TWO COOKBOOKS ARE ENOUGH FOR ME.

Well, for those of you who haven’t heard from me in months, I’ve been busy changing my home space and continuing – with only occasional stumbles - on my minimalist journey. The change was radical. We bought an old RV. And for the past four months we – my husband and I – have lived in a 30-foot RV along with our one gray, outdoor cat. Our RV is parked in a rather large, tree-lined mobile park. Here, we have all the services and Internet for our general creature comfort. 
 
On the basis of our recent experiences, I can say that  life can improve by living with less - all that depending, of course, on what sort of person you are. For us, the minimalist life is challenging, empowering and fun. Saying no to consumer overkill is a tough skill to acquire, but once we had it, we easily gave up a bunch of things that other people still cling to and started to live life on your own terms. 

As we were to become RV full-timers, we prepared to rid ourselves of virtually everything that we deemed unnecessary. And, for us, holding on to just the essentials is a great satisfaction.
 
What fits, in the way of furniture, are only the original RV built-ins. So, all our old furniture had to go. Other personal possessions needed to be weeded out. For example, my wardrobe is now a third of what it was 12 months ago. My husband's held on to about half of the clothes he had. As for household items, we started downsizing a while back when we still lived in regular housing. We took an audit of our bedding, towels, toiletries, kitchen items, electronics. We kept only the best and what we truly used. We got rid of one of our cars 12 months ago. Now we have only one small car and a motorcycle that gets my husband to work. That seems just right for our life in a small town where almost everything is less than a half-hour drive. 

Despite our efforts to prepare for life in the RV, we had to face the fact that the living space is extremely limited – beyond what we could have imagined. So, for the first two months in the RV, we rented a storage unit for the overflow. We also gave a lot away to friends and to the thrift store. We were still cramped for space. There was a real lack of space for my kitchen stuff. And I thought I didn’t have so much. Well, as I’ve found out, I had way much more than I needed. At first, I had kitchen stuff hidden in every sort of place well beyond the tiny kitchen - into the living area and under the bed. I realized that I would have to sort through and keep just what was the most necessary. And that I’ve done and probably will continue to do over the next few months. 

Also, when we moved in, I knew that we wouldn’t have space for a formal book shelf. Our books had to be tucked away in a couple of overhead compartments. That meant that the total - for me - couldn’t be more than a couple of dozen books. And, as in other areas of my material life, I thought about why I was holding onto treasured things and what would happen if I let them go. I spent a whole morning sorting through and donated about thirty books to a community library. And, now, I am the proud owner of 20 books – 6 non-fiction, 12 yoga and self-help books, and just two cookbooks. (Because of their usefulness, cutting back on cookbooks was something that I found especially difficult.)

Finally, settling down to just two cookbooks.

Anyway, that’s the introduction to what I’m talking about today – the downsizing of my cookbook collection. Just a year ago, I had - maybe - twelve cookbooks of all sizes, shapes, age and content. I had believed - erroneously, I imagine - that twelve was a small number. Twelve seemed to be only a few when compared to some friends who report having as many as fifty cookbooks. (What they do with all of them I really don’t know.) It seems if you love to cook, you probably have been collecting a lot of cookbooks. So, this must be a particularly challenging area for library downsizing. 

Of the dozen that I had in the apartment, I'd kept three cookbooks for the RV kitchen. They were: Better Home and Gardens - classic loose-leaf, 5-ringed edition, Frugal Gourmet, and a really old, paperback Joy of Cooking that I'd been carrying around for decades. I felt rather proud of myself for having eliminated well over half of my collection. Still, after a while, I realized that I didn’t need all three and decided to do something about it. Going only e-recipe cooking wasn't a good option for me. While I do sometimes look up recipes on the Internet, most of the time I prefer the tried and true meals from traditional cookbooks. The recipes that I use tend to be easily made as given or simply modified accorded to my whim or, more often, after the lack of one or another ingredients that are included in the write-up. I also had a collection made up of recipe clips from magazines, Internet print-outs and fully hand-written pages. 

For most of the dishes that I like to make, I choose recipes from cookbooks with traditional American recipes. But then, again, I occasionally want to do some ethnic dishes – mostly Indian, Italian and Mexican. I really don't care much about the photos. Also, fortunately, I had no sentimental cookbook inherits from my mom or grandmas.

