down to earth

A simple home can be many things. It could be a flat, house, caravan, shed, a room, a retirement village or a module in a sustainable community. Whatever form your home takes, it is an important part of your life and how you feel each day. Making it as sustainable, comfortable and productive as possible will make your life easier and more simple.

One of the most liberating and symbolic things you can do on your journey to simplified living is to declutter your home. It’s liberating because you don’t have to look after all that junk anymore and it is symbolic because it’s opening up your home and your mind and rejecting a more consumerist past life. It’s amazing how energised you feel after decluttering your home. We all have “stuff” in our lives, junk that we keep because we think it’s important, we haven’t thought to throw it out or we believe we might need it someday. Get tough with yourself and your possessions; they are holding you down under the weight of a hundred Saturday shopping trips to the mall and all those birthdays and Christmases. How many times have you “needed” something, tried looking for it and given up before you found it? How many times have you looked for something that you couldn’t find, bought a new replacement, then found the old one a week later? Those days are over.

You’ll be surprised when you’ve decluttered your home just how much junk you’ve paid money for and kept over the years. Keep only those things that you really need or those that give you pleasure. If something is kept in a cupboard and you don’t see it for months or years, get rid of it. When you finish your first decluttering session, look at what you have and enjoy it.

Decluttering is a major investment in your future well-being. Don’t try to declutter your entire house in one purging frenzy. Do it properly. It’s not a race. This is a readjustment to your life and it needs to be done with care and consideration. Concentrate on one room or one area at a time. Do one room a week until you’re finished, then revisit every room and make sure you got everything.

There are hundred of ways to declutter. This is how I do it:

Get four large boxes or garbage bags and mark them “Put Away”, “Give Away”, “Sell” and “Rubbish”.
Start at the door of the room and work in one direction around the room.
If you’re not sure about any item you pick up, ask yourself these questions:

Is this important to me or my family?
Would I be sad if I didn’t have this?
Have I used this in the past year?

When you pick something up never put it down anywhere except in one of the bags or boxes. Never skip an area, even if it seems overwhelming. Starting some areas is the biggest step. Keep that in mind and if it looks like too big a job, time yourself. Tell yourself that you’ll work on it for 15 minutes. Set a timer and when 15 minutes is up, stop. Often you’ll find that 15 minutes will be enough to make a big dent in your problem area, you can go back and finish it later.

Keep the things that are important to you but be ruthless and get rid of everything that you haven’t used in the past year. When the boxes/bags are full, everything in the “Put Away” box should be put away in the appropriate place in your home, what’s in the “Give Away” box can be given to charity, neighbours or friends. Take your “Sell” box to the garage and keep it with all other things you want to sell on eBay or at a big garage sale you can have at the end of your decluttering. The “Rubbish” items can be further sorted into rubbish – for the rubbish bin, or recyclables for the recycle bin or station.

As you work through your rooms resist the temptation to clean while you go. Leave things tidy but save your cleaning and organising for another day. When all your decluttering is finished and you have removed all the boxes to their appropriate places, go back to each room and assess what needs to be done next. Now that you’ve removed all the excess items you can really clean and organise your rooms into fully functional areas that work for the purpose they are intended.

Look what I found yesterday! An old photo of my boys - H, Shane and Kerry. H would have been in his early 40s here.

Although I love working in my home and recognise that everything I do here makes life better for H and I, there are some chores I don't like doing. But as I work my way through each day, as I make our bed each morning, wash the dishes and sweep floors, I know that what I am doing contributes in a meaningful way to our lives.

When our sons were much younger and I was hoping that my methods of firm boundaries, loving guidelines and setting a good example, would produce the men they eventually became, through all those years of mothering, even in the tough times, I knew unreservedly it was an honourable task.

I look around today at a world that is faster and noisier, where you are held in high esteem if you live with secret debt in a fancy house, where people rush to judgement, where children take knives and guns to school and where people, especially women, wonder if their vocation to work at home or in the business world is the right one.

We need to look at work with fresh eyes, we need to respect the work we do, and the work of others. You will always feel undervalued and have a sense of not being recognised for your work - both in paid work or at home - if you do not try to work to your full potential, set quality standards for yourself and honour what you do.

If you want your work to be respected, you must first respect what you do. You have to give meaning to your own work - whatever it is. Work is its own reward, it brings self discipline, honour and gratification in a job well done. Set your own standards of quality, don't look at the next door neighbours or those you work with and wish for what they have. It's irrelevant. Care for and respect what you have. Respect what you do and others will too.

There is a sense of accomplishment in starting a job, setting your standard of quality, working through to the best of your ability, bit by bit, taking in every part of that work. It will give you a sense of achievement and pride in what you do. Being the best mum, writing an accurate and intelligent report, serving your customers well, baking a wonderful loaf of bread, tending your garden, collecting eggs, mentoring your work colleagues and being the best you can be will make your work honourable and make you better for it.

