Well the december gift wrapping challenge of buying no wrapping paper went well. We now have made a new tradition for Xmas presents with our in-laws and their children with our santa sack. It was just as much fun for them to pull their presents out of the santa sack as it was to unwrap presents. The sack came home with us and is now in the cupboard ready for next year. It went so well I am thinking of making a sack for every family member for next year.
Another monthly challenge
The december challenge is to see if our household can refrain from buying any Christmas gift wrapping or Christmas cards this year. One family group is getting their gifts in a Santa sack and we will then reuse the sack each year to house their gifts. I received the sack as part of a present a few years ago and have never really found a use for it until now. Other family groups are getting reused wrapping paper from last year that was carefully flattened and put in our gift box. Some are (hopefully) getting gift bags that I’m going to make next week out of some left over wallpaper remnants. Small presents are going to be wrapped in lovely calendar pages that we’ve kept over the years given to us as gifts originally). Some of the Christmas cards we are using I recycled after Christmas last year, others are from the Christmas box – my collection of left over cards from card sets over the years. Will keep you posted on how it goes on the big day!
Buying Second Hand
Every time I sit down to write my blog I am reminded of the value of second hand goods – I bought my laptop for $400 a few years back and it is still going strong, giving much pleasure. Our house is furnished with second hand furniture – dining room table, king size bed, wardrobe, bedroom mirror, hall table. Second hand clothes hang in my wardrobe. A new nephew is due to arrive in two months time – last week I picked up some lovely second hand toys for his arrival. We have never bought a first hand car in our lives. Although the last few years have definitely had an impact on my buying second hand I think that even when things ease a little I will as much as possible make it my first option over brand new. Ten things you should never buy new – Money Expert – Diana Clement – Financial Planning, Career, Investing, Economy, Property – MSN NZ. Sites such as Trade Me have made buying second hand a lot easier, a smaller site is Zillion http://www.zillion.co.nz/. You can also give away/get things for free – The Freecycle Network – about the Wellington Group is for those things that you can’t be bothered selling, but really don’t want to chuck away – I just joined up today. Come to think of it I even have second hand cats, compliments of the Cat Protection League!
Love Food Hate Waste (3)
Well our Love Food Hate Waste challenge continues this week. We are up to Day 5 past our normal grocery shopping day. Today I finished off the about to expire cream making a jelly cream whip for dessert for dinner. It was lovely, although usually I prefer the yoghurt one as it is a ‘bit’ healthier! (see below).
Berry Whip
1 pkt boysenberry jelly, 4000ml boiling water, 1 tblsp orange juice, 1 tsp finely grated orange zest, 2 x 150g cartons berry – flavoured yoghurt
Make up jelly with the boiling water and orange juice, place bowl in the refrigerator until almost set.
Add the zest and yoghurt to the jelly. Beat using an electric mixture until the mixture is frothy.
Spoon into 4 individual glasses, return to the fridge for 1-2 hours. Decorate with cream and seasonal berries.
Dinner tonight was spaghetti and bolognese with the left over put into the freezer for another meal. Tomorrow’s baking will include pikelets to use up the left over milk, with a little bit of cream to go on them! Half of them can go in the freezer for another day. Mmmm ……can’t wait for tomorrow to come.
Domestic Goddess Morning
I have a few days off from work at the moment so have the luxury of not having to race out of the house in the morning. I got a call today from a friend wanting to pop around so I had a quick look at what I could make. We are stretching our food at the moment so we are three days past our shopping day. The lemons were starting to look past their best so it was time to use them – 20 mins later a dozen Alison Holst Crunchy Lemon muffins were in the oven (some destined for the freezer) and all the spare lemons had been juiced and put into the ice cube tray so I can have lemon juice available for emergencies. Part way through mixing the muffins I realized I hadn’t cleaned the bathroom this weekend so quickly raced around with vinegar and baking soda, not a stressful job anymore as it can be sprayed on all surfaces – all ready for visitors! Rags went into the laundry- not a single paper towel used. Checked the fridge – cream, milk and mushrooms are getting close to their use by date so I grabbed a few slices of bacon, puff pastry and cheese out of the freezer – time to make some little quiches for lunch the next few days. Popped hubby’s work clothes into the washing machine to soak for a few hours in cold water to get stains out – saves on stain removal. Sat down to the computer to finalise the accounts for September and analyse our spending – looks like we’ve saved money this month again, this is slowly getting a little easier each month as changes in our lives become second nature. Think I deserve to put my feet up this afternoon after my productive morning!
