down to earth

Our solar panels at front and the solar hot water system further back.

We have had a solar hot water unit for about 30 years. We had one on our old house and installed a new one when we moved to our home here. Solar hot water units still attract a government rebate in Australia and as hot water is one of the highest components of the electricity most of us use, it's a worthwhile exercise to save up and install one. Information about solar hot water for Australians is here. I would love you to add comments about rebates in other countries. Half way through last year we went a step further; we had some money, and with the assistance of the government rebate, we had a small solar unit - 1.5 kW, installed. We got excited about it and had visions of working our way towards saving money on our electricity bills. Here in Australia, and probably all around the world, the cost of electricity, gas and water have been rising a lot. We thought that with prudent use of our appliances and by keeping a careful eye on what we were producing with the solar panels, we'd slowly work our way towards a credit balance on our electricity bills.

That didn't happen. We were in credit on the first bill. Yes, $55 credit! I can still see it now. Hanno and I don't use a lot of electricity but we were not always like that. We slowly learned how to conserve this precious resource and we cut our electricity bill back to about $130- $150 per quarter, before our solar panels. In Australia most of our electricity comes from coal-fired plants so not only were we saving money if we cut back, we were saving carbon emissions too.

Some of our strategies might help you and if you contribute to this conversation in the comments, we might come up with a pool of great ideas that will help people all around the world. I am aware that many of these things are common place, but it's worthwhile repeating them because a lot of this about about developing habits - and that comes from repetition.

1. Get into the habit of turning off appliances at the wall. Standby power drains about 10 percent of your power over the course of a year. See if you can rig up your TV, DVD etc, to one power board and turn that one board off every night. Yesterday I read that these are the yearly stand by costs for:

Printer/ Broadband Modem / Telephone all on standby but not used - $61.
Home computer with printer on standby - $20.
LCD TV, with DVD and PVR in average use and always left on standby - $45.

You can read that article about electricity costs for the average Australian home here.

2. Read the manuals that come with your electrical appliances, especially those with cooling or heating elements, and use them according to the recommendations. For instance, the best temperature for cost effective cooling a room with an air conditioner is 24C / 75F.

3. During extreme heat, and depending on security in your neighbourhood, keep some doors and windows open at night to let the cooler air in and close them during the day. This works really well if you're home is insulated.

4. If you live in a country with a cold climate, make some window quilts to help keep the cold out and the warmth of the fire in.

5. Hang clothes outside in the open air instead of using the dryer.

6. Use the washing machine with full loads and in off peak times. Here is a general idea of peak and off-peak times. For more accurate times, google you home state's household electricity peak times.

7. When we have to replace an appliance, we look for the energy star system. We recently had to replace our fridge and after a lot of research we bought an Electrolux two door - fridge above, freezer below. We've been very happy with it and I have no doubt it helped us with that $55 credit. Info about energy stars her for USA, UK, Australia and NZ, Canada I tried to find European Union information but all I found were regulations (very frustrating). If you have a European site to share, please do so.

8. When you're baking, bake several things at once, or one after the other. That allows you to use the heat you've generated without letting the oven heat up and cool down for once batch.

9. I live in Queensland, and here we have a government program called Climate Smart. It is probably in every Australian state so google the name with your state's name to get the full details. At the moment, the service will provide the following for just $50, it's a wise investment:

4 standby eliminators and remote control
Household power assessment by qualified electrician
A wireless power monitor - you set this up in your home and it will show you how much electricity you're using at any time. This alone will help you save energy - you can see how much your washing machine is costing you and how much it goes up when you dry clothes in the dryer.
5 power saving light globes
A hot water system adjustment, if yours needs it.
Water and power saving shower head.
A customised power and water-saving plan.

Hopefully a similar service is provided in other countries as well. Please let me know what government incentives are available in your country.

10. Replace your old light globes with compact fluros. These can be expensive but well worth the investment. If you're on a tight budget, buy one a month until you have all your lights covered.

Concentrate on your big energy appliances first - dryers, heating, cooling etc. Moves towards reducing your electricity consumption are usually slow and it's one of those things that takes time to see improvements. But if you can make a plan to cut your usage, it will pay off because it looks like these charges will continue to rise in the future. Yesterday many of you shared your wonderful ideas by commenting. Please do so again and see if we can help others save both money and carbon emissions.

If you were to cook your own meals from scratch, I doubt you'd add sulphites, nitrates, artificial colourings or flavours, gums or MSG, and yet they're common ingredients in foods on supermarket shelves. Some preservatives, like calcium propionate (282) in bread have been removed recently because of their effects on health, but there are many other additives remaining in the food we eat. These things are added to keep food fresh, to add colour, flavour and to replace certain food properties that are removed during processing. Some additives are harmless, some cause problems, some haven't been tested. If you buy processed foods or pre-prepared meals, it's a good habit to get into to read the labels and have some understanding of what you're reading.

