I've always loved the idea of bartering, but never found opportunities to do it. In the last couple of weeks I've discovered several such opportunities and I'm loving it!
I'm doing some casual tutoring for a teenage friend. I really enjoy stretching my brain and using all that stored up knowledge from my science, maths and teaching degrees, and because I'm keeping the sessions casual, it doesn't really feel like work. I tutored her a bit last year and her mum paid me for the sessions, but this year, I asked for no cash payment. Instead, her mum (who happens to be one of my best friends) will be doing some other things in return. Today, she baked us a delicious banana bread and later in the week, she is going to fix my iPod for me - something I don't know how to do, and would otherwise cost me quite a lot of money. I don't expect something each week, but get so much more enjoyment out of the payment in goods or services than if it was cash.
We happened across another trade this week, completely by accident. Stu took in some zucchinis and nectarines for his work mates, and one of them sent back, empty jars and egg cartons and has promised to hunt out her unused vacola jars for us too. The excess food isn't a loss for us, but a saving and a treat for her. Getting rid of jars that are unused and taking up space in her home is beneficial for her, while receiving free, useful jars for preserving our crops is wonderful for me!
Next week, I'll be doing some sewing for a dance student's mum who doesn't have the time and expertise to do it herself. She offered to pay me for the job, but I think I will ask if she would like to barter instead - I know she doesn't have a lot of spare money, but as a dairy farmer, she should be able to trade raw milk that I can use in my cheese making.
I have been reading with much interest about 'crop and swap' community gatherings and would love to be involved with one someday. But for now, I'm enjoying trading my goods and services for much appreciated others. I think I will make this my newest challenge, to hunt for opportunities to barter.
Do you barter? What have you traded? Any suggestions?
Monday, 11 February 2013
Sunday, 10 February 2013
11 years
Eleven years ago, we got hitched. A white wedding in the botanic gardens with family and friends present. Despite the February rain and the unseasonal chill, it was a beautiful day.
The last eleven years have been full of adventures and boring days; great times and not-so-great times; laughter and tears; new arrivals and sad departures but through all of it, we've been together. As promised in our wedding vows - best friends always.
Our challenge today, to choose one photo for each year that represents just one of the high points of that year. It was tough to choose just one, and we've had to leave out so many holidays, pets and good times, but here they are - 11 years of us.
The last eleven years have been full of adventures and boring days; great times and not-so-great times; laughter and tears; new arrivals and sad departures but through all of it, we've been together. As promised in our wedding vows - best friends always.
Our challenge today, to choose one photo for each year that represents just one of the high points of that year. It was tough to choose just one, and we've had to leave out so many holidays, pets and good times, but here they are - 11 years of us.
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| 2002 - We got married! |
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| 2003 - We went to Thailand for the 2nd time |
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| 2004 - We brought home our baby boys (and despite the look on Stu's face, were thrilled!) |
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| 2005 - We bought our new home. |
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| 2006 - Our beautiful dog Buddy joined the family. |
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| 2007 - We began renovations on our house - removing the old chimney. |
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| 2008 - My belly dance journey began |
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| 2009 - We took a family holiday to the Gold Coast. |
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| 2010 - Little Hurley became the baby of the house, a friend for Buddy. |
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| 2011 - A family trip to New Zealand. |
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| 2012 - We renovated our kitchen! |
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| 2013 - Relay for life as a family with our school. A great way to spend your wedding anniversary. |
It's been an amazing 11 years and I can't think of anyone else I would rather have spent it with.
Thursday, 7 February 2013
This week I'm an event organiser.....
A lot of my time lately has been taken up with preparing for a belly dance camp I will be hosting in May this year, and I thought it was about time the blog saw a bit more of my life as a belly dancer!
In 2009, as a fledgling teacher, my friend Sharon and I hosted our first ever Night Bazaar. It was held in the gardens of the local nursing home and we had dance groups from all around come and put on a wonderful, colourful show for the locals. We had a number of stalls and people came to pinic on the lawn, enjoy the show and shop. We were thrilled with the success.
In 2011, we hosted another Night Bazaar, but this time, went out on a limb and combined it with a camp. We expected about 20 of our closest dance buddies to show up, we hoped another teacher might teach a dance workshop and we thought we would put on a little show too. Well, the camp was a massive success! We sold out, had to put on an extra set of workshops (and still had more teacher's asking to teach), had a fabulous show, lots of stalls and people standing outside the venue just to see in! We were, again, blown away!
