The Great Weed Take Down of 2011

The commune is getting herself all prettied up! Seth and I are diligently working on trying to get the house as ready as we can for June. It’s going to be a BUSY month. Back to back parties over three weekends…it’s going to be insane, but it’s actually been good because it’s giving us an excuse to get some stuff done around the house that’s needed it…badly. We’ve decide to chronicle this journey of fix-it-ing and thought it might be fun for you to see what we’ve been up to! The first place that we needed to work on was the backyard. But the Rouggly’s are proof that work can be fun! For instance – before we mowed the back yard weeds…not lawn…weeds – we played a game of “Spot the Seth”. Can you find him? (hint – try clicking on the picture to blow it up…maybe it’ll help? :/ )

Did you find him? Try this one!

Well – in case you can’t tell….we’d let the weeds get a bit out of control. Seth is about 5’11 and they came up to his waist. See?

So come Saturday, we decided it was time to hit the yard. And just for clarification, in this job – “we” means Seth. I was inside doing homework…although I am not sure which was more fun. After about an hour and half, here’s what it looked like:

And this:

This was NOT an easy job. In fact – our poor electric mower was doing it’s best – as was Seth, but it just couldn’t push through. There were many times that Seth had to push the mower up a mountain of weeds, like this:

It was not without adventure though!! We found MANY things in the forest we had back there…trash that was thrown over the house (our yards are a magnet for trash – especially the front), chickens and the rooster (and some baby chicks that went running as soon as I tried to snap a photo of them), and this guy:

Once we had gotten all the weeds cut – the trimming had to commence. See, in the picture below, there’s actually a cement walkway that Seth is standing on, but you’d never know!

It ended up looking quite nice!!

Not too shabby, huh? Well – here’s the man of the hour after this 4.5 hour job….seriously….four. and. a. half. hours. Wow…I <3 him!

And the best part is – we get to compost it all!!! And this job gave us PLENTY of compost:

So thanks for allowing me to take you along for the journey of the great weed take down of 2011. Hopefully it’s the last time for a while! Since then – we’ve actually decided that the grass on the right side of the yard is much better than the left and so we’re going to maintain about half of it as grass. The stuff on the left side will be eventually tilled and covered with raised garden beds…but that is another story for another time! Stay tuned for next time’s installment of the never-ending saga of fixing up the commune! The joys of homeowner-ship: There’s ALWAYS more to be done! But I’m soaking up every minute of it!

Lifestyle

So my last post went into a detailed diatribe of certain things we’ve done to change our eating habits. A lot of those changes have been gradual and some more difficult than others. But those diet changes aren’t the only things we’ve done. We have also tried recently to make some lifestyle changes as well. Here are a few of the things we are doing and have done to change the way we live.

1. We are trying to simplify.

This is a pretty broad category, I know, but we are really trying to live more responsibly within our means as well as with a global outlook. That global outlook does play out a lot in our food, but it does play out in our possessions as well. We’ve cut WAY back on buying things….all things…any things. The last time we bought clothes was about 4 months ago when Seth and I needed new jeans. We each bought one pair. We’ve also gone through our closets about 2 times since we’ve lived here (about 10 months) and have each time donated bags and bags of clothes to our church and to goodwill. At the moment, I am down to about half of a normal size closet and a small ikea dresser (2 big drawers, 2 littles). This is a FEAT of clothingdom for me! Seriously. I used to be a clothes lover. I would go to Old Navy, my drug of choice, probably once a month just to see what’s new, which translated to, “Hey! What can I buy this trip!”. The odd thing is that since pairing down my own wardrobe, I find choosing my outfits to be WAY easier. Like TOTES easier. I know exactly what I have, what looks good, and what I want to wear. Badda bing, badda boom. Done and done.

