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In the throes of my Thanksgiving migraine, I thought to myself, Man, the kitchen is such a mess! And it was. We hadn’t done the dishes, so they were piling up. I needed to take the compost out. I couldn’t face cooking or cleaning up because a migraine negates all feelings other than “get thee to a bed and sleep.”
When I became a little more clear-headed, I realized that most of the dishes piling up were the things we used every day: forks, knives, spoons, plates, bowls. One of our wedding presents was a dinner set for sixteen people from Mr. Savvy’s parents — left over from their own decluttering process, they had used it for every Thanksgiving dinner for the past twenty years.
That’s a lot of plates.
Having that number of plates means that whenever I want to eat something, I reach into the cabinet and grab a new plate. Never mind that there’s a stack six plates high, waiting to be washed. The same thing went for a fork, a knife, a bowl, a cup.
In the midst of feeling impatient and angry and grumpy and migrainey, I said, “This is ridiculous. I’m going to get rid of every single plate but two. And the same goes for bowls and forks and knives and everything. Because then whenever I want to use one, I’m going to have to wash it. And we’ll NEVER have a dirty plate in this house again.”
I was a little angry (hey — I’d had a migraine for two days!), but I was also brilliant. Sort of.
The migraine wore off and I had time to think about it. When I suggested The Plan to Mr. Savvy, he agreed that it would certainly simplify things. But because the plates were a part of the family’s tradition, and we like to entertain guests, he suggested packing them up and storing them so we could haul them out whenever we had people over.
This is what my cupboard looks like now. Look at all that space! Before, I had enough room for the dinner plates, and then tucked into the back corner were those two small plates to the left there. The second shelf housed all the bowls. Now I need to find a place to store the remaining fourteen dinner plates, side plates, side bowls, big bowls, forks, knives, spoons, and cups. Ah, the eternal storage issue. I’m sure I’ll figure something out.
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©2009 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where I might put the remaining plates back in the cupboard in a taped-up box. That should stop us. First image courtesy of gregoryjameswalsh.
My Thanksgiving? It was quiet. I woke up, went to work. Got a migraine. Came home from work, got into bed. The next day, I still had a migraine. Sure, I cooked a little, but the migraine made it tough to focus on anything else.
And that was my holiday. Next year, I think I’d like to focus even less on “traditions,” and just spend the day doing something enjoyable. Not having a migraine would be nice. I’m looking forward to ushering in a quiet and relaxing holiday season.
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©2009 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where I haven’t “celebrated” Black Friday in years. Image courtesy of Chris_J.
There I was, minding my own business this morning, checking some old email addresses, when this story caught my eye: The reality of Black Friday ‘Doorbusters.’ I was excited — that sounded like a good title, a green title. Like someone was finally taking interest in the amount of mass-produced Stuff that we’ve been known to buy on the day after Thanksgiving, and was willing to write an exposé about how these bargains aren’t really bargains at all because of their environmental costs. And this story made the front page of Yahoo!, and millions of people would see it and read it and feel bad for the horrendous working conditions for the people who make our electronics, and maybe – just maybe — they’d think twice about buying something like this for their loved ones.
Reader, I clicked on the link.
It wasn’t a green story. Instead, it was a story about how stores are using cheap tactics in their advertising to get people to walk through their doors on Friday morning. Nothing about the enivronment, the working conditions — nothing even pertaining to my hopes and dreams.
The more I think about the upcoming holidays, the more I don’t want to take part in most of the traditions. Particularly this tradition of rushing around and feeling stressed and buying lots and lots of things. Last year, we had a quiet Christmas, preferring to celebrate the solstice instead, and scaling back. This year, we’ll do the same. I wish others felt the same way.
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©2009 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where you should tell me what you’re doing for Thanksgiving and Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and Solstice. Thanks!
As I head into the last few days of National Novel Writing Month, I find that my time on the computer has become more productive, due in large part to a program that is both this writer’s best friend and worst enemy: Write or Die. I set myself a word count goal, choose an amount of time in which to complete this goal, and start writing. If I stop writing for too long, a really annoying noise plays. If I’m feeling daring, I set it to “kamikaze” — then it eats my words. The stuff of nightmares.
