$304.37 and the redemptive power of naked ladies

So.  Three hundred and four dollars and thirty-seven cents is a big power bill.  It's not at all conducive to saving for a new car.  So I thought carefully about our power consumption and decided that:
1. The heater in the dining room should not go on so readily.
2. We should use the tumble drier less.
3. We should use the freezer more.

On the second point, I worked hard at being a good brownie all weekend and washed about a million loads of washing while the sun shone and kept drier use to a minimum (not everything was completely dry at the end of the day).  On the third point, I thought about lentils and the general concept of making better use of the freezer.  I've wanted one for years and we were fortunate enough to be given a small one at the beginning of this year.  At the time, I was all about buying bulk amounts of red meat.  There are still quite a lot of sausages and some other meat in there, but now I'm cutting back red meat consumption, what I really need is some more home made ready meals in the freezer. 

I soaked some lentils and bought lots of vegetables and promised the kids I would bake and freeze food for school lunches and in the end, I bought us takeaway fish and chips for dinner.

All for a good cause though, that of my garden.  The children and I took Mary K out (from the rest home) to her old house this afternoon.  It has been cleared inside, ready for a deep clean and to be put on the market.  I dug up some more of Mary's lovely bulbs: daffodils, snowdrops and naked ladies (amaryllis), plus some hydrangea cuttings.  Instead of cooking at nearly tea time, I planted the daffodils in the herb garden, the snowdrops outside my/our bedroom window and the hydrangea cuttings I poked into the soil outside the lounge window.  I've not decided where to put the naked ladies, and anyway it was getting too dark to see the soil by then.

After reading Rosemary McLeod's piece on her dance around the edge of 1960s lefty circles in today's Sunday Star Times, I'm gagging to read Workers in the Margins, Union Radicals in Post-War New Zealand by Cybele Locke. 

Comments

Anonymous said…
We, too, just had our first ever $300+ power bill. Unfortunately, that is before we have even started using the drier or heated towel rails. Looks like we won't be!
Our only way of cutting back is to try to limit using the oven to twice a week and make sure we all sit in the same room with one light on in the evenings!
~Rachael

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