One of the things I really enjoy about my simple life is that I've taught myself to make many things I used to buy. I'm pleased that most of what I make is really good and that inspires me to keep up the home production of as many things as I can. So today's kitchen table discussion is about just that, the home production of goods - there is no category for these things, it's just making whatever we can at home.

There seems to be a certain mindset that goes with this. Sometimes we start off awkwardly , not sure if our skill level is sufficient, but with one or two projects under your belt, you realise it's just a matter of trial and error and the more you do it, the less error there is.

Some of the things I've taught myself, or improved upon the skills I had, are bread making, soap making, sewing - aprons, napkins, tote bags, skirts, knitting - scarves, mittens, bags; seed saving, composting, worm farming, aquaponics, preserving/canning, stockpiling, budgeting, slowing down, quilting, embroidery, mending, reading electricity and water meters, and probably a lot of other things I can't remember now.

Learning or improving skills like these will support your simple life but also save you money, greenhouse gases and help you live to your true potential. There is nothing like a difficult task to teach you things like patience, persistence, observation and awareness. Life long learning keeps you on your toes and sharpens your mind - a thing I'm acutely aware of as I move further into my 60s. It also slows you down and makes you focus on the task at hand. That is always a good thing.

Look around your home to see what you need that you might be able to make yourself. It could be anything from a dishcloth to a home made wedding - I am here to tell you anything is possible. Believe in yourself, go slowly, plan, read as much as you can or find a mentor and then set to work. Don't believe you can do it? I think you might surprise yourself.

Our changes

1. I am still working on my oil candle lamp.
2. And making liquid soap.

Things to think about

• Since the 1950s, we've been lured into buying convenience at the store. That is fine for many things but not for others. For instance, I saw an advert the other day for cheese pieces cut the right size for a cracker! Most of us don't need that sort of convenience. For most of us it's better to buy a block of cheese at a reasonable price and cut it, or shred it, ourselves. Why pay for someone else to do something we can do ourselves.
• Buying that convenience, makes us more and more dependent on others for our needs. Take back your independence and do for yourself and teach your children to do the same.
• Many things you do in your day to day life build character. Instead of working for the money to buy what you need, invest time in yourself and think about making some things at home. It will pay off in more ways than one.
• Test yourself.
  

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
Henry Ford

How are you going on your no spending task? I know Pippa has bought more milk for her boys, it's incredible how much milk teenage boys drink. If you've had to buy something, just get back to no spending for the rest of the week. If you're haven't gone to the shops at all, well done! We'll see the week out together with our money in our pockets and not handed over to someone else.

I've loved reading the comments for our biggest kitchen table series. I haven't had much of a chance to comment myself because I've been at my voluntary job the past couple of days, but I read every one and I learn and smile along with the rest of you. We have built a community of supportive and intelligent people here and I always look forward to seeing what little gems are left in the comments section.

Today we'll focus on green cleaning - which is all that cleaning we do without the use of harsh chemicals that are in almost all the supermarket cleansers. We've been hoodwinked into believing that we need a different cleaner for each job and that what you use in the kitchen or to clean the bathroom floor can't be used for other cleaning jobs. That's hogwash. We're encouraged to buy a different product for all types of cleaning but most of us know that soap, vinegar or bicarb/baking soda will clean almost anything. If you go to this old post, you'll find recipes for making all sorts of cleaners using basic requirements like those just mentioned, and, as usual, if you have some ideas or recipes to share, we would love you to share them.

Additional reading from my archives:
Green cleaning - floors and furniture
Green cleaning - the bathroom
Green cleaning - the kitchen
Frugal cleaning
Cleaning with rags
Establishing household routines

Our changes

1. I'm currently knitting a few lighter dishcloths. I'll post about these soon.
2. I'm making liquid soap that I'll post about soon.

Things to think about

• Make sure you label your bottles. This is especially necessary if you have small children living in the home or visiting you. Keep your recipe sheet in your home management journal so that if a child does swallow some of your cleaners, you'll know immediately what's in there and can take the sheet to the ER if you have to go there.
• Never mix ammonia and bleach together - it's very dangerous.
• Ridding your home of harsh chemicals will not only save you a lot of money, it's much healthier for you and your family.
• Our grandmothers and their grandmothers used these types of cleaners. It's only in the past 50 years that we've used what is common now.
• Make up cleaning kits to keep in the bathroom, kitchen and laundry. Each kit can be stored in a little bucket or old ice cream container that you can fill with warm water if you need it. Keep each kit in the room you use it in so it's always ready for its purpose.
  

