A-Z Simple Living: G = Gardening

Those of you who have followed my blog from the very beginning know that I was not an avid gardener. I used to be when I first moved here....I loved spending my weekends out in the gardens with the kids. I did grow a few vegetables but nothing really of note. I didn't fertilise or prepare the soil, we just planted some seedlings every now and then and hoped for the best. I stopped gardening after our third year of floods. It just seemed so useless if everything was going to get ruined by being underwater for a few days at a time. That's not to say that the floods wreck everything...some plants thrive in it but it just made it difficult to plan when and where to plant to avoid the risk. Plus, I was angry at my home, and lost the motivation to look after it.

I am so glad that I changed my focus and mindset about my property because my appreciation for it is renewed by what it is giving back to me. This post is inspired by the readers who have asked me where and how to start. This is a summary of the steps I first took..and I am certainly no expert :)

1. Start Small 

If you have a habit of neglecting pot plants (I am famous for it...and burning pots) then don't rush into producing a market garden overnight. Start off with something small, like some herb pots. My husband gave me these one day...and I have always kept them full of fresh herbs for cooking. They sit on my verandah just outside the kitchen. Tomatoes also grow well in pots, you just need to water them more as the moisture evaporates easily.

When you are ready to step up to a garden bed, make it a small one that is accessible to water, and concentrate on just this one for your first growing season. This is a before photo of my water tank garden which is right next to my house...and easy to maintain and weed.

2. Prepare Your Soil

Every gardener will always tell you this is the most important thing to do. I bought a soil test kit so that I could see whether my soil was alkaline or acid, and fortunately it is neutral which makes it good for growing most things. Look online to determine what you need to do to get your soil right first. Then, fertilise before planting with cow manure or blood and bone, or compost, mixed into the soil. Your vegetables will have a better chance if this is done right to start off with.

3. Compost

I am not a diligent composter but I did manage to get a couple of barrow loads to mix in with my soil for this season. I add grass clippings, food scraps, paper shredding, soot from our camp fire and leaves on a regular basis and just turn it over every so often. Here is the link to a great youtube video that explains it all :) How to make Compost.

3. Mulch

This is very important for keeping out weeds, and keeping the moisture in the soil. Layer it thickly and water it in before planting.

4. Research

Not everything will grow well in your area, or in any given season. I assumed that if the hardware store sold a particular seedling then it was suited for the season but that's not the case. Gardening Australia have planting guides for all areas of Australia and I am now sticking with those.

5. Start with Seedlings

My Spring garden consisted mainly of seedlings purchased from the markets. The Zucchini plant above was grown by seed. I am planting only seeds and my own seedlings at the moment, but it has been a bit hit and miss with the heavy rains so, to make an easy start....just plant seedlings.

6. Water

It's not rocket science that plants need water, some more than others. Beans for example don't like too much watering....they thrive on neglect. How you water is also important as how often. In the hot summer months I watered every morning before work to keep my garden going. With the rain we have been having lately I am only watering every few days. Plants with large leaves like the Zucchini need to be watered from underneath, not on the top of the leaves...I found out the hard way when my plants were not producing. It is trial and error but there is a ton of information online.

6. Pest Control

There will always be bugs and some of them, I have found out, are beneficial...like some beetles who prey on aphids and scale. I am only learning about this now, but I did find that my silverbeet was very prone to bugs, so I just sprayed it with a watered down chili and garlic mixture...and they left them alone. You don't have to use chemicals to treat your pests.

7. Top up fertlise

Once your plants are on their way, fertilise regularly with a liquid fertiliser. I buy a milk carton full of worm liquid from the markets for $3 and dilute it with water to fertilise with, and it works really well on everything.

So, these are only basic tips and you can find out so much more from the experts. The main thing is to give it a go, and as you have more success you may find the bug gets you...it is a rather addictive hobby :)

Do you grow your own produce? What tips would you add to the above list?

A-Z Simple Living: F = Fresh Food

Before I started on my simple living journey, I had become complacent about food and where I bought it from. Occasionally I would visit the markets, but usually I bought all of my groceries including meat and fruit and vegetables from the supermarket...to save time. It wasn't until I started harvesting my own vegetables that I remembered just how good fresh produce tastes. It brought back precious memories of time spent with my late grandmother in her vegie patch, picking beans straight off the vines, to munch on after school.

I was always impressed that she grew so many vegetables, and never really understood why she did that when I was a kid...but I now think that part of her lives on in me, and I am thankful for those early memories.

