Land Hunting Update

When I last wrote, we had gone to view a property that we’d passed up on several weeks ago because the slope of the land was rather steep. After weeks of looking for other options we were starting to feel it might be our best bet after all. We had decided to put in an offer when we found out one had just been accepted.

I was feeling quite discouraged as nothing else was available and new listings weren’t coming up very often. Turned out our realtor did some digging and learned that a family just up the road from the place we missed out on was looking to sell off 2 acres of their 10 acre lot. They are a family of builders who are well known locally with a good reputation for quality work. They hadn’t listed their lot, but were wanting to sell to someone who would use them to build the new home.

We went to view the lot last week and it is lovely! It is a wide rectangle oriented West-East so even though there is a slight slope running North-South it doesn’t affect the property much. It also has a great southern exposure due to the owners having cleared most of the property directly in front (it’s a heavily forested area with tall trees that tend to block much of the light). We decided this was the place we wanted, and hoped the builders wouldn’t mind doing a small house that could fit within our budget.

That doesn’t appear to be a problem, however we’ve learned of a potential setback. The lot has been surveyed but there has not, as yet, been an official application to the District to subdivide the land. There are no potential hurdles there other than the snail pace of bureaucratic processes. The lot we’d been looking at before was part of a four-lot subdivision that, as of the one year anniversary of application, had still not received final approval. Hopefully the fact that there were four of them may explain the delay, but if our guys can’t start building before the permit is granted we could be looking at well over a year before we gain occupancy.

We’re going to meet with them this weekend and hope someone can clarify these details. I am really anxious to get out of the suburbs and onto a small acreage. One possible suggestion we’ll put forward is regarding the mobile home currently on the land. The city will require it to be taken down but that may relate to the “one dwelling only” rules in that area. So, perhaps we could move in there when the worst of winter is over. That, plus our trailer, could provide us with enough living space to make it through the rest of the time required to complete on the place. We’d save tons on rent, be in our new neighbourhood, and hopefully be allowed to at least start a vegetable garden or make other small improvements to the place (like fencing) while they are building and waiting for subdivision approval.

So that’s where we are right now. Here’s hoping it all goes smoothly. It’s the best deal we’ve come across so far, especially given we’d have more control over final cost by being able to dictate house size and design. We’ll have to just wait and find out!

 

I’m BAAAAAACK!!!!

It’s been a while, but I’ve decided to revitalize this blog. Why? Because we are very close to finally fulfilling our goal of buying an acreage! We have been househunting with a realtor for the past few weeks and think we have settled on a place. It’s a bare lot and will need a fair amount of work and I want to be able to document it, so I figured this blog is the natural place to begin the process!

If you are interested in reading a couple tales about our buying experience thus far, you can check out my other blog for this post about doing the Due Diligence Dance, and this post about my brief (yet obviously insane) consumer crisis where I flirted dangerously with the idea of living in a (gasp!) strata community with NO PRIVATE YARD!

Well, after viewing a few more properties this weekend we seem to have come full circle and are going to put in an offer on the very first place we looked at. At the time we thought the grade of the land was too steep, but after seeing all the other options out there this one started to look better. I don’t want to talk too much about it until the deal is done, but it looks like we’ll be doing some real, honest-to-goodness planning soon. I’m SO excited to finally begin this next chapter of our journey!

 

Not so LUSH-ous after all: shampoo bars

I’m venturing out of semi-retirement with this blog to tell you (if there’s anyone left reading this) about my poor experience buying a shampoo bar from a well-known “natural products” company that has franchises across North America (the title just slightly gives it away)…

So, I have been using natural soaps and shampoo bars for about 7 months now and will just never go back to the commercial stuff. Recently, due to procrastination, I found myself out of shampoo bars and none coming in the mail any time soon. With the hair really needing a wash (I run; need I say more?) I was desperate to avoid using the gunky chemical goop that we call Shampoo. The only place I knew of in our fair city where one could purchase a shampoo bar was a certain place that prides itself on its “natural, handmade cosmetics”. So I went to buy one.

Walking into the store I just about choked on the cloying, overwhelming air pollution created by an entire room full of over-perfumed product. There couldn’t possibly be anything natural about the stuff they are using to fragrance these products, and I’d be surprised if long-term workers don’t suffer from respiratory ailments. The lady on the bus who drenches herself in perfume each morning has nothing on this place. 

