paradise ali

Back in the beginning part of February, I bitched about wrote about our humongous January electric bill that increased by more than $100 since December.   Apparently I wasn’t the only one who complained.  Both newspapers ran an article by Jason Armstrong with different headlines, “Electric Bills Stun Isle Residents” in Hawai`i Tribune Herald and “HELCO Charges Customers Fuel Surcharge” in West Hawaii Today.  Our skyrocketing costs are, of course, related to the price of oil.   The image below from West Hawaii Today is an “average” user’s bill (we have a bigger family and a bigger bill) and an explanation of the itemized charges.  Note that, “Energy cost adjustment: Reflects oil prices”

 If we only knew two years ago that we could have easily rolled the costs of installing a photovoltaic system into our refinance, we would have jumped at the chance.  Unfortunately, we didn’t.  So faced with the rising costs of everything in our isolated, oil dependent paradise, here’s what we did:

· Switch out the light bulbs for CFLs.  They burn way less energy and last longer than traditional bulbs.  They may seem more expensive out of the box but they actually come out as a much better value.

· Reduce the temperature on the electric water heater.  Some people also put it on a timer with good results.  We’d like to eventually change over to a tankless heater or solar. 

· Take shorter showers and use a low flow shower head.  Conserves electricity (assuming the use of an electric water heater) and water, too.

· Turn off the lights whenever you leave the room.   Easy enough.  I have a friend who uses a motion detector to turn lights off and on.  He’s an electrical engineer and likes to tinker with things. 

· Use less lights.  We have two light fixtures in our living room and, most of the time; we only need to use one.  Same thing with using lamps and the overhead lighting at the same time.  We don’t really need to use the hallway light either. 

· Cut down the use of halogen lights.  These are usually the lights in the range hood and over the vanity.  It’s overkill unless you are doing detailed work. 

· Use Energy Star rated products.  When we moved, we needed to buy appliances.  Our old, small size, stand alone freezer used more electricity than our present full size, freezer on the bottom, refrigerator.  We don’t run the freezer anymore.  Our front loading washing machine not only uses less electricity but also less water and less detergent.

· Use the oven less and the toaster oven more.  If you do use the conventional oven, try to bake something along with the meal to do double duty.  Take advantage of the heat and bake up another meal or batch of cookies or other baked goodness immediately after.

· Use the stove-top less and the crock pot/grill more.   Instead of simmering in a stew or soup on the stove for hours, it can easily be done in a crock pot.  We have an electric grill/griddle thing and it’s faster than using a frying pan on the stove because it has more surface area–two batches of pancakes instead of four on the stove. 

· Keep the freezer full.  Buy in bulk, make your meals ahead of time and freeze them or even make ice cubes.  The freezer doesn’t work so hard and suck as much electricity if it’s full.

· Vacuum the coils in the back of the fridge. Don’t forget to unplug it first!  You may also want to use a dust mask if you are sensitive.  We had to remove a panel to get in there.  Eww!  It was disgusting in there! 

· Stop opening the refrigerator door.  It’s not like anything changed since I peeked an hour ago!  It’s a bad habit of mine that I’m changing.

· Put on layers of clothes and socks instead of running the heater/wear less clothes if it’s hot.  It gets pretty cold here (for us, anyway) and the heater felt so nice on those cold mornings.  Yep, until we figured out how much it costs to run the darned thing!  Ouch!

· Do full loads of laundry and use cold water.  Our kids would sometimes throw in three pairs of jeans and a shirt or something.  Wastage! 

· Use the clothesline when possible.  My hanai mom used to dry things on the line and when they were just about dry, she’d stick them in the dryer to “make ‘em soft.”  It rains fairly often here and I admit that I don’t use the line as often as I should but the method is sound and it does work.  I usually dry at least the rugs and delicates on the line. 

· Probably the biggest thing?  Unplug (or turn off at the surge protector) items you are not using.  It’s not enough to turn the TV or toaster or blow dryer off.  As long as they are plugged in, they are sucking electricity. 

Pretty simple, huh?  In March 2007, we used 41.8 kwh/day.  In January 2008, we used and average of 40.2 kwh/day.  In March 2008, we used 25.1 kwh/day.  This is the lowest bill we’ve gotten in years! 

When we bought our present home a few years ago, our plan was to pay rent for an extra month at our old place so that we would have time to set up the new house and sort through everything at the old house. The idea was to move only the things we really needed and wanted to keep and take the rest to donate or to the dump. Despite it’s size, our old home sure had a lot of storage space. Well, as the Universe would have it, our best laid plans were tossed out the window when we couldn’t extend our rental.

