A dream without a plan is just a wish

When I first decided in 2005 I wanted a smallholding, I had a tendency to view my dream through rose-tinted glasses. Everyone does to some extent, whatever the dream happens to be, because until you start living your dream you can only approximate what your life will be like on a day-to-day basis. Your brain will also always make the dream a blissfully happy experience.

If someone asked me in 2005 what I would do on my dream smallholding, what my plans were, my answer would have been very vague. At that point, I knew there would be chickens and veg, probably pigs and sheep, but how many of them and on what acreage I had no clue. I also didn't have a clue whether that would sustain us, whether we would have to sell our produce and even how we would afford it, but I was confident it would all work out. Then I came across this quote on the internet.

"A dream without a plan is just a wish."

According to psychologists, you will be around 50% more likely to achieve your dream if you write it down. That's when I realised how far removed from reality my dream was - I had nothing written down at all. Watching repeats of The Good Life and reading smallholding books didn't get me any closer to having smallholding. That started a period of intensive research as I tried to separate the dream from the likely realities I would face. I started writing it down.

For example, for some people the dream is to spend every day immersed in smallholding, making jam, pottering around the garden, bottle feeding orphaned lambs, gathering herbs, wearing hunter wellies and a Cath Kidston tea dress...the reality is not really having the time to potter due to a full-time job plus lambs stick their poo-covered trotters on the dress the second they see a bottle and chewy little piglets bite straight through your expensive wellies.

The dream could be to have an old stone cottage with an Aga to cook on that heats the whole house, where you can sit with you feet up against it in the evenings and produce a wide array of wholesome tasty food...

the reality is all that stone can make for a cold damp house, and if anything goes wrong with the Aga or you have problems getting it or keeping it lit, it will usually coincide with you doing chores outside on the wettest, coldest, muddiest day ever. Then you find your dinner hasn't cooked while you've been out and there's no hot water to wash the mud off :(

Before coming here I was very confident I wouldn't be bothered by cold slippery mud because I would be living the dream on my smallholding! Now I'm here...I really, really don't like cold wet slippery mud. It is grim to deal with during torrential storms when I have to check the animals; my clothes get covered, shoes are always plastered in it, I have ended up covered in mud after slipping flat on my back in it, and the house entrances need constantly cleaning during the winter. There are sometimes mud smears up the walls.

So, if you're thinking about this Good Life (and for everything I have written it is a good life) here are some other things you might want to consider: 

• How's your health and will it stand up to what you want to do? 
• How isolated do you want to be?
• How far do you want to be from a main town?
• How far from your neighbours?
• How much land is enough and how much will be too big an area to maintain? You can cope with it now, but what about in 10 years time when your back hurts a lot more?
• Do you consider privacy to be the last house on the way out of a village or a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere?
• Do you want mains gas heating system, or will you settle for an oil or a wood burning range as your source of heat? What secondary systems will you have?
• Do you want to be able to drive in bad weather or are you happy to be snowed in for a few days? At what point would you feel trapped and start to panic?
• How are you going to fund it? If you're a couple will one of you work or both of you? Full-time or part-time? 
• Will you buy outright or have a mortgage? The bigger mortgage you have the more hours you have to work to pay for it. Would you be better renting or maybe buying with parents or friends?

You won't get everything you want, it's rare when property hunting that you do, but what will you compromise on? For example, you may not want neighbours within five miles of you but if you have a health problem in the future you could need their help one day, so perhaps no more than a mile away would be better.

Get it all out of your head and write it all down. It will change as the months and years go by, that's inevitable, because life changes and you have to adapt to keep up. Things will happen to you that make you grow and develop wisdom about who you are and how you fit in the world, and that in turn will change what you want and your dream. The act of writing things down creates a powerful mental shift, it starts the wheels turning. 

But it won't happen unless you commit your dream to paper. 

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Steel Kitten

Spring cleaning the bathroom

Ok, so the utility room and porch are done. It's the best I can do at the moment because the utility room really needs a complete overhaul and be redesigned with proper storage units and a sink, but that will have to wait for a later date.

Anyway, it looks so much better and it's amazing the difference the cupboard doors make.

Onto the next area: the main bathroom. The main bathroom has a tendency to revert to shabbiness as it is painted, and of course paint fades and gets chipped. Also, the previous owners laid carpet in there, which I personally dislike and I want that out. Any room with a toilet needs to have the floor around it disinfected. I think we all know why! I should add, I have no fears for Martin in that regard (he is a very clean lad!) but I have had some male guests who, to be frank, I wanted to clout.