When I found the shampoo bars the first thing I noticed is their odd composition. They are not solid bars, but rather made up of thousands of tiny pellets that are almost exactly the same size and shape as chocolate sprinkles. These have been pressed together to form a small, hockey puck-shaped disc. At first I wondered why on earth someone would go to the trouble of making and curing soap only to extrude it in tiny pellets and then mold it again…

…and then I saw the ingredients list.

The first ingredient in every bar was Sodium Laurel Sulfate. Yeah, that’s just so Natural. The rest of the ingredients didn’t read anything like those in my natural soaps: where was the palm oil? The shea butter oil? And then it hit me…these aren’t actually Soap!

The name “shampoo bar” was actually literal. These bars were made of shampoo ingredients that had been pressed into pellets and formed into discs. YUCK. 

But…I had gross, sweaty hair (and I’d tried using my body soap but it just didn’t clean it well) and tiny shampoo pellets without a plastic bottle were better than goop IN a plastic bottle, so I reluctantly  brought it home. 

The interesting thing is, now that I’ve not used commercial “soaps” in so long, I noticed that what we have been programmed to believe is a “rich, creamy lather” is actually rather oily in texture when compared to the natural lather from real soap. Instead of feeling “luxurious” I felt like I had just dumped a pile of oily stuff on my head. And my vinegar rinse has been sorely challenged as a conditioner after coating my hair with this stuff. Must explain why the store also sells “solid conditioner”. The clerk there looked shocked when I said I use vinegar – in fact, she didn’t seem to understand what real soap is or how it’s made. When I asked about what oils were saponified to make the soap she rattled off some prepared statement about using “organic, natural ingredients, blah blah blah”. Since when is “Yellow #5″ considered natural?

Thankfully my regular bars will be arriving any day now and I can put aside my shampoo-hockey-puck for emergencies. I don’t know why I thought a large chain of franchise stores would actually have Real Soap. Silly me.

 

Face Oil: my new best friend

I’m back for a bit because I couldn’t resist posting here again to let you all know about my latest discovery.

A while back I ordered some soap from Kama Soap Co. on Salt Spring Island. I was also looking for some moisturizing cream for my face. I’ve had dry skin since my mid-twenties and even with natural soaps my facial skin feels so tight and dry after washing. I was using an organic lotion but there are still a whole lot of ingredients in there I don’t recognize and I’d been wondering if there was something more pure and simple.

Well, Kama didn’t have any face cream but they had something called “Face Oil”. It’s a blend of essential oils formulated for “dry and mature skin”. I was a bit hesitant at the idea of putting oil on my skin: seemed antithetical to my experience as a teenager, when oiliness=pimples. I emailed Sharon, owner of Kama, and asked for more details. She replied that it doesn’t require using waxes and other ingredients to make a cream, and she found it worked very well. So I decided to give it a try.

I am really loving this product! The oil is absorbed very quickly into my skin and there is absolutely no oily feel. It works just as well as lotion to relieve the tight, dry feeling after washing. I have also noticed that my skin feels very soft these days. I love that it is such a simple product: just essential oils – no preservatives, waxes, gums, emollients, etc. I think it’s about as natural as you can get, and it definitely works!

 

On Hold for now…

I’ve been feeling a bit guilty about neglecting this blog, but the truth is life is just growing and expanding in so many ways it is hard for me to keep up with it. I also feel as though I have come a huge, long way this past year in my Simple Living journey and maybe I just need some time to sit back and digest it all and let things plateau for a bit.

We’ve begun the property searching but are likely going to hold off for 2 to 3 more months to see what the market is doing and to give our respective businesses (mine and my husband’s) a chance to prove themselves before taking the final plunge into Mortgage-hood. We’re not in a rush, but we have a clear and exciting vision of what we are looking for and everything is on track at this point.

Until then I’d like to thank all of you who have shared this journey with me, those who have just stopped by to get some information, and anybody else who finds their visit here to be worthwhile. It’s not Good-Bye just yet…and if you are interested in seeing what I’m up to on a more personal note please feel free to visit my other blog My Unconventional Life.

