MamaStories

“Rekenen,” Dutch: to count

Am I reckoning month 5 already – or only? Sometimes it seems like we’ve been doing this all our lives, other times it’s like we only started yesterday. It shows that we’re not totally “in the habit” yet. I’m 16 (!) days late in reporting. Also, this month is ugly: our consumption went up on several counts, because of our seedling setup in the basement (electricity) and our co-houser (water), but mostly because we were less vigilant with our consumer goods purchases.

Gasoline: 16%

Between us we consumed 19 gallons. That’s 6.3 gallons/person, that’s:

15% of the US national average.

This is getting better every month, and better days are ahead as the weather gets warmer and drier and we can look forward to hopping on that bike!

Electricity: 13%

We pruned the house of all the suckers, but still our electricity consumption went up from 371 KWH last month, to 484 KWH.

It makes for 13% of the US National Average.

Considering we have an extra person staying at our house as well as over a hundred seedlings under lights and above heatlamps in our basement (*), and that all our electricity comes from wind, it’s maybe not too lamentable.

Heating oil and warm water: 109%

The days are slowly warming up and the Freeze Yer Buns challenge is over, (though it’s going to freeze again over the coming weekend). Our heat is still on (at 62 F during the day, 58 F at night), but I’ve shut off the heat and opened the windows on several more days, and we no longer heat the Annex, the part of the house we are working on.  It has shown in our consumption (67 gallons of oil this month against 79 gallons last) and it’s giving me some hope.

109% of the US national average

Heating oil is definitely our weakest point. Now, as we approach the time of year when the boiler will only come on for heating our water, we need to start working on alternatives. Quite a few of them are under review: several solar hot water systems, as well as better insulation of our hot-water tank and the pipes.

Thinking a bit longer term, I’ve ramped up my lobbying for the wood stove, especially now that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Part III, Section 1121, Energy Conservation Incentives) promises a tax credit for the installation of efficient stoves. And then there are the plans for a greenhouse wrap-around, which will act as a solar wall and solar thermal collector next winter…

Garbage: 10%

We’re making less and less household garbage each month, and are well in the range of the 90% reduction. Work on the part of the Annex is still ongoing, though I believe most of the demolition is done, and we’re looking mostly at building from now on.

We salvaged quite a few good two-by-fours and other pieces of wood, one of which is already shielding our third compost bin from the wind and rain. Once the trash company comes to pick up the leftovers, we’ll weigh in.

Water: 19%

Our water consumption is up by way too much since last month. We consumed 580 gallons a person, which makes for

19% of the US national average

It was a shocker, because that’s up from 14%. Sure, the seedlings drink quite a bit, about 2 gallons a day, I should say, between all of them, but that hardly accounts for a 605 gallon jump!

I know the problem: our co-houser takes a daily shower. DH and Amie and I were trying to compensate for his extra usage by showering less, but this month, it turns out, our co-houser sometimes took two showers a day. I’m such a non-confrontational person, it took me so long to discuss it with him that in the end he was the one who brought it up. He is very open to reducing (he’s helping with “pruning the house” – a constant effort for which he devised a neat game – about that soon!). He was shocked that his consumption counted for so much, and now we’re back on track.

Consumer goods: 51%

This is where it gets ugly. We splurged this month. It hurts after being so victorious last month.

I had to buy gifts (got craft materials) for two birthday parties, clothes for Amie (we’re usually in a reliable hand-me-down pipeline: don’t know what happened), and materials for our Annex (that cost will go up drastically next month as we enter the building phase).  (Our purchases for the cold frame I will, as per usual for any garden-related costs, not count.)

Our biggest expense however was books. I bought that wonderful and expensive set, the two volumes of Edible Forest Gardens, and we spent quite a lot in our favorite bookstore, the Brookline Booksmith, on that memorable weekend.

Altogether that makes for

51% of the US national average.

Yikes!

Food: ?

I’m referring to an older post for my reasons for not reckoning this category. We sinned a bit here too: got take-out twice, and made a large order of coffee ($65: gack!). DH on his trip had no choice but to eat out a lot…. I’m not even going to ask him for the bills!

We’re working on our garden, of course. Slowly we’re nudging the food deficit into the black…

“Rekenen,” Dutch: to count

Gasoline: doing much better at 16%

Between us we consumed 20.3 gallons. That’s 6.77 gallons/person, that’s:

16% of the US national average.

