Turtles-Paradise

Most of us have too much stuff. Whether it is a pile of junk mail on the kitchen table, or a closet stuffed full of old board games and broken toys, clutter is insidious. The worst part is – once you get used to it, you don’t even see it anymore.

Tip 1: Throw out 50 things

Grab a box and do a fast sweep of the house. Grab empty cans, junk mail, unused toiletries, bits of paper with scribbled notes on the back, out-of-date food, anything that’s broken or unused. Don’t give yourself time to think: just clear that clutter now!

Tip 2: Get everything out

To streamline your kitchen, your office, or your bedroom, pick a day when you don’t have much else planned and pull everything out of the cupboards, closet, wardrobe and drawers. I did this with my bedroom recently, and it was a little scary to see how many random t-shirts I had acquired, most of them advertising things.

Put the most essential items back – so put a good knife back into your kitchen, and put your clean underwear back into your bedroom. Put everything else in a box. If you need it, get it out and put it back into the kitchen (or kitchen). After six months, give the box to a charity shop – without opening it.

After all – how many of us use paperclips anymore? How many times have we actually used that juicer? How many socks do we actually wear in a week?

Tip 3: Do 15 minutes a day

The Flylady website recommends spending 15 minutes a day decluttering. You can also get rid of one item a day, or do one drawer a day, or whatever small decluttering action you feel happy with. The key to this decluttering technique is little and often.

Tip 4: Get rid of Storage

It’s a harsh measure, but it works. Get rid of your sideboard, your free-standing wardrobe, your second fridge. Move to a smaller house. By forcing clutter out from the dusty drawers and dark spaces you force yourself to confront it. You might be amazed at what you find. Old pez dispensers, expired medication, bits of lego?

Tip 5: Scan It

We live in the digital era, and whilst digital clutter can be a problem in itself, it had to be said I’d rather my paperwork was virtual. Don’t print off every email and file it – send your files to your email.

PDF scanners like the ubiquitous ScanSnapcan turn all your tax returns, receipts, utility bills and other documents into PDF files.

I have one of these at work, and it’s pretty awesome. But if you don’t have a lot of paperwork, then don’t get it.

Even better is to opt out of paper-statements, bills and so on. Most companies let you get your bills and statements via email now – and they will often give you a bit of a discount for saving them the cost of postage.

Save a tree. Ditch your filing cabinet. What could be better?

Tip 6: Swap It or Rent it

One way to avoid getting clutter in the first place, is to rent or swap for what you need. Bookhopper is like PaperbackSwap for those in the UK. It lets you exchange your books with other readers, thus ensuring that you have both a plentiful supply of reading material, and you don’t have a big pile of books cluttering up your house.

Renting is often easier than buying. Renting a car, for example, can be cheaper than owning one – especially if you only use your car occasionally. Renting a TV over the World Cup period would work out cheaper than buying one, if that’s the only thing you’ve watched in the last four years.

Tip 7: Organise your Food

Many of us buy ingredients for dishes we end up only cooking once. The expensive pantry ingredients often sit around afterwards, taking up space and otherwise turning themselves into clutter. If you hated it, or it’s faded into something unusable – get rid of it. I once bought a spice jar of saffron for a specific dish, and it was so eye-wateringly expensive I never used it again. The result was that the taste faded and it ended up going in the bin. A total waste!

For any ingredients you have left, find some meals you can use them in, and then use them! Once they’re gone, they’re gone.

Buy your food once a day and buy only what you need. Keep your fridge clean and mostly empty, and you’ll never end up looking into it and seeing a pile of junky salad dressings but nothing to eat.

For your dry staples, get only what you know you will eat. Porridge oats are awesome to have – unless you never eat porridge. We all have four or five meals we always end up cooking – and it’s usually beans on toast, not duck l’orange.

Tip 8: Replace Multiple Devices with a Multi-Purpose Device

If you own lots of equipment, and you use that equipment, it may be worth upgrading to a multi-purpose device. Instead of having an mp3 player, a digital camera, and a mobile phone, you combine the three and get a smart phone.

Instead of a scanner, a printer and a photocopier, you get a combination all-in-one device.

