Making a start...

I spent some time today pondering over the 100 Things list...and these the things that we are already achieving out of the first 50.

1. If you live in a place where it gets hot in the summer, consider building a screen room (a room with screened windows all around or almost always around), either attached to your house or seperate. You can put a wood cookstove in the screenroom and use it as a summer kitchen for cooking and canning, avoiding adding heat to your house. You can also sleep in the screenroom when it is too hot to sleep inside, and reducing or eliminating the need for air conditioning. The room can double in the winter as a woodshed. If you cannot build on, freestanding screenrooms are also a possibility. For sleeping even a mesh camping pavilion or tent under the trees will be better than many houses. Well this isn't relevant for us, where we live in this country doesn't get *that* hot, nor *that* cold all year round. We currently have no air-con or central heating anyway. I do like the idea of maybe enclosing a portion of our front porch though for weather protection for storing things that may need to easily accessable instead of having to traipse to the garage. Not high priority though and easy enough to do from recycled marials under our house if the need arises.

2. For those in cold climates, consider a four poster bed. These were once not merely decorative - with heavy coverings for the top and the sides, they could be heated with your body heat, and provided a cozy sleeping space in an era when bedrooms were unheated. A frame can be added to many existing bedframes if you are at all handy, and curtains are easily made. You can also add wall hangings and tapestries as cheap forms of insulation to existing walls. They can be made from old blankets and cheap fabric, or can be as artful as you like.

and

44. We dress our kids for winter nights in unheated bedrooms in several layers - long johns under blanket sleepers. Sweatshirts and sweatpants can be added over those. So even small children who don't reliably keep covers on can be warm at night with minimal or no heat. A nightcap really will keep you considerably warmer.
Well I never knew this was the purpose of four poster beds - of course makes sense! Our bedrooms are small and not a high ceiling anyway. We don't heat our house overnight during winter anyway.

3. Clean and organize your house, and get rid of anything you don't need. Time is at a premium, and will only be more so in the future. For things that you wish to keep for the long term, pack them up and keep lists of where they are. You may need to find things quickly. Make sure emergency supplies, such as medical items, flashlights, etc... are readily available and can be found in the dark and under stress. I'm already the declutter queen, so we're all set there. Of course, now I am not wanting to part with *too* much stuff incase it might be needed as a replacement item that will not be easily accessable later on.

5. Expect if times get hard to consolidate housing with friends and family. Make sure you can live fairly comfortably. Yard and rummage sales are excellent sources of extra blankets, towels, and pillows. Fold up futons, tatami mats, even rolled up carpets make excellent emergency guest beds, and can be stacked and stored pretty easily. It may get crowded, but it doesn't have to be miserable. So true about comfort. We already have a bit of spare bedding and places to sleep (a futon sofa converts to a bed and our couch cushions are removeable and very comfortable. We could also double the kids into our bed if needed as well.

7. Make sure you have a reliable source of non-electric water, whether rainbarrels, a cistern, hand pumps on your well, or a community source, such as a public pump. If you cannot easily create a private such source, consider advocating with your community that public water sites, with either manual pumps or solar powered ones be created at local public centers, such as schools, parks and community centers. Use the examples of extreme weather to emphasize the need to ensure a reliable local water system in a crisis. As previously mentioned, we have a large water tank under our deck that has a feed from rainwater off the roof. It doesn't have a pump, so would need to be collected via a tap outside. We will need to get some water steralisers though despite the council man telling me it was drinkable as is even without boiling??

9. If you decorate for holidays and special occasions, invest in permanent, sustainable sources, or consider making them. Wreath making, for example, is comparatively simple and many of us have access to local evergreens. Decorate your sukkah or for a birthday party with hand knit or sewn "streamers" made in the shape of intertwined tubes or in roughly the style of tibetan prayer flags. Festivals and rituals are important - maintaining them sustainably is equally important. We already own permanent decorations.

12. If you plan to buy a house or land, remember, that an acre is a lot of land. It is easy to get all worried about peak oil and imagine you need 20 acres, but one acre, or half an acre or even a quarter can do an awful lot. As already mentioned, we have a 1/4 acre of which about portion has immediate plans for planting out and putting chooks on (and in reality we could use *a lot* more if required).

13. Take an introduction to permaculture class, or read up on permaculture. Toby Hemenway's book _Gaia's Garden:An Introduction to Home-Scale Permaculture_ is an excellent start. Begin replacing ornamental plants with edibles that are also beautiful. I have read several books, one of which I own: The Permaculture Home Garden by Linda Woodrow.

14. If you are concerned with having to grow much of your food and don't have a lot of space, prioritize root crops, especially potatoes and sweet potatoes (sweet potatoes can be grown in much of the northern half of America), rather than small grains, and beans, instead of meats. The people at Ecology Action, who have done more than almost anyone to figure out how to grow the most food in the least space recommend that 60% of your land be in cover crops, 30% in root crops and 10% in everything else. This is interesting, we do eat a lot of root vegetables, so makes sense here. Especially since I imagine rice, other grains and beans will not be as readily available in the immediate term anyhow.

20. Urine is sterile, and a person's yearly output can provide a good part of the fertility for 1/2 acre. Pee in a bucket, jar or commode, and fertilize your garden with liquid gold, diluted 1 part pee to 10 parts water. Simon was reading this list last night and was keen to contribute to this!

36. Practice doing laundry without power. There are several ways, including long soaking, using a plunger and a bucket and various devices such as hand washers and pressure washers. But make sure you are not dependent for clean clothes upon power. Hopefully 'no power' will not be an issue, however we do have a large plastic tub/container that would be a good size for washing clothes in.

37. If you are troubled by towels and jeans that don't dry as soft on the line as in the dryer you can add vinegar to the rinse to soften them, or use less detergent. Or just get used to it. We don't own a dryer anyway, so a non-issue (maybe I'm just immune to hard clothes haha).

47. Switch to cloth menstrual pads. They can be made from patterns available on the web or purchased. Orconsider a diva cup or keeper. Use rags instead of paper towels, cloth napkins, handkerchiefs instead of kleenex, cloth diapers that you wash yourself instead of disposable. Doing this already.

I also spent a bit of the day randomly working on writing up a list for our Emergency Kit/Peak Oil supplies. I'm sure it will be work in progress, but it's a *huge* step up from having nothing! Slack I know! We should already have had an emergency kit anyway and I have half-heartedly thought about it and bought random things but never committed to it fully. So over the weekend I will go out and buy it all and store it in a big wheelie bin we have.