I have this great deal with another mom from Amie’s preschool: in lieu of my watching her kids for four hours a week, she watches Amie for two hours and she picks Amie up almost every morning on her way to drop her daughter off at school (we’re on her way): saves me time and gas. I’ve also managed to keep the trips to the grocery store (in the other direction) to once a week. If only Spring would come, then we could bike…

Electricity: we made it!

Our electricity consumption at 371 KWH is up a bit from last month, but then we have one more person in our household (our “co-houser” ), as well as a hundred or so little germinating seeds and seedlings under 16h/day growing lights and a 24/24 heat lamp.

But we still made it to 10% of the National US Average!

How so? Well, it’s all wind!

Yes, we switched to the 100% wind energy plan. Who would have thought it was that easy? (I’m sure that last statement is a lot more complex than it sounds!).

Heating oil and warm water: the usual fiasco

We had some really cold days, and a couple of warm days too, when I just shut off the heat and opened all the windows to let some fresh air in. But those were exceptions. Mostly it was cold. So we consumed 79 gallons of heating oil. That’s

128% of the US national average

It’s less than January and December and it will go down as the earth’s axis tilts us closer to the sun, but it’s still too depressing. I’ll just refer you to my usual winter-rationale and leave it there.

Garbage: used to make it, not this month, though…

We’re making less and less household garbage each month, and are well in the range of the 90% reduction. But we started working on the “Annex”, the part of the house that we close off in winter. Something is rotting in there and we need to address it before we install a “guest suite” there (fancy for guestroom with bathroom).

So we started ripping out some walls and floor boards. Today as we stood over the pile to sort through DH and I discussed what to keep. He didn’t want to spend so much time on taking out the hundreds of nails pounded and wrenched into perfectly fine two-by-fours. I insisted though, that I’m not throwing the good stuff away! Even the remotely good stuff. Even though I don’t know what we’ll use it for.

Still, our garbage will peak this and next month as we get the renovations over and done with. I’ll weigh in when we have assembled and sifted through the entire pile.

Water: same, with one person extra

Our water consumption has stayed the same, which is great news. Our co-houser takes a daily shower, so we must be making a great effort!

We used 430 gallons of water. Per person (4 of us) that makes:

14% of the US national average

Consumer goods: made it!

Nothing broke. We didn’t run out of anything. We did spend some more money on our germination and seedling setup (more seeds, of course, an extra timer, a spritzer, and some extra flats and plugs), but as that’s an investment in a more sustainable future, I’m leaving it off the tab, just like I did last time.

We also bought some good, new tools for our renovations ($ ) and on my favorite food growing book: Growing Vegetables and Herbs, From Seed ot Harvest, by Terry and Mark Silber ($15 secondhand). That totals up to $50 new and $15 used, which comes to:

6% of the US national average.

Amazing, when you just don’t go shopping anymore, how easy it is to simply forget about spending money, and about stuff in general.

Food: how even to begin

We ate out twice this month, cheap pizza each time. It had been so long: the first time we ate at the restaurant/take-out place, Amie was so excited!

I’m going to refer to an older post for my reasons for not reckoning this category. But I can report that we are eating less and less meat (about a pound of red meat between all of us per week) and that we eat a lot more dry and bulk foods.

{This is a second attempt at this poll. I deleted the first one: the polling service wasn’t working properly. My apologies to those who already voted; please vote again.}

I am curious about how my readers think about Peak Oil / Global Warming. Do you think the threat is real? What do we hope/fear for the future?

And coupled to that: What are our appropriate responses? Should we simplify/reduce, rebuild our sustainability/resilience, work on our skill set for a depleted world? Start growing our own food? Or not?

Please click. If you can’t find your reason, let me/us know and I can add the alternative, or you can type it into the poll yourself (in that case, please keep it short). You can choose any or all answers that apply.

For those of you reading this on the Riot site: you’ll have to come on over to the blog to vote.

Good luck!

We finished our second month of the Riot while not at home, so my meter readings are a couple of days off. These numbers are for the period from 1 December 2008 to 4 January 2009.