Focusing on how you work - be that at home or in the workplace - gives your day purpose, it helps you live deliberately and it will help you create a fuller life for yourself. If you can wake in the morning with a feeling of wanting to do your best, work through your day with a generous and happy heart and look back on what you've achieved with pride, then you've lived that day well, and to its full potential. And if that seems to be too much of a task for you to achieve, just start one step at a time. Concentrate on what you're doing, do small tasks well and take pride in them. Slowly you will start seeing all work as honourable and when you understand that, when you know that what you do contributes to the quality of your life, it will make it easier for you to totally embrace your work.

I received an email from a reader the other day asking about water saving strategies so I thought now is a good time to be checking our water meters.

In Australia, water charges are bases on kilolitre lots; a kilolitre is 1000 litres.

Click here to find out how to read a water meter in Australia.

Water meters reading in Canada.

In the US, Water meters in the U.S. typically measure volume in gallons or cubic feet. One cubic foot = 7.48 gallons and 100 cubic feet = 748 gallons. Water charges are typically based on 100 cubic feet or on 1000 gallon units.

California and Portland

There are 1000 litres (or 220 gallons) in a cubic metre.

TIPS ON SAVING WATER

As Australia is such a dry continent, we've been developing our water saving strategies for some time. You can check out this site for some good water saving tips that could be used in every country.

I think we waste a lot of water when we do things like clean our teeth, wash hands and vegetables under running water and rinsing plates and cups before putting them in the dishwasher. Waiting for shower water to heat up is also a big waste. Put a bucket in the shower to catch the cold water and use it the next day to either flush your toilet, or to water your garden. Please add your own water saving tips to the comments box.

CHECKING FOR WATER LEAKS:

Choose a time when you are not using any appliances that use water. (overnight)
Make sure all taps are turned off.
Allow all tanks and cisterns to completely fill (this can take up to 30 minutes).
Take an initial meter reading (read both the black and the red digits).
Leave all appliances turned off for at least an hour after the reading has been taken.
Take a second meter reading (read both the black and the red digits).
If the second reading is greater than the initial reading this indicates that water has passed through the meter and you may have a leak.

If your water meters indicates you have a leak, start looking for it but also contact your water authority as soon as you can. Many water leaks are underground and your water authority will have the ability to find these.

OUR WATER USAGE

I have been keeping an eye on our water usage for the past year. We use around 6.5 kilolitres a month which is about 116 litres each per day. We don't have water restrictions here but they do in our surrounding shires and the recommendation there is a daily use of 130 litres per person. That is 34.3 gallons per day, per person.

So now you'll need to read your meter and see just how much you are using. Take notes of your readings and let us know what you discover. It will take a few days to get a realistic reading as it will go up and down, but keep with it and see what you use over a week. To get a daily usage per person, divide your weekly total by 7 to get your daily reading, then divide that by the number of people in your family to find out what each person is using. Good luck!

The tools of a revolutionary.

There comes a point when everyone needs to make a conscious decision to make changes that need to be made. How many times have we talked about small steps, how many times have you seen that strategy in magazines, online or in newspapers; how often have you already used the small steps strategy? We all know small steps work.

Everyone in the world needs to change a little, or a lot, to become greener. We need to change our idea that there is a product for everything; we have to stop buying the mountain of products that will end up in landfill or will pollute in some way. Everyone has a part to play in this, everyone needs to help.

It doesn't matter if you can afford to buy lots of electricity or water, or if you can buy new clothes, shoes, paper plates and napkins or a million other products that harm the planet, until the cows come home, we all need to stop doing it. And we need to do it because it's the right thing to do - it is important, it will help, every small step does.

So today my friends, I want you to commit to your change. I want you step up today and decide that even if you haven't done anything yet for your planet, and especially if you have, today I want you to tell me in the comments box what small step will start or continue you along the road to a greener life. I want you to tell me about your change and how it will affect your life. Please don't close this blog down now and walk away. Today is the day when instead of just knowing that something needs to be done, you start doing it.

I commit to stop using tea bags. From now on I will use up the organic black tea bags I have in the pantry, then I will only buy loose tea. I have some metal tea containers that I can use loose tea in that will be similar, but not quite as convenient, as a tea bag. Loose tea is cheaper and better than tea in bags, so I win on that aspect, but if lack of convenience is the price I pay to stop wasting all that filter paper, string, a label and one staple for every cup of tea, that, my friends, is the price I will pay

I want every one of you to email this post to a friend so we can get a million small steps happening. I want you to help me tell as many people as possible that we are doing this. And, most of all, I want to know what you will do.