What I finally did was keep the Better Homes and Gardens. That was the most useful as it was – minus the meat, fish, and poultry sections that I removed. As a vegetarian, I was 99+% sure that I wouldn't be using anything in those sections. I held onto about forty separate pages of ethnic cooking recipes from the Frugal Gourmet book. It was an old paperback and falling apart, anyway. So, I didn't have to feel so bad about that. I put the Frugal Gourmet pages in the Better Homes and Gardens book, punching holes and separating them into the same food divisions already there.   My diverse recipe clips were transferred to hand-written pages in a special binder that I found on sale at the bookstore. The twenty or so Joy of Cooking pages that I saved were small and fit into plastic page covers in the binder. To tell the truth, a good part of the things in the binder are still in the form of printed pages, computer printouts or magazine clips, awaiting the day, if it ever comes, when I get around to transferring them into nicely hand-written pages.

For those of you who like the idea of cutting back to only a few cookbooks, I urge you to do so. Just start slow and enjoy the activity. Look at one book at a time. Take time to pull the book off the shelf and consider if it's really worth it according to your time and skills. Honor your emotions. Send all those that don't make the cut to someone else, so they'll have a new home. Other books that aren't so valuable  can be donated to the thrift store. You should be happy with the remaining cookbooks. Any other recipe that you might need for some special occasion can easily be found on Internet cooking blogs.

TAKE STEPS TO USE LESS WATER.

TAKE STEPS TO USE LESS WATER

Fresh water supplies are a huge concern for both industrialized and developing countries, and the lowering of water reserves is an alarming environmental issue throughout the world.

While water covers 71 percent of the Earth's surface, less than 3% of that water is fresh water, and can be considered as usable drinking water. Because of global warming, overpopulation, and decades of abuse of water, there just isn’t enough to go around. The sectors of society that dominate in water use are agriculture, chiefly the meat, cotton, and coffee industries; large industries especially those involving metals; and recreation, principally that used to maintain hotels, resorts and golf courses.

The consequence of all this water consumption is a growing process of draught and desertification. Water is scarce in many areas and becoming increasingly expensive as a resource for the general population. At the same time, corporations are converting what's left of our water into bottled water for profit. The situation is so dreadful that many predict that, over the next few decades, water will cease to be considered a basic human right, and will be traded and commercialized just as other natural resources, like our forests and oil, are now.

Today, more than one sixth of the world’s population, 1.1 billion people do not have access to any safe drinking water. Then, consider that the average person in the U. S. uses between 100 and 250 gallons of water a day, all of which comes from safe water supplies. How ever you look at it, that's an unsustainable amount of water being used in the U.S. Unsustainable in this context means that there is no way that so much water consumption can be projected into the future, what with national population growth and dwindling supplies.

Experts say that only a small fraction of the total being used by U.S. people would be sufficient, if water saving measures were taken at the household level. Per capita residential water use in the United States is more than four times higher than that in England and five times higher than in Germany. (I suppose part of this problem is the existence of so many “McMansions” in the U.S.)

So, what should the average person or average household do to face up to this terrible threat?

First, it's necessary to study what's happening to the water on this planet and understand the reasons for its disappearance. That way we will be able to consider what measures to take now and be able to talk to other people about the situation. We also must be ready, at some point, to get actively involved and help mobilize our neighbors to fight for our public water supplies.

Next take steps to use less water at home.

Households can reduce their domestic water use, also called direct water usage, by doing these things:

- Be sure you have no leaks in your home. (According to some experts, as many as half of U.S. homes have a slow water leak.)

- Install water saving toilets and showerheads, and close the faucet when you brush your teeth.(Do you really need to flush every time you urinate? Can you limit your showers to three minutes? Can your children be bathed together --with supervision, of course?

- Don’t wash clothes in the washer or dishes in the dishwasher until you have a full load. If you wash dishes by hand, keep a pan of sudsy water and soap up all the dishes before turning on the rinse water.

- When you boil vegetables or eggs, don't throw out the water. There are valuable vitamins and minerals in that water. Use it for soups and stews, baking bread, or making hot cereal.

- Save what fresh water we have left by never throwing medicines, paints, harsh chemicals, or petroleum products down the drain or into the sewer system.

- Wash your car with one bucket of water.

- Sweep your front entry, driveway or deck – don't do any washing of these areas

- Build a rock garden to fill up part of your lawn or install landscaping that does not require lots of water, like ground cover plants. A more radical option would be to remove all your lawn and put in a totally natural landscape.

- Harvest rainwater and install a rainwater storage container, also called a cistern. There are 250,000 cisterns in use in the U. S., today. There need to be tens of thousands more in the next few years. Cistern water, without treatment, is considered to be unsafe for drinking, cooking, and tooth brushing, but it can be used in the garden or for other household cleaning purposes.

- Plant trees wherever you can in your yard, for shade, for beauty or just for holding water in the soil. There are trees for all spaces – you don't need a big yard to have a tree or two. Ask an expert in your area about indigenous trees (those that grow wild in your area) that need less water and space.

- Find other uses -- such as for watering plants, washing cars, etc. -- for once-used water from bathing, clothes washing and bathroom sinks.

