down to earth

Michelle posed an interesting question over at aussieslivingsimply this morning. She asked "Is it possible to live well on the age pension?" For our international readers, the age pension is paid to citizens of Australia after they reach the age of 65 - men and women. Michelle says the pension is $877 per couple per fortnight, or $438.50 a week. We live well on less than that. H is on an age pension (I'm only 59 so I have another five years before I can claim), we also have some share investments and money in the bank, but we made a conscious decision to give up a more lavish lifestyle and live on $400 a week.

It would be very difficult to live on this amount if you had debt or were paying rent, although I think there is a rent allowance if you do pay rent. But overall, I have to say it's possible to live on the pension, to live well, to enjoy yourself and to save.

Like just about everything else, you need to be organised and have a plan. If you go from week to week without one, you'd quickly fall on your face. We have a budget that we stick to - our budget is our spending guide which enables us to buy what we need, pay all our bills and save $150 a month. It's not a lot, but it pays for a holiday every year. In our former lives, $150 would have paid for a new pair of shoes, now it's much more valuable to us. We value our time more now so we'd never spend that amount on something so trivial. We're different people, we've changed our lives and the way we look at spending and possessions.

I've written before about how we break up our budget here, and in a few posts that follow that one, so I won't go into the details of it again, suffice to say that we couldn't do it without a budget or spending plan, and by being frugal. Thrift is the glue that holds our lifestyle together. We don't spend on things that don't give us true value. We gave away pay TV, flying, expensive clothes and shoes, magazines and most newspapers, brand name groceries, new cars every few years, eating out at restaurants, paying for someone to iron and clean, giving expensive gifts and pampering ourselves with what money buys. We are still pampered, but it's with healthier things like relaxing with a good (library) book on the front verandah and having the time to really enjoy our garden; we eat well, in fact we eat better now than we ever have with a lot of fresh, organic food rather than stale supermarket food; we don't miss 99% of pay TV and magazines. I'd still love to watch Martha and I'd still love to have my favourite magazine - British Country Living, but that's all I miss and it's not a big deal to miss something, it makes me stronger and I am better for it. And all the other things we gave up are nothing, we don't miss or think about them now. Our lives are better and we are happier than we've ever been.

We still pay for top cover private health insurance, we still have our dogs, we have a reliable car and whenever we have to buy something, we shop around and make sure we are getting the best value for our dollars. All those things are covered in that $400 a week.

So we are proof that living well on a pension is possible. We couldn't have done it without changing the way we see possessions and success. Success to us now is not a new car, it's whether the tomatoes have a bigger crop than they did last year. Our success now is seeing our sons mature and live their own lives well. We've taken the emphasis off money, we realise now that you don't read about true quality on a label but rather by the smile on someone's face or in the feeling of satisfaction after a hard days work. True happiness isn't about getting everything your heart desires, it's more about reaching your genuine potential and living a life that reflects that. And, ladies and gentlemen, I'm happy to say, you can do that on $400 a week, and probably less.

Monday is washing day
Tuesday is ironing day
Wednesday is mending day
Thursday is market day
Friday is cleaning day
Saturday is baking day
Sunday is a day of rest

Of course, most women didn't just do that chore on that day, they also did their general house work and often had time to visit with neighbours, join sewing circles and play with the children. It was a much more relaxed way of living that was centered around the family and home.

Things have changed. There are now more women working outside the home, often grandmothers look after grandchildren while the mums are at work, many couples work at different times so there is always someone with the children, stay at home mums sometimes have a hobby/job they work on at home during the day, others homeschool. Some SAHMs care for elderly parents, some volunteer their time to schools or other community organisations. Life is lived at a faster pace now and there is no one size fits all when it comes to housework routines.

How you organise your housework will depend on whether you work outside the home or not, how many people you're looking after and at what stage of life you're at. When I had two young babies just 12 months apart, I found not only was I washing on Monday, but also most other days of the week. Now I wash only on Wednesdays. Everyone is different and your routine will change at different stages of your life.

