The Philosophy of Playdough

Gift Bags Anonymous

2016-08-29T16:17:00.000+10:00

It has been over five years since I began pursuing a minimalist lifestyle, and yet there are some things that the minimalist in me still hasn't quite conquered the hoarder.

Today I am confessing gift bags. I can't bear to throw out a gift bag unless it is broken. I have dozens of gift bags stored in my cupboard for those occasions that I might need gift bag. Which is not all that often, given that I am not really much of a gift giver, either.

I have giant gift bags, tiny gift bags, Christmas gift bags, Easter gift bags, ugly gift bags, beautiful gift bags, baby girl gift bags, baby boy gift bags, wine bottle gift bags. You name it, I probably have one.

I keep them because they are reusable. And what a waste to not reuse them! Single use items bother me. A great deal.

The problem is that the rate of gift bags coming into my house is faster than the rate at which they leave. (I'm pretty sure this is an immigration issue, not a birth rate issue.) My husband receives many gifts at the end of the school year, and sometimes Easter as well, and I save all the bags. Occasionally one of us will receive a Christmas or birthday present in a gift bag, and we were given many gifts in bags when each of our children were born.

I try to reuse the bags. Honest! But we use re-useable fabric wrap for birthday and Christmas presents at home, paper is easier if I have to pack or post gifts (often in recycled wrapping paper), and paper is more exciting to unwrap when the kids go to birthday parties. I'm left with not a lot of opportunities to use up the bags, because I'm just not a gift giver. (If you know about the five languages, gift giving is fairly low on my list of how I show love.)

Until I get the courage up to donate a large pile of gift bags to charity, I'll just store them in the cupboard, along with my supermarket bags, rubber bands and scraps of fabric.

Unreality TV: the game show as story

2014-04-30T23:48:00.001+10:00

I know, I said just last week that I was retiring a blog that I hadn’t updated in almost a year, and here I am posting again. But I realised that there are things I want to write that don’t fit on Wild Lily. So The Philosophy is staying for now, where I can write about society, education matters, and other miscellany that fills my mind.

***

Apparently there was some controversy this week about My Kitchen Rules. Apparently, not everything is as it seems.

Now here’s my disclaimer: I have never watched an entire episode of My Kitchen Rules. I don’t watch much at all in the reality-competition genre. It’s not really my thing. A few episodes, or parts of episodes of, The Biggest Loser, Survivor, Beauty and the Geek, The Great Bake Off, The Amazing Race, to name a few. I have, however, seen more than one entire series of MasterChef. I started watching season one halfway through on recommendation, and enjoyed it, so I watched from the start of season two and ended up forcing myself through to the end. Big J decided he really wanted to watch it last year, and I had to keep abreast of the show to know what he was talking about and explain the bits he didn’t understand. (He’s counting down until this year’s season starts next week.)

I am not sure that a lot of the viewing public realise that there is more than meets the eye in these reality-game shows. There needn’t be any controversy, if viewers understood that it is all just storytelling.

These game shows are not just game shows. They are not Sale of the Century, or Wheel of Fortune, or Deal or No Deal, where the contestants show up, filming runs all day. A few clothing changes make it look like the carry-over champ has been there all week, when they have actually played back to back games. In this new breed of game shows, filming lasts for weeks, but probably not as many weeks as the show actually runs for. But, that’s not particularly controversial. It’s almost common knowledge that a week in the MasterChef Kitchen or the Biggest Loser house is not a week in real time. At least I hope it’s common knowledge: last year on MasterChef, the contestants travelled to Dubai and Paris, all in four days!

Reality game shows are not just game shows: they are an unfolding drama.

Contestants don’t have a quick profile read by the gameshow host on their introduction: they have a backstory, a dream, and something to play for. A life changing accident, migrant parents, children they want to be an example for. They are more than just contestants: they are characters. The show is carefully edited, possibly even scripted, to help build characters that the audience will love or hate. The caring mother, the young man barely out of his teens lacking in confidence, the feisty older lady, the middle aged man who has had a string of rotten luck. The things they say on camera, the things we see on camera, have been chosen out of hours of footage to create a character which may or may not reflect who they are in real life.

(My cynical hunch is that the producers have already decided the winner, or a selection of possible winners, after the contestants have been selected. The potential finalists are created as the loveable characters, juxtaposed against the arrogant, the cocky: the ones we are glad to see go. We cheer when our favourites scrape through, and when ‘the bad guys’ don’t get through to the next round. The competition is constructed to make sure that the chosen finalists get through to the finals, even if it means a surprise return of an eliminated contestant.)

It is all story telling. Every single contestant on MasterChef gets a plate up in time, despite the preceding scenes suggesting that some people might not. Their benches are all clean in time for judging. No-one ever gets so hopelessly lost or delayed in The Amazing Race that they are ever more than an hour or two behind the first to arrive. And how come sometimes they have to carry a backpack and sometimes they don’t?

It is all story telling, as much as Home and Away, Big Bang Theory, or NCIS is story telling. Scenes are crafted, characters are created. Props and sets are used, along with clever camera techniques. The music heralds tension, climax, resolution, victory.

The producers don’t really care about who can lose the most weight, or be Australia’s best amateur cook, or get to the last checkpoint without being eliminated. They care about getting the most people to watch their show.

I don’t want to discourage you from watching these shows. The stories are enjoyable. They are meant to be. We relate to the characters. We empathise with them. We are inspired by their triumphs, their progress. If she can do that, then so could I!

However, I do want to protect you from the next controversy. Just like in a movie you know that the bad guy didn’t actually hit the good guy, it was just acting, you should also know that the ice-cream should have melted by now and those two bickering contestants actually get along just fine, so you won’t be shocked when you see in Facebook newsfeed that someone has revealed the dirty tricks of your favourite reality show (controversy is handy for boosting ratings… just sayin’).

Keep enjoying the shows, but know that they are not reality: they are a cleverly told story.

Retiring

2014-04-20T22:33:00.003+10:00

The Philosophy is retiring.

Not that I've written anything here for a year or so.

But I want to start again, so I'm writing a brand new blog, mostly about simple living with a few other things thrown in.

It's over here at Wild Lily

Go and bookmark it, because I'd love you to keep following me.

And I can't leave without a thank you to my readers for hanging out here and reading my rants.

Travelling Light: the new baby edition

2013-08-30T11:17:00.001+10:00

Last Christmas we were away from home for almost a month.

We had a wedding, a week on the Gold Coast, and Christmas, all interspersed with visits with family.

Five of us: the smallest of whom was eight weeks old at the start of our trip. Five of us needing a whole lot of different gear to cater for the different actual scenarios we were going to encounter.

We were going to need a car while we were in Brisbane, but timing meant we had to fly there on the day before my sister was getting married. So my mum drove our car down for us, and took with her our stroller, a travel bassinet, and a bag of Christmas presents, as well as the kids’ carseats. Everything else we needed came with us on the plane, and it all had to fit in the car to come home again.

This was our pile of bags at the airport:

I thought it was far too much, but I couldn't get it down much further than that. The blue Converse bag had all our wedding outfits; half of the big black suitcase was Christmas and birthday presents that I had bought ahead of time because I wasn't sure if I could get them easily while we were away. (We have a lot of family, and a disproportionate number of birthdays around Christmas.)

