries - possibly in two days with all this rain we have at the moment, then the tiles can be laid and the new fixtures and fittings installed. We're looking at the end of the week at the earliest for it to be completed. 

And here I was thinking it's only a bathroom, it will take a couple of days.

There has been rain on and off all week and yesterday a lot of rain fell over the east coast of Queensland. It's surprising because winter rain is unusual here in our state. It looks like it's broken the drought in some places out west, so that's a great outcome for the farmers and rural communities.

We had Jamie here over the weekend which is always a pleasure. We made cupcakes and he played with his Legos, making some magical aircrafts and all sorts of spectacular "people". There wasn't much time outside because of the weather but he brought his Lego Movie with him so that DVD saved the day.

I love this quote from the book Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair that I've ordered from Book Depository:

Here’s the true secret of life: We mostly do everything over and over. In the morning, we let the dogs out, make coffee, read the paper, help whoever is around get ready for the day. We do our work. In the afternoon, if we have left, we come home, put down our keys and satchels, let the dogs out, take off constrictive clothing, make a drink or put water on for tea, toast the leftover bit of scone. I love ritual and repetition. Without them, I would be a balloon with a slow leak.

and this:

People like to say that it - significance, import - is all about the family. But lots of people do not have rich networks of hilarious uncles and adorable cousins, who all live nearby, to help them. Many people have truly awful families: insane, abusive, repressive.  So we work hard, we enjoy life as we can, we endure. We try to help ourselves and one another. We try to be more present and less petty. Some days go better than others. We look for solace in nature and art and maybe, if we are lucky, the quiet satisfaction of our homes.

I think I'll love this book. It will remind me to think about "the quiet satisfaction" as it unfolds, to look for meaning and appreciate things that make ordinary days at home so significant and enriching. Life is not about toil to me, it's not the main point of every day. I love to work and do my fair share but I want to enjoy every day and appreciate the beauty lurking in my home too. Finding those beautiful gems in a home I've live in for almost 20 years can be tough sometimes but it's not impossible. And when I do something I'll remember forever or when I increase my knowledge of my environment or myself, when I cook a great meal, drink our fresh orange juice, eat a crisp pea straight from the vine, follow a pattern until the end, or when I sit breathing fresh air deeply that, my friends, is something that helps me appreciate what is and keeps me going until the next time.

Sunday morning 7.30 and I'm trying to re-establish my routines. They used to work well for me in the past but were abandoned when I was writing; it's about time they pulled me back into shape again.  And shape is an appropriate word here - routines shape my day, they'll probably do it for you too if you give them a chance. I like to have all my regular, easy housekeeping finished by 9am. If I can do that, I can concentrate on a larger project from then until lunchtime. So the bed is made, bread is set to rise, the kitchen cleaned and lunch prepared, all before 9am. We have our main meal at 12 noon so I often get started on the prep before nine. If it's a slow cooked meal it might already have been cooking since the night before. Now that we're moving towards the cooler weather, when we have plenty of soups, curries, casseroles and roasts, one of then will usually be filling the house with home cooked aroma and reminding us that at noon, we'll be sitting down to a hot nourishing meal that will keep us going throughout the afternoon and evening.  Late in the afternoon we might have toast, a crumpet, fruit, yoghurt or tea and cake. We don't need much then. I find that having the main meal at lunch works better for me now that I feel tired in the afternoon. I know I've feed us well and cleaned up while my energy level is still high and it doesn't take much to prepare a snack later on.

We have a visitor here for the next week so I'll probably move the main meal to the evening but the cooking will be done well before then and I'll just have to serve and clean up. The dishwasher does most of the work that I used to do washing up by hand, so cleaning up after a big meal in the evening isn't the palaver it once was. Late yesterday afternoon I set out my meal plan and shopping list for the week. I'll shop today and look after Jamie, then during the week, with Hanno's help, we'll really concentrate on one of our biggest annual tasks - our new season vegetable garden.