One of the ways we can get around this is to buy unprocessed ingredients instead of food that has be modified in some way, or already prepared and cooked. If you can make meals using ingredients you know, such as vegetables, fruits, meat, chicken, fish, dairy products, pulses and legumes, you'll be as close as you can get to eating and serving food you can be sure of. Instead of relying on packets of powdered spice mixes and cans of soup to add flavour to your food, get to know the herbs and spices you have available and use them instead.

Chop, slice, shred your food yourself.
Caramelise meat, chicken, onions and vegetables - that alone will add a lot to the flavour of your food.
Make your own seasoning mixes. Find recipes here.
Be careful with fruit juice as well. It's much better to grow your own or buy oranges and squeeze your own juice, but if that is not possible, read the label carefully and buy cautiously. There have been news reports last week about insecticides in orange juice imported into the USA from Brazil another country and processed in America.
Buy in season; fruit and vegetables in season are usually cheaper and fresher.
Buy cheaper cuts of meat, like shoulder of lamb or pork instead of the leg, and chuck steak, skirt steak, gravy beef, shin beef. All these cuts contain cartilage that break down with long slow cooking to give you natural gelatine in your food. That is very good for you. There's more to be read about this is the excellent book Nourishing Traditions. Use your slow cooker or a casserole dish in the oven to slow cook a double batch. Freeze the second portion. We buy our meat in bulk from a local family butcher. We usually buy a hind quarter of beef which will see us through several months. It costs $7.95 a kilo (2.2lbs) and is local meat from the butcher's own farm. Obviously that is the ideal and not everyone has that luxury but you can ask about the meat you buy. If you ask questions you'll learn more and will be less likely to buy inferior meat.
Stockpile - this will support you cooking from scratch. A cupboard full of ingredients will see you through not only your daily meals and snacks, it will be an insurance policy for those times when you don't have the time or energy to shop, when you have increased expenses one week and run short of cash or if there is a community emergency such as a storm, flood or fire.
Use your leftovers. Learning how to deal with leftover food can stretch one meal into two or at the very least will provide a lunch the following day.
Take your lunch and drinks to work or school.
“Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. "When you pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes, or eat something with 15 ingredients you can't pronounce, ask yourself, "What are those things doing there?" Michael Pollan says. So if you eat grains for breakfast, forget the Corn Flakes, Coco Pops and Cherrios and go for oatmeal or semolina instead. Don't buy instant oats (or instant anything), buy rolled or cut oats or barley, soak them in water overnight and cook them in the morning.

Cooking food isn't one simple task. It's a series of steps that will see you buying, possibly growing, cleaning, preparing and cooking the food you eat. How do you go about it? Can we turn this list of ten into 100 essential tips?

I received an email from Madeline last week asking me to write about replacing household linens, crockery and odds and ends like umbrellas, as well as how to plan in the costs of maintaining a home. She wrote:

I've just had to replace my hot water system and computer printer. I also noticed the exterior of my house is suddenly looking really shabby,with exposed lining boards in places.I'm considering painting some of it myself to save money, but aware that I'm just one person trying to manage home, garden, major renovations, a business, and two kids!

And then there are all of the little replacements that add up - the umbrellas for school, crockery that's broken, towels ready for the rag bag etc….

When my very old sewing machine gave up a few years ago, I replaced it with a Janome Quilters Companion I bought on eBay for a fraction of the new price. It's still going strong and has worked perfectly since I bought it.

I've written in the past about the common sense option of building an emergency fund for unusual and unexpected expenses. Everyone has these expenses as some point - the dog will have to go to the vet, someone is sick and needs special treatment, the fridge breaks down or some other appliance you need has to be replaced in a hurry. Those expenses are best covered with an emergency fund. The fund is kept in a bank - we use the ING online bank because their interest rates are better than the local banks. You may not need to dip into this for a couple of years and when it reaches a certain level - say $1000 - $2000 - you stop paying into it. It can sit there earning interest until you need it. Don't be tempted to keep your emergency fund at home in cash. You'll be tempted to dip into it and many of us would give in to that temptation.

Hanno doing repairs to the drains in the backyard during the recent flooding rains.

Moving, replacing and repairing fences is a fairly frequent task here.