We were immediately asked when the next camp would be. It was tempting at the time to make it for the next year, but we knew that most of our supporters are mothers, without a massive amount of disposable income and that perhaps doing it every year would make the event stale, so we scheduled another for 2013.
Last October, I started advertising the camp. By Christmas time, I had sold 40 of the 50 camp places, had 3 fabulous teachers from Adelaide, Melbourne and Geelong in place to teach workshops (I'll also be teaching), was set to be the Victorian host of the ShimmySkirt project and well on the way to preparing for camp.
This week, I have only a few places left to sell, and have been busy allocating people rooms, checking payments, sending letters to all of our campers, planning workshops, planning menus (yes, we feed them too!), liaising with screen printers and our designer for tshirts and sorting out the performance. In the next few weeks, I will have to speak with the venue and work out how many tickets I can sell to non-campers for the performance night and have a meeting with my fellow committee members to move along the preparations for food, stalls and a fundraising raffle.
Its an awful lot of work - voluntary work that I'm not trained for. But I love it! I love the organising and planning and the fiddling around with the fine details. But most of all, I love that I am able to put on a wonderful weekend that people look forward to. A weekend full of feminine joy, friendships, giggles, makeup and dressing up with friends, performing, teaching and learning, and community spirit. I can't wait!
In 2009, as a fledgling teacher, my friend Sharon and I hosted our first ever Night Bazaar. It was held in the gardens of the local nursing home and we had dance groups from all around come and put on a wonderful, colourful show for the locals. We had a number of stalls and people came to pinic on the lawn, enjoy the show and shop. We were thrilled with the success.
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| Some of my students at our first ever Night Bazaar. |
In 2011, we hosted another Night Bazaar, but this time, went out on a limb and combined it with a camp. We expected about 20 of our closest dance buddies to show up, we hoped another teacher might teach a dance workshop and we thought we would put on a little show too. Well, the camp was a massive success! We sold out, had to put on an extra set of workshops (and still had more teacher's asking to teach), had a fabulous show, lots of stalls and people standing outside the venue just to see in! We were, again, blown away!
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| Me as a student in a "ballet for bellydancers" workshop at the 2011 camp |
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| Some of the fabulous performers at the 2011 Night Bazaar |
We were immediately asked when the next camp would be. It was tempting at the time to make it for the next year, but we knew that most of our supporters are mothers, without a massive amount of disposable income and that perhaps doing it every year would make the event stale, so we scheduled another for 2013.
Last October, I started advertising the camp. By Christmas time, I had sold 40 of the 50 camp places, had 3 fabulous teachers from Adelaide, Melbourne and Geelong in place to teach workshops (I'll also be teaching), was set to be the Victorian host of the ShimmySkirt project and well on the way to preparing for camp.
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| Our logo for 2013. Copyright Meenkeel Gypsies, Koroit Belly Dance and Elissa Taylor 2013 |
This week, I have only a few places left to sell, and have been busy allocating people rooms, checking payments, sending letters to all of our campers, planning workshops, planning menus (yes, we feed them too!), liaising with screen printers and our designer for tshirts and sorting out the performance. In the next few weeks, I will have to speak with the venue and work out how many tickets I can sell to non-campers for the performance night and have a meeting with my fellow committee members to move along the preparations for food, stalls and a fundraising raffle.
Its an awful lot of work - voluntary work that I'm not trained for. But I love it! I love the organising and planning and the fiddling around with the fine details. But most of all, I love that I am able to put on a wonderful weekend that people look forward to. A weekend full of feminine joy, friendships, giggles, makeup and dressing up with friends, performing, teaching and learning, and community spirit. I can't wait!
Sunday, 3 February 2013
Rocket chai!
It's been raining here. It is so lovely to watch the droopy shrubs perk up and the veggie patch looking vital again. And our tanks are full! The loss of our bore water connection this summer had me worried and I was beginning to think we might end up needing to buy water during those long, hot and dry weeks when I was having to pour our rain water on the garden to keep our veggies alive. But with full tanks at the start of February, I feel confident that we'll be OK. That's important to me. I feel that even if we can't be self sufficient for everything, it is important to be able to look after the basics - simple cooking, growing a few edibles, home maintenance and gathering enough water and managing its use so it is enough. Clearly we want to be much more self sufficient than that, but that is my base line.
