I am thankful for how much easier my life is this year compared to last year. After 13 months at this apartment, things are settling down. Last year at this time I was scrambling to have food to eat. Now that is not a worry I am very, very thankful for my garden, the food shelf and food stamps.

I am sooooo thankful to be up off the floor! Sleeping on the single mattress on the floor was better than being ON the floor, but was tough on this old body. My life improved greatly with a donated mattress and box springs and then improved even more this summer when I finally got a bed frame. Now getting into and out of bed is something I do not even think about

My sister gave me 2 long sleeved shirts last year and Beth and Luc gave me one this year. I bought winter boots in the middle of last year’s deep snow in October. I bought a pair of sweat pants and was gifted with 2 others I can dress warmly.

I LOVE my new little ceramic heater! It has not been as cold this fall as last fall. Mostly it’s my feet that are freezing. I turn the little heater on for a few minutes and I am happy

I still do not own real shoes. I either wear sandals or heavy boots. Maybe some day I will give in and get some shoes. I’ve been thinking more about footwear since snow is predicted in a few days and I watched Doug and the maintenance man put the plow on the truck today. I am VERY grateful for maintenance men!

I have furniture! I love garage sales and am very thankful for garage sales and Freecycle. YIPPPPPEEEEEE!!!!! I love my freezer full of garden produce

This is my post about THINGS. I now have enough things to live much more comfortably. For that I am very grateful

]]> http://durhamdev.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/new-revelations-and-new-opportunities/ Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:27:19 +0000 durhamdev http://durhamdev.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/new-revelations-and-new-opportunities/

While I am still working on getting one of my laptops to work, and making the others as functional as possible, I have been graced by many with other used computers and parts. Many thanks go out to the couple in one of my previous posts, who provided me with two full-size computers, as I have taken on another project with the parts…

I am building a Home Theatre PC, all from freecycled equipment!

“What is a Home Theatre PC?” you ask? Well, let me tell you. It is a computer where you can store all of your media – movies, pictures and music – and then connect it into both your home network and your television for a completely integrated solution.  After doing some online research, I found that you can download Media Centre software (a la Windows Media Centre) which has similar functionality and is 100% free! I know what you might be thinking – “If it’s free, there’s no way it’s functional/attractive/good…”

Oh, my friends, this is where you’re wrong!  There are many programs out there which permit you the ability to store and organize all of your media in one place, making it accessible to your home theatre and your other computers, all while having a very, very attractive and functional menu system.

Taken from the very popular XBMC (X-Box Media Centre) and the skin named “Aeon“, the screenshot above illustrates how beautiful and customizable that this program is.  Without going into too much detail (I could go on for hours) there is a menu system allowing you to access various types of media (pictures, movies, TV shows and videos) and show them in a very attractive format.  Check out the background from the movie “Watchmen”.  It is an example of some of the user downloadable content which you can customize your viewing experience.

I am currently putting together a P4 system with integrated video/TV card, including Ubuntu Linux as well as XBMC, which I hope to have configured and attached to my 42″ Plasma screen within the next couple of weeks.  I’ll keep you updated on my progress, and there should be some very interesting posts coming up.  There are simply so many ways to configure your HTPC, and I hope to include many of them here.

Stay tuned!

None it would seem. Clearing out some shelves of old computer equipment today I was planning to put some of the more useful items up on ebay – each for a penny in case anyone out there has a use for a little network hub or a parallel printer cable and some other bits.

A quick search (of ebay) seems to indicate that there will be few if any takers though. We’ll see if freecycle is any better, but ultimately I expect to be taking some perfectly good CPU fans (never used), a 4 year old wireless print-server (which was a pain to configure), three parallel printer cables and various other old bits of kit down to the local tip/recycling centre.

Shame, but then it’s out-dated, slow, or just plain incompatible. It seems such a waste. Chances are another Iomega zip drive will be on its way to silicon heaven very soon.

If you’re looking for cheap Python programming books – I am trying to recycle those too. It’s probably too late for the CD’s I chucked out. If you were looking for (un-opened) Microsoft Works 2000 – sorry, the rubbish is picked up this Tuesday.

Update 25/11/09: The answer to whether parallel printer cables have any use these days is still ‘No’, but most of the other bits got picked up on Freecycle. Search for your local Freecycle group here – http://groups.yahoo.com/ (much faster to access than through www.freecycle.org)

Ok, I’m a bit ticked off.

We have a push mower – my parents gave it to Yankee Elv and I as a Christmas present in 2007. We were really happy to have it. Our yard is quite small, so it was great to have an eco-friendly (no fuel required!) way of keeping it in shape. It’s very achievable to mow it by hand and it’s a good work-out. I prefer it – I’m always paranoid that pebbles will fly from under a regular mower and hit me in the leg.

Ozito push mower, with blades no-one will sharpen or replace.

Anyway, the blades on the push mower are dull. We have been trying for more than 6 months to find someone to sharpen or replace the blades and no-one will do it. Bunnings used to (that’s where my parents bought it originally), but apparently it’s too cost-prohibitive for them to continue anymore. Everyone else has the same excuse. We’ve called mower places, hardware stores and tool shops. We even reached out on Freecycle and had someone agree to do it for us, but then he backed out. I emailed the mower company and got no reply. I’m very frustrated!