No matter what stage of life you're at it's a really good idea to develop a housework routine. That will take the huge and often overwhelming task of "housework" and break it down into smaller and manageable parts. You can either make up your routine to do your work room by room or you could do a specific chore on a certain day, much like the verse. If you're like me, and have only one other person, or just yourself to look after, maybe you could have a routine which is similar to mine. My routine is similar day by day with changes only for washing, ironing and shopping, which is done once a month.

This is my general routine - it's a loose kind of thing that can easily be changed if friends drop by or I realise I have to work on an unplanned project.

Rise and shower.
Work on the computer until H rises.
Feed dogs and cat.
Make breakfast and wash up.
Check chooks, feed and change water, collect eggs.
Make the bed, tidy the bedroom and bathroom.
Make bread and tidy the kitchen.
Sweep the floor, vacuum once a week.
Once a week I bake biscuits or a cake.
Morning tea.
Gardening, sewing or writing.
Make lunch and wash up.
Tidy one area of the house - like the lounge room, the laundry etc I spend no longer than 30 minutes on this.
Writing, sewing or computer.
Make dinner and wash up.
Relax.

Every Wednesday I do the washing, hang it outside and fold it when it's dry.
Every Sunday morning I do the ironing.
Once a month, on a Wednesday, I go grocery shopping with H.

There are also seasonal jobs to be done. Such as in summer, I do a bit of preserving. That's always done in the morning. In Winter and Spring there is more gardening to be done.

I find that if I break up my housework with ideas about when I'll do certain things, it stops me thinking of "housework" as one big uncontrollable monster; it turns into tasks that will be done at certain times.

If you haven't thought about your housework in an organised way yet, give it some thought and make up your own routine. Write down what needs to be done. You don't have to itemise every task, go for whole areas - like vacuum house, clean the bathrooms, or divide the tasks up so that, like the verse above, you're doing one major task on one day, with a few little tasks with it. Don't be afraid to modified your routine to suit how you work and who is there to help, if anyone. If you find something doesnt work as you planned, change it.

When you've worked on your routine for a week or so and it is working how you want it to, stick to it and hopefully it will help you do the work that is required to keep your home clean and well maintained. Don't forget to take time out to have morning tea and to look after yourself. Sitting down with a magazine for a 15 minute break will give you something to look forward to, renew your energy and will break up the tasks for you.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY H!

He turns 67 today. I picked up his gift on the way home from work yesterday and here he is just after I gave it to him. He was really pleased with the bicycle and rode around with Alice running behind. I love making him happy.

I usually use cold water in my washing machine, I will do a hot water wash only on whites. I use homemade laundry powder (recipe here) and I always treat stains before I put them into the washing machine. I have a front-loading, five star washing machine. I’ve washed this way for years. I’ve never had a problem with dirty clothes, colours that fade too quickly or hygiene problems with underwear, tea towels or tablecloths.

Always pre-treat stains
For small new stains use the homemade laundry powder mixed into a paste and apply the paste to the stain. Leave for 15 minutes, rub over the stain and then wash as normal in the washing machine. Most new stains, if treated just after the spill, will respond to this treatment. If you have a really dirty item, fill a nine litre bucket with hot water, place in a cap full of a non-chlorinated bleach powder or nappy soaker, dissolve the powder in the water and soak the dirty item in the bucket, preferably overnight, or at least until the water is cold. After this treatment you can wash the garment as normal in your washing machine. This treatment usually removes the worst stains.

Read the care labels
Be guided by the labels on your clothing but use your common sense when dealing with your laundry. If the label reads “dry clean only”, try a delicate hand wash on a small portion of the item to test for colourfastness and durability. If that small piece dries well, you can hand wash the entire piece. I’ve done this with clothes over the years with no ill effects. Always try to hand wash it as it will save you paying for dry cleaning and it will also save you from chemicals used in the dry cleaning process.

One ward of caution here. If you start hand washing, you should always hand wash it. If you dry clean, always dry clean. You can’t swap between processes.

