Bed, part I: Natural mattress

We've long needed a new bed. A full size just isn't big enough for the two of us. I was very motivated to get the house at least somewhat in order ahead of Erin's visit. A new queen bed was part of that.

Step 1: Mattress.

Reading "green" literature takes you down a rabbit hole. There's a lot of unhealthy stuff in the world! And while I don't necessarily think one's gotta go organic and all-natural everything, there are a lot of blatantly unhealthy manmade things in the world that Erin and I have been trying to avoid. We're not chucking out everything we own, but we're certainly rethinking how we approach buying things when we have full control.

Take a mattress. The ones you see in the store are lined with fire retardants known to cause cancer. They've got springs that wear out, layer after layer of synthetic materials, and they smell funny. That smell? VOCs and other nasties. Given that we'll spend a solid 1/3 of our next few decades in extremely close proximity to our mattress of choice, I'm okay with investing some time and money in alternatives. If it turns out that there's nothing whatsoever wrong with the standard mass-produced mattress, I'll have wasted a few bucks. If it's the other way around, it's hard to put a price on that.

It didn't take much research before I honed onto 100% latex. There are a lot of "green" and "natural" products out there with coir, bamboo, and latex, but nearly all of them -- many of which cost $3000 and upwards -- have synthetic layers. No thanks. I opted for 100% latex, 9" of the firmest stuff you can buy, wrapped in an organic cotton cover with a thin layer of quilted wool. No fire retardants, no plastics, nothing. Some assembly was required, but I save $1000+ vs. buying one the old-fashioned way.

The next step was to get a mattress topper. Life is complicated! It turns out that pretty much every topper on the market has plastic layers in it. All the effort of a natural mattress seemed wasted if you're going to put a toxic layer between you and it.

I latched on to virgin wool as a good choice. Untreated and naturally water resistant (not waterproof). Unfortunately, you're looking at $200-300+ here unless you get creative. Rather than buying something that calls itself a virgin wool mattress protector and charges you accordingly for the privilege of buying it, I bought us a twin-size virgin wool blanket on clearance. It turns out that a twin is almost the exact size of the footprint of a queen-sized mattress! It fits perfectly.

And that's that. For now, the mattress sits on the floor. Erin's visit is three weeks away; I'll sort out the bed later.

Homemade soy milk and other wonders

Back in our Year of Less, we dabbled with homemade almond and soy milk. It was just too much work without a good blender or with our undersized food processor.

I'd long been itching for a Vitamix or Blendtec. It was time. Rather than a replace-it-every-three-years foreign-made blender, we went for the gold standard. Something with a kick-ass warranty that you'd eventually repair rather than replace.

I'm not really cool with dropping $500 on a blender, but it turns out you can buy factory-refurbished units direct from Vitamix for a substantial discount. Done.

The thing is amazing. I haven't bought soy milk since! It takes ridiculously little time (and perhaps 25 cents' worth organic soybeans) to make a 1.5L batch. In addition, it makes the world's best smoothies. And if you're a vegetarian like me who sometimes doesn't really like to eat his vegetables, now you can drink them!

Neighbors

The "new" neighbors are retired bakers who've lived her for something like 45 years. They bring me plates like this about twice per week:

Score.

And Rod has every tool and fastener known to man. He's implored me to come see him before I buy anything. "If I don't have it, you don't need it."

Double score.

Have I mentioned that I love this place?

Stuff

I arrived with the truck of mostly-useless items I had in Minnesota. Anything I actually needed had moved with me in subsequent years. Statues, dicksticks from New Guinea, and 60,000 baseball cards have little utilitarian value. For the past weeks, I've been sleeping on the hardwood floor.

No longer. Our "stuff" from Vancouver arrived today. In this giant truck -- about 10% of which contents were ours (most of the rest was headed to Quebec, apparently).

I don't really know where to put it all -- that's Erin's forte -- but at least it arrived safely!

Lawn mower

You have a lawn, you need a lawn mower. My parents had an extra one in Minnesota and it was my original plan to pile it into the moving truck so I wouldn't need to purchase one here.

And then I got thinking: do I really need a gas-powered mower? Probably not.

From there, I started researching push mowers. I found the best model after reading lots of articles and Amazon reviews. Ready to order?

And then I thought, why buy new when surely there's something used around?! I started looking in Craigslist and, sure enough, it wasn't hard to find a bunch for sale.

And then, I was in my new backyard talking to Rod, my 79-year-old neighbor. I told him I was going to pick up a mower and he said I didn't need to do that -- I could have his old one that hasn't been used in years. Bang.

It's heavy. It's rusty. The blades are dull. But the damn thing is solid; no plastic and no Made in China here. Sure, it took a few hours to figure out the best way to sharpen it and I learned some new stuff in the process.

But now our new house has a new lawn mower. It works well and I can mow the whole yard in 10-15 minutes.

Home, sort of

This won't be home until Erin and I are together in it. But it is a house, and a pretty nice one at that. It's got character (built c.1895) and it's easily walkable to both work and downtown. And voila! -- life has simultaneously slowed down and gotten more complicated.

Our 2013 "Year Of Less" project kicked off a number of changes for us that have stuck. We've both been wanting a home for a long time. We have ambitious gardening plans. I'm committed to bringing this 19th century into the 21st, energy efficiency-wise.

In summary, there is a lot of work ahead.