The mower is not usable, and we can’t continue whipper snipping the lawn, small though it may be. The day before yesterday, Yankee Elv went to Bunnings – one of those shops that won’t sharpen my current mower’s blades! – and bought a new mower. The fact that she needed to do that really pisses me off!! We got an electric mower, so at least we can use green power rather than gasoline… but that’s really not the point. The push mower we have is just fine.

It annoys me that people feel it’s not worth keeping up a perfectly good product because of their impact on their bank account. What about the impact on the environment? It’s not like the damned mower is recyclable even.

Grr.

Friday 20 November 2009

I didn’t mention my two main birthday presents so thought I would now even though my birthday seems ages ago but was in fact four days!  My daughters bought me a Nintendo DS and the Brain Training pack and Gordon bought me a new LG phone.  I had such trouble with my last good phone that it ended going back to the shop almost a year after I’d bought it.  It had a wonderful organiser and camera, it just had lousy reception and was constantly informing callers that the phone they’d dialled was turned off.  It wasn’t of course since I am the mother of girls for goodness sake!  Everyone knows you have to be constantly reachable when you have offspring, especially of the female variety.

Anyway, I digress – yes, again!  This new phone has a great organiser, a great camera and has so far rung three times!  It’s not that it doesn’t ring, it’s just that no-one has tried to contact me.  The girls have corresponded via text messages – a little disappointing since I have a wonderful ringtone.  But hey-ho.

The DS is something I’ve quietly been hankering after for a little while and already I find I’m totally addicted, so much so that I think I may have given myself something resembling arc-eye.  That or I’m coming down with a severe cold and my eye is a warning sign.  I’m kind of hoping it’s the cold because then I can carry on using the DS without permanent damage to my eyesight.  In the meantime I’m wiping my eye with a tissue to keep it gunk-free.

Nothing much else has been going on around the farm this week.  I’ve had a fairly quiet one, sorting, freecycling, clearing.  I’m up-to-date with the accounts, all the correspondence and even the majority of the housework since the girls were both home at the weekend and helped me get the house ready for friends to visit on Saturday evening.

The tube on our TV went last week so we’ve ordered a new, all-singing, all-dancing flatscreen which won’t arrive for another week.  In the meantime I’m using the lack of one to thoroughly tidy the room we euphemistically call ‘the study’ where it lives.  It’s full of books we never read, videos we never watch, an old sewing machine, various bits of audio-visual equipment that don’t work and Gordon’s enormous speakers!  Something has to go.  When I suggested the speakers Gordon went into some strange denial thing that men do when you suggest getting rid of old familiar things.

“No”, he said.  “There’s nothing wrong with those speakers – they’re very good ones.  They cost a lot of money when they were new.”

“Yes”, I pointed out “but that was almost forty years ago now.”

“They’re aren’t that old” he said, affronted.  “I bought them in the 70s.”

I rest my case.

By Daniella Alpher

We closed our online survey today and want to thank the 152 parents out there who took the time to answer our questions this past week. Two out of three respondents were mothers. We had 83 Americans, 42 Brits and 27 from a variety of other countries all over the world. 

We can’t share our key findings online at this stage, but we can say the following:

1. Parents in the US and UK turn mostly to eBay and Craigslist for second-hand goods. Gumtree and FreeCycle are next after that. Incidentally, our research shows that Craigslist has grown in the past year from 4.4m unique users to 8m uniques. Which is staggering.

2. We had no idea Babycenter was so popular – both in the US and UK.

3. While we received clear assurances of the opportunity in this market segment, there doesn’t seem to be much interest in a swapping ecosystem for second-hand maternity clothes. Toys, clothes, furniture, books – all yes. Maternity clothes – no. Why not…?

A special thanks to the Maida Vale Mums for boosting our participation rate in the UK.

ThriftStoreRemix

is finally back online.  The past few months have been crazy, but we are glad to be back again.

To kick off this month’s blog, we have an exciting interview with thrift store fanshionista, entrepreneur and designer, Kimyatta Wilson-Brown. 

Kimyatta directs the Stone Mountain Interior Designers MeetUp group.  She tweets at twitter.com/kbhomeportal

ThriftStoreRemix:  Why do you shop at thrift stores?  What got you started? What keeps you coming back? 

KB: I shop them to scour for unique, funky, and inexpensive home décor elements.  I started years ago when thrift was all I could afford. Now, it’s my destination place to find chic and unique items.

ThriftStoreRemix: Has the economy affected the way folks view thrift stores?  Will shoppers revert back to their old spending ways after the economy recovers?

KB: Maybe for clothing, but I’m not for sure for house wares.  If anything I think the home decorating shows have influenced shoppers to shop thrift for the home.

ThriftStoreRemix: Does thrift store shopping help the environment?  Please explain?

KB: Well it is recycling.  It’s not tossed in a dump but rather reused.

ThriftStoreRemix: What tips and tricks do you have to improve the thrift shopping experience?  What other outlets are good resources for deals?

KB: I make the best of thrift shopping trips by staying abreast of what’s hot in the design industry and by shopping high-end stores to know true quality when I see it.  Other places to shop are consignment shop (my favorite) and estate sales.

ThriftStoreRemix: What is the coolest item you’ve purchased at a thrift store? 

KB: The coolest item would be this large black pot rack that I have (and don’t have enough space to hang…. Always the down side).

