I love Christmas.  I love the fact that in Europe, the rising Christian monarchs pragmatically looked at the climate, the food stocks and the people and took on the pagan celebrations as Christ’s birthday and in most countries said that should be a bank/public holiday.

Ours is a little beyond the shortest day in the year in the UK, but it means for many, while the nights are colder, we get to stay indoors and enjoy our labours from the last year.

We do presents, I know some people are moving away from that tradition.  In a time of massive consumption, maybe that would be better.  I love the beautifully wrapped thoughts nestling under our tree.

It’s really the tree I’d like to discuss today, in fact all the decorations.  Over twenty-three years of owning my own place, I have built up some baubles, tinsel, star and lights that deck our tree.  We have reusable lights and wreaths that bedeck our home outside, and this was how I got into home automation.

My newest bit of tinsel is 10 years old, the oldest is 23 years old, bought for my first tree.  That first tree is safely stowed for next year – we have a real tree every other year.  The real tree holder is 13 years old this year.

It’s all about building up and making the most of what you have.  I saw a set of 12 baubles I loved and bought early in that game.  The rest were as I saw something I liked.  One thing a year until the stowed tree was dripping.

The tree goes up around the 15^th December and always comes down on or before the 6^th January (twelfth night).  I am very traditional, not because I have the glitter, tinsel and baubles, but because it should be special and different.  Something to look forward to each and every year.

I’m planning on taking it all down tomorrow as I have my eye screening on Wednesday and I’m working on Thursday.  Each bauble will be placed in its holder and the hanger stowed in the corner of the bauble box.  The decoration my son made in primary school takes up two spaces and that is done early.  The felt stocking I made in primary school will be placed in that box on top before the lid is closed.

Every piece of tinsel will be folded up and lain in the tinsel box and the star laid on top.  The lights will be packed away and placed in the corner of that box before it is closed.  Then they all get placed in their corner of the attic ready for next year.

The cards are packed away, ready to be recycled as decorations or just as reminders of family and friends.

This year, as we’ve had a real tree, it is taken outside and will dry for a month in the shed.  Then we’ll cut it down and dry it out over two years.  The fronds make wonderful tinder if properly dried, but the resin means it is not a quick process.  By contrast the branches are normally ready after 12 months or so: we chop them up quite small.  The ashes are used to fertilise the garden flower beds.

Lastly, the outside decorations are all removed, packed away for next year.  They go up on the first weekend of December and the timers set to come on at sunset for a few hours to give joy to those travelling to and from work on most days.

Over the December and January months we don’t produce much rubbish at all as a result.  Hope you’ve had a sustainable and merry yule tide.

Like many, this year has involved some changes health-wise (4 vaccinations, 3 for Covid-19 and one for influenza) and some sole searching following COP26.

COP?  Police?

No, the climate crisess :D.  For me, this has to be a personal thing.  While governments and business can do their bit to ensure we can’t screw up, there are every day choices we need to be making every day.

One of the ones we made during October was the decision to change our themorstatic radiators values with “smart” ones from tado.

Is that complicated?

In many ways this is a much easier job than swapping a room thermostat and doesn’t require messing about with the boiler or power as thermostatic radiator valves are purely mechanical.  You don’t even need to turn the radiators off, though we did, as it was October – just to make sure no-one got burnt!

The steps are then reasonably straight forward to follow.  The receiver plugs into a power socket and using the phone app, we

 

plugged it into our hub router, automatically connecting it to tado’s servers to you can then drive everything from the tado app or web interface.

Then unscrew the existing valve in question (having let the radiator cool down), and after activating the battery, screw on the new thermostat.

In reality, the valve is untouched, what you’re swapping is just the thermostatic part.  That means you don’t need any tools or plumbing knowledge – it also means you don’t need to pay “for installation services” unless you have no strength in your arms or difficulty sitting on the floor to reach the valves.

Once in situ, following the instructions help to pair the thermostat with the receiver.  This is the time consuming bit and pretty much out of your control, you’re just waiting for connections and pairings.

What you end up with is a set of named thermostats, and a dashboard as below.

The menu boxes allow a comprehensive programming capability for each and every radiator – which is amazing where you have a single radiator in a room, a little harder to pair if you have more than one!

Savings?  What’s the outcome?

There are a couple of things to note.  One, to make the most of this, you need to pay a subscription annually.  Two, it makes no sense to do that unless you have a smart phone that can tell the tado servers where you are.

