Becoming Domestic

My poor little head is too full of too many things to do (an exciting dot com project with my beloved, administrative work for our small internet business, a small babe and two little kids on summer holidays to look after, a house to keep in order, tummies to feed, this blog to write AND its so hot!) but I’ve got a tiny moment to share the fantastic book I’ve borrowed from the library.

Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘Animal, Vegetable, Miracle – Our Year of Seasonal Eating’ is an insiprational and educational account of the author and her family’s decision to leave Arizona where the population generally doesn’t know that potatoes grow in the ground and are 100% dependent on the petroleum industry to bring them food to their supermarkets all year round to a farm in Virginia where they spend a year only eating what’s in season and grown locally (their own gardens and those of small local farmers). The kids and the husband all write essays, facts and recipes which are inserted into the main narrative. Its a fantastic read.

It has made me determined to eat less food which has traveled a long way. Food which is grown to be transported thousands of miles is generally bred to travel well and not to taste good, and for each 10 calories provided by a vegetable or animal when eaten many more calories are spent producing it (fertiliser chemicals, insecticides) and transporting it. Each time I put the book down I’m even more fired up to continue our quest to live a simpler life in which food is not just grabbed as a pre-prepared product at the supermarket and wolfed down but instead lovingly planned, grown, shopped for, perpared and enjoyed with no hidden preservatives, flavourings, transfatty oils, or meat from poorly treated animals hiding within. More »

July 28th, 2008 | Tags: Food | Category: Country Living, Food, Frugal living, Gardening | Comments (10)

I’m cheating writing this post tonight as am soooooo tired I can barely even keep my eyes open (and we have 20+ people coming to stay for an all-weekend mini-festival at our house tomorrow yikes better get some kip soon) but my dear friend Rach just sent me this via email so am doing nothing more than copying & pasting & hitting the publish button…

Hi Ackers,

A. bought home an interesting article in the Guardian the other day. It contained 20 tips on how to cut food waste, I thought it was really helpful, although most of them we do already, but it sounded to me like something that would be good on your blog. They also point you to this site which is great:

http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/

As a direct result of reading the article I made a lovely batch of strawberry jam after going to the fruit farm at the weekend.

Anyway, thought it might be of interest to you.

Xx

1. Avoid the supermarket
2. Ignore 2 for 1 offers (just a way for supermarkets to get rid of excess food near it’s sell by date)
3. Shop daily for perishables
4. bulk buy non-perishables
5. Be storage savvy (a lot more on this on the site above)
6. Meal-plan for the week
7. Cook! That is not just following a recipe but being able to create dishes from what you have in the fridge
8. Buy quality not quantity
9. Freecycle/become a ‘freegan’ – I think this is something to do with getting food from supermarket bins that has damaged packaging but is perfectly fine otherwise
10. Reacquaint yourself with your freezer – apparently freezers are more efficient when full Good housekeeping.com has good tips on using the freezer
11. Don’t be afraid of an empty fridge – this was a revelation to me, I always get twitchy with an empty fridge incase I can’t feed my family, but now I like it not so full so that I can see exactly what I’ve got and I know how I’m going to use it.
12. Grow your own herbs and salad
13. Buy vegetables whole
14. Know how much a portion is so you don’t overcook
15. Bulk-cook meals – then freeze the rest
16. Learn how to use leftovers – My mum was saying that they’d have roast on Sunday, cold cuts on Monday, hotpot on Tuesday maybe a pie and then always fish on Friday. There is nothing wrong with having the same meal on the same day of the week…we’re too used to being impulsive with food etc..
17. Look to previous generations – during the war years and up until the 60’s food was precious, a weeks meals were planned down to the last carrot. Dishes such as shepherd’s pie and bread and butter pudding use up leftover food
18. Take sell-by dates with a pinch of salt
19. Rediscover packed lunches
20. Equip yourself – introduce yourself to the stockpot, freezer bag and salad washer

Thank you Rach!!

July 17th, 2008 | Tags: Food, Frugal living | Category: Being Green, Food, Frugal living | Comments (6)

Our little son was very good at communicating his need to watch tv before he could even speak. As 15 month olds they communicated with us via sign language as we had taught them from age seven months basic signs for milk, various animals, food, ‘more’, ‘help’. We made up easy signs when required and the sign for ‘tv’ was always urgently made by Morris (hands in a T-shape). We figured that being a bright, chatty boy he probably liked watching television as a way of switching off and relaxing. He would, however, spend huge chunks of warm sunny days in front of CBeebies (no ‘adverts tv’ allowed) while the rest of us enjoyed the outdoors, begged him to come out or endured his moaning and crying if we made him come outside.

