Washer Update

   It's been three weeks since the arrival of the new washing machine and I am still pretty happy with it.

   We received our water bill and I was disappointed to note that our water use did not go down -- in fact it was almost exactly the same as last month and slightly more than this month last year. I quickly made two important realizations.

   1) Our dishwasher was broken for most of last month. The landlord approved my ordering replacement parts and fixing it myself, but while that was figured out, the parts ordered, and the repair made, we were hand washing everything. As much water as dishwashers use, hand washing tends to use more. I usually use the gathered water from the dehumidifier to rinse dishes and use the water-miser setting on the washer, so I can see how hand washing the dishes may have had an impact here.

   2) Also, in our excitement over the added capacity of the washer and it's allergy and sanitizing options, we got a jump on the spring cleaning and have been washing EVERYTHING. Blankets, rugs, pillows, curtains, you name it -- it's been through the wash. While I still doubt we've averaged eight loads a week even in this short, high use time frame, we have been using it a lot more than we normally would. We're also using more intensive cycles than the average day-to-day washing. Having used the machine for a few weeks now, I believe our average use will be about three loads a week -- a load of "normal" wash, a load of pants/jeans, and one other that will vary between whites, towels, the pink/red/purple/ultracoldwaterload, etc.

   It's also worth noting that the water bill period was three days longer this year than last. While three days does not make up the difference between 79 gallons a day and 87 gallons a day on average, I think the other factors help to explain the difference. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few months (assuming we do not have to relocate).

   In other water news, I have started the process of draining the rain barrels and cleaning them out so they can refill with fresh water for the summer. Today I intend to get up on the roof to brush off the moss and fir needles and clean out the gutters.

   In gardening news, we have sunflower, green pepper, and yellow pepper sprouts under the grow light! My hops that survived from last year are also making a healthy comeback. The forecast calls for one overnight low of 31 in the next ten days. Between that and ongoing uncertainty over the rent and my job, we are continuing to delay further seed sowing.

   I really want to put seeds in the ground...

More Pictures!

   While putting up today's pictures I came across some pictures I had uploaded earlier and never got around to posting. Just got sidetracked...

   Let's see... up first, our clothes dryer:

 

   ...we have an electric clothes dryer, but we only use it for towels and sometimes sheets and blankets. During the summer we can hang clothes to dry outside on the line, but most of the year we use this method. The downside is that we can't really do more than two loads a day, but that means we tend to pace ourselves, do just one load every day or two days, and we don't use a ton of water on any one day. The upside, though, is that our clothes don't wear out as fast and our electric bill is considerably lower. 

   It's not a bad system, in all. We run a dehumidifier regularly anyway. The dehumidifier uses a lot less electricity than the clothes dryer and we are able to use the water it collects for things like dishes or the next load of laundry. We also heat with the wood stove. In order to move the heat around the house we have one fan behind the wood stove and a box fan on the hall floor (as seen in the first picture above). The fan behind the stove moves warm air around the living room while the box fan pushes cold air from the back rooms into the living room. The warm air from the living room is displaced to the back rooms. We run the dehumidifier at night while we're asleep because it does make some noise.

   We hang shirts and pants on the door frames in the hall way and hang the rest on racks in the living room directly downwind of the hall. The whole set-up creates an airflow through the house that dries a couple loads of wash overnight. 

   What else did I find?...

 

   ...some pictures from one of this winter's snowfalls...

   ...and some pictures from the last harvest of the past fall.

Where Have I Been?

I doubt if I’ll ever get a regular posting schedule going because my life just isn’t set-up that way. I started working at age fourteen, put myself through two years of college, and then worked in various jobs for over a decade before being able to support myself and my family through music and entertainment. I found the times I was happiest with my job was when my schedule was less structured. When I did break off from the day job routine I was working Monday through Friday for a corporation. It was a less-than-ideal environment for me. I was fortunate to work for a manager who understood me enough to work with my schedule as long as I put in a full eight hours and got the job done, but it was still soul-draining.

So now I am very happy to be able to make a living working only a few nights a week. We have had to make some concessions and live a simpler life, but that’s what this blog is about. One of the consequences, however, is that any kind of regular schedule tends to be short-lived.

That said, I haven’t been a complete slacker. I’ve been studying and practicing reloading. The weather cleared up and the sun actually came out last Saturday so my son and I spent the afternoon hiking around Banner Forest. A few days ago I took my son to the range to let him do some shooting and to try out my own hand-loaded rounds. It went very well and my son had a great time despite the cold weather. I cooked a roast and sliced it up and the wife and I have been having French dip sandwiches the past couple days. When it’s been rainy we’ve been occupying some downtime with Wii Fit Plus and the BBC series Planet Earth – an excellent series in case you have not seen it. I’ve also been online reading some forums and food safety websites, signing petitions and sending emails. As I type this I am brewing up a batch of beer and doing a bit of laundry.

One project around the house has been to try and get a handle on our humidity issues. Living in NW Washington State, across the sound from Seattle, we virtually live in a rainforest and everything seems to get damp this time of year (“this time of year”, meaning September through May). My wife and I both have allergies, though she has it much worse than I. I can usually get by with the woodstove and a fan to circulate the heat to the back rooms, but the humidity still stays relatively high inside the house and that creates an environment where allergens to which my wife is sensitive thrive. Basically, my wife is allergic to the Pacific Northwest. It doesn’t help matters that we hang dry almost all of our laundry and when it's wet outside, it has to be hung inside.

During our last visit to Portland my wife scored a really nice 75-pint-per-day dehumidifier that her cousin is not currently using. I was naïve to think we could run it for a day or so in each room and have our problem under control. We have been running it almost nonstop for two and a half weeks and emptying five to nine gallons from it daily. I was hoping that between that and our UV air cleaner the allergens could be kept at bay. My son and I are both fine, but my wife is still miserable. Fortunately there are over-the-counter meds she can take that relieve her symptoms, but neither that nor running a big dehumidifier twenty-four/seven is sustainable or cost effective. I am still weighing the clothes dryer against the dehumidifier and the dehumidifier is winning me over. Obviously I'm going to have to keep working on this one.

It’s almost mid-February, which means it’s time to get started on building the second raised garden bed and getting the gardens ready for spring. It will have to wait until after Valentine’s Day, but then I have no excuses for putting it off any longer. It won’t be long now before seeds go in the ground…