 

Work-Life Balance

The good news is that, over the last few months, my consulting business has started to take off. Financially this has really been a life-saver since Husband has not found work since he was laid off last July. The income I’m bringing in has made the difference between getting by each month on our own, versus dipping into our savings (reserved for buying that dream acreage!). I’m grateful for that; and the truth is I really enjoy the work I do – especially since I can do it almost all from home and on my own time, and it’s interesting.

The not-so-good news is that this month things have been so busy that I have not been able to fulfill my duties as Number One homemaker. Husband has been taking great care of the kids, but pretty much everything else has fallen by the wayside. Laundry has piled up, there has been no meal plan this month and the kids have been surviving on foods that I’d rather they not be eating so often. We’ve already spent too much on takeout, and I’m starting to get really sick of eating cereal two or three times a day. The house is a total mess and the plastic bag holder which I have managed to keep practically empty has now filled up (Hubby forgets to use the cloth bags most of the time). The kids’ bedsheets need to be changed…should I go on? 

Now it may be that this month is just a fluke and things will be quiet again for another many weeks to come. But it also may be that business is going to keep going or even build up further, and this has caused me to do some thinking about what I’m going to have to let go of should I find myself more engaged in paid work. I thought I’d share that thought process with you, since my guiding values are those I consider to define Simple Living.

First and foremost, I will not give up so much time with my kids that I can’t be the primary caregiver and homeschooling parent. At MOST I want to work part-time (maybe 50 hours per month). Son will be joining Daughter’s homeschooling program this fall which means more reporting and greater activity on that front. I’m so excited about it and no amount of money is going to take me away from that. I’ve already decided that, when and if I am lucky enough to get to that point, I will hire an assistant to take over the daily managing of the business. I earn very good money for my time, but for me no amount is worth losing full-time status with my kids.

I will also not give up my volunteering with La Leche League. I think volunteering is so important and I get so much out of working with new mothers and helping them along in their breastfeeding and mothering journey. I am thinking of taking over an administrative position in our provincial chapter and I’d like to take a comprehensive breastfeeding course some time in the next year or so (taught by my co-leader, an amazing mentor and role model). It doesn’t take up that much of my time, but it is time away from family so it eats into what’s left after working.

And so I’m left with my one other role: homemaker. I love being a homemaker and I take great pride in the way I run my household. I love that we buy  wholesome, healthy foods that are produced ethically and locally whenever possible. I love that we use only 1/4 of our allotted waste volume each week, and that we compost. I love keeping things orderly and running smoothly. But that in itself is pretty much a full-time job. Whenever I’ve taken a day off here or there to work, I almost always come home (or come out of my home office) to a house that needs a good day’s worth of organizing and tidying to get back to an acceptable (to me) state. As much as I love my domestic duties, they are very different from parenting, volunteering, and consulting in one very important regard: the latter three are jobs only I can do.

And so I’m entertaining the idea of bringing someone in every now and then to help me with the general housework. Up until last fall when we moved to this house we had a cleaning service come every other week – I decided I didn’t really care all that much about how clean things were – wiping down a toilet doesn’t take much time when a guest is on the way. What gets to me is when things aren’t tidy, when things aren’t in their rightful place. And of course certain things like laundry and taking out the recycling/garbage also need to be done fairly regularly otherwise the system starts to break down. If I brought in someone once or twice a week to do those tasks it would leave me more time with the children. I’d still be able to enjoy plenty of time to bake, hang laundry, and tend to my vegetable garden. I’d be a part time homemaker and my hired help would still be doing things my way, so overall the house would be running the way I like it.

I have struggled with the notion that someone who is being true to the concepts of Simple Living doesn’t hire domestic help. It seems rather elitist. So I began to think about what Vicki Robins wrote in her book Your Money or Your Life: calculate the true cost of your job and purchases. So I estimated the cost of having a housekeeper come twice a week for six hours each time and that amount is less than I charge for 2 hours of consulting. So it seems to me a pretty darn good trade, don’t you think? I work 2 extra hours in one week and I get 12 hours of housework done; that’s 10 extra hours with the kids. 

Of course, this may all be premature. The above calculation also depends on how many hours I bill each month – the less I bill, the more of my income is being taken up by hired help. If things stay at their current pace and Husband starts bringing in some money  it will be worth it, if I’m lucky enough to see business grow further it will definitely be worth it. On the other hand, things might slow down a bit now and that would be just fine with me, too! It’s nice to feel like I have options, and some control over my choices in life. And while I hate to sound preachy, that comes from being debt-free, y’all (props to Dave Ramsey)! So perhaps I am being true to Simple Living after all.

