Simple Living

Our journey to living more simply will be ongoing and never-ending I think. I am constantly re-evaluating the things we are doing, the how, the why, the what, when and where. I received this book by Rhonda Hetzel a few weeks ago, and I really do love it.

Although it's really quite a simple book and I didn't really learn anything 'new' from it, it is so beautifully presented, and such a gentle guide and, hmmmm, kind of a tap on the shoulder saying "hey, remember this stuff, you know it.........it works, keep trying!"

The biggest thing I have taken from the book is the message for Mums who choose to stay home and not return to work outside of the home.The message, the way I perceive it, is this (in a nutshell): your work in the home is important, incredibly important.

 Although our governments and society in general are constantly trying to have us believe that contributing financially is more important than contributing to society through the work that is being done in our homes, raising our children.............this is not necessarily true.

 Every day we head out in to the world, perhaps to school, to work, to catch up or care for family and friends, or any one of a million other reasons, whatever it is.

Whatever happens each day, it may be fabulous, it may be awful, it might just be ok.............at the end of the day we head for home. It should be a haven.

This is where we are raising our children and nurturing our relationships, taking stock of how we choose to live, taking care of ourselves.

In my ever so humble opinion there is too much pressure on women with children to be organising alternative care for their children so that they can return to work. Makes so very little sense to me. In my wildest dreams never did I plan on having children so I could pass them on to someone else to raise while I worked.

I truly do not feel that my government, society, my community in general, give those mothers who stay at home to raise children any support or encouragement to do what they do. Sad, really, how driven by the dollar our world really is.

Holy-going-off-track, clearly all of this is very much on my mind at the  moment............this was to be a post about bread and bircher muesli, believe it or not. Doesn't take much to get me off track sometimes.

 I simply believe that when Mums do choose to stay at home and raise their children, the world benefits from this, it's good, and there should be encouragement and support (I'm not referring to financial support when I refer to support for SAHM's, simply the kind of support where SAHM's will no longer be made to feel like they are lazy leeches of society) for those who choose to live this way.

I am getting off my soap box now, to talk bread. Promise.

I started making bread a month or so ago, I'm still trying to nut it all out.

Started out using a free standing mixer to knead the dough and baking in the oven. I quite like doing it this way but it means that we  always have our fresh bread in the afternoon, and not in the morning when we really want it.

This is one of my oven baked loaves, so yummy on the day of baking........the next day, and subsequent days....not so much. My bread is still coming out a little 'doughy', so maybe it's just because of that.

 
This also, obviously, an oven job, is a Spinach and Fetta pull apart. I wasn't a huge fan, it was a little too 'spinachy' for me. Surprizingly though, the kids liked it. After they got over their initial 'That looks yuck' thoughts that is.

We were given a bread making machine by one of my sisters and have used it a couple of times and will use it again. The big plus for me with the bread machine is the fact that you can have fresh bread (and the beautiful fresh bread aroma) ready to go when you get out of bed in the morning. Just sitting there on the kitchen bench waiting for you! That's gold.

The big negative is that the bread machine is a decent sized appliance and if you have an itty bitty kitchen like me.........where in the world are you going to keep that sucker? Also I really do like doing it the way I was, but there's no way we'll ever get to wake up to fresh bread in the morning with me doing it that way.

Haven't decided for or against either way yet. Going to give it a bit more time.

In other kitchen adventures, my little boy who really is just not that interested in food that's good for him, decided he wanted to try bircher muesli. We have a selection of reading material in our loo, for those who like to sit and ponder. Clary is one of these people. He often sits in there singing his little heart out, loudly. You just know when Clary is sitting on the toilet.

One day he called me to his office in the toilet to show me a recipe in a magazine he'd found in there. I didn't think too much of it, but he later brought it to my attention again. It was for bircher muesli and he was keen. I hadn't had bircher before because although I thought it sound kind of nice, I also thought it sounded kind of cold and gloopy. Which it is. But yummy! Perfect for summer (it's Autumn here so probably won't make it again for a while), and perfect just to have as a snack, as well as for breakfast.

 We took our oats and added grated pear and apple, a bit of a mix of chopped up dried fruit (apricot, raisins and cranberries, I think), chopped nuts (almonds and walnuts, that's what we had on hand) some apple juice, yogurt and honey, I think that's about it. Mixed all that up and popped it into the fridge overnight.

Clary did the grating and a bit of chopping too. It looked gloopy like this when we were done.

The next morning we stirred in some milk and a little bit of extra honey and enjoyed it. Yum.

Best Homemade All Purpose Cleaner Ever.

Ok, I guess it's entirely possible that this is not actually the Worlds' Best Homemade Cleaner Ever, but it would have to be pretty close I think. And if you know of a concoction that perhaps could take out the Worlds' Best Homemade Cleaner Ever title, then share the love and pass it on to me.

A couple of months ago, I set out on a quest to minimize the amount of chemicals and artificial ickies in our life and home. I started with general household cleaning goodies. I looked at a lot of different methods and concoctions via the internet.

Of course, two of the cheapest and easiest natural cleaners available are vinegar and bicarb soda. Seriously, there cannot be a person alive who does not know that. I've known it for a long time, but I haven't been doing it! Crazy. I would do it sometimes, but I wasn't consistent. If, say, my mother-in-law was due in an hour or so and things were a bit grimy (they often are) and I hadn't noticed till the very last minute (I usually don't), I would just grab that Pine O'Clean 4 in 1 or whatever it is, and get wiping. But while doing my natural cleaning research I became very, very aware of just how efficient vinegar and bicarb are, in getting the cleaning done. Especially in the bathroom, love it.

But still, I do love the convenience (I know, I know, it's really not hard or time consuming to go the vinegar and bicarb route all the time, but even to shave seconds off the cleaning is attractive to me) of just grabbing the old spray bottle and squirting that grimy crap away.

Finally I have it. It's cheap, it's free of chemicals, it's easy.

Awesome All Purpose Cleaner

1 teaspoon washing soda

2 teaspoons Borax

2 tablespoons white vinegar

2 cups hot water

10 drops of essential oil, whatever you like, lavender, orange, lemon, mix them up if you want (I just used lavender)

quarter of a cup of liquid castille soap (I used Dr Bronners)

Use a funnel to pour all ingredients except for the castille soap into your spray bottle and shake to mix them up. Then add your castille soap and shake it all up again.

You're good to go. Spray. And wipe.

I use this on the kitchen benches and I think it is awesome. I used this to get rid of some truly disgusting grime, the kind of ick you find on top of the cuboard that is located above your stovetop. Do you know the one I mean? The thick, sticky stuff, like dirt mixed with oil. Sprayed this stuff on there, left it for 5 minutes and just wiped it all off. Too easy.

And while it would be nice to be able to tell you that I've got that stuff all packaged up looking as pretty as these below (from Murchison-Hume)...........

this is my stuff here. On the subject of those plastic spray bottles also, I do actually find these Hills brand ones, which you can find in the gardening section of hardware stores, to be 100% better than those crap things they sell in the supermarkets and at the $2 shops.

On the left are my stunningly gorgeous Orange Infused Cleaning wipes (again, convenience).

I simply used already-used Chux for these, soaked them in hot water/vinegar mix with a few drops of orange essential oil added. After a 5-10 minute soak I squeeze them out and stick them in the bottle, they're ready whenever you need them.

For the first batch of these wipes I actually did the orange oil myself (covering torn up orange peel with boiling water and squeezing the oil out of the peel), but all subsequent batches I just use essential oil straight from the bottle and have found that to be just fine.