ThriftStoreRemix:  What is the location of your favorite thrift store(s)?

KB: The Goodwill in Tucker, GA

ThriftStoreRemix: What item category (Clothes, Books, Furniture) items do you regularly purchase?

KB: Furniture is my thing, and I always scout the books and magazines because they go along with the décor industry and because I’m a freak – want tell you how many I have or where I keep them……

Checking up on recent Freecycle postings this morning, I found one that starts:

 Ashwood Care Centre, Hayes, has recently had an organ very kindly donated by a local gentleman …

Kidney? Cornea? First time I’ve seen organ transplants being facilitated on Freecycle. Still, one has to be open to new trends. Read on, read on …

If you have sheet music you don’t need, it would be put to wonderful use as there is nothing they like better at the home than a good sing song.

Aah — I see. A new lease of life can be given by more than one kind of organ.

One of the things I really appreciate about the Freecycle program is that it’s a very organized community.

Freecycle is hosted on Yahoo Groups. Posts are broken down into categories: Offer, Wanted, Given, Received, and Info. It’s not a chatting  mailing list. Chatter is forbidden as is spam to the list. The moderators work very hard and you can be certain that if anyone is being abusive they are removed from the group.

The best way to work with Freecycle is through Yahoo Groups’ “Daily Digest” feature. This cuts the clutter in your inbox by sending you a digest of the day’s post.

I’ve seen everything on there from an ironing board to a bale of straw.

If you have something you no longer need, post it to Freecycle before tossing it in the landfill, because chances are, someone in the Freecycle group needs it or knows someone who needs it. You post an “Offer” with a brief description of what you are offering. Freecycle members who might want what you have send you an email. From there you choose your recipient and set up the transaction. 9 times out of 10 when I’ve received something from the Freecycle group I simply drive to the person’s home and the item is on the porch. So if you’re not a social person or don’t care to meet and chat that’s okay. Just put the item on your porch, and post “taken” after the item is picked up.

Unlike other communities, such as “Craigslist Free” – the group is membership based and strictly moderated. I think this serves to enhance the overall safety of transactions and makes it function very efficiently.

To find a Freecycle group in your area, search Yahoo Groups for “Freecycle” or go to http://www.freecycle.org/ and search for your city.

I suspect the current household I live in is similar in some of the following ways to other households in the U.S. today.

My husband and I lost our house this past year. Then I was laid off. These events prompted relocation to Roseville with my daughter, her husband, and my 1-year-old grandson to cut living expenses. As my husband’s business in Sacramento continued to slump downward, he started a new business in the Central Valley.

While we were moving our belongings to storage and seeking good homes for the belongings we no longer needed, I became aware of an interesting evolution in American consumer culture. In the early 90’s we had E-Bay.com! It was name your price and higher. Soon after the dot-com bust, the preferred favorite became Craigslist.org , where a deal could be had by all and where price gouging and bidder wars were a thing of our gluttonous past. Now, in 2009, after the massive economic meltdown hitting all sectors of our population, the new choice of the masses is swiftly becoming Freecycle.org, items not for bid, not for bargain prices, but for free!  This downward spiral of consumerism is not only ushering in a simpler time, but a smarter time where waste and unnecessary spending are seen for what they are–unnecessary. For us, Freecycle became the quickest and easiest way for to unload many of our no longer needed household items and move them into better homes. Even my houseplants found good homes through Freecycle with just a simple one-line posting and a phone call. Quick, easy, free, responsible, and win-win for all!

Yes, simpler, smarter times were in order for me, but I had no clue as to how deeply these changes would end up manifesting. Shortly after I moved in with my daughter, the three of us adults living in this new Roseville home were all unemployed. It was an uncanny joke, but we were not laughing. We were all part and parcel of the daily news; we were strung together with most every other American, rich and poor. No one seemed to be left out of this current state of affairs.

On the other hand, I found the first month of these dramatic changes actually a refreshing opportunity. I cleared out my boxes of unfiled paperwork, sorted my belongings into only the bare essentials. Unemployment was a blessing, giving me the much-needed time to rewrite my book and work on all of the other time-consuming publishing and networking details I never had the time to deal with. I also cherished this rare time with my grandson, feeling blessed every day I heard his sweet voice and saw his precious smile.

Into the second month, it was clear however that things really had to change, which further stimulated my analytical mind. I made a firm commitment to use only the resources I already had, both from a business and personal perspective. I reveled in just how many resources I actually had without having to go to the store. I had a good supply of bulk foods and office products and those little one-time use shampoos and lotions from years of traveling. I had time to cook for the first time in years. After decades of mandatory budgeting for a family of five under my belt, the creative know how to make a meal stretch was a happy challenge once again. Nevertheless, I did continue to purchase my $7.00 bottles of wine for my nightcaps, fair-trade organic coffee, and organic vegetables and fruits.

At the end of two months however, savings running lower, and the publishing date for my book kicked out further than anticipated, I began to see more changes were in order; more scaling down was needed.

With every weekly trip to the grocery store—finding myself living in the isolated suburb of Roseville, miles from my friendly and economical Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op of downtown Sacramento—I had to be honest.  Deeper change was in order, even if it was temporary.