While thinking about that, and hearing stories of people being without power and phone, and cut off from the rest of the world by floods and fires, I've started thinking more about our emergency plans. Hopefully, we never have a big emergency, but evem if we don't, we do often have to cope without power for a few hours, and I want those occasions to be easy to deal with. We are so reliant on power for the operations in our homes. Here, we have no natural gas and, in our home, absolutely everything is electric. When we have no power, it isn't only heating, cooling and the kettle that we lose, but our oven and stove are out of action and we can't even get water from the taps as they rely on an electric pump. If I know the power will be out, I put water in the sink to wash hands, fill water bottles and a thermos for hot water etc, but when it is unexpected, we're stuck.
So this is one of my goals for February. To organise a water supply that is not reliant on the power, or a non-powered way to access our tank water. And I'm also playing with ideas for how to cook and otherwise cope so that we don't feel that we have to go somewhere else or resort to takeaway dinners just because I don't have an oven.
Yesterday, we played with one of those ideas. We built a rocket stove in our garden using the simple plans from a Grassroots magazine. It was a very quick and easy build using things we scrounged from the garden - about 15 bricks, a tin can and the metal pot holder borrowed from the BBQ. We built it on the concrete behind the pizza oven, and the first version was on the ground. But it did really need to be raised so that it could be cooked on and fed sticks easily. We scanned the garden looking for something and spotted the no longer needed old toilet and a slab of concrete. A quick rebuild and our rocket stove was complete. We were highly amused by our use of the old loo - Stu's parents who were visiting think we've lost the plot ;)
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So the idea of the rocket stove is that it burns sticks to cook things in the pot at the top. It works, but not fabulously. For us, it was at least a two person job. Someone had to be sitting feeding in sticks constantly and tending the fire, while someone else found the sticks, broke them to the right length and saw to the food on top. It was fun though, and the boys got involved with the fire feeding as well.
Our stove wasn't exactly great and may need some adjustments, but we'll keep working on it (the pizza oven was terrible the first time we used it too, but we've learnt how to use it now). We did manage to cook something though. A large pot of homemade chai. It was definitely slow living (the chai took almost two hours!) but it was so much fun and boy did that chai taste good sitting together as a family sharing our 'rocket chai' in the garden. The slowest rocket in history!
If I can't get the stove to work better than that, it won't be a terribly popular cooking method. But if we were without power, I could at least boil water for tea and make a simple hot meal using only a pile of sticks and leaves from the garden as fuel.
And now, would you like to make some chai too? Here is my from scratch recipe - feel free to use a conventional stove to get somewhat faster results ;)
While thinking about that, and hearing stories of people being without power and phone, and cut off from the rest of the world by floods and fires, I've started thinking more about our emergency plans. Hopefully, we never have a big emergency, but evem if we don't, we do often have to cope without power for a few hours, and I want those occasions to be easy to deal with. We are so reliant on power for the operations in our homes. Here, we have no natural gas and, in our home, absolutely everything is electric. When we have no power, it isn't only heating, cooling and the kettle that we lose, but our oven and stove are out of action and we can't even get water from the taps as they rely on an electric pump. If I know the power will be out, I put water in the sink to wash hands, fill water bottles and a thermos for hot water etc, but when it is unexpected, we're stuck.
So this is one of my goals for February. To organise a water supply that is not reliant on the power, or a non-powered way to access our tank water. And I'm also playing with ideas for how to cook and otherwise cope so that we don't feel that we have to go somewhere else or resort to takeaway dinners just because I don't have an oven.
Yesterday, we played with one of those ideas. We built a rocket stove in our garden using the simple plans from a Grassroots magazine. It was a very quick and easy build using things we scrounged from the garden - about 15 bricks, a tin can and the metal pot holder borrowed from the BBQ. We built it on the concrete behind the pizza oven, and the first version was on the ground. But it did really need to be raised so that it could be cooked on and fed sticks easily. We scanned the garden looking for something and spotted the no longer needed old toilet and a slab of concrete. A quick rebuild and our rocket stove was complete. We were highly amused by our use of the old loo - Stu's parents who were visiting think we've lost the plot ;)
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So the idea of the rocket stove is that it burns sticks to cook things in the pot at the top. It works, but not fabulously. For us, it was at least a two person job. Someone had to be sitting feeding in sticks constantly and tending the fire, while someone else found the sticks, broke them to the right length and saw to the food on top. It was fun though, and the boys got involved with the fire feeding as well.