We’ve now had to ban any tv watching in our house since a recent incident at our friend’s 40th party made us realise Morris’ addiciton had affected all of us and spoilt what was a lovely occasion with loads of children and adults having fun (he sobbed, fumed, threatened constantly for over an hour when he realised there would be no option to sit inside to watch ‘just 1 minute’ of his beloved CBeebies. With little information on what to do if your 5 year old is so attached to telly watching that he can’t survive a fun afternoon without it we decided he and the rest of us needed to go cold turkey and live without it, and any kind of computer (the kids not us), until at least the end of the school term.

Amazingly after a couple of days of pleading with me to watch it, being sad and droopy on coming out of school knowing he’d be without his fix he now comes home and Does Interesting Things and plays with his two sisters. All three of them play together so nicely. I’m not sure how we’re going to reintroduce tv especially when I have been guilty of using it as a babysitter especially since January when the new baby arrived or during the school holidays when I’ve had some work to do.

The first day of withdrawal I let them have the remaining 30+ set of Mr Men books I had bought for them at a book sale when they were very tiny. They have loved putting them in order, hearing all the stories and generally leafing through them.

We have started planning fun, non-tv activities which will not cost a fortune to look forward to in the holidays. I have promised that the tv will be allowed again once the school holidays begin but it is likely to only be before breakfast. The room where their tv is has now been turned into a guest room.

The kids agreed that they will help me keep the house a nice place to live in and in return I will take them strawberry picking once a week (and have told their classmates’ mums that we will be doing this each Wed at 10am if they want to join us), we will try making new things in the kitchen (melted chocolate muffins and caramel popcorn being high on the list), we will maintain the school concept of ‘playtime’ after their lunch so they get outside for a while even if it isn’t gorgeous weather, we will go for walks up the local hills (there are many), we will feed the ducks, go to a Saturday morning cinema matinee (£1 per child and adults free apparently), we will visit the Roman Baths in Bath, we’ll stay with their Aunty who has generously offered to babysit for a day and take them to the city farm, we will use their many many toys (puzzles, crafts sets, cars, dolls, dressing up clothes, musical instruments) and those they don’t enjoy we will take to a charity shop, I will read them the first Harry Potter book, they will read to me, we will dance to my CD collection, we will make up tunes on the piano, we will explore nearby towns we haven’t yet visited, we will have picnics, we will not turn into tv junkies.

I liked this blog when trying to find out more about actual TV addiction:

Television Addiction: Dealing with the only form of addiction that society condones and encourages.

July 9th, 2008 | Category: Family Health, Good Parenting, Things to do with young kids | Comments (3)

I do know that we are extraordinarily lucky living where we do and living the way we do. We have three beautiful, healthy little kids, great friends and family etc etc etc but very occasionally, when I’m tired, or have too many things going on at once and feel under it I need a reminder about how fortunate we are.

This week I was getting irritated with myself for not having a house which was nice and tidy all the time (mainly because the boiler needs fixing and all the shelves with all the stuff on are taken down in anticipation of the repair man coming on the day he said he would). I also always feel a little inadequate when I visit a friend’s house for the first time and see how neatly they are able to keep their house compared to the way ours always seems to look despite our best efforts. When we went to a bbq at another family house this weekend I asked the hostess how she managed to keep such a lovely home and wrote her answers down. This was great for me as its something that is rarely discussed between us girls and somehow I managed to miss out on how to keep house as I grew up. She made it sound so easy and stressed that she wasn’t mad on housework but does love the results. Here are the weekly routines she uses.

Mon: Bathrooms

Tues: Dusting, mirrors, windows, clean kitchen floors, online shopping delivery put away

Wed: Beds and a ‘zone’ (ie. one main area like the lounge, the main bedroom, kids bedroom)

Thurs: Hoover rooms and an extra good hoover in the zone

Fri: Bleach kitchen surfaces and do the floor

Sat: Order food online

Sun: Clean fish tank

I do remind myself
(a) that I don’t live in a modern house and that in itself gives our house a more shabby country chic look along with the fact that a large percentage of the things we own are from second hand sources.
(b) I have a newish baby, a part time role with Bealers’ firm, and two messy five year olds who are given more stuff (toys & clothes) than we can actually cope with by their four loving sets of grandparents so have not enough time and too much stuff to make the house the minimalist zen-like environment I dream of.
(c) by following a few simple housework rules it is super-easy to go from a house which feels horribly messy (especially after the weekend with grass and mud being trampled into one which feels orderly and well tended with not much effort.
(d) There is probably a good case for ceasng to hang out with friends who have super huge, gorgeous houses with small armies of cleaning staff as I tend to look at our own home in a poor light after visiting them but I can’t as they’re my chums. I’ll just have to re-read this post and resist any kind of urge to feel envy for others.