I am having the most incredibly busy week. Monday and Tuesday were spent at my wonderful job at the Neighbourhood Centre. I have been trying to reorganise a lot of things there since I took over as co-ordinator and consequently, when I'm there, I never have enough hours in the day to get through all I want to do. This week was particularly busy as we had a burglar alarm installed and I had to write procedures on how to arm and disarm the alarm (I set it off accidentally yesterday and nearly deafened everyone in the building LOL), show them how it was done and also write a procedure for our committee members who are the ones who will respond if the alarm goes off. The procedure spells out how to respond safely. Luckily I had another volunteer there with me yesterday, so Bernadette and I showed everyone the ins and outs of the alarm system. We also dealt with a few people coming in for food relief, interviewed a new volunteer, answered the phone too many times, talked to people who came in, cleaned up and tried to organise the place for the volunteers who will be there for the rest of the week.

I usually only work there Monday and Tuesday but today, Bernadette, H and I will go back to change furniture around in our two meeting rooms. Now the alarm is in it changes how we use our rooms at night. We sometimes have local groups using the meeting rooms at night and we have to change them to suit the alarm. Hopefully we'll be finished doing that at lunchtime and I can come home and sort out the swap partners.

When I came home yesterday H was in the kitchen talking to a builder. I told you all that our dishwasher hose sprung a leak recently, well, we had the insurance assessor in on Monday, he said we have to have the floor replaced and to get a quote from a kitchen builder for the damaged cupboards. As it turns out, the entire floor has to be replaced - it's a floating wood floor and they can't match what is down now, so the whole floor will be done. That is the floors in the entire house, except the bedrooms, which are carpeted. The kitchen man said that replacing the kick boards under the cupboards and a few cupboards will mean the entire kitchen will be taken out. The kitchen cupboards have to be removed anyway for the floor to be laid and when the bench tops come out, they will crack, they will also break the tiles behind the benches, as they're all glued together. So .... we will need the entire kitchen replaced too - all cupboards, new tiling, plumbers and electricians in to turn off and reconnect the services. I am still trying to digest this information. At the very least it will mean no kitchen, no walking around the house and workmen here for at least three days. =:- O It also means I have to work out what sort of kitchen I want. Will I have the same or go with something new? I'll have to go to the showroom and see what's available now. Replacing the kitchen is something I didn't think I'd do so I have no idea what I should be looking for. It looks like a few hours on research there.

There are quite a few small things happening too. It's H's birthday next week, the boys and I want to buy him a pushbike, so Shane and I have been looking around for that. We're expecting visitors soon - my sister and Kerry with his Canadian friend. We still have quite a bit of the vegetable garden left to plant up - that's important and can't be put off. I'm trying to work a few hours everyday on the ebook, but haven't done anything for the past week. So all of that is happening as well as our normal chores that must be done every day. It's been a stretch to get it all in. I wish I lived in an Amish community where I knew everyone would come and help. Now wouldn't that be a good thing? : )

But as my mum would say, at least I have plenty to do and I know I'm alive. I always enjoy writing my blog, it helps me sort through what has to be done and organises each day before I face it. And besides, I wouldn't be dead for quids. (That's an old Australian saying, sorry if you don't understand it.)

So for the time being, this simple life isn't so simple but I'm sure it will return to gentle ambling again soon. Life is full of the unexpected, it's often what makes us look at our lives in a different way, so I'll just go with the flow and see where I end up. Whatever will be, will be. Wish me luck.

There could be anything down there but it's important to have the area under your kitchen sink clean and organised, with all your cleansers and cloths close to where they'll be used.

Store your kitchen cleansers, cleaning brushes and cloths under the kitchen sink. Or if you have a stack of hand made wash cloths, find a good looking container and have them sitting on your window sill. That's where mine are. I like looking at them when I wash up and they look good sitting there proudly displaying their home made origins.

I can't show you a photo of my under sink area at the moment, as we're still waiting for the insurance assessor to inspect the damage we had when the dishwasher hose split; it's empty. But when it's full, I have a small plastic basket to store my bicarb and soap in, and there is a pair of rubber gloves hanging over the side. I go through stages of using detergent, when I have dishwashing liquid for hand washing or dish washer detergent for the machine, it's stored in the basket with the bicarb. In another small plastic box I keep a bottle of ammonia, a box of yellow laundry soap, a bottle of white vinegar and some brushes. This keeps everything together and they can be easily be move to one side if I need to store something behind them.

Next to all this is our kitchen rubbish bin, which fits in nicely under the sink and is not out in the kitchen for the dogs to check out or visitors to see.

I wonder what it looks like under your kitchen sink. Does it need a clean out? Is today the day? If it is, it won't take long; it's such a small space.

If you want to clean that area, remove everything, wipe the space out with a soapy cloth and dry it all with another clean cloth. Then go through all your products and remove everything you don't need - either throw it out is it's old and unusable, or put it in the laundry room if you'll use it for other cleaning duties. Find a couple of containers that will conveniently hold the items you want under the sink, place everything in them and put them back under the sink. Make sure you have everything you'll need for kitchen cleaning.

See, all done! Now you can go and enjoy your morning tea knowing you have one important cleaning area in your home all tidy and organised.

Don’t forget to lock this cupboard with a childproof lock if you’re a parent of small children or if you have small children visit your home.