Trader Joes completely replaced the Food Co-op, not because of price—the prices are comparible—but because of gas prices and the environmental consideration of driving for 1 1/2 hours compared to 30 minutes.

Things continued to evolve when I discovered one day that I was out of Earl Grey, a necessary part of my afternoon ritual. Okay, it was time to use all of that green tea I had been saving for THIS rainy day. Reluctantly I sucked it up, drinking in THIS abundance. It reminded me of that phrase from the old Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young tune, “If you can’t be with the one you want, love the one you’re with!” I rekindled my appreciation for green tea that I had never actually lost, I just liked Earl Grey more.

As time passed, every consecutive weekly trip to Trader Joes became another lesson in this evolution of simpler times. I began seeking $5.00 bottles of wine, then $3.00, and finally, I realized I had hit bottom when I became overjoyed at the discovery of a $1.99 bottle of wine that actually tasted decent! (It is obvious my taste buds are also changing with the times.)

This downward evolution in taste has become even stranger when it comes to beer. Not in my wildest dreams did I ever believe I would settle for the budget beer in a can that my son-in-law had been drinking for years. How could he? How could I?

Then, while on a camping trip with my daughter in the fall, I observed that she too had been changing her ways. I remember how thrilled I was when I found out she had actually brought beer on our trip, something I hadn’t had the heart to add to my budget at the time. I didn’t even think twice about drinking that beer in a can or consider how it tasted! I was grateful to have it at all! When she told me she got it at Trader Joes for only $2.99 a six-pack, I was floored because in recent months passed, I had become acutely aware of how expensive beer really was. This felt like the deal of the century!

I have to admit with pleasure, that since the beginning of this newer, simpler time, I have gone back to my roots. Waste and overspending has always been unnecessary in my book and I have always been thrifty, but now, even my thriftiness has taken on a new depth. The only places I really have no discipline when it comes to shopping is in bookstores or fabric stores. Now, I stay away from those places too. I have a box filled with sewing projects I am vowing to complete before I buy any more fabric. I actually made a dress last week, sewing something for myself for the first time in years! As has been my preference for a while, I only buy a book when I know it is a must and I wait for the price to go down first. Though I don’t know if I have the heart to wait for Barbara Kingsolver’s new book, The Lacuna to drop in price. Perhaps that will be my Christmas present to myself! When it comes to my own book sales, hopefully, this trend in thriftiness doesn’t affect them—but I suspect it will. (For this reason, I DO have a special temporary price reduction while I can offer it because I know everyone is counting pennies, not just me!)

Today,the three adults in our household actually have temporary employment to get us through these times, but the budgeting, the simpler view of what we can and cannot live without is sticking with us. My husband enjoys his new business much more than his former one in Sacramento.  He, too is impressed with how much happier he is living with less and how much less complicated his life is today.

I still buy organic spinach, tomatoes, and some fruits. I still insist on organic fair trade coffee, but I have had to compromise when it comes to sharing with my family. I eat what they cook, which means I am eating more meat than I prefer, yet they eat what I cook, which means they are eating more vegetables than they prefer (especially my son-in-law). They now see the simple and healthy value of oatmeal in the morning for the little guy and the security of a pot of beans in the fridge. I now accept a hot dog now and then as a trip down memory lane, instead of a scandal.

I have learned to live without a few movies every weekend and am spending more time reading and writing as a result. Thank goodness the affordable and health promoting walk is ALWAYS available.  I have actually lost weight due to this natural portion control and I am in better shape than I have been in years because exercise is free!!!!

Though, there is one challenge my son-in-law and myself are still mulling around: along with the challenge of getting through this winter without buying any new clothes, my son-in-law (with British roots) has exhausted the black tea in the house, and my green tea is almost gone as well. This is where we both draw the line! Neither he nor I are interested in drinking the large container of assorted “caffeine-free” herbal teas in place of our black or green tea!

Is there anyone out there open to a trade? Herbal for caffeinated tea bags? Our zip code is 95747! We even have Echinacea we are willing to forego for the taste of black-any type of black tea! Leave a comment!

That is my story. These signs of simpler times may not be the best for economic growth, but actually, maybe more environmentally responsible and economical deals of the century for basic staples should be considered for manufacturing instead over the wasteful, unnecessary products of the past! As taken from Chapter 16 in my new book THE NEW PHYSICS OF CHILDHOOD: Replacing Modern Myths with Simple Strategies, “When consumers have more options to purchase responsibly made products, they will be more likely to invest in them.” 

Some may argue that this all costs too much, but if we scale back on what we don’t need, we will have more capital, creativity, and energy to design, manufacture, and purchase what we DO need!

I still shop at my favorite Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, just when I am in town about once a month. In time, when I am living closer, it will become preferred store once again, mainly because almost ALL the produce is organic and locally grown with the location of the grower on the product label above each tasty in-season treat. This store is one of the best reasons to live in Midtown or Downtown Sacramento!  Until then, Viva Simpler Times Lager!

WHAT CHANGES HAVE YOU MADE DURING THESE SIMPLER TIMES?

Cheers!

Or something similar. We are a ‘overproductive’ household. It blows my mind when I consider how much refuse we produce.

Maybe it’s because my kids have two warm meals a day and the grocery items are always overpackaged in unnecessary packaging!

Anyway the point is – we throw a lot away both in terms of refuse and old clothing and items. In the UK I used to put items we no longer wanted up on the freecycle forum and people would just come to collect. Very convenient.