Our next plan was to move everything from storage in the old house to the storage in the new house. We threw baby clothes, school art projects, kitchen items, receipts, photos, text books, children’s books, and you name it into boxes and bags and hauled it all up here with no labels, no real groupings of like items, just a hurried mess. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we have a fair amount of storage in this house, too. We painted almost all of the interior living spaces, moved in new appliances, and settled in. The storage items? For the most part, out of sight, out of mind. Well, intermittently, we’ve gone out there and made a small effort but lately it’s been really nagging at me.

I just read “Celebrate Discardia Starting Today” over at Lifehacker.com and this fits so well with what I’m currently trying to do–clear out clutter. Not just physical clutter but also mental clutter, bad habits, anything that is no longer working for you. It was started at “Discardia” (Imagine that!) in 2003. What I like about this made up holiday is that it takes place in the time between the Solstices & Equinoxes and their following new moons. That means that the time varies and it happens four times a year. The first Discardia for this year starts today, March 19th and runs until April 5th. Perfect! There’s an end in sight and no pressure to hurry through it half assed just to finish because there’ll be other Discardias in June/July, September and December.

I just watched this show on FitTV. Shimmy teaches belly dancing in a similar viewing format with Namaste Yoga, which I also love. I like the changing backdrops and that the models are attractive but aren’t all tall, blonde supermodel types. (No offense if you are a tall, blonde supermodel!) Okay, I know this sounds odd but the changing backdrops and camera angles really help me to focus. So far, these two are the only exercise type shows that I can really get through without getting distracted and wandering off during the commercials. I actually broke a sweat! I tried to get the kids to do it with me but they declined. They’ve jumped in a few times when Namaste Yoga was on so I’m not counting them out yet.

Been thinking I need to move around more. I don’t want to lose or gain weight nor do I want to get up early and be in the gym at 5 a.m. like I did when I was in my 20’s. Just want to have more energy, be toned and feel stronger. My dad’s side of the family has several marathoners so I’ve also been thinking about running. Hey! You can stop laughing now! Okay, more like “run/walk” or maybe “jog.” Yeah, that sounds more like it.

Sugar Cane and Rainbow by Omega Man

I was raised in a rural sugar plantation/farming community.  My folks usually had a garden with plenty of lettuce, beans, corn, mustard cabbage, carrots and all sorts of things.  Even if it wasn’t in full production, there were always the staples of green onion and chili pepper.  We also had aloe.  Not to eat, it’s good for burns.  (We had animals, too, but I’ll save that story for later.)  It was nice back then, we gave our neighbors vegetables and mangoes and they gave us fish.  The hunters would share pigs, goats, pheasants and smoked meat.  Nobody ever called it bartering or trading either.  No one thought of it like that.  It was a gift from the heart with no expectations of reciprocation.  It was life.

People would come together to prepare the pig to kalua (bake in the ground) and dig the imu (underground oven) for a baby luau or party.  It was a time consuming process (I’ll spare you the gory details of pig prep), usually overnight, and it would be a mini party right there.  Primo and Olympia beer flowed freely and then there was the music.  Not just singing, mind you, they had ukuleles, guitars, bass, drums, harmonicas and even accordions!  Later, at the party, people would get up and do an impromptu hula or sing a favorite song. There was no such thing as karaoke–the backup music was live and unrehearsed!  It wasn’t uncommon for the singing and merry making to last a few days, especially when family from other islands came in to visit.  There was the cooking for the party, then the party, then the clean up where folks broke down tables and took the rubbish to the dump and then lunched on the leftovers.  (There was always food leftover.  Just about the worst thing that could happen would be having too little or running out.  That would be “shame”! )  It was a blast! 

Besides the parties, other things were based around food.  It was a culture of food.  The first thing you’d hear when you went to someone’s house to play was, “Come!  Come inside and eat!”  It didn’t matter if all they had were crackers and sardines, it was offered.  Oddly enough, in the humbleness of local style, if some aunty or uncle (every adult was aunty or uncle out of respect) asked if you were hungry, you had to say “no” even if you were starving.  Aunty would bring something out to eat anyway and you had better eat whatever was put in front of you and say, “thank you!”  How you behaved reflected directly on your family.  In a more formal visiting situation, you’d bring a gift of food with you.  Whether it was fruit from your backyard or homemade goodies like sweet bread or sausage, you wouldn’t think to go empty handed.  Same if you traveled to O’ahu or some other place, you’d bring something for your host and you’d bring back for family and friends things like King’s Bakery Sweetbread, Liliha Creampuffs, Chinese food from Chinatown, Kona coffee, Atebara Potato Chips, Kaua’i Cookies and other endless goodies.  Food is the universal language of love!

What were parties and food traditions like when you were growing up?