Charlotte Davies
Charlotte
is a mother to one-year-old Felix. She lives in Mount Pleasant, Swansea, and
works part time as a volunteer development worker at Swansea Council for
Voluntary Service. Since having her son, she thinks more about her impact on the
environment and feels that she could do a great deal more to alter her
behaviours and help combat the effects of climate change.
“I know that doing my bit for the
campaign will be good, not only for my health but my wallet too. I have a young
son and a busy working life, so it’ll be interesting to see how easy, or hard,
I find it to implement these actions into our daily lives.”
Home Insulation and Saving Water
I live in a lovely little house in Mount Pleasant in Swansea, two up two down, made of solid stone at the turn of the century. Over the years, we have tried to make little changes to the house to make it more efficient, but our feeling was that there is not that much you can do to a house where there are no cavity walls for insulation, the roof and windows are a bit draughty, but we don’t have hundreds of pounds available to fix them; the house needs a bit of TLC – but who can afford that?
So, along comes the Energy Saving Trust’s ‘green house doctor’ who walked around our terraced house and gave us some really good ideas about ways of saving energy that would also save us money ….excellent. So, starting in the kitchen the biggest thing I learnt was that you can get LED lights to replace the halogen ones….now, I have looked on Amazon and they are £6 each, while you can buy 6 halogen bulbs for that price. But if they last longer, then maybe it’s worth spending the extra? The other things in the kitchen are the things we’ve all had drummed into us already about kettle boiling, having the fridge on low and turning appliances off at the wall. I did learn that you can wash nearly everything at 30 degrees ….. this is an excellent revelation as I do have a little one and as the washing builds up so does the electricity bill!
And so into the bathroom where we now have a hippo in our toilet cistern so that we don’t flush away too much. Our new water saving showerhead is surprisingly better than the old one – so another easy change to our lives that will save us money in the long run.
These are the only things we have done so far ….but watch this space, 2014 is going to be the year of reduce - reuse - recycle in my family. Maybe we should start by giving everyone a water hippo for their toilet cistern for Christmas – maybe that will solve the problem of what to buy for the person who has it all!
#BikeIt
Picture the scene ... a beautiful sunny day in
this fun filled summer, perfect beach weather for friends and family.
As we think about packing up and driving out to the Gower, we are suddenly put
off by the thought that every other family in Swansea will have had the same
idea; sitting in a stuffy car huffing at the traffic suddenly didn't seem so
appealing. A light bulb moment hit us and we decided to ride out to the beach
on our fleet of bikes. A group of friends, minimal baggage and the promise of
an ice cream as a reward for when we arrived at our destination - just perfect.
The ride was fantastic, the baby bobbing along
on the back of his dad’s bike - making eyes at all the passers by, waving and
chatting away, until slowly but surely he is lulled to sleep by the gently
rhythm of the movement, only to wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed for a
bracing swim in the clear waters of Rotherslade - our new favourite cove.
Sandcastles, chips, ice cream and rock pooling were the exciting tasks ahead,
and all of us enjoyed the day thoroughly!
Salty and exhilarated, we climbed on board our
trusty steeds for a slow and steady ride home. Satisfied that not only have we
had great exercise, we have had a traffic free, fuel free (unless you can count
chips as fuel!?) fun day out! This is what memories are made of for our little
man!
#pedalpower is one
thing #familyfunandfitness is an added bonus!!
Washing at 30ยบ
So, picture the scene, my husband
and I of an evening, cuddled up after a
busy day of entertaining a small baby, tired and utterly satisfied with our
lot; romantically sitting with a small glass of red....putting together yet any
other load of freshly laundered nappies! We’ve had our little bundle of joy for
18 months now; he wears approximately 7 nappies per day, we wash a full load
every other day; that means we have sat of an evening preparing around 2,735
nappies all in all!!
But how does this fit in with this month’s challenge of washing at 30
degrees? I usually wash nappies at 50 degrees, but with a bit of research, I
have discovered the Tots Bots Potion which kills all the germs at just 30
degrees! This month I have challenged myself to use just this; and it’s been a
great success.
Car
Sharing
So, this month’s challenge was to car share instead
of travelling on my own…..like travelling by bus, I knew this challenge would
be tricky, but actually, it turned out to be easier, and more social than I has
thought!
I’ve been doing a course just outside Swansea and
as my husband and I only have one car between us, which he needs most days for
his work; I was wondering to myself how, between his work and collecting the
baby from the child minder, I would get there and back every day. It turned out
that one of the other people on the course lives just down the road from me,
and she was very happy to swing by my house and collect me each day! Great – no
more logistical worries, and we both benefit from sitting in the Fabian Way
traffic together nattering about this and that!