We put aside a certain amount every month for home maintenace. That covers house painting - we have a brick house so it's only interior painting, guttering, roof repairs, fencing etc. We are lucky in that Hanno can do most of our maintenance and repairs and when he does he often uses recycled materials. Hanno never throws away nails, screws, washers, paint, timber, wire, roofing iron, steel reinforcement or anything that he thinks will be useful in the future. Luckily we have a large shed to store these thing in and having that stash of recyclables saves us a lot of money. One of the many things that impresses me about Hanno is that he is always checking things to see if they're working and in a good state of repair. If he finds anything broken or damaged, he will fix it immediately. He never lets it get worse. Get into the habit of checking around your home and do your maintenance promptly so it doesn't turn into a repair job. If you need to replace or repair anything, look at buying from renovation yards and compare prices between buying new materials from the hardware store and recycled pieces from the dump shop or renovator's store. Make sure you not only compare price, compare quality too so you get the best value for money. Madeline, if you have to pay to have your repairs done, if you source the materials, that will save on those repairs.

We put money aside every month for car registration, maintenance and repairs too.

Check your sheets and towels when you fold them after washing. Replacing household linens is best done at the post Christmas sales.

Inside the house, we only replace things like sheets and towels when they're absolutely beyond repair. I keep a lookout for frayed or ripped sheets, and repair them to keep them going another season, generally I get another two seasons from them and then the sheet or towel will be used for cleaning rags or patchwork, it won't be "thrown away". I only ever buy sheets and towels when I see them at a good price, usually at the post Christmas sales. If I don't see the quality I want at the price I'm prepared to pay, I don't buy it and we make do until I see something I'm prepared to replace it with. I don't want to waste money and I don't want inferior quality. If I can buy best quality as a reduced sale price, I know that it will last many years, it will be a pleasure to use and I haven't spent too much on the replacement. I am prepared to wait for that. If I were to replace crockery, glasses, pyrex or cutlery, I'd do it at a good sale too, and make sure I got the best quality I could afford. Second hand shops are also a great place to look for kitchen replacements. Naturally everything will be pre-used but they'll be clean and in good repair and usually the older items haven't been made in China or India and will be good quality. Taking a regular stroll through your local second hand shop is a good habit to get into because you never know what you'll find there.

Hanno with his son Jens in his workshop/shed. In there he keeps all the bits and pieces he saves that he thinks might be needed for future repairs.

For odds and ends like umbrellas, sports equipment, camping gear and bags, the obvious place to look is the closest lost property sale. Here is a link with a catalogue showing what is available here in Australia but I'm sure most countries would have similar lost property sales. These auctions happen all over the country, you may find one near you. Go well before the auction starts because you should inspect what you intend to buy. You won't get your money back if you're not satisfied. Goods bought at an auction are generally bought "as is".

When you're doing this kind of shopping, don't go overboard and load yourself up with too much. Keep your simple life values in mind and remember what your level of "enough" is. All you're looking for is good value and good quality and if you can get that you've done a good job.

So to recap, if you can, and I know not everyone can do this, save an amount for emergencies. Put aside a certain amount each month for ongoing house repairs and maintenance and car repairs and maintenance. To work out what that amount is, go back and look at what you've paid in previous years and if you think that is a typical yearly amount, divide it by 12 to get a monthly amount, or by 52 to get a weekly amount, and that is what you'll have to put aside. If you get to the end of the year and you haven't spent the money you set aside, use it on building up a stockpile of a small number of sheets, towels, glasses, crockery, underwear, socks, work clothes, children's clothes in sizes they'll grow in to. Once you have enough of these things in your stockpile, any excess money can go to your emergency fund or straight to savings. Take advantage of sales, second hand and auctions - either local or online and be prepared to step back and wait if what you need is not at the right price or is an inferior quality. It's okay to wait for exactly what you want. That is wise economy.

Please add your thoughts here so this pool of ideas can help Madeline and others who are changing how they live.

ADDITION: I forgot to tell you that I'll be interviewed live on Radio National's Life Matters today at 8.45 am Queensland time and 9.45 am AEDT. The program will be available later in the day as a podcast.

I've noticed quite a few new soap makers at the forum lately, and have had emails from some of you with soap questions, so I thought it would be timely to give a few thoughts, not so much about how to make soap but about those things that are associated with it. Please remember I'm not an expert soaper. I make my own soap - one that is plain, unscented and not coloured. So I don't know much about essential oils or colourings but I know about what I do and am happy to share what works for me.

Some soap drying in the open air, and a new batch under covers in the middle.

You don't need the best oil for soap making, in fact courser oils are better.

If you can't find coconut oil and you live in Australia, use copha instead. You'll find it in the dairy aisle at the supermarket. It's solidified coconut oil.

You have to be careful with palm oil. That's often found in the dairy aisle too but many palm trees are being cut down to supply palm oil and that is not sustainable. Palm oil itself is not a problem but it becomes a problem depending on where it is harvested and how it is processed. Go here to download a very good file (and click on the Panda) that shows what various countries and companies are doing. If you don't know the source of your palm oil, buy a different oil, like coconut or sunflower.

Don't make too much soap. The oils can go rancid and additives like oatmeal can go mouldy, so if you make about three months supply at a time, you'll be able to get through your batch and have a new one waiting while only making soap once every 10 weeks or so.