The promises are high and we’re probably not making the best of the radiator thermostats as we don’t have the tado zone thermostat – it didn’t seem worthwhile to ditch our existing one as it’s still working and doesn’t require a battery.

We’re not achieving that, on average we’re saving 19% on our bills according to the phone app (18.3% in October, 9.3% in November), probably as you can see, I’m working from home which means we’re not out of the house much and needing to heat upstairs.  It will detect open windows though and turn off a room while it deems a window to be open which is impressive.

But we’re getting quite a bit of extra information via the “air quality” menu.

This is interesting, not least as responsibility northern Europeans, we follow WHO guidelines and typically run our bedrooms between 15.6°C and 19.4°C, especially when sleeping.  Tado quotes these values and ignores them, preferring rooms to be set at 20°C as an absolute minimum.  Our rooms are typically called cold.

We also live in a humid climate in the winter – today, in my home town, the forecast states that humidity is 97%.  My office, shown above, is running at 57%.  At 60%, it would be deemed, humid, so 17.6°C and 57% is cold and getting humid, so it advises turning on the heating.

For guidence on what an ideal temperature for rooms in the UK, please check out this post: Viessmann – a boiler and radiator manufacturer.

If we turned on the heating to the settings they advise to be “pleasant” instead of cold, we’d be spending more than we did with the old thermostats!

You wouldn’t recommend it then?

If you ignore the whinges about temp and humidity, it is magic.  Separately controlling the zone thermostat to the individual rooms, allows us to fine tune out climate indoors without crippling the wider environment.  When rooms get to the right temperature but the zone thermostat is still on, the bathrooms are allowed to completely dry and stay toastie but not uncomfortable thanks to the zone thermostat.

To be honest, that is probably the best thing about the system.  Complete tunability run to your spec, no waste.

It’s not cheap and it’s not an instant setup, it probably took a week to get it tuned to us with temperatures and times.

But when it’s done, it is amazing the difference it has made to our comfort without burning any more gas than we need to as an absolute maximum.

Merry Christmas.

It’s November, news flash, it’s winter!

Very few days have peaked at 10°C, so it’s still autumn…

Anyway, the heating is definitely on. Which is a great time to get a new EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) done.

There’s no reason it cannot be done in the summer, any measurements are done in reverse, rather than heat getting out, you measure the heat getting in. In the UK, that doesn’t make much sense as we tend to protect against heat loss rather than heat gain.

Yawn, so you’re putting the house on the market?

No, definitely not, we’re in this for the long haul as it’s a goodish house (after all, you never figure out what’s wrong with a property until you are living in it) and we like the area. It gives us everything we need and there’s still enough to do to keep things interesting. We’ve got the rest of the hedge to do and…

Back to the point, please?

OK, sorry. EPC. Ours ran out , as per find energy certificate a while ago and there was some really useful information in it. We’ve done almost all it suggested (on the advice of Greenscape Ltd, we’re getting our water heated by solar PVs rather than a solar collector) and have indeed got our energy usage down considerably.

But it’s really a guess whether or not we’ve met the criteria for the next band.

Measuring will help us decide on our next steps.

Why not put it on the market to get a free EPC done for you?

I want a real one done not a sales one. £72 for the south of England is a decent price for someone to come out and assess rather than look at the figures. We’re lucky in having 251m² but we’re no longer a simple property. The solar cells are very standard but the vehicle to grid is exotic and skews the numbers. Looking at last month, it looks as if we’re burning 300.2kWh more in terms of electricity use but in reality that’s balancing the grid to the tune of 243.4kWh – 56.8kWh is what we’re really spending driving around (about £9 a month or if that electricity were generated by gas, 13kg of CO₂ per month).

What do you care, you’re paying for this and getting paid well for the feed in, so what?

I care a great deal about this, not least because the actions each and everyone of us takes, matters.

While COP26 has had the world leaders making promises, I feel it’s people who take the actions that impact the world. I feel I should be doing everything I can. Not because someone is telling me to but because I have a choice to be a positive or a negative impact on my world and the rest of the world.

My car is making a small impact as an 8 year old vehicle. But my house and how I choose to live in it has an impact every second of every day.

Why wouldn’t I want that to be as good as it can be?

(NB: I’m still largely working from home, so the 160kg of CO₂ for our car use is a little low. Obviously, like many, we’ve not been using our ICEs very much at all.).

