Tuesday, March 25, 2008

The Essential Thing Rag is the name of an ol' Hoodangers song, a 5 piece Melbourne band that do amazing things to trad jazz with a banjo, a mohawk and quite some nudity. It seemed a fitting name for this blog, which is about doing without the non essentials. It's a personal protest against the dredging of Port Phillip Bay to accomodate bigger boats carrying more stuff for us to consume. Seems to me that if I consume less stuff and the folk around me consume less stuff, then dredging the bay to bring more stuff into town may not be necessary. It's a beautifully simple equation. And it is a beautifully simple quest. Get your list of essentials sorted, give yourself a start date and you're away. Consuming less stuff. Go. Go make yourself an intention. Go hardcore. Or go easy on yourself. And let me know your list of essentials, cause I daresay they'll be different to mine and hers and that guy's over there in the window seat.



This is what we are buying at the moment, for my young family of 4 (with a little justification in brackets as necessary):

- green manure seeds (our vegie patches need a little post summer pick me up)
- chickbits (for our 6 baby chicks we just inherited!)
- tomatoes (just put our finished plants through the mulcher and into the compost)
- washing powder (so many nappies for A and so many wet pairs of pants for an almost toilet-trained J!)
- flour and yeast (a fellow yogini gave us her old bread maker recently, but I'm still yet to use it. Anyone got a favorite recipe?)
- a ream of amazing gold material (from the Barwon Heads Church Op-Shop that I have used to sew some hand made friends for new babies in town) and some rainbow dyed wool tops (cause it's getting kinda small-folk-need-a-felt-vest-wintery here in the hills)


here's our lil' ladies


Et tu?

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