Currently we have one big ‘mess’ in the garage – planks that when assembled make up a ‘cabin bed’ but right now I’m not sure what’s what! A baby change table with lost screws etc

Here in Fredrikstad I have been limited to the local Fretex which is not convenient because I have to take the stuff to them. The result is bags of clothes in the garage – not to mention other odds and ends which could be used.

I know it will keep building up until spring and then we will have to have a major clean up.

I’m a little puzzled that Fredrikstad doesn’t have a freecycle online group. I mean – they’re complaining about theft from the local rubbish dump.

Some of these ’stolen’ items contain sensitive data that could be used by fraudsters so I can understand that people don’t want others using their old hard drives. But there’s other stuff that I’m sure could easily be given away by a freecycle group.

But we do have a wonderful young chap who has initiated a gratisbutikk (freeshop).

Although I prefer the online concept of feecycle (come fetch and save me time) – I love the initiative of this young chap with his gratisbutikk.

I will definitely keep him in mind when it’s time for spring cleaning the garage!

Gladware, the type of food storage I have at home. I’ve heard soft plastics are more prone to have dangerous leachates, and this stuff is as soft as you get. (Creative Commons-licensed photo from Timothy Valentine’s Flickr account)

Nick Kristof’s column Saturday dealt with Bisphenol-A, the chemical lots of people are worried about because, hey, who knows whether it’s dangerous. Some scientists have done studies saying it is; other scientists, funded by companies that use BPA, say it’s not.

Oh no, who to believe?

I think the real story here is that so many corrupt scientists are still working. Who can live with themselves after doing “research” for corporations that concludes unsafe products are safe? Don’t they take the equivalent of the Hippocratic oath when they become scientists? Is there an effort to put something like it in place? Or are these people taught to worship money?

I’d love to do a piece for a magazine where I interview these types of scientists. For example:

• those who said cigarettes are safe
• those who determined “smart bombs” actually hit their targets (They don’t. Watch Why We Fight.)
• those who said the Gardasil vaccine does more good than harm
• those who promoted DDT
• and the list goes on and on and on…

The blog of Seventh Generation—the corporation that produces safe cleaning products and promotes corporate responsibility—frequently features things like BPA. Here’s a link to one post about all leachates, which are chemicals that leach from packaging and food-storage containers.

According to their source, an article in a chemical industry magazine (also an interesting piece), leachates are almost impossible to avoid.

But I’m gonna try to avoid them as much as I can. When I get my student loan, I’m buying glass and/or stainless steel food-storage containers. Those also have the added benefit of lasting my entire life. Screw Gladware.

I wish I could get these things via Freecycle, but the administrators for Chicago’s Freecycle group are falling way behind in approving new members. I’m about to e-mail the national administrators.

An apology: I seem to write about the New York Times a lot. I’m sorry. They just write about good topics, and don’t generally suck at writing about them. I’ve seen it, but it’s rare. I hate crappily-written stuff, so the Times is a safe bet. Also, I generally know how to spot a biased story or one with incomplete reporting, and I stay away from those I find in the Times.

The interior of the Sherlock Holmes Museum on Baker Street. In the Victorian style, it's cluttered with stuff. (Creative Commons-licensed photo from the Flickr account of practicalowl)

Here’s an article written by a professor in my academic department, Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin. I haven’t yet had her in class; she’s on sabbatical this semester.

In this she’s written the most complete, historically accurate magazine-format depiction of planned obsolescence I’ve ever read. And I’ve read several great ones.

Planned obsolescence is, in my own words, designing something to wear out, give out, or otherwise become unusable or out of style after a certain amount of time. Which prompts the consumer to buy another.

It hasn’t always been around; in fact, it has only governed business practices in the last 80-90 years, and, arguably, the vast majority of it has popped up in the last 40 years.

In my opinion, it’s dishonest. In most cases, we (well, industrial engineers) know how to make stuff last, say, ten or a hundred times as long as it “normally” lasts in our experience. Why don’t we? People like to make money.

Obviously it’s destroying our planet, and to a certain extent, our souls, if you believe in that kind of thing. I like good product design as much (and probably a lot more) than the next guy, but what happens to our humanity if we’re never satisfied with what we have?

One man asked that and came up with the “100 Thing Challenge,” where he sold, donated, or put into storage all his possessions except a carefully-chosen 100 things—for one year. He got coverage by Time magazine online and now has a book deal with Harper Perennial.

My sister today said something like “I’m against the production of new stuff.” She thinks the world has everything it needs, and if we just passed it all around—Freecycle, that sort of thing—we’d all be better off.

I’m not there yet, but I’m on my way.

GoodNewsForPolarbears.org, is an ingenious free local recycling website that combines the best features of Freecycle and eBay. It lets people recycle things they no longer need by simply giving them to other people that DO need them.

I don’t need anything, but I do have a TV I don’t need – I’ll list it up and tell you how I get on!

Well let’s start it off by saying there’s a new review up for my novel Interregnum at http://www.fantasybookreview.co.uk/SJA-Turney/Interregnum.html and it’s a good one. I’m feeling kinda smug. I now have three reviews live for that book, and one pending. Two of the three live reviews are damn good and basically I need to produce evidence that I’m just that damn good in order to hook and land myself an agent. So… fingers crossed for the fourth, which I’m about to chase up. I’d really like to write some more, but I need someone to invent either an eighth weekday (blorksday) or the day’s 25^th-28^th hours so that I have the time. I could devote 25:00 to 28:00 on Blorksday every week to nothing but writing.