It’s not the first time we’ve travelled with a baby. All three of our kids have made the trip to visit their grandparents sometime in their first few months, and again later in their first year (our youngest is heading down for her second trip in a few weeks time, just before her first birthday). In that time, I’ve moved from a pack-for-every-possible-eventuality type traveller to an if-it-can’t-fit-in-a-carry-on-it-can’t-come.

Here’s what I've learnt about travelling with young children:

1. Buy nappies and wipes when you arrive at your destination. I usually just pack in my carry-on enough to get me through to when I can get to the shops.

2. Consider hiring or borrowing car seats, porta-cots, high chairs, and strollers at your destination. (Virgin and Qantas both include this as bonus baggage on the plane, but, for me, the cost of hiring is worth not needing to lug them to and from the airport.) Or, consider even which of these things you can do without while you are away.

3. Use a baby carrier at the airport. If you don’t have one, borrow one. Putting Miss M a carrier meant I had one hand free to drag a wheeled suitcase and one had free for to hold Little J’s hand.

4. Stay somewhere that you can wash. The less clothes you can take for everyone means the less you need to carry.

5. Don’t take too many toys and things to keep the kids entertained. Find things to do at your destination.

6. The smaller the baby, the more you need to take for them. Muslin wraps. Extra clothes in case of leaked nappies.

What are you tips for travelling light with a baby?

Is bullying always bullying?

2013-04-30T14:25:00.004+10:00

I have no doubts: bullying is a bad thing.

But, kids are mean. Kids don’t know how to deal with the other kid who is ‘different’, and ‘different’ kids get picked on.

Understand where I’m coming from. I grew up as the ‘different’ kid: a bit socially-awkward, a bit un-sporty, a lot nerdy. Low fruit for mean kids, and for the kids who need to make themselves look good by making others look worse. But, the only time I’ve ever considered myself ‘bullied’ is in the workplace, as an adult. Many other kids probably had a similar experience to me through school, and learnt that sticks and stones may break my bones, but words leave deep scars, making you question your worth well into adulthood when the things that once made you ‘weird’ now may even make you the envy of the ‘normal’.

Here is my question: is there a difference between bullying and kids being mean?

If there is, what’s the difference? If we label all acts of kids being mean as bullying, do some kids end up more victimised: not only are they taunted by their peers, they are now labeled as ‘bullied’ by the grown ups. But if we blanket say that most ‘bullying’ is just kids being mean, then do the genuine bullies - the ones that seek out weak kids to make fun of - get away with it more easily. And if we say that kids are just mean, are we implying that it’s okay, it’s just a part of growing up, and ignore the kids on the receiving end?

If there is a difference - and I think there probably is - we need a different approach to dealing with the bully as we do with dealing with the kids who are mean. And whether there is a difference or not, dealing with bullying can’t be just left up to the schools. It needs to start at home. We need to teach our children to be resilient, confident and respectful of differences. (I also like to remind my son that he doesn’t have to be friends with the dominant personalities that like to call the shots, often at his expense: there’s plenty of nice kids at school to play with!) Not that schools have no responsibility, but, like most things, schools, parents and students need to work together to make it work.

What do you think? (Feel free to disagree!)

Eat the packet, throw away the chocolate

2013-04-02T16:24:00.006+10:00

The Husband brought home some chocolate recently. This wasn’t a huge surprise, given that in our house chocolate is one of five food groups.

But this chocolate was different.

It was natural and sugar-free chocolate.

Now, I have been to the Cadbury Chocolate Factory in Dunedin and I saw them making chocolate with cocoa beans, milk and sugar. What on earth is in sugar-free chocolate? Cocoa beans and milk?

Actually, it had a natural sweetener - Stevia - which isn’t sugar. It has a lot less calories than cane sugar: it’s a lot sweeter, so you can use a lot less. But, it’s not cane sugar, and it tastes different.

I tried a sample of Stevia in my coffee recently. I could taste the difference, but The Husband couldn’t. But, then, he also thought the natural, sugar-free chocolate wasn’t too bad.

He was wrong.

It was awful.

He said it’s because it was dark chocolate and I don’t normally eat dark chocolate. I say it’s the polydextrose and erythirol and isomalt they had to use in order to give it the same texture as dark chocolate!

Here’s what I think: forget low-fat or low-sugar versions of foods. It’s the fat and the sugar that make them taste good. Eat the bad-for-you foods. Just don’t eat them all the time. Treat them as treat foods.

Give me decent chocolate any day… just not every day.

The Cult of Motherhood: Part One - Idolising the Perfect Mother

2013-03-26T22:08:00.002+10:00

A typical day for a mother of the full-time variety (whatever that may mean) might look like this:

Mum gets up and puts on a pot of coffee and a load of washing. She prepares the children their breakfast, then the whole family eats breakfast together. Dad heads off to work, and the children play while Mum does the housework, carefully marking off each chore on her Master Schedule. She helps the children cook something delicious for morning tea, and after they have finished eating she sets up their craft activity. Once the craft is hung on the wall, and the mess cleaned up, Mum heads out with the kids do errands, and usually they’ll stop at the playground on the way home where she’ll push the kids on the swings, or chat with one of the other Typical Mothers. After lunch, Mum might allow her children a half-hour of television so that she might have a well-earned break. Though it can hardly be called a break, when most of the time is spent online paying bills or reading Important Articles on the Latest Research on Child Development. She cleans up promptly after lunch, does a quick tidy around the house, and puts the children down for their rest time. Rest time is very valuable to a mother: if she is lucky she is able to pursue a hobby or earn an income at home during this time, but usually it’s the first chance she’s had all day to get any housework done or have a break. But after the children wake up, Mum spends precious time playing with her children. They build cubby houses, have tea parties, read stories, sing songs, dance, imagine. But, sadly, this time each day must come to an end, as Mum has to follow her Meal Plan so it’s off to the kitchen. If Dad is home by this time, the children will play with him, but if he’s not yet she might resort to another half-hour of quality television. They eat, the children bathe and go to bed, and she pours herself a glass of wine and gets to work on her latest craft project, probably something that she’s seen on Pinterest, before heading to bed herself.

My day looks nothing like that, except maybe the ‘puts on a pot of coffee’ part. I’d be hard pressed to do all of those things just once in a week. Usually my day involves a sink never empty of dirty dishes, dirty nappies, too much time online, my kids watching too much TV while I read a book, whatever I scrape together for lunch. It involves yelling, impatience, laziness, frustration. It involves beating myself up over not doing a good enough job with my kids. Every so often it involves craft, cubby houses, or a trip to a playground. There’s plenty of coffee involved. While I’m typing, my middle child is colouring himself in with a felt pen. And there’s laughing and cuddles, games, lego constructions, lightsaber battles and books.

The Typical Mother* isn’t typical. She’s phenomenal, but she’s fictional. (Or possibly a liar.) And yet, I think many of us have got in our head that The Typical Mother actually exists. She does: she’s online. She writes a blog (sometimes more than one), and others pin her creations on Pinterest. She updates us about her day on Facebook or Twitter. She gives opinion and advice and kind words on parenting forums.

These mothers are real women, and they may well be brilliant women. But the online world can only give you a certain image of reality. Anyone who posts something online is constructing an image of themselves, whether intentional or not. We tend to post only our successes, rarely our failings. If we do post our failings, it’s not often out of honesty, but rather for attention, or for someone to say ‘oh, you stuffed up, but you’re still a good mum’, or to give an appearance of integrity (that’s what I was doing up there, when I pointed out my own inadequacies). And sometimes those failings aren’t even legitimate failings: we just haven’t measured up to the Perfect Mother image. Online, we don't see what these women aren't doing.