The course finishes soon, and I’ll miss my relaxing
journeys with my new friend who picks me up and takes me home door to
door….I’ve, saved on fuel, money and I’ve done my bit to tackle climate change. I’ve
also made a new friend – so I’ll definitely be car sharing more often in the
future!
The next challenge – to wash laundry at 30 degrees…..I’ll
be doing my research on this one, as I use re-usable nappies, and wash them at
50 degrees; but how do the benefits of washing at a higher temperature outweigh
the pitfalls of dumping in landfill? I’ll keep you posted!
#TicketToRide
This month’s Way To Go Wales challenge....to use
the bus instead of the car - a cheaper and more fuel efficient way to travel!
I knew I would find this one hard, and I did. I
walk almost everywhere, so in that respect I have succeeded (yay!). But I do
have to drive the baby to his child minder two days per week – it’s at the
other end of town, so too far to walk if I’m to get him there by 8.30 am and
still get back to work by 9 am. So, I looked at the bus time tables, and the
journey would mean walking to the central bus station (5minutes), then catching
the bus to where I need to go (20 minutes), then catching the bus back to town
(another 20 minutes) and hot footing it back to work (5 minutes). A 50 minute
journey for what takes 25 in the car....eek! The bus times are such that
timings are not as easy as all that either. But, I thought to myself, it’s only
two days out of 7, so I’ll let that go!
Instead, on my days off with the baby when I
generally walk everywhere, I thought I’d give my legs a bit of a rest,
and rather than trudging up the big steep hill to my house, I’d hop on the bus!
I live in a lovely little house in Mount Pleasant in Swansea, two up two down, made of solid stone at the turn of the century. Over the years, we have tried to make little changes to the house to make it more efficient, but our feeling was that there is not that much you can do to a house where there are no cavity walls for insulation, the roof and windows are a bit draughty, but we don’t have hundreds of pounds available to fix them; the house needs a bit of TLC – but who can afford that?
So, along comes the Energy Saving Trust’s ‘green house doctor’ who walked around our terraced house and gave us some really good ideas about ways of saving energy that would also save us money ….excellent. So, starting in the kitchen the biggest thing I learnt was that you can get LED lights to replace the halogen ones….now, I have looked on Amazon and they are £6 each, while you can buy 6 halogen bulbs for that price. But if they last longer, then maybe it’s worth spending the extra? The other things in the kitchen are the things we’ve all had drummed into us already about kettle boiling, having the fridge on low and turning appliances off at the wall. I did learn that you can wash nearly everything at 30 degrees ….. this is an excellent revelation as I do have a little one and as the washing builds up so does the electricity bill!
And so into the bathroom where we now have a hippo in our toilet cistern so that we don’t flush away too much. Our new water saving showerhead is surprisingly better than the old one – so another easy change to our lives that will save us money in the long run.
These are the only things we have done so far ….but watch this space, 2014 is going to be the year of reduce - reuse - recycle in my family. Maybe we should start by giving everyone a water hippo for their toilet cistern for Christmas – maybe that will solve the problem of what to buy for the person who has it all!
#BikeIt
Picture the scene ... a beautiful sunny day in
this fun filled summer, perfect beach weather for friends and family.
As we think about packing up and driving out to the Gower, we are suddenly put
off by the thought that every other family in Swansea will have had the same
idea; sitting in a stuffy car huffing at the traffic suddenly didn't seem so
appealing. A light bulb moment hit us and we decided to ride out to the beach
on our fleet of bikes. A group of friends, minimal baggage and the promise of
an ice cream as a reward for when we arrived at our destination - just perfect.
The ride was fantastic, the baby bobbing along
on the back of his dad’s bike - making eyes at all the passers by, waving and
chatting away, until slowly but surely he is lulled to sleep by the gently
rhythm of the movement, only to wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed for a
bracing swim in the clear waters of Rotherslade - our new favourite cove.
Sandcastles, chips, ice cream and rock pooling were the exciting tasks ahead,
and all of us enjoyed the day thoroughly!
Salty and exhilarated, we climbed on board our
trusty steeds for a slow and steady ride home. Satisfied that not only have we
had great exercise, we have had a traffic free, fuel free (unless you can count
chips as fuel!?) fun day out! This is what memories are made of for our little
man!
#pedalpower is one
thing #familyfunandfitness is an added bonus!!
#BikeIt
Picture the scene ... a beautiful sunny day in
this fun filled summer, perfect beach weather for friends and family.
As we think about packing up and driving out to the Gower, we are suddenly put
off by the thought that every other family in Swansea will have had the same
idea; sitting in a stuffy car huffing at the traffic suddenly didn't seem so
appealing. A light bulb moment hit us and we decided to ride out to the beach
on our fleet of bikes. A group of friends, minimal baggage and the promise of
an ice cream as a reward for when we arrived at our destination - just perfect.
