Taking Stock :: Summer

It's been months since our last post! We've been busy as ever, doing all the things. There's much to write about. But for now, I'm ripping the bandaid off and posting a simple stocktake of where we're at now...

Making: Pigface Jam. I'm hoping it's a thing. We have lots of pigface.
Cooking: Chocolate Zucchini Cake. It's zucchini season and this cake feeds hungry owlets well!  
Drinking: Home made lemon and mint cordial. So good!
Reading: The Women in Black and Dark Emu. I read snippets when I can. Very slowly!
Wanting: So many more hours in the day and limitless energy. Yep.
Looking: Out the window to see when it's good beach weather. 
Preserving: Tomatoes! 
Considering: Sauce or canning whole toms for winter? I think whole. 
Harvesting: Tomatoes, mulberries, cucumbers, strawberries, rhubarb, apples, beans… Blueberries!
Wishing: Straws and napkins at cafes were an opt-in situation.
Enjoying: Hanging out at the beach on sunny afternoons. 
Waiting: For the rest of the tomatoes to ripen. And the corn to grow! I'm not sure it will. 
Liking: Starting our days with yoga most days. 
Wondering: Where the ducks have hidden the eggs.
Loving: Watching all the best 90's movies with Big Owlet. 
Pondering: Moving to a cheaper house, far away, with more land for growing more things. 
Foraging: Elderberries. Apparently I'm not the only one. If you see any, let me know!
Listening: To the rain pouring outside. Gotta love Tasmanian summer. 
Deciding: We're super happy living right where we are. Urban permaculture is where it's at. Remind me again in July. 
Buying: Milk in bottles again at the farmers market! Woohoo! And fetta and halloumi. Sundays are the best!
Watching: The West Wing and pretending its real life. Also Gossip Girl because it's the opposite of our life. Escapism can be fun!
Hoping: We can afford a holiday this year. 
Marvelling: At how much food three owlets can eat.
Cringing: At the news. See Watching. 
Needing: Firewood. 
Learning: As much as I can about herbs. This seems to be a sporadic, lifelong project for me. 
Questioning: How I'm going to nourish our soil better this year. 
Smelling: Basil. One of the greatest summer smells, I reckon.
Wearing: A new pair of Softstar shoes. My last pair lasted for 4 years! These were a little Christmas splurge for me. Barefoot shoes make all the difference for me. 
Noticing: The light is definitely changing. It's a little more golden now. I see you there, Autumn.
Thinking: That I'm glad we've taken our time to ease into this year a little gently and thoughtfully.
Knowing: The rest of the year will probably be full on. 
Admiring: Fellow homeschoolers who plan amazing, incredible and super beautiful years for their owlets. 
Sewing: Cloth pads. Practical, necessary and waste free!
Getting: Some immune system building remedies ready. All the garlic. 
Bookmarking: Fire Cider recipes. Tweaking and picking what works for us where we are. 
Closing: My laptop any minute now. 
Feeling: Excited about visiting my sister next month and giving my nephews a squoosh.
Celebrating: The long weekend in Hobart. Gotta love extra time with Huz. 
Embracing: Big, scary, exciting challenges in the works. They're the best kind.

~ Lauren. xx

The legacy of our pre-zero waste life

We all accumulate "stuff". Some of us more than others. Anyone with a hobby, actually, anyone trying to meet basic needs, will at various times buy, make, inherit, borrow, create, and/or otherwise "get" things. Some of our stuff lasts a lifetime or longer, like great-grandma's ceramic hand mirror, or that wooden heirloom shoehorn, handed down for generations. But the trend towards things not being built to last, the trend towards planned obsolescence - means that things break, lose their function and become waste.

For anyone switching to a low-waste or zero waste lifestyle, there can be the warm and fuzzy feeling of knowing that you haven't created any new waste in the last week or month or more. But what about all that other stuff that fills your home; belongings from the glory days when ignorance was bliss, when we bought and wasted with reckless abandon and still have a legacy of "stuff" to show for it. What about when our nylon clothes fall apart, when the washing machine breaks, when those "sturdy" plastic storage tubs snap, when the dog chews the elastane out of your slippers, when you find that drawer of old mix tapes that no-one would ever want to hear again? How do we live a zero waste life when we still live in a house containing items from our past that will at some point lose all function and become waste?