As the Massive Attack lyric goes

‘Though you may not drive a great big cadillac
Gangster whitewalls tv antenna in the back
You may not have a car at all
But just remember brothers and sisters
You can still stand tall
Just be thankful for what you’ve got’

Two posts from fellow simple-life, green and frugal bloggers were really inspiring to me this week. The lovely pictures on Ted & Agnes blog of a beautiful family home with gorgeous home made and second hand treasures made me open my eyes to some areas of our home (obviously not the piles of laundry waiting to be put away, or the kids playroom with the toys all out on the floor) and how nice some of the things we have picked up from Freecycle or second hand shops over the years are. Here are the pictures to show myself if ever I forget what a nice place it is:

Slightly broken mirror from my Grandfather – clearly says ‘Property of Buckingham Palace’ on the back, a picture of us moments after our marriage vows were exchanged in an East End pub with the registrars who did the deed.

More wedding paraphenalia – a remnant of the beautiful poem our friend Jane painted for us mural-style for the wedding (I left the comics in the picture as it reminds me that my son sits there to read)

The view from my bed as I feed my baby several times a day. How can I ever find anything to moan about with this outside the curtains?

My kids’ curtains made from popular Ikea fabric but brings an advance tear to my eye thinking of the days when they are no longer children and how this pattern will invoke memories of all the years of goodnight lullabies and sleepy chats. They have a nice view too.

Patchwork quilt from local charity shop, dressing table from car boot sale, hand painted name tags and better than all of this – the twins have learned to make their beds every morning!

The view from the baby’s nappy change unit.

Our veg garden – all Bealers own work this year as I’ve opted out completely

The other post which made me really stop beating myself up over the state of our house was from Finding Simplicity which lists out many of my favourite things to feel happy about as hers too.

I came up with a few things of my own to realise once in a while to:

1. The House-Spotless and Hotel-Like Auditors are **not** due to arrive tomorrow (or the day after, or ever actually).
2. The house I live in will be very clean and very quiet for all the many many years that my children are likely to be grown ups. My Gran is now 94, her son – my father is in his sixties. She has had five decades of not picking up his things, not treading on small toys, not asking him to be quiet and not washing up his porridge bowl . Presumably the cuddles dried up a lonnnng time ago too.
3. Finding the time to enjoy the smaller things makes a huge difference. Watching a blackbird feed a cherry to its young, the mother rabbit with quadruplet babies bounce around in the evening sun, my five year old daughter gently explore the contents of my sewing basket while I mend her bunny, my small baby learning to laugh, to feed, to use her hands, the warmth of sun on skin, a beautiful sunset, being able to phone my mum and dad for a chat and for advice, flowers. These are all things I enjoy. I am hugely rich.

July 2nd, 2008 | Category: Bits and Bobs, Home Management, Vintage Country Shabby Chic | Comments (6)

It must be human nature to want to acquire things. I used to love shopping and spending. These days I’m always trying to think of more ways to keep spending to a minimum.

A number of beautiful looking catalogues regularly come through the post addressed to me. I usually open them, flick through and then throw them in the recycling bin. I used to keep them and pour over them and use them to buy presents for Christmas or birthdays so I had improved. Today I decided to put a stop to temptation and to ask the companies wasting their catalogues on me by phoning up to ask to be removed from their mailing list. It is so much easier to not spend money on things you don’t actually need if you don’t see them.

Admitedly the Lakeland catalogue does look extremely enticing with its pretty spotted bowl full of salad on the front and I know it does have lovely things in it but I already have a huge number of nice things. I can live without whatever they are trying to sell me. They are trying to make money and that’s why they’ve produced a catalogue and sent it my way.