If you are a mother of little kids and your day looks nothing like my opening description, but you think it should: stop beating yourself up over it.

Stop assuming that other mothers are doing those things.

Get offline.

Stop reading other mothers’ comments on forums.

Stop reading blogs by mothers, especially the ones where they wax lyrical about their daily schedules and their ah-mazing children.

Stop comparing yourself to your friends based on their Facebook statuses and photo streams.

Stop browsing Pinterest for lists of 101 Easter Crafts for Kids and birthday cakes that would take a normal person 56 hours to create.

We cry out against magazines creating unrealistic expectations for girls and body image, but need to see that we are doing the same with motherhood. We’re looking at airbrushed images of mothers and comparing our messy, unstyled houses, our meal plans (or lack thereof), our kids who draw on the furniture, our hair that doesn’t quite sit right, our craft projects that never quite end up looking like the photo. It's okay that people publish their seemingly perfect lives online - who wants to look at photos of messy houses? - but remember that a lot of the time it is just staged.

Use the Internet to connect and find inspiration, but don't let it be a source of discontent with your own life and circumstances.

You don’t have to be The Typical Mother. You don’t have to be The Perfect Mother. You just have to be Your Children’s Mother. BUT…I’ll write and post Part Two, um, sometime. There isn’t enough coffee or episodes of The Octonauts for me to guarantee when the next post will materialise.

Leave me a comment, feel free to tell me I’m the only person in the world who has this problem, or that you are indeed a Typical Mother.

* Maybe it’s just what I read, but ‘mothers’ always seem to be ‘mothers of under-6s’. Except around Mother’s Day, when all mothers have grown up children. That could just be my warped view, so feel free to ignore this statement.

The Great Benefits of E-Books

2013-02-04T21:54:00.002+10:00

I don't have an e-reader*. I've read one e-book on the Kindle for Mac App, but I'm not in a hurry to read another one. I have more than enough physical books on my bookshelves and on the library's bookshelves to get through before I can justify buying an e-reader and buying books for said e-reader. Call me a luddite, if you will, but really I just haven't needed an e-reader. I enjoy physical books, and find I tend to skim-read anything on a screen. At the moment I don't read enough, mostly just too much screen skim-reading. And I'm not blaming having kids: it's pure laziness on my behalf.

Oh, I know there are Great Benefits to e-readers, and I will concede that an e-reader would help when travelling with reading material to locations where it would be too difficult to swap your last read at a book exchange or drop into an op shop. (My holidays always are filled with good intentions to read, but it rarely happens, though I never travel on my own.) I guess some e-readers would weigh less than some books, too, and maybe are smaller, which could be handy if you were carrying a book to read with you a lot. Though, if I'm going to take a book with me to read somewhere, I take something small and lightweight. I know. Crazy.

One Great Benefit that is often touted in discussions on e-books is that you can store THOUSANDS of books on your e-reader. Think how much SPACE you can save by not having to store all those books in your house. Logic tells me this: if you read one book a day, it would take three years to get through just ONE thousand books, let alone however many more thousands of books are stored on your Super Duper e-reader. If you only read one book a week, and I seriously doubt many working outside of an English Literature related field would read any more than this, it will take TWENTY YEARS to get through a thousand books. (Meanwhile, I'm culling my books and letting the libraries and secondhand bookstores store my reading material.) Digital storage doesn't make less clutter, it just makes digital clutter.

A more contentious Great Benefit to e-readers is the environmental benefit. I remain skeptical. No trees are cut down to make e-readers, but an e-reader isn't going to last as long as a paper book, it needs to be charged regularly, and the servers where the e-books are stored before being purchased need to be run on electricity. I have well-read books on my bookshelves that are older than me. I'd like to see an e-reader still in use into its thirties. Digital has its own environmental footprint. Just because it is stored on a hard drive doesn't mean it uses no resources.

One final note. An article I read this week said this:

"Fiction is moving to e-book more quickly than non-fiction, especially romance and crime; in fact sales of romance novels have dramatically increased. This stands to reason by the way: I tend to buy crime fiction on my tablet and serious non-fiction in print, although that may change in future.The biggest market for e-books is women over 45 and whereas the split between female and male print book consumers is 60-40, in digital form it's 70-30."

I'm not certain what to make of this. People who tend to read literary fiction are slower to transition to new technologies? People who read non-fiction would prefer to make notes on the text? E-readers are an easier way to hide the fact that you are reading Mills and Boon? (Are they still publishing those, or do I just sound old/ignorant?) Maybe I'm just not old enough to get into the whole e-reader thing, given that I'm still well off 45.

Go ahead, enjoy your e-reader. One day I might convert. I sincerely hope the digital publishing world takes off. That writers are paid well for their work. But I equally hope that ease of digital publishing doesn't diminish the standards of books and reading, because a good book is a marvellous thing. Oh, and I hope real books hang around a little longer yet. There are literally thousands of books in my local library, and I haven't read them all yet.

*The terms e-reader and e-book give me the giggles. Remember when new words were taken from other languages, like French or Latin. Okay, neither do I, but I've read about it happening a long time. ago. These days, you just whack a vowel in front of a word and voila! a new word!

Is hiating the present tense verb of hiatus?

2013-01-13T15:31:00.001+10:00

I've been on a bit of a hiatus. Please don't tell me you haven't noticed!

I've been busy: having a baby, getting the house ready to sell, Battleship and Payday, travelling, Angry Birds Star Wars.

I've been busy.

But I'm looking forward to a bit of blogging again in the coming months.

A steady diet of good books.

2012-10-11T20:20:00.000+10:00

Ah, home readers. Those small books of questionable literary merit that come home each week for you to hear your child read and improve their literacy. I know they are of good value, but they are tedious. But this week we had a chuckle at a non-PC little book called Mum’s Diet.

“I’m too fat,” said Mum.

“No, you’re not,” we said.

“You’re only saying that,” said Mum. “Look at me! I’m far too fat and I’m going on a diet.”

We all moaned and groaned. When Mum when on a diet, we went on a diet too.

On the first day of Mum’s diet they all eat lettuce and tomatoes. On the second day they eat parsley and carrots. (What sort of diet is this?)

We said to Mum, “You have carrots and parsley and we’ll have spaghetti.”

“No,” cried Mum. “I’m not sitting here watching you two gobble down spaghetti.”

“You could close your eyes” we said.

The next day they go to Dad’s house and try to raid his fridge.

“Don’t tell me,” said Dad. “Your mother’s on another diet.”

Mum weighs herself every morning, and cries that she is still fat.

But then one day the kids come home to a fantastic smell: spaghetti and doughnuts! Mum has given up on the diet.

Or maybe it’s not politically incorrect. They have ticked other boxes of inclusivity: a dark skinned family and a single mother. Maybe the book is indeed educational, about the importance of self acceptance and the dangers of yo-yo dieting. It finishes like this:

We hugged Mum.

“You’re a cuddly mother. We like you just as you are.”

“I think I like me too,” laughed Mum, and she had another doughnut.

Or maybe it’s time to cull this book from the collection.

Decluttering Conversations

2012-09-25T20:07:00.003+10:00

I’ll clean out the spare stationery draw today.

Oh, good. There’s a lot of stuff in there you don’t need.

Yeah, yeah. But I’m sure most of it is useful!

How many spare display folders does one need?

