It has been a fairly cold winter so far here in the deep southeast part of Alabama. The sage has a heavy frost sitting on it's leaves. It rarely snows here where we live but some of the meteorologists are starting to talk about a polar vortex coming to the deep south.
The possibility of very low temperatures in the range they are talking about is quite concerning to have ice and snow is even more concerning because we do not have the equipment for such as this down here. The rare occasions normally bring things to a standstill and can easily cause power outages.
I craved a woolen skirt this year for some reason and now I know why. Wool anything is not common here. Charles and I have been wearing three layers lately but last year I did purchase us some wool socks and I am so happy that I did.
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Our white on the grass comes in the form of frost, normally.
The backyard garden beds have been wrapped up tightly and I go out and peek inside each day to see how we are making it in there and so far things are good. The lowest temperature we have had this far is 26 degrees F. or 3.333 Celsius. Our birdbaths have frozen solid a few times and to my surprise my growing vegetables during winter experiment has gone very well.
The roots on the turnips are getting larger now, the plants seem to like being covered.
My winter happiness is this lavender that looks like this each time I pull back the winter blanket. But will it survive a polar vortex? Now I question should I have planted our winter garden in pots?
The curly Kale has finally started to show some growth.
I have planted out many of the onions but saving some back that I will bring inside the house if I need to.
Charles and I dug out this old two burner stove from the shed. We need to re-season it, it is in good working condition and we can save money on electricity and fuel by using wood since we have fallen tree wood that we can use for cooking.
Inside our home is warm cookies in our small two room flat that we have made for winter. We have worked really hard keeping our electric use down. We have been able to close off half our house now to where we are only using heat in the kitchen side of our home. We looked back in our journal and we have dropped over half of the kilowatts we used in previous years. Next week might be a different story if it gets as extreme cold as they say might happen. We are prepared for whatever is to come including power outages during very cold weather. We must think ahead to remain prepared for things that can happen and sometimes do. However, the kilowatts that we did not use will keep the electric bill from being drastic as it could be during winter.
I have been sorting out closets and drawers all over the house and separating items that I will keep and that will go. These items above I will keep. I have little piles all over the house.
My drawers had become a complete mess and most anything could be found in any drawer that it did not belong. So I pulled it all out and started putting back everything that went with what it is suppose to go with.
I collected all of my scissors...
And now this is where they live.
Carley the bunny decided she wanted to live on top of the Martha Washington sewing cabinet but with a head of lettuce in case she gets hungry.
I am still in the gathering process but it is starting to take shape. I have all of the treadle sewing machine drawers emptied and those too will all be sorted. Due to my age and the fact that my parents and grandparents passed many years ago and their small items were left in my care I have ended up with many helpful things but there are many of those helpful things. I am quite a homebody and my interests are many such as sewing, knitting, crochet, bobbin lace, tatting, embroidery. These occupations require proper tools, now I am in the process of sorting the tools in order of which of these belong.
I have moved the Lavabo to our little flat because we drain our water pipes when our temperatures go below freezing since our house has a crawl space. We do cover our air vents under the house but we have seen neighbors pipes to burst and do not want to take the chance of that happening. I do not like to drip water for long periods and would rather draw water into buckets for use in the lavabo's and drain the pipes.
We simply just switch from water from our sink faucet to water from a lavabo. We added a larger one above our kitchen sink. I have not taken a picture of the kitchen sink lavabo because I am in the process of painting the new shelf that the larger lavabo is mounted on.
I removed my night stand and flipped a piece from the back of the house to my side of the bed. Now I have some of my personal items kept here. There is no closet or dresser here in our little flat. We go to the back of the house and collect our items needed for the day, we are getting used to living this way and will most likely stay like this because we can save on air conditioning use in the summer.
We make our homes as we need them to be, not to look similar to others just because that is how we are shown how a home should look. We have worked hard to set our home to function as best it can without expensive items that increase monthly bills. Many people today are struggling to pay utility bills and like I have said many times, just because electricity and water flows to us does not mean that we have to use it. If we do not control it we might not be able to pay for what we have used and what we used was something that we did.
Remember that every time we turn on a light, a computer, a stove, a heater, an air conditioner, a fan, a shower, a tub bath, when we plug in our chargers, open our refrigerator or freezers, use an electric mixer instead of a whisk or spoon, place only one item in a oven instead of baking many things together, use a hair dryer instead of rolling our hair or letting it dry naturally, using the clothes dryer instead of the clothesline, taking a long shower uses much water plus electricity or gas to run the hot water heater.
We are not owed these things, we own these things and the monthly bill is based on our decisions of what and how much we use. We should not be shocked when we get a large bill because we can budget what we use. When Charles and I first started really buckling down to lessen our bills, we realized that our electricity and water was something that we simply freely used with no check system.
We have removed many appliances and electronics in our home because they increased our electric bill. We are wearing layers in the winter (inside our home) to keep our heating bill down. I mentioned we have wool socks now, we also added warm hoodies that we sleep in and wear during the day, inside the house. As adults, we understand that we have seasons and that we should plan ahead of time for the season that will be next. We can take advantage of the savings and expenses of the seasons. We are in winter right now, and we need heating but we still occasionally have warm days so we turn off the heat.
We used to have central heat and air and when our air unit went out we decided to not replace it but use window heat and air so we could control the air flow and which unit to use, sometimes both but many times not. It is very expensive to run central air and heat day and night every day to just keep our home temperature the same all year around. Much too expensive for us plus we had to put up with the fact that in summer it would blow hot air first until the condenser blew the cold air, then reverse with winter, it would blow cold air until the heat unit got warm. That just added to our electric bill.
In the spring we can save quite a bit on the utility bill and use nothing or a fan if needed in the room that we are in if it feels a bit too warm. We save all we can for the upcoming months that we will need air conditioning. Many of us have several months of very high heat but even with that we can modify and take advantage of the days that are a little bit cooler. Come fall, we are much like spring and can use much less and save up for the cost of winter.
Now, we are using less of our house because we decided to not heat and cool areas that we are not in. There will be many days that the whole house is open and curtains are blowing in the wind. Then there are days we retreat to our little flat. This winter, we have reverted back to when we were young and we had a gas heater by the wall that was turned on in the morning. We we were young we used to bundle up at night and had many blankets that we could pull over us and now we are doing this again and something feels very right about this.
Our vintage life has been very helpful for us to live sensible and with a bit of creativity our homes can become functional and charming without the big bills. Maybe today is a good day to start working towards having a home that does not drain the budget.
Some of you know that before Charles mother passed away we took in her cats. I have not shown them in awhile, this is Blue and she is saying hello to all of you. They have lived here with us, New Mommy and New Daddy we call ourselves, for a year and three months now. They are happy and well settled. Their play room is now by the kitchen so we only have to heat that room and our kitchen/bedroom/dining area/ all in one.
This is our very big boy "Jess".
Jess will not let me take a picture where you can actually see him. He is not black but Grey and has a beautiful face but he turns and jumps around when I try to take a picture but just wanted to show you he is a very big boy!
I hope all is well for you, are you making adjustments for the increasing cost of most everything. Up in the forum we talk about these things, and we learn from each other. I would love to see you there. Grandma Donna