Usually in the afternoons I do slower and easier tasks or work on my sewing and knitting, and later in the afternoon, just when the light is dimming, I like to go out to the garden. Connecting with the natural parts of my world never fails to remind me of my place here. I take off my shoes and feel the grass under my feet, I feel the soil for dryness and moisture and sometimes I water the plants while I watch the birds and listen to the sound of the neighbourhood. We are all surrounded by such artificiality. I really felt it while I was away touring with Hanno and Tricia. There was no grass to feel, no vegetables to pick, only concrete, bitumen, plastic, glass and unfamiliar, man-made noise. We are all part of the natural world and for me, this part of the day is therapeutic.

This week I'll clean out the fridge and organise one shelf of the stockpile cupboard a day until it's back up to scratch. Later this morning I'll clean the floors and organise the kitchen table and dresser.  Since we went away they've become dumping grounds, holding a variety of things that needed to be put back in their rightful places. They need to be tidied, with fresh flowers brought in, so it's once again a pleasant area to sit and talk. It will all get back to normal eventually, it just takes time and a bit of effort.

I have two Brisbane outings this week. On Friday, 1 April at 12 noon I'll be at Dymocks in Brisbane for a book signing. The address is 177 Albert Street, (Cnr Elizabeth and Albert), Brisbane. Please come along if you can. Don't forget it's Mother's Day soon, maybe the mother in your life would like to read The Simple Home.  Then on Sunday, 3 April at 4pm I'll be at Riverbend Books, 193 Oxford St, Bulimba for a talk, crafts and afternoon tea. I hope to see you there but I believe the event is already booked out.

There was some much needed rain here yesterday. Our small 5000 litre tank overflowed an hour after the rain started.  It was short lived but the tank is full, the larger tank is probably three-quarters full, and if there is no more rain, that will see us through the next few months. It's enough and enough is all we need.

The rest of the day was spent sewing and knitting. It's such a satisfying way to spend time. Creating clothing out of wool and cotton fabric shows just how much we home producers can do for ourselves. We choose to do as much for ourselves as our time allows, using the materials we already have on hand. We create our own self-reliant, productive circle doing that by making use of what we have here, which helps us cut back the amount of waste we produce.


There is a feeling of accomplishment in being able to produce our needs without running to the shop to find bits and pieces. It often involves compromise and flexibility but I think that's part of the creative process too.  Being resourceful with materials pushes us to consider ideas that may not have occurred to us otherwise.

During the week I hope to finish off a scarf and make a new nightie for myself. I'll just cut the pattern from my old nightie, I have some very soft cotton lawn here and it should make a comfortable, pretty nightdress.

If you're wanting to get yourself into the routine of doing a bit more at home, or you want to rearrange your current routines, Becci has set us a wonderful challenge over at the forum. Read her Morning Routine Challenge here and the sister thread Morning Routine Challenge Chat Thread here.  Have you ever thought about helping out a charity with handmade goods? There are many charities who need various items that can be made at home and sent in. There's a thread about that on the forum too, with a list of charities that need help. It does my heart good to see the work being planned by the members.

Rose is also writing about routines and her thread Developing a weekly routine that works for you started last night. It's a good insight into how to develop your own routine based on what has been working for Rose for a long time.  She also has a very popular Christmas 2016 savings group. Read about that here.

Have you ever thought about making a raggy quilt?  Damac, one of our sewing moderators, is leading a raggy quilt-along. Read the thread to see what's involved and how to sign up. It won't cost anything to join in and you may be able to use some of the fabrics you already have at home. The raggy quilt tutorial thread has just gone up on the forum, so read through it, check your supplies and dive in. It's a great quilt for newbies and there are plenty of members joining in and following along.

I've really settled back into my home this week and have been re-establishing routines and trying to find my rhythm again. There was a time when I would have had bread on the rise, cleaned the kitchen, made beds, fed the outdoor animals and tidied up, all before 9am. That's not happening now and I'm not sure if it's because the cold weather is making me slower or if I'm still finding my feet. Either way, I'm enjoying my work and have decided to do things differently now so I'm trying a few things to see how they feel.

I was supposed to be doing one of the final readings of my book now but that's been postponed so this week will be all about routines, tidying up and sewing. I've joined the blue, purple and mauve colour swap at the Down to Earth forum. I've been partnered with moeymichelle in Perth and have some household linens sewing scheduled for her. I'm looking forward to it and when I finish writing this post, I'll be going through my stash to choose fabrics. We can make anything we like as long as it's within the colour range of blue, purple and mauve. I'm sure there'll be a wide variety of crafts travelling back and forth for this swap and I'm looking forward to seeing what the ladies make.


