Small scale living

I picked up an article and some attendant discussions recently about living in small spaces. Apparently new build in the UK is smaller than European averages, with one bedroom flats at perhaps 43 meters square. I did the maths and worked out the boat may be slightly smaller than that, and there are three of us in it. I also gather that in Japan, small living is more prevalent.

There are challenges, let’s be clear. Having more than one person in a small space means next to no personal space. Privacy is at a premium, but not impossible. It calls for constant attention and negotiation, so you really have to get on with the people sharing the small space. We’ve not struggled on this score, although in the depths of winter when it’s wet and grim outside and we’re all fidgety, it isn’t always a joy. Laundry and wet clothes are the biggest practical problem. Again, not insurmountable. I now have little lines strung up over the sink and draining board for when the waterproof outers get soaked. Dealing with wet clothes in a small space is not entertaining, but again, wholly possible. The person with a car probably wouldn’t face this one as much.

We had to give up all sorts of things to downsize. We have to be very disciplined about buying new stuff. Actually I like this, I like living lightly and not feeling weighted down by possessions. There’s less to clean, tidy and maintain, too. Every prospective purchase has to be considered. Where is it going to live? Is something else going to have to move out, and if so, what? It makes us focus on what we value and use most. It also discourages people buying us (and especially the child) anything that is both large and useless. Another win.

There is no way we can have dinner parties. I’m fine with that, I feel no lack. We meet people other places. No frantic pre-visitor tidying up, we just go to the pub. Splendid. We don’t end up with hordes of other people’s children coming to visit. This is fine too. We go to spaces where children can rampage. I do not worry about breakages, or children getting into things they should not. More win.

Large spaces are an invitation to accumulate stuff, (Been there, done that) most of the stuff is barely used, not even necessarily wanted, but it grows to fill the available space. The smaller the space, the less you let it do that. Unlike a lot of people I know, I don’t have an attic, garage or spare rom stuffed with unwanted things I can’t let go of. This is another win. Large spaces are also an invitation to stay in while your small space encourages going out. There’s a lot of space outside. Most of the time I’ve not felt cramped in the boat, because of what’s outside the windows. There’s a lot of space outside, and in nice weather, I can sit in it, and work. My ‘office’ for writing this afternoon will be under the willows. I can also use libraries, cafes, and other public spaces. I’ve felt more cooped up in houses than ever I have on the boat.

Then there’s the cost and environmental aspects. Often we only need one light in the evening, and the heating is much reduced. More space equals more lights and more heating needed. Bigger properties occupy more land, and that does have a direct environmental impact. Think how much soil is taken out of natural use in order to support all those bedrooms and garages stacked with unwanted junk. Smaller spaces take less cleaning and therefore use fewer cleaning products. Less carpet is required. Fewer cans of paint will be deployed in decorating, and on it goes. A smaller space means less consumption, continually, saving money and keeping you greener. Furthermore it will have been cheaper to buy or rent than a big space. And that saved money will enable you to get out and do more interesting things somewhere else.

I’m conscious that anyone with mobility issues may need a bit more space to get around. That’s a different sort of issue. Some working from home options require more storage space and work area than we do – again I’d not argue with that. However, having space so that you can have more junk, and as an antidote to not being able to relate very well to the people you ostensibly live with… not so clever. Small spaces call for interesting skills, managing possessions, accumulation, and human relationships. I can really recommend it as a learning experience. There’s so much to be gained from finding out what you actually need, and what’s just weighing you down. It’s easier than you might imagine, and more fun.

Druids afloat

We’ve just had our first anniversary of moving to the boat, which seems like a good time to reflect on the experience. Boat life has definitely changed me, and altered the dynamic in my family.

The first and most obvious issue was space, moving from a large two bedroomed cottage to a narrowboat meant paring down our possessions. A lot. Tom had already done that to change country. I had to consider what to put in storage, what to bring, what to give away. James had to contemplate his vast array of toys. The process turned out to be similar – what has good memories associated with it, and what reminds us of things we would rather forget? We took the opportunity to get rid of anything with unhappy associations. What do we really use and enjoy, what is just ‘stuff’?In the space of a few weeks, we contemplated our need for and relationship with every physical thing we owned. And I have to say, we judged well. We swap books and toys around with those in storage every so often, but I don’t miss any of the things I let go of. Rather than having a lot of toys, James now has a few that he really gets good use out of, and a better idea what to pick out for himself when looking for new things.