COP26 is on in the UK and we are all looking at these leaders for what we need to do.

Living in the UK, the average person has a carbon footprint of 13 tonnes a year. Given a population of 67 million, that’s a huge national footprint.

So, where do you fit on that scale? Are you above the 13 tonnes?

Moving house in 2013, getting an electric car in January 2014 and finally making the move to solar panels in August 2014, we have a reasonable idea of what the house is doing. Even more so as we’ve taken the plunge with our vehicle to grid donations.

Since the 1st January, we’ve used a wapping 5.8mWh! But we’ve donated 1.7mWh leaving a consumption of 4.1mWh.

We’re using spare solar energy to save gas usage (on any sunny day), which has increased our electricity usage but our house usage is 4.1 tonnes instead of 4.9 tonnes thanks to these simple measures (excluding our donated electricity from the car). As we’re oscillating between 2 and 4 people in the house, we’ll keep it simple and say we’re two people – that’s 2.1 tonnes each as a max.

I don’t drink milk at all, though I do eat cheese and yoghurt. I have 6 meals a week (max) with meat in them. At least one is purely vegetarian though sometimes we do have more meat free food than that: I make my own soup which is often veggie – I don’t count these meals if they have cheese or cream in them. Most of the food we have is made fresh in the house. I buy tins where possible and unpackaged fruit and veg where possible.

My big thing is baths. My showers are frugal, barely 4 minutes of running water and I keep my water on the cool side, but I do have a 2 hour soaks in the bath. Where possible I try to do this when the solar power can heat the water afterwards, but it’s still my big luxury.

I don’t use bathroom cleaner

Yuk!

No, I use steam. It saves 10 or more plastic bottles a year, no to mention the chemicals. I fizz my own water, which saves many, many plastic water bottles. Where possible, water bottles are reduced.

I still wear a pair of dungerees I bought when I was 14. On average I spend £200 on clothing a year. Shoes typically last 5 years, outdoor coats 5-15 years. I buy classic styles so things don’t go out of fashion.

Yawn, so what?

Well, my carbon footprint is approximately 3.2 tonnes per annum. There’s more I could do. But it’s a start. Especially given the average footprint in the UK is 13 tonnes!

What’s your’s?

As you’re aware, we’ve swapped our old manual thermostatic radiator values with Tado’s “smart” ones.

Once the first one was done – even though we’d read the instructions and watched the video, this was still a 15 minute task for the first one.  We felt like fools but having sussed out the procedure, it took only a couple of minutes longer to do the next 6 as it took to do that very first one.

They’ve been in place for a week it seems to have been worth the effort not least as we have precise control over each and every room.

Don’t see why you think this would be of interest to anyone…

OK, but one of the interesting things the smart thermostatic controls do is measure air quality in the rooms.

Eh?

Well, they record various bits of information, one of which being the room’s humidity.

Now living in a damp country (today’s weather forecast says air humidity is 90%), there’s only so much you can easily do in our accommodation, but ideally, your living spaces should be between 50 and 60%.

Helpfully, given the outside conditions, Tado suggests opening a window to reduce our room’s humidity.  Which would be a really quick way to solve the issue if it wasn’t for the fact outside is wetter than within.

Still, in for a penny… and opening a couple of windows in the dampest room does allow us to bring the humidity down 5%.  Pretty impressive.  But nothing seems to lose that last couple of percentage points and as it’s actively raining outside, I close up the windows.

I’ve ensured all the vents are open on all the windows and doors are closed but short of getting the dehumidifier out, I think we might just be stuck until there’s a really dry day later in the year.

It does suggest keeping rooms warm enough to prevent mold, which can be harmful to life but again that tips away from having a window open all the time to combat the damp as during the winter, that’s a sure fire way to cool a room down.  Indeed, that radiator thermostats can automatically shut themselves down when they “sense” an open window to help preserve energy efficiency.

Of course, if it gets a bit cool…

Which may mean there’s no way to win this easily, other than keep an eye on it and adjust as required.  Keep the vents open on the windows and take the opportunity to air the rooms when we can.

It’s the UK, we do have a summer.  However brief…

It’s a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon in early October and I’m sitting in the kitchen with my feet up.

It’s the first time today I’ve had a chance to rest and I’d like to explain why.

Doesn’t sound in the least interesting!

Harsh, but true 🙁 Here’s why I’m writing this.