When I decided to reduce my spending at the supermarket I analysed my dockets for a few weeks (How to Save Money on Groceries), totalled them up into categories and realised that my biggest expense besides meat was fruit and vegetables....then processed foods. I was the queen of quick, short-cut meals with a stock of pasta sauces, curry bases, one pan dinners, instant pasta meals...you name it, I had it in my pantry. Now, that does not mean I still don't have some of these available as a backup, but I now try and prepare fresh food (vs processed or frozen) at every opportunity. It means I need to be more organised, which I am...most of the time.

It makes logical sense that the best way to buy fresh food is to buy it locally, especially if it is produced or grown in your area. This food has not sat around too long in storage, or been transported in trucks or boats...and you get to know the people you are buying it from. I have started investigating different avenues of shopping for fresh produce in Gympie (besides my local market) and I was inspired by a recent post from
Natural New Age Mum, How to Go Supermarket Free. If you have not visited her blog before, be warned...you could be there for hours!

She offers some really great suggestions for avoiding supermarkets such as community gardens, buying direct from farmers and co-ops. The Supermarket Free Challenge (conducted for the month of April) even has its own website. Here are just a few of the suggestions of where to source your local produce:

1. Your own backyard vegie garden
2. Farmers Markets
3. Local butcher for meat
4. Bakery for bread - if you don't make your own :)
5. Toiletries from your local chemist - If you buy the monthly specials they are cheaper too!
6. Bulk items from your local wholefood shop - I buy alot of my grains and flours in bulk from our health food store

I have now decided to make a conscious effort to do this. I have been asking my local butchers where their meat is sourced and I have found a couple that stock local meat - one I found buys meat from Tasmania would you believe? I order two dozen eggs each week from a lady at my Gym who has free range chickens, and every second weekend when I don't have Army cadets, I will attend my local market and buy fresh - only what I haven't grown myself of course. I would also recommend adding your local Asian Grocer to the above list....they have amazing and interesting fresh produce too.

I am curious....do you shop the old fashioned way? Or do you do all your shopping at the supermarket?

A-Z Simple Living: E = Energy Efficiency

Saving energy saves money, which is important to me as it means that I am one step closer to attaining my goal of self-sufficiency, albeit a very tiny baby step. Saving energy also saves the environment, by reducing the level of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. The greenhouse gases trap heat from the sun inside the earth's atmosphere and the increasing levels of greenhouse gases erodes the ozone layer which consequently results in global warming and climatic change, with detrimental effects to mankind. So, there is my science lesson for the day...and two very good reasons to save energy.

So, what are the best ways of going about doing this? Here are a few of my tips, that have worked well for us:

1. Examine Your Bill
Before getting our solar panels, I saved $100/quarter of our electricity bill by taking one easy step....I had a good look at my bill and what I was being charged for. Like so many people I know, we just paid our bills without realising exactly what they were made up of...and were amazed to find that we had been charged an incorrect business tariff (on our residential property) for as long as we had owned it. This amounted to a whopping $300/year and was a huge battle to rectify, but we got there in the end.

2. Talk to your Electrician
When reconnecting our power after a flood, our electrician advised us that our hot water was not on a separate economy tariff, meaning we were paying full rates, even when it was heating overnight...which is usually charged at a lower tariff. So, we rectified that one immediately, and saved another $400/year.

3. Shop Around
In my post B = Budget, I shared the story of our change to Click Energy and the savings we made. Weigh up all of the competition in terms of tariff (regulated here in Qld) and service charges. Then talk to your existing retailer who may match a competitors offer, or offer more incentive to stay with them.

4. Consider going solar if you can
This is seriously worth weighing up if you own your own home, and your electricity service provider can advise you of the savings to be made. There are also online calculators available.

5. Improve your Efficiency
Look at what appliances you have and when you use them. For example, with solar power we now wash our clothes in the evening to maximise the kilowatts going back to the grid. I also replaced my kids 'box' televisions with led versions, which use a lot less power. If you don't have solar, there are heaps of ways you can save energy just by using the appliances you have differently. 

                                     

The following links have some great ideas and suggestions:

Where does my electricity bill go?

Electricity Savings Action Plan

Save Money and Electricity

Use Appliances Effectively

So, what are your best tips for saving electricity?

A-Z Simple Living: D = Declutter

This topic is a tough one for me to conquer, simply because I live in a house with four clutterers. Every time I try to create some sort of order amongst the chaos, someone always comes along and undoes my hard work. So, it's hard to be vigilant when it comes to decluttering unless I want to spend all of my valuable spare time on it...and the rest ranting and raving at everyone to put things back where they got them from - several years of doing that have not yielded 100% results...so I have made a few 'compromises' to keep my sanity.