The shortage of space inside means we are outside a lot. It also means we have learned to work and move around each other, careful of each other’s space and needs, co-operating to make what space we have work for us. That’s been really good too, and I think in terms of inter-personal skills, has fine-tuned the child’s sensibilities. He defaults to tidying up now, has learned to manage his own space and possessions, and has become very good at fitting in. We’re a quiet boat, and a happy one.

Electricity as been an interesting issue. Boats are self contained units, which means generating your own power. This has made us super-conscious of what we use, and absolutely careful about not wasting it, or frittering it away on pointless things. Computer time is really focused, and if we can find a non-electrical solution we use that instead. So we have a wind-up radio, and sometimes we use candles. It makes for a more relaxed and peaceful environment.

I’ve always loved to travel although I don’t do well in cars. Boat life means moving at least every two weeks. A change of views, a different route to school and in the holidays and at weekends, adventures further afield. There are a lot of villages that are a bit like ‘home’ and we go to events all over the place. We meet a lot of people. And of course all the other boaters are moving too, with a shifting, transient community of friendly people. The flow of neighbours, the webs of friendship and the real sense of community amongst boating people is lovely, and I’ve really enjoyed that aspect.

I’ve learned a lot about me in the last year. I have learned how little material stuff I need in order to be happy, but I have also learned what I cannot do without. I’ve fallen in love with small-space living, I can’t imagine I’d ever want to live in a big house after this. I love the compactness. I love having to think carefully about what I need, and what is useful. I had thought before this that I wasn’t a materialist, that I was mindful of electricity and water consumption, but I’m even more aware now, and it’s a good awareness to have. Living small means living lightly, but rather than feel restricted by this, I find it increasingly liberating. Inside the boat is a warm, contained space, outside is everything else, and room for adventures.

I miss having the space to grow plants, and I would like enough room for all my books, and I do occasionally hanker after the kind of kitchen that has a table in it and room to feed large gatherings of people, but there will be time for that in the future. I find I don’t hanker after gadgets, or even furniture that much. I could imagine living in a traditional Japanese style house where beds are rolled up each day and people kneel at a low table to eat. The trouble with ‘normal’ is that we can so easily forget it isn’t necessary, or inevitable much of the time. I don’t need much, and my child, with his one box of toys, his stack of books, a bike and a lot of open spaces, is happier than he’s ever been. He doesn’t seem to miss the gadgets either. His main desire for more space involves room for bookcases and his wish to have his now considerable book collection to hand too.

Spoon billed sandpipers

Yesterday I alluded to spoon billed sandpipers as creatures in need of our support.  I first heard about them through the wildfowl and wetland trust. I’ve seen video footage. They are tiny birds, the sort you could easily fail to spot, but rather sweet. There are only 100 breeding pairs left in the wild, and the WWT are breeding them in captivity. More information here:

 

http://www.wwt.org.uk/what-we-do/saving-wildlife/science-and-action/globally-threatened-species/spoon-billed-sandpiper/?gclid=COKA9rHfga4CFcQTfAodjlau4A

 

Being migrants, the spoon billed sandpipers move through a lot of different environments. Birds don’t notice human borders, but when they move between boundaries they are vulnerable to the variances in laws. So many migrant birds are in decline. Habitat loss and being hunted feature prominently in the explanations.

As is often the way of it, the spoon billed sandpipers are ‘posterboys’ for a great many other creatures who all live in the places they pass through. Save the iconic creature and a whole host of less photogenic ones also benefit. And we benefit too. The loss of species and the loss of habitat is also the degradation of our habitat. It is the loss of beauty and inspiration from the world, the loss of genetic diversity. It is the loss of living things that do not deserve to die.

Most of the time, there doesn’t seem to be much that we can do in daily life to support distant and endangered creatures. Throwing money at things does help, if you have money to throw. It brings me back to a question I keep asking – what do we prioritise? Every time we put commerce before sustainability, every time we sacrifice another life form to our hunger for economic growth… As Jo pointed out on her blog this week, every time we spend our money, we make our voices heard. Just a little bit. There’s no shopping choice that will help the spoon billed sandpipers survive. There’s no specific company to boycott, no easy thing to point at as a way of making a good contribution.

But still we can consider the question about how we contribute. How our own priorities and day to day actions shape this world, in which trade is a constant political priority, and extinction barely gets a mention. Judge us as a species and it looks like we value shopping more than we do life, and that’s a pretty scary thought, for me at least.