 

SitRep: operation Cloth Wipes and operation Shampoo Bar

Pardon the geeky terminology – I just watched the season premiere of Battlestar Galactica last night (awesome show, and I generally hate TV so take heed!). If you are going to ban cable from your home (which we have happily done for 4 years now) you at least need one tech-savvy person in the family…’nuff said!

So I’m going to update you readers on two projects that are underway. First, I have started using my cloth wipes in place of toilet paper. I was able to tally up our pre-wipe TP usage to roughly 10 rolls per month so it will be interesting to see how using cloth for “#1″ will affect that number. Daughter has decided to opt out of my little project, but I still hope to see a significant drop in TP consumption. My parents and inlaws think I’m crazy, but at least it’s a laughing sort of crazy and not a “you’re ruining the children” kind of crazy! Here is what I have learned from using the wipes for one week now:

1) They do feel softer and nicer than TP.

2) The wiping action is quite different and takes some getting used to. All my life I’ve wiped and dropped, but now I have to pull the wipe out of the area, which was a little awkward at first. Locating the wipe bag on the right side of the toilet (being that I’m right-handed) would make the motion even more smooth. But right now I don’t have anywhere to hang my wet bag on the right side (taking notes for our future home!).

3) I made them too small and am having to use 2 at once. Yes, I wash my hands after using the toilet but that doesn’t mean I like getting my hands wet when I wipe. The next batch I make will be much bigger and I’ll fold them like a handkerchief. Currently they are about 4 cm square so I’ll aim for 8 cm x 8 cm (I have some lovely donated soft, gorgeous flannel waiting for that!).

4) I’m happy to report that my peri-bottle rinse idea appears to be unnecessary. I have been using them for seven days now without rinsing myself and there is no smell from the wipes (from my son missing the toilet when he pees, yes there is urine smell, but not from my wipes bag!). I am using an old Bummis size small wet bag from when we used cloth diapers and it’s working just fine. Eventually I’d like to find a lidded basket I can use to make it all look more aesthetically pleasing. I keep my wipes in a basket on the bathroom counter beside the toilet.

5) There is definitely a difference between that first pee of the day, and later pees. In terms of “letting the yellow mellow” I am flushing after me and the kids have done our morning pees (Husband prefers the other bathroom), and then it’s good until someone does #2. We are saving water and there is no urine smell because the later-in-the-day pees really don’t smell much at all (thus most of the wipes in the bag aren’t smelly, cutting down on overall odor).

I’m definitely going to keep this up as it is reducing our consumption and allowing us to reduce water usage. Win-win!

On to section 2 of this report, an update on using natural shampoo bars instead of bottled, commercial liquid shampoo. Can I just tell you that I am LOVING my hair! Here’s what I’ve learned since we started using the bar two months ago (and yes, we are still on the same bar!):

1) For me at least, the vinegar rinse definitely acts as a conditioner/detangler of sorts, although even on the day I forgot to use it my hair was far more manageable than it ever was without using conditioner with conventional shampoo. I don’t even rinse the vinegar out anymore – I have a spray bottle in the shower of diluted vinegar and I just spray it on after shampooing and that’s it. And no, I don’t smell like a salad.

2) My hair feels wonderful!

3) I do notice that the day after shampooing it is more oily than it would be a day after using the bottled stuff. However, this is not the same kind of “oily”. The hair still looks great, it doesn’t have that greasy, dirty limp look to it. There is still body. And it then stays at this level of oiliness for another couple of days, whereas with the old stuff I would have to wash by then because it just looked greasy. I think what I’m seeing is the natural oils in my hair, which my old shampoo completely stripped.

4) Can I just say for the umpteenth time that I’m still amazed every day that my hair can look and feel so good with NO conditioner? 

5) We have nice, soft water and I understand that the bars don’t work well in hard water, so consider that if you wish to give these a try.

So if you are thinking about using cloth wipes make them big, and don’t worry about odor. If you are thinking about using a natural shampoo bar, if you have soft water go and do it – you won’t regret it!