The carpet is cream, worn out and grubby with suspicious stains and I took great pleasure ripping that out on Tuesday. I've put it to one side to make a pattern for the new lino, which should make fitting it a lot easier. Fitting lino in such a small space is quite simple if you have a template as long as you take it slow and check every cut you intend to make twice BEFORE you cut. You can't take it back. I went to a local carpet store and found a simple off-the-roll lino that has actually provided enough (we think) to do our ensuite bathroom as well (another unhygienic carpet to root out). 

I've cleaned, sanded and painted the baseboards, a task which took me three, one-hour sessions; an hour to prep, and a further two hours to paint two coats of white satinwood paint. This bathroom will be overhauled and modernised in a few years time, as the plumbing and sanitaryware is quite old and starting to have problems, but for now a deep clean, paint and new lino will do fine.

Anyway, this is the list:

• Dsinfect light switches and fixtures
• Clean and disinfect toothbrush holders
• Clean light fixtures and wash globe(s)
• Clean mirror
• Clean shower curtain and liner
• Disinfect countertops
• Dust and clean windows, inside and out
• Polish sink and bath taps
• Scrub and disinfect toilet, including around base, under seat and around hinges
• Scrub the bathtub and/or shower
• Wipe the walls
• Wipe down cabinets, knobs, towel rail and toilet paper holder
• Clean bathroom exhaust fan
• Clean shower head
• Check caulk around bathtub
• Re-seal tile and grout
• Clean, organize and declutter cabinet
• Paint the yellowing skirting boards
• Replace the carpet with linoleum
• Fix the broken window catch

Quite a bit of the cleaning on the list gets done most weeks anyway and there isn't a lot of stuff in here to declutter. Fingers crossed, this should be quite simple to accomplish this week.

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Steel Kitten

Looking after the woodwork

Spring cleaning inside had to take a bit of a back seat over the last week because the UK has actually had some good weather!

We are about a month behind in the garden and I had all but given up on the chance of getting anything done out there until I took some annual leave in the summer. Then suddenly it was lovely, hot even, and I realised come hell or high water I needed to be outside, not inside. I took a day's annual leave and managed to work the rest of my schedule so I started and finished early for a few days, snatching some extra time.

The biggest job outstanding on the holding is the woodwork  - it's all starting to look shabby round the edges; the main gates, the paddock gate, the barn doors and window frames, the front and back pergola, the porch door, and the summer house. Replacing wood structures is surprisingly expensive and there is no money in our budget to replace them for some years to come so looking after them and extending their lifespan is one of my priorities. Luckily, it is not a major expense, just the odd can of wood preservative and paint. 

There was no way I could do all of the woodwork in the small amount of time I had so I chose to do something that would immediately make the property look well-cared for and give it 'kerb appeal': the main gates and paddock gate. The main gates are the first thing you see from the road and every time someone opened them they got dirt and slime on their hands. The paddock gates were heading that way, and a few times I've ended up with a green slime trail on my jacket.

We're very lucky that the previous owner chose to spend the money on proper pressure-treated wood, as that has added to the longevity of everything considerably and helped save us cash. However, I was a little apprehensive at first; the top of the gates are starting to disintegrate, despite being pressure-treated, probably due to all the algae and moss invading the grain, but I made sure not to direct too strong a jet of water and do more damage than good. Slowly, some rather nice looking gates emerged from underneath the dirt and slime.

After a couple of hours drying in the hot sun, I could then get to work painting them with my secret weapon - a fence paint brush. A few years ago I invested in a good one of these for about £8 and it is by far the best brush I have ever owned. Instead of one line of real bristles, it has four so it holds more paint/preservative and gets the job done exceptionally quickly. I think each gate took me 35 minutes for both front and back.

Seeing the clean painted gates galvanised Martin into action and he immediately set to work restoring the vintage railway sign. This had been attached to the gate by the former owner and left to rust but fortunately these things were thickly forged to a high standard back in the day so all they needed was a good wire brushing to prepare them for painting. Martin patiently applied two coats of white base and picked out the lettering with black Hammerite. He's soooooo much better at this detail stuff than me.