1. Gasoline: OUCH!

We did so well last month: 7.939 gallons of oil/person or 19% of the US National Average. But for the New Year we visited friends in NY City and Washington DC. For the three of us it was much cheaper to drive than fly. I do love road trips, I admit it. I love singing along with the 70s and 80s music we always play when on the road, and looking outside, concocting stories about the places I glimpse, through the trees, and getting a feel for the vastness of this country… But the memory of all that doesn’t lessen the pain:

22.6 gallons per person = 55 % of the US national average.

I’m enjoying winter, but I’m looking forward to when I can bike Amie to school. That will save us 32 miles a week, or 128 miles a month.

2. Electricity: up a little

We spent a little more on electricity than in month 1: 345 KWH (up from 300).

That’s 38% of the national average.

The rise probably has to do with the fact that we recently started heating the bathroom with a small space heater.

3. Heating Oil (and hot water): DOUBLE OUCH!!

We burned an incredible 93 gallons of oil in little over a month, 10 days of which we weren’t even at home (the thermostat was set to the minimum, and no water was heated). That’s almost double what we burned last month (52.7 gallons), and

151% of the US national average

(which ranges over a year and the entire country, not to forget).

Evidently it was terribly cold here in neck of the woods. For instance, on the day of our trip back up North (1 January), the temperature in DC was 36 F, 19 F in NY and 6 F in Mass. – we were happy to stop in NY for a couple more days. And it continues to be freezing cold.

We’ve insulated the house as tightly as can be, we Freeze our Buns, and as long as our budget doesn’t allow more measures to be taken (like a woodstove, and a home-built solar thermal collector), this is how it will have to be. I hope it averages out at the end of our Riot year…

4. Garbage: made it

This is unchanged from month 1. We produced 3 lbs. of garbage on average, so at 0.15 lbs a person a day we made the goal of

10% (.45 lbs) easily.

5. Water: very close

We consumed 324 gallons per person, which is

11% of the US national average.

I ascribe the drop (it’s down from 459 gallons in month 1) to the fact that we weren’t home for part of the month.

6. Consumer goods: Christmas fling

We spent $326 on consumer goods last month – not bad considering it was the holidays. We did a Handmade Christmas, but we also got a globe and a small computer mouse for Amie and some books and crockery for ourselves.

It amounts to 40% of the US national average.

It’s an aberration and we’re back on our thrifty track.

7. Food: Huh?

I am no longer going to calculate this category.  The more I think about how to, the less possible it becomes. Can anyone tell me how they do it? By weight, by bulk, by cost?

We have one month of Rioting for Austerity under our belts.  Let’s see how we did.

1. Gasoline: down but still a long way to go: 19%

We’ve been extra careful with our driving. DH has gone into work a little more often than usual, but for the rest we’ve managed to consolidate our driving into absolutely necessary trips that comprise of school drop-off, DH’s drive to the shuttle, shopping and library downtown once/twice a week, and an occasional Freecycle/Craigslist pickup in town.

The result: 7.939 gallons of oil/person. That’s 19% of the US National Average. Sounds good, only that’s just one month. At the end of this month, for instance, we’re driving to DC: that’ll blow the budget! This is one category that needs to be calculated over a year, though it’s still good to keep a monthly tally, of course.

2. Electricity: 33%

This was another one of our weak points and there’s good news here too: our last meter read indicated our household used up 300 KWH last month, that’s down from 411 KWH in October but still 33% of the US national average. The goal is 90 KWH per household per month.

So let’s see, what is plugged in? Constantly: our oil furnace controls, the radon remediation system, one thermostat, three clocks, our cable modem and wireless, the phone, the fridge (old upright with freezer on top). Intermittently: our  laptops, the lights at night (only where necessary and all are CFLs), the washer (we wash cold and line dry in our basement), our electric stove and oven.

Where can we cut back more? Cooking, for one.  As it gets colder, we cook and bake more. We’re working on a hay box for stew and soups, and a smaller one for the teapot to outdo our present tea cozy, so I don’t have to use the microwave that often. We microwave more (the choice between “cook on high for 2 minutes” and “cook in oven for 30 minutes” is an easy one) even though the results are less crispy. In summer we plan to have our home-made solar cooker ready. Sharon has 25 tips for  saving energy and money when cooking here.