So this morning there was frost. First time this season I looked out and the village green was white. The fence was white. The top of the car was white and I had to use a credit card to scrape the windows. No, I wasn’t on the bike this morning. With the discovery of my slipped disc, wifey has decided that I should be on the bike as little as we can manage and, with the frost this morning, today was a damn good day not to ride. And because it was cold, cold, cold, I put on my usual T-shirt, threw on my jacket for work, but as an afterthought swapped my T-shirt for a thick, fleecy hoodie. And I was toasty. Very nice. I spent the next three hours sitting next to a window through which the sun blazed mercilessly. I swear I lost a quarter of my weight in the first hour. By hour two I was sat in a puddle of perspiration. And there’s nothing I can do about it except melt until it gets dark at 4:15 tonight. Yipes. I will be a shadow of my former self by then.

Wifey makes me chuckle. We’ve had our log fire going for the last several nights since the temperature began to fall. And last week Murphy the lurcher, who has no respect for his brother’s fluffy toys, tore apart a fluffy giraffe in a savage lion-on-wildebeest kind of action. Eviscerated. Fluffy intestines everywhere. Wifey put the shredded carcass in the log next to the fire. It sat there for three nights while we dug around beneath it for wood. Why? Because wifey is strangely pregnantly hormonal and can’t bring herself to consign giraffe to the funeral pyre. In fact it upset her enough that she took the body back off the pile last night and put it in the corner of the room. The time is coming, I suspect, when I will have to have a funeral and bury a shoebox full of fluffy giraffe in the back garden. I suppose I’m preparing to be a parent, but in the most peculiar way!

Oh, and courtesy of wifey we’re going to shortly become the International House of Chairs. Perhaps I could open a second hand chair store. You see, due to my newly-revealed bad back, we both decided I should probably not spend my time sitting on my own crossed legs on the side of a bed in the spare room using my pc. Perhaps a real chair? So I went onto Freecycle. Great idea, freecycle. I found a guy giving away exactly the sort of chair I wanted. So I asked if he still had it and said I would like it if so. He never replied. And then wifey got involved. She put a wanted ad on freecycle. And nothing. So she went onto Ebay and bought herself two big wicker chairs and me an office chair. And now the freecycle guy has responded with his chair. And another office chair has appeared on freecycle. Currently we could have 3 office chairs and 2 wicker chairs this week. Mmmm. Anyone want to shop at the International House of Chairs?

Ciao Bella…

Today has been a good autumny kind of day, not to windy, mostly bright with only a few bitter cold showers.

The garden, and goat pen, are starting to get very muddy again. A productive afternoon was spent in the garden sorting, the morning disappeared somewhere too but not as productively, I remember looking at the clock and finding at it was already half past one with nothing done.

A pile of sacks of manure was cleared, unfortunately not to the allotment but to some local freecyclers. Even though the allotment needs as much manure as possible on it but it is the time it takes moving it up their and in the next couple of weeks there is the muck heap garden to be taken up there to make way for the new goat housing.

A fire was lit and lots of old branches were sorted, broken up and either burned there and then or put to one side for cutting up for the Rayburn and indoor wood burners. Over the summer a lot of twigy branches have built up from the greens feed to the goats, and now that the garden is gettting muddy they are starting to get walked into everywhere.

Then this evening we went out to see some fireworks. (photo to follow when I get bluetooth working)

On graduating with a degree in Social and Political Sciences, I had little or no idea of what I wanted to go on to do. I had an undefined view that I wanted to “make a difference”, but as to what that difference would be, or how I could make it, I was unclear.

It was then that I spoke to the father of an old friend – a successful businessman and philanthropist. Though he had left school at 16, he had been in the same predicament. The advice he gave to me was based on his own experience, taking the first job offer he received. Getting your foot on the ladder is hard enough. Trying to find your dream job from day one, is nigh on impossible. The worst that can happen, he told me, is that you learn what you don’t want to do.

Applying for every job I thought I might want to do, I took that advice and accepted a position as a graduate trainee at an independent communications group. It was the best move I could have made.

Cutting my teeth in the private sector, enabled me to develop many valuable skills that have held me in great stead as over time I began to specialise in advising social sector organisations on their communications. It was then that I left the communications group to set up my own PR agency, specialising in charity PR, and then selling my stake in that to set up another agency, The Social Enterprise, that focused on broader consultancy to charities – including policy, programmes and development.

It was from there that I was offered my current position, as Director of Survivors Fund (SURF), an UK registered charity representing and supporting survivors of the Rwandan genocide. The position is challenging, as we are a small organisation (I am the only full-time employee in the UK) managing a comparatively large budget of up to £1 million per annum. As such, it is vital to be able to do everything – which in the past week has for me included writing funding proposals, managing a board meeting, developing a new programme evaluation model, writing this article and finding and making a new meeting table (sourced through freecycle, a wonderful resource!)

The best training for the position is twofold.