We’re still in the newbie phase of owning our new cooker and one of the things it has is a meat probe – the idea is, however economical your cooking methodm, stopping the oven dead once it’s cooked has to be better. By economical read spending less energy cooking your food, which means less carbon produced.

Sounds interesting… ish…

Hey, let me finish. Now cooking books and oven manuals of yore

Really?

Hush! Stated the times needed to cook meats to the point where they tasted great and all the bugs were killed. This is possibly most important with pork as our DNA is very close to that of a pigs

Seriously?!

Yes, so we need pork cooked well to stop things jumping the species gap.

OK

So, I played with this for the first time. Now the difficult thing is that the meat is not the only part of a traditional British roast dinner. Taking the “traditional guidence” in mind, I started cooking.

Only to find my little joint that should have taken 1 hour 26 minutes

Spurious accuracy!

Don’t knock it, if it’s one thing I can do, it’s roast a joint to perfection.

My little joint only needed an hour and that was in a cold oven. Which meant a bit of a rush at the end and no chance to do things in my usual order.

But that does seem to be the lesson. Put the roast potatoes in with the meat and then everything will be ready together, no effort without the need to rush at the end, whip the meat out, turn up the oven and rush to get the vegetables cooked. Including apple saue, did I say I had a great recipe for apple sauce…

If you’ve ever watched “Deck the halls” with Matthew Broderick and
Danny Devito (alphabetic order of surnames), you will understand how seriously out of hand outdoor Christmas lights can get.

Thankfully, our neighbourhood is significantly saner than that movie
suggests it can get. It does lead to the question – how do you make the task of setting up next year an enjoyable job rather than a miserable chore spent on a damp late November or early December Saturday untangling never ending cables and drops of LEDs?

I know some favour cable ties or bread ties for the task, but I have found an old-fashioned approach works for me.

Don’t be tempted with a “wound coil” approach. Split the light run
into three sections and “concertina” them into a bundle.  Fix the top of each with either a simple granny knot and bow, or if you’d really like to make the job easy for next year, do a clove hitched “spine” – three or four clove hitches make it easy.  Repeat for the rest of the lights.  You should have three bundles tied together.  (I leave the gutter ties on it, again so it’s
easy for next year, but that’s definitely your choice).

Then put the far end of the lights in the box first and the end with the plug last.  Seal the box up ready for next year.

Always test the lights before you uncan the worms – nothing worse than laying them out in situ and finding they don’t work which happened to us last year!

Thankfully, our neighbourhood is significantly saner than that movie
suggests it can get. It does lead to the question – how do you make the task of setting up next year an enjoyable job rather than a miserable chore spent on a damp late November or early December Saturday untangling never ending cables and drops of LEDs?

I know some favour cable ties or bread ties for the task, but I have found an old-fashioned approach works for me.

Don’t be tempted with a “wound coil” approach. Split the light run
into three sections and “concertina” them into a bundle.  Fix the top of each with either a simple granny knot and bow, or if you’d really like to make the job easy for next year, do a clove hitched “spine” – three or four clove hitches make it easy.  Repeat for the rest of the lights.  You should have three bundles tied together.  (I leave the gutter ties on it, again so it’s
easy for next year, but that’s definitely your choice).

Then put the far end of the lights in the box first and the end with the plug last.  Seal the box up ready for next year.

Always test the lights before you uncan the worms – nothing worse than laying them out in situ and finding they don’t work which happened to us last year!

Isn’t it a Saturday? Time of fun and joy and more importantly, the weekend?

Yes, but I’m listening to the news…

Ah, that’s where you’re going wrong!

There are a few major takeaways today.

Numero uno

A couple of weeks ago now, a cable importing electricity from mainland Europe into the UK had a fire than has meant it’s going to be out of action until mid-November at the earliest. That means the wholesale price of electricity has gone up AND the UK’s carbon intensity is significantly higher as we’re now using our gas power stations to generate our electricity rather than import when our green generating supply is lower than our requirements

What this is likely to mean is a spike in electricity prices.

Anything I can do to mitigate that, from a personal paying the bills point of few and a helping the planet obviously?

Good to see your priorities are straight.

If you haven’t already, look at your light bulbs. Any halogens and even CFT could be replaced by LED bulbs. Consider task lighting and lamps rather than lighting a whole room. We have a large lounge but if there’s only one person in it, we tend to use standard lamps rather than lighting the whole room with several central lights.