As for some of the less “energetic” appliances, we can unplug them and run them on rechargeable batteries charged by a solar battery charger. We could try this with some  reading lights as well – those in any case are good to have in case of emergency or for camping out. Gotta find a good affordable one first (any suggestions?).

We’re also looking for a way to hook a (solar-charged) battery pack to our oil heater controls – I don’t like the idea that if the electricity goes (if only because a tree falls on the lines somewhere), we’d have no heat.

3. Heating (and Hot Water): 85%

The weather turned nasty a couple of weeks ago, and our usage of heating oil – which also warms our water – shows it. Even though we’ve been Freezing our Buns at 63-64 F during the day and 58 F at night, we’ve consumed almost as much oil in the last month as we did in the previous 4 months: 52.7 gallons. That is 85% of the US National average, but then that average is calculated over the full year, so I’m not too shocked about it.  November, December and February will naturally be our highest oil-consuming months. This is one category we’ll have a better picture of once a whole year is out.

Still, we’re working on this. We’re having the last 10% of the house insulated on the 6th. And there are some experiments in the works. For instance, we picked up an about-to-be-trashed double-paned window today via Freecycle and we are hoping to put it in a solar thermal collector of our own making. This has only just reached our drawing boards, so I don’t know when I’ll be reporting on this one. Lastly, we’re still saving up for our super-efficient wood stove.

4. Garbage: 3%

This is unchanged. We produced 3 lbs. of garbage on average, so at 0.15 lbs a person a day we made the reduction  (.45 lbs) easily.

5. Water: 15%

Our water consumption has gone down: 458.83 gallons of water, which is 15% of the US national average. We’ll keep chipping away at it…

6. Consumer Goods: 44%

We have been following a more or less strict regimen for both consumer goods and food and we have for the most part stuck close to it. Between 1 November and 30 November we spent about $350 on new consumer goods and $50 on used (Craigslist). Most of this sum went to the “homestead” (mason jars, 7 bags of Moo Doo, 2 much needed comforters, candles) and crafting materials (glue and paints) for our Homemade Christmas. Still, they all count. That puts us at 44% of the US national average. Chippin’ – we’re chippin’…

7. Food: at a loss…

We have been extra careful with our food purchases, which account for a large percentage of our monthly expenses. We had two moment-of-weakness-restaurant-take-outs (aaargh!) and one restaurant visit that was made of necessity (sigh).

Now I am at a loss as to how to calculate the three categories. I was doing so by dollars, which gave me this:

a. Local, sustainably grown: 13.5% – where at least 70% is desired.
b. Dry, unprocessed bulk goods: 8.5% – where no more than 25% is desired.
c. Wet goods & conventional: 78% – where no more than 5% is desired.

which is pretty bad. But then I realized that, once we start growing our own, that is, free food, the whole reckoning will be out of whack, unless I assign some sort of dollar value to each item I pull out of the soil… Reckoning by items, which is what the Riot website suggests, is difficult too, because some, like a bag of flour, last months, while others, like a tub of yogurt, last two days… By weight? Keeping score is tough on this one. If I just eyeball it honestly, it is bad, probably as bad as the percentages (by price) above.

Needless to say I am looking forward to growing our own food next year. I think we can make a huge dent in the cost of food while also balancing the 3 categories better. But while we wait for Spring we are working on getting a chest freezer so we can take advantage of local sales. We bought a whole lot of (used) mason jars and are now on the look out for a decent but not too pricey (new) pressure canner. We’re also drawing up plans for a root cellar. So much can still happen here!

Food is the category where we perform the worst, but also the category that gives me the most hope!

Yesterday one of the headlines in Google was “Economy Contracts as Consumers Retreat“. There is a nice rhythm to that phrase, don’t you think? And, also like a good line of poetry, it says a lot in the most subtle of ways. The bellicosity of this phrase reveals what we all really know about consumption in a more-is-more, me-firs, “free” market: it’s a battlefield.

Who are these consumers at war with on this field, and to whom are they losing the upper hand? And where can they retreat to, to which safe haven?

Since beginning the Riot 4 Austerity I have had some conversations with friends and family members about reducing one’s footprint. I’ve noticed a couple of things. First, that invariably the first two questions from family members  are: (1) Are you in financial trouble? (2) Isn’t 64 F (17 C) too cold? No to both. That was easy.

