I'm a little behind on this, as week 5 is almost over too, but here's my report card for week number 4 of the Riot for Austerity.
I started a worm bin (I already had this container). The goal here isn’t so much to have a worm bin as a way to cut down on waste (as I can put all those food scraps in my city compost collection), as much as to be creating a batch of my own compost that I don’t have to buy in a plastic bag. For the same reason, I’m also going to be creating a compost pile again in the yard. I’ll build it with grass and vegetable trimmings mostly. I want to continue putting weeds (I’m fighting a bindweed invasion-not a weed worth keeping or ignoring!) and my non-vegetable food scraps in my compost that is picked up by the city. These are things that my compost pile won’t get hot enough to work with or would attract unwanted visitors. At some point I think I want to add an angora rabbit and/or chickens to the list of household dependents. An angora rabbit would be great for collecting wool (although I’m not sure how much…) as well as manure for the garden.
I am preserving more of my own foods. I am freezing all the extra berries I’m harvesting right now to eat through out the year. At some point I’m going to replace my refrigerator. Running a small refrigerator and a chest freezer uses much less electricity than my current refrigerator and will get me closer to the 90% for electricity. I will also be able to preserve more food with a larger freezer. My thoughts about this are that I can get a lot of fruits and vegetables locally during the summer (either growing my own or from the farmer’s market). Anything that I am able to freeze, can, or dehydrate myself will cut back on packaging and the transportation issues. Although I have very little that needs to be refrigerated (dairy and leftovers), I’m not quite ready to give up on a refrigerator.
And that brings me to electricity. My electricity is down 200 KWH from last year, but I still have a ways to go to reach 90%. I’ve done a lot of research on appliances. The only way I’m going to improve my electricity usage is by replacing or not using larger appliances. This is going to be a long term goal. As soon as I get more organized, I am going to find a new home for my dryer. It’s the logical appliance to stop using altogether. What I have discovered is that I need to have a back up set of blankets (dogs!) so that I don’t have to wash and dry on the same day in order to have bedding. I’ve also learned that during late spring I need to dry heavier clothing outside so that it doesn’t get that mildew smell.
When I took the garbage out this week, I was very happy with how little there was -and I'm already below the average. But I was also very sad about the fact that it was mostly plastic packaging. I’m going to keep looking at ways to minimize this. I’m hoping to try making paper with some of my scrap paper I’ve been saving this next weekend. Should be interesting!
Transportation and heating continue to be easy for me. I am going to ask my brother to help me figure out how I can insulate my pipes better this next month.
This month I’ve used up some of my allowance for consumer goods. I had a gift certificate for a local bookstore but wasn’t able to choose just one book. I bought Gardening when it Counts by Steve Solomon and The Hand-Sculpted House by Ianto Evans, Michael G. Smith and Linda Smiley. The book by Solomon has some great gardening without petroleum products advice. I’m two chapters in and getting great ideas. The other book is really more to dream about, building with cob. I don’t think I’ll ever build a house but maybe a shed…. Also I know cob can be used to build an outdoor oven. That is something I’d really like to try!
Some other things I’m doing: watering the plants on the porch with grey water, taking cloth bags for all my shopping, not just food; taking my own containers for bulk items at the coop rather than using their plastic or paper bags, making my own butter with local cream, working through my stash of old clothes and material to make new clothing as I lose weight (yea!), and baking with a full oven. Mostly it’s been little things, but it all adds up.