1. If they choose to keep their bedrooms untidy and cluttered, and believe me they do, then that is their choice. When they can't find clean undies or socks to wear, because they have been shoved under the bed all week, that is also their choice...and if they miss the washing cut-off of Friday night in the laundry basket, then they do it themselves. So that's one compromise right?

2, The other is that everything in my kitchen has to go back to where it was taken from...no excuses. So, when my husband makes a masterchef dinner, whilst having a few glasses of wine, I have chosen to accept the chaos rather than harping on about it...and I move everything back the way it was after he is finished. It is important for me to love my kitchen, and to know where everything is...it is one of my many havens and I do have certain drawers and cupboards dedicated to me, such as my preserving and cheese cupboard. No-one touches it :)

So, I am not the best example of decluttering but I am cutting down on the amount of stuff we have and getting rid of things we don't use. Less clutter = less stress. Some things that may be repurposed are kept outside until I decide whether they will be of use. But, if you really want to know how to declutter then I suggest you visit these blogs:

1. The Organised Housewife. I absolutely love this blog and aspire to be the perfect housewife, apron and all, that these posts conjure up. There are printables you can purchase to assist with your organising, and a 52 week declutter challenge to follow.

2. Me and My Ready Made family. I love this blog because Sheridan Anne inspires me to organise my home  better and to continue with my meal planning which I have let slip lately.

3. Duchess Declutter. A wonderful lady who started a blog about decluttering, and there are some great posts on this topic, but she covers gardening and life topics as well.

4. Home Life Simplified. Deb is currently on a mission to declutter and improve areas of her home...she also has amazing e-books with step by step ways to simplify your entire life. Well worth checking out.

So, the sixty four million dollar question is....are you a clutterer or a declutterer?

A-Z Simple Living: C = Cleaning

If you are wanting to start your own simple living journey then the best place to start is by making your own cleaning products. I started with laundry liquid first, and once I was sure it would be just as effective as the store bought ones, I then experimented further. Basically any product that you buy from the supermarket to clean with, you can make at home yourself for a fraction of the price. My last batch of ten litres of laundry liquid cost just $3 to make and has lasted me for six months. It has no nasty chemicals and does an amazing job of cleaning the kids clothes....it also does not irritate my sensitive skin like some laundry liquids have done in the past, and my daughter's dermatitis is now non-existent.

I use the recipe from Down to Earth and thought I would include it in this post so you can see how easy it is to make!

Ingredients

1 cup of Lux soap flakes

1/2 cup washing soda

1/2 cup borax

1 1/2 litres of water

Add the above ingredients to a medium sized saucepan and heat, stirring, until all ingredients are dissolved.

Add 8 litres of water to a 10 litre bucket, pour in the hot soapy mixture and stir. The mixture will thicken into a gel as it cools, and you then place it into plastic containers for storage.

How easy is that? I bought the ingredients and it was a while before I got around to making it, so I kept my laundry liquid bottles to re-use, and for the rest I stored it in empty water bottles. You do need to give the liquid a shake before using as the mixture does separate, so leave some room in the top of the bottle to allow for this. 

Once you have made this laundry liquid you can use it as a base for so many other cleaners. I use a watered down version with a few drops of eucalyptus oil as a spray for my benchtops. There are also home-made cleaners you can make using vinegar or bicarb soda as a base ingredient to clean anything from showers, toilets, floors, dishwashers etc. I made a few and did a road test of the cleaners on this post Homemade Cleaners Road Test.

I have also experimented with making homemade soap. It turned out okay, and is totally natural, but I found the oils quite expensive to buy...and we don't use alot of soap. My family prefer the shower gels, so I buy organic homemade soap from the markets and turn it into Home-made Shower Gel instead. I am still avoiding the chemicals, saving money (cost about 20% of store-bought product), and am adding to that reduction in my carbon footprint. 

So, there are no hard and fast rules. You do what works for you...and experiment as you go along. Do you make any of your own cleaning products?

A-Z Simple Living: B = Budget

I chose this word for my next simple living topic because the logic behind a move towards sustainable or simple living, is to ultimately save money. I have made significant changes to reduce my cost of living, and those savings are currently being re-invested in infrastructure required to produce further savings...I have found that you need to have a mixture of long term and short term financial goals in order to see some immediate rewards.

