Becoming Domestic

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)

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)

As we were fortunate enough to be given LOADS of second hand washable nappies I am really enjoying not having to use disposable nappies which I’m glad about as disposables cost a fortune (about £10 for a week’s worth of botty changes) and they also are super stinky in the household refuse bin (even when bagged in a nappy sack). The washable nappies are collected throughout the day in a lidded pail with a mesh drawstring bag as a liner and few drops of tea tree oil to keep fresh and they are washed with a load of laundry at 40 degrees each evening or every other evening if I’m feeling slack (we have so many I don’t ever run out of nappies).

Before our baby arrived three months ago I wasn’t aware that people who use washable nappies also tend to use washable wipes and I had stocked up on a box of ‘environmentally friendly’ disposable wipes. These went fairly quickly and it was just by chance that I came across a woman on eBay selling brand new washable wipes made from fleece in a huge range of cheery patterns. I bought one pack of 10 from her (£1.50) then another and now we just use lovely pure warm water to clean the baby. The fleecey squares are kept in a little basket near to the babe’s changing station.

They are so soft and really big that the task of cleaning a really nasty nappy is far less trouble with these cloths than with any thin shop-bought tissuey wet wipe which must be full of chemicals. They get popped into the nappy pail along with the nappy and being fleece they don’t colour run in the wash.

I always have a few in my baby’s changing bag and get lovely comments about how pretty, soft, thick and useful they are. When the bub starts to eat solid food I’m sure I will get through plenty as little face cloths. I shudder to think how much I spent on disposable nappies + wipes with the twins before they were toilet trained it must have been close to £2,000 during the two years of their lives.

May 18th, 2008 | Category: Baby and Pregnancy, Being Green, Frugal living | Comments (5)

My local butcher stocks really good quality meat but doesn’t supply chunks of stewing lamb as by the time he has taken all the cuts of meat from the animal there is very little left to cut into pieces worth selling. For some reason though the supermarket does sell stewing lamb and so when I saw a couple of packets in the reduced refrigerator section I decided to snap them up and find out whether we like traditional Lancashire Hot Pot (we do)…

Some recipes for this dish call for lamb kidney but being a hater of all things offal I gave these a miss and made a simple stew of lamb pieces, 2 sliced onions, 3 carrots chopped into mouth sized pieces, 2 parsnips (instead of turnip which some recipes called for) and finely sliced celery heart (including the flavoursome leaves).

The meat was browned by heating a little vegetable oil to a high temperature then added all the chopped veg and sauteed it all with the lid on for a little while, I added a teaspoon of cornflour to thicken the stew liquor, some thyme and a bay leaf, loads of black pepper and a little salt. I then added just enough water to cover the ingredients. About 3 potatoes were sliced thinly (skin left on) and arranged in a pretty overlapping circles pattern across the top.

I then went to collect the kiddies from school and when I was giving them their tea I brought the hot pot back up to a gentle simmer and the casserole dish was then baked with the lid on for about 1.5 hours at a low-medium heated oven, then 30 minutes before eating the lid was removed, the potatoes were brushed with oil and returned to the oven without the lid so the potatoes could go golden and crunchy on the top.

It was really nice. We had it without any extra vegetables as Bealers was in a hurry to go out to meet someone but I thought it would have been even better with a portion of freshly cooked purple sprouting brocolli.

May 6th, 2008 | Category: Food, Gluten free living, Recipes | Leave a comment

The Willow Den in the background will get much leafier this summer

Last March we bought the willow withies to make a willow den for the children as our garden has no shade after midday during the summer months. Withies can be bought from November-March in the UK when the wood is dormant.

We followed the instructions found in a great book called ‘How Does Your Garden Grow?: Great Gardening for Green-Fingered Kids’ and within a few weeks of planting at the beginning of April, the willow had taken root and formed a superb play den in the corner of the garden.

Now it is a year on and I’ve been asked to show a picture of just how leafy it is. We’re not sure whether the maintenance of tying in the bows at the top of the dome will be an annual job. It may be that using the recommended rafia twine was a bad idea for long term growth as it just rotted during the winter and the vigorously growing willow burst its joins. Bealers is going to use more sturdy non-biodegradable ties when he has the time to bend the open roof branches over again.

Not a very good picture as the plum tree growing behind makes it look very tall! 

May 6th, 2008 | Category: Crafts, Gardening | Comments (2)

I was fed up of watching steel ‘TP’ climbing frames go for more than I wanted to pay on eBay. I’d decided a while ago that a climbing frame would be a great investment in my kids health and had some money given to them for Christmas by their Aunty and Grandma in the giant piggy bank in my bedroom. I was prepared to spend £126.79 I decided but all the TP Challenger Frames near enough to us to collect were being sold for £170. Very occasionally some kind soul would offer a metal climbing frame on Freecycle but was overwhelmed by responses.

