Things I Can Do Without

Re-Nest, a blog associated with the Apartment Therapy series, recently posted an article about living with less. After perusing the list, I realized that I already do without many of these things:

• Plastic food bags - I use reusable ones.
• Paper towels - I've successfully made the switch to dish towels, and I'll never go back!
• Microwave - the one at my house broke several weeks ago, and after the first week I stopped missing it. They always weirded me out anyway.
• Coffee maker - I've been a french press enthusiast for years. I use my electric kettle to heat water.
• Television - I've gone a year without owning one, and I can't say I miss it.
• Garbage disposal - Drain catchers are kind of a pain, but using water to dispose of waste is kind of silly.

Before I go congratulating myself, though, I stopped to think about what other luxuries I simply do not need. These are things I still use that are on the Re-Nest list:

• Plastic wrap - I know, I'm sorry, but sometimes I need to cover baked goods that don't fit in a container with a lid and I just have to. :( I wonder if tin foil is better...at least it can be reused.
• Trash bags - Seriously? The article says "Control your rubbish, no bags needed!" I compost my food waste and don't use disposables beyond the occasional piece of plastic wrap and I still have garbage. This one just isn't going to happen for me right now.
• Hair dryer - I use it a couple times a week during the winter, for a whopping total of about 30 times per year. I won't be using it again until November, so we'll see what happens. Maybe I'll ditch it!
• Dishwasher - Considering my dishwasher is only effective if the dishes that go in have NOTHING on them, I might as well not use it. Perhaps a bigger drying rack is in order...

There is one more item that I have been toying with going without for some time now, and this article might just be the inspiration I need to stop using it: the dryer. I just have to get a clothesline up in my backyard. More on this later!

What can/do you go without?

The Chicken Lady

I have officially been referred to as a "chicken lady", as has R. Perhaps I should change the name of this blog to Crazy Chicken Lady...hmm. Here's an update on our lovely ladies.

The chickens spend most afternoons out of the coop, wandering around the yard with the dogs. They eat bugs out of our compost, chase each other around, and they've even learned how to walk up the back porch stairs. Lucy discovered the dog house and decided it was a great place to build a nest and lay a little egg.

Lucy in her dog house nest!

Lucy came to get her food off of the back deck. Cheeky little bird!

Pip helping Amelia clean up the food Lucy dropped.

The biggest news of all is that Nappy laid her first egg yesterday! At first we thought it was Lucy who wasn't laying. Then we found her in the dog house having just laid an egg. Now we know for sure that Nappy hasn't been laying, because the 4th egg was soooo tiny compared to the others. Nappy is a Silkie, which is a bantam variety. Bantams are smaller than standard chickens (hence her name, which is short for Napoleon) and thus lay much smaller eggs.

And in other news, the vegetable garden is growing! We were a little late in planting the spring plants, so we'll have to see how they do. It was almost 90 degrees yesterday, so hopefully it's not too hot for all the tiny plants. Pretty soon we'll be harvesting all our spring goodies.

What can I say? Life is good here on our little backyard farm.