While projects to save individual species who are on the brink, are undoubtedly good, it’s fire fighting. The causes of endangerment and extinction are not being entirely tackled by this. Causes like pollution, poaching, habitat destruction and war, which have their own causes in human poverty and desperation, and in the desire for wealth. We have so much wealth in the world, so much technology. As a species we could probably address any issue, if we had consensus over it, but mostly we don’t. There’s always something else more ‘important’ to talk about, some short term, money orientated agenda that takes precedence.

Time is finite, and this is our habitat too. If we push ourselves onto the endangered list through mistreatment of the planet, there will be no one to come and rescue us.

Earth Mother politics

In ‘Women who run with wolves’ the author suggests that how we treat women mirrors how we treat the planet. Look back on the centuries of planet ravaging and the oppression of women, there’s definitely a parallel. Is there a causal link? I think so, and it has a lot to do with priorities.

I’m going to be brutally honest here and say that were it not for Tom, I would very likely have become the kind of radical feminist who is anti-male. There are days when hearing new stories about male violence towards women fills me with rage. But there is also Tom, who is brave, gentle, heroic, and reminds me of all the other good men I have met along the way. Statistically, about one in four men are abusers; that means three quarters aren’t. There are days when I have to remind myself of this.

However, when it comes to raping the earth mother, we’d be self-deluding if we tried to cast that as a gender issue. There are no shortage of men working for the good of the planet, and no shortage of women participating in the great commercial pillage. It would also be fair to say that gender politics are not a simple male/female conflict either. How many women were taught by their mothers to put a brave face on it and be stoical? How many women help coerce their daughters into unwanted marriages, throw out pregnant daughters, defend abusive men, and otherwise add to the problem? More than enough. The new girlfriend is often the person most willing to give that bitch of an ex-girlfriend a hard time. Knowing or not, we participate.

When I’m not raging over some specific injustice, I tend to feel that feminism is inadequate. It supports the ideas of polarisation, division and difference. It also gives the woman-haters out there something very easy to latch onto and attack. The sort of person who views every threat to total male supremacy as a feminist conspiracy to destroy all men. They most certainly exist – read the comments on the Telegraph online sometime. Getting angry and building up the barricades doesn’t help. Reinforcing the gender divide solves nothing.

A few months ago I sat in a room with a woman who was covered in bruises because her boyfriend had beaten her. She was in the process of trying to escape, and it was one of the most heart-breaking things I have ever seen. Of course women who are wounded by other means, driven to depression, to drink, self blame, self hatred, have no such wounds to show the world, but they are just as damaged by male aggression.

There’s a whole culture underpinning this kind of behaviour. It’s laden with beliefs about ownership and rights. How many men think about women, and women’s bodies not unlike how they think about the earth – as a resource to be used for their benefit and pleasure. We exploit, we use, we take, I come back to the idea of entitlement again. And sure, women do it to men as well, although in nothing like the same numbers. But the culture underpinning it, we build together. All of us. Regardless of gender. We do it in every advert that uses a scantily clad woman to sell a product, and every advert that shows woman as house elf and man as mighty leader. We do it in our stereotyping, our willingness to blame the victims, our collective reluctance to take the problem seriously. Sometimes we do it in our religions too, and our politics uphold it.

We won’t fix either earth abuse, or woman abuse, or any other kind of abuse, until we fix the mindsets that allow us to justify them. It’s all too easy to be accidentally complicit, or to be part of the problem just by ignoring it. What we do not speak against, others may assume we condone. Half the problem with abusers, no matter who or what their victim is, is that they believe they are just the same as everyone else. Everyone else is doing what they do, or would, if they were only powerful enough to pull it off. That idea is the real enemy.

Druidry and politics

My personal belief is that government and religion should be kept well away from each other, for the good of both. All those issues about power corrupting, for a start, and on the government side, it should be about making pragmatic decisions that will be best for as many people as possible, rather than being led by the morals and priorities of any single faith group. But that said, we are all people and what we believe inevitably does colour everything else we think. At a personal level, politics and religion are not so easily separated.

We know that historical druids were political. I get the impression that’s why Rome stamped on them so thoroughly. Where does modern druidry fit with modern politics though? Should we be joining parties and making like the druids of old, or are we better off keeping out of all that? I don’t think there’s a one answer fits all here (do I ever?) but at the same time, I can’t see how any of us can take forward any spiritually inspired principles without to some degree engaging with the political system.