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©2009 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where writing is my life right now. And I haven’t received any goods or services in exchange for promoting Write or Die — I just love it that much. They certainly do put the “prod” in “productivity.”
Lately, I’ve been feeling like a kept woman — kept by my Stuff, that is. After a bout of sickness that forced me to stare at my Stuff day in, day out, I am tired of looking at it. I’ve gone on one of those purging rampages that I’m not proud of. And after a morning of sorting and looking and piling and boxing up, I still have Stuff everywhere.
It makes me mad. Isn’t that silly? I’m mad at my Stuff because I don’t want to look at it anymore, but I can’t bear to part with some of it, and I can’t find places for the rest. Which, naturally, means that there’s too much of it.
I need a break. So I figured now was an excellent time to remind myself that I am not my Stuff. Please bear with me for a moment here.
Who am I?
I am Christine. I really am a know-it-all, but I’m learning to like that part of me. I like riding my bike, writing, Lily snuggles. I’m 24 with a dry sense of humor and no tolerance for bullshit and exclusionary language. Going green informs every aspect of my life right now. These things are me: they don’t require a lot of Stuff: bike, pen, paper, puppy, library access.
Who I am not
I am not the pile of five boxes in front of the office bookcase, waiting to be sorted through. I am not the closet full of games and movies that we use occasionally, nor the trunk of spare blankets, nor the box of winter coats that I went through earlier. And I am most definitely not the books overflowing from the bookshelves — they may represent things I like or know, but they are not my knowledge; that’s in my head.
What you won’t see me doing
- shopping for clothes at Wal-Mart
- buying something without lots of thought
- eating veal, foie gras, processed foods
What you may not believe about me
- I love temporary tattoos
- I am participating in NaNoWriMo this year for the first time ever, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to win
- I can eat a pint of ice cream in approximately forty minutes — less, if I’ve had a bad day
- My desk is a mess right now
- I work three different jobs on top of blogging
- I blub on a regular basis at movies, books, songs, photos, novel ideas, headaches, puppy snuggles
- The guys at the bike shop know me by name because I’ve gone in with so many questions
What’s coming next
I am going to finish this ridiculous decluttering/cleaning process, bring the Stuff to Goodwill, and get on with my life. Because hey: life is not about Stuff. And neither am I.
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©2009 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where I got the idea for this post from Tammy at Rowdy Kittens, who in turn got it from Liz Franco. Credit where credit’s due, after all.
When we first moved, one of my lovely readers asked me to talk about how I find food that fits into my ethics, and I responded with An Introduction to Finding Your Food, talking about the ways to source good, local vegetables. With the holidays almost upon us, I thought I’d branch out from there and tell you a little how I’ve found the animal products that we eat on a regular basis. Because all regions are different, I’ll give you the low-down of what I did, and see if you can’t pick up a few pointers.
For starters, I looked in our local big box supermarket to see what kind of meats and cheeses they carried. If anything claimed to be natural or organic in any way, I wrote the name down and looked it up on my computer. I also kept an eye out for local foods, and stocked up on those in the mean time.
You can only get so far in supermarkets. Truth be told, fliers have been my greatest boon in the search for better foods. I’m talking about those annoying fliers you get in the mail, the ones you hardly ever glance at before tossing in the recycling bin and saying to yourself, “How in the HECK did they get my address?” Yeah, those. I peruse them like nobody’s business, sending the Rite Aid and Shaw’s fliers off to be recycled, while searching through the remaining materials for coupons to local stores, announcements about special winter farmer’s markets, and news from local businesses about how their raw milk industry is booming.
Well, not so much that last one.
But you get the picture. Where other people toss these things aside, I read through them for more information about the area I live in. That’s how I found a Whole Foods-like store near us that caters to local farmers. That’s how I found out about the winter farmer’s market that’s occurring this Saturday, and five other Saturdays throughout the season at a greenhouse not far away.
