Sustainable – all said and done

Published October 16, 2012 by Rebecca Matheson

Doing things I’d said I’d do

Recognising the characteristics of a Enneagram One, we don’t celebrate small achievements well. The inner critic is ‘strong with this one’. And so here is a small celebration of some things I’ve done recently that I have spent a long time not doing and a long time wanting to do.

1. Meet my neighbour

We moved to this house back in February. After living on a main road with almost never seeing our neighbours we are now in a court. A court off a court. You can’t get much more ‘communal’ than that. Not that it’s a very communal street at all. I had every intention of going to meet at least one of my neighbours and it never happened. You know when you leave these things a few months, you’re no longer ‘new’ and it just gets more and more awkward (in my head). About a month ago those neighbours moved out. The house has been empty since then. Yesterday I met Mark. He is my neighbour. He was pulling down the fence/fixing the pailings between our two houses. He came to the door to ask if it was fine to walk across our property. He and his wife (whom I have not met) are fairly similar in age to us. When I was heading out to get groceries I had another brief chat to him. They own the place and they are renovating. I have met my neighbour.

2. Composting

Another little thing. We live in an area where you get three bins: recycling, rubbish and green-waste/composting. We have major issues with our rubbish as in this region you get a half size bin and it is emptied once every two weeks. This is a great theory and works to reduce waste until you have a baby and nappies OR you go on holidays and forget to put your bin up. I am currently using our greenwaste bin to store excess (humbug). Regardless, our lovely rental came with it’s own, rather robust compost bin which I haven’t been using. When I first moved in I put some scraps in a bucket and erm, I am embarrassed to say that the bucket is still under the sink (I don’t want to know about it). But as of this week I have been using a small open top container on the bench and when it fills up I take it out. I am composting.

3. Journalling

As mentioned in my previous post, I have started journalling again, after a much too long hiatus. This also means I am spending somewhat regular time reading my bible and praying and reflecting a bit more on life. Something I used to do regularly and something I find I need to do, to main some kind of inner clarity.

4. Cooking

I am a lazy cook. I can cook okay, but we eat a lot of pasta. Pasta sauce often just from the jar. I have had a long standing goal to plan some meals and so consequently eat better, spend less. Yesterday I did just that. I roughly planned some meals. Went shopping. Sadly the local fruit and veg shop isn’t open Mondays – which I’d forgotten. But best of all: I didn’t get bogged down in a system (which is what always thwarts me… wanting to instigate some kind of comprehensive database so I can plug in the meal I want to cook and spit out a shopping list – which is still terribly appealing and I do have a marvelous app that will do so, it just need a lot of work to get it functional). Last night I made gnocchiÂ from scratch. And I have some other different food planned for the rest of the week. Nothing too daunting, just different. Geoff does probably most of the cooking, but I’d like to learn to cook better: some simple, tasty, healthy meals – variety. Two of my sisters are great at this and the other one is a pastry chef/librarian-in-training (I don’t even want to pretend to compete!).

I find that routine is truly helpful for instigating stuff in my life. With a baby now on a routine (and boy does she have a freakish inner clock) I am set up with regular blocks of time and if I intentionally do certain things in those blocks of time, things get done.

Enneagram One Experiments House Life Sustainable

Published March 27, 2011 by Rebecca Matheson

Finders Keepers March 2011

Finders Keepers was dandy. I went with my friend Sam on the Saturday and after braving the masses of Collingwood fans we made it down to Shed 4 whereby I had an epic coughing fit and probably disturbed more than just the people infront of me in the lunch line.

The food area was much better set out this year with the coffee split off to the side and more sitting and eating space. The paper installation above the stage was pretty fantastic. Thumbs up to the cupcake stand at the front – we did a lap, had a cupcake and did a second lap, I truly appreciated the Ewok, it was quite excellent.