Today we'll be thinking about how to use less electricity and water. This part of the audit is another one where if you can reduce your consumption, you'll save money and be kinder to your environment at the same time. Many things in this simple life have the dual capacity of being frugal and green. I see it as a reward - and it doesn't matter what side of the fence you usually sit on, if you're out to save money, your reward if knowing you're also being greener, and if your focus is on saving resources and raising your environmental awareness, then your reward is to save money too.

Please read this older post first, it explains how to do your electric and water audits.

Here in Australia, we're being told the price of electricity will increase a lot in the future. Even in the past year it's gone up and is set to rise again. But these price rises aren't only here, they're all over, including the USA and Europe. And sure as eggs, when the price of electricity rises, so do all of the products produced, stored and transported using it.

It's not good news, is it. But we can do something about it. Doing an audit is a simple exercise that will show you how much you can save by changing the way you use electricity and water in your home. Get the kids to help, it will be a useful exercise for them too because they use these utilities, just as you do. And remember, your savings will be small over a 24 hour period, however, all those small savings on all those days add up and make a big difference.

Read this page. It's an excellent website for learning about how to reduce your electricity usage. You'll find strategies for saving water here and my post on water harvesting is here.

I wish you luck in reducing your electricity and water usage. It's one of those things that both easy and difficult to do but if you have the will, it can be done.

Today we'll talk about getting rid of 'disposable' paper products, dishcloths, menstrual pads, baby nappies/diapers and plastic shopping bags. This is one area where you can make a big step forward in one quick swoop. Making a commitment to not buying a number of the products you may buy now, like paper towels and paper napkins, will help you on this path. When you start on this you'll realise it's easy and once you start, you might get rid of all your 'disposable' products. If you decide to replace menstrual products or nappies/diapers with homemade alternatives, I recommend my sponsors on the left side bar as a good place to buy from.


Apart from the obvious environmental problems these products cause, using your own homemade alternatives is cheaper and I think using knitted or crocheted dishcloths and cotton napkins makes the home more like a real home. You replace the mass production that is so common nowadays with something that you've thought about and want enough to put your time to making. If you do that with a lot of things that can be replaced around the home, piece by piece you'll build a beautiful home that is unlike any other. Looking around your home to replace disposables can be an exercise in homemaking as well.

The down side of disposables.
Free patterns for dishcloths.
Free patterns for shopping tote bags.


Doing my audit I realised we have been using the cloth napkins and homemade dish cloths and face cloths as if we've always used them. It's normal for us now, and always will be. We still buy toilet paper, paper tissues and plastic wrap and I doubt we'll stop using them, although we are careful with their usage. I'll revisit that statement whenever I do an audit such as this, but for now, they're staying.


I'm still using rags to clean with and I think you increase your potential for success if you have all these things ready to be used. Don't expect to make up rags when you spill something, you'll just go back to the paper towels. Go through your linen cupboard and find an old terry towel. Cut it up into squares with pinking shears and put them in a rag bag near your cleaning kit. Mine hang in a rag bag in the laundry. Everyone knows where to get them and that they are washed after use for most things, but if it's wiped up cat pee or something similar, it's thrown out.


Of course, you could also replace your paraffin candles with little oil lamps. Replacing paraffin, which is a petrochemical, with a sustainable oil like olive oil or rice bran oil, will make your home a little bit greener and safer. Olive oil burns clean with no smoke or smell. I made this small test lamp, it is running on olive oil, and as soon as I test drive some new home made wicks, I'll do a tutorial on it.

I am making no changes in this part of my audit at this time.

Some things to think about:

1. Are you ready to stop buying disposables?
   
2. If you are, use up what you have at home, and start preparing rags and making napkins and dishcloths and whatever else you want to try.
3. Remember, there is no guilt in the audit. If you can't let these things go now, promise yourself you'll think about it again later in the year. You might be ready then.
4. These activities make a powerful statement - for the environment, for your purse and for the life you intend to live.