Be careful with this one – it’s easy to get sucked into ‘upgrade’ mode. I have a mobile phone and a digital camera, but I don’t want the monthly fees associated with a smart-phone, and I don’t use my phone often enough to make it worth replacing.

Tip 9: Share with Someone

If you read a lot, share your books with someone else who likes to read a lot. Not only do you combine your libraries, you also get someone to talk about your latest read with.

Share camping equipment with another outdoorsy couple, share fitness equipment with another fitness fanatic. Get a communal lawnmower for the neighbourhood.

Tip 10: Don’t Replace Things

When your jeans finally get just too many holes in to wear, or your washing machine leaks all over your floor, get rid of it. But don’t replace it. Learn to live without your jeans, and start using a laundromat or washing your clothes in the bathtub.

When you shampoo runs out, see if you can make-do with baking soda.

When your tent poles snap, go camping with a poncho instead.

When you spill beer all over your laptop, unplug. Internet cafes and libraries can fill the void, and you may find your life substantially better for not being able to check your emails every five minutes.

For every ‘time-saving’ device there is usually a cost. The cost of storing, cleaning, maintaining, replacing. If we went back to (some) of the labour intensive methods, we might find we don’t need to work 80 hours a week just to afford all of our time-saving toys.

What’s the hardest thing to get rid of for you? What have you decluttered today?

Food has often been one of the most expensive items on our list of expenditures – even by making a weekly meal plan, shopping for stuff that was on sale, downgrading to the store brand and making lots of things from scratch – we would spend between £230 – £260 a month on food for the two of us.

Last month I managed to drag our spending on food right down – to £180. How did I do this?

By shopping every day. I gave myself a daily budget of £5, and from that £5 I had to get breakfast, lunch and dinner for the two of us. I thought it would be more difficult than it was. By shopping every day on my way home from work, I was able to pick up the fruit and veg that was being reduced, and snap up any major bargains. It meant I didn’t have to plan beyond the next three meals, so I never forgot any vital ingredients. I frequently came in under budget, which was a dramatic difference from my weekly shopping.

It didn’t even mean that I missed out on bulk buys – picking up 8 cans of baked beans on a ‘Buy 2 for £3′ deal, and several ‘buy one get one free’ deals on frozen pies etc.

It did mean I had to downgrade some things. I couldn’t spend £4 on two slices of cheesecake for a start. I also had to downgrade my washing powder – to a brand that actually made my clothes smell nicer.

In short I would say the experiment has been a great success. I certainly haven’t felt deprived – especially since I’ve been feasting on a fantastic greek salad for the last three days – olives are always amazing!

Strawberries at wimbledon, and minty pea-soup to sip in the garden. June passes us by, and July gets ready to burst onto the scene – in, I hope, a gloriously sunny month that let’s me take long rambly walks through fields of wild-flowers.

July is all about barbecues, picnics, salads and refreshing glasses of ice-cold lemonade. Family gatherings, water-balloon fights, and siestas in the sun. Bliss!

Eating what’s in season has a number of benefits. It’s cheaper, it’s healthier, and it keeps us in touch with the cycles of nature. When we can buy strawberries in December, or pumpkins in April, the food loses a touch of what makes it special. Anticipation, after all, is half the fun of anything.

The Best Food of July

Cherries – ripe, luscious little fruits that taste like nothing else. Unfortunately, Britain has lost around 90% of its cherry orchards in the last 50 years, in favour of importing them from overseas. July 17th is Cherry Day, so go pick your own from a local orchard, or buy some from a farmer’s market. Cherries can be used to make fruity buns, sauces for meat, or delectable pie fillings. Or just eat them by the handful. Om nom.

Peaches – peaches are another refreshing fruit. Somehow, the idea of eating a peach with juices running down my chin while sitting under a cloudless blue sky is my idea of heaven. If you like peaches, you’ll be pleased to know that peach trees can be grown in containers. Just make sure they get lots of sunshine. And make sure you get lots of sunshine as well – we all thrive and grow during the sunnier months.

Cucumber – cumbers are cool. They’re famous for it, in fact. And, when you get a bit hot and bothered, or maybe don’t like the sun quite as much as the peach tree – a cumber is the perfect antidote. A cumber salad makes for a good lunch, or as a trusty side for a bbq. If you feel a bit worn out, you can lie down with a couple of cumber slices on your eyes. Or, you can drink it.