Turn off lamps and appliances if they’re not in use. If this is hard due to location of switches and your use of the house, consider smart bulbs that you can switch on and off with your phone. I use smart plugs in my home office – when I finish for the day, everything in there is switched off with a “scene”. Smart plugs sit between my monitor and the wall socket.

Remember to clean lampshades, especially glass ones. No point putting in a brighter bulb into a dusty or dirty lamp!

How are you heating food? Could your diner be cooked in the microwave or fan oven? Do you need to use the oven and the hob? Not only is it more energy efficient to cook everything in the oven but can be a real time saver too. We no longer cook the yorkies for a roast beef dinner in the top oven but cook them for 10 minutes longer in the main oven with the roast potatoes saving power. If we’re only cooking for one or two, a microwave or induction hob can be amazing. Soups take less time on the induction hob.

Do you really need as many pans on the hob? We do our veggies in one pot. The carrots go in with the timer set to 15 minutes and then we add the baby corn, beans, broccoli as their cooking time allows. Energy efficient and saves on washing up.

Er, ok!?

The 2nd piece of news

that caused concern was the news of rising gas prices which will also impact electricity prices. This is due to price hikes from Russian gas suppliers. 22 million homes in the UK use natural gas central heating which means this will impact many people across England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland.

Over the past few years, we’ve all been encouraged to turn the thermostat down, insulate better and exercise more.

I can’t afford to replace windows or put in more insulation…

Double glazing has long been seen as the only way to insulate windows. Even if you have double glazing, windows can still be a major source of loss but there are some relatively cheap options out there.

Put in blinds. Sounds nuts but a blind between the curtains and the window provides an extra layer. Choose a plain coloured blind to tie in with your main walls and it can look like a fashion statement rather than a canny insulation strategy. https://www.blinds-2go.co.uk/roller-blinds/32556/chromium-satin-white.html is a thermally protective blind from £11.60 retain heat in a room as well as providing privacy and sun shading.

Venetian blinds are not as good at that dual purpose, great for privacy but less good at insulating. Removing our venetian blinds made a huge difference to our heat retention during the winter months and they keep us cooler in the summer too.  Roller blinds have come a long way in terms of light and heat blocking capabilities.

Service your radiators, even if it is just bleeding them (removing air from each and every one). Get the boiler serviced too, if these are all working well, a timed thermostat with a remote control can ensure you are only heating what you need to. What do I mean by a timed thermostat? That’s one where you can set not only when the heating comes on but at what temperature. We have an older set but it means we don’t have to heat the upstairs during the working week unless we need it. We’re comfortable but our heating bill halved doing that. We also set the thermostats according to the zones: bedrooms should be between 16 and 19°C, the lounge (while we’re in it) between 18 and 21°C, the kitchen between 18 and 20°C (especially if you eat in there too).

If your thermostat has a remote facility, you can use that to turn off the heating when you go out of the house.

Using our timer, we have the bedrooms at 16°C from 23:30 until 06:00. We then warm them to 19°C until 08:30 then back down to 16°C until 20:30 when they are up to 18. It means we’re warm when we need to be but not wasting gas heating empty rooms. We have a different schedule for the weekend.  A new thermostat can often be fitted yourself to replace an existing one for about £50 including VAT.  If you have traditional radiators, you can change the valves on them (which often have a “heat setting feature”) for thermostatic ones too: a bit more expensive and involved to fit but worth the investment if you have a single thermostat in your house.

The most energy efficient thing to do is spend time with the other members of your family. Each person radiates heat. During the three-day week in the 1970s, if we got cold in the house, we’d wrap up warm and go for a walk which speeds up the metabolism and gets you warm. The house feels so much warmer when you get back home!

Right, so if I’m on a limited budget, you’re suggesting I go for a hike?

I’m saying libraries are warm as are shops and pubs. It’s cheaper to warm a hot water bottle than a whole house. It’s cheaper to heat a house to 17°C than 22°C. Close the blinds and curtains as the sun sets rather than leave them open until the last minute before going to bed.  Every little helps.

My father died a few weeks ago, so I’ve been a little distracted by the shock of his sudden death and appreciating that life really can change at a moment’s notice.

It’s been a pause, a chance to catch my breath and think about the questions my mum has been asked in past few weeks and she is asking herself.