Our stove wasn't exactly great and may need some adjustments, but we'll keep working on it (the pizza oven was terrible the first time we used it too, but we've learnt how to use it now). We did manage to cook something though. A large pot of homemade chai. It was definitely slow living (the chai took almost two hours!) but it was so much fun and boy did that chai taste good sitting together as a family sharing our 'rocket chai' in the garden. The slowest rocket in history!
If I can't get the stove to work better than that, it won't be a terribly popular cooking method. But if we were without power, I could at least boil water for tea and make a simple hot meal using only a pile of sticks and leaves from the garden as fuel.
And now, would you like to make some chai too? Here is my from scratch recipe - feel free to use a conventional stove to get somewhat faster results ;)
Chai blend
Crush the following in a mortar and pestle: 3 cinnamon sticks, 12 peppercorns, 12 cloves 4 whole crushed allspice and 6 cardamom pods. Mix in 1 tsp crushed cumin, 1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg and 1/2 cup of black tea. You can use the crushed or uncrushed equivalents if needed, just make sure they are still fragrant and fresh. Store in an airtight container until needed.To brew chai
Add about a heaped teaspoon of the above mix to about 2 cups of water. Bring to the boil. Boil for 3-4 minutes. Add about a cup of milk (soy is nice, but cows/goats works just fine) and boil for a further minute. Strain tea into mugs and add honey (or sugar or vanilla sugar etc) to taste. Enjoy!Friday, 1 February 2013
A dal kofta platter
Linda who blogs over at The Witches Kitchen has been writing about platters this year. Beautifully presented, delicious, healthy and seasonal platters of food to share with a friend, the whole family or guests too. We love a good platter at our house. It is casual dining at its very best. Finger foods that can be mixed and matched to suit each diners tastes.
Platters are often used on Thursday nights at our place because Thursdays are busy for me. Last night was my first work night of the year, so a platter was called for and it was so pretty and yummy I just had to share.
Spinach roti from this recipe, made using our silverbeet and garlic and baked in the pizza oven on Sunday night and frozen.
Dal kofta balls from this recipe. I made the whole batch and we have enough balls in the freezer to have as a curry on the weekend with naan that I also cooked in the pizza oven.
Fresh lettuce, celery and grated carrot from the garden.
A simple homemade yoghurt dip/sauce (no recipe, just some yoghurt and herbs thrown together).
And a few other bits and pieces, including a dash of chilli tomato chutney (would have put fresh tomatoes on, but we've still only had one ripen this year).
Yum.
Platters are often used on Thursday nights at our place because Thursdays are busy for me. Last night was my first work night of the year, so a platter was called for and it was so pretty and yummy I just had to share.
Spinach roti from this recipe, made using our silverbeet and garlic and baked in the pizza oven on Sunday night and frozen.
Dal kofta balls from this recipe. I made the whole batch and we have enough balls in the freezer to have as a curry on the weekend with naan that I also cooked in the pizza oven.
Fresh lettuce, celery and grated carrot from the garden.
A simple homemade yoghurt dip/sauce (no recipe, just some yoghurt and herbs thrown together).
And a few other bits and pieces, including a dash of chilli tomato chutney (would have put fresh tomatoes on, but we've still only had one ripen this year).
Yum.
Thursday, 31 January 2013
Back to school
Unbelievably, the school holidays are over. My boys have gone back to school this morning as Grade 2s. Its going to be a great year for them, I can feel it.
I know some parents are thrilled that the school year has begun - those summer holidays can feel very long! But for me and the boys, it is with mixed feelings that we start another year. Part of me is thrilled to have them off to learn more, to not have to drag them off to do the jobs that are part of my week, and to have the peaceful hours in the day without the occasional bickering and the constant run of mess that they leave as a trail behind them. But the other part of me will really miss having them home. I love having them home to come and eat lunch with me and I've thoroughly enjoyed having my one day in town for shopping and jobs broken up by visits to the skate park or a scooter ride/walk along the foreshore and visits to the library to choose a pile of books together. And for their part, they will miss lazy mornings when they haven't had to get dressed till 10am, and being able to come and chat with me, and time to explore, play and just be, enjoying the precious twin time that they spend together - brothers and best friends.
