MamaStories

Have you seen the small CNN documentary video about the Dervaes Urban Homesteaders (of Path to Freedom fame)?

If you’ve followed the Urban Homesteaders, it won’t show you much that is new, except for that toilet/sin (approx. 2/3 into the video)!

The lid of the toilet water tank has been converted into a small sink. You wash your hands with new water and it drains into the water tank. It’s perfect!

Theirs seems to be a Gaiam system (picture above), but for the do-it-yourselfers I found a quick hack here. A more elaborate system that stores the drainwater under the usual sink and diverts it to the toilet can be found here and here.

No need to flush perfectly good drinking water down the toilet!

I discovered Chile’s Quit Now Challenge (see the logo to the sidebar: it’s the clearest, most uncluttered, Peak Oil logo I’ve come across). I devoted some deep thinking about what I would give up…

• Cigarettes? Diet Coke? McDonalds? Never did that / haven’t done that in half a decade.
• Paper towels? TV? Airco? Plastic bags? Did that, done.
• Dryer? Junking veggie waste? Will give that up the moment we move to the new place, where hanging clothes and composting are possible.
• Procrastination? Can’t. I mean, loafing is an integral part of my job (writing). So are coffee and black tea.

Sigh.

Look, it’s not that difficult! Here goes:

I will give up buying toys and books for Amie, and books for myself.

From today (5 July) until 5 July, and after that we’ll see.

The comments and Chile’s later post on the matter discuss whether this means depriving oneself (negative spin) or gaining space and time (positive). In our case, of books and toy we have enough, too much already. Getting more will actually mean having less: less space and less time to discover and rediscover what we already have.

Also, we’re looking at our move, coming up soon (it’s planned in two weeks). I haven’t been able to bring myself to pack yet. It’s the books!

My 1000+ count philosophy library is already in boxes in storage. But since “giving up” philosophy, I’ve gained many more books, mainly children’s books, ecological treatises and all manner of homesteading books. I could never ever think of books as “clutter,” but truly, when you have to move them, they are, factually, weight.

So there. Can I do it? Can I be a Quitter?

In the meantime the Manush House is finished. I decided not to glue the bathroom/kitchen and the staircase onto a cardboard sheet. It would make it more difficult to move the doll house around and take it places (if ever Amie wants to do that).

Here’s the whole house (so far), with some of the proud owners taking advantage of the new facilities (note the Mama in the bathtub, the Baba in the kitchen!) and their guests, Mickey and Minnie, asleep in the living room/bedroom.

Reader Anja had suggested I send a little story about the doll house to Mothering Magazine. I was considering it when two days later said magazine arrived in my mailbox and there already was a story about making a fairy house out of trash. What a coincidence! It’s great to know more people are doing this!

In the meantime I had also sent word to Annie’s HomeGrown - the staircase is made out of three of their boxes. They loved it and guess what: they will feature the house in their next newsletter! Everyone sign up!

(*) I am happy to have made this doll house almost entirely out of trash: boxes of all sizes, aluminum foil, plastic containers and styrofoam, as well as some pictures out of magazines all bound for the recycling bin. Only the paint, glue, staples, tape and ink were new.

You can review the progress on the doll house (in chronological order) here, here, here and here and lastly here.

More pictures:
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That’s it for this installment of the Manush House. Amie is already lobbying for another addition: a bedroom. I am thinking: a piano! The living room needs a grand piano. I’m on the lookout for a good box.

Some scissor work on the IKEA catalog and the Manush kitchen and bathroom are fully equipped and ready for their new occupants. But where are they? Oh, they’re at the zoo.

Yes, there are even curtains!

What remains is fixing the whole thing - kitchen/bath unit and staircase - together onto a large cardboard sheet that will give it some stability (right now the box falls over too easily). Once it’s totally done I’ll try to take some better pictures.

We’re not really into big festivities round here - it comes with being far away from family, and Amie isn’t into presents and all that (yet). We spent some lovely days with friends in NYC. They’re into big get-togethers with hour-long conversations, heaps of good food and frequent bursts of laughter any time. You find yourself in the middle of that wonderful city but you just can’t make yourself get up and go places!

Perceiving a definite slow-down on other blogs, I decided to take a little time off too. The free moments here and there I devoted to the “bari” or “badi” - as Anja called it, in Bengali: the little house I was making for Amie, I mean the Manushes.

I spent more time on it than I planned to, for several reasons: the paint was such that it needed several coats, I changed the colors and design midway through, I got very, very into it and, much to my surprise, Amie let me work on it once in a while. It was very relaxing, in the evening after she had gone to sleep, to spend 15 minutes with it. I’ve never been a knitter, but I guess this comes close.

Baba Manush proudly surveys his domain from his new steps.

I used two Annie’s Homegrown boxes: Cheddar Bunnies and Mac’nCheese. Seeing how heavy-footed those Manushes are, I made the staircase very strong, with reinforcements and lots o lots of cellotape!

