down to earth

If you believed the advertisements on TV, washing clothes is one of the most difficult things to do if you don't have THE special magic potion. The reality is that washing can be done easily and effectively with simple products, a bit of time and some elbow grease.

WASHING IN A WASHING MACHINE
In our house we often have clothes that need washing but aren't really dirty. They might have been worn for a few days and are starting to get a bit grubby or smelly, but there are no stains that have to be treated. These go straight into the washing machine and are washed with my home made laundry powder. We also have clothes that need stain removal - that stain might be grease or oil stains on H's work clothes, or stains from a food or coffee spills. These clothes go into the laundry tub with some oxygen bleach and hot water and stay there either overnight or until the water is cold. Then they are checked to see that the stain is gone, scrubbed with laundry soap if it's not, and put into the washing machine on a normal wash with the HM powder.

If pre-soaking hasn't removed a stain, usually scrubbing with laundry soap will do the trick. Don't wash the soap off, put it straight into the washing machine and let it wash with the extra soap. This generally removes even difficult stains.

I use a cold water setting with most of my washing but every so often I'll wash the sheets on a hot water wash. I also use hot water if H has some greasy work clothes. I soak them first, then hot wash.

Don't overcrowd your machine. Everything needs to move around inside the machine, it's part of the washing action that cleans then. If they can't swish around, they won't wash properly.

DISHCLOTHS AND TEA TOWELS

These need special treatment as they're used in the kitchen so need to be disinfected. When I've used a dishcloth for a couple of days it's placed in the laundry room in a dry bucket and left until the rest of the washing needs to be done. The night before I start the washing, I fill the bucket up with hot water and some oxygen bleach to soak the cloths. Every so often, I give this same treatment to the tea towels. It keeps them looking good and removes any food stains that have built up since the last soaking. After the cloths have soaked overnight, they are washed in the machine with the general washing.

SOAK BEFORE WASHING
Most clothes benefit from being soaked. It loosens dirt and is a good treatment for stains. If you can soak clothes before washing, do it. It's gentler on fabric than washing. If you start your washing with cleaner clothes you need less laundry powder, less energy to run the machine on complicated hot water washes and less time in the machine.

KNOW YOUR MACHINE
I have a fully automatic washing machine but I never use the programmed settings. I modify every wash according to what goes into the machine. So if I have towels, my auto setting tells me a hot water wash and three rinses. I disagree with that - I use cold water and two rinses. Every couple of months I give all my towels the hot water and oxygen bleach soaking mentioned above. It disinfects the towels and gets rid of in ground grime.

Remember, you don't need a mountain of different products in the laundry. Generally homemade detergent, laundry soap, oxygen bleach and ammonia will keep your fabrics fresh and clean. Soaking will get rid of stains - then just wash as normal.

GENERAL REMINDERS

Read the labels on new clothes and wash accordingly.
Always wash with phosphate-free detergents.
Try using homemade laundry detergent, there is a recipe for it in this blog. Not only is it an excellent cleaner, it's also much cheaper.
Try to always hang your washing on the line to dry. Dryers use more energy than any other home appliance.
Treat stains as soon as you can. The longer a stain remains on the fabric, the harder it is to remove it.

FURTHER READING

How to fold a fitted sheet
Washing in Victorian times
Staying clean in the colonial outback

It's Christmas in July here next weekend. For our international friends that is the time when many Australians - at least those in areas near here - celebrate a fake Christmas so they can enjoy a "real Christmas dinner". That includes hot food like turkey and ham with all the trimmings and hot plum pudding under a blanket of flaming brandy. Anyhow, it started me thinking about the real Christmas in December and what gifts I have and what I'll make.

Last year I felt quite satisfied with the gifts I gave and only fell short of my goal to give all homemade gifts, with my two sons. For them I bought "stuff". I'm not sure why I did that. They both know what H and I are aiming for in our lives now but because they don't live as we do, I crumbled when it came to their gifts. I hope I'm stronger this year.

Good organisation is the key to frugal gifts. You need to be well prepared and to start thinking about your gift list well in advance of Christmas. The June/July sale season is an ideal time to start. Making a list of people you want to give a gift to is essential, and if this is the first time you've really been mindful of what you're giving and to whom, the list might give you a few worries. A few years ago I culled my list to the bare bone. I realised that giving gifts just for the sake of it, or because they were expected, is wasteful and adds significantly to an overspending culture. So I contacted those people, well before Christmas, and explained my new philosophy. Most were relieved to get off the merry-go-round of Christmas spending, others said they didn't care. So with my new improved list that now comprised my immediate family and a couple of close friends, I started thinking about the specifics. The next step is to work out how much you intend spending - this needs to be an overall budget as well as an amount for each person. When you've done this, you're ready for the interesting part - the gifts.

