Saturday, March 28, 2009

Earth Hour, and getting ready to go fridgeless

We will do Earth Hour tonight I think, yes. But Keith Ng makes some very good points about it on his blog at Public Address.

I'm getting excited about the challenge of going fridgeless, and heard from a friend last night that she is thinking of doing it too.

Also, I have really appreciated some comments from Kate about it, containing great ideas and advice. I'm especially interested in the Nigerian invention of zeer pots, and the cooling possibilities of evaporation.

But the first step is to start using up everything in our fridge's freezer box, in preparation for switching off. (I recently started stocking up on frozen stuff, so this is a bit of a reversal and it'll take some time to get through everything that's stashed in there ...)

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Powershop update

We've now officially switched over to Powershop. The range of electricity packages and products you can choose from is not as huge as the advertising might lead you to believe, but I think there's enough choice to make it worthwhile. (Well, any choice is an improvement on the alternatives.)

What I like about Powershop best, though, is being able to keep track of and micromanage our power use. In fact I think I feel a new obsessive compulsive disorder coming on.

Almost hourly I'm on the Powershop website checking our meter reading against the Powershop estimated reading for us, seeing how much of our paid-for units we've used up, and running round turning things off to see if it makes any difference to how fast the units get used up.

I guess the novelty will wear off soon ...

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

More fridgeless living links ...

... for the doubters, much as I love them!

Little Blog in the Big Woods whose writer 'Greenpa' has been fridgeless for 3 decades.

'Don't Fight Room Temperature'
- an Economist article ensuing from the discussion Greenpa started on his blog.

'Trashing the Fridge' - the New York Times gets in on the act.

Sharon Astyk asking - how necessary are fridges and several other appliances?

Robyn M's blog post pondering fridgeless living.

Or just google fridgeless ...