Turtles-Paradise

There are several ‘zones’ outlined in permaculture, which go from the house right out to the wilderness. The purpose of each zone is different, and our level of impact on it is also different. I want to talk a bit about each zone and how we can simplify the way we work and live within it, and discuss simple ways of bringing each zone in alignment with permaculture principles.

Zone 1

Zone 1 are the outside areas that we spend most of our time in. It is not, necessarily, the areas closest to our house. This zone contains our most frequently visited plants, that usually include herbs for cooking and any kind of instant cut-and-eat type leafy vegetable. It will also contain seedlings and plants that need a lot of attention in the form of watering etc.

You want these plants close to where they will be used. Herbs should be on the kitchen windows, or just outside the kitchen door. Seedlings should be on a path travelled every day – maybe the front walkway to your car when you go to work, or maybe the path to the chicken hutch for when you go to feed them. The idea is to minimise the effort needed to utilise them. You aren’t going to walk to your allotment three blocks down to snip a few sprigs of rosemary!

We can simplify this zone in the following ways:

• Grow a limited number of herbs and seedlings. Grow only the herbs that you actually use for your cooking – Ferm has written a great guide on ‘Herbs to Grow for Ethnic Cuisines‘ As always, don’t just grab the cheapest mixed herbs container from your supermarket – instead, really think about what you need and use.
• Use labels for plants so you remember what they are! I also like to write down some very basic info about the plant, e.g. ‘water often, full sun’ or something similar.
• Pick plants that are hardy and flourish with the minimum of attention. This will vary depending on where you live, but plants like basil, thyme, coriander, and rosemary are good choices.

Everyone can grow plants in Zone 1.

There are many people who don’t have gardens, or balconies, or patios. You might not have space for a full-blown vegetable garden, but most people can find the room for a window box with cut-n-grow again salad leaves, or a few pots of herbs.

Growing your own herbs and salad leaves can:

• Lessen our dependence on big-chain supermarkets that import food from countries thousands of miles away.
• Decrease the number of ‘food miles’ we contribute to, and accordingly lessen our contribution to pollution and the draining of our oil reserves.
• Increase the amount of nutrients we get from our food by giving us extremely fresh produce.
• Give you control over the growing conditions of your food; lessens your exposure to chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and other nasties.
• Connects you with your food, and with nature.
• Provides a feeling of independence and self-sufficiency

Even just one pot of parsley makes a difference.

We’ll be back to the permaculture zones very soon, but I just wanted to say congratulations to my other half, who successfully landed two part-time jobs in the past couple of weeks. In ‘Let’s talk about Money‘ I told you we just about broke even. We’ll be in a much better place now. The important thing for us to remember:

• Not loosening up on the frugality side of things. It’s easy to not spend money when you don’t have money! But a lot harder to resist that urge when you do have that extra income. Both of us have the same goals of financial freedom in the long run, and neither of us want to achieve that by working stressful, high-powered careers. The only way to make it work will be to cut our living expenses to the bone.
• Sitting down after my other half goes through the next stage of his visa applications and discussing the next stage. For the past two and a half years the visa application and being secure in living together has been our top priority. I got an apartment, because it looked better for the visa application. We both delayed other life goals in order to make this happen. It cost us well over £2000 in fees and incidental expenses, and who knows how much we spent on plane tickets!

With less than two months to go before he is (hopefully) allowed to remain indefinitely with more-or-less the same rights and opportunities as a British Citizen we will now need to solidify what we want to do next in our joint lives. Of course, we know more-or-less, but we need to write down the exact figures and plans to make it happen.

Okay, enough about us! We’ll be back to permaculture in the next post.

There are several ‘zones’ outlined in permaculture, which go from the house right out to the wilderness. The purpose of each zone is different, and our level of impact on it is also different. I want to talk a bit about each zone and how we can simplify the way we work and live within it, and discuss simple ways of bringing each zone in alignment with permaculture principles.

Zone 0

Zone 0 is the home, where we live. It is the area where we have the most impact, as we design the entire structure around our needs. It is also the area where we can end up with the most clutter!

The home usually needs to fulfil a couple of functions:

• A place to relax, sleep, rejuvenate.
• A place to cook and eat.
• A place to store items of importance.

We have different housing needs at different times in our lives. At some points all we need is a place to sleep and maybe a toaster oven. Everything we own could be can be carried on our backs. In these cases, ‘home’ may just be your rucksack!

Later, we might have a spouse, children, a garden, pets and so on. We start to require a surplus of food, and so on. Our housing needs change.

Generally speaking, we can always live in a smaller house that we think we ‘need’.

Simplifying our homes is a difficult and emotional task. We have a tendency to acquire objects of sentimental value. We also sink time and money into hobbies and items that might no longer fulfill us in the present, but represent so much ‘investment’ that we feel like we can’t throw them away. We may hang on to unwanted gifts out of a sense of obligation, or keep equipment on hand ‘just in case’.

There are several methods we can use.