The ride was fantastic, the baby bobbing along
on the back of his dad’s bike - making eyes at all the passers by, waving and
chatting away, until slowly but surely he is lulled to sleep by the gently
rhythm of the movement, only to wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed for a
bracing swim in the clear waters of Rotherslade - our new favourite cove.
Sandcastles, chips, ice cream and rock pooling were the exciting tasks ahead,
and all of us enjoyed the day thoroughly!
Salty and exhilarated, we climbed on board our
trusty steeds for a slow and steady ride home. Satisfied that not only have we
had great exercise, we have had a traffic free, fuel free (unless you can count
chips as fuel!?) fun day out! This is what memories are made of for our little
man!
#pedalpower is one
thing #familyfunandfitness is an added bonus!!
Washing at 30ยบ
So, picture the scene, my husband
and I of an evening, cuddled up after a
busy day of entertaining a small baby, tired and utterly satisfied with our
lot; romantically sitting with a small glass of red....putting together yet any
other load of freshly laundered nappies! We’ve had our little bundle of joy for
18 months now; he wears approximately 7 nappies per day, we wash a full load
every other day; that means we have sat of an evening preparing around 2,735
nappies all in all!!
And so, as we sit for another
evening putting nappies together for the next day, we often ask ourselves why!?
We’re always reassured that we will have saved ourselves £1,000 by the time
he’s potty trained; and we will have diverted in the region of 4,000 nappies from landfill. Nappies that will
still be around 500 years from now I should add. Another way to look at it, we
have halved our weekly rubbish and our carbon footprint could be up to 40%
smaller! We dry our nappies on the line, so there is no extra power usage from
a tumble dryer, and this heat wave we’re having is drying them in no time at
all.
And it’s all so easy….
Forget fiddly folds, pins, plastic pants and leaking bulky nappies,
cloth nappies really have evolved. Ours have waterproof breathable fabrics,
Velcro fasteners, stay dry interiors and super absorbent cores which mean cloth
nappies have zoomed into the new millennium with a super-soft fluffy landing.
They have been made in the UK and bought from a local supplier, no shipping
costs either to our wallets or to the environment. Baby’s skin is kept soft and
clean without chemicals, and we just love our nightly routine of preparing for
the day ahead.
But how does this fit in with this month’s challenge of washing at 30
degrees? I usually wash nappies at 50 degrees, but with a bit of research, I
have discovered the Tots Bots Potion which kills all the germs at just 30
degrees! This month I have challenged myself to use just this; and it’s been a
great success.
Baby can always be identified from behind by his big colorful bum – I
love them, and so does he!
Car Sharing
So, this month’s challenge was to car share instead
of travelling on my own…..like travelling by bus, I knew this challenge would
be tricky, but actually, it turned out to be easier, and more social than I has
thought!
I’ve been doing a course just outside Swansea and
as my husband and I only have one car between us, which he needs most days for
his work; I was wondering to myself how, between his work and collecting the
baby from the child minder, I would get there and back every day. It turned out
that one of the other people on the course lives just down the road from me,
and she was very happy to swing by my house and collect me each day! Great – no
more logistical worries, and we both benefit from sitting in the Fabian Way
traffic together nattering about this and that!
The course finishes soon, and I’ll miss my relaxing
journeys with my new friend who picks me up and takes me home door to
door….I’ve, saved on fuel, money and I’ve done my bit to tackle climate change. I’ve
also made a new friend – so I’ll definitely be car sharing more often in the
future!
The next challenge – to wash laundry at 30 degrees…..I’ll
be doing my research on this one, as I use re-usable nappies, and wash them at
50 degrees; but how do the benefits of washing at a higher temperature outweigh
the pitfalls of dumping in landfill? I’ll keep you posted!
#TicketToRide
This month’s Way To Go Wales challenge....to use
the bus instead of the car - a cheaper and more fuel efficient way to travel!
I knew I would find this one hard, and I did. I
walk almost everywhere, so in that respect I have succeeded (yay!). But I do
have to drive the baby to his child minder two days per week – it’s at the
other end of town, so too far to walk if I’m to get him there by 8.30 am and
still get back to work by 9 am. So, I looked at the bus time tables, and the
journey would mean walking to the central bus station (5minutes), then catching
the bus to where I need to go (20 minutes), then catching the bus back to town
(another 20 minutes) and hot footing it back to work (5 minutes). A 50 minute
journey for what takes 25 in the car....eek! The bus times are such that
timings are not as easy as all that either. But, I thought to myself, it’s only
two days out of 7, so I’ll let that go!
Instead, on my days off with the baby when I
generally walk everywhere, I thought I’d give my legs a bit of a rest,
and rather than trudging up the big steep hill to my house, I’d hop on the bus!