Remember your goal is to give all your gifts spending the least amount you can, but all your gifts MUST be something the person will like and use. It's a total waste, and defeating the purpose of frugal gift giving, if you give someone a piece of junk because you don't know what else to give. That piece of junk will sit in a cupboard and will add to the billions of dollars spent on gifts that have no real meaning. The key to this is to think carefully about your gifts and give something that will be used or treasured.

The practical gift
If you have a friend who is just getting into simple living, give her some thing that reflects simple values. Something like a nice enamel "Laundry Powder" container with the makings of homemade laundry power with it. A container will cost you about $25, the makings - laundry soap, borax and washing soda, will cost another $5.

You could so the same for soap making. Make up a parcel with olive oil, coconut oil, caustic soda and some soap moulds. Print out the instructions for making soap from the internet and parcel it all together in a tea towel and you have another gift for under $30.

The scraps gift
Look around your home and see what fabric you have to make a few gifts. You could make a tea cosy, apron, peg bag, wall hanging, table mats, cushion covers or tote bags.

The outdoor gift
Something for the gardens. Buy some attractive pots and potting mix and try to swap (or buy) heirloom seeds for tomatoes, chilli or herbs. In September, plant them up and nurture them until you give them on Christmas Day. You could also paint some plain terracotta pots in favourite colours.

If your person has a favourite plant, get some cuttings and six months of care should give you some nice plants to give. Or if you can't think of exactly the right thing, give a voucher for a Sunday of lawn mowing and clippings removal - and do that yourself. Just make up the voucher on your computer.

The food gift
This could be just about anything. Really popular things will include homemade jams and preserves, plum puddings, fruit cakes, home made fruit cordial, wine or ginger beer. Or you could make up a bread makers gift of a kilo of bread flour, yeast or sourdough starter, good salt and a bread tin - print off a tried and true recipe from the internet.

The bathroom gift
Homemade soap, home grown loofahs and soap, bath salts, shampoo bars, shaving soap, or any homemade cosmetics would fit well in this category.

The hobby gift
If you friend loves sewing, knitting or needlework, make up a kit of things she'd love. A keen gardener would probably love a new hat and gloves.

Tea and Coffee gift
This speaks for itself. Make up a little basket with a selection of various teas or a bag of organic Australian coffee and a nice mug.

Children's gifts

I haven't given gifts to children for a long time but you could think about books bought on sale, homemade playmats, bags for Legos, marbles or small treasures, colouring in pencils, homemade tote bags, fairy wings and skirt, Harry Potter cape or Hogwarts scarf. For older children or teens, a voucher for one CD will cost $25 - $30, or movie tickets will cost less.

Just about everything above can be bought cheaper than retail price if you started buying your items at the mid year sales. For things like tea and coffee or the hobby items, look for those things as you're progressing through the months. You can often pick up a good special if you keep your eyes open. If you're going to make most of your gifts, start now so you're not rushed later. Work out how many you have to make, and work according to your list. You may need to make one gift a week, or one a month. Don't leave them all till December because you'll be overwhelmed and wonder why you ever started this type of gift giving.

The most important thing is to make everything as well as you can and make sure your gifts suit your recipients. Wrap them nicely in a tea towel or brown paper, decorated with leaves, ribbon or kids drawings and you'll be giving a gift that is full of love and good intentions. And that, my friends, is the best gift of all.

(Image from Allposters.com)

One of my current projects in the garden is to cultivate more fruit. I would love to be able to have days when I eat all raw food, preferably my own home grown organic fruit. If all of our fruit plants produced as well as our lemon tree, I'd be one very satisfied woman.

When we moved here ten years ago, we planted a few fruit trees but we didn't look after them; they didn't die but never really produced much. A couple of years ago I started fertilising with blood and bone and potash, giving each plant the required amount of water and everything turned around, we started getting healthy looking fruit trees. This year we allowed the flowers that developed on the trees, shrubs and vines to produce a few fruit and this is the result from one of the Washington Navel orange trees. I picked this orange yesterday afternoon and ate it last night, it was delicious and juicy and everything a good orange should be. And true to the saying: you can't judge a book by its cover, the skin didn't look too appetising as it was a bit mottled and had blotches on it. It didn't look like the perfect orange, but it was! Long ago I stopped judging books by their covers, and I like getting reminders along the way that reinforce that clever strategy.

The Washington Navel tree is on the eastern side of our vegetable garden, so it doesn't shade the vegetables. In that same vegie garden we are also growing some rhubarb, a peach tree and a nectarine tree. I pruned those trees a couple of weeks ago as I want them to remain small enough for me to net them. Last year we grew about 200 perfect peaches and nectarines, and then fruit fly found our garden and we ended up eating five. The chooks got the rest. This year, more care and vigilance, and fruit fly baits, will hopefully reward our efforts.

Just outside the fenced garden we've planted four blueberries. They've been producing in small quantities ever since. Hopefully when spring comes they'll bush out a lot and grow lots of berries.