Ahh, sweet regret. Why did we say yes to the crappy plastic toys that accompany those McDonalds happy meals for the kids? Why did we buy that plastic weed mat, that seems to attract weeds more than suppress them, only to create a hulking mass of plastic and unwanted plants? Why did we choose the cheaper plastic-handled frypan rather than the long-lasting cast iron one? Such is the benefit of hindsight. We can all lose our minds dwelling on past purchases, on our past adventures in wasteful frivolity. Or, we can be practical and do our best to deal with the mess we've made.

Our family of five have been trying to live without (new) waste for a year now. So far we haven't created enough to fill half a rubbish bin. Leading up to that one year milestone of sorts, we reflected on what waste we still had around the house from the pre-zero waste days. And it actually amounted to quite a lot! We've been in this house for nearly 10 very busy years and raised three children and a menagerie of animals and tried to be resourceful and generally survive through life, all the while accumulating 'stuff' to help us grow and learn and live.

“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” ~ Maya Angelou

We already had a pile of 'junk' down the side of the house, long intended for a skip bin, and a bit of spring cleaning identified other odds and ends of waste around our home. As a sort of final transition of sorts, we agreed to collate our legacy waste and dispose of it as best we could - we sold some items, donated others and have retained some 'waste' items for later re-purposing (e.g. we've kept our old toilet to use as a garden plant pot, and a super-rickety cane chair to grow plants over).

We ended up filling a small skip bin (2 cubic metres to hold 10 years of legacy waste is probably not too bad!). What did we put in it? Well some of the culprits included: old degraded weed mat, perishing and torn sheets of plastic that had covered mattresses when bought, torn kiddies inflatable wading pool, cheap laminated CD stacking shelves that we'd intended to donate but had been left in the rain and rotted, a child's car booster seat (used by all our kids, but well past its safe use condition), the rusted and twisted metal parts of a cheap plastic green house that had exploded in our back yard in a strong gust of wind, some rusted parts of an old gas barbecue (we kept the main bbq unit for a potting bench!)… mostly degraded plastics that held their desired form for only a short time, when you consider that tiny little toxic particles of that plastic will be existence on our earth for centuries.

There were lessons learned as we (reluctantly) transferred our legacy waste to the skip bin - we acknowledged the relatively short life span of many items that we think should last a long time, and we realised lack of waste-free options for some items (e.g. the kids car seat), and the wastefulness of buying the 'cheaper' option (I'm looking at you, broken cheap plastic/metal green house). We talked and ruminated over it and felt some sadness and regret over the waste that we made before, but felt reaffirmed in our criteria for any new things that come into our home...

Where possible, buy to last, buy compostable, and remember to look after your 'stuff'. 

That includes looking after stuff in that time between when you've finished with it and when you've found a new use or home for it - leaving stuff out in the elements to weather and rot is no good to anyone (except maybe the guys on American Pickers!). One big positive for us is that our owlets are now part of the decision making process and are well aware of the consequences of our past mistakes. Hopefully this means that their legacy will be minimal and conscious choices will be their normal.

Transitioning legacy waste is an important part of switching to a waste-free lifestyle. It is not necessarily something to feel guilty about, but should strengthen your resolve to 'do better' and shop smarter, and live with less waste. We now move into our second year of waste-free living, producing very close to zero new waste and with much less legacy waste. Over time, we anticipate that the legacy waste will drop too, as we switch away from most plastics, and clothes with nylon/acrylic parts, and stuff we realise we just don't need to live happy, abundant lives.

~ Oberon & Lauren.
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So you think you're sustainable?

A little while ago, I entered a competition I stumbled across on Facebook. It was a challenge set by Sustainable Living Tasmania, and a few other local organisations, to live as Sustainably as possible for a couple of weeks.  We had intended to make some big lifestyle changes this year, which well and truly fell by the wayside as life and winter happened. We got pretty slack...

So it was with some enthusiasm that we welcomed the news that we were finalists in the challenge. We won some awesome prizes to get us started and we're in the running for some pretty impressive window sash treatment for our old 1950's nest. Mostly we're just grateful for the motivation to get started doing something and the owlets are super pumped too!

When the energy assessors came to visit, and we understood what was in store for us, we figured the extra challenge here was that we were already living pretty sustainably. All our food was composted or fed to the chooks. We were pretty conscious about things. Surely there couldn't be much more we could do that would make a difference, could there? We knew we'd slackened off a bit, but we'd have to work extremely hard. So we set out to see.