But, as we're not homeschoolers, it is back to school for us and back to our regular routines. and today, that routine for me includes hours of mundane office work (blah!). and a big batch of cooking for Stu to take to share with his (new) workmates tomorrow. He feels guilty leaving me to cook for his turn at supplying morning tea, but that's ok. Honestly, I feel guilty that I get to stay home and cook while he goes to sit in an office all day.!
I haven't blogged much over the last few weeks, school holidays does that, but there is so much going on around here that I have been busting to share!
Firstly, we have put our deposit on our solar power system! With a bit if luck, we'll be making our own power by the end of the summer. It will be amazing to have no (or very small) power bills, and to think, we have the gut-wrenching experience of Stu being made redundant to thank for it....
Our second big news is that we've booked an overseas holiday for later in the year. We are thrilled to be able to take the boys to Bali with us to experience another culture, and I'm really enjoying working out how to have a culturally enriching, environmentally OK holiday. I'm also loving relearning bahasa Indonesia (which I studied at school and uni) and teaching the family a bit too.
And our third piece of exciting news (you guys are going to love this one) is that we're getting goats! I have finally nutted out a plan and twisted Stu's arm into agreeing. I've also found a breeder close by who we'll buy from. We will get a couple of mini goats who will produce just the right amount of milk to keep us in dairy products 9 months of the year.
It's all just too exciting! I knew this was going to be our year.
I'm hoping to be back to more regular blogging now, so I should be back real soon.
I hope all of your days (extreme weather aside) have been grin worthy too.
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| First day of grade 2 |
I know some parents are thrilled that the school year has begun - those summer holidays can feel very long! But for me and the boys, it is with mixed feelings that we start another year. Part of me is thrilled to have them off to learn more, to not have to drag them off to do the jobs that are part of my week, and to have the peaceful hours in the day without the occasional bickering and the constant run of mess that they leave as a trail behind them. But the other part of me will really miss having them home. I love having them home to come and eat lunch with me and I've thoroughly enjoyed having my one day in town for shopping and jobs broken up by visits to the skate park or a scooter ride/walk along the foreshore and visits to the library to choose a pile of books together. And for their part, they will miss lazy mornings when they haven't had to get dressed till 10am, and being able to come and chat with me, and time to explore, play and just be, enjoying the precious twin time that they spend together - brothers and best friends.
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| A beautiful place to walk on shopping day |
But, as we're not homeschoolers, it is back to school for us and back to our regular routines. and today, that routine for me includes hours of mundane office work (blah!). and a big batch of cooking for Stu to take to share with his (new) workmates tomorrow. He feels guilty leaving me to cook for his turn at supplying morning tea, but that's ok. Honestly, I feel guilty that I get to stay home and cook while he goes to sit in an office all day.!
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| School holiday strawberry picking fun |
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| Fresh strwaberries are the best! |
I haven't blogged much over the last few weeks, school holidays does that, but there is so much going on around here that I have been busting to share!
Firstly, we have put our deposit on our solar power system! With a bit if luck, we'll be making our own power by the end of the summer. It will be amazing to have no (or very small) power bills, and to think, we have the gut-wrenching experience of Stu being made redundant to thank for it....
Our second big news is that we've booked an overseas holiday for later in the year. We are thrilled to be able to take the boys to Bali with us to experience another culture, and I'm really enjoying working out how to have a culturally enriching, environmentally OK holiday. I'm also loving relearning bahasa Indonesia (which I studied at school and uni) and teaching the family a bit too.
And our third piece of exciting news (you guys are going to love this one) is that we're getting goats! I have finally nutted out a plan and twisted Stu's arm into agreeing. I've also found a breeder close by who we'll buy from. We will get a couple of mini goats who will produce just the right amount of milk to keep us in dairy products 9 months of the year.
It's all just too exciting! I knew this was going to be our year.
I'm hoping to be back to more regular blogging now, so I should be back real soon.
I hope all of your days (extreme weather aside) have been grin worthy too.
Wednesday, 30 January 2013
Simplifying the linen cupboard
There was a time, not so long ago, when I was sure I needed new towels and sheets. I shopped for them, but didn't find anything in my budget that I was happy with, so didn't buy anything. Now I'm really pleased I didn't.