Sorting the washing
I used to think this was a thorough waste of time. Now I do it routinely. It’s worth the effort. Remember when sorting before washing, also turn clothes out the correct way and empty the pockets. You can also check for stains at this point. If the stain is not removed by hand washing prior to machine washing, then it will have to be treated and soaked according to the instructions above.

Sort you clothes into piles before you start your washing. The basic sorting is to sort whites from everything else. If you have a pile of white clothes, it might contain things like white t-shirts, tablecloths, underwear or nighties. It’s fine to wash all these things together, although you might want to put your underwear into a mesh washing bag to keep them all together and to stop the bras and fine shoulder straps tangling with other clothing.

The next level of sorting will depend on the size of your family and the washing you have to do. If you have a big family, you can probably have a load for jeans, one for towels, one for cottons and so on. If you have little washing to do, you may just sort the whites from the darks or the heavy materials, like jeans, from the delicates.

Make sure you don’t wash new towels with dark clothes as you’ll get lint on the dark things and always be careful with red clothing. If you can, wash red with other bright colours or hand wash it if you know the colour will run. I have a red top that never runs but I have other red clothes that, no matter, how many times they are washed, they still shed some red pigment in every wash. If in doubt, test for colourfastness or hand wash.

When it's all washed, I hang the washing on the line to dry. I have a dryer, I never use it. Hanging washing outside allows the sun to give an extra bit of cleaning as UV radiation kills bacteria and prevents fungi from spreading. Don't leave the clothes on the line too long though as, over time, it will fade bright colours. There are two lovely side effects of line drying - seeing your clean clothes gently swaying in the breeze and smelling the sun in the clothes when you bring them inside. There is nothing better than sleeping on newly laundered sheets that have been dried in the sun.

FURTHER READING:

About drying

It will be a busy week this one. I'm off to my volunteer job today and tomorrow with, no doubt, a million things happening there. Tomorrow we host the Minister for Communities at morning tea when he visits our Centre. I am making tea and scones with homemade strawberry jam and local jersey cream. I hope that helps with future funding submissions. ; )

I'll be posting a few things at the post office while I'm out, including my napkins. Prepare for incoming, Deb. Would the lady who asked me about soap a long time ago please email again. I've lost your address. Thanks.

The photo above was taken yesterday from one of the bedrooms. It shows almost the entire length of our house. H is still painting - he's in my new sewing room now, so he had the vacuum cleaner out because he was sanding the doors down. The doors will be painted today, we are using Smoke Rings - a very light grey colour. That light brownish door just on the left of the green cupboard, is my stockpile cupboard. Those doors will be replaced to match the doors in the new kitchen.

It's H's 67th birthday on Wednesday. I'm taking him to the local tea house for lunch and I've ordered him a new bicycle, with basket. He wants to cycle to the shops to collect the mail each day and needs the basket for that and if he needs to pick up milk or a newspaper. I know he'll be really surprised. I hope he likes it. I will pick it up from the local bicycle shop on my way home from work tomorrow. The man said he'll have it assembled and attach the basket for me. I hope I can fit it in the car for the trip home.

I made tea cake muffins yesterday. They're a lovely light cake topped with cinnamon sugar and here you see one as part of my morning tea yesterday. It can be made as a tea cake or as I have done here, as muffins. It's a quick and simple recipe and well worth the making:

Tea Cake

125 grams butter (¼ lb)
2 eggs
tablespoon lemon zest
¾ cup sugar
1½ cups self raising flour OR 1½ cups plain/all purpose flour with 1½ teaspoons of baking powder sifted in
½ cup milk
½ tablespoon cinnamon + 1 tablespoon sugar for the topping

Place all ingredients, except the topping, in a bowl and beat for two minutes. Place in a small round cake tin, or a muffin try, and cook on 180C for about 15 minutes. When you take them from from the oven, brush the tops with melted butter and sprinkle on combined sugar and cinnamon.