June 27th, 2008 | Category: Frugal living, Saving Money | Comments (6)

Here’s a fantastic list of easy ways to save money from The Times Online. Some really good ideas.

http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2008/02/the-thrifty-fif.html

I’m already doing some of them (cooking in bulk, using leftovers, magazine swapping with a friend each month, using a piggy bank for all my loose little bits of change, reusing pots and bread bags for storing sandwiches and leftovers in, using pan lids to keep in extra heat and turning off the hob a few minutes before the food is eaten) but was unaware of several choice gems including:

When taking your car for an MOT use a local council test centre rather than a private garage. The council centres do not offer repairs and therefore have no vested interest in failing your motor. Contact your local council for details of your nearest centre.

Check whether it’s cheaper to buy medicine over the counter rather than putting in a prescription. Many commonly prescribed medications, including painkillers, allergy tablets and dermatology creams, are also available over the counter without prescription. Often it’s much cheaper just to buy them this way, rather than paying the £6.85 flat prescription charge.

If you do buy fresh herbs and find it hard to get through a whole bunch, instead of throwing what’s left away make frozen stock cubes. Finely chop the herbs, put them in an ice cube tray and cover with oil. Put the tray in the freezer. When frozen, pop out the cubes and place them in a freezer bag for easier storage. Next time you need herbs for soups; pastas, etc. add a cube to your recipe and warm.

Being thrifty and frugal is definitely becoming strangely fashionable. Everyone’s talking about it, only a few are doing it…

June 26th, 2008 | Category: Family Finance, Frugal living, Saving Money | Comments (3)

Ever since we noticed our monthly food bills rising without good reason, since we heard more and more about the so-called ‘credit crunch’ and the predicted downturn in the economy, we started thinking seriously about what options we had to make ourselves recession proof.

A brief look at our fixed monthly outgoings identified our rent, food, fuel, insurance premiums and phone bills as our biggest expenditure areas.

An extremely quick win was to have a short and pleasant chat with nice customer service people at our respective mobile phone providers to agree new (and lower) rates for fixed annual contracts (including a free brand new phone each despite my telling them that neither of us needed new handsets).

This is great news as it means a net monthly reduction of about £70 between us plus two swanky new Nokia handsets which we will immediately try to sell on eBay (it worked last time) without even taking them out of the boxes.

Put in real terms the results of these two short phone calls will cause us no hardship (we will still be able to make phone calls and send sms messages which are the only two functions we use on our phones despite them being apparently capabable of so much more) and will save us the equivalent of the approximate cost of twenty new pairs of jeans, ten pairs of good shoes, about forty take away meals, two thirds of a months rent or one week in the sun for the whole family.

Tremendous.

June 23rd, 2008 | Category: Budgeting and Finances, Family Finance, Saving Money | Comments (3)

EDIT: We’ve set up a new blog called Becoming Self Sufficient that you may also be interested in visiting.

Its a new long term project that has just emerged for this family but since Bealers has been Head of Veg Gardening and really enjoying it (having never planted or grown anything before he’s now growing chillis, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, peas, pumpkins, all manner of herbs and salad items, raspberries, strawberries and LOADS of potatoes!), since all the recent talk of predicted economic doom and gloom, soaring fuel prices/import costs as well as the UK’s ageing population, increased violence have lead us to believe that there may be some really tough times ahead for those not well equipped to look after their own. We have started to think seriously about becoming more self sufficient as a family and less reliant on others for food and energy requirements.

At present we’re not doing much more than a bit of idle internet research and have found a load of good sites (added to the blogroll here) but have also started to collect books on the subject of self sufficiency, allotment gardening and keeping chickens and livestock.

Bealers is now happily enrolled on a 10 week Beginners Carpentry evening course at the local college from September and I’m really keen to do the NVQ in hairdressing (but at the moment the small baby at home means I’m unable to leave the house without her). Other interests we’ve identified as being useful for those who aim to be more self sufficient are fishing, shooting, first aid, general building skills, plumbing, teaching and counselling, dressmaking, knitting, crocheting. About a lifetime ago I trained to be a primary school teacher and although I never actually got paid for doing it I do still sometimes have an urge to home educate our kids.

At the moment we are fairly close to being a typical modern family but perhaps where we differ is in our new attitude to doing things for ourselves. We are raising our children (twins aged five and a new baby) to know about food (cost, growing, preparation, nutrition), how to enjoy their free time without classes or clubs where people tell them what to do, to spend plenty of time in the fresh air and to understand that money is a finite resource which for most people is hard to come by and too easily spent. We teach them how to sweep, how to make their beds, how to hang clothes up, how to load/unload the washing machine, how to donate old things no longer required to the charity shop, how to borrow books from the library. We holiday in a twelve year old five berth touring caravan and we write letters to friends and family members. All this is fairly new to us as only two years ago we wer, like so many others, enjoying the luxuries that a two salary household could enjoy.