First, undertake as much work experience as possible, in my view the broader the better. Get a feel for the kind of organisation that you want to work for, large or small, public sector or social sector, local or international. Also, try finding opportunities in different departments – communications, finance, research. Do your research and tailor your approach to secure the opportunity, and mine the network to get that all important break – GradLink is a great resource for this purpose.

Second, consider a practical masters degree to develop your skill base – but do not jump into it after graduation. Build up some work experience first, and once you have an idea of what you really want to do then focus in on the programmes that offer what is best suited to you to take you to the next level. I was incredibly fortunate to be offered a Reynolds Fellowship in social entrepreneurship from New York University. It gave me the exposure to learning and access to contacts that are now proving critical in my new role. Whether I would have benefited as greatly from the programme without the 7 years of working beforehand; I question.

Ultimately there is not one best route into a job in the social sector. The difference I want to make may well have been possible in the private sector – working in corporate social responsibility – or in the public sector – working for the Department for International Development. What is most important is to open yourself to opportunities and take the opportunities open to you. Obstacles are there to be overcome, and failure to be learned from. Good luck!

First published: The Cambridge Student, October 2009.

For those of you who follow The Freecycle Network’s Twitter account (@TheFreecycleNW) you may have seen the #FreecycleFriday tag going out over the last few weeks.

So, what is it?

‘Freecycle Friday’ is a Twitter based community involvement project. Much in the same vein as ‘Follow Friday’, where you tell your followers which Twitter accounts you recommend, ‘Freecycle Friday’ is a ‘pull together’ of Twitter users all tweeting about the same thing.

Freecycle encourages users to use ‘Freecycle Friday’ to introduce someone to Freecycle (just tell them about your experiences and direct them to freecycle.org) and/or to offer something on your group.

It gets Freecycle known to people who perhaps haven’t come across it before and helps you clear out some stuff you don’t need or want any more. How cool is that, right?

So go ahead and tell @TheFreecycleNW what it is you’re doing for #FreecycleFriday. They retweet some of the messages, so you might just get your Twitter account a little bit of exposure while you’re at it.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to try Freecycle for yourself, check out freecycle.org.  Freecycle is a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills.

Membership, as well as everything offered, is free.  So, with nothing to lose, check it out today.

The kids and I try to do something unique to give back to our community in some way every year at this time.  A few years ago we thought it would be nice to do a white elephant sort of Christmas gift thing through Freecycle. We had left over items from a school bazaar, as well as a bunch of wrapping supplies. So we passed these items on as “surprise” gifts, kinda like a “Secret Santa” sort of thing, for others to fully enjoy.

But also, my 9 year old daughter, at the time, had just lost a special friend just before Christmas to a plane crash. Her friend was only 10 when she died with her brother and parents in that crash. And it really struck close to home.  We decided to do this in rememberance of her loving and lively spirit as well.  It was the first time my kids lost friends.  And the first time a mother and her children disappeared from my “mommy circle” and life as a parent.

Most of the gifts were sort of like stocking stuffers or were perfect for one child to give to another. Most were of most interest to children under the age of 8. None were super expensive or fancy. But each interesting and would be enjoyed.

We completely wrapped them ready to put under someone’s tree, or in a stocking, or taken to a gift exchange.  They weren’t meant to be given to some charity. We already gave extensively to several.  We gave them out as surprises – the recipient having no idea exactly what was inside, except maybe guidance for age or gender. 

We had a resounding response!  Simply giving small surprises to a wide range of people, from a wide range of backgrounds and a wide range of stories and trials to share.

The purpose for the giving of these gifts was not really about someone not having as much as someone else. The purpose of this giving was in reflection of what kids do naturally – give to each other  – simply because – regardless of perceptions of wealth, religion, etc.. 

The gifts were meant to carry on the spirit of gratitude to our community, both givers and receivers.  To bless friends and neighbors without judgement. 

Because simply… this is God.

I hope to do this again this year.  Want to join me?  Post in the comments and tell your friends if you like.  Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a grand surprise giving to our own neighbors and community, that took place all over the world this year, besides the usual charities?  To lift the spirits of a fellow stranger, without any particular reason in the world, except just to Give.  It’s amazing the healing that can take place.  It doesn’t have to be through Freecycle, but it can be a fun community venue, especially for smaller communities.

We'll settle for the lesser of 2 evils~

Boy # 2 arrived home from school yesterday looking like the picture of complete misery, runny nose, sneezing, coughing, later on he started running a temperature, I immediately banished him to his room and gave him a tub of disinfectant wipes. Both boys # 2 & 3 crashed out early and were asleep before 8pm. This morning at 5:45 I checked in on boy # 2, he was running a temperature of 102°, poor baby, when my babies are sick, I feel their misery, they both have asthma and when they get sick they tend to have respiratory distress…and with Swine flu being a big threat, I went into a panic…like I needed something else to send me into a panic (yes, still suffering from Panic Attacks, so if I can put you on my call list, let me know, last night I needed to talk to someone, anyone and I had nobody I could talk to). So this morning I sat by the phone and as soon as it was 8am I dialed the doctor’s office and was able to get boy # 2 in at 9:30, he was not diagnosed with Swine flu, just your common everyday Piglet flu, big sigh of relief, he was prescribed antibiotics and got a refill on his inhaler, and a follow up in a couple of weeks…of course they recommended we all get the H1N1 vaccine, but of course they are not available. Figures. Boy # 2 was so sweet, he was like “thank you mom for taking me to the doctor” I hope he gets better soon, I hate seeing my kids sick. I’ve got him walking around carrying his wipes…

Keep your germs at bay and away

As for me, well still miserable…I know, what else is new…since Monday’s procedure I’ve been having headaches and shortness of breath, I’ve called the Dr’s office who referred me to the surgery center, I called the surgery center and they referred me back to the doctors office…IDIOTS…as if I am in the mood to be playing on the phone….I’m tired of laying flat on my back, laying on my side (either side), tired of sitting, and don’t have the energy to stand….I’ll say it again…I want my life back….