In terms of stalls this time around – there was a fair chunk of overlap from last time (both good and bad), one of the stalls I really loved last time wasn’t there (who sold super cute rabbity things) and there seemed to be a bit of an excess of silver jewelery. I also found that the prices seemed less accessible – I think there were more stalls in general and more that were charging more. I consequently bought less and was a bit less excited about the whole thing. It’s all very well but I’m not going to buy more than one or two things if the prices are jacked up however pretty and lovely they are. It’s fine to value ones craft, but make it affordable – it’s a market. There also seemed a few stalls that didn’t quite fit the mold of what I expected/wanted. There were a few selling rather non-descript scarves and one quite quilt’ish/old ladyish stalls that I would expect to find at your local market not a craft/design market that is held twice a year.

I came away with an excellent print by PrintSpace, and a very cute coin purse (at the ONE stall who had outstanding prices and were consequently extremely busy the whole time we wandered) Only Midge. But that’s it.

Other favourites (but alas either didn’t have the spare coinage or have too many brooches already…) Angus & Celeste and also Brkich there were also some extremely cute toys around that had great personality.

It was a good day out but perhaps a fraction disappointing compared to last time. Or maybe I’m just a cheapskate.

Culture Design Sustainable

Published April 17, 2010 by Rebecca Matheson

Scarf

Something quick to actually get things happening. Made this scarf. It worked fairly well – I’ve never ‘felted’ before. I.e. buy old woolen jumpers from the op-shop and then wash them in a hot cycle to shrink them… not sure if they shrunk quite as much as they should have but I don’t have a dryer to get them that extra step. Cut circles (or whatever) and sew them zig-zag all the way down. Next time I think I’ll make the scarf a tad longer, this used 30 circular pieces in total. 10 of each colour. I also have navy blue waiting to be used and there is STACKS of leftover material. I could also possibly be a tad neater on my circle cutting but no harm in smoothing things out a bit later. I just wanted to make something. And I have. Pretty happy with the effort.

*Next time triangles???

(Definitely assisted by my bargain jacket purchase… sadly not so eco friendly. But do love 50% off. One day I’ll work out how to sew jackets. Slowly, slowly)

Create Sustainable

diy scarf sew sewing upcycle

Published October 16, 2009 by Rebecca Matheson

Attitudes affect Behaviour – Blog Action Day

I do get a bit over the whole ‘climate change’ stuff sometimes. There are weeks where we thrash it to death through my design course. I do assignments on sustainable waste management and water and discuss how we as designers are both pretty much the problem and the solution. It’s a theme that rocks up in pretty much every class at some point during the semester. So I was a bit ‘mi lase’ (Which basically means ‘I don’t want to’ in Solomon Islands Pijin) with the Blog Action Day theme (Speaking of which, I’m kind of a day late). Then yesterday I spied a comment on someone’s facebook about having despite tried, their carbon footprint had increased in the past six months. From there ensued quite an interesting discussion between me and another who commented on the post.

“I can’t stand it when the hippies tell us it’s so easy to be green. The only way to be effective ecologically seems to be give up our entire way of life, completely… we can’t survive without the way we have life now. Even if only places like factories, hospitals, morgues and food storage places where allowed to continue as they are (which they need too) we are still screwed. I just wish someone could come up with a better efficient form of energy that can produce stuff to the levels we need.”

and then I entered the conversation with something like “Bollocks, yes we can”. Great starter, really about getting someone on my side.

So the conversation went on and honed in on ‘Do the little things make a difference’?Â As much as we’d like to think the little things don’t always make a huge difference, but the idea of these things and goals like Target 155 (which surely could be lower)Â is about attitude change which has bigger implications for overall behaviour. At the moment I feel is fair to call out the world around me as being too comfortable, too selfish, too lazy. Myself included. There are many things in regard to climate change that revolve around changing systems that sit at a higher level than many of us operate in but these systems also rely on an attitude change. So lets start with the little things within reach.

The conversation on facebook made me realise something, I do actually care very much about climate change. And fair bit more than I’ve realised. Just perhaps this will have implications for further altering my own behaviour?

Below is an average breakdown of how you use your domestic water… click to zoom.