Rotting food, sugary drinks, and too many towels to wash

So much for that post about the bokashi bin that never happened. Not that anyone's reading this blog, but I'm slipping on a lot of fronts so I need to 'fess up and stay accountable to myself here.

My beautiful bokashi bin finally arrived and I have set it up... so far all good in terms of there being no noticeable smell, but I'm giving it a few weeks of fermentation to see if that changes. One problem I've had is that it's bigger than I expected, which means it doesn't fit nicely into my kitchen. I've been experimenting with other places to put it, and for the moment it's on the dining room table - not the best and most guest-friendly place for a bucket of rotting food :S

In other news I've not only been having many many soft drinks, I've also had quite a bit of coke in the last two weeks particularly. BAD Jess. It got to the point where it was too many to be able to remember them all to put on my soft drink counter. I'm pretty mad at myself, but I'm making a new start today, which is all I can do. So from today: only water and tea, with the occasional fruit juice, coffee, or soda water with a dash of cordial. I decided the occasional coffee will be ok, as long as it's fair trade and organic (the reason I'm allowing myself this naughty caffeine drink is that on the days where I absolutely cannot stay awake, I'm finding myself giving in to getting coke - or worse, an energy drink - so I can make it through the day. If I allow myself A FEW coffees each week, maybe it'll be easier to resist the other evils...?)

My showers have been creeping past the 4min point, so SLAP on my wrist. I'm sitting at about 6-8min now, and there's NO excuse now that I have my beautiful little timer in the shower. Time to recommit to that, especially seeing as the last water bill told me I'm using 192 litres PER DAY, which is way under the government's personal target for each person of 155 litres. Hmm.

One thing that really annoys me is that our rental property only has a full flush toilet. It's a shame, because apparently about 20% of a home's water is flushed down the toilet so there's huge water saving potential there. I doubt there's any chance the landlord would put in a new toilet for rental tenants (?) so I'll just have to focus on other water saving tactics...

1. actually start using my shower bucket, and try flushing the toilet with this when I have got enough buckets worth (I've heard you can do this but have never tried flushing the loo without pressing the flush button... we'll see)

2. be strict with myself again about having 4min showers

3. Shave my legs BEFORE I have the shower so I can just rinse the soap off under the running water when I do start my shower

4. Guilty confession time... I usually use a different towel every day. What the? So, try to use towels for more than 1 day so I don't end up washing a load of towels every week

OK I think that's enough for now. I'll let you know how that all goes.

I gotta go see my supplier...

So I just found out that there's an Environment Shop round the corner from me! Very exciting news, though I'm a bit disappointed I didn't know sooner as I could have got my bokashi bin from them. Instead it's using greenhouse gases getting sent to me. At least I hope it's getting sent to me, it hasn't arrived yet. Oh well at least I can get my bokashi refill bags from the Environment Shop, which is exciting!

http://www.environmentshop.com.au/

They sent me a catalogue, and there were SO many delightful things in there. Must... control... spending! I am not allowed to buy the remote controlled power switches, the real beer handmade shampoo bar, the staple-less stapler OR the every drop shower saver. No more buying stuff until the end of the year. Hehe.

One of the exciting (but certainly not necessary... now) things I saw was the BabyBeeHinds fitted cloth nappies - I knew I'd have to use cloth nappies when I had kids, but always hated the idea of trying to fold them into one like an origami and then try not to stab them as you get the safety pins in place *shudder* - fitted cloth nappies? Great invention :)

Apparently the Environment Shop also stocks the stuff I recently bought from Ripple, a business in Melbourne that sell water saving stuff. Cool.

OK time to leave the blogging and finish reading my chocolate book...

*Oh btw, the other day I was reading the 'About Ripple' section of their website and found this juicy, appealing bit of information about them:
"Currently, we choose 100% GreenPower from our energy provider, offer secure bicycle parking for staff, and insist on the reusing, recycling and composting of waste where appropriate. When required to print, our paper is recycled and sourced locally. We participate in a car share rather than owning a company car. Staff are encouraged to contribute to office initiatives regarding the sustainability of all our operations."

Hell yeah.

my water wasting ways...

I felt inspired by a post on Towards Sustainability to go to http://www.savewater.com.au/ and see what initiatives I could try around the house to reduce my water usage.

Here's what i came up with:

- When washing dishes by hand, don’t rinse them under a running tap. If you have two sinks, fill the second one with rinsing water. I must admit I rinse my dishes under a running tap because I feel like the dishes don't get clean enough if they're rinsing in water where other dishes have been rinsed. Very anal retentive. I'm going to try and switch to rinsing in the sink though.

- Catch running water whilst waiting for it to warm up. Use it to water plants, rinse dishes or wash fruit and vegetables. I want to try this with both the kitchen and the bathroom. I'll let you know how it goes.

- Wash with a full load and you'll save 10 litres of water each wash. I do fill up the load usually, but sometimes with the delicates wash I normally only have a few things in there. I can probably work on washing more things together...

- Use a shower timer. Choose from a manual 4-minute egg timer or a more sophisticated electronic timer. I've worked on timing my showers by setting an alarm on my phone, but this is getting annoying and a shower timer would be handy. It's on my list of things to buy.

- Shave your legs before taking a shower. Use running shower water to rinse off. Hmmm that's a nifty idea! I'll try this one next time I need to shave my legs.

Awesome. A lot of the other stuff on the site doesn't apply, as I don't have a garden to speak of, a garage, a pool, a dishwasher, etc. But there was still heaps for me to work on. Must remember to recommend that site to friends and family.

I am a Wally with water...

I remember the "don't be a Wally with water" campaign from primary school, and I must confess that I did not learn my lesson at the time. I always knew I was taking long showers - I would have pegged it at about ten minutes, which is still obviously way too long. However, earlier in the week I started putting a timer on so I'd know how long my showers actually were.

The first one was fifteen minutes. Ouch! What was I doing in there? Not happy Jan.

The second time I tried to cut down the time I was in there by being careful not to just daydream and relax under the water, but focusing on what I was doing. I thought I was doing pretty well... Ten minutes. Harrumph.

Yesterday I decided to put a timer on that would go off at me after four minutes. I managed to get out at five because when the timer went off I was half through shaving my legs. Hmm. Still, five was better than fifteen and ten.

Anyway, today I really focused and managed my first-ever four minute shower. I was actually about to turn off the taps when the alarm started going off. Hooray! It should have happened a long time ago but better now than never, hey?

Who would have thought a few months ago that I'd be excited at cutting down a shower time? Once I get the four minutes down pat I'll be changing it to my final goal of three, with a fourth optional minute for days when I shave my legs.

At some stage I'd like to get a bucket I can collect the water's-still-warming-up stuff in... then I can use it to water my tomatoes and strawberries.