Okay. Not that many. But I’ll keep all these manilla folders. They are definitely useful.

Hmm. You’re less than halfway through that box of 100. Did you buy that box when you were still at uni? That’s at least ten years. You usually just recycle a manilla folder when you need one.

Of course I do! I don’t want to waste them!

And all these refill pages for display folders. There’s an unopened packet of 100! Plus the rest…

I used to use them in folders for my sheet music.

But a packet of 100? Why did you even buy that in the first place?

In case I needed them.

In case you needed them? Why not just wait until you actually needed them?

Yes, okay, okay. Can we move on? What will I do with all these envelopes?

That’s a lot of envelopes.

I know. But I when I needed envelopes I could only buy a box of 100. And I use those four different sizes. Just not very often.

Fair enough. That letter paper?

But what if I need to write a-

You don’t write letters. Ever. Some of that you’ve had since you were ten. Bin!

What if I need this graph paper?

Have you needed graph paper in the last fifteen years?

But what if I NEED some?

You can get more. Get rid of it.

Right. That’s done. Yes, I’ve kept a little more than I probably need to. But this is my first stationery cull. I think I’ve done okay. It looks tidy. There’s less unnecessary stuff in the drawer. I’m happy with that.

Repairing the burst seams in my wardrobe

2012-09-07T21:43:00.000+10:00

I have over 100 items of clothing in my wardrobe.

This doesn’t even include underwear, swimwear, or my maternity clothing.

More than one hundred. I counted them after I did a cull recently.

Please don’t laugh. Or judge. (Especially not before you’ve counted the items of clothing in your own wardrobe.)

I know I own far too many clothes. It’s more than I can reasonably wear (there ARE only seven days a week, and I wash on at least two of those). My whole adult life I have had too many clothes. Conventional decluttering wisdom says if you haven’t worn it in a year, get rid of it. Yeah, but I’ve got clothes that I have only worn once in the last year, but I still love them. Or, worse, I haven’t worn them in over a year because I have more clothes than I could have worn in that amount of time.

Here’s the surprising thing: almost one-fifth of my wardrobe has been introduced in the last year-and-a-half, while I’ve been trying to gain control over my impulse shopping. Only about 10% is over six or seven years old. And given that I’ve either given away or worn out a large number of items of clothing, it means that I’ve bought or sewn a lot of clothes over the last five or six years.

This is the alternative decluttering wisdom that I need to hear: stop buying more clothes. Wear the clothes you already own. Don’t even bother looking at the shops if you have plenty already. Just because it’s on sale doesn’t mean you need another shirt: there will be another sale.

I would like to get down to just 30-odd items of clothing - a third of what I own now. Does that sound crazy? Sure. But I don’t think it is unreasonable, either. Have you heard it said that we wear 20% of our clothes 80% of the time? Looking at the clothes I have, and the clothes I wear, I would say that it’s true enough of me. It means potentially buying nothing new for a year. Or four. But it also means that when I do need to buy more clothes I need to be more intentional.

I’ve started out by identifying my style: a-line skirts, simple t-shirts or blouses, sandals or mary-janes, a chunky necklace. No tiny prints, no stripes, no ruffles. A little bit hippy. If I must buy more clothes, they must fit with my style.

Then I’ve chosen a colour palette. I only buy clothes in colours that suit me: browns, purples, berries, olivey-greens, creams. I don’t buy colours that I know to not look good on me, or that I tend not to choose to wear: white, blue, red, yellow, black. (I used to wear a lot of black, but as I have gotten older it doesn’t look so good on me and is being phased out of my wardrobe.)

Then I consider my lifestyle. At this stage in life I spend most of my time home with young kids, and my choice of clothing needs to reflect this. And given that most of the time it’s too hot to wear long sleeves, so I don’t need to own winter attire.

Sticking to a style and palette, everything should go together, and with a selection of shoes and accessories, there is still plenty to keep it interesting.

I’m thinking about putting everything but 30-odd items of clothing away in a box or another wardrobe, and when something needs replacing I’ll go ‘shopping’ in my box first.

To fix my clothing clutter problem, I need only buy clothes when necessary and be intentional about what I do buy. Don’t just get rid of clothes you don’t wear, break the cycle by not buying them in the first place.

What about your wardrobe? Too many clothes, or just enough? Do you wear everything you have? Are you intentional in what clothing you buy?

Reducing Our Car Dependency

2012-07-24T22:04:00.001+10:00

We are a one car family, and plan on staying that way for a long time to come. In fact, we are working towards a point where our car is no longer a necessity for us to function day by day.

To make it work, I plan my days and weeks. I only have the car some days a week. If I need to go anywhere, I go on the days I have the car, and I go there on my way to and from school, rather than coming home and going out again (this saves time and fuel). We also use the bus. The bus isn’t the best option in our town, because it’s not overly reliable and takes a lot longer to get anywhere than driving. But for $2.80 once or twice a week, we don’t care if it takes longer: it’s an awful lot less than a second car would cost us.

Cars are expensive. Including insurance, registration, service costs, new tyres and depreciation, our car costs us around $13 a day just to own. Our fuel costs currently are about $5.40 per day. (That equals just over $6700 a year.) My estimate is that a second car would cost us between $8 and $12 a day, plus fuel.

Now that our eldest has started school, at the same school the my husband teaches at, things have become more complicated. They are both at the same school, but if there are meetings on after school, I have to have the car on those days to pick our son up. Some afternoons we do things after school, some afternoons my husband catches the bus home. But because we live 15 minutes drive from school, and I walk our son in and out of school the days I drop him off and pick him up, it works out as a minimum of 50 minutes for me to do the whole trip. But a second car would probably only save me an hour or two a week, and we would use roughly the same amount of fuel as we use currently.

Our solution is to move closer to school. Not just closer to school, but generally more central. The area we plan on moving to is within walking/riding distance from school, but also close enough to other schools in the event that we need to change schools in the future. It is also close to a main bus route, and if I do return to work some day, most of the high schools are accessible by bus. Being able to walk more places is much better for my health than driving everywhere, and I believe a better use of my time. There are other reasons for us to move from this house, but if I only took into account moving costs compared to buying a second car, we would break even with the move in 4-6 years.

We can’t have no car at all. Public transport in our town is not sophisticated enough to allow us to do that. And just like we can’t manage without a car, there are plenty of people for whom it is not realistic to live with just one car. But for some families, it may be an unthought of possibility. If one person can get to work by public transport (or walking or riding!), and the total yearly cost is less than the cost to own a second car, it may be worth considering ditching one car. Buses aren’t just for poor people (which seems to be the attitude in regional cities), and half an hour on the train is time you can spend reading rather than concentrating on traffic.

As far as I’m aware, oil is a finite resource. Fuel will continue to get more expensive until eventually it runs out. Hopefully, alternative options for powering cars will have taken hold well before that day and we will be able to continue driving, but in the mean time I don’t want to have to pay for increasing fuel costs if I don’t need to. Also, burning fossil fuels has a negative environmental impact. I don’t just mean global warming, which I appreciate that some of my readers disagree with me about. The pollution that comes from driving cars isn’t such a great thing, really. So, for me, there are many reasons that I want to reduce my dependency on cars.

What about you? How reliant are you on your car?

Six hours a day, with twelve weeks holidays!

