Revisiting the Riot for Austerity.

I got into this blog world after joining an online Yahoo group called the Riot for Austerity last June or so. Some of you have read my posts about that, way on down the list. Funny how trying to reduce consumption has ended up with me spending more time online. One benefit to that is that I now read hardly any magazines. I spend a lot of my reading time online now, which hurts my eyes more but doesn't involve any trees, I guess. Still, I hope someday to cut back on this yet...

We have dropped the Riot for Austerity thing--actually I did that several months ago. The email digests I got from the group every day just got too judgemental for me to stomach. It was fun while it lasted. And what has lasted in George and me and the kids are some habits and ways of thinking that we got from the Rioters. (Did anyone ever riot for austerity? Probably not! Our generation is probably the only one looking for ways to downsize.)

There are seven areas in which the Rioters are trying to reduce consumption to a level 90% lower than the American average. On many of these areas, we have never come close to the American average anyway. For example, with consumer goods. There's no way we ever spent $1000 a month on goods beyond food and fuel (which are in their own categories). $1000 would be more than a third and almost half of George's monthly net income and even more than 25% of his gross. (My income is minimal enough to hardly count--about $500/month working 16 hours/week at the co-op, but it does pay some bills.)

Let me just list the 7 areas and where we've made changes in our habits to date:

1. Electricity. We started out at an average of 578 kWh/month or 6,936 kWh/year. The american average is 11,000 kWh/year. We've now had months down to 240 kWh and no higher than 440 kWh (that was last month due to the furnace running). The Rioter goal is 90 kWh/month. Our goal was to get to 50% of US average or about 458 kWh/month. We've gotten there easily and most months are much lower than that, even with the heat running in frozen Minnesota.

Some things we've done and are continuing to do out of habit:

*put the computer, printer, tv, and stereo on power strips and turn them off completely when not using; we also unplug the microwave and kitchen radio when not in use--anything with a clock still uses a lot of electricity when it's not running

*switched most light bulbs to compact flourescents (not quite all yet)

*hang clothes outside in summer and on drying racks in winter, except for underwear and towels where I'm still holding out

We have not gotten rid of the tv, turned off the fridge or freezer, quit using the dishwasher or vacuum cleaner or really done anything to inconvenience ourselves or change our lifestyle. This has all been very easy and has cut our electiricity use by at least a third to a half, saving quite a bit of money as well.

2. Natural Gas. This is much harder in Minnesota where we heat with Natural Gas. The Riot goal is 100 therms/year or under 10/month. We started with an average of 89 therms/month or 1068 therms/year. This is basically the US average. We would love to cut this in half, but we need to heat the house and use hot water.

Things we have changed, though:

*We keep our heat at 65 F. when we're home during the day now, instead of 70 F.. It's always at about 58 F. at night since we can't sleep otherwise. We use down comforters and they're toasty. When no one but the cat is home, we set the thermostat for 60 F. Sometimes at night when the wind is blowing through the walls, I'll cheat for a few hours and turn the heat to 70. It's just so much easier to move in the house then! Or sit and watch tv, read, do homework, etc. Still, we're using less in general.

*We now wash every load in cold water. I never thought I'd do this for whites, but since we dry them still the germs get killed that way.

*We've put plastic on some windows, bubble wrap on the kitchen windows and a quilt on the north-facing downstairs window. I'd still like to invest in some insulated curtains, esp. for the kitchen, bath and bedrooms. Someday...Maybe I'll sew them, too.

3. Gasoline. The Riot goal is 50 gallons/person/year or 200 gallons/year for our family of 4. We made a few changes here but more are needed.

*traded the 20 mile/gallon van for a Honda Civic at 30 miles/gallon.

*in the summer I biked to work but have since wimped out on that one.

*we walk when we can.

*we could take the bus more and we would like to take a train to Virginia next summer instead of a major fuel-using airplane. However, so far an Amtrak trip costs 1/3 more than a plane trip. Need to find a deal on train travel...We think it would be fun anyway.

We could do better in this area!

4. Garbage output. The goal is 12.6 pounds/week of trash for our family of four. We easily met this before the Riot. We use less than one of our city trash bags/week and sometimes just put out one bag every other week. How can this be?

*we use cloth napkins, cloth rags instead of paper towels, cloth menstrual pads (too much info?), cloth handkerchiefs, hardly any disposables at all

*we compost our food scraps

*we buy groceries from bulk bins at the co-op with very little packaging

*we recycle every scrap of paper, cardboard, paper board, can, bottle and plastic thing we can

*we actively try not to consume things that will end up as trash

This is one of our easiest areas.

5. Water usage. Goal is 10 gallons/person/day for all washing, eating, cooking needs. Frankly, we haven't been good at keeping track of this one. Some things we do have in place to cut back on water usage, though, are:

*a high-efficiency washing machine that uses hardly any water

*low flow shower and faucet heads

We need yet: a low water toilet and a rain barrel for catching garden water

6. Consumer Goods. Again, the goal here is $100/month instead of the US avg. of $1000/month. As I said, spending $1000 a month on stuff would be impossible for us. However, if you count our debt, money we've already spent on things like cars, furniture and appliances, we are right up there with the average American. We are working very very hard to pay down our debt. My income goes to that. In about 3 years all our consumer debt should be gone. In the meantime, we are trying to save so that we don't add more debt in times of emergency, etc. With the way the economy is going, everyone should be getting their butts out of debt and being very careful in this area. Screw the newscasters and marketers saying we need to boost the economy by spending! We need to help our country out by getting out of the endless debt cycle which is falsely propping up our economy but rapidly failing us...(Sorry, soapbox!)

We have focused on buying more secondhand items again (we have a good history of this), and we are trying very hard to live by the "use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without" motto of times past. For example, I have lots of fabric and yarn stashed away; I am trying to use that for house projects and clothing rather than buying stuff.

7. Food/Body Care/Cleaning. The Riot goal here is to buy 70% local and organic foods/body and cleaning products; 25% dry, bulk or local, wet products; and only 5% non-local and/or packaged foods (what we might call luxury items).

I don't know what our percentages are, but this is a fairly easy area for us also because we are used to co-op shopping, cooking and baking from scratch and using very plain body care products. We have mainly focused on finding as much food locally as possible. We have found this to be the yummiest way to eat food!

We have done these things and will continue to do them:

*bought 1/4 beef from nearby friends and froze it; we also have a local chicken farmer we frequent in the summer to stock up on her delicious chickens

*found a farm 8 miles away from which to buy our milk; make our own yogurt from it as much as possible. When we can't get to the farm, we can buy our milk from several MN organic dairies that sell at the co-op.

*shopped the farmer's market every week, just blocks from our house but even if we had to drive an hour it'd still use less fuel than buying food from CA or NZ at the grocery store down the block.

*picked blueberries, strawberries and raspberries at nearby farms. We froze the blueberries and most of the strawberries to use in cereal and baking. We also made strawberry and raspberry jam.

*canned and froze tomatoes from the farmer's market and have stored winter squash in Rose's cold closet for eating through the winter.

*we buy local eggs, butter, honey, maple syrup, flour, cornmeal, yak, buffalo and pork--all from the co-op where I work

*oats, flours, rice, beans, peanut butter, nuts, spices and herbs are all bought in bulk at the co-op

*of course, we garden a little bit. This year we had radishes, lettuce, cabbage, chard and chamomile with very little time or effort put into it.

Well, that's the seven areas. I think someday I'd like to teach a class on this stuff. Think anyone would come?

Lisa