When you finish making a batch of soap, store it on an open shelf on a rack that allows air circulation all around. Turn the soaps every day or so to facilitate the drying. You could keep the soap on this rack for six weeks if you wanted too but if you need to use the shelf, you could put the soap in a box for long term storage. Don't store your soap in plastic because it will make it sweat. Find an old shoe box, or a few of them, or a larger cardboard box and punch some air holes in the side walls for air circulation. Line the box with some brown paper and place a layer of brown paper or paper towel in between the layer of soaps. Don't add too much soap to the box, you need to have air circulating around it, maybe two layers would do nicely. If you're in a humid climate store the box in a cool space in your home.

If saponification takes place correctly, your soap could be used a couple of days after it's made. Generally though, we store our soap on wire racks to dry out for 4- 6 weeks. This allows the water in the soap to dry out. The drier the soap is when you start using it, the longer it will last.

If you want to test that your soap is okay to use, buy litmus paper from the chemist to test it. A reading of pH 7 is neutral but your soap will be slightly alkaline. You're looking for a reading somewhere between 7 and 9 and you'll be on the right track. Don't use any soap over pH 10. To test with litmus, wet the soap and lather it in your hands. Then wet the litmus paper with the lather and compare the strip of litmus paper with the little chart that comes with it. If your soap is too alkaline, let it sit for another week and re-test it. If your soap stays over 10 over the course of a few weeks, you could re-batch it or use it as laundry soap.

This is my tray in the bathroom. The soaps at the front at those kindly sent to me by readers of the blog.

I usually make about 20 bars in one batch. I let them dry out for a month or so and then I usually store them soap in an open tray in the bathroom. If this humidity goes on too much longer, I will store these in a paper lined box.

I hope you're having fun with your soap making. When you "get it" soap making could take you on to many wonderful types of soap or even a little business you could run from home.

~~~~~**~~~~~~

I forgot to tell you but yesterday I was on NSW ABC radio on the afternoon program. Apparently it aired state-wide except Sydney and Newcastle. I'll be on next week too. Tomorrow I'll be interviewed on Radio National's Life Matters - 8.45am Queensland time and 9.45am AEDT. That should be available on podcast later in the day too.

I've been wanting to share some really special photos with you and today I have a good reason for it - apart from the fact that they're just so darn cute. Shane and Sarndra had some professional photos taken recently - a day in their life, and they said I could share them with you. This first photo of Alexander is part of that series, taken by photographer Hsu-Yin. I think you'll agree with me that they're charming and beautiful and from one who knows my family well, they have captured their truth. I invite you to look through the entire album on Hsu-Yin's blog.

This little red donkey that Alex has above is a Steiff animal I bought for Shane when he was a baby in Germany.

This photo of our little cutie pie Alex was taken by Sarndra to show an outfit that Aunty Benita sent from England. Alex is almost seven months now and he has seven teeth. :- )

And here is the gorgeous Jamie, all dressed up on Christmas morning on his way to visit Santa at the Neighbourhood Centre.

Jamie again discovering our floor for the first time on Christmas Eve. No doubt this is territory he will walk for many years to come.

POSTING THE BOOK

I had a lot of inquires yesterday about sending a signed copy of my book to all corners of the world. Thank you for your interest in it. Hanno spent quite a bit of time looking around as different options and gave me the rates when I came home last night. It's not good news - the book weighs over 1 kg (2.2lbs) and the international postage is quite expensive, especially when you consider it is on top of the book price of $35.

New Zealand - $30.50

Asia-Pacific - $37.00

USA - Canada - Middle East - $43.25

The rest of the world - this takes in UK, Europe and South Africa - $53.25

But there is some good news. If you go to the Fishpond au site, you'll find their postal rates. They're reasonable because they send out so many books and are much more attractive than the prices at our local PO. I am guessing that most of the online stores would have similar rates, but you'd have to check if you wanted to use a different store.

Of course, if you still want to go ahead with your international order, let me know and we'll add your name to our list, but I'm assuming that everyone of you will order online. One of the readers suggested I sign a name plate and I would be happy to do that. I'm sorry, I forget who mentioned it. If you buy a book online or in a book shop and you'd like me to write an inscription, just send me a letter with a stamped self-addressed, return envelope and I'll make up some name plates, inscribe one to you and send it back. Then you can paste it into your book. Our postal address is: Rhonda Hetzel, PO Box 249, Landsborough, 4550, Queensland, Australia.

So I'm keeping all the orders we got from Australian readers and over the next day, I'll be contacting all of you with our bank details. I'm assuming all international orders are cancelled unless you contact me to tell me otherwise.

Please accept this as a response to your email - there are over a hundred emails just from yesterday and it would take me too long to reply personally to all of you. And if you did send an email, thank you so much for so many words of kindness. It was a real treat for me to read them all. I am very thankful I am part of this wonderfully supportive online community. I well and truly feel the love. Thank you.

Thanks to everyone who sent an order or an inquiry about buying my book. I've answered some of you and will answer you all when Hanno gets more information from the post office. We're trying to get the best possible price for you all but so far, for overseas sales, it's looking pretty expensive. I'll have more information this afternoon and I'll try to answer all the emails from other countries when I come home tonight.