But friends have more complicated, diverse reactions. They run the gamut of (1) a smile (you-goofy/silly-people-now-on-to-a-different-topic) to (2) “why on earth would you deprive yourself of Coke and cable”, to (3) “I really admire that but we just can’t do it like you”. So far I am ashamed to say that I haven’t made any convert, but then again I’m so non-confrontational I am probably the lamest activist you’ve ever met!

But here’s the thing: I get the sense that none of my friends are happy in their role as consumers, to which they choose, nevertheless, to cling. I have the feeling that they all long for something different than a life on the battlefield/market. I have heard them talk of their need for something spiritual, a different kind of riches. For a return to daily rituals of comfort and belonging, like they remember from their childhood perhaps (because most children, if you let them, are so naturally at home with themselves). And for time: time to be at home with oneself and one’s family, time to reflect on something beautiful, to read a book, time for friendship. Time that is not hurried, not stuffed up with stuff, but calm and warm and ample.

They want these intangibles (a nice way of avoiding calling them “things”), but they seem to deny  that the only way to get them back is by taking them back from the mass  marketplace. Because in my honest opinion, that’s where we have traded them in, our time most of all, for stuff, for plastics, for vapid “entertainment,” for glossy magazines and a glossier, paper thin life.

The mass marketplace where we are at war. The “economy shrinks” as we “retreat” from a battlefield: what does that mean? The newspapers and politicians and Wall Street investors would have us believe that it means that we are losing jobs, so money, so stuff, so happiness. They would have us believe that the only way to win it back is to ratchet up our consumption again, to “have confidence in the market”. They want us to believe that the enemy is the Chinese toymaker, the Euro, the Japanese car manufacturer and the Indian telemarketer. And they want it to be taken for granted that our retreat can only be temporary and that a victorious recovery just around the corner. That there is no other place to be.

But I believe that we are really at war in that field with our worst enemy: ourselves. We have been pitched against ourselves. No wonder no one can win. And even if the market recovers, “victory” is only Pyrrhic. Pyrrhus after winning one of many battles said that one more such victory would utterly undo him. It’s the same with us, only worse. I’m saying that we have already been completely undone.

I’m not just talking about global warming, peak oil, and all those “obstacles” to economic growth and ultimately, of course, our self-preservation. I am talking also of our loss of our “spiritual needs.” Yes, let’s name them: love, home, kindness, peace, and time. I believe that’s what my friends have been saying, suffering. Not the loss of stuff, but of soul.

And no marketplace is going to return these to us.

There are many other ways to recovering  happiness. By avoiding the mall and the box store, and saving the money for something more permanent and less polluting to the body and the mind (a woodburning stove, in our case), or for a sense of security at least. By coming together every evening in the kitchen, cooking together and then sharing the meal at the dinner table. By congregating in the living room, telling stories and listening to music or discussing a book,  and playing board games or making art together. By staying home, going for a walk in the woods and listening to the birds.  By counting what we consume in energy and goods  and how much we trash our planet, and reducing those. By planning our garden, our self-sufficiency.

By knowing where we stand, as a family, on that marketplace: more and more on the sideline, less and less at war with ourselves.

• Update on WATER

I found the water meter reading from when we bought the place at the beginning of May. We only moved in at the end of June, but we’ve had house guests – sometimes 1, mostly 2, and sometimes 3 – for most of the time since then, so I will let those even out and count the numbers for just the 3 of us for those 6 months.

Turns out we consumed 1418 cubic meters in 6 months = 1768 gallons for the 3 of us per month = 589.3 gallons per person per month = 20% of the US national average.

That’s not bad but we should be able to reduce that.

Hey, my estimate of 20 gallons a person a day wasn’t too far off!

• Update on HEATING OIL

DH explained to me the workings of our boiler and I went down there to take a reading.

Since its installation on 24 July, the boiler has run 66 hours. Each hour it runs it consumes 0.85 gallons of oil. So in 3 months we have consumed 56.1 gallons. That is 30% of the US national average and pretty bad news considering the coldest months are still ahead of us.