Food is an important part of everyone's life; we have to eat every day for as long as we live. And that is one of the reasons we need to focus carefully on our food. We grow it, buy it, cook it, preserve it, freeze it and store it. Buying it costs a lot of money; growing it takes a lot of energy; wasting it is not an option. If you organise your food growing, buying and storage efficiently you'll save money because you'll grow the right amount, buy at the right price, and store it to prevent wastage.

I walked around the garden, kitchen and storage areas with a pen and paper to write down my ideas as I thought of them. Seeing everything and being there made the process easier and sparked some ideas.

FOOD - OUTSIDE
We have a food garden in the back yard. We grow all manner of fruit and vegetables and we have chickens for eggs. I see our back yard food production as very important as it supplies us with organic produce, it is the freshest food available and it gives us a small measure of self reliance. It works well in partnership with our pantry and stockpile cupboards and if there were a disaster, we could easily live on what we have in our cupboards and backyard.


Vegetables
It is important to me to plant open pollinated seeds. Unlike the regular hybrid seeds available at the plant nursery, open pollinated seeds will reproduce from their own seeds, so seed saving is a priority. Theoretically, once you have your stock of open pollinated seeds, you won't have to buy vegetable seeds again, unless you want to try new varieties. Then I would prefer to seed swap instead of buy. We have a set group of vegetables that we plant every year. Occasionally we try new (to us) varieties but we stay within that group classified as open pollinated (heirloom) seeds.

We have one major planting a year - in March/April, then fill in spots when they become vacant. We plant more tomatoes, beets, beans, peas, corn than we need because they're easily preserved by freezing, preserving/canning or when made into chutneys, relish and pickles.

Herbs
Again, we have our set group of favourites that we have growing almost all year. Parsley, chives, oregano, marjoram, bay, thyme and sage. If any of them die, I replace with a plant from the market.


Fruit
Fruit usually takes a long time to establish but it's well worth the effort. In the past year we planted grapes that I hope will survive for many years, I also plant pineapple tops - again they take two years to fruit, but the taste alone make it worth the time and effort We have bananas, passionfruit, pawpaw (papaya), lemons, oranges, mandarins (clementines), blueberries, pecans and avocados. Every year we get more fruit from our trees and I am convinced that whatever fruit we can easily grow here will be of benefit to us many years into the future. I would like to add a native raspberry to our fruit orchid but apart from that I don't want to change anything.

Most of our fruit is eaten fresh from the tree but we do freeze lemon juice to make lemon cordial in summer and mandarins are made into marmalade and passionfruit into butter, similar to lemon butter. We also grow vanilla and ginger for cooking and to make ginger beer, and turmeric for tea and stir fries.

Our changes:

1. Grow more potatoes, garlic and onions.
2. Improve our fertilisation of citrus to speed up tree growth a little.
3. Add native raspberry.
   
4. Organise our stock of vegetable seeds and store in the fridge.
5. Read more about vanilla and focus on helping our plants flower.
6. Change the lid on the worm farm for easy access.
7. Tidy up the pots and improve storage areas in the green house.
   

Things to think about:

• Are we making enough compost?
• Are the fences effective?
• Can we increase the amount of compost we produce?
• Is the chook food vermin-proof?
• Check taps and tanks for leakage.
• Check hens' nests.
• Check chicken coop for insects and snakes.
• Make sure chicken coop is predator-proof.
• Are the chickens safe and comfortable in hot and cold weather?
• Are there enough water stations in the backyard for chooks and animals?
  

FOOD -INSIDE
Once the food is in the house, it's either eaten raw, cooked or stored for later use. For this part of the audit I had to clean out and reorganise my stockpile cupboard. I will also do my pantry cupboard but that will be done sometime over the weekend. It's important to check on your stored goods every couple of months to make sure all is in order and to remind you of what you have. Don't just put food in the cupboard, use it. Make sure that when you add to your stockpile you add to the back and use from the front. That way you'll keep rotating your stock. A stockpile is dynamic, it's constantly changing - it's not there for show, it's going to keep you alive and healthy. Use it to save money and to cook from every day, as a buffer against food shortages, in an emergency or if you want, or have to, stop spending for a week or so.