2012-05-28T12:45:00.003+10:00

You may have heard people say that teacher’s don’t deserve any pay rises, because they only work six hours a day and get twelve weeks holiday. If they want decent pay they should get a real job. (Forget the fact that none of those people working in real jobs would have said job without the aid of 10-12 years with their teachers.) But I’m not talking today about pay. It’s the ‘six hours a day’ issue I want to address.

I feel qualified to talk about this, because I used to be a teacher (and may yet find myself back in the classroom), and have been married to a teacher for almost eight years. I do not come from a position of ‘teachers are so hard done by and have the hardest job in the world’. No, every job has its good and its bad. And every job has slightly different arrangements.

In Australia, everyone is entitled to four weeks annual leave. There are also around ten gazetted public holidays, which differ from state to state. Depending on the year, about half of these fall during the school holidays. There are twelve weeks of school holidays for students in Queensland public schools, and I will assume most states have roughly the same amount. The school holidays include about six student free days, where teaching staff are required to be at school either in professional development courses or planning.

If you have done the maths in the above paragraph you should have concluded: average Australian = six weeks off work. (People who are require to work on public holidays are compensated with higher pay rates for those days, and may get an alternative day as their ‘day off’.) Of the twelve weeks of school holidays, a teacher is entitled to four weeks annual leave, one week’s worth is public holidays, and one week’s worth they aren’t actually on holidays at all. So they have an extra six weeks of holidays. Which does seem a bit unfair at face value.

Teachers are usually required to be at school from 8:30 to 3:30, which means a teacher’s official work hours are seven hours a day. The school day runs from approximately 9am to 3pm, with about an hour for lunch breaks. In Queensland, the Unions require that primary school teachers have a minimum of two non-contact hours a week, time where their class is with a specialist teacher (e.g physical education, library, music.) This makes up for the lunch breaks lost to things like detentions, helping students and playground duties.

For a teacher to work the same amount of time as someone in a ‘nine-to-five’ job they need to work an extra hour a day on top of their ‘official’ hours, as well as six hours a week for the forty weeks of term to make up for the forty hours a week of their extra six weeks holidays (not included lunch breaks!). So by working from 8-4:30 every day plus a few days at the end of each set of school holidays (I usually count our summer holidays finished 1 ½ weeks before school starts) and maybe a weekend here and there, teachers have already completely made up for their extra six weeks off. Once you factor in time spent to plan and prepare lessons, mark homework and other assessment, write report cards, conduct both official and unofficial parent teacher interviews, assist in extra-curricular activities (e.g. choir, musicals, debating and other inter-school competitions), attend school camps, attend staff meetings and curriculum planning meetings, participate in outside-school hours events such as fetes and awards nights, and attend professional development seminars, then it isn’t hard to make up that time. No, not all teachers put in this effort. There are some who will do barely more than seven hours a day for forty weeks. But these teachers are doing a disservice to their students and should not be teaching.

Different jobs have different arrangements. Yes, teachers have "twelve weeks holidays", but have to take them at the same time as the students. Some jobs require much longer work hours, but also command a much higher salary. Some jobs attract overtime rates for hours worked above 40. Some employees are given time-in-lieu that they are able to cash in or take as extra holidays. Some employees have rostered days off every fortnight, and work nine hours a day for nine days to have the tenth day off. The hours beyond 40 hours that salaried employees work - including teachers - to meet expectations is becoming more and more common, and is another issue altogether.

Do teachers work more than anyone else? No. Do teachers have a harder job than everyone else? No. Do teachers work for six hours a day and get 12 weeks holidays? No.

Curing my bad shopping habits: Part Four

2012-05-12T15:30:00.000+10:00

Part four: I used to have a shopping problem, but I stopped shopping. That sounds simple. It sounds so obvious. But it is a little more complex. If someone wants to lose weight, you can’t just say ‘well, eat less’. Why are they eating more than they need to? Are they actually eating the right amount, but choosing the wrong foods and need to learn what the right foods are?

Remember parts two and three of how I cured my shopping habit? I simplified my budget and got honest about how much I was spending and how much I could spend, and made practical changes. Then I learnt to recognise how much I used and needed, and consequently what I didn’t need. Without those two changes, I probably couldn’t have stopped shopping.

Now, understand, when I say I stopped shopping, I don’t mean I made a pact to buy nothing for a year, or to buy nothing new for a year. This is a permanent change. I don’t just wander through Target or Spotlight anymore, and generally avoid shopping centres there is something particular there that I need. I don’t look at clearance racks for ‘just in case there’s something good on there’. I don’t browse a lot of online stores either. And ever so occasionally, I leave the kids with my husband and go shopping on my own: wander, browse, try things on.

When I do need to go shopping I consider my purchase. Do I have one already? When will I use this? What will I use it for? Does it actually fit? Do I have anything to wear it with? Do I really need it? If I can only answer ‘I don’t know’ to the question, then I don’t buy it. I have put plenty of things back after wandering around with them for five or ten minutes. Often if I want it but I’m not sure, I’ll leave the shop and come back later when I’ve made up my mind. If it’s gone by then, it doesn’t matter because another one will come along. Usually, I know before I even go shopping whether I need it or not.

Sometimes I still buy things that I don’t need. The worst is when I do the grocery shopping. I’m not perfect. And I’m not writing this to tell you how awesome I am and that you should all be like me. This was hard work to completely change the way I think.

Buy less and be better for it.

Curing my bad shopping habits: Part Three

2012-05-11T15:28:00.000+10:00

Once upon a time I bought far too much. I’d spot great bargains and buy them because I knew they were things that we would use, or that we needed - even if they weren’t really. I guess I overestimated what we needed and how much we used - maybe because I grew up in a large family and we always needed lots, or maybe I was duped by the two-for-one sales and the economy of scale.

It started with cling wrap. I scoffed at a comment I’d read online somewhere, someone saying they took a year to use a roll of it. So I wrote the date on the end of the next cling wrap I opened, and finished it almost 18 months later. I started to keep track of other things as well. 500mL of olive oil lasts me about two months. I realised we use less pasta and rice because we tend to bulk up on vegetables. We have used 9 rolls of toilet paper in the last month. I haven’t worked out how long deodorant and toothpaste last me, but I know I only need to buy them a few times a year. At the moment, the largest box of Weet-bix lasts us less than two weeks. This has revolutionised my grocery shopping. I stockpile less, I spend less, and I waste less.

Considering how much and how little we used food and personal hygiene items made me also look at how much I owned of non-perishable items. Clothes. Shoes. Books. DVDs. Recipe books. There are only 24 hours in a day, only seven days in a week, only 352 days in a year. I had enough recipes in books that I could cook something different every day for two-and-a-half years. A whole month of not having to wash clothes. Two weeks worth of shoes. Books that I was never going to read again. Did I really need all this stuff?

I started buying less clothes for the kids once I realised that I was packing away barely worn clothes when my eldest son grew out of them. I wash every few days, and he would always just take the clothes on top, so why not only have the clothes on top?

And I stopped buying craft and sewing materials at a faster rate than which I could actually use them, but that’s whole post of it’s own!

What about you? Do you tend to by more than you need, or only just enough?

Curing my bad shopping habits: Part Two

2012-05-10T15:27:00.000+10:00

Yesterday I shared with you how I had a shopping problem, and was spending all our savings on things that I didn’t need.

We only have one income. I am not in paid employment, so that I can be home with our preschool aged children as necessary. My husband is a teacher, so he earns a reasonable salary (well above the average in Australia), but we still have to watch what we spend. But herein is part of the problem: I don’t work so we only have one income, but because I don’t work I have extra time to go shopping.