I wonder how to bring that down? We’re already Freezing our Buns. Can we save on hot water, which is heated with the same boiler/oil? We usually do our laundry and dishes with cold water and use little water as it is, hot or cold. Also, in times of cold weather our water is heated, as it were, for free: the boiler is running anyway, so it might as well heat the water too. We did int he beginning have some trouble closing off “the Annex”,  the part of the house we don’t use and so don’t heat (turns out the thermstat was broken), so we may already be saving there. And let’s see how well our new insulation serves us…

We have decided, DH and I, to try the Riot 4 Austerity. It was that whole business with Sharon’s run-in with the New York Times that finally did it: we got really upset about it and this seems the best way to address that kind of inanity.

We’re now trying to establish our baseline (starting point) for the 7 categories. For some it’s as easy as looking at the utilities bill, for others it’s more difficult, but mostly because we have never kept a tally and merely have to start doing so now.

1. gasoline consumption

The desired 90% reduction of the average American usage (500 gallons per person, per year) is 50 gallons.

When we lived in the city we had only one car, a station wagon – bought second-hand with the safety of our still-to-be-born daughter in mind. We still have that, and now another car (a sedan), because in the burbs it is impossible for me to be without a car and drop Amie off at and her up from preschool (5 x a week) and do grocery-farm stand-Farmer’s Market shopping and library (1 x a week) . There is no public transport here. The preschool,  food places and library are each only 1 mile away. DH drives 3 miles to a shuttle into the city three times a week.

Add to that the occasional trip to another store, the landfill to drop off our trash and recycling, and frequent trips to visit friends and that  makes us fill up each car about once a month. It’s not exact science yet, but so far we estimate:

+/- 36 gallons a month for the 3 of us = +/- 150 gallons a person a year.

As I expected, this needs a lot of work, and there is a lot of room for improvement. The cold months are here and I doubt we will ride our bikes to school/shop/shuttle when it’s freezing, let alone snowing. Still, we can consolidate drives and as soon as it is possible switch to the bike.

Here’s a tough one: air travel. It’s been so expensive lately that we haven’t been flying much – 90% of our family live across one ocean or another. But family has been flying in to see us… Should we count that? This is a really difficult issue, something but for another post.

2. Electricity

Last month we used 448 KWH.

The goal is 90 KWH per household per month.

We can’t figure out why we use this much. We used to live in a basement and had the lights on all the time, and we used almost half that amount of electricity.  Here we don’t need the lights on during the day, use compact fluorescent bulbs throughout, never have lights on in rooms we’re not in, turn off computers when we’re not working on them, line dry our laundry – if not in the yard, in the dry basement next to the boiler – etc. Maybe it’s the old fridge that came with the house? The radon remediation system that we were promised uses very little? We have a power meter that you plug in in between the socket and the appliance, so we should find out soon.

3. Heating and Cooking Energy

Average US usage is 750 Gallons per household, per year. A 90% cut  =  75 gallons.

We cook with electricity since there are no gas lines here.

We heat the house and the water with oil. We had one of the most efficient burners installed a month after moving in and we also had the house insulated, but we don’t know yet what our consumption is going to be. We do know we have 2 honking big black tanks with 490 gallons of oil sitting in our basement (they came, full, with the house). We are planning on having that last us 2 years, because we signed up for Chunky Chicken’s Freeze Yer Buns challenge, so we keep the day temperature at 64 F and at 58 F at night.

Our baseline?

No real idea, but let’s (over?)estimate at 500 gallons a year and we’ll find out soon.

4. Garbage

According to the numbers, the average American generates about 4.5 lbs of garbage per person, per day. A 90% reduction would mean .45 lbs of garbage.

4.5 lbs a day! It boggles the mind. Discounting recycling and all the kitchen waste that becomes compost, I think that

we make that reduction at about half a pound a person a day quite easily.

I haven’t weighed our garbage yet, but will do so from now.

5. Water

The Average American uses 100 Gallons of water per persons,p er day. A 90% reduction would mean 10 gallons.

I think we will do well here as well. We shower every other day and we make it quick, and Amie gets a bath once a week (she won’t stand for more often, abhors it!). We flush selectively and are very water conscious otherwise as well. In the garden next year we plan to have water barrels and other ingenious water saving measures in place. We’ll start keeping a tally on the water meter but for now

I estimate we use 20 gallons of water per person a day

 6. Consumer Goods

The average American spends 10K per household, per year on consumer goods. So A 90% cut is 1,000 dollars.