I’ve love where I life: the location, the building and what the potential we still have to realise. We’ve been here 8 years and have been working on a room of the house or a major feature each year. That has made our lives more comfortable as we’ve gone on. We’ve been lucky in that the bones of the house were pretty much there.

On our wish list, we have several major tasks to do: en-suite to our room, the windows, kitchen, main bathroom, carpets upstairs and the wood flooring downstairs. That’s in no particular order though the en-suite planning is probably the furthest along in planning.

The main aim is to clear the mortgage and ensure we have somewhere pleasant to spend the next 20 years. When we first owned a house, we used to watch the House Doctor who had a ready reckoner; you should spend 10% of your house’s value on improvements every year. Given today’s prices, we think 5% (unless you’re doing a big project) is a good guide.

0.5-1% should be maintenance: fixing the issues that come up, cleaning products and tools to help, for example. Burst pipes, serving the boiler and replacing worn out items, cleaner and window cleaner.

That leaves 4-4.5% to spend on renewing decor, furniture, lighting etc per annum. Or at least saving that money to reinvest at a later date. Including the garden and any garages etc.

The average house price in the UK (excluding London) is around the £250,000 mark, so 10% of that is £25,000 and 5% is £12,500.

Are you investing that in your house each year?

Of course, there are limitations in what you should do: fitting a £50,000 kitchen in a house worth £250,000 probably isn’t going to be recouped in the long run. You cannot make a £250,000 worth £300,000 unless the house was desperately run down. In which case, the investment should be in the structure and modernisation and may indeed cost that £50,000.

There are also limits in the cycle. A kitchen should last 20 years: from ecological point of view, replacing the units of a kitchen more frequently than that is extremely wasteful. So ours is scheduled for 2026/7. We’ve had a couple of the big appliances fail in that time (ones we’d had for 20 years), so they have been replaced and will be incorporated into the new kitchen when it comes ready for their cycle to be incorporated. We don’t build in the fridge or dishwasher – they can be switched out or repaired without risk of damage to the units.

Some guides reckon the kitchen should have a budget of 15-20% the value of your house. Given our average house price, that’s £37,500 – £50,000!

Given the average earnings in the UK, that’s obviously not practical for most people and appliances will be switched out more frequently than the 20-25 years.

We’re planning on retaining many of our appliances when the time comes. Keeping the basic layout, means the floor can be retained as we’ve got tiling. If we do lose the flooring this time round, we’ll ensure the flooring goes under the cupboards so that in 25 years time, we can just change what needs to be replaced not what doesn’t.

That’s a long-term commitment. We’re lucky, our investments so far have been on ensuring our carbon footprint and energy usage have come down as far as we can get it. We’ve taken our consumption down to an EPC rating of B compared to C. From solar panels to curtains that improve our insulation. Carpets that ensure minimal heat loss as well as feeling comfortable and keeping the boiler in tip-top condition to ensure it is as efficient as possible. (We service the cars and motorbikes for the same reason).

We’ve planted a tree hedge to help capture carbon and planted flowers and fruits to ensure the insects, mammals, reptiles and birds we share the planet with have food and shelter. Although, I do wish the squirrels would stop digging up some of the plants we are growing for a tasty snack 🙂

The funniest thing about discovering the joys of not commuting every day (or indeed travelling for business at all) has been doing our own cleaning.

Eh?

Well, to ensure we were protected, we lost the cleaner and started doing it ourselves. Because of the cleaner, we knew the absolutes basics that needed to be done each week and thanks to the time we’ve got back, we’re also scarily on top of the “extras”. Indeed, I’m sitting typing this listening to my husband start the decorating process in our bathroom – unfortunately, it’s much quicker if he does this as there is a window ledge 7’6″ up a wall that needs to be rubbed down and painted every so often and it takes me a good 45 minutes on the day to psyche myself up to do it…

And the point of this is?

My apologies. The chicken and egg scenario is all about our vacuum. With the money we saved from having a cleaner, we got a new cordless vacuum cleaner and have really enjoyed using it. The person who’s turn it is to cook Sunday lunch each week inherits the floor cleaning duties in the kitchen and with the vac and the steamer, it’s a 45 minute job.

When we had the cleaner, I had an alarm on my calendar reminding us to clean the filters on the vac, thus prolonging the life and maintaining the performance of the gadget but somehow, this has fallen by the wayside.

I can still do the steaming in the kitchen but it’s going to be a while before the filter is dry enough to use in the vac. Doh!