As part of our decluttering this month, I've given the linen cupboard an overhaul, and a whole new look. It seems that I didn't need new linens at all, but actually needed less! We had a linen cupboard full to bursting with things - ridiculous quantities of towels, numerous sets of linen for each bed and piles of beach towels. There are also a small amount of tablecloths and napkins. There were so many things in there that I couldn't find what I needed and had that sense that people often feel about their wardrobes "so many clothes but nothing to wear". So I've given it all a good clean out and am much happier now!
In the bed linen shelves, I have one change of linen (doona cover, fitted sheet and pillowcases) for each of our three beds, and for winter, flannelette sheets and hot water bottles. I threw a few sheets from our sets to the rag pile a while back as they had started to pill and fray. Now I have just the right number of sheets and doona covers for us, and will only replace when more become damaged (and then I will be buying quality organic cotton/bamboo sheets). From the boys linen, we cleared out linen printed with preschool pictures and sent them to the opshop, and they were short a couple of fitted sheets but had a pile of unused flat sheets, so they've gone to my sewing pile for conversion (I learnt to convert flat to fitted a few years ago - so easy and makes sheet sets better value for those of us who don't use flat sheets).
More preschool printed bath towels joined the sheets in the opshop pile, as did a couple of tablecloths.
Our bath towel shelf was the worst. For our wedding (11 years ago), we were given about six full sets of towels! Many if these sat unwrapped until the boys came along 8 years ago, then we used them as baby towels. Since then we've been given more towels (why? Are we that hard to buy for?). So there were simply an insane number of towels in the cupboard - all used, but only one was fraying, and only a little bit. A few odds and ends of towels in weird colours and with stains were donated to a friend of ours who is a wildlife officer. Then the boys and I selected 2 sets of towels, a few changes of hand towels and bath mats and a set of guest towels. The guest towels were put aside in a box (so they don't get muddled) and the others fit neatly on the shelf. All the rest of the towels have been folded and will be put into storage. The plan is that the towels in the cupboard will last us for sometime yet, and when they eventually get retired to the rag pile, we will 'shop' for 'new' towels from our stores.
It's just a linen cupboard, but I feel so much more in control of the contents now, and pleased from an economic and environmental perspective that it will be some years before we need to buy anymore linens.
As part of our decluttering this month, I've given the linen cupboard an overhaul, and a whole new look. It seems that I didn't need new linens at all, but actually needed less! We had a linen cupboard full to bursting with things - ridiculous quantities of towels, numerous sets of linen for each bed and piles of beach towels. There are also a small amount of tablecloths and napkins. There were so many things in there that I couldn't find what I needed and had that sense that people often feel about their wardrobes "so many clothes but nothing to wear". So I've given it all a good clean out and am much happier now!
In the bed linen shelves, I have one change of linen (doona cover, fitted sheet and pillowcases) for each of our three beds, and for winter, flannelette sheets and hot water bottles. I threw a few sheets from our sets to the rag pile a while back as they had started to pill and fray. Now I have just the right number of sheets and doona covers for us, and will only replace when more become damaged (and then I will be buying quality organic cotton/bamboo sheets). From the boys linen, we cleared out linen printed with preschool pictures and sent them to the opshop, and they were short a couple of fitted sheets but had a pile of unused flat sheets, so they've gone to my sewing pile for conversion (I learnt to convert flat to fitted a few years ago - so easy and makes sheet sets better value for those of us who don't use flat sheets).
More preschool printed bath towels joined the sheets in the opshop pile, as did a couple of tablecloths.
Our bath towel shelf was the worst. For our wedding (11 years ago), we were given about six full sets of towels! Many if these sat unwrapped until the boys came along 8 years ago, then we used them as baby towels. Since then we've been given more towels (why? Are we that hard to buy for?). So there were simply an insane number of towels in the cupboard - all used, but only one was fraying, and only a little bit. A few odds and ends of towels in weird colours and with stains were donated to a friend of ours who is a wildlife officer. Then the boys and I selected 2 sets of towels, a few changes of hand towels and bath mats and a set of guest towels. The guest towels were put aside in a box (so they don't get muddled) and the others fit neatly on the shelf. All the rest of the towels have been folded and will be put into storage. The plan is that the towels in the cupboard will last us for sometime yet, and when they eventually get retired to the rag pile, we will 'shop' for 'new' towels from our stores.
It's just a linen cupboard, but I feel so much more in control of the contents now, and pleased from an economic and environmental perspective that it will be some years before we need to buy anymore linens.
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