Many of the big issues for druids are too big to be tackled through national politics even. Justice, peace and environmental protection have to be tackled at a global level. These don’t seem to be major priorities for our governments. But druids are international folk. Our orders, social groupings and networks cross borders all the time. And we’re a talkative bunch. My sense of things political in a number of other countries come entirely from what other pagans and especially druids, tell me. And I suspect that some folks perceive English politics primarily through the blog posts of Damh the Bard, Cat Treadwell and others.

At the moment, that might not seem all that important in the scheme of things. Druidry is a growing religious movement, and it is an international one in which political national borders mean very little. We utilise the internet a lot. Through podcasts we hear each other’s voices right across the world. The scope to share information, is considerable. As we grow, the political potential of Druidry will increase. No doubt that will offer us more challenges than solutions.

Druidry is inherently political. It prioritises things that governments do not prioritise. Quality over quantity. Environment over profit. Inspiration over conformity. Honour over expedience. So much of what happens in politics is based on short term thinking and a desire for immediate gain. Druidry does not encourage a buy now, pay later mentality. It is co-operative rather than competitive, favours compassionate ways of treating the disadvantaged, and does not dive enthusiastically into every available opportunity for war. Every time one of us gets up and mentions any of these values and priorities, we are acting politically. We are challenging the ‘norms’ and resisting the current tides.

The druids of old were not the chieftains and rulers. They offered advice. Generally speaking, telling people what to do is a very good way of getting them to ignore and resent you. We can however ask awkward questions, enquire ‘what if’ and keep talking about those other ways of being political, that are not about gross national productivity, economic growth, fantasy finances and yet another scapegoat to bomb as a distraction from issues closer to home.

Housework for Druids

Every aspect of how we live can be, should be even, a manifestation of our beliefs. So, what are the Druid issues when it comes to housework?

I’ll start with the reasons to treat housework as an important, worthwhile thing.

1)      Respecting our own space is an extension of self respect.

2)      By caring for the house we are honouring the spirits of place.

3)      Work undertaken around the house also cares for our tribe (assuming we have one).

4)      We can create beautiful, sustaining, inspiring spaces for ourselves and others, pouring bardic creativity into our homes.

5)      All work done mindfully has a value, we should not devalue any work just because it is not directly paid for.

 

On the flip side, there are reasons to be wary of housework.

1)      Is your home as shiny as houses in TV commercials? Do you feel pressured to make it that way? That’s about pressure to buy products, and needs resisting.

2)      What are you cleaning your home with? All products, even the green ones, represent consumption and use of resources. Reduced cleaning can be the greener option.

3)      How much time and energy goes into housework, and what else might it be used for instead?

4)      Over-identification with under-valued work can be very bad for your sense of self and can affect how others perceive you. While there’s much to said for re-valuing domestic work, that’s a revolution that hasn’t happened yet.

 

As with most things, there are no rights or wrongs here. It’s very easy to be ‘too green to clean’ or to view it as someone else’s job. It’s also very easy to feel people will judge you on the appearance of your home – especially true for women – and that no matter what else you do, an imperfect house will condemn you to all who see it.

You can pour heart and soul into anything and get positive effects. You can bring grace and beauty to any activity. How you judge the results and value of this is very personal. A lovingly maintained home, where people can rest, play and work together happily, is a remarkable thing to have. Whether the uber-tidy and ultra-clean shiny house in the style of the adverts, actually gives you that, I shall leave you to ponder.

Green Hair

Look at the list of ingredients of most shampoos and you’ll see a lot of chemical names. I’ll freely admit I don’t know what half of them are. Since my teens, I’ve struggled to find anything that would both get my hair clean, and not result in scalp itching hell. There is also the issue of not wanting to pile potentially hazardous chemicals into the water system.

The substances used in beauty products have all been tested – on animals. That’s a great big ethical discomfort all by itself. It’s also flawed. Short term animal testing does not tell us much about the long term effects of use on humans. It doesn’t tell us what these chemicals are going to do when we mix them up with a whole bunch of other stuff, wash them down the drain and send them off into the water system. There are all kinds of things we know perfectly well are ok in small doses and deadly or damaging with longer exposures. X rays. Chemo therapy. Sunlight. We’ve been assured chemicals used in farming were safe, only to find out years into the real world experiment, that they were killing high level predators. As soon as we wop the ‘science’ label on our beauty products, or anything else, a frightening number of us seem to imagine nothing bad will happen. The truth, as illustrated by thalidomide, organophosphates and other things that have since been banned after first being though fine, is that we the users are where the real scientific research happens. Slowly.