I had a budget. I knew how much money we had to spend, and kept very detailed track of what I was spending. But I kept overspending. In every category, other than bills. And the further each category went into the red, the more I felt I was fighting a losing battle and stopped fighting. Bad move.

We also had a free redraw facility on our home loan. So each fortnight we’d pay a high amount onto the loan, and I’d pay everything by credit card. When the credit card came due I paid it in full by redrawing off the loan. Obviously, such a plan wasn’t working for me.

So I started paying cash. I know that it helps some people keep track of their spending by having all of their transactions on a credit card statement, but swiping every time I bought something wasn’t helping me. I put away my credit card and paid cash instead, and kept track of how much cash I was getting out of the bank each week. Maybe I’m a more visual person, but seeing how much cash I started with and how much cash I ended with each week prompted me to be more conscious of where that cash was going. It may help that a week is much shorter than a month, and so the pain of having spent all the money comes sooner when it’s paid with cash.

I also stopped using our home loan’s redraw facility. I opened two separate accounts: one for money for predictable bills and one for money to save for larger purchases and irregular bills (mechanic, doctor etc). Long term savings, such as that needed to buy our next car outright and not on finance, still went into the loan. Suddenly, instead of seeing our loan balance going up more than going down, I kept watching it go down and down and down. This gave me great impetus to keep saving.

My budget used to have around twenty categories - loan, groceries, insurances, rates, clothes, entertainment, eating out, fuel, gifts: it went on and on. My budget now has six categories: bills, home loan, kids’ and school savings, general maintenance (health, house, holidays, car), giving, general spending. General spending includes everything that doesn’t fit into another category (fuel is included in bills, because we are fairly consistent in our fuel usage). I still spend a little too much in the general spending category, but the amount I am over each year has been decreasing, despite cost of food increasing considerably in the same time.

A simpler budget helps me keep my money organised, and using cash keeps my spending under (better) control. What about you: do you keep a simple or complex budget? Do you pay cash or credit?

Curing my bad shopping habits: Part One

2012-05-09T15:27:00.000+10:00

I used to have a shopping problem. My shopping problem didn’t come in the form of new designer clothes every week and thousands of dollars in mounting credit card debt. It looked more like this:

Deodorant is on special, two for one. I use deodorant, I’ll stock up at that price.

Shirts in the next size up for my son, marked down to three dollars each. I’ll buy three.

That is the most beautiful fabric I have ever seen! It would make such a lovely skirt. I’ll get that.

Clearance rack of tops. That’s pretty. I’ll get that.

That’s cheap. It would make a great gift for someone. I’ll buy it and put it away for when I need it.

That book looks like a good read. And it’s only $5. I may as well get it.

I am a hoarder by nature, tend to buy things and keep things because I might need them or they might come in handy, even if it is somewhat illogical to do so. And I’m an overbuyer, which I guess goes hand in hand with being a hoarder.

I wasn’t putting us into debt by my shopping habit, but I was eating into our savings considerably. One day I looked at the amount still owing on our loan, the time in which we should have been able to pay it off, and the time it was actually going to take, and I realised I had to do something differently. So I got serious about making changes.

And I made some changes. I said that I used to have a shopping problem. I’ve almost solved it. I still need to work hard at it: not stockpiling, not buying things because I can’t pass it up at that price. I still buy more than I need to. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to not work hard at it.

My husband tells me that I wasn’t that bad. I didn’t spend as much as I think. Yes, the amount of money that I spend in a week is not a lot more than a lot of families of our size spend at the supermarket each week. But I was still buying a lot of things that I just didn’t need.

But in curing my shopping habit, I’ve done more than just save money. My house is becoming a lot less messy and cluttered. Stockpiled items are getting used up and no longer falling out of my cupboards. Less new things are arriving for me to try and find homes for. I have more time, because I spend less time at the shops, as well as less time trying to solve the clutter problem. I feel more confident that we can afford to be on one income for a few more years yet, so I can stay home full time with our pre-school aged children. I’ve even lost weight, because I realised I need to eat less, and I buy less food that I don’t need.

What were the changes I made? Stay tuned…In part two, I’ll share with you how my changing the way I budget helped me slow down on my shopping. In part three, how I learnt to recognise what I did and didn’t need to buy. And in part four, how I stopped shopping.

How the locals like it?

2012-04-16T13:47:00.001+10:00

I was surprised, as I’m sure many others were, to learn recently about the impending fate of seven of the eight IGA stores in Townsville, as well as others across the state.

I must confess, I am not a regular IGA customer. I’m not really a regular anywhere customer. I’ll shop where I happen to feel like shopping, not out of loyalty. I’ve never even been a semi-regular IGA customer. Maybe if they offered a better range of fresh foods, or a point of difference to the major supermarkets I would shop there more often. At best, they seem to be competing, evidently unsuccessfully, with Coles and Woolies, rather than offering something unique.

Actually, they do have a point of difference: something unique. They are ‘local’. Which begs the question: what does ‘local’ mean?

Neither Terry Walters nor Derek Cornett who own the IGAs in Townsville actually live here, or in many of the other towns they own stores in. (One of Cornett’s Townsville stores has been open for over 12 months, but has only just been included on their website this week.) As far as I understand, they are franchisees, and so pay an annual fee to the parent company, as well as buy their stock through them or their distributor. They pay their employees (local) and sponsor events (local) and the rest of the money…. Leaves town?

Metcash, the parent company of IGA, is based in Melbourne, and is listed on the Stock Exchange. The IGA brand is all over Australia. In fact, the IGA brand comes from America, though the name has been changed from Independent Grocers Association to Independent Grocers of Australia. I occasionally shop at Cornett’s IGA locally, occasionally shopped at Cornett’s IGA when I lived in Gympie, and usually go in to a Cornett’s IGA when we visit my in-laws near Brisbane. All this takes away from the impression that it is a local store, at least it does for me.

I’m going to hazard a guess that the in-house brands - Black and Gold and IGA Signature - aren’t all labelled ‘Product of Australia’ or even ‘Made in Australia’. I’m also suspicious that tomatoes and bananas grown within a couple of hundred kilometres travel a lot further than that, via a major distribution centre, before they reach the shelves. (This is a beef I have with supermarkets in general.)

Now, suddenly, I’m not so convinced the IGA is ‘how the locals like it’. Ultimately, is there a difference between IGA, Woolworths and Coles? I don’t like the dominance that Coles and Woolworths hold over the grocery market, but that is an issue for another day.

If started a campaign ‘Buy Local: eat at McDonalds’ most would think I was mad. But most of the McDonalds franchises in Townsville are owned by George Colbran, who lives in Townsville and has been an active member of the Townsville community for many years. McDonalds supports and sponsors numerous local events, big and small. It seems that McDonalds is more ‘local’ than IGA.

(Just as a side note, in a different article I read in the print paper that I couldn’t find online, a local (?) economist was quoted as saying the problem was that people wanted to be “$1 milk from China”. This amused me no end, as IGA also sell $1 a litre milk, and I’m not aware of any milk in any supermarkets coming from China.)

What do you think? Am I missing something really important here? Feel free to set me straight in the comments.

