The Measured Morning

We are moving into another New Year full of the unknown.  

Charles and I try to follow our intuition to do the things that we do, we study where we have come from and plan for where we are going.  What is important to us to live within our means and that requires us to live a simple life that feels comfortable but capped.

We have saved what we could for retirement but life threw us some challenges along the way, paying for big repairs and unexpected expenses and it chewed away at some of our savings.  We are not alone with this, many of you have challenges as well. 

We are looking at this new year as a new start, and anyone can do this. For many years starting New Years Day we have taken on a history study and have truly enjoyed our studies.  This year we are taking many of the things that we have learned from our studies and applying this knowledge to live wiser, and less wasteful.  We want to be comfortable but very measured.  We are not going to study a particular year but apply the knowledge from the history studies because we feel we need to do this at this time. 

Some people are doing well, at least for now but many people are struggling and do not know what they are going to do the next month, or week or day for that matter.  

Some of my blog posts I talk about controlling the flow, just because we have it does not mean we must use it.  What I am referring to is electricity and running water or anything that flows to us.  I personally remember some of my family members that lived without electricity and running water and how they managed their home.  We do not plan to live without electricity and running water but what we do plan is to do our best to not go over the "required" amount that they will charge us for. 

This is where the measured morning comes in. 

If you look on the internet today how people live without electricity and running water, you will find the stories of the poor and the sad stories of how bad it is.  In the past, our generations before us knew what to do and how to do it and how to be comfortable because they never knew any other way.  Life is what we make it.

Are we literally measuring what we use?  Yes we are.  How do we know how much we need if we do not know what we normally use.  We also are re-using what we can for other purposes and controlling waste.

How do we purchase groceries without a meal plan or some idea of what we need each week?  If we did that we would spend over our budget.  

Can we make what we need?  Our dog Elizabeth needed a new collar, hers had worn out so I went to my scrap fabric and picked out what I needed and made her a new collar.  Just like I had done before.

Many years ago I started making their collars and what I did was save the parts from the other collars and made new ones using the parts. 

With our cold weather I make soup more often.  When I am making other meals I save back parts of the veggies and use them for making soup. 

We live in the city but we have a backyard garden so we use our backyard to provide us with food.  When something is growing in the garden I use bits of that for the soup pot such as a few of these turnip green leaves.

And add it to the pot...

Our garlic beds are doing good.  We have fifty garlic heads growing in two wrapped large cattle rings we are using for raised beds.  We cover it with frost cover when we dip below freezing.  Our garden is about to test it's limits next week with very cold weather coming our way.

One of our changes for our water use is we will not be using a water hose to water.  We are using rain water when we have it captured in our rain barrels and we are filling buckets in a wagon and dipping our water to water our plants.  Each plant requires a different amount of water so this works very well.  We have different size cups that we use to dip and water.  I do not like water hoses anyway, they are a trip hazard and we waste water because it is unknown how much water we are actually using on the plants.  We also have a couple of garden cans that we use on certain things.

Gardening is physically challenging but if we set our garden in a way it is easier for us we can continue to garden longer.

'We had coddled eggs for breakfast with chives, with a dab of butter and a teaspoon of cream.  It was a special treat for us.  

Our measured mornings are a study at this point since we are starting day one of the new year.  The amount of water we need per day is coming from our budget numbers.  They charge us for 2,000 gallons even if we do not use it. 

This is our outdoor Lavabo for washing our hands.  I search to see how people live around the world and I find that outside of our country, many people live very sensible lives that do not tie them to the grid.  They use simple items that make their life comfortable without having to live an expensive life that I call our modern trap. These are used inside and outside of the home in place of running water. 

We have been reducing our electric and water use and doing pretty good at it so far in our practice run.  Our house is all electric, we do not use gas, we do have a kerosene heater that we use on very cold days. Our regular heat is electric.   We are trying to reduce our electric use by 40 percent which is a lot since we already are frugal with it.  

Many people around the world still cook outside. I am a bit envious of those that are set up for outdoor cooking or cook inside on the wood cook stove.  When I was young and into my young adult years some of my family still cooked on the old wood stoves.  Some had kitchens that were separated from the house by an enclosed breezeway so the house did not get too hot in the summer. 

We drain our water pipes when needed during a hard freeze because we do not want to pay extra for heating to prevent the pipes when all we need to do is drain the pipes.  We have a special cut off valve that we had put in to turn our water off an drain our pipes when needed.

I have come to love washing dishes at the table.  This is truly measured water and the rinse water will be reused to water the bushes and the wash water can be used to flush the toilet if saved throughout the day from hand washing dishes and poured directly into the toilet bowl.   

We are using Portiere's over doorways to heat only certain rooms and we are probably going to make an outdoor kitchen in an area that we could do this easily. We have this stove above that works well to cook most any meal and we use limbs that we pick up from our trees and Charles will stop and pick up wood people have set out for trash pick up from where a tree has been cut.  We find a lot of oak and pecan wood this way. 

This sounds like a lot of effort to keep our usage down, but once we have it figured out and let go of things little by little we will get a routine and it will simply be just the way we live as those before us did.   We have a manual push vacuum and I like not having the loud noise of a vacuum and a cord to deal with or keeping it charged.  The first part of my adult life before electronics I did not have a vacuum cleaner.  I used a broom and I had floors that I mopped and I shook out my rugs.  People live much differently today than when I first started housekeeping.  We were brainwashed we needed these things that cost us so much today to purchase, to use, to upkeep and to and needed attachments and filters.  And then there is the cost to run them whatever that thing may be. 

Charles and I slip back to our modern ways time to time, usually during sickness and when we are recuperating but then we come back to our senses because this old fashioned life feels right for us. With the economy like it is we need this more than ever before. 

Basically we are just moving back to doing things the way we did before we knew that we did not need all that we have today.  I have many changes planned from how I am currently doing our laundry, I did slip back to using a dryer for awhile but I need to hold to using the clothesline because it is free drying!  

We have changed our bathing routine and are doing stand up washing up as I linked in my previous post.  Basically just imagine a home during the past before all we have today, that is where we are heading.  Anything that costs money that I can do for free is what will be done.  We also bathe in the tub but we are taking bucket baths in the tub where we pour the water over us and soap up and rinse well.  We only use 3 & 1/2 to 4 gallons of water and that is plenty of water. We have not been able to figure out how to capture the bath water as of yet as it would be nice to use to water the lawn since we use real soap instead of synthetic soap. 

So this is our life and where we are at the beginning of the ear 2025, it should be quite an interesting year. 

I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year and hope that you all stay well and find ways to save money if that is what you want to do.  I hope to read some chatter up in the forum to see what you all are doing and are you making adjustments this new year?  If we put our thoughts together we might just be able to come up with some good ideas.  How to save in many ways, not just water and electric. We can cover many ways of saving money just like how I saved on Elizabeth's collar.  We can all use ideas how to live a more simple life.  Grandma Donna