Budgeting is not a big strength of mine, despite the fact that I work with figures and numbers every day...like the plumber with a leaky toilet :) I find that, with teenage children, there are so many variables that are not accounted for and my budgets have always tended to run in deficit. Still, I do have a plan that I stick to every fortnight when I get paid, and these are some of the things I first did that helped me to reduce my expenses:

I made a list of all of my fixed expenses such as mortgage, insurance, car registration, electricity, groceries, credit cards etc. I then brought all of these expenses down to a weekly figure ie. monthly credit card payment multiplied by 12 then divided by 52. I tallied all of these up and deducted them from my net income, leaving a surplus amount for variable expenses such as school excursions, medical expenses etc.

I then had a look at everything I was paying, and investigated whether I could save any money on those fixed expenses. This is what I came up with, which I have posted about previously Focus on Financial Balance:

• Mortgage - I weighed up various options and found our rate and the fees were very competitive but I did ring our bank and tell them I was looking at other offers...and they reduced our rate by .25% over the phone. 
• Credit cards - I transferred our outstanding balances to a 0% for 12 months credit card - a massive saving over $1,000 in interest. The interest rate after the interest free period is also 5% lower so there are ongoing savings.
• Insurance - I got quotes, and bundled all our insurances together to get a bulk discount - this saved $500/year
• Electricity - we took advantage of the Solar offer of 44c feed in tariff. Origin offered us an extra 6c on top of that because we bought the panels through them. I then joined the One Big Switch campaign and Click Energy offered us an extra 2c on top of that. So we have a 52c feed in tariff, and even though we are paying our solar panels off for two years at $300/month, we have no electricity bills and are actually $150 in credit. So, when we pay the panels off...we will be $2,500 a year in front.
• Groceries are our second biggest expense and I set myself a goal to reduce our bill by $50/week to just $150. This has been my second biggest saving...a massive $2,500/year. In this post How to save money on groceries I outline 20 different ways you can save money. The biggest saving for me is in making my own cleaning products which save me around $10/week or $500/year.

Everyone has a different situation and the above outline is only an example of where I started, in examining my finances. A useful website I have found that has great money saving and budgeting tips is Simple Savings. They even have a link to a budget that you can use to plan ten years in advance...which I have put on my list of things to investigate.

As well as reducing the cost of my existing expenses I am also working on my variable ones, for example reducing my personal spending and putting the surplus into a savings account. I buy less luxury items, and always look for the most economical alternative. For example, I used to spend hundreds of dollars at a time on skincare. I have now found that organic brands such as Sukin work fantastically well for about 20% of the price. I also know people who make their own skin care products which may be something I venture into down the track...the homemade bug is addictive once it takes hold :)

Have you given your budget an overhaul lately? Where have you managed to save money?

A-Z Simple Living: A = Awareness

I have chosen Awareness as the perfect starting point in my Simple Living A-Z series. Perfect, because in order to start living simply, or at least making changes towards that lifestyle, you first need to be aware that what you are currently doing could do with some improvement. For me, I always knew that I could be doing things better for my home, my lifestyle, the planet, and my family....I just didn't know where to start, and lacked the motivation. Working full-time and raising a family makes for chaotic times, but with planning and organisation, I have found that I have created more time to work towards this goal of living simply.

I was aware that I could make changes, but I did not have the knowledge, nor had I even heard of the concept of simple living...until a chance meeting occured. I attended a blogging workshop at the Reality Bites Literary Festival last year presented by Rhonda Hetzel from Down To Earth and this meeting was exactly what I needed to become aware that I could make simple changes to my life, to make it better...and to ultimately make me happier. This journey has been nothing short of amazing, and the quality of my life has improved immensely. Before adopting this lifestyle choice, I was at a loss with my flood-prone property, but it now has a purpose, and despite its flaws, has become more than just a home...it is also my haven.

Through Rhonda's book and her website I have taught myself so many skills that were not passed down to my generation. I bake bread, make my own cleaning products, grow my own vegetables, make preserves, make cheese, make yoghurt, recycle and re-purpose everything I can...and these are just a few of the many things I can now do that have added so much value to my life. I am proud of the fact that my carbon footprint is smaller than what it used to be, proud of the fact that my children have home-made treats in their lunchboxes, proud that I use less chemicals and know where most of my ingredients come from...and that pride shines through to my family, who have a happier Mum who is more accepting of her flooding property.

All of that started with awareness. Awareness of what I wanted to change about my lifestyle, and awareness of what those changes could do for me. My most popular post was written in the first month of my blog and also describes my early foray into Simple Living. How to Start Living Simply describes the baby steps I first took, and how to sort through the mass of information on this topic. Start with the simple changes first, and it will snowball from there.

I am still learning about this concept of simple living and can only embrace it part-time, but I eventually hope to clear my debt, work from home and be fully self-sufficient. It's nice to dream isn't it? Do you strive to live a more simple life, or are you happy with things just the way they are?