A radical solution to excess alcohol consumption

2012-03-19T13:46:00.001+10:00

Australia has a drinking problem. There are 3000 deaths in Australia each year from alcohol - cirrhosis, car accidents, alcohol related violence, alcohol poisoning. It costs us a lot:

It has been estimated that alcohol cost the Australian community about $15.3 billion in 2004–05, when factors such as crime and violence, treatment costs, loss of productivity

and premature death were taken into account. These figures are recognised to be conservative,

as the cost of alcohol related absenteeism alone has recently been estimated at $1.2 billion

per year, using self-report data from the 2001 National Drug Strategy Household Survey (AIHW 2002).

My husband was watching an NRL game on TV on Friday night. I noticed on the field two ads, both for Bundaberg Rum. The one that stood out to me said: Get footy ready with Bundy and BWS.

The message that this ad presents is that drinking alcohol is an important part of watching football. But this is the problem. Somehow, we have got this idea in our heads that you can’t have fun, you can’t enjoy life, if there isn’t alcohol involved.

I don’t think we need to go as far as making alcohol obsolete or socially unacceptable, in the way we have smoking. Tobacco smoke in any amount is hazardous to health, whereas alcohol in moderation is okay. We need to make excess drinking socially unacceptable.

Here’s a suggestion: get rid of ads for alcohol, or at least set up tighter restrictions on where and when alcohol ads can be shown and what can be shown in them.

Stop the advertising companies from making us believe that alcohol is an essential part of life.

Reducing Australia’s alcohol consumption needs a drastic solution, but who is going to stand up and make it happen. Sporting organisations, such as the NRL and the AFL, stand to lose millions of dollars in sponsorships from alcohol companies are banned. Television networks would also lose millions of advertising dollars.

But worst of all, our Government isn’t going to do anything real to combat Australia’s drinking problem. Not only do they bring in a lot of revenue from taxes on alcohol sales - a deterrent which obviously isn’t working - they fear losing votes by making an unpopular decision. And those who stand to lose the most have the money to stop the changes we need to happen. Money talks. Those with money can talk to the voters and convince them this is a bad move.

This is the sad thing. Money is more important than lives.

Stand up, Australia. Let’s show the world that we can have fun without excessive drinking.

Don't get organised: simplify!

2012-03-15T12:41:00.000+10:00

This week, I sold my Filofax on Ebay. I can’t wait for it to be paid for and so I can put it in the mail!

My Filofax is beautiful red leather, neat, tidy, with a clasp and just the right size. And a big waste of my money.

You see, I bought my Filofax at a time where I thought that all I needed to have a beautiful tidy house, and days filled with enriching activities for my son, was to be more organised.

Only, as it turned out, I didn’t need to be more organised. I needed to simplify.

This is what I learnt from my expensive mistake:

- I am not a routine person. I have routines which I follow; things I do at certain times during the day. Things like when I eat, and when I check my email, and what I do when I get up in the morning. But to have to follow a schedule? That makes me break out in a cold sweat! I love lists, and lists help me when I’m busy and I’m concerned I’ll forget something. But if I make a list and I can’t get things marked off, it stresses me out. A schedule is like a giant list that I might not get the things done. A bad night sleep, a child who wants extra attention, a great article or book to read, an idea that has popped into my mind that I have to write down RIGHT NOW, something I need to know that is going to drive me crazy until I’ve found out, I just feel like sewing today, or a job takes longer than I expect: those things each mean something doesn’t get marked off, and I feel like I’ve failed.

- I am already organised. I am just an organised person. Unfortunately, it’s all in my head and doesn’t translate to the chaos on the dining table, so I’ll forgive you for thinking otherwise.

- I don’t need to be more organised, I just need less stuff. The chaos on my dining table usually has more to do with my spontaneity and distractability than my lack of organisation, but the chaos filling the rest of the house has got to do with the lack of cupboards in which to keep it. The solution is not more cupboards. The solution is less stuff. I’ve been working on that, and my house is getting less chaotic.

- I don’t need to be more organised, I just need to be less busy. I know Mary has six kids, is on twelve different rosters at church, leads Bible Study, visits old ladies on Mondays, and listens to kids read at school, but I’m not Mary. I’m only capable of X, Y and Z, and if I try to do more, then other things start to fall apart. Besides, you don’t know what is actually only being held together by a loose piece of thread in Mary’s life. She may be brilliant, or she may just not know how to prioritise or say no.

- I’m not a tidy person, and I hate housework. I don’t need to be more organised, I just need less house to keep clean and less stuff to keep tidy. And if you don’t like my imperfect housekeeping, well, you don’t have to live here, do you?

- Less busy-ness with housework and clutter means more time to do fun things with the kids.

I'm getting $30 for my Filofax, and will soon be rid of something that is just cluttering my life.

Richard Gill on Music Literacy

2012-03-02T16:24:00.000+10:00

Richard Gill is one of Australia's foremost experts on music education. This video is about twenty minutes long, but he talks about what he sees as some of the problems in our education system at the moment.

A few of his best points:

That we have insisted literacy and numeracy is the right of every child is fundamentally good, but to ensure every child is literate and numerate we need to test. But in order to ensure the school gets good results teachers are beginning to teach to the test, or excluding students who won't do well. This is not education.
There are two reasons for school: to learn to think and to learn to learn. Education should be about teaching students these two things and instilling a hunger for them in the students.
We can't dumb down the curriculum! Gill used the example of teaching music notation to small children using flowers or ducks or cars instead of noteheads, and that he has never, in all the music repertoire, seen a piece of music written in ducks. This gives the message that children are silly, but they are not.
The reason for teaching music is that music is good, but the bonus of teaching music is that it has flow on effects in all areas of learning. Much research points to the reality that students who learn music do better in other subjects.
Sadly, 80% of schools don't teach music. (I'd be interested to know where he got this statistic, because I thought the number of schools that did offer music would be higher than that.)

I agree with him. Children need things simplified, not dumbed down. That's the way I approach my own children: put things in a way that they can understand, but don't 'baby' them.

Also, school should not be about learning facts, and not just about learning the mechanics of reading, writing and arithmetic. We as educators should be creating lifelong leaners. Unfortunately, I believe, standardised testing leads to teaching the mechanics and making sure the kids can pass. Kids definitely need to learn reading, writing and arithmetic, but they need to learn it in a real world context, not just well enough to pass a test!

And as for music, the new National Curriculum asks for two hours a week on the arts (music, art and drama), lets hope this happens in practice! Music is good because it is good.

Some thoughts on private schools, public schools, and school funding

2012-02-25T13:07:00.001+10:00

With the release of the Gonski review into school funding everyone is back out with their flaming arrows about Private vs. Public education.

My husband teaches at an Anglican school. He is a strong supporter of private education. Our son attends the same school. I attended a small Christian school for high school, and my two years of teaching were in a Christian school. I’m in the process of deciding where I stand, on an ideological level and a pragmatic level.

And so a few thoughts. Feel free to rebut them.