We’ve also really tried to simplify our possessions. Those of you who are friends with us on Facebook know that we are selling our DVD collection. All 350 of them. I just got tired of seeing them, storing them, etcetera-ing them. So that was my Christmas gift from Seth was to slowly sell of our DVD’s. It’s been actually a fun adventure to see who buys what and how fast certain movies go, etc. It’s a social experiment, really. It’s also been quite crazy, as someone pointed out at small group last night, to think about how much money we spent on buying all those DVD’s. Granted – it was over a long span of time and I got really good at shopping for them (Hello Black Friday Sales!!) but still. So instead, we’re selling them all in order to help pay off my graduate school loans. Good cause right? Buy my DVD’s to send me to school! :)

When our roommate Becky moved in, we also did a HUGE kitchen purge of all small appliances, gadgets, extra stuff that we just don’t use anymore. I plan on doing another one when I am finished with school this coming summer. I also plan on systematically going through books the same way we have DVD’s. There are some that I never read anymore, so why not sell them or give them away to people who might? That will most-likely happen this coming fall as well. After that – who knows what we’ll purge next, but I am sure it will be something.

A lot of my personal thoughts on possessions, consumerism, buying-power and the like have come from a guy named Dave who did the 100 Thing Challenge where he lived with 100 personal items for a year. Yes, including clothes, personal hygiene, and even his wedding ring he counted as an item! You can find out more about how he did it, his list of 100 items and what it taught him here.

2. We’ve changed our personal hygiene routines!

Speaking of personal hygiene, that’s another thing that’s changed as well, for both me and the hubs. We haven’t used regular shampoo or conditioner in at least 6 months and we’re going on a month for the deodorant ax as well. For shampoo – we are using a mix of baking soda and water, and conditioner is a white vinegar (or apple cider vinegar) rise. It’s been REALLY good. It took about 2 weeks for my hair to get used to it, but now, I can seriously wash my hair like 2 times a week (sometimes even 1) without it looking gross….at least no one’s told me it’s gross. In fact, I think I’ve gotten more compliments on my hair now than I had before! Even my wonderful hair stylist said it looked really good and healthy!

So the deodorant is actually a mix of baking soda, cornstarch and coconut oil. We mixed them all together and make a paste like thing and packed it in our previous deodorant holders to apply it. Others I know just apply it with their fingers like a lotion. I love the deodorant too. No one has told me I stink so far and Seth has had the same experience. He’s much more of a sweat-er than me, so if no one smells him, that’s good!

3. We clean differently!

There’s been a shift in our house cleaning too. As you can probably tell – we own stock in sodium bicarbonate…affectionately known as baking soda. Not only do we use it in shampoo and deodorant, but I use it to clean about everything in the house (as well as baking too!). It cleans the shower, the toilet, the dishes, the counter, the fridge, my face (make a paste and instant facewash) and many more. We also own gallons of white vinegar. That’s “conditioner” but I also add it to the clothes in the wash (it makes them softer when line drying and acts as a more natural bleaching agent), add it to baking soda for a deeper clean in the toilet, takes out odors everywhere, and is just so cool. We also go through a LOT of apple cider vinegar here too – for our hair, drinking for our digestive system, and most recently for making clay face masks!

So yes – we’ve downsized our possessions and changed the way we treat our bodies and our home. Surprisingly, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I feel like there is so much more we could be doing, but a lot of that is being put on the back-burner while I finish up grad school (which I should be working on now, but I am hoping and praying blogging gets me in the paper-writing mode). Once that’s done and I can focus more on working and home-life more consistently, I am sure another wave of lifestyle changes will take place. All these changes have been better for our home, ourselves and our wallets! We’ve essentially cut out our budget for toiletries and selling DVD’s has been pretty lucrative so far! It’s all part of how we’ve chosen to live, and even though didn’t start out as a financial endeavor, it has certainly helped that area. Being able to cut things from our budget completely, like toiletries gives us the chance to make that money count somewhere else! In the words of Dave Ramsey, “We’re living like no one else so soon we can live like no one else!”