On Monday I cleaned up the bookcase I keep in the kitchen to house my cooking books and some old magazines. Although I've decluttered routinely, I'm far from being a minimalist. It makes me feel comfortable and happy seeing familiar things around me - things I've known for many years. While I was cleaning those shelves, I made a mental note that I have enough cook books. I think the last one I bought was The Thrifty Kitchen and that was a few years ago now. Some of my most loved books were gifts from my family, and my Penguin friends sent me some cookbooks recently as a thank you for meeting all my deadlines. I'll be sharing a recipe from one of those books later in this post. It's the pecan and marmalade slice.
ADDED LATER: I just remembered that the last cook book I bought was The Country Table. I bought two, one for Sunny and one for me, because it's filled with old fashioned Australian cooking. Sunny had just asked me for a recipe for corned beef when I saw it in this cook book, along with a lot of other traditional, well-known food.


I've been asked for this recipe a few times so here it is. You might recall that I rarely stick to recipes and sure enough, while this was a new recipe to me, I did make a few minor adjustments. I'll give you the correct recipe as it appears in the book,  and let you make your own adjustments or stay within the recipe. Either way, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.  It's an unusual slice because it has a pastry base with a cake top. It's delicious and wonderful with a hot cup of tea.

This recipe is published in David Herbert's Best Ever Baking Recipes, published by Viking 2012.

 Marmalade Squares 

Base and part of the filling:

• 350 plain flour
• pinch salt
• 200g unsalted butter, chilled and diced
• 150g muscovado sugar

Filling:

• 1 rounded teaspoon bicarb
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 120 mls double cream
• 50 g pecans, chopped
• 50 g mixed candied peel
• 100 g orange mamalade
• 2 tablespoons orange juice

Oven @ 180C
30cm x 20 cm baking tin, lined with baking paper

1. Sift flour and salt into a bowl. Rub the butter into the flour with fingertips, add the sugar and mix until it clumps together.
2. Spread half that mixture on the bottom of the baking tin and bake for 15 minutes or until light brown. Allow to cool.
3. Tip the rest of the base mixture into a large bowl and stir in bicarb. Mix in the egg, cream, nuts, mixed peek and half the marmalade. 
4. Pour over the cooled base and bake for 20 - 25 minutes until golden brown.
5. Warm the remaining marmalade with the orange juice in a small saucepan. Brush over the top of the squares when they finish baking. Cut into squares and store in an airtight container for up to five days.

Hanno and I had a rare weekend away last weekend when we drove over to Toowoomba for a meeting with the simple living group there. Such a fabulous bunch of women! They all brought along some knitting, cross stitch, crochet or sewing and while we talked, they worked on their crafts. We had hot tea on that cold morning and it felt good to be alive and in the company of like-minded folk.

I'll probably spend most of today sewing and tinkering around in my room. Days when I sew or garden or knit or take time to do that kind of work enrich my spirit and give me hours to think about my tasks, my family, you, me and how it all fits together. It's a small miracle that we gain so much pleasure from fabric and the hours we take to sew it. Part of that miracle is that we connect with our ancestors by using a skill they would have known, that what we do slows us down in the most gentle and gracious way and that what was once a one dimentional piece of fabric, after being worked, becomes part of life. I hope you have a lovely day.  ♥︎

Happy birthday Jamie, he's four today! He's still in Korea and will celebrate his birthday with his mum, Korean grandma, aunties, uncles and friends. They'll be back home on Friday so we'll have another birthday then.  There was a time when I never thought about being a grandmother. Now I can't imagine life without my two precious grandsons.

This is him at the airport with his robot bag full of little toys.

The weather is close to perfect at the moment. The evenings are cool, the days sunny, the humidity is low and it makes me feel happy and optimistic. I spent some time yesterday morning planting granny's bonnets (aquilegia) in the vegetable garden. I love seeing flowers in with the tomatoes and cabbages, it's something you don't expect. Flowers bring the bees in too, and that makes it even better. Hanno has been working in the garden too. He's trying to remove the stumps of trees felled a few years ago that are now providing a problem with his ride on mower. Soon we'll organise a day together, when it's a bit colder, when we weed and prune the front garden and plant out a few cuttings I've been growing in the bush house.