Private schools are not all equal. Not all private schools are Geelong Grammar.
Public schools are not all equal. They are not all dens of iniquity, devoid of morals and failing all their students.
Most religious schools follow their State’s (or now the National) Curriculum, but make some modifications. It’s easier than writing a whole new curriculum, especially if your school is already seriously underfunded. They don’t just spend all day indoctrinating their students and ignoring Maths.
Private schools get more Federal funding than public schools, but public schools get a lot more State funding. I think on average public schools are funded double per student than private schools. I can’t believe people still can’t get their head around this one.
Education is a good thing. I think it’s a huge marker between Developed nations and Developing nations. High levels of literacy and numeracy theoretically should keep corrupt governments out, aid in preventative medicine, reduce crime rates, increase productivity, and generally advance a nation. Every child in Australia should have access to a good education.
Not all teachers are rubbish. Falling literacy and numeracy rates aren’t squarely to blame on our teachers, though improving teacher quality would be part of the solution.
There is an argument that if governments removed private school funding then the state school system would collapse under the weight of the influx of new students, and the Goulburn School Strike is often cited as an example of what would happen in such a case. The assumption here is that funding would be removed suddenly, all consequently underfunded schools would close their doors immediately and parents would have no choice but to send their children to the local public school. Such a situation could be avoided with gradual removal of funding, and planning towards such a move. If funding was phased out, then gradually fees would be increased, schools would need to find alternate income or find other ways to cut costs. If fees increased, there would be certain points where different families would say they can’t afford it any longer.
There is another argument that private schools save the government money, in the vicinity of $6000 per student. Some families would still send their children to private schools even if there was no funding, so that would actually save the government $12000 per student. Of the remaining students, there would be a lot of costs simply absorbed into current school costs. Not all private schools run at full capacity. There are 8 places for students in my husband’s class this year, and I think similar places in the other two classes of his year level. (Other grades are full.) When I was teaching, I had a Year 9/10 music class with only 12 students. My graduating year at school had only 4 students. Surely such small class sizes are not an efficient use of teachers! Also, many school resources are shared between classes. Not every student in the school needs to be using a soccer ball, or a computer, or a trundle wheel at the same time. A small increase in student numbers would be an even smaller increase in many resources. Infrastructure would be a hurdle.
There are a large number of Christian schools not attached to a church, or at least not receiving large amounts of funds from a church. Many of these could not function any longer without government funding, and would lose a lot of enrolments if they increased their fees. Is there a genuine need for such schools that requires government subsidies? I’m not sure. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t.
Private schools can pick and choose their teachers and students. This means they can have the best teachers and the best students. Teachers often want to work in private schools because of the overall better behaved students, not because of increased pay. Most private schools pay on par or below the current State award.
Are there a lot of inefficiencies in the public system? I don’t have a clue. But I would hazard a guess that teacher’s payrises attached to length of teaching, and teaching being an almost guaranteed job is one inefficiency that could be looked into.
My experience of teaching in a private school was that cutting costs meant cutting teacher’s salaries. I was paid $8000 a year less than my public school counterparts. (Which wasn’t voluntary. I just wasn’t told, and not bold enough to challenge when I found out.) But running a school is expensive. An experienced teacher of a class of 28 (Education Queensland’s target for grades 4-10) costs $3000 per student; most private schools cap at 25 or 28. The ancillary staff, the principal, insurance, computers, books, buildings, furniture, sporting equipment, toilet paper: it all costs extra.

I don't have a stand yet on whether private schools should receive government funding. Go ahead and add to my thoughts in the comments.

Travelling Light: Part Two

2012-02-20T12:32:00.002+10:00

The last time we flew down to Brisbane to visit grandparents I stood and laughed at our luggage. We had the same amount for the four of us that I used to travel with on my own.

Two converse travel experiences taught me the benefit of not taking everything I could possibly imagine needing on a holiday.

First, we went to Melbourne, in winter, when our eldest was about 21 months old. We struggled to stay under our weight limit, and struggled to manage our two big suitcases, big duffle bag, stroller, two decent size carry on bags plus the baby. We didn’t really use a lot of what we packed.

Then, a little under a year later, my eldest and I flew to Brisbane with my mum for four days and only took carry on luggage. Mum checked in a small suitcase, which meant I was able to buy a couple of things while we were down there, but all I actually needed to take for me and my 2-year-old was a small bag and a medium-size backpack. The backpack was just for our jumpers and a snack for the plane.

I can assure you, that second experience was far better than the first, and it challenged me to think about what I pack.

In the last ten years we have probably averaged 2 ½ trips a year, mostly by plane, and I have gone from needing a huge suitcase to fitting everything for a week away in a good sized handbag. It’s incredibly freeing to get off a plane and just walk out, without having to stop at the baggage carousel. It’s also so much easier to get from the airport to wherever you’re going with two young kids and minimal luggage. I hate flying to start with, so not having to lug big bags around makes it far more relaxing.

I still take far too much with me, but here’s a few lessons I’ve learnt about packing light:

1. Do some research and found out where you can wash. The number of outfits I pack now is based on how often I can get to a washing machine. Laundromats aren’t cheap, but the biggest cost is the dryer. Cut drying costs by doing one cycle through the dryer and hanging out the clothes in your room to finish drying overnight. Pack clothes that won’t take as long to dry.

2. Choose clothes that take up less space.

3. If you’re concerned about being bored by only three or four outfits for a week or two, take things that all go together so that you can mix and match. Two weeks isn’t really that long to be wearing the same few things.

4. Take as few shoes as you can get away with. Shoes are bulky.

5. Take less toiletries. You don’t need a huge bottle of shampoo if you are only going to wash your hair twice while you are gone. Don’t take spares of anything, either. Most places have shops if you happen to run out.

6. Take less entertainment. You are going on holidays! Spend the time chatting with your travelling partners or the people you’re visiting! Take in the sights! Take one book and then find a secondhand bookshop to exchange it at if you do end up needing another one. Take one less toy for the kids. My experience is that they rarely play with what you take and instead find new and exciting things at the destination, or they want to play games like I Spy.

7. Find accommodation that provides linen, including towels.

8. After you’ve packed everything, take something out.

What are your tips for not over-packing?

Travelling Light: part one

2012-02-18T12:42:00.001+10:00

After my second baby was born I needed to carry a lot more stuff around with me, or so I thought. I went and bought a nice big handbag to fit all this extra stuff. It was a beautiful handbag. Black leather, big internal pockets. I loved it as soon as I saw it and bought it on impulse, even though I had been looking carefully for the right bag and this bag was a lot more expensive than I was planning to pay. I justified the price by saying I would use this bag for the next five years.

Three months later I ditched the bag and bought one less than a quarter of the size, that wasn’t quite so big and bulky. I am rarely away from the house for more than three or four hours, so there aren’t many things I can’t cope not having in that time. What I do carry is:

- Wallet

- Keys

- Mobile phone

- Prescription sunglasses/glasses (these are in my bag so that when I walk inside with my sunglasses still on I can swap them without going back to the car).

- Fold up shopping bag

- Spare disposable nappy. Just one, and it only gets used once or twice a month. I keep two more spares and spare clothes in the car, but in 15 months have used those spares twice.

- Small plastic bag for a dirty nappy.

- Tube of Pure Wipes. Travel sized baby wipes seem to dry out quicker than I go through them.

- All my rewards cards in a rubber band (this means I can carry a smaller wallet)

- Lip gloss (not really necessary, but I like having it)

- Lip balm

- Pen

- Comb (though I don’t recall having ever used this!)

Occasionally I will also have a camera, a water bottle, a snack, a toy, an iPod, my Keep Cup, an extra nappy, or a book, depending on where we are going and how long will be gone. But I don’t carry all of those things everywhere, all of the time. Just what I’m likely to need.

The list of what other people will need on their person each day will look different to mine. I would love to be able to carry less with me, but I haven’t worked out how to get it down any smaller. Some people walk around with just their mobile phone, some cash and a house key in their pocket. How wonderful would that be!

What about you? Do you lug a lot around with you each day? Or do you carry just the absolute bare minimum? What things are essential for you to carry with you?