The indirect water usage of homes is that which deals with the products purchased and consumed by household members. The indirect use of water is usually much greater than the direct one. One way households can lower their indirect water usage is by choosing different products that require less water as part of their growing, processing or manufacture. Here are some examples.

- Buy used cars, not new ones.

- Remodel older houses instead of buying new ones - unless the new ones are much smaller or much more efficient.

- Eat less meat or become vegetarian.

- Drink tea instead of coffee, or if you feel you must drink coffee, limit yourself to one or two cups per day. Better yet, drink a lot of plain water -- it's very good for you.

- Wear used clothing or wear your own for a few more years instead of buying new.

- Or at least, refrain from buying all-cotton clothes, since cotton is one of the greatest users of water.

Talk to your family members about the situation of water throughout the world. Tell your children that the resources we have today are God-given for our proper use and not for our sinful abuse. Begin the discussion by asking them how they think the earth will be in 50 years if everyone on earth -- or even if everyone in the U.S. -- uses water as they are doing today. Tell them about good stewardship of the earth and what that means to families now and to generations of families in the future. With the children’s help, think up ways that the family can save water and reward the children in some way, when they help conserve water.

EMBRACE A SIMPLE HOME

If you want to live simply, don't try to fit your home life into a pre-molded floor plan - even the one that you now have as determined by your outside walls. Instead try to make sense of the way you want to live. Think outside the blueprint and search your heart to create the simple home that you’ve always longed to enjoy. A simplified home will allow you to focus on what's important and relax more when you need to with the added bonus of cleaning less and consuming less - what with lowered energy use and need for fewer material things. (And, as I keep harping in this blog, the best way to help our planet is by consuming less.)

You can begin your adventure of embracing a simple home by making a mission statement - a few lines of text that cover what's true about your home life and minus all that's false. You probably should pass on this statement of purpose to other members of your household to see if there's some basic agreement regarding a common mission. Reflect on how you truly live or hope to live in the not-so-distant future. Don't let other people's purposes or rules guide you choices. Don't try to plan for what your life may look like in 10 or more years.

Look for ideas to create a master plan for simplifying your home - in magazines, catalogues, on the Internet, and in showcases. Most people simplify by downsizing - choosing to live in a smaller space - and using that opportunity to find greater organization. You can easily make this choice the next time you move. But even if you plan to stay in the same house for several more years - or forever - there are ways to down-size and organize - by cleaning out and closing off rooms that serve little purpose for your current lifestyle. Remember a simple home includes only the basics and doesn't need part-time use rooms - like guest rooms and even a separate dining room or living room often is not necessary. Many times, outdoor spaces can be a good substitute for additional or little used rooms. (Putting the hype for McMansions aside, we often can fully live our home lives in one, two or three rooms and be just as well off or better when it comes to some really important things in our lives - like time for family, creature comfort, and spiritual growth.)

To create your simple home, assess your real needs and eliminate any excess. When you have a plan for the spaces you need for your lifestyle, then organize and declutter all areas. Minimize furnishings and decorative pieces in your plan. Use your walls wisely for extra vertical storage. Color can be part of a simple scheme - make use of it on walls, floors, curtains, cushions, etc.

As a place to start, here are the functions and basic spaces that just about all of us need:
- Calm place for individual relaxing, sleeping, meditation and prayer (bedrooms);
- Area for eating, preparing meals, and socializing (kitchen or great-room);
- Area for work at home, including office, laundry, gardening, and crafts (may be separate spaces or just  work areas in the already mentioned rooms).

CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH THE YELLOW, CANINE CAT BURGLAR

About 10 days ago, our young dog, Sofi, part German Shepherd, part Husky and now weighing about 70 pounds, began to show signs of going into her first heat. We were concerned because, to our best calculations, she was only 8 months old. But then, we could easily be wrong because we really don’t know her birth date for sure. Anyway, we hoped that we were wrong about her condition. But, because the signs of hormonal change were there, Enrique cancelled the walks with our dogs around the neighborhood until we could clear up the confusion.

A week ago, our doubts about Sofi’s situation, if we had any left, were ended. All night long we heard her racing from one side of the house to the other, banging her body into the fence, trying to catch the attention of the many dogs that romp down our street. While Sofi was busy making a show of herself the entire night, Helen, her still puppy companion, was barking on and off, seemingly every time another male dog came to the front of our house. In the early morning, we woke up to find six male dogs were making a huge noise, trying jointly to knock over our very sturdy iron rail fence – that stands 7 feet high. Sofi was at the fence, enjoying her newly acquired popularity. Enrique went out yelling as loud as he could and chased them away with a meter long staff that he uses for weapons training. Enrique then fixed up the chicken wire addition to the fence that Sofi had worn down over the past months by sticking her head over it to look out at the many interesting activities occurring on our corner, including passerby street dogs, truck vendors, and people waiting for the bus. He also put up an additional half meter of wire.