I am a bit happy…I sent out an email on the internets…freecycle that is…and one of the ladies that comes around for my giveaways set aside two bags of books for me, so happy reading to me, she also emailed me and told me she would put me on her books list…yay, these are the books I can read, true crime, mystery, suspense…she did throw in a couple of “light” romance, but I may be able to read them, if not I’ll just pass them along. Books make me happy, free books make me happier, books I want to read make me silly happy….so yay, I’m happy.

Book love~

When I first started to collect laptops for my project, it was with giddy anticipation that I thought I could create something from nothing for my own personal use.  I didn’t give too much thought to what I was going to do with the equipment I might have left over, but I only ever considered giving back to those who donated hardware of their own accord, and to the Freecycling Community that was supporting me.

I was actually very impressed with the work completed on the show Junk Raiders, which debuted on The Discovery Channel.  (Wikipedia link.)

Their show centered around doing what seemed to be the impossible: create a downtown Toronto loft out of an older industrial unit, and build and furnish it using only Freecycled material and a bankroll of five-thousand dollars for “urban professional” clients.  Nearly everything came from hard work, from the framing and walls to the final result, and I was completely impressed with what they pulled off.  Surely if they could build an entire loft from cast-off materials, anyone should be able to reuse, or even repurpose, older equipment to fill a present-day need!

In the past, I thought about selling off my old, unused computers and electronics, but I quickly recognized that there was no real market for old, outdated hardware, as even a glimpse of the pages upon pages of computers and equipment on E-Bay will tell that story quite well.  Previous generations get little-to-no respect, often going for a tiny percentage of their worth, regardless of the fact that they still might be worth something to somebody.

I was always disappointed when I put up a piece of computer hardware at a fair price, and received few – if any – bids, or even interest!  There is simply too much of a glut out there, that people are likely not even reading your ad anymore.  So, in this endeavour especially, I decided that E-Bay was not the answer.

What I didn’t realize is that by recycling your electronics, you might not only be helping others to get something that might be of use to them, but you might also help save lives in the process.  I’m not talking about the environmentalist issue of “everything we keep out of a landfill helps to save the environment”.  I’m speaking of the issue of health and safety that affects those people who’s job it is to actually recycle this hardware.

From an MSNBC Article, located here, I read a very disturbing quote:

“While there are no precise figures, activists estimate that 50 to 80 percent of the 300,000 to 400,000 tons of electronics collected for recycling in the U.S. each year ends up overseas. Workers in countries such as China, India and Nigeria then use hammers, gas burners and their bare hands to extract metals, glass and other recyclables, exposing themselves and the environment to a cocktail of toxic chemicals.”

Now, I understand that the numbers being presented may simply be an estimation by environmental activist, but the fact that workers are disposing of hazardous materials with substandard methods and equipment is simply scary.

“Many brokers claim they are simply exporting used equipment for reuse in poor countries. That’s what happened in September, when customs officials in Hong Kong were tipped off by environmentalists and intercepted two freight containers. They cracked the containers open and found hundreds of old computer monitors and televisions discarded by Americans thousands of miles away.

China bans the import of electronic waste, so the containers were sent back to the U.S.”

From a post on the Ontario Ministry of the Environment Website, located here, it offers a very good suggestion when dealing with electronic waste:

“The first thing we should always think about when discarding something is whether there’s a worthy cause that could make use of it. School, charities and other non-profit organizations are usually a good choice.”

Reading further, I also noted that they also have a warning, and one that seems to echo the sentiments of MSNBC:

“There are also private companies that recycle computers. There’s a caveat here: Choose computer recycling companies wisely because some of them send equipment to countries where recycling is cheaper because fewer safeguards are in place. Do your research. We’re no better off if we protect our own environment at the expense of the environment in other countries.”

There’s a lot to think about when it comes to recycling your old electronics.  In weeks past, my Wife and I took some old construction waste to our local waste management facility, and I walked across to look at a pile of old electronics that they had piled up.  I was immediately stopped by an Employee, who told me that I wasn’t permitted to go through it.  I was quite surprised, as I had been to other facilities previously, and they allowed you to take from the stock, but I was informed that, because this was a private waste management facility, that they recycle the old electronics themselves.

Translation: That pile was worth money, and no, you cannot touch it.

When you are looking to dispose of that older television, computer or electronic device, I would personally recommend looking into locally run options first, rather than running your older equipment off to the local dump.  Obviously, I recommend www.freecycle.org as your first step, but also look into donating your electronics to schools, shelters, or even community groups.

I guarantee that there are no end to the options available when you are looking to donate.  In the end, you are helping somebody out, helping yourself, and helping us all in the process.

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