• Start with a room at a time, and clear all non-essential items into a box and store it. If, after six months, we haven’t needed to find and use those items, they can probably be tossed. You may want to apply a caveat for emergency and annual items, such as first-aid kits and thick winter coats.
• Give yourself a minimum number of items to purge, and go through the house with a bag tossing in anything you don’t want until you hit your number. Do this frequently, every couple of days or once a week.
• Get rid of one or two items every day.

Remember that items should be re-purposed, re-used or recycled in preference to chucking them in landfill.

In addition to taking stuff out of our homes, we need to stop bringing new stuff in. For every purchase ask yourself:

• Do I need it?
• Can I afford it?
• Is there something I already own that can do this job for me?
• Am I prepared to spend the time and money in maintaining and looking after this item?
• Have I considered the true cost of manufacturing and transporting this item?

You can apply delay methods to see if you really need something, or if you just want it. Put it on a list for 30 days, and if you still want it, you can have it.

Hobbies can provide an amazing way of stocking up on expensive equipment that then gets abandoned later. It may be you were really into oil painting at one point, and you still own an easel, a large number of expensive paints, and so on. “But I’ll go back to it one day” is a hard pill to swallow. Even harder is knowing how much all that stuff cost in the first place!

We can mitigate the effects of this in two ways:

1. Rent or hire to start with. I think this is a good rule to apple to anything where the equipment needed is costly; photography, extreme sports, mountain climbing. Later, we can decide whether to keep renting or go ahead and buy the equipment because we have found one of our true passions.
2. Join (or create) a group in which everyone contributes a monthly fee towards the cost of materials and equipment. This is especially good for things like gourmet cooking, painting, gardening, music and so on. The members may change, but the group will endure and continue to use the equipment. Just be sure you have enough members to cover the costs of everything and the cost of hiring a neutral storage space/work place. Some of the best examples of this are things like communal allotments.

When it comes to getting rid of old equipment for hobbies you no longer enjoy, consider donating the equipment to a school or to a group that works with disadvantaged people.

Zone 0 is a unique space that we all relate to in different ways. Spend some time thinking about what you want your space to contain. I don’t mean design and build your ideal 3-story mansion, I mean think about what kind of feeling you want from your home. Do you want it to be a quiet sanctuary from the world? Do you want it to be a place full of life and joy and good friends? Do you want it to be a place where you can work-out and eat well? What do you need to sleep well?

Then go about getting rid of anything that doesn’t add to that vision.

Over on miss minimalist, there is a recent post about the 100 things that most people own that she and her partner do not. It includes common items like a sofa, a TV, a dining table, and what I would consider more esoteric items like an air conditioner, a coffee maker, and a fondue set (I really don’t know anyone who owns a fondue set!)

There are also lots of posts knocking around about the 100 (or 50) things challenge, in which you try and keep your personal possessions below an arbitrary amount. I don’t think the amount actually matters too much, or how you categorise them (individual books or ‘the library’) so much as simply restricting yourself and thereby forcing yourself to really consider which items make the cut and which ones don’t.

At Unclutterer, they talk about the Red Velvet Rope technique, in which only the most valuable possessions are allowed into your home. Over at Early Retirement Extreme, he notes that depending on what your hobbies and passions are will dictate the amount of stuff you want to own.

The idea is to get your list down to just what you need to survive, be happy and be productive. There’s a number of things I don’t own that are relatively common (a car, a smartphone, a laptop, a bedframe – I just sleep on a mattress on the floor) but I also own a lot of quite frivolous items (two digital cameras, a Nintendo DS, a garlic mincer, a television, and a snow-globe).

What do you need to survive?

Food. Shelter. Clean water. That’s basically it. If you’ve ever done any long-distance hiking/camping, you’ll know that these needs can be met with a minimum of lightweight equipment.

What do you need to be happy?

I think everyone has a few key things they need to be happy. Significant relationships with other people – be they family or friends. A sense of safety and security. Well-being and good health, which is usually achieved by eating well, enjoying exercise and getting lots of sunlight.

What do you need to be productive?

By productive I don’t mean engaging in mindless busy-work, I mean producing something of benefit. I think we all co-exist by volunteering our time and efforts towards activities that benefit each other (growing a surplus of food and sharing it, teaching skills and ideas, entertaining the group, protecting the vulnerable, and looking after the sick).

Everybody needs the same basic things for survival, but once you move on to happiness and productivity, the material items required are extremely varied. A farmer, for example, will definitely need more land, equipment and storage space than that of a yoga teacher. Both are producing benefits to the group, but they do so in different ways. The items they need to be productive are completely unrelated.

Being a minimalist is not about owning less than fifty things – being a minimalist is about not owning, or consuming, more than you need to survive, be happy, and be productive.

1. Pause. Stand up and stretch. Breathe slowly and deeply for a minute.
2. Go outside. Stand in the sunshine, or the rain, or the wind. Allow yourself to just enjoy the feeling of real weather.
3. Do a few star jumps (jumping jacks).
4. Smile as wide as you can.
5. Give yourself a quick eye and temple massage.
6. Drink a glass of water.
7. Phone a friend and listen to them talk about their day.
8. Have a hug.
9. Write down the thing that is stressing you out. Then rip it up.
10. Go for a long walk. Preferably with a dog.