~~~~~~~***~~~~~~~~

Last week someone asked me if it is possible for those who work for a living to live a simple life. The answer was a resounding and positive "yes!". I write about this subject from my own perspective and as we're retired folk, we have time to give to a variety of activities. However, what happens if you have less time? I know of many younger people living this way and many of them go to work most days and have two days at home - just like we used to.

This simple way of living is like a piece of elastic. You can stretch it every which-way and it will fit around whatever you're doing at your particular stage of life. You can live simply in the city, the suburbs or the country. You can be a stay at home homemaker or go out to work. You can be a woman or a man, a couple, single, or with a brood of children. The thing that will distinguish you from your contemporaries if you live this way is that you'll make a commitment to conserve rather than splurge, you'll recycle and repair, you'll see the value in eating local and seasonal food, you'll take your own shopping bags or a basket to the shops instead of relying on plastic bags, you'll be paying off debt rather than adding to it. Basically, you'll be stepping back from the cult of convenience and trying to become more self-reliant. And along the way, you'll develop several strategies that help you save both time and money so you have that precious duo to use as you need to.

I thought it would be helpful for some of you who don't have a lot of time in the home and newcomers to this way of living, if I went over a few of the day-to-day tasks that will save you money and time. You may believe, like the person who asked the question did, that you don't have the time for these kinds of things, but I'm here to suggest three key points to you and to encourage you towards them.

STOCKPILING GROCERIES
Stockpiling groceries, especially if you're in a large family, or even a couple like Hanno and I, will give you the convenience of having a cupboard full of groceries available to you 24 hours a day, most of which have been bought on sale. I recommend you start a stockpile. I started mine by putting aside a certain amount of money each week to buy whatever we used or ate that was on sale that week. I guess it took about three or four months to have my stockpile cupboard at the stage it is kept at now. We have enough non-perisable food, groceries and toiletries here to last us about three months. It's a great insurance policy - if a family member loses a job or if someone is sick, you know that you can still put food on the table every night.

My stockpile cupboard is above. That holds all the groceries that I've not started using yet. Below is my pantry, it is where I store the items I'm using at that time. As soon as something is opened, it goes from the stockpile to the pantry.

Don't forget to include your preserves in your stockpile. When you make jam or relish, try to make enough for six months or so. And don't forget your freezer. If you have too much silverbeet/chard or beans or whatever - either harvested from your own garden or bought cheaply at the market, freeze it. Preserves and frozen vegetables make a valuable addition to your stockpile.

The thing that will support you cooking from scratch more than anything else is to have the ingredients you need at hand. If your children come home from school and hand you a note saying they need to have some cupcakes for the school fair the next day, no problem. If someone drops by out of the blue for dinner, you won't be frantic wondering what you'll feed them. And it is a great time saver too. When you have that cupboard to the capacity to want, you won't have to shop every week. You'll keep scanning the sales flyers and shop only when you see a bargain, or to pick up fresh milk, fruit and vegetables. Your weekly shop will be replaced by a top-up shop once a month. There is a post here about how to set up a stockpile.

MAKING HOMEMADE CLEANERS, ESPECIALLY LAUNDRY LIQUID OR POWDER

Those of you who don't make your own cleaners will probably be surprised to know that laundry power takes about one minute to mix up; laundry liquid takes a bit longer but it's much more economical. It takes me 15 minutes from start to finish with the liquid. That makes up 10 litres and that will see us through at least four months. I'm sure you'll agree, 15 minutes every four months is not much when you consider what a saving it is. Depending on how large your family is, that four months of commercial laundry liquid would cost about $60 in Australia, homemade will cost you about six dollars and you'll have ingredients left over for another batch. But it's the time saving I'm highlighting here. If you have the ingredients on hand, you'd be able to make up enough for months in less than the time it would take you to go to the supermarket to buy the commercial stuff. And it works! The recipe is here.

Don't forget to stockpile the ingredients for your green cleaners. If you have them on hand, you're more likely to get into the habit of using them.

It will take you less that a minute to fill a spray bottle with vinegar, that can be used as an all purpose spray and wipe type cleaner. Adding bicarb to laundry liquid and stirring it will take about two minutes and you can use that to clean the bath or sink. As you can see, green cleaners can save you a lot of money. What I hope you realise now is that even if you work outside the home, you can make all these cleaners up in less than 15 minutes, then it will be a long time before you have to go through the process again. Not only will they save you time and money, they're a much healthier option for you and your family.