I lamented to Bealers that there should be something ‘between local Freecycle groups and eBay’ to which he suggested I try the Malvern FlogIt/SwapIt group. I’m thrilled to have signed up as its is similar to Freecycle in the way that messages are distributed to subscribers but people are able sell things second hand via an email description and can put out ‘Wanted’ adverts too which is exactly what I did. After posting that we were after a climbing frame a local family got in touch saying they would be happy to sell us their frame + slide for slightly less than my top price would have been on eBay.

Both parties are happy as they did not need to go to the bother of photographing and description writing for an eBay sale, they made money from something that had been gathering dust in their garage since they moved and we did not have the stress of bidding against others and watching the price rise. My kids are beyond thrilled and so are we to have such a fine piece of equipment for such a brilliant price. Admittedly I do now owe my blessed husband a day of his time…

The new climbing frame - halfway assembled (it now has a slide & scramble net too)

May 5th, 2008 | Category: Family Health, Frugal living | Comments (3)

Mmm-mm. Whilst sorting out my cupboard I found 3 full bags of red lentils which is a lot for someone who only knows one recipe calling for red lentils. As we are keen to use up store cupboard supplies in light of my recent thoughts on food prices increasing but me being determined not to let any more of our income go on the weekly food shop thought I’d better increase my lentil repetoire.

A quick search on ‘red lentil recipe’ came up trumps as one of the first recipes I found (on the BBC Recipe website) was for a quick, easy and tasty sounding dish, was gluten-free and I just so happened to have all the ingredients for (apart from the cream so I just omitted it). I added a bit more cayenne than it called for too (2 teaspoons instead of 1/2). It was delicious and what’s more the Meat Lovin’ Husband thought it was tasty too. We had it with a green salad with a lemon juice, olive oil, sun dried tomato paste dressing.

Ingredients
175g/6oz red lentils
350ml/12fl oz water
110g/4oz cheddar cheese, grated
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
½ tsp cayenne pepper
a little lemon juice
1 large egg
3 tbsp single cream
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp butter

Method
1. preheat the oven 190C/375F/Gas 5.
2. Pick over the lentils for any sticks and stones. Rinse thoroughly and cook in a tightly covered pan with the water for 10-15 minutes. Check after 10 minutes in case you need to add more water. The mixture should cook to a stiff purée.
3. Remove the pan from the heat and mix in the grated cheese, chopped onion, parsley, cayenne pepper and lemon juice. Season to taste.
4. In a separate bowl lightly beat the egg, stir in the cream and pour this mixture over the lentils.
5. Grease a 450g/1lb loaf tin with the tsp of butter and press in the mixture.
6. Bake for 45-50 minutes until the top is golden brown and the mixture feels firm to the touch.
7. If you are serving this loaf hot, let it stand for 10 minutes in the tin before turning it out. Alternatively, serve cold with a salad.

May 1st, 2008 | Category: Frugal living, Gluten free living, Recipes | Comments (3)

Hmmm. I’ve just been watching the boldest, chunkiest rat while I did the washing up. He/she/it was waddling around the path in the garden, popped up the apple tree and sat looking at me then waddled back down, had a sniff around the drain and the rubbish bin (no lid and generally has refuse sacks containing the week’s waste complete with holes made by a mystery creature) then waddled back to where I presume it sleeps in the ex-outdoor toilet which is now used as a garden store.

Until I came upstairs I thought little of the latest visible wildlife in our garden other than a fleeting ‘Gosh aren’t they sweet looking, nimble and intelligent too’

Turns out they have nasty diseases, nasty habits (like popping themselves up nearby sewage pipes and into one’s lavatory), can cause nasty things to happen (especially if they chomp through household electricity cables) and the only thing to do if you have signs of rats living near your premises are to kill the blighters. The best way to kill them is apparently with a rat trap.

Great. It wasn’t something I had on the to-do list but here goes - better start getting rid of them before they get the better of us and start being really cheeky like coming into the house. I’m a bit scared of traps though as I imagine they would hurt A LOT if it went off on a human finger or toe and with two daft five year olds living with us I guess we’ll have to wait until after their bedtime to set the things up.

The following advice is taken from the very helpful page at King County:

Rats are dangerous! They can ruin your food, destroy things in your home and start electrical fires. Rats and their fleas can carry disease.

Where do rats live outside?* Under wood piles or lumber that is not being used often
* Under bushes, vines and in tall grasses that are not trimmed or cut back
* Under rocks in the garden
* In cars, appliances and furniture that has been put outside and is no longer being used
* In and around trash and garbage that has been left on the ground
* In holes under buildings

Where do rats live inside the home?

* In the insulation of walls or ceilings
* Inside the crawl spaces
* Behind or under cupboards, counters, bathtubs and shower stalls
* Near hot water heaters and furnaces
* In basements, attics and wherever things are stored in boxes, paper or cloth

What foods brings rats into my yard and neighborhood?

More »

May 1st, 2008 | Category: Bits and Bobs, Country Living, Family Health | Comments (3)