Sustainable habits that our visitors find weird
Its not until we have visitors, or we stay away from home, that we realise how weird some of our habits might seem to other people. If you are trying to live a simple, frugal, self-reliant or sustainable life, you probably have some weird habits too. I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours....
1. We eat what we grow
Sometimes people bring us packaged food from the supermarket. Honestly we don't need any food, if anything we have too much food. We have all the meat, vegetables, eggs and milk we can eat at the moment. I actually got a little stressed out recently by exactly how much food we HAVE at the moment. Please don't buy food for us, but we would love to share what you grow yourself. When I want to take something to share with someone else, I usually want to grab something out of the garden, is it weird to turn up with a kg of tomatoes, or a carton of eggs?
2. We don't make much "rubbish"
Firstly, we line our rubbish bin with newspaper, rather than using a bin bag. Second all our vege scraps go into the worm farm(s) - we have two worm farms! We try not to buy things with packaging and always take green bags shopping, so we probably only needed to put out the wheelie bin once a month if it didn't get too stinky (and now we don't even have a council rubbish collection, so we take our bin to the local transfer station about once a month). I also hoard things that might be useful, like envelopes, scraps of plain paper, rubber bands, paper bags, glass jars and bottles, and buttons.... we don't have recycling here in the South Burnett anymore, so reusing is our only option.
3. We conserve water
We collect rainwater in tanks, and that's all we have for drinking, cooking, washing up, showering, laundry and for the chickens and garden. We don't waste water. And I mean we really don't, not like when you have town water and you kind of try not to use it much. This is our only water supply. If we run out of water, we have to buy town water, and the town water around here is pretty awful, we really don't want to have to buy it, so we don't have to wait to be put on water restrictions! We take a bath (one between two) or a very quick shower. I only wash clothes when they are dirty (sometimes I wear them again several times). For the toilet we follow the mantra "if its yellow, let it mellow", if we have visitors I have to remember to flush.
4. Our bathroom shelves are empty
We don't have any hair products (not even shampoo), make up or other clutter in our bathroom. I only realise how weird this looks when I see other people's bathrooms full of products! We only have soap, a few jars of salve and some essential oils. One visitor asked if I had any cream for toe fungus. No, I just use neem oil for that. If you forget to bring your cosmetics, good luck, because I probably won't have what you want, but I can offer a crunchy alternative!
5. We don't give presents
We do give gifts sometimes, if we see something that someone might like, but we don't do Christmas or Birthday presents at all. Our family and friends know this and know not to expect anything. It really does reduce the stress of buying STUFF at Christmas. If anything, I prefer to give homemade or homegrown gifts when they are available, but not to a schedule.
6. We buy local even if it costs a little more
We make a big effort to support the shops in our local town, and our monthly farmers market. We always use the local supermarket and hardware store, even though there are larger options in the next town over. I don't mind paying a little more for the convenience of having a shop closer to us, and supporting our community. We recently changed our bank to a local building society branch too.
7. We don't have a clothes drier
But we do have a mincer and dehydrator.... we did have a clothes drier in the back of the shed for 5 years, never used, so we left that at the dump shop. We seem to manage without it, seeing as it doesn't rain much!
8. We use our electric oven to store oven trays (not for cooking)
In winter we used to cook everything on our woodstove, but our new one doesn't have an oven, I still use the top for cooking casseroles (we made sure to get one that still got hot on top). And in summer, its so hot, we prefer to use the gas BBQ or the slow cooker, so our electric oven very rarely gets used.
I'm sure there are more, but that's all I can think of right now! So its your turn now, what weird habits do you have that you only notice when other people are around?
1. We eat what we grow
Sometimes people bring us packaged food from the supermarket. Honestly we don't need any food, if anything we have too much food. We have all the meat, vegetables, eggs and milk we can eat at the moment. I actually got a little stressed out recently by exactly how much food we HAVE at the moment. Please don't buy food for us, but we would love to share what you grow yourself. When I want to take something to share with someone else, I usually want to grab something out of the garden, is it weird to turn up with a kg of tomatoes, or a carton of eggs?
 |
| veges from our garden |
2. We don't make much "rubbish"
Firstly, we line our rubbish bin with newspaper, rather than using a bin bag. Second all our vege scraps go into the worm farm(s) - we have two worm farms! We try not to buy things with packaging and always take green bags shopping, so we probably only needed to put out the wheelie bin once a month if it didn't get too stinky (and now we don't even have a council rubbish collection, so we take our bin to the local transfer station about once a month). I also hoard things that might be useful, like envelopes, scraps of plain paper, rubber bands, paper bags, glass jars and bottles, and buttons.... we don't have recycling here in the South Burnett anymore, so reusing is our only option.