At present we rent a fairly big Victorian house with a good sized garden on a busy main road in rural Worcestershire but aim to one day live somewhere with enough land, outbuildings etc to grow vegetables, raise some animals for food (chickens, ducks, pigs?), to have access to somewhere to fish. We don’t know where this will be. We sold our house in London last year and now are settled and happy enough for the time being where we are taking the small steps towards a totally different lifestyle to our old city ways.

The only conundrum for me is how we will have enough time and energy to manage such a lifestyle. At present we watch very little television, have not much time for sitting and reading, I get up with the three kids early in the morning and I am just finishing cleaning, washing, drying, feeding etc by the time it is our bedtime. My hope is that as they grow older they will be more independent on us and will have their own role to play, Bealers will presumably work away from the home less as theoretically we will need less cash to pay for things and will therefore have more time to spend on managing our home environment.

http://www.selfsufficientish.com/forum/

http://www.goselfsufficient.co.uk/

http://www.simpleliving.net

http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/

June 19th, 2008 | Category: Being Green, Frugal living, Gardening, Self Sufficiency | Comments (2)

As someone who used to have a job as a crisis management coordinator for a big global firm. I realised this weekend while talking to my uncle about oil prices and how heavily our island society depends on oil to transport food that my young family is currently woefully ill-equiped to cope with any kind of disruption to everyday services.

Yes we do have a few potato, tomato and courgette plants growing but we certainly do not have enough basic supplies to keep our family healthy if there was ever an emergency which meant supermarket shelves ran empty (eg. no haulage firms willing to transport food if oil costs soared to unprofitable levels).

I’ve decided to invest in a contingency stock which will include enough food, water, basic medicines, washing equipment and enterntainment for us five if something untoward creates chaos in the supply chain to supermarkets and shops. I’ll need to store it all in the cellar in lidded crates so no errant rodents get to it before me.

My uncle’s stock consists of the following:

• Dried beans, mixed lentils, tinned foods, etc, and plenty of the basics such as tea, coffee, soap, toilet rolls, washing powder etc

and he assumes he would use water from a nearby rive or rainbutt. I would have to add children’s items such as kids’ painkillers. Our wind up radio and wind up torch may also come in handy.

Apparently it is key to check your stock every 6 months and use/replace items which are near their sell-by date.

It won’t take much effort or cash to put together these rations but may well be a real life saver if the unexpected occurs to our delicately balanced society which depends so heavily on various factors.

In the long term we’re putting plans in place to equip ourselves with skills which would be useful in leaner times (eg. rearing chickens and other animals for food, carpentry or plumbing, fishing, shooting), brushing up on first aid knowledge and also looking out for mechinal machinery which doesn’t require electricity (eg. carpet sweeper, hand operated drill, a rotary lawn mower, scythe).

If at the end of our lives we haven’t needed any of the things then we can pass them on to our children and they can do the same but at least we will have been prepared (one of the campaigns I ran when I worked in crisis management was “Expect the unexpected!”).

[NB: My crate of Tesco Value contingency food stuffs was delivered yesterday. Here's what we now have in a dedicated crate to enable us to stay healthy for approximately 1 month. The sum total was £50 but would have been £37 without the 2 x Value Vodka!]

5 x Tesco Value Tinned Sweetcorn
10 x Tesco Value Instant Mash
10 x Tesco Value Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce
5 x Tesco Value Spaghetti in Tomato Sauce
10 x Tesco Value Tuna Flakes in Brine
4 x Tesco Value Long Grain Rice
20 x Tesco Value Bacon Flavour Instant Noodles
3 x Tesco Value Dried Skimmed Milk
4 x Tesco Value Eveporated Milk
5 x Tesco Value Clear Honey
3 x Tesco Value Jam
5 x Tesco Value Still Water (2 Litres)
2 x Tesco Still Water (5 litres)
5 pack of child resistant lighters
4 x Boxes matches
4 x toilet paper
2 x Paracetamol packs
2 x Ibuprofen packs
2 x Calpol packs
2 x Tesco Value Vodka
1 x Tesco value toothpaste
1 x jar instant coffee
1 x  bag tea bags

June 10th, 2008 | Category: Bits and Bobs, Crisis Management | Comments (3)