Green and Thrifty

Exploiting passive solar heating on a sunny winter afternoon. Posy is eating fried rice for afternoon tea, and for some reason has filled up an old water bottle with milk.. The dog is just blissfully happy.

Mostly, the green and thrifty things I do day by day are small and boring. But the accumulated effect is that in a thousand tiny ways I manage to live cheaper, slower and more sustainably. So here are some of this week's boring green and thrifty moments.

My winter boots are getting scuffed and unhappy because I wear them every single day at work. I have two pairs that take turns. I hate cold feet, so I wear them with thick black tights and skirts, but no-one can see that inside the boots I am also wearing thick hiking socks, which keep my toes toasty and happy. So the hard-wearing boots deserved some love, and I gave them the full shoe polish treatment. I have discovered that with long boots it is so much easier to polish them while wearing them, brushing and polishing the boot with foot propped up on the bath. My boots are now looking shiny and respectable again, and I am sure they will last longer and keep the rain out more effectively.

I sewed up a tiny hole in my newest op-shop cardigan. To be honest, 'a stitch in time' is one of my least favourite domestic proverbs, but really, I should get more friendly with the mending basket, because if I stitch in time, I save a piece of clothing. If I don't, I lose it, and then, horror! - I have to go and buy more clothes. Aargh! Really, I should just get on and do the rest of the mending..

As per usual I ate left-overs from dinner every day for lunch. Did you know that there are people who refuse to eat left-overs? I cannot understand this. Almost every dinner is even yummier the next day..

Thrifty entertainment: Grandma and Rosy have been busy with their giant 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle this week. After completing two 500 piece puzzles in three days last week they needed more of a challenge. Autumn leaves reflected in a lake. Ha. That slowed them down.

I have been crocheting around squares for my afghan rug again, after staring at it morosely for a month and not doing any. Mum always inspires me to start it again, because she has a special talent for being able to sit and knit quietly in a corner through any family upheaval. So now crocheting has become my new substitute for flapping about pointlessly. Can't decide what to have for dinner? Crochet around a granny square. Arguing with the youngest child again? May as well crochet around a granny square; it may give me Zen-like patience, who knows? The advantage is, if I really can't be bothered doing anything else, and all I want to do is curl up in a corner and wait for the world to go away, at least if I have crocheted around some granny squares I can have had a little crisis AND have been productive, so it's win-win really. And now we know why our grannies resorted to knitting every afternoon at about half past four...

This week I chose a library book at random, because I liked the cover and the title. I rarely do this, but this week I was rewarded with Elegance of the Hedgehog. It is a novel about literature and ideas, with a concierge who is carefully hiding her passion for literature and art, a school girl who has decided there is no point in living and who is planning to stage a dramatic suicide on her thirteenth birthday, and an enigmatic Japanese businessman who moves in on the fourth floor. Translated from the French, and immensely popular in France, I enjoyed it as a week end treat. Must say though, that even though the ending worked beautifully from a literary point of view, from a purely sociological passion to see what happens when world views collide, I would have liked to have seen an alternate ending.. which would of course, have required a sequel or a very long novel, but still..

It is Sunday night, and with a full day at work tomorrow (The Girl and I) or at school (Posy and Rosy), we have left-overs stashed in wee glass bowls for our lunch (The Girl, and I) or ready to pop in the thermos (Rosy), or sushi prepped and rolled (Posy). Grandma and Grandpa will be foraging in the fridge for their lunch, and the dog will look soulful, hoping for tidbits, even though he doesn't eat lunch (so why he resembles a barrel is a complete mystery).

Wishing you a joyful week of thrifty delicious left-overs and satisfying library books. Tell me what you have been up to..