Fennel – It’s not all fruit and salads. You might still want your sunday roast, or fancy something a bit more filling. Enter fennel, a vegetable I was first exposed to as part of my veg box delivery (for those of you unable to get to a market, one of these can really help you support a local farmer – I really miss it), and which I instantly fell in love with. It looks a bit like it came from outer-space, and it tastes like aniseed. Aniseed is one of those flavours you either love or hate, so if you didn’t like the sweets you won’t like this. It goes well in a risotto, and makes a perfect match with fish.

Spinach – spinach is in season through most of the year, which suits me just fine. As a leafy green, spinach is one of those nutritional powerhouses that – whilst not turning us into Popeye – has a truly insane amount of vitamin K and A. Plus a bunch of other things, all of which are good for you. Add it to a salad, steam it as a side, or dump it into a fruit smoothie and turn that smoothie a beautiful shade of green.

Peas and Beans – Peas, green beans and broad beans are all being picked and podded right about now. Add them to that risotto, or enjoy them with fish and chips. Vegetarians can enjoy this tasty walnut and green bean dish – well, and so can the rest of us. Don’t you just love summer?

This is a mere sampling of what’s on offer right now, but it makes a good start. Remember to buy local – if you shop in a supermarket, look for the British sticker. Alternatively, visit a farmers market, or get a veg box delivered. Fresh, in-season produce – it simply cannot be beaten.

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 2

Zone 2 is generally considered the garden. It’s an area that we still go to on a regular basis, and that requires our attention in order to thrive. It doesn’t need to be the patch of land to the back of your property – it could be an allotment, or a roof garden. Generally speaking, it’s going to be where the bulk of your food is grown – fruit trees, vegetable plots, chicken huts, and medicinal plants will all be put here. If you don’t have a garden, it might be the deeper pots on your balcony, the window-allotment, or similar. Zones don’t have to be a particular size or shape, and it’s important we don’t prevent ourselves from growing due to a preconceived idea of what a ‘vegetable patch’ looks like.

We can simplify this zone in the following ways:

• Pay attention to the shape of the space, the levels of light, the average temperatures and amount of rainfall, and the type of soil – before you start growing. Grow the types of foods that have always been grown in your area, and don’t try and plant your favourite exotic fruit tree that is going to take lots of time and water to look after.
• Garden to your own level of experience. Start small. There is nothing worse than spending a lot of money on seeds, plants, trellises, pots and special soil and then watching everything die. A tomato plant and some herbs is a garden, and you can make food from it.
• Develop your knowledge of companion plants. Get the plants to do the hard-work for you!
• Share the hard-work with others – start a community allotment, or get the kids involved in the back-garden.
• Perform maintenance work ‘little and often’.

Think about Wildlife

Humans share this planet with a massively diverse range if other life-forms. Due to our overwhelming dominance and cultivation of land, we have driven a lot of these life-forms to the margins, shrinking their numbers daily. Some we outright kill, through serious pesticides that poison far more than just insects. For others, we simply alter their habitat until they starve to death.

Your garden can and should provide a place where wild-animals, insects and birds can live. Encourage the diversity of life, by planting things designed to attract and nourish bees, butterflies, birds, hedgehogs, bats and so on.

Attracting the right sorts of bugs can help keep other bugs in check. For example, ants keep termites away. Ladybugs eat aphids. Birds and hedgehogs eat slugs. Let a natural ecosystem exist, and you won’t have to worry about pesticides and fumigation.

Saving your crops

Of course, if you attract lots of insects and birds, there’s a chance they might devour your hard-won fruit and herbs. Having had last years cabbage plants eaten in their entirety by a hungry pheasant, I know how quickly things can get decimated.

The quickest and easiest way to stop them is to do the following:

• Put netting over young fruit trees and bushes.
• Use physical barriers like raised beds to get them away from birds like ducks and pheasants.
• Grow lots of honeysuckle, and put out bird feeders. Give the birds other things to eat, and they’ll not bother with the fruit.

If anybody else has suggestions, please let me know! Managing pests and predators is one of the biggest challenges in outdoor gardening.

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.