Whether in the front or back garden, this time of year is our busy time in the garden and when we're not out there, we're thinking about being out there. But there is one thing we must remember at this time of year, when the weather makes being outside such a sublime pleasure, and that is to go out there, enjoy it and just soak it all in. No work, just sitting or walking or sipping tea. We make these spaces to be beautiful and serene and it's at times like these that they should be appreciated, looked at, thought about, enjoyed and celebrated.
Simple life is as much about slowing down and enjoying your surroundings and your home as it is about the thrifty management of household funds and low impact living. We live in an age where many people are permanently busy and although I am busy at times, I take time out of every day to relax, think and appreciate what surrounds me. Those times, sometimes brief and some not so, help me get through the harder times.

I'm longing to return to a state of relaxed normality but it's been a busy few weeks here. We've all been waiting for yesterday when the book was published. Thank you so much for the warm support you've given me with your comments and emails and by purchasing the book. Those comments encourage me to continue here because I know people are reading and are connected enough to comment. It is good to have the book out and on the shelves so now I can concentrate on getting the last three written and out to you.

My sister has been here for the past week, and flies home today. While she was here, she helped me organise the Mending, Repurposing and Household Linens book and she made up the cutest, sheer, patchwork kitchen curtain and a jug cover for the book. It was good to sit and talk to someone who understands what I'm trying to do with the linens. I want to encourage mending and recycling instead of buying new, as well as help develop traditional sewing and mending skills for some of the younger women and men. This is work such as replacing zippers, sewing on buttons, making dishcloths, mending rips and general maintenance of clothes and household linens. If you have these skills it allows you to keep trousers, shirts, jumpers, jeans, dresses, pyjamas, night dresses, skirts and school uniforms going for much longer, as well as save money by not buying disposable products such as dishcloths and dusters, which helps a lot with the budget.

The final reason for my busyness has been the continuation of Hanno's illness. Since early December he's had long periods of gout pain that have come every month and only let up for a week or two, only to return again. We went back to the doctor yesterday and have a referral to a new rheumatology specialist at Greenslopes, which is a large hospital in Brisbane. The GP is changing his diagnosis too, from gout to gouty arthritis, and possibly to rheumatoid arthritis. So bear with us. We're a bit slow at the moment but we're getting there.

Over the next couple of days, I'll take the opportunity to catch up on a few things not done while Tricia was here. I don't know why but I find it impossible to stick to my routine when she's here. I haven't made bread for a week, we bought bread from the local bakery and while I did continue feeding the chooks and letting them out each morning, then quickly watering the garden before going back inside, there were quite a few things I should have done but didn't. I did cook from scratch each day but we also went out for lunch twice. Once was Tricia's treat and the other was yesterday when we celebrated the book with a beer, fish and salad at the local pub. I did make the bed everyday, I did wash up but I didn't sweep the floor.  I feel like I've been on a little holiday. I'm not feeling guilty about it. It is what it is. I just have to pick up where I left off a week ago and get things done now.

So to get me back into gear and to help those of you who struggle with this sort of thing, I recommend Rose's 28 day organising challenge at the forum. These are small challenges for common household tasks that can be done in a few minutes. You can do the entire challenge or pick and choose the tasks you struggle with. Either way it's a great refresher for all of us who've fallen off the wagon, or never got on it. ;- )  

Rose's discussion thread. Look below the discussion thread for the individual day challenges. For example, this is the entry for day six:

Day 6 will essentially repeat Day 5, if you've been sticking to this challenge you may find a rhythm emerging especially with your morning and evening routines. Today, keep to those routines, do the tasks for today from your weekly routine, continue to put away dry washing, declutter at least one item and identify an undone thing that is niggling at you. You may decide to do this on the spot, if it's going to take a while then note it in your journal and break down the whole task into smaller steps.

Permaculture is a design system started in Australia, originally for permanent agriculture and homesteads, but now the principles have spread world-wide and the design system is much more far reaching. Last year I wrote about how the permaculture could be applied inside the home as well as in the garden. I got a reminder recently that this subject might be an interesting one to write about again and hopefully by doing so I can encourage you to look to permaculture principles to examine your home life closely.