Wednesday afternoon, after lunch at the tea house, we're going to the local kitchen showroom to look at new kitchens. Thursday and Friday will be spent on housework and the garden. I think my sister is coming to visit the following week. Hopefully along the way I can do some work on the ebook and of course, I'll be blogging each day. It's another week full of interesting and satisfying things to do. I hope your week is the same.

I've heard some disturbing reports in the last couple of days from farmers and meteorologists stating that unless we get good rain in Australia - particularly the inland of Victoria and New South Wales, then we could be in for "catastrophic crop losses". There are many reports from reputable government agencies that in coming months the price of food will skyrocket, especially if the drought continues. Other reports state that prices will rise because of the drought and oil prices. The increase in the production of biofuels has helped push up the price of grains.

Some of our primary food producers are on their last legs and one farmer on the ABC last night said that he has been farming for 50 years and has never seen the number of people on smaller farms leaving the land as they are now. If you only read one of the linked reports here, read this one from The Australian. This report in The Age newspaper states that food prices will rise by 50% in the next five years.

Unfortunately, it isn't just Australia facing this problem, it is world-wide. Wheat and oil prices effect world food prices, and I expect that if you did a google search about food prices in your own country, you'd find a similar story.

Simply put, if the drought continues and if oil prices continue to rise, we are in trouble. I don't want to scare anyone and, by nature, I am not a panic merchant, but I've never seen it like this in my lifetime. We all need to prepare for the worst but expect the best. Hopefully the rains will come and all this will fade off into our memories, like the Y2K Bug. But if it doesn't we must be prepared for it.

With the rises in prices we have to think also about the flow-on effect it has on other products. When wheat prices rise, that effects the price of bread, meat, chicken, pasta, eggs, milk and all the items made with these products. A rise in the price of milk and eggs will effect just about all processed food prices like cakes, desserts, processed tinned and frozen foods, ice cream, biscuits/cookies, etc.

We all need to be prepared for this. H and I have a healthy stockpile, laying chooks, water tanks, gardens full of organic fruit and vegetables, and our aquaponics system of vegetables and fish, but we will be auditing our stockpile in the coming week to see what we need to buy to supplement those fresh supplies. I know right now that we'll buy more flour, rice and vegetable seeds. I have secure places to store these things and I know they won't go off.

I want to revisit the subject of stockpiling groceries. I have written about it before here but I want to urge you all to start your stockpiles now, or top them up. Already the cost of wheat and milk has risen, so bread and eggs will rise soon too. Even if you can only stockpile things like flour, rice and other grains it will help. Stockpiling won't insulate you from the rising price of food and fuel, but it will help delay the impact and it will also lessen it.

If you haven't yet started a stockpile, now would be a good time to start. If you have one, check it and stock up on everything you eat that will keep in your cupboard or freezer. It's Spring in Australia, so if you are in Oz, now is the best time to start growing your own fruit and vegetables. I have a feeling that food prices won't be going down again in a hurry. Having a vegetable garden will help, so if you have water tanks or enough water from other sources, think about starting or enlarging the vegetable garden.

Another thing we can all do it to learn how to make more things from scratch. Bread, cakes, biscuits, drinks, jams, sauces and relishes are all easily made at home and will help provide healthy interesting food from your own garden and stockpile. If you're not already cooking from scratch, now is the time to start. Cooking from scratch doesn't mean cooking with tins of soup or other processed ingredients, it means cooking everything from basic unprocessed ingredients. Also think about making your own laundry detergent and soap. They're easy to make and you will save money doing it.

I am really interested in knowing what others think about this. What, if anything, are you doing to prepare? Do you have any suggestions you can share that will help lessen the impact of the drougth and rising prices?

Read through the links I've added here and if you all want to discuss this further, I could write some more about it in the coming week. We are still in a period where the prices haven't risen too much, so now is the time to do something.

FURTHER READING
ABC article on rising prices.
Courier Mail article on rising price of potatoes.

An american list for a healthy stockpile.

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.