 

Freezin’ My Buns Off (but not really)

Crunchy Chicken is on her second (or is it third?) Freeze Yer Buns Off Challenge. I didn’t sign up for it this year because I was on a blogging break for a while, but I joined it in spirit. I decided to see how long I could go into winter before caving in to the cold and turning on the central heating. 

October was warm, even for here, so it wasn’t until November that it began to get noticeably chilly in the house. We have a large gas fireplace in the living room and since we spend most of our time in that part of the house, I started turning it on (with ceiling fan) and seeing how long we could go with just that. We turn it off when it starts to get too hot. So far it’s worked out so well that I have barely used the central heating at all.

And truth be told, everyone in the family except ME doesn’t seem to mind the cold at all. The kids are usually naked or half-naked and quite happy. I’ve got wool slippers and lots of wool socks and sweaters, extra wool blankets on the bed. When they said it would get really cold at night I worried for the kids, but I worried for me more since they seem so much more cold-tolerant than I am. So I had them sleep with me and their warm bodies kept me quite cozy.

Even though we had “Snow-mageddon” this year, I only turned on the central heating a few times. Temps have been unseasonably cold, some nights threatening to drop to minus double digits (Celsius)! On those few nights I set the thermostat to 10 degrees (50 F), though I’m not sure it kicked in at all. Mostly I wanted to guarantee I didn’t wake up in the night freezing.

I’m so used to it now that I don’t even think about turning it on. I just put on more clothes, and if I get that sort of chill that won’t leave my bones, I just go sit in front of the fireplace for a while. Or do some housework, lol. I do confess, however, that after running in this damp, cold weather I have a nice, long, HOT shower. Mea culpa.

Now I’ve heard that gas fireplaces are not efficient heaters. But the point is to only heat that one room (the living area). The back end of the house, where the bedrooms are, stays quite cool. And it’s not on all the time. Someone also suggested to me that it uses less gas b/c it only aims to get a yellow flame, whereas furnaces use blue flames which require hotter temperatures. I have no idea, but my guess is that just heating one room of the house with a gas fireplace is going to be less energy-consumptive (and therefore less expensive) than heating the whole house with a furnace.

We get our bills through the landlord and pay every 3 months, so I’m not sure yet how much this practice has affected our heating bills. Also, we share with a guy in the basement suite and I am quite sure he isn’t making much effort to keep his heat down. Still, it will be an interesting experiment in finances. I figure if we can make it through this winter with barely using our central heating and just the fireplace, then we’ll be in great shape!

 

I’m sewing!

It was several months ago that I excitedly took possession of an old hand-me-down sewing machine. After “test driving” it with some scraps of paper and finding it working perfectly, it sat for all this time waiting for me to find a project. That opportunity presented itself recently when I purchased a pair of pants that needed to be hemmed – usually I would send these to my mother, an excellent seamstress, but this time I decided to do it myself.

I also happened to finally get around to a thrift store expedition, from which I brought home 3 men’s flannel shirts ($5.99 each) to turn into cloth wipes. I cut them up into squares, not bothering to measure since I don’t really know what size I like best anyway, and because I am impatient, and because I wanted to use as much of the fabric as I could. 

For the last few days I have been happily sewing away whenever I get the chance, even treating myself to an old movie (The Apartment, 1960, staring a very young and beautiful Shirley McLean) one evening. The flood of memories this brought back was really lovely – my mother sewed throughout my whole childhood, and I had forgotten how many evenings were spent with her sewing while watching a movie on TV. Not only were the memories happy ones, but it felt extra special to be passing this scene on to my own children.

I had a few glitches to overcome. First, the bobbin winder didn’t work because the rubber ring that rubs against the main wheel had dried up and broken off. Determined not to be put off I wrapped a rubber band around it. I have to remove the cover plate and hold onto a few parts, but I can wind my bobbins and that’s all that matters!

I also had a frustrating first attempt when the stitches kept getting all tangled up. If I hadn’t used it when I first brought it home I’d have worried it was broken. After trying all sorts of variations on thread and bobbin tension I resorted to Googling the subject. Sure enough the advice was to check the needle to make sure it was inserted correctly. I double-checked and, even though I’d read the instructions, I’d still managed to put it in the wrong way! With another problem solved, I happily proceeded.