When I went to Not Whole Foods, I came across a free magazine called Taste of the Seacoast, which had tons and tons of ads from even more family farms in the area. Online research about these farms led me to take another look at Local Harvest — which I’d given up on at some point. If you haven’t heard, Local Harvest is a website that’s kind of like a phone book for local farmers. Oh, you’re looking for CSAs in your area? Here you go. Trying to figure out when the next farmer’s market is? No problem. It’s handy, but sometimes a little overwhelming if you don’t know where to start.
I was searching for local meats, and that’s how I came across a raw milk dairy farm not two miles away, that also sells meats, breads and pies occasionally. And when I went to visit them, there were fliers and business cards tacked up on their bulletin board, some of the advertising more local businesses. Jackpot!
They key here, as in my previous post, is to pay attention. Actively search for your local businesses, because they don’t have the advertising budget of bigger stores that knock you over the head with ads that say “Shop here!” It takes a little more effort, but the payoff is huge.
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©2009 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where, in one of life’s beautiful coincidences, my friend Katie at Making This Home posted about something very similar today. First image courtesy of Chiot’s Run. Second image courtesy of parl.
When I first started cooking, I was an impatient cook. I would throw pots on the stove and set them to high so they’d be bubbling in no time. I regularly gnawed my way through tough meat and overcooked vegetables. The acrid smell of burnt garlic permeated my kitchen every night, and my favorite pot developed an unpleasant brown ring on its bottom. Yes, I was impatient. I wanted food done, and I wanted it done now.
My cooking suffered for it. Sure, we had fast(er) food, but it didn’t taste good. It wasn’t until after Memere died that I started to slow down. I rediscovered cooking at a slower pace by turning down the heat. This made for better dishes. Food was good. It took a little longer to get to it, but it tasted so much better that the trade off was worth it. If I found myself trying to speed up again, I would say to myself, “low and slow.” The rhyme scheme made me remember it, the tasty food made me stick with it.
Around that same time, I figured out that driving at 65 miles per hour saved me gas compared to when I drove 75. It took an extra ten minutes to get to my mother’s house, but I’d already been in the car for two hours, so another ten minutes didn’t feel like a problem.
And just last week when I started riding my bike around, I wanted to push push push myself up a hill. My legs didn’t like that. Neither did my lungs. I’m not smoker, and I thought I was in all right shape, but my body begged to differ. That’s when I figured out that going in a lower, slower gear and taking my time made the bike ride more enjoyable. I didn’t need the speed.
Are you seeing a pattern here? Low and slow — it’s the way to go (if you’ll forgive the obnoxious rhyming, that is). I never thought I’d be applying this to so many different portions of my life, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense: doing something at a lower level or intensity saves resources. That’s a good thing. Slowing down means more time to enjoy whatever’s happening. That’s also a good thing. Combine them, and I have one award-winning strategy for cooking, bike riding and driving around. I’m sure I can fit this in elsewhere. I just have to look around.
What about you? Have you seen any patterns in your life lately?
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©2009 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where there’s nothing low or slow about how much I want breakfast right now. Image courtesy of zenobia_joy.
Mr. Savvy’s friend made him a mixed CD (isn’t that sweet? So 90s!) with this Ingrid Michaelson song on it. And I must say, I love nothing better than slow dancing to this song first thing in the morning. The lyrics are below.
[The video shows the front cover from Ingrid Michaelson's album Be OK -- her face with the word "be" on one cheek and "OK" on the other.]
Don’t you worry there my honey
We might not have any money
But we’ve got our love to pay the bills
Maybe I think you’re cute and funny
Maybe I wanna do what bunnies do with you, if you know what I mean
Oh let’s get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France
Let’s get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance
Let’s get rich and build a house on a mountain making everybody look like ants
From way up there, you and I, you and I
Well you might be a bit confused
And you might be a little bit bruised
But baby how we spoon like no one else
So I will help you read those books
If you will soothe my worried looks
And we will put the lonesome on the shelf
Let’s get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France
Let’s get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance
Let’s get rich and build a house on a mountain making everybody look like ants
From way up there, you and I, you and I
Let’s get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France
Let’s get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance
Let’s get rich and build a house on a mountain making everybody look like ants
From way up there, you and I, you and I
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©2009 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where this song doesn’t exactly advocate simpler living — building homes? Buying sweaters? — but it makes me feel calm inside. Yadda yadda, no affiliations or payments received. You know the drill. Movie courtesy of Yorrii, music and lyrics by Ingrid Michaelson. No copyright infringement intended — just admiration.