DOUBLE BATCH COOKING and the SLOW COOKER

It's a wonderful habit to get into to do some batch cooking on the weekends. If you have a couple of spare hours, you have a cooking session and then you've got three or fours meals in the freezer to feed the family during the week. When you come home, you know the meal is there, all you have to do is warm it up while the kids set the table. Goodbye takeaways and convenience foods! But I know that many of you don't have that spare time on the weekends, and even if you do, you're so tired, cooking is the last thing you want to give two hours to.

Using homemade chicken stock in my cooking. Every time I make meals that are suitable for freezing, I make enough for two meals and freeze half.

But there is another way to squirrel away a meal or two without going to too much extra effort. There are many meals that you can cook on a week night that can easily be doubled up. You eat half straight away, the other half is frozen for later. Meals like meat sauce for pasta can be used for tacos or turned into savoury mince a few night later. Chicken curry, beef stew, soups, pizza, stroganoff, can all be made in large batches and the second half frozen. Any roast meat or chicken can be eaten as a hot roast one night and turned into a quick curry or stir fry the following night. If one chicken is enough for your family for one meal, then cook two at a time and save the second in the fridge. It saves electricity, time and effort. If you can get into the habit of cooking double batches, and you seal them up and mark them correctly, you'll often have a meal waiting in the freezer on those nights when you run late or you're just too tired to cook everything from scratch.

Making chicken stock from scratch.

Another cooking method that will save you time is slow cooking. Just load the slow cooker in the morning before you go to work, turn it on low, make sure it's on a sturdy surface and the cord is safety tucked away and you can leave it all day to cook. If you have a large slow cooker, make a double batch and freeze half of it.

These three key steps will help you get closer to your goals. They don't take a lot of time but by doing them, you'll save time and money. There is no magic fairy who will come down and transform your life to a more simple one, but these steps will help you get there. Once you've got these three key things as part of your life, you can move on to another three. Good luck!