Since then I’ve broken a few needles but was finally able to head out yesterday and get some replacements (thank goodness the standard needle size hasn’t changed in the last 40 years!). The pants were successfully hemmed and I’m almost finished with my wipes. I used a wide zig-zag stitch and polyester thread since they will be washed frequently. Here’s a sneak preview:

I’m very happy to have learned another skill in the repertoire of self-sufficiency. I doubt I will take this hobby much farther than doing little projects like this one – I am far too impatient to properly measure things. (knitting a test gauge is usually done under self-imposed duress!). But it is still a very useful tool and, combined with the warm memories it provides of my own childhood, a priceless addition to my home.

 

Going Greener in the New Year

It can be overwhelming for folks living your average Western lifestyle to consider making the switch to more sustainable living. Suggestions for how you can accomplish this are everywhere – advertising, educational institutions, non-profits, and articles in the media. They generally give a big laundry list of Green things you can do, and the sheer number of changes can make people feel like withdrawing into their shells and staying within their comfort zones.

The absolute best piece of advice I can give, and one that is repeated in many blogs on the subject, is to take it one step at a time. Pick one thing, perhaps a small thing, that you think you can change and then do that until it feels normal, until you can’t really imagine doing it the old way anymore. Then you are ready for the next thing. You may even find that you begin to whet  your appetite for more challenging changes, like ditching disposable menstrual products or perhaps deciding to use family cloth instead of toilet paper. I myself have found it to be quite fun as I continually challenge myself to take even bigger steps away from the norm of our society’s consumption and waste lifestyle. It’s even more fun when you join in with others.

As I welcome in the New Year, I have been reflecting on the changes made in 2008. What strikes me most is how comfortable I am living this way. It hasn’t seemed difficult at all. I firmly believe this is because we made changes slowly, one or two at a time…

On the outside, we’re just another house in the suburbs, but in the yard there is a compost bin and two vegetable garden plots. The laundry line gets used heavily in the summer. On garbage day, instead of the allowable two bins, we put out only one half-bin of garbage. Inside the house, it’s what you don’t find that counts. There are no commercial cleaning products, no bottled shampoos or commercial bath soaps. There are no paper towels or napkins, no tampons or disposable pads. The kitchen and bathroom waste bins are not lined with plastic bags. The Ikea plastic bag holder under the sink is practically empty (Hubby often forgets to bring the cloth bags into the store; thankfully I do almost all the shopping!). 

But there is still more I want to do. Here is a list of a few changes I would like to implement this year. I will note, however, that we are hopefully (fingers crossed) buying a home this year and some of these changes won’t make sense to implement in a rental house that we will likely be leaving soon.

1) family cloth (for #1 at least) – I’m almost there, stay tuned for a post on this subject

2) find an alternative to our water delivery (which comes in plastic, reused bottles) – I’m not afraid of our tap water, I simply don’t like the taste. I think the ideal situation is a built-in filtration system with recyclable filter cartridges, if such a thing exists. This will have to wait until our new home.

3) challenging myself to cut down as much as possible on electricity consumption: right now our utilities are billed to us via the landlord, who divides the total amount between our suite and the tenant downstairs. when we have our own place I will start with a baseline measurement and then slowly implement changes, like turning off the Wii and computers at night for example, and see just how Low I can Go!

4) cut down on water consumption: i’m already beginning this with such acts as not flushing the toilet when it’s “yellow” and not irrigating the lawn (thankfully it’s mostly moss anyways), but I have no way of monitoring our water consumption here. in our new home we will harvest rainwater and attempt to recycle greywater, too. if we are on a well system, which is likely, this will be a good skill to learn.

5) increase our food production: I’d like to try and make it so that we are producing a much higher percentage of our veggie intake in our own back yard. that means increasing the number of plants and the variety. I’m not going to change the size of my garden for this coming season since it’s likely we’ll be moving before the growing period is over, but I will experiment with some new crops and sequential plantings, etc. I’m already reading and planning a garden for when we get our acreage

6) canning and preserving the harvest: this goes hand in hand with the above. I’d like to set up a root cellar on our new property and use it for storing our own onions, squash, and garlic for the winter months. I’d also like to expand my canning experience – so far I’ve just made jam.

Hopefully, 2009 will be an exciting year for our family as we hope to attain our goal and buy that dream acreage. In the meantime, I’ll keep challenging myself to take ever-increasing steps towards a truly sustainable lifestyle.