We have a chest freezer that I am going to run down a little. It had been full for the wedding and I've lost track of what is in there. I love that freezer. I use it to kill any bugs or larvae that might be in new grains and dry goods I buy. When these goods come from the store, they go in the freezer for a few days and are then stored in a cupboard. I need to list what's in the freezer.

Our changes:

1. Clean and reorganise stockpile cupboard.
2. Clean and reorganise the pantry.
3. Run freezer down and reorganise. Make a list of the contents of the freezer to keep track of what is in there.

Things to think about:

• Menu planning - this works for some families and not others.
• If you're growing food, how do you intend to use your excess?
• How do you safely store your food?
• Have you minimised food waste?
• Do I use leftovers wisely?
• Skills - learn to preserve/can, blanch and freeze, bake, sprout, ferment, fruit cordials.
• Make a space in your cupboard to store recycled bottles and jars.
• Do I have enough good cooked from scratch recipes to cover a two week meal rotation?
• Do I have a good selection of quick and easy fast meal recipes?
• Am I able to fill school and work lunch boxes with healthy snacks?
• Is the fridge cooling as it should?
• Do I use my oven efficiently? Baking two things at once. Make twice the amount and freeze half.
• Is my kitchen set up properly for the tasks I carry out frequently? eg, if you bake a lot, do you have all your baking equipment together. If you drink a lot of tea or coffee, do you have a tea and coffee station set up close to your stove or hot water kettle? Can the kids reach the water glasses easily?
• If you're composting, do you have a covered container for your kitchen scraps?
• Do you need to make food covers for bread, ginger beer, sourdough, yoghurt?
• Do you have enough dishcloths and tea towels/dish towels
• Do you have enough large glass or plastic storage containers? I got some 5kg plastic buckets from my local baker (free) that I store flour in. Look around for recyclables for your storage, they do just as well as store bought containers.

Food is a huge subject but if you get this right it will save you money and enable you to serve good wholesome food to your family and visitors. Please share your ideas in the comments. This is the purpose of these kitchen table discussions - we share, help, encourage and support each other in our life choices.

Monday's topic will be disposable products.

Hello everyone, thank you for joining me in this most important monitoring task. I hope that through these simple audits, we'll all be able to look at what we're doing at home and make changes if they are needed. As usual, check the comments here because many of our readers will give you excellent ideas for changes and modifications.

No Spending Week
Tomorrow we'll start a no spending week. If you're in the USA and will be going out to enjoy your Independence Day celebrations, please start your no spending the following day. Everyone please make sure you have enough food on hand to last a week. Hanno bought two litres of local milk for us yesterday, so we will be fine with what we have in the house and in the backyard until the week is up. If you've never spent a week, or any time, when you decided not to spend anything, it might be quite confronting, and if you're tempted to spend, think about your purpose and the life you want to live. Rewards are waiting as long as you can stick with this. If you continue to spend, you're just staying on the same old merry-go-round you've always been on. Try to jump off with the rest of us.

Today's topics are 1. Living Deliberately and 2. Money.

1. Living Deliberately
Living Deliberately can be confusing at first. All it means is that you think about your life, plan the direction you want to go in, then follow your plans. If you want your life to be focused on family and the home you make plans to make that happen. If you want to retire early, work from home or homeschool your children, you plan those things so they happen as part of a planned and careful process, not one that is haphazard and chaotic. Making prudent plans increases your chance of success.

Over the past few decades we have been conned into thinking that we need all manner of products and services to be happy and successful. The problem with buying those products and services is that we have to work more to pay for them. Working more means spending more time away from our families, and almost all the research I've read about what makes the average person happy, tells me that we are made happy by our family and friends. If our family makes us happy, why do we think that spending more time away from them to earn more money to buy products that we don't need will make us happier? It doesn't make sense.

I encourage you to think about your own life. Talk about your hopes for the future with your partner and together, make a plan to create the kind of life you want. Live a life you care about. Don't go along with everyone else - either as a spender, or living a simple life if that is not what you really want. Think, talk, dream, discover, and make a life that reflects you and your values. Remember that your life and aspirations will change as you grow older, plan now for two or three years into the future. And write your plan down on paper so you can monitor how you're progressing. If you don't know what to write down, or if you're new to this, be guided by the list we will follow during our audit but in every stage, think about your own circumstances and hopes and make your list, and then your life, reflect your unique beliefs and needs.