The paddock gate was also cleaned and painted, not an easy task when two sheep are intent on investigating it before it dries. They both ended up wearing Harvest Brown wood preservative on their faces but as it is water soluble a little rain overnight washed them clean.

Next job on the list? As the weather has disintegrated again I am back to spring cleaning inside.This week is the bathrooms, which involves evicting some grotty unhygienic carpet with ominous stains. Bleurch!  I did finish the porch and utility room and pictures will follow in the next post. 

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Steel Kitten

Simple vs frugal

Homemade pizza

I've been a frugal soul since I was old enough to focus my eyes, first with my parents through their passion for car boot sales, charity shops and junk shops, and latterly when I was single and living alone. Then I met Martin and pulled him into it too so now he's a pretty frugal thing too.

But simple living has been a relatively new concept to me. I came across Janet Luhrs and her simple living philosophy about 10 years ago. I have many of her back issues of simple living magazine and also her book Simple Living. I can honestly say I read them all through periodically and nod as I do, thinking yes, this is the way I want my life to be.

The trouble is, I've found simple living and being frugal at the same time don't mix 100%. To a certain extent they do, but then they diverge. 

Wikipedia defines simple living as:

Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include, for example, reducing one's possessions, generally referred to as minimalism, or increasing self-sufficiency. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they have rather than want. 

As far as I can work out from the conversations I've had over the years, everyone seems to agree on three principles:

Be satisfied with what you have
Reject consumerism
Put people above things

But for everything else, it's a grey area. For every argument for doing something one way, there will be another equally good argument for not. 

Take technology. I know of many people who do not consider technology to be compatible with simple living yet technology has enabled people to work from home and telecommute, cutting down the number of cars on the roads and the amount of emissions as well as reducing stress. I'm one of them. I work from home. There's no doubt that walking a few steps to my study to work is as simple as it gets. I am less stressed than working in the office and have more time for things I enjoy, all the things simple living is supposed to be about. Couldn't do this without the internet, a good laptop and my phone so I can teleconference instead of driving to meetings.

Advances in technology mean that instead of tapes, records and DVDs we now have digital recordings. Some people embrace this, as it allows them to declutter and reduce their possessions. Others cannot see the point of getting rid of things that are perfectly useful and still functional. I'm a bit in between on this - on the one hand I would love to reduce our DVD collection from its current behemoth proportions; on the other hand that will incur expense replacing them either with a streaming service like Netflix or buying them and downloading them onto (newly bought) storage devices, so not a frugal move. 

Then there's cars. They are a major expense and need a lot of considered thought as to their place in an simple and frugal life. Some people advocate a car-free life, opting for the bike, others maintain that it is better to keep a car for a long time and maintain it carefully until it reaches the end of its natural life. I know an extremely frugal person who only buys end-of-day food reductions and doesn't put the heating on in the winter. She despises consumerism, yet every three years she gets a new car on a lease deal. As a single woman, trouble-free motoring independence is high on her list of necessities and she'll do what she has to in order to achieve that. 

Over the years I've realised; there's no black and white answer as to what constitutes a simple life as we all lead such different lives and different priorities. The best we can do is consistently check in with ourselves to see if what we're spending and doing is aligned with our goals, and if not making a conscious choice to do something different. 

• Are we paying too much for something and can we get it cheaper?
• Should we get it cheaper or pay more to support a local business?
• Do we really need it or is it just for show? 
• If we do need it, is there another way of getting it besides just handing over cash?
• Can we do the job ourselves and save money?
• Is it all worth the time and effort, or are we making things more difficult for ourselves for very little gain? What is the simplest path?

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Steel Kitten

Always double check!

I was so close to finishing the kitchen spring cleaning when disaster! I absent-mindedly put the wrong cleaner in the dishwasher and ended up with foam all over the place. Thankfully, after scooping out the worst of the foam, cleaning the sensor and then running a rinse cycle it was all sorted. 

At the time it did register on some level that the cleaner I put in wasn't right but as usual I forged ahead. When MIL moved in, she bought a ton of cleaning products with her and I am slowly making my way through the least nasty of them (the real nasties I took to the tip and added them to the chemical pile for disposal). Unfortunately, the dishwasher sanitiser was in a similar bottle to one of her cleaning products. Oh well, at least the floor got deep cleaned :)

Anyway, I've pretty much finished the kitchen now - thoroughly cleaned and sorted. The things I don't want to see have been put way and the things I do have been brought out. There are four outstanding jobs which need a bigger block of time this weekend:

• clean the oven
• clean out sink pipes 
• put a new door on the pan cupboard
• adjust the height of the breakfast bar and bolt back onto wall

The last two jobs DH is doing when he's on annual leave next week. 