This is a tough one to estimate. DH insists we collectively buy only about $1000  a year. I’m not so so sure, but it’s possible. We go shopping for clothes once a year (e.g., I own 2 pairs of shoes) and I don’t do cosmetics. We  get a lot of second-hand and hand-me-down children’s clothes. As for toys and books, a lot of these come from friends (thank you!) and we are frequently at the library. We shop wholesale and in bulk for many things like paper goods, etc. Furniture, garden tools and those things often come through Craigslist and Freecycle.

We’ve managed to become quite thrifty with our weak points as well: electronics for DH (he’s been eying that flat screen tv but we don’t have cable anyway) and books for myself (since taking Chile’s Quit Now challenge I have bought only a few gardening and homesteading books). So,

 I estimate that we spend $2000 per year, half on new stuff, half on second-hand.

I don’t know whether that’s a conservative estimate or not. It’ll be fun to see how well I guessed once we have more concrete numbers.

 7. Food

Oh, tough one, and the organizers seem to have had a tough time coming up with a good calculation as well. I like it that instead of sticking a dollar price on this, they have opted to tie the reductions to the percentages of

1. locally (within 100 miles) and organically grown foods
2. dry bulk foods transported over distances longer than 100 miles
3. wet goods transported over distances longer than 100 miles.

The idea is to bring  the percentage of (1) up and to lower the parts of (2) and (3). Ideally, one’s  food purchases should be (1) 70%, (2) 25% and (3) 5%.

During the growing season I shop for most of our veggies and fruits at the Farmer’s Market and at a farm stands right nearby. All that has closed down now, and we were too late to sign up for the winter CSA’s.  Our town only has only one supermarket: Whole Foods. Going anywhere else means more gas mileage. WF is expensive, but we are careful when we go there. We seek out the local produce (keeping in mind that WF does dare to call “New York State” “local”in Eastern Massachusetts). We also think twice before buying exotic foods such as kiwi’s and mangoes, and often stick to apples. We buy our cereals, grains and flour from the bulk section (and use paper bags), but more at wholesalers like BJ’s if they have the organic kind. We have cut down substantially on meat (and often buy that local) and fish and make our own pizzas. Our major vices are coffee and tea.

I would estimate for now that our percentages are (1) 50%, (2) 35% and (3) 15%.

There is much scope for reducing (2) and (3). We’re working on our garden and as of this summer, we’re counting on being more or less self-sufficient for veggies. We’re also going to can and freeze, and install a root cellar so we can get by next winter. Other more short-term projects are to bake our own bread again and to revisit (with the town) the possibility  of keeping chickens.

I plugged all this into the calculator (so cool!) and this is what our baseline looks like:

Yes, I’m taking the challenge, probably the most difficult one of all for me, because I’m one of those people who always feels cold. At the bookends of the summer, when other New Englanders are still/already wearing their t-shirts outside, I’ve got my scarf on and a sweater. I am unapologetic about that, but not about turning up the fossil-fuel heat that we are, at the moment, dependent on.

So far we’ve been blessed with mostly good weather (61 degrees and sunny right now), but we had a some cold days a couple of weeks ago and turned on the heat. Having a new boiler installed was one of the first things we did after buying the house, as the old boiler was literally an antique. We wanted to see how and if it works properly. We have forced hot water with cast-iron floorboards and about 1200 square feet to heat (1500 if we also heat the guest zone, but we shut that off). Unfortunately there is no way to turn off any of the radiators, so we can’t close the bedroom doors and just heat our living space.

We had a tough time finding the right settings, but the main problem was me. DH and Amie are “warm” people, walking around in their light sweaters – and even that had to be forced upon Amie. I was dressed for deep winter, had my hands wrapped around a cup of steaming tea most of the time, and I was still shivering. DH set the thermostat to 64 degrees during the day (or almost 18 Celsius, which still makes more sense to me) and I complained, I admit. And though I hated hearing that infernal boiler fire up, I turned it up a couple of times.

But I shouldn’t.

So I pledge 64 during the day and 58 F at night.

(That’s 17.7 and  14.4 C)

 Now I’m going to peruse Crunchy Chicken’s Freeze Yer Buns posts from last year to see how I can make this any easier.