 |
| my button collection |
3. We conserve water
We collect rainwater in tanks, and that's all we have for drinking, cooking, washing up, showering, laundry and for the chickens and garden. We don't waste water. And I mean we really don't, not like when you have town water and you kind of try not to use it much. This is our only water supply. If we run out of water, we have to buy town water, and the town water around here is pretty awful, we really don't want to have to buy it, so we don't have to wait to be put on water restrictions! We take a bath (one between two) or a very quick shower. I only wash clothes when they are dirty (sometimes I wear them again several times). For the toilet we follow the mantra "if its yellow, let it mellow", if we have visitors I have to remember to flush.
 |
| a large green frog (and our toilet) |
4. Our bathroom shelves are empty
We don't have any hair products (not even shampoo), make up or other clutter in our bathroom. I only realise how weird this looks when I see other people's bathrooms full of products! We only have soap, a few jars of salve and some essential oils. One visitor asked if I had any cream for toe fungus. No, I just use neem oil for that. If you forget to bring your cosmetics, good luck, because I probably won't have what you want, but I can offer a crunchy alternative!
 |
| homemade herbal skin salve |
5. We don't give presents
We do give gifts sometimes, if we see something that someone might like, but we don't do Christmas or Birthday presents at all. Our family and friends know this and know not to expect anything. It really does reduce the stress of buying STUFF at Christmas. If anything, I prefer to give homemade or homegrown gifts when they are available, but not to a schedule.
6. We buy local even if it costs a little more
We make a big effort to support the shops in our local town, and our monthly farmers market. We always use the local supermarket and hardware store, even though there are larger options in the next town over. I don't mind paying a little more for the convenience of having a shop closer to us, and supporting our community. We recently changed our bank to a local building society branch too.
 |
| shopping at our local farmers market |
7. We don't have a clothes drier
But we do have a mincer and dehydrator.... we did have a clothes drier in the back of the shed for 5 years, never used, so we left that at the dump shop. We seem to manage without it, seeing as it doesn't rain much!
 |
| we use a solar clothes drier (and there's our rainwater tanks too) |
8. We use our electric oven to store oven trays (not for cooking)
In winter we used to cook everything on our woodstove, but our new one doesn't have an oven, I still use the top for cooking casseroles (we made sure to get one that still got hot on top). And in summer, its so hot, we prefer to use the gas BBQ or the slow cooker, so our electric oven very rarely gets used.
 |
| our woodstove |
I'm sure there are more, but that's all I can think of right now! So its your turn now, what weird habits do you have that you only notice when other people are around?
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One we’d have is that we don’t eat or own any breakfast cereal. When family come to stay we never have many options for breakfast, and its a bit of a shock to remember that others keep a range of cereals at the ready in their homes. We have oats, that’s about it. :P
Weird habits? I have a few. I guess the most contentious one is how I use my backyard, as a dumping ground for all our food scraps. Some goes to the chickens, some out the back door, others on a heap we don’t turn, and lastly, anywhere we happen to be with something organic (banana peel, apple core, etc) it just gets dropped on the ground. I saw a Kurrawong, fly into a tree recently, with an old watermelon skin – It was left behind from the chicken tractor, we recently moved.
I know how some people get at the thought of throwing “rubbish” in their backyard. But it’s organic rubbish, so feeds my system. It’s taken up fairly quickly too, so nothing lays around for long. But if you’ve never enjoyed the thrill of seeing native birds and animals, take up your rubbish, then the “icky” factor might be too overwhelming, to contemplate as a normal and sustainable practice. ;)
Ha! I can so relate to that post! I go to people’s houses and they have empty benches and I’m like ‘where are your eggs/ripening tomatoes/herbs/kefir/plant cuttings etc’. Where is the ‘actual’ food? Usually it’s in the freezer :-( And yes, remembering to flush when there are visitors!
I was walking down a couple of aisles in Coles yesterday and was looking at all the products I don’t buy or use because I make my own. I am sure the fact that I can have sourdough starter and kefir grains and sometimes sauerkraut on the go on the bench plus numerous bottles of various homemade vinegar, Fire Cider, Four Thieves vinegar etc. hiding away in a dark cupboard might seem strange to some people but that is the norm around here these days. Don’t sit on that frog, Liz ;-)
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