Then I decided to change the color scheme

It needs a little more work, some finishing touches. Hope to report back on that soon!

It started snowing here on my way to pick up Amie from her daycare, around one. On the way back she found it so peaceful she fell asleep in the stroller (it’s a ten minute walk). It really is rather magical and eerily calm when those flakes start coming down.

While she naps I stole a moment to put the first layer of paint on the interior structure and the large furniture. Don your hard hat and your smocks, please!

Phase II: First layer of primer

Isn’t that this week’s issue of the New Yorker? Why, yes it is! Honestly, who has time to read the New Yorker anymore?

Then I stole a moment to write you this.

And now I’m going to steal some more moments to finish chapter 8 of my novel.

The day after Anja commented on the dollhouse in the background of a recent picture, Amie took a sudden interest in it. It had been sitting on that ottoman for months…

The first thing she asked for was steps. The Manushes couldn’t get into the house! So I made steps, which the Manushes now use very carefully and meticulously, almost like a toddler unsure of her step(s)…

Here they are, with Bob the Builder, soundly asleep in their beds made of blocks.

Then Amie asked for another house. “I want one more house,” she said. I proposed that we build two more rooms - I knew of just the right box! I asked her which those rooms should be. Well, Amie reasoned, they already have a living room and a bedroom (both rolled into the above), so they need a kitchen! What the second room should be she couldn’t think, but she agreed when I proposed a bathroom. She also pointed out the kitchen should be on the groundfloor, the bathroom on the second floor.

Construction has started. Please don your hard hats!

Phase I: structure and plumbing

The bathroom: bathtub and toilet

The idea is to make the whole house purely from recycled materials, preferably from things that were on their way to the trash.

Just getting Phase I completed was nervewrecking, because Amie wanted to help and got very interested in my scissors (that’s why I didn’t take out my Exacto knife, you know) and the stapler. A good opportunity for a safety talk!

We’ll keep you updated as the works progress!

I can’t remember or find out via which blog I discovered this (my apologies), but it is fantastic and I want to spread the word. It is “The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard,”  an informative, entertaining and especially rousing little movie (20 minutes long) about, you know, stuff. Go have a look-see!

I’ll just reproduce an old cartoon I penned years ago, when our condo - 25 units - didn’t have recycling (yet) and DH and I volunteered to make weekly trips in our Geo Prizm hauling everyone’s recycling away. That may explain DH’s reluctance in the comic…

In other news: I caught Amie’s cold and though she is on the upswing, I am succumbing to the sneezy snottering coughies and the ringing-of-the-ears, o the ringing!

Still, I am cheered when I think of my little two-year-old’s statement yesterday afternoon, after L, the babysitter, came that morning:

“When Baba comes home, and when L comes home, we’ll all have dinner!”

I had a discussion today with my upstairs neighbor this morning. She leaves her airconditioners on, all of them, all day and night, even while she’s at work. One of them is very noisy and makes the doorknobs in our bedroom vibrate. I met her in the hallway and addressed the problem (again). She was very defensive, which is not new, but in a (for her) novel way. She said:

- “I can run my airconditioners whenever I want!”

I said she could, it’s her electricity bill, and was going to reiterate my real complaint (about the noise), when suddenly I realized that, no, this time I won’t shut up! So I added:

- “Still, don’t you feel bad about wasting fossil fuels and polluting the environment? What about your grandson? I am always thinking of Amie’s future. I am sure you think of his future too. I know you’re very fond of him.”

This rambling and pacifying tone is typical me: I can’t bear confrontation, and my neighbor can be very rude and aggressive (verbally), so I was extra careful.

- “Those will be their problems, not mine,” she stated, stomped off, and slammed her door. 

Then followed the brilliant insight, the stroke of argumentative and rhetorical genius, the absolutely withering reparte:

- ”How about this: in 50 years time, when water and food and fuel are rationed, your grand and great-grandchildren are allocated less than others, because their grandmother was so wasteful.”

She answers:

- “It would be totally unfair to punish my grandchildren because of my behavior!”

Me:

- “Oh really?!”

(Again she stomps off, but after her slamming her door, she thinks about this, and within 10 minutes I can hear she has turned off her airconditioners. Then she calls me up to suggest the condo step up the recycling and install a compost bin…)

Just published a review on Suite101.com of Gaia’s Garden, the book that led me to Holmgren’s Permaculture. I  tremendously enjoyed reading Hemenway’s book and I hope the review does it justice.

I also hope that, once we have some land, I can put the permaculture way of gardening into practice. I might have to revisit the review at that point.

We found a house for sale, quite a whiles west of Boston but close to the commuter rail, that we might go and take a look at. It’s 1500 sq.f. (too big, really, but maybe we could close some of it off during winter) and 0.95 acres of land. With that plural, “0.95 acres” sounds like it is more than “1 acre”. We can’t afford it, really… but it would be so sweet.