So, onto the utility room and porch...and it really has got out of hand. There is not enough storage in the utility room, despite putting in two new under-counter cupboards, and what is in the porch is being occupied by empty boxes and items that either need to go to the tip or into the barns for a car boot sale.

So, to this week's list.

• relocate anything not supposed to be in the utility room and porch
• get rid of excess cardboard boxes and tip/car boot items
• dust/wipe all surfaces, including tile walls
• clean light fittings
• sort out and wash outdoor jackets
• organise and clean outdoor shoes
• deep clean washing machine (using the right cleaner!)
• clean washing machine drawer and seals
• deep clean the floor
• reorganise the cupboards and shelves
• throw out unwanted cleaning materials
• disinfect door knobs and switch plates
• buy plastic storage boxes to organise counter top items
• sweep porch step 
• sanitise cat litter equipment
• clean window and windowsill
• put new weatherstrip on porch door
• put doors on the new cupboards

Like before, the majority of this will be done in 5-20 minutes spurts when the kettle is boiling or the dinner cooking. The last couple DH will do.

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Steel Kitten

Spring cleaning

Of all the household tasks in the year, one of my favourites is spring cleaning. Don't ask me why. Normally I don't particularly like cleaning, so I tend to do as little as I can get away with on a weekly basis combined with sudden binges on specific bits when the mood takes me. As we don't have children, the place doesn't generally disappear until mountains of mess every day so the decline in cleanliness is slower and gentler :)

I've tried Flylady and while i had some success, a busy period at work combined with long hours puts me off kilter for that week, maybe even two weeks. That means not touching it again until the following month when the appointed zone rolls around. If I get another busy period, i end up missing it again. I just can't stick to the kind of routine. 

Anyway, this year I have my cleaning list at the ready, and have decided to spring clean over a couple of months, as oppose to my usual 2-3 weeks. March has been a bit of a loss so far, as the dull cold weather hasn't inclined me to do a great deal, but a few days ago the temperature soared to a whole 14oC, so I beavered away cleaning up the garden. Before I knew where I was, i had also dusted the bedrooms, landing and living room in a whole day. Unheard of! That's when I knew spring cleaning fever had arrived.

I've based my list for each room on this one from I Dream of Clean. I have eight areas to complete, which neatly ties in with about the number of weeks left of spring:

Kitchen

Utility room/porch

Main bathroom

Our bedroom

Our en-suite

Living room

Landing/lobby

Miscellaneous 

MIL takes care of her own room, as do Martin and I with our hobby rooms/study.

So, the kitchen is the first up for cleaning (as evidenced by the dreadfully untidy and cluttered corner of my kitchen in the main blog picture!), and by Sunday I will have completed the following:

• remove anything from the kitchen that doesn’t belong PART DONE
• clean and disinfect the rubbish bin
• clean worksurfaces and windowsill 
• dust and clean the light fitting/fan
• clean skirting boards and door frames
• clean the shelves either side of the log burner
• wash the back door mat
• clean the windows
• clean/replace the vertical blinds
• clean and polish the log burner
• polish the wood mantlepiece
• clean the microwave
• deep clean the dishwasher
• clean and organize the refrigerator
• clean and organize the freezer PART DONE
• replace refrigerator water filter
• clean the oven, hood vent and change filter if needed
• reorganize kitchen cabinets and drawers, eliminating the unnecessary PART DONE
• organize the pantry 
• clean out sink pipes 
• clean and disinfect dolce gusto machine
• clean under the sink and eliminate the unnecessary
• clean cabinet and room doors PART DONE
• clean upvc patio doors
• clean tile and touch up paint on walls
• deep clean the floor
• disinfect door knobs, light fixtures and pulls
• put a new door on the pan cupboard
• adjust the height of the breakfast bar and bolt back onto wall
• thin out cookery books

I tend to do things while the kettle in boiling or food is cooking, as I find that is quite useful 'dead' time. I have no problem doing things shelf by shelf if necessary. 

So, over to you. Do you spring clean and, if so, how do you tackle it?

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Steel Kitten