Happy Australia Day to my fellow Australians! Whether you celebrate quietly with Vegemite on toast while watching the cricket, or at a BBQ with a lot of people, fireworks and wine, I hope you enjoy today. We have a lot to be thankful for.

~~~~~*~~~~~~

Just after Christmas I had to go to town to buy a couple of things at the post-Christmas sales. I grabbed my trusty small brown leather bag that I can fit my wallet and keys in, and left. When I paid for my purchase, I was a bit embarrassed to see the shop assistant looking at the inside lining of my bag which was ripped and tatty looking. It had been like that for quite a while. On the way out of the department store, I went to the bag department and looked for another bag. This little brown bag of mine has been my sole leather handbag for at least 20 years. It's probably older than that, but let's say 20. I like it because it's very good soft leather, made in the UK and I can sling it over my chest and have my hands free to pick up things for a closer look.

So, there I was in the handbag department, thinking I'd pick up a good bag for $50 on sale. I almost dropped when I realised the bag I liked, something similar to my little brown number, was $225, reduced by $100. ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS for a handbag? I think not. I put the bag down and went home.

Yesterday afternoon, I was in my workroom and looked at my handbag again. I decided to fix it. I carefully cut the old lining out and made up a rectangle of cotton. While I was sewing it on my machine, Hanno came in to ask me something and wanted to know what I was doing. I told him I was fixing my bag. He sort of rolled his eyes at that news, asked me his question, then left. As I continued on my task, I wondered if I was being a bit too enthusiastic about recycling this bag.

I've thought about it for a while now and I know I did the right thing, for me. I fixed my wallet about a year ago. Same story - good soft leather (so I could stitch it on my machine), with the lining pulled away from the edge. Then I just tidied up the lining and restitched it. It's perfect and I've been using it for the past year with absolutely no problems. That wallet is probably 20 years old too. While I was doing my repairs I kept thinking that an animal had died to supply meat and the leather and that to throw it away without getting the full value of that sacrifice would be disrespectful and mean spirited. Those two items demonstrate to me the wise economy of buying the best quality you can afford with the intention of making repairs as you go through the years to realise the full value. All it needs now is a good clean and reconditioning with some Dubbin and it'll be ready to go for another 20 years. : - )

But it got me thinking about how far we push ourselves when we recycle. I believe that if something is still serviceable and fixable, then you put the effort in. I don't care about fashion - in fact, it doesn't enter into my head at all when I'm thinking about recycling (or ever). But am I alone in this? How far do you go? If someone you know thought it was a bit extreme to recycle a handbag like this, would it stop you doing it? Would you even care? My answers are no and no, what are yours?

We had a nice supply of ginger beer going over Christmas. It's a delicious soft drink for young and old, although there is an alcoholic version that can be made with a slight variation on the recipe. Ginger beer is a naturally fermented drink that is easy to make - with ginger beer you make a starter called a ginger beer plant and after it has fermented, you add that to sweet water and lemon juice. Like sourdough, it must ferment to give it that sharp fizz.

To make a ginger beer plant you'll need ginger - either the powdered dry variety or fresh ginger, sugar, rainwater or tap water that has stood for 24 hours to allow the chlorine to evaporate off. You'll also need clean plastic bottles that have been scrubbed with soap, hot water and a bottle brush and then rinsed with hot water. I never sterilise my bottles and I haven't had any problems. If you intend to keep the ginger beer for a long time, I'd suggest you sterilise your bottles.

MAKING THE STARTER
In a wide-mouthed, sterilised jar, place 1½ cups rainwater and add one dessert or soup spoon of ginger and one of sugar. You don't have to be exact but be mindful that if you add a lot of ginger you'll have a strong tasting drink and if you add too much sugar it will be very sweet. Every day for seven days add those amounts of ginger and sugar and mix it in well. Fermented foods and drinks thrive in aerobic conditions, so make sure you give it a good stir and mix in a lot of air.

Depending on how much natural yeast is floating around your kitchen, by about day three you'll notice small bubbles appearing in the ginger mix each day when you add the ginger and sugar (see photo above). That means the natural yeasts in the air you're breathing have colonised the ginger beer plant, they're eating the sugar and giving off carbon dioxide - the bubbles.

Leave the mix sitting out on the kitchen counter during the entire seven day process and cover it with a loose weave cloth or net to allow the yeasts to enter but keep out insects. This is an entirely natural and very healthy process. Fermentation needs a warm environment to flourish so any Australian or New Zealand kitchen in summer, or any northern hemisphere heated kitchen in winter would provide the right temperature.

On the seventh day, feed the plant, and using a wire strainer and some muslin, cheese cloth or loose weave cotton, strain the ginger mix through the cloth into a large bowl. Squeeze as much liquid as possible into the bowl. This is what flavours the drink and continues to ferment it in the bottles. If it hasn't started fermenting, give it another week - keep feeding it and see what happens.

When all the ginger starter is in the bowl, add four litres of water, 2 - 3 cups of sugar and the juice of two lemons. Mix well until the sugar has dissolved.

Bottle this using plastic bottles and let them sit on the kitchen counter for a couple of days to continue fermenting and develop the fizz again. Then add the tops and put the bottles in the fridge.

When it's cold and you can see bubbles on the side of the bottle (see above), it's ready to drink.

If you want to make an alcoholic version of this, add ¼ teaspoon of brewers yeast that you can buy at the local brewing shop. The instructions and recipe for the River Cottage alcoholic ginger beer is here.

Once you have made the starter and strained the mix into your bowl, the remains of the starter can be used again to start off another batch. Throughly clean and sterilise the jar again, drop the old starter into the jar and repeat the above process. This time the mix will ferment quickly, probably on day two.

I know there a lot of germaphobes out there who are probably cringing while reading this post, but I encourage you all to try this. It's a similar thing to sourdough and yoghurt, using beneficial yeasts and bacterias to start the fermentation. This is better for you than a lot of the other soft drinks/sodas and it's a great drink to have over Christmas or at social events when you want to offer a non-alcoholic refreshing drink to both adults and children.

