This weeks challenge is a bit more... challenging

Last week our challenge was to not use any electric kitchen appliances. It went very well, until Wednesday night when the storm hit. First of all, we had the grill fired up and heating to cook supper that night but then the thunderstorm came with heavy wind, rain and lightning. No one wanted to stand out in that with a metal flipper, so we moved it in to the stove. That was all ok except that night sometime, a tree blew over somewhere and took out a gas line for the city so everyone's gas was knocked out. School was canceled and most work places shut early since there was no heat and the temperature was dropping steadily to the 30's. So we decided Thursday that, in the interest of being able to make food, we'd allow appliance use until the gas came back on! It ended up being only until Thursday night, but we were thankful to it back on and working.


This weeks challenge

Our challenge for this week is to reduce our water usage. It's difficult because we thought it'd be good to have some actual results to compare to, but we weren't really sure where to start. We don't know exactly how much we use each week or what would be realistic to try to reduce it by (half seemed extreme). So we started by coming up with a list of ways to reduce our use like shorter showers, filling cups only half full at dinner and getting more if wanted, flushing less and continuing to make sure loads of laundry and dishes are completely full before running. We're also checking the meter at the street to see the numbers (though we're not sure what they mean) and trying to make the difference smaller each day.

In the interest of not having a post without pictures, here are a few from our first trip of the season to Dairy King. We bundled up to get some ice cream, and then wimped out and came back home to eat it by the heater.