What rotten news. According to this Guardian UK article, the International Energy Agency says that we have currently passed the world’s peak oil production. And not only that, but when asked last year about world oil production, they lied and said we could probably increase our output. Here’s why:
Now the “peak oil” theory is gaining support at the heart of the global energy establishment. “The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120m barrels a day by 2030 although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116m and then 105m last year,” said the IEA source, who was unwilling to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry. “The 120m figure always was nonsense but even today’s number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this.
“Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources,” he added.
A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was “imperative not to anger the Americans” but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. “We have [already] entered the ‘peak oil’ zone. I think that the situation is really bad,” he added.
Perfect. Go Americans. I love being the bully of the world. Sarcasm aside, however, this is serious news. For starters, lots and lots of people depend on the International Energy Agency’s figures. If they’re wrong, then we’re all wrong. And it looks like we’re all wrong because America runs on oil.
There are things we can do to reduce our oil consumption, of course — they’re the things that eco-friendly websites have been promoting for months and months: Use your car less, buy less processed Stuff, reuse what you have, buy local. Let me give you another fabulous quote, this one from the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver:
Americans put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our cars. We’re consuming about 400 gallons of oil a year per citizen – about 17% of our nation’s energy use – for agriculture, a close second to our vehicular use…. More than a quarter of all farming energy goes into synthetic fertilizers.
But getting the crop from seed to harvest takes only one fifth of the total oil used for our food. The lion’s share is consumed during the trip from the farm to your plate. Each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1500 miles. In addition to direct transport, other fuel-thirsty steps include processing (drying, milling, cutting, sorting, baking), packaging, warehousing and refrigeration. Energy calories consumed by production, packaging and shipping far outweigh the energy calories we receive from the food.
A quick way to improve food-related fuel economy would be to buy a quart of motor oil and drink it. More palatable options are available. If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That’s not gallons, but barrels. Small changes in buying habits can make big differences. Becoming a less energy-dependent nation may just need to start with a good breakfast.
It’s kind of mind-boggling, isn’t it? These small changes that we make at home are making a difference, a huge difference. And it looks like it counts now more than ever. If anything, the news about the IEA has made me more committed to using my bike, more committed to buying local produce, and makes me want to give vegetarianism another chance. Is anyone else feeling the same way?
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©2009 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where you all keep my spirits up by reading and commenting, especially when I read bad news like this. Image courtesy of the Guardian article. And no, I didn’t receive anything from Barbara Kingsolver for linking to her book. I’m going to have to come up with some sort of fancy symbol to tell you that at one glance.
I made the scandalous claim two posts ago that my car gets 12 miles to the gallon in the city, and 17 on the highway — a claim based on my unrecorded observations of how often I have to fill up. If I’m going to tell you all how rotten my car is at being eco-friendly, I might as well have proof of some kind.
That’s where Fuelly comes in. It’s a service that helps you track your car’s mileage and fuel intake. And by “helps you track,” I mean, “it’s no different than if you were to write down how much fuel you put in each time you filled up your car, and then wrote down the odometer reading.” Except, of course, that it’s online. Online makes everything better.
I just signed up for Fuelly — not only to figure out how much gas my car guzzles, but to help me keep track of when it needs maintenance; gas economy is a good indicator of problems like too little air in your tires, or dirty oil. I also signed up because I want to feel even better about riding my bike, and having definite proof that my car is a clunker is a good way of doing that.
So? What about you? Do you keep track of your car’s vital stats? How do you feel good about your alternate modes of transportation? Do share!
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©2009 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where we’ll see if I can remember to write down the odometer reading and amount of fuel I fill up with. That’s why I carry a notebook. And on a side note, Fuelly hasn’t given me anything to write about them. I’d tell you if they did! Image courtesy of mag3737.
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