Love Food Hate Waste (2)
Back in March (28/03/2009) I wrote about the British campaign to reduce the amount of food that we throw away uneaten. There is now a website with lots of good ideas to help people eat what they buy rather than throwing it out. I’ve found parts of it quite useful so thought I’d pass it on – today I’ve been looking at salad tips given the lovely weather Salad days and Picnics – Love Food Hate Waste , on the side of the page are lots of tabs to other tip topics. Must go and get my lettuce sorted out for the week…….
Rag Day
Today is rag day in our house. It’s the day that the rag bucket gets emptied and all the rags are washed and put out in the sun to dry. It can look a little weird – last time we had rag day we had visitors and had to explain why we had strange looking bits of ripped/torn clothing hanging on the clothes horse. It makes the cleaning a lot cheaper than using store bought cloths or paper towels and is a good way to reuse clothes that are too old to be worn by anyone else. It also means you have lots of clean cloths for places like the kitchen and bathroom which is more hygienic than having the same Kleenex cloth day after day.
Reducing waste does save money
Well this week our 6 month wheelie bin contract came up for renewal so I rang up and cancelled it. The last few months between trying to reduce waste, reusing and recycling more we have ended up with quite a small amount of rubbish at the bottom of the wheelie bin most weeks. There are cheaper companies around and we probably only need a smaller bin picked up every fortnight so I’m going to see if there is a company who will do that. I was surprised when I rang up to cancel my contract from Waste Management that the employee just said “OK”. I would have thought at the moment that companies would be trying harder to hang on to their customers. If she had asked me why I was cancelling my contract she might have been able to have signed me on to another contract that better suited my needs. With unemployment figures rising it would seem to be a sensible self-preservation technique for employees to help their employers stay in business.
‘Love Food – Hate Waste’
I was reading about an interesting British initiative the other day. A government agency is trialling going door to door giving advice about how to reduce food wastage. The estimate of this agency is that about one third of all food purchased in the UK ends up in the bin costing an average family about $1,100 each year. The article cites that the C02 impact of eliminating this waste would be equivalent to taking one in five cars off the road (Source: NZ Healthy Food March 2009 p. 14. Original source: Telegraph.co.uk).
In our household we have been trying really hard since the end of 2008 to minimise food wastage, planning our meals around what is about to expire etc so that we make the most of the food we have bought. Last week we had sickness in the house and were off our food a little so we ended up with a bit of wastage but even that was very minimal compared to what we used to waste. The cats play their part as well – we have found they are very fussy about the kind of food they get during the day but if we leave meat scraps from our dinner out during the night the plate is always clean when we get up in the morning.
Takeaway free zone update
Wow that happened quickly – January has gone and along with it the first week of February. Nothing like going back to work to slow your blogging down. However having set up good routines over the holidays it has been fairly easy to keep going with my personal consumer challenges even when exhausted at the end of a working day.
It is shopping day today and I am browsing over our fridge and cupboards making our list. 37 days takeaway free!! I am probably of course crippling the local takeaway economy. Hubby has cheated occasionally as he buys his lunch but overall he is slowly making better food choices.
It’s such a nice feeling to get to the end of the week and know that you have actually used the items that you bought shopping the week before and have tried hard not to waste anything. It saves time too – no more having to clean out the fruit/vege box, coming across something dead at the bottom! Every week it is automatically cleared out by planning our meals around what we need to use up. I am looking forward to getting the house renovation finished and the landscaping done so that I can start growing a few things.
Today’s consumer decision was one of cost versus creating waste. Once a month my treat is a home/garden magazine. It is read over many times and kept, not thrown away. I decided that it was time to get a subscription as it is a significant cost saving – $7.20 vs $4.60 per issue. Having got my credit card details and the phone in my hand it suddenly hit me. When I buy a magazine by post it has to be individually wrapped and individually transported to me. Environmentally it is much better to pick the magazine up when I am at the shop to get my groceries. Damn.……why couldn’t I have had that thought after I had sorted out the subscription? I’ll have to put that one in the think about it later box to see if I can come up with a solution that suits me and my conscience.