 

 

All about food

I was recently reflecting back on things that have changed in my life the past couple of years. A lot of these things have been a gradual change, but changes nonetheless. These changes are also, seemingly, just the start of even more changes. Not only am I changing, but I also see Seth changing and growing in new ways too. It’s becoming more and more real to us that we’re adults now, which I suppose we should have recognized a while ago, but whatever. I’ve been wanting to write on these things for a while, so I am thinking about doing a small series of things that have been changing around the Rouggly house. So here’s round 1 of a few things I’ve been processing through…

1. We’ve radically changed our diet!

It’s true…we have. We no longer eat random crap anymore! That’s got to be a sure sign of growing up, right? But this change has probably been the most dramatic by far. For starters – we joined a Community Supported Agricultural group or a CSA. It’s been a really hard but really good experience for us! It’s been great because it’s really broadened our horizons as far as what is grown seasonally/locally/organically, etc. The CSA we use is called Abundant Harvest Organics and you can find out more about them here. If I am being completely honest, it’s also been hard because we let some of the items spoil too fast, which is hard. I think when 2 out of the 3 people living in the commune aren’t in school it might get a little easier. Next quarter, I have NO night classes, which will be AMAZING….and unheard of yet in my grad career. We’ve also made other changes to our diet and are in process of making more.

Some of the changes have easily been spearheaded by Seth. He’s gotten a bit…ahem….authoritative on some of our diet things. First – he is a CRAZY person about our eggs. I made the mistake of sending him this chart that ranks egg companies and how well they do on different scales and so now, there are few brands of eggs allowed into our house. He’s also crazy about his coffee creamer. It has to be organic and he also has certain brand preferences. He’s also been researching lately on BPA and how it affects our diet. I am getting the feeling soon that BPA is going to cut out of our diet by Food Dictator Seth (as I’ve officially now dubbed him) which means a LOT of changes. I’ve requested that this BPA-cutting gets implemented after school is over because at this moment, cutting out BPA completely is not something I can do. It would  mean cutting out ALL canned goods and virtually all plastic packaging which translates to a LOT of freaking work. There are nights now when I come home and dinner consists of a can of Trader Joe’s organic Spaghetti-O’s. So until I have time to make Spaghetti-O’s from scratch – the BPA stays. The most recent change happened just last night when our roommate, Becky Sue threw out the suggestion that the commune should switch to Almond Milk, from it’s current diet of Raw milk. That was immediately met with a chorus of “Huzzah!!!”‘s from Food Dictator Seth who has been worried from the beginning about our cooking with raw milk. Finally, the hubs, as much as I love him, is quite the conspiracy theorist. I personally think that his job as a technician and his love of post-apocalyptic movies and tv shows REALLY contribute to that, but that’s besides the point. He has a general distrust of stores and farmers markets. This has been a big t0-do with the eggs. We can’t get good eggs anywhere close to us and he doesn’t trust any local farmers markets so we’re driving all over Timbuktu to get eggs because they are a BIG staple in our house…like a carton a week kind of staple. So until we get our own chickens, a trapesing we will go.

I shouldn’t give him all the credit….or blame for a lot of the changes. I am making some of my own as well. I’d been thinking about trying to eat completely vegetarian when we go out to eat for a long time and I decided last week, whilst standing in line at Chipotle, that I was indeed going to try. I did make the disclaimer though that my one exception would be in-n-out, because why on EARTH would you go to in-n-out if you didn’t want a delish cheeseburger? That’s just ridonkulous, really. Granted, we’ve also drastically reduced the amount we eat out, so it’s not a super big thing, but it’s a small think I can do….CRAP! I just realized I had ham on pizza on Friday….dang. oh well. There’s grace :) So chalk it up to still being a work in progress! It’s hard! For the last couple of months, I’ve been examining menus of places searching for vegetarian items and let me just say, they are few and far between. I see the reason why vegetarians have their own restaurants and do a lot of their own cooking. I’ve also worked really hard at being a lunch-packer. I try and be diligent to pack left-overs and fruits and veggies from the box to keep the food spoiling down to a minimum. There are still a few things that are difficult to choke down (broccoli and cauliflower being the two majors) but I feel like I am learning all about a new world of veggies, which is great! I now am a huge lover of asparagus and brussel sprouts, which I never would have guessed, as well as becoming more adequate in the kitchen for cooking said veggies.

So those are a few of the changes we’ve tried making here and there! I think next I’ll look at how we’re making some big changes to our lifestyle! So stay tuned!

I’m back in school and it’s converging on my real life again

Me and the roomie are back in school this week! Here’s our back to school picture from yesterday. (The weird thing is, technically I have 3 first days because each time I start a class, it’s a first day…anyway….)

Our First First Day of School!