Just Do It
Old post on Living Deliberately

2. Money
Although money is not the most important aspect of a simple life it is the glue that holds it all together. You need to organise you money well - have on hand not too far above what you need to live, nor too far under. If you earn much more than you need, pay off all your debts fast or make some provision to donate or invest your money so it isn't there tempting you to spend it. If you don't earn enough to cover your expenses, cutting back on non essentials, cooking from scratch, gardening and mending may help you make ends meet. I don't want to trivialise anyone's circumstances, but these posts need to be short, so I have to generalise.

Above all else, pay off your debts as soon as you can. You will be rewarded with freedom.

We use the envelope system here and it works very well. We wrote up a budget, and labelled ziplock bags (or envelopes or jars or read Heather's post at the Co-op here) to put in the month's money for that category. We know at a glance how much cash we have for each item and how much is left over. Any money left over at the end of the month is paid into our savings account because we have no debt. If you have debt, it can go towards an extra credit card or mortgage payment. So my envelopes are working as they should, I have no need to change them. I am happy with how we're organising our money.

The envelope system is a very good way of keeping an eye on your money. It's simple, yet effective. But I want to add a way to track and record our money from month to month. I found this free download that I'm quite happy with - Budgetpulse software. So far, it looks very good and it provides money tracking and budgeting tools without linking to your bank account like Mint does. So that is one change for us - using software to track our money and keep records.

We have a pretty good idea of how to handle our money and we are in a phase of life when we don't have a need to add much to what we already own. If you're at a different stage this part of the audit many be difficult for you. Comment on your problems and we, the readers and I, may have some ideas for you. If you use an effective way of handling your money, please share it with us.

These posts on the various aspects of our audit have to be quite short. But I want you to take the ideas here and use the ones you like in your own life. Remember, nothing is set in stone, modify ideas to suit yourself, twist things around, fashion everything to suit YOUR life. There is not only one way of doing this. If there are lots of comments on particular subjects, we can go over them again in other posts after the audit. The main thing now is to start. So let's get moving.

Tomorrow's subject is food.

This is one of our Biggest Kitchen Table discussions.

We have been scrutinising our lives again. While sitting on the verandah yesterday, Hanno and I talked about slipping slowly away from our ideals. Auditing is necessary for us. We don't want to turn around one day and find ourselves back on the spending merry-go-round, so regular audits keep us on track. We must continue our mindfulness, make sure we remain on track and stay focused on our values. It is so easy to become complacent and lazy.


There are times in our lives when we make momentous decisions that are life changing, but we also have times when we need to take stock and make sure we have stayed true to our changes and remain on the right path. This is such a time for us. We are reaffirming that our life choice is working for us and going through our home to decide if there are things we can do without, or tasks we can do differently. We want to be sure we are doing all we can to live simply. It's a healthy activity that will enable us to be fully aware of our past choices while making sure what we have here is working for us.

So during our own review, I thought it would be a good idea to gather as many of you as I can and together we can check our homes to see if improvements or changes are needed. We'll be checking a number of things like disposable products and food, to see if they can be replaced with home made products. We'll be checking our household cleaners, aprons, stockpile cupboards and a few other things I'll tell you about later in the week. We'll also include a no spending week, that will start on Friday 3 July and continue till Thursday night, July 9. That will give you a chance to buy milk or whatever else you need if you're at the end of your grocery cycle. Then, it will be absolutely no spending for the week.

Who will join us in our simple home audit? This will be a no guilt audit. We all have past mistakes we'd rather forget about. The aim of this audit is to keep us on track, or, for some of us, to start living more simply. We will just take stock, make adjustments, move towards a fresh beginning and get on with it.

Each day for a week, I will set a simple task to be completed. They won't take long so those of you working outside the home can join in or save the tasks for your days off. We will start tomorrow. Today I want you to add your name if you want to be included in this task. If you wish to, please capture the badge at the top of this post so you can show what you're doing on your own blog. Who will join us?

ADDITION: Shane and Sarndra have returned from their little honeymoon now and Sarndra just has left a comment for all of us here.