Our main fruit growing area is on the other side of the garden. There we're growing new sultana grapes, lady finger and dwarf cavendish bananas, a pink grapefruit, a mandarin, passionfruit, raspberries, loquats and another navel orange. In the past they've always suffered from lack of water so we installed a water tank near them last November and they're now getting enough water to thrive. I'm also growing vanilla orchids in the bush-house and avocados in the front garden.

Last year's bananas.

We're still a long way from being self sufficient in fruit, but that is our goal. Like many other things in this simple life, it's small steps all the way. We've put in the hard yards during the year so I'm hoping that like the orange, our other fruit plants will produce abundant harvests for us in Spring.

As soon as you realise that lifestyle change is essential in every affluent country and understand that you must be part of that change, your personal transformation can begin. You don’t need special equipment or anyone else to help, you just need to start and to remain focused and motivated. We got into this climate change predicament over the course of several decades; I believe we will get out of it with each of us taking small steps.

Of course every one's small steps will be different but there are a number of common measures that will probably be a part of every one's strategy. These include:
* Getting off the mindless consumption merry-go-round
* Reduced spending
* Cutting back on your consumption of electricity, petrol, gas and water
* Reduce, reuse, repair and recycle – both at home and at work

It could also include such things as:
* Not eating meat
* Shopping locally
* Growing your own food and supplement it with your stockpiled staples
* Not eating takeaway food
* Cooking from scratch

We had a surprise visitor here yesterday. It was a friend that we’ve known for many years, we had our first babies at the same time and lived in the same isolated town for many years. She is six months older than me but she will be working until she is 70 to pay off all her debts. She was surprised when I told her how little we spend but I doubt that small surprise will be enough to change her mindset. You see that’s the thing. You have to be so concerned or shocked or unhappy that you realise without reservation that you must change. My friend is not there yet.

H and I live on $350 a week. We live well and we are happier now than we have ever been. We have private health insurance, we have holidays, we have everything we need, we have no debt. We live a truly simple life that allows us to choose whatever we want to do each day. We could both still be working if we chose to but our mindset has changed; we don’t view success in the same way anymore. We want to be part of a solution, we don’t want to add to the problem. We’ve implemented strategies that are easy to follow that have allowed us to reduce our electricity consumption to 11.7 kWh per day from 13.9 last year and around 25 kWh five years ago. We’ve reduced our water usage to 100 litres each a day, we use 6000 litres a month. We used to use so much water we paid hundred of dollars in excess water bills.

So you can see that it is possible and they are not huge changes – it’s reducing in small steps. We are just ordinary people, if we can do it, anyone can. All it takes is the change in mindset and the willingness to start. That first step is the most difficult and after that it’s a matter of remaining focused. You can stay motivated by reading the many blogs on this subject and reskilling yourself for your new life. It is that simple.

Ready, set ……… go.

I’ve been thinking a lot about positive role models lately and how there are so few of them. I look at my friends and none of them live as I do, they are all still caught up with spending and over consumption. I love my friends dearly but I am not inspired by how they live.

So where do we usually find women, or men for that matter, who act as role models – who simply by the way they live and present themselves, inspire others to live to their true potential? Certainly not in the popular media, and I won’t go further than that as this would turn into a tirade if I did. If there is no inspiring light in your group of friends or someone at work, then where?

Well, for me it’s been in blogs. I have found wonderful role models online. Women who show me a way of being that allow me to stay true to who I am, and simply by sharing their lives demonstrate important, honourable and creative ways to live.

The blogs I like best are those written by women who are living an authentic life. I’m not interested in the political and intellectual blogs that talk about change and how to achieve it; I prefer to get that information in books. I am more interested in people who live their changes rather than talk about them, and who share their experiences. I’m fascinated by those blogs that show you, with words and photos, how others live simply, while being mindful of environmental responsibilities, in ordinary and every day ways. For me, living a life that works well, and honestly sharing it with all its ups and downs, is the best example.

At the moment I find inspiration in a few blogs that you might have already discovered yourself. If you haven’t, I encourage you to check these places out.

Path to Freedom I have been visiting this website for the past five years and am still as motivated by them as I was on the first visit. The Dervaes family live in California and show us all that true change is possible.

Sometimes I see love and caring in photos and I see it often in Little Jenny Wren’s photos of her home. Jenny is a Tasmanian woman who shares her family and her crafts with all of us. There is plenty of simple wisdom there.

When she writes about her day-to-day life Jewels clearly demonstrates that everyone and everything matters. She lives in the US with her husband and ten children and shows us that simply living can also be elegant, heart warming and a lot of fun.

Phelan is living on farm and tell us about all the changes she's making. I love her honesty and her enthusiastic small steps.

I really like the cooking on the free range living blog, but there is also a lovely small house she sold recently and the excitement of a new house she and her family are now moving in to.

There must be many more blogs that document the authentic extraordinary lives of ordinary people. I would love to find more blogs to inspire and motivate me. If you have favourite blogs you go to everyday, please tell me, and everyone else, about them and add a link so we can visit.