I am actually really excited about this quarter. I think it’s going to be a fairly easy workload, which will be a transition from the past two quarters I’ve had. I am taking Christian Ethics with Dr. Glen Stassen who is a leading Christian Ethicist. I am also taking Spiritual Traditions and Practices with Dr. Bradley as well as Poverty and Development with my favorite professor, Dr. Bryant Myers.

I have been to two classes so far (Ethics and Spiritual Traditions and Practices) and both of them, yes BOTH have intersected with my real life, or life outside of Fuller. In everything we’ve been reading so far in Ethics is about the Sermon on the Mount. The teaching pastor at my church just so happens to be in the middle of a sermon series on The Beatitudes and it’s been my meditation for the past couple weeks. I have been focused on the Sermon on the Mount like nobody’s business in my own personal spiritual life. Then today, in Spiritual Traditions and Practices, the professor talked about the Sermon and specifically Jesus’ call to fasting – which my roommate and I are studying this week in our book study on Richard Foster’s The Celebration of Disciplines at my church. The whole ST&P class is about how our spiritual disciplines and traditions are to interact with our faith in a daily way, which is exactly what Richard Foster talks about.

Not only that, Seth and I had a nice long discussion about fasting last night.In my past, I’ve felt like fasting is empty and meaningless. I feel like I am emptying myself of food, but not filling myself up with the Holy Spirit. I am not taking the time I spent eating to pray. In our discussion, I shared my feelings with Seth and it felt like we were going in circles. He doesn’t like having an agenda when he fasts, but I need one to keep me on track. But ultimately, I felt like our fasting together as a couple never brought us closer to each other. We fasted, but we never talked about it. We never shared how God met us in our fasting, or what was revealed to us. But that is fodder for another post.

Ultimately, I am noticing that God is meeting me in so many ways. He’s meeting me in my church, at the mall, in my home, and now, yet again, in my classes. Our God is a great, big God and I am feeling like He’s holding me in His hands. God’s showing me that he’s around me and with me, and in front of me and behind me. God’s preparing a place for me this quarter, and I am ready for it.

Why won’t dishes do themselves?

I really don’t understand why dishes won’t do themselves. I also don’t understand why it is that the amount of dishes in my sink often reflects the amount of free time I have in my life. This relationship between dishes and time is completely inverse. Less time = more dishes. And – do you notice how Seth politely does his dishes and then nicely sets them out to dry? Those are his over there, minus the red polka dot cup. Does he not see the entire counterful that are waiting to also be politely washed?

I am ready for Charlie Brown to be over this weekend, solely to have Saturday’s back. I am ready to be done with all of my school work, to have every day back (until Sept. 28th that is). I need more time for my dishes! Well – I need more time for everything, and right now, dishes happens to be the byproduct of that time loss. So what do I do? I take a picture of my dishes and then sit here spending 25 minutes writing a blog about how dirty they are when I could have just cleaned them in the first place…but I find that I do that a lot. I want to do something, like my final test for a class, but I sit and sit until it’s crunch time and then bust out the paper, or test questions. But I have to wonder, “Am I missing the joy of the washing?” There’s something peaceful about making things clean, and new…useable once again. Taking something soiled and washing it and having it sparkle in your hands. Taking a subject, researching, learning and dissecting it, then putting your thoughts down on paper (or computer screen) to realize that you did a good job and you know what you’re talking about.

I suppose that’s process right? It’s the idea of taking things from a dirty, confused, and in the case of my dishes, some downright disgusting places and making them plain, clear, and useable. Maybe I’m the one in process? Maybe my dirty dishes are symptomatic of the fact that I myself am dirty and must be cleaned by my Maker and Owner. Have I set myself on a counter somewhere? Have I made things more confusing than they ought to be?

I know my dishes won’t do themselves, just as I know that I can’t clean myself up. I need time to process – to ruminate and think things over. And then I need time to say, “Help me God…I am confused. I don’t understand this – I’ve let myself get dirtied by the things of this world and I need to be cleaned again”

So my dishes might sit there for a bit longer while I process…because maybe my 25 minutes spent here on the couch and not washing them, is the 25 minutes it’s taking me to be cleaned by my Father first.