Hair is just one issue amongst many. I’m flagging it up because I appear to have found a good solution. Green, light on chemicals of uncertain effect, no sign of scalp irritation and resulting in clean hair. Having tested this on me for a while, I am reasonably confident in suggesting it.

Just washing with water may get sweat and dust out, but it doesn’t give you much to sort out hair oils. When you first stop using regular shampoo, even if that’s just to move to a milder, greener product you may find you produce a lot of grease. You probably always did. Regular shampoos strip out a lot of oil and thus stimulate oil production. Giving them up means grease.

I spent a lot of time pondering what other creatures do to maintain fur and hair. Licking was straight out. Water I’d already got. What I’d not tried, was a dust bath. Pick a flour you are fine eating. I’m currently using rice because I hate cooking with it, but any fine flour will do. Take pinches and rub it into your hair, thoroughly. This takes a while and gets flour everywhere, just to warn people. Brush it out. The flour combines with the hair grease and off it comes. I like to follow through with a water rinse, because that feels really nice. If you brush the worst of the flour out, you do not then clog up the sink. If you buy organic flour, you’re about as close to green hair as I think it may be possible to get. I have long hair, of a tangly, misbehaving disposition. It comes out smooth, clean, silky and looks good for quite a lot of days post dust bath. It’s slightly more fiddly and messy than regular washing, but uses far less in the way of chemicals, uses far less water than conventional hair washing, costs far less than shampoo and works better than anything else I have tried so far. It’s also a great way of using up flour that is past its best and smells nice, in a ricey sort of way at the moment.

I can’t claim this is fool proof, allergic reaction proof, or absolutely guaranteed to work for everyone. I mention this in case anyone tries to do it to a llama, resulting in terrible consequences and a desire to sue. That should cover me for llama misuse. It works on me, I suspect it will work on other people, I also think if it doesn’t, it probably won’t kill you.

Living Small and Green

Somewhere back in the depths of winter we started talking about small living. The smaller a property, the less it takes to heat it, the less land it occupies, and the more conscious you have to be about how you use the space. No owning things for the sake of it, if you have next to no room. In terms of living greenly, living in a small space seemed the way to go. At that point it was all theory, but the Gods were clearly listening… things happened and we took the decision to live on a narrowboat. I can’t claim the main reason was green, but that was in the mix.

So here we are, off the grid, generating our own electricity, and in a very small space. We’ve been doing this for a few months now, so I feel able to comment.

The process of moving in involved a radical rethink of everything we own. What do we actually need? What can we stash in the available space? What will suit our lifestyle? Having spent a lot of years in long skirts, I’ve become a jeans girl, because boats and cycles do not go well with long skirts. My son had to weigh up the fun to space ratio of his various toys. And it must be said, he gets a lot of use out of the things he picked, and has not missed anything so far as I can tell. He’s learned a lot about himself and how he likes to play. We brought a lot of books, by agreement, and that was a good call. The stripping down process created self awareness, and made us conscious of everything we do. From a Druid perspective, it’s been a great teacher and awareness raiser.

One of the effects of living in a relatively small space is that you spend more time outside. There’s a great deal of outside with a canal, all of it beautiful. We go places and do things, work outdoors, eat outside, play outside as much as we can. It’s made me increasingly aware of the relationship between ‘in’ and ‘out’. Currently the norm seems to be to go after ever bigger and more luxurious houses full of stuff. The more houses we have, the more inside we create, the more ‘outside’ we destroy. On the whole, I’d rather have my home be a small space, and there be lots of wild outside everyone can share and benefit from.

Smaller homes do not require as much cleaning, which is a plus for work, and a plus for not using cleaning products. Fewer rooms equals less lighting, a radio on in the boat entertains us all. The smallness of space encourages us to interact and co-operate, unlike families in big houses who all have their own rooms and a television in each one. We share, entertain each other, and that living closer is a good thing. And if we need space, there’s an abundance of outside right there.

I’ve had to rethink my priorities, my whole way of living and doing. It’s been a good process. I feel cleaner, lighter. I like owning less but having the exact things I want and need. I like the green electricity, and I love how much ‘out’ there is. No vacuum cleaner required. No television. No hot and cold running conventionality. I can’t claim it’s been easy all the way, there have been a lot of challenges and a great many things to learn, but that’s part of the joy of it. Challenge is good. Without challenge, there’s precious little scope for growth.