We timed our showers and were surprised at just how many minutes (and litres!) we lost while daydreaming. On average 8 minutes, but up to 18, which translates to 180 litres in our shower. That's a whole lot of water going down the drain. We kept a rough food diary, which reflected how hurried our days had been and how convenience played a part in our consumption. We tallied all the waste we produced, both rubbish and recycling, and although people have told us the amount seems small to them for a family of five, to us it is far too much for one planet to consume, week after week. Don't you agree?

We'll be blogging and instagraming our findings and reflections over the next couple of weeks, as we find a way to make this work, not just for two weeks, but for life. We've got some pretty big goals and we'll be tackling things like reducing our energy consumption, producing zero waste, family cloth, composting, animal poo worm farms, using less water, and grey water. There's always room for improvement!

If you'd like to join the challenge, you can find it here. If you're in Tassie, you can take your challenge worksheet along to the Sustainable Living Festival and enter into the draw to win a solar hot water system - what we wouldn't give for one of those! Let us know how you go! 

~ Lauren. xx

Blooming where we're planted :: Tiny house thinking

The other morning I was standing at the kitchen sink, craning my neck to try and catch a glimpse of the two-doors-down neighbours' new extension. In the years since we've lived here, as we've planted trees and welcomed babies, we've watched the two-doors-down neighbours' children grow up. The youngest is driving with L-plates now and her once home-based mother is part of the morning commute. We've watched and imagined a time like that in our future, when owlets have grown and money's less tight and maybe that longed-for extension, that studio or parent's retreat or extra living space… 

We've imagined waking up and looking across the river as the sun rises and warms our bedroom, overlooking the garden. We've imagined a breakfast bar and sweeping deck, or double-glazed family room and extended kitchen. We've imagined the suburban standard bedroom each and a studio. Oh the extra space! It was one of the attractive thoughts painted to us, on that first day we set eyes on our little green house, by an eager real-estate agent, playing the dream-making game.

Seven years in to our life here, we've begun building a garden that means the world to us. Our little nest is comfortable and well loved and lived in. We've spent happy nights with all our owlets squishing into our bedroom, sleeping on the floor if they must, just to be closer. Seriously, the amount of times we find ourselves in the same square meter of this nest is hilarious.We remember the large family who lived here before us and the childhood bedrooms we shared with siblings. The closeness, the company of shared quarters. How much space do we really need? 

Waking up in the morning, we sit up in our bed, overlooking the front garden and the river, as we watch the sun rise and start our day. We have a version of that dream already. And I'm back to craning my head to see the two-doors-down neighbours' extension and it dawns on me… 

We spend lots of time looking at and thinking about tiny houses. At life pared back to essentials and smart storage solutions aplenty. We imagine running away to an off-grid life and a tiny cabin in the woods. We think about it lots.  

And then we remember Huz's job and the opportunity and potential it brings to create change. We remember the convenience of being near people and things we need, like activities for growing owlets and friends… And this garden. This house by the beach and bush, where owlets have been born, lost and grown…

What if we just stop here now? 

What if instead of expanding this house and imagining more here, we imagine less? 

What if we apply tiny house philosophy to our medium-sized house and just improve it?

What if our cabin in the woods has been here all the time? 

What if a mansion in the suburbs wouldn't create the connection and life we want? 

So we're creating for ourselves a tiny-house inspired nest. A little nest that we don't intend to grow, so much as improve. Slowly, we're refining and simplifying. The permaculture plan is slowly and steadily being implemented. The basic renovations we needed to do to improve the existing rooms are almost complete. A little touch-up here and there will see it feeling less tired. We just need to be smarter about how we fit us all in here. 

It means paring back. It means negotiations and long discussions with owlets about more and less and enough. It means simplifying. Giving away or selling whatever doesn't belong in our dream house. Because this is it. Here and now. We have what we need, now lets' make it what we want. Slowly. Steadily. This is home. 

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Inspiration… 
A Memoir About What Happens When You Get Rid Of All Your Stuff ~ by The Minimalists
The Tiny House Family
Tiny House Living
Tiny House Swoon
Rhonda's fabulous book which has a chapter on this very sort of thing.