I live a charmed life. We live here, on this fertile land with a creek running by it, at the end of a one-lane street, surrounded by a few neighbours and bushland. We use our land; it is one of our assets and to not use it productively would shame us. We grow food and keep chickens and that allows us to eat fresh organic produce that we would not be able to afford if we had to buy it all the time. But I'm aware that this kind of living is not within everyone's reach. It wasn't within our reach for a long time either, but both Hanno and I worked hard, made sacrifices and eventually bought and paid for our home for about a quarter the price of what we'd pay for it now. I know a fair amount of luck helped us along the way - we had no major illnesses, we had great kids, we both had good jobs, but work was the main contributor; we knuckled down and made the most of our opportunities. We've been here 15 years now and I'm pretty sure this is where we'll die.

Twilight in the hen house. Broody hen Kylie is still on the nest and joining her are friends Nora, Lillian, Flora and Annie. Soon they'll be too big to share a room.

Today I thought I'd write about building a wonderful lifestyle from nothing, or turning plain life into something exceptional, because that is what I think we have done. When we arrived at this doorstep all those years ago we had a very basic brick slab house in a historic town that very few people found attractive enough to put down roots in. Most of the new people moving to this area went further down to the more fashionable part of the coast where there is a lot of traffic, the houses are built right up to the fence line and were more likely to have a swimming pool in the backyard than a vegetable garden and chooks. We chose here because the house blocks were big, the houses were old and on our patch, our house was surrounded by virgin land and a permanent creek made up the back boundary. When we bought this place, there were no fences, no gardens, no water tanks, no out buildings, no verandahs, no solar panels.

It was a big leap to get here but we made what we have now in small steps. The first thing we did was put in a water tank and then Hanno built a chook house. While he was doing that, Shane and I started work on the gardens, enriching the clay in the back yard with homemade compost, lawn clippings, old paper, manures and just about anything else we could lay our hands on. I knew we could grow vegetables here but I also knew they wouldn't thrive in the soil as it was then. For successful and abundant harvests we needed to put work into the soil. We needed to add life. We did that and with work and time, we turned clay into dark, rich soil.

And that is what we've tried to do with everything along the line. The main ingredient was work, and when we did that, it brought in new life. From those very humble beginnings, slowly, when we worked enough to afford it, we added skylights to dark rooms, whirly birds to extract hot air from the roof space, we added a bedroom, put up fences, put in an organic vegetable garden and many fruit trees. We bought a large shed to house our straw and for Hanno to use as a workshop. Almost ten years after we added that first water tank, we added another. We invested in solar energy - in the first few years we bought a solar hot water unit, last year we bought solar panels. It's the smallest unit but it's a huge help to us in managing our electricity bills. We don't use much electricity but even with this tiny unit, we are now in credit. Hanno built our chook house and the bush house from mostly recycled materials. It's been a lot of work, and it's been slow, but now we have a productive and comfortable little homestead here that suits us perfectly.

There is no doubt that a simple life is hands-on living. There is no standing back from this. There is no buying into it, you can't pay someone else to do the daily work. If you want to live this way, you dive in head first and expect that work will be part of it. Never be afraid of work, it can be a great teacher over time and I know for sure, that I would be a different person now if I had not done the work. But how do you decide what work needs to be done when you find yourself at your own front door for the first time, or if you want to stay where you are, but change how you live? Decide what you want - is it to work for a living and pay off your mortgage as fast as possible? If so, add few things to your home, concentrate on saving money and cutting back as much as you can. Recycle, make a budget, and when time allows cook from scratch, bake and make green cleaners. All those things will save you money. When you've paid off your debt you can work with a different focus. What if you want to live like Hanno and I? Well, identify what you can do in your own backyard, what livestock you can realistically keep, put up fences, water tanks and out buildings when you can afford them, and start off ordering heirloom seeds and keeping pure breed chooks and go from there. And what if you're aiming for a mix of both those options? If you're part of a couple, each take the part you would do best. Talk to each other - this way of living can be tough, you need to have a faithful shoulder to lean on. If you're alone, or with children, it will be slower and tougher but still doable. As the children grow, teach them what you need them to do that is appropriate for their age. Learn new skills so you can do the tasks you want to do. You might want to make cheese or soap, or sew. Learn how. It's all part of it. Try to find people in your community who live this way and befriend them. If you can't find anyone, join an online forum that will support and encourage you - they are out there. Be part of your commuunity. You will get more from that than you expect to.

We've just spent a couple of very relaxed weeks when we didn't do anything much outside except to care for the chooks. We read, watched the cricket, I knitted, Hanno spent time on the computer and we had a fine time recuperating from the past year. But you know, even though I loved those two weeks, if I lived like that all the time I would grow to hate it. I think we set our value by the work we do and for me, the work we do not only gives us some of what we need here, it also gives me my sense of worth. During our time off I had trouble sleeping and have only the past week got back into my normal sleeping pattern. That tells me that our work makes us tired enough to trigger our bodies to sleep. Work is part of our natural 24 cycle and without it, our patterns are out of sync.

There is a lot to be said for a good days work, carried along with a certain rhythm, and dotted with restful periods. It allows you to notice what's happening around you, it helps you get through tasks without being stressed, and as you tick off items from your list, you develop an appreciation for your ability to carry out the work needed in your home and the satisfaction of doing it. Self reliance is a wonderful thing.

If you're at the very beginning of this beautiful journey we call simple life, don't be impatient for everything to be there right now. Building most things from scratch, and using what you already have, is part of it. The slow steps of work tasks will help you develop an understanding for the life you're building and it will allow you to really live each day and not wish it all away. There was a time when instead of slowing piecing together my daily tasks I avoided housework; now I know it was the work that made me what I am today. So if you are at the beginning of your own journey, or stuck along the way somewhere unsure of what your next move is, just decide on something, then work slowly towards it. There are no prizes for speed here and it doesn't matter if you can't afford everything you want or even need to have. Slow down, disengage from the rat race and work slowly towards the life you want. There will be no end point, there is always something to do next, but you will get to a stage when you can see your own progress and the real difference it makes to your life, and that, my friends, is a fine prize.