Oh the joys of Freecycle, I just love it when there can be a genuine flow of giving and receiving – it gives me such a buzz! I have let all my computer mags and a small colour TV depart. I have received two wooden pallets and a metal storage cabinet. Why? To keep our stuff away from the mice in the garage (metal cabinet) and dry (off the floor on pallets). Basically we need to take care and respect the stuff we actually have, without it getting needlessly nibbled and drenched.
My next plan is to get a kitchen cabinet inner on freecycle, then take out the fridge to put it on freecycle. A perfect circle. Although freecycle is like riding a wave – sometimes you get the perfect wave and ride, other times you find small little waves that come to nothing. The joy is the anticipation and simply not knowing.
Back at the Kent County Show this year, trundling around with the pram. Little Megan loved all the things that make the county show what it is: the tractors; horses; strange breeds of cows; cute sheep; huge pigs and bizarre llamas.
The Eco-village section is growing nicely and has a fairly balanced mix of ‘buy-me’ stalls, advice stalls and project stalls. Justin, who installed our solar panels was there, and our house was pictured on one of his publicity boards *blush*!
But where was the antique tent? Heavens above! I was looking forward to it, but it had vanished. At least most of the supermarket tents had also disappeared as well – hurrah! I wont mention the 2 hours I was stuck in the carpark trying to get out (mutter, mutter…)
Last time I wrote, I was promising to start Not New Year again at summer solstice. Well its been just over a month since then and a lot has happened!
1. I decided that since I was going to Glastonbury Festival over the summer solstice, it would be plain rude to start then. Or, if you were in a cruel mood, you could say that not buying lovely tut at the festival would be akin to torture, so I woost-it for a week. Guilty as charged!
2. I panicked. I have discovered this about myself – the first month of Not New Year is mad. I go into a weird shopping frenzy where I have to get loads of things off ebay. It is very strange and only now are things slowing down and becoming a little more sane. What will be revealing is the picture of expenditure over the 6 months as a whole (I hope!).
3. What has been interesting is that this year I have recorded everything entering (material wise, not food and bog roll!) and leaving the house. Upon typing I can say that the score is zero – but this hides 46 items entering the house and thus 46 items leaving. Freecycle, ebay and charity shops have helped with the purge but they are also responsible for adding to it.
4. The concept of a closed loop is working as far as items in and out of the house, but not in being able to fund ebay. The huge panic on ebay has landed me about £100 out of balance – so I must sell £100 worth of stuff to close the loop. Oh Dear. Must-stop-ebay-habit.
5. Just lost my job. This I think help explains, in part, the spending spree. I am hoarding. Using the last of the money to get things for myself and the family. I am, as I said before, panicking. But now I have had my last day, I can truly say I feel more in balance.
I’m I shocked? I’m I appalled? Not in the least …… human nature is a tricky thing, mixed with power, often a complete disaster. Having said that I might cry if Caroline Lucas has been doing a big expenses fiddle, but apart from that.
Stephen Fry has said it best: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8045040.stm
We’ve finally gone solar! Well we did in Feb, but it has taken rather longer than I thought to get round to posting it (slap hand, will do better in the future, promise!).
So: pics!!!!
Starship Enterprise of control panels. Not sure what it does, except scare small children and prophesies the future in a weird Morgan Freeman style voice.
Up go the panels. Apparently the view was great from up there. I took their word for it.
All done and very shiny. And yes, there is one tube missing, ‘cos it broke….. to follow soon they assure me….
So does it work? Well yes, as long as you only shower and wash up in the evenings – which is fine. And yes the showers are very hot, not luke warm, so its all good. And we light the fire if there isn’t enough……
Wrote a lovely piece about my rather lovely solar alarm clock, but it got eaten somehow (the post, not the clock).
If memory serves me I said something like:
- gosh, not as daft as people on facebook were cruelly saying when I had problems getting it to work (all sorted now now – and no, putting it outside wasn’t really the problem, but thanks for the input!)
- nice not to have another gadget in the house eating power (reference to my old sony clock alarm) and zapping my head at night with electricity I dont need to use.
- and, er, it works, doesn’t make loud ticking noise near my head and glows when I hit the button at the top – nice!
The most exciting thing to emerge from Earth Hour was making our OWL electricity meter display zero – a never before achieved feat!
We enjoyed the whole thing so much, we are thinking about making Thursday nights “no power nights”, and do strange things like eat, talk and play games!
Showering, cooking dinner, recharging phone and finding candles before Earth Hour starts!
We live in the countryside, so we wont know if anyone else is doing it – a bit like a Zen Koan – If a tree falls, and no one is there to hear, does it make a sound? Oh well, should be fun never-the-less……..
You are really not going to believe this: the solar guys were installing the panels (yay!!) and went to make a cup of tea when I was out. Put my old fashioned style ELECTRIC kettle on the gas stove. Resulting in one embarrassed guy and one very melted kettle!
So we are on the look out for a new kettle! I want to go the eco route, but the question is what to go for?
There are a few ways to lower consumption of energy and water, one of the most obvious is making sure you only boil what you need. There are a series of ‘eco’ kettles on the market right now. Talk about Greenwash – my word! The only thing they have is a water indicator on the side that says ‘one cup’, ”two cups’ etc…
The real thing is The Eco Kettle: a great gadget. It focuses on making sure that you only boil what you need by having two water chambers – press the button to release one cup at a time into the water heating chamber. Friends have also told me it boils super fast. I think its a great idea, but we have that one sorted as we are very careful about how much water we put in.
So how else can we reduce our consumption (apart from not melting kettles!)?
I like the idea of a insulated kettle, so it keeps the water hot after boiling for more cups of coffee. The thing is, we are not huge hot-drink-drinkers, so we really wouldn’t use it. Great idea though, although according to Amazon, the only two available have poor feedback ratings. More design work required!
I also like the idea of the Tefal Quick Cup. Rapid boil, and only delivers one cup (does what says on tin). However it has a cartridge system inside that needs replacing. How do we recycle it? Is it another way for a company to get us to buy more things? I understand that something with complex design needs to be protected from limescale (we are in a very hard water area), but I think the solution is to buy a simpler gadget that can cope with the water. This means the Breville Hot Cup gadget is also out of the running.
I found a Philips Kettle with temperature control (HD4686) that has a button that will set the heating temperature of the kettle. It turns out that coffee and herbal tea don’t need 100 degree water to brew, 80 degrees is fine. Now this will make a difference to our power usage.
Keep your fingers crossed that its the right choice – eco decisions can get very complex. Very …. hurts my head ….