And, what a pleasure it was too! Friendly driver,
friendly passengers, sleeping baby – excellent! The wheels on the bus did go
‘round and round’ and the mummy on the bus did ‘natter natter natter’ all the
way home; luckily on this occasion, the baby on the bus did not go ‘wah wah
wah!’.
So, I’ve asked some of my mummy friends how they
find using the bus, and overall the motto is ‘be prepared’!
- be prepared for the crying baby and the looks
from the people who were hoping for a power nap on their journeys home
- be prepared for the old ladies telling you about
how cute their children were at the age that your baby is now
- be prepared to have to take the pram down with
hands full of baby and shopping
- be prepared for the very excited child who just
wants to push the button the whole journey
- but overall, be prepared for a pretty good time!
Just Enough
So, the challenge last month was to wear an extra
jumper at home rather than cranking up the heating. It was all going really
well, the baby slept with an extra blanket, and my husband and I wore extra
layers…then, in March, it started to snow! The wind was the coldest thing and
even though I live on a terraced street, I feel my neighbours must have been
doing the thermostat challenge as well as we were getting no residual warmth
from them! So, although I am dedicated to the cause, I thought to myself, I am
no martyr, so up it went, and we were cosy once more! It’s back down now though
and I think we can keep it going when the weather isn’t so extreme!
Well, this months challenge is to only fill the
kettle with the required amount of water…. A hot cup of tea is the holly grail
in my house. There comes a point in a new (ish) parents life when they wonder
to themselves whether they will ever drink a hot cup of tea again; I am at that
stage now, to be honest a lukewarm one would be a bonus and I am finding that
one of the few benefits to being back at work is regular hot cups of tea, where
I don’t need to worry about it being tipped on an unsuspecting small persons
head!
We have a standing joke amongst my mum friends that
whenever we boil the kettle, rather than standing there waiting for it to boil,
we might put the dishes away, put in a load of laundry, feed the baby, feed
ourselves, sing a nursery rhyme, wipe the surface and organise lunches; while
the dads, when they boil the kettle, are so mesmerised by the light indicating
that the kettle is on the boil, that no other household tasks get done in the
meantime. Whilst I concede that this is wholly unfair, as my child’s father is
very domesticated, the point still remains – does that fact that we can whizz around
doing so much while the kettle boils mean that there is simply too much water
in it, more than is strictly necessary for one or two cups of tea?!
I know in my family that boiling the kettle with
just the right amount of water will be infinitely achievable, it’s not a
complex task, and is even one that my sleep deprived brain could manage. The
problem is, remembering to use the water for which the boiling was intended! I
fill the kettle, put it on to boil, then hear the baby cry, or hang the laundry
out, or wipe the surface, sing a nursery rhyme….and the tea never gets made.
Maybe the dads have it right after all? (don’t tell them that!)
So, my own slant on the challenge is going to be –
only fill the kettle with the required amount of water, and only set it to boil
if there is a certainty that I will use it!
Get It On!
One
year and one month ago, I had a baby. He is amazing, and having my own little
family is an awesome experience, it’s exciting, exhausting, fun and
overwhelming - I love it! But, having a Felix in your life makes you
think seriously about certain things; will I ever get a full night’s sleep
again? Shall I give him toast or omelette for lunch? What will become of the
world if we keep using all of its resources like we are doing
now? Do I need to worry about climate change, or should I leave that
to the experts?
I have always been a bit eco-minded, that’s not to
say I’m an eco-warrior. I recycle, because Swansea Council have made it easy to
do so, I walk to work, because I live 15 minutes from away and parking there is
a nightmare, I use Ecover, but my husband has eczema and anything else
irritates his skin, I use energy saving light bulbs because I was given a load
for free, and anyway they last longer; so, in short I do the things that are
easy, and not necessarily because of the environment, but because they fit in
with my life and require little or no effort on my part. But, one year into
parenthood, I throw away more food than ever before, I put out more rubbish
than ever before, I use the heating more than ever before, I use much more
water and I own much more stuff (mostly plastic fantastic....thank you Santa!).
But it’s not actually the babies fault – It’s me who has to make the
changes....
So, along comes Way To Go Wales Way- the Welsh Government's climate change
campaign, and I thought
to myself, bring it on, it’s time to see if I can make some
more changes to mine (and therefore my families) lives. So here I
am, I have taken the first step, I have turned my thermostat down, and am
wearing my new, rather fetching , bright orange Jumper, courtesy of Way To Go
Wales, instead of sitting in my usually toasty warm house – and actually, it’s
not so bad!
......Then, a moment alone gives me the opportunity
for a nice long soak in a hot bath....oops; OK, let’s take baby steps here!
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