I am not a trained permaculturalist. I read the books by David Holmgren and Bill Mollison in the 80s, then, shortly before we came to live here in the mid-1990s, Linda Woodrow's superb book The Permaculture Home Garden was published. Linda's book showed me the possibilities lurking in backyards and even before we arrived here I'd decided to continue vegetable gardening, install a water tank and buy more chickens when we settled in. We don't follow the traditional design elements of permaculture, we prefer a more organised garden. It was enough for us to garden organically, but I never forgot the excitement I felt when, after reading Linda's book, I realised that a vegetable garden wasn't just a garden. It was a gateway into another kind of life.

The principles of permaculture are applied to working zones, generally in the garden and outdoor areas of a home, but they can also work well inside. Some folk get stuck when they stop spending and start working towards a simpler life and they don't know what they should or could be doing. I'm not saying that permaculture has all the answers but it will give you guidelines to apply to your home, it will encourage you to think deeply about the work you do there and maybe that will be the key that opens it all up for you.

Maybe as you work through the zones and customise your home using them, you'll organise your work spaces in a more logical manner and discover ideas you never thought about before. Basically the house is Zone 0 and the work zones are the lower numbers. The further away you go from those zones, the less time you spend there and the less work is done there. I have listed my zones below. My list goes from Zone 0, which is the house itself, and works out from zone 1 through to zone 5; I added zone 6, which is my community. Go through the list, think about your home if it could work for you and then define for yourself what your zones are. 

Permaculture zones in our home and possibly many suburban, urban and rural homes:

Zone 0

The house. Here babies are conceived and cuddled, toddlers turn into school children, then teenagers. It is where people like you and me develop, create, think, relax, grow older and often thrive. Here in my home the house is now a place for grandchildren as well. The home is where families grow into strong units. At the edges of your property, your community starts. From here you'll reach out and be part of your community and hopefully you'll help build an active and thriving neighbourhood.

Zone 1

This is the zone were most of the daily domestic action happens and for me, that's the kitchen. Included in this zone are the freezer, pantry, stockpile cupboard and kitchen table. This zone is mainly for food storage and preparation as well as family meals and visiting guests. this is where all the action happens.

Zone 2

This is the living and relaxation area of our home - the lounge room, front and back verandahs. Zone 2 in the house is also directly connected to zone 1 in the garden. It is where I sort seeds, tie garlic and onions, write plant labels, process loofahs and store excesses of lemons.

Zone 3

This zone requires a little less attention but still it's busy. This is the laundry where we wash clothes, make cleaners, make and store soap and keep the ingredients for all our cleaners. Here is where babies are bathed when they visit and where our dirty clothes and stored and then washed.

Zone 4

This is our maintenance zone. It's is sewing and work room and the linen cupboard. In here I mend, sew, store fabrics, yarns, sewing machine, knitting needles, buttons and sewing tools.

Zone 4

Takes in the garage, the garden shed and Hanno's big shed. These areas are where we store broken furniture, bits and pieces waiting to be fixed, tools, lawn mowers, wheelbarrows, hay and backyard equipment.

Zone 5 

Budgeting zone. Although this is not an actual place and doesn't require daily monitoring, it's an important part of the system because it relates to every zone. Zone 5 must be working well for all the zones in the house and garden to function to their potential.

Zone 6

Your local community. In a functioning local area, the homes and the people who live in them are connected to and support their local community. Occasional work may be done there in the form of committee work, support for the local school, youth and sports clubs. If there is no community support, towns die, professionals such as doctors, midwives and dentists leave and CWA, community gardens, and other neighbourhood groups close down. A thriving community always has the support of its citizens.

These zones are set up according to your work and how often that works needs to be done. Zone 1 work is usually repeated many times every day. It's also the area where you place things that need attention every day.

But the zones are only part of this. There are 12 permaculture principles that play an important role because they make you think about what you're doing, they help you improve your work practices and they guide you to effectively apply the principles of permaculture to help you live according to your values. The principles of permaculture are guided by three ethics: earth care, people care and fair share. These three ethics are a way of saying we look after ourselves, our family, our community and we don't use more than we need - we share.

This post is getting to be a long one so tomorrow I'll write permaculture principles. Hopefully today you'll share your thoughts on how you might use these zone to help you organise your work at home.