Now, I should tell you that most, if not all, of the street dogs in our neighborhood, actually have homes. At least they have houses where they go to get food most every day along with a pat on the head – if they’re lucky. It’s just that they aren’t allowed in the houses and, lacking fences or chains, they don’t have any reason to stay in their own yards. The houses in this new section of the city are tiny, and most have only one multi-use room and two small bedrooms. What with the occupancy per house being, by my best estimate, about four or five people, there just isn’t any space for a dog. Nevertheless, many people here say they "have" several dogs.

Enrique and I are lucky because we have a corner lot and that gives us more yard than most of our neighbors. We also keep our 2 dogs behind a strong fence, and they only get out when we take them for walks. To continue with my story, the six street dogs did not return after their encounter with Enrique. They apparently had tried with all their combined strength to topple the fence without any success. What with Enrique’s obvious anger and means of dealing with them, the six street visitors did not come back, at least they didn't when we could see – or hear – them.

We thought we had handled the problem the best we could. After all, the fence had withstood the combined weight of six highly motivated male dogs. We knew that no dog could get through the chicken wire without jumping as higher than a meter and then propelling himself through the 8-inch wide, diamond-shaped rails. In our judgment that would be impossible. When we no longer saw the six earlier canine visitors, we convinced ourselves that, even with Sofi’s continuing provocative actions, that we would not have any further problems. Of course, as you might imagine, we were wrong.

Five days ago, I left the house to go downtown early in the morning. As I waited on the bus on our corner, I saw an underfed, medium height yellow dog on the opposite corner, sniffing the air and looking over at our house. He was really ugly and looked just once removed from a fox or a coyote. At the time, I imagined that Sofi’s perfume had drawn him there. But, I was unconcerned. Enrique was home and, as we had seen in the past few days, the fence was a solid barrier against Sofi’s suitors.

Enrique was at home that morning and, after a while, he went out back to do his regular weapon’s training. He was carrying the meter-long staff. When he went out the back door, the two female dogs greeted him as usual and began to follow him around as he prepared to do his practice. Everything seemed normal. Enrique had just begun his practice when he saw something strange. At first he wasn’t sure what it was. Then he realized that some animal had dashed out of our large doghouse and was speeding around the side of the house. As Enrique ran around the corner of the house, he saw a scruffy, skinny yellow dog, trying to exit our property. He was furious at the presence of the intruder and began to yell and run after the dog. He also tried to hit it with the staff. When the dog reached the fence, he leaped and hurled himself through the small diamond shape rail just above the chicken wire. Just as he went through the fence, Enrique hit his back leg hard with the staff. The dog yelped and went away limping as he headed down the street.

Even with as mad as Enrique was, he was amazed. The dog was as agile as a trained circus dog. The evidence was clear. The yellow dog had entered our back yard without making any noise, sometime in the early morning. To do that, we agreed that the yellow dog must have had the skills of a cat burglar. He obviously had entered the property through the fence without making any noise, made fast friends with both Sofi and Helen, and had been in the doghouse with both females for perhaps as much as an hour. The remarkable part of this is that neither female dog had barked at the intruder. I guess his incredible savoir-faire overwhelmed the two of them.

Now we don’t know what actually went on inside our rather large doghouse. There must not have been a lot of extra space in there what with three dogs inside. Nevertheless, the weeks ahead will tell if the intruder was able to mate with Sofi. What we do know is that the yellow dog would have to have even more sophisticated cat burglar tricks in order to come back into our fenced yard. The same day of the unwanted dog's visit, Enrique requested fifty cinder blocks and made a block wall on the sides of our house. Only the gate remained unprotected with block. Then, Enrique took a large piece of canvas and lashed it to the sides of the gate. The canvas appears to be impassable.

I saw the yellow dog two or three times after that. With each appearance, he was limping a little less. He continues to come up to the fence at least once trying to see if he could get in again. He hasn't been able to pass through the fence and he just sniffs around and barks to Sofi. She comes to the fence and barks back, but had no way of doing more. Whenever Enrique or I see the male dog, we opened the front door and chase hime away. The yellow dog yelps loudly with fear and goes away fast, fearful or being hit again with a stick.

From what we can see today, Sofi has finished with her first heat. We are now breathing a sigh of relief and our new cinder block side walls are providing a lot of needed privacy for us as well as for our two female dogs. The dogs, of course, are not at all happy with the newly enforced fence that blocks their view of street happenings.

DO YOU NEED A BROOM CLOSET?

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HOME MANAGEMENT: find storage space in your home.

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GET GREENER: using less energy in the home.

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