hehehe so much for not writing every day after July LOL!Anyway, I was thinking more about the Air Quality Issues so decided to write!The biggest issue we have is that we just don't know exactly how much poor air quality is contributing to our issues - we certainly do know that neither girl has slept through an entire night since moving here, despite sleeping reasonably well in our old house. So after eliminating everything we can think of as a cause for their sleep disturbances (and starting our Biomed Program, so finally sorting their diet out), all that is left is the house and its environment.So whilst this certainly makes for one chronically tired Mummy, more importantly it means that our girls are obviously struggling too :(And just under an hour spent at an Open Night at Miss E's Kindy with a few other *smelly* parents, resulted in Miss E having an enormous reaction and being barely able to cope with anything at all yesterday - she's still off with the fairies today, but at least her mood is stable. So its blatantly obvious that the air my children breath in needs to be as clean as possible - not only was yesterday a very stressful day for me, it must have been even worse for Em who simply cannot control her emotions the way we adults can.It proves that our attempts to minimise our exposure to these things is absolutely worthwhile and it really does have a dramatic impact on our children. Obviously things like the Kindy Open Night aren't going to be regular occurances and after having the past few months at home with as little contact with the outside world as possible, it was a great chance for us to guage how sensitive Em still is, and reiterate to us that we do need to be very careful.Less than an hour with a handful of smelly adults caused a massive fallout.I'm keen to see how much happier the girls could be in general day to day life if they aren't also breathing in air from our home that isn't so poor. We certainly think they've come a long way in the past 6 months, and can't help but wonder how much better they could be in another 6 months...
I know I'm really not supposed to be online on a Thursday, but I've been doing some cooking and thinking (rolling dough and cutting biscuits gives lots of thinking time!), and have a few more thoughts to put out here that may or may not help bring clarity to the situation! My first post probably needs to be read to make sense of this one LOL.Firstly, if the only issues with our current house were the indoor air quality and the need to extend the house, we would probably risk renovating as the reno's would hopefully help solve a few of the indoor air quality issues in the process. However, seeing as we are very much an outdoors family, the issues of proximity to neighbours and the busy street are of significant concern - and renovating can't solve these problems. This morning has shown me just how much my daughters need to be outside regularly - they are instantly soooo much happier as soon as we come outside to play! (Fortunately the neighbours are behaving themselves at the moment!).I was also thinking about WHY we bought this house in the first place...- It was the only affordable home that was able to be lived in straight away without major renovations required.
- It oozes potential and character - two things that were very important to us then.
- Its proximity to those things I've already discussed earlier, as well as the school we had originally planned to send the girls to. Its across the road from Kindy, so also only 3.5klms away, but we are highly unlikely to send the girls there now. And also at that stage I was still at the Dr's regularly (fortnightly) as we battled constant illness and ongoing testing to try and make sense of what was going on with the girls. However in the past 6 months (since starting our Biomed Program) I've only been there about 6 times all up and most of those times were simply for referrals/scripts or the girls regular weigh in's and dealing with Miss G having pneumonia!
- The landlord where we were renting was not one of the better ones, and her property manager was possibly the worst we have ever dealt with, so our renting experience at that time was not overly pleasant - especially seeing as between us we had rented a considerable number of times throughout our lives and were used to higher levels of service.
So of those initial reasons we bought the house, the only truly valid ones that would still apply are the fact that we had had a bad renting experience and that could be repeated (although I suspect that with the amount of questions I need to ask about any prospective home I would soon work out if the property manager was going to be helpful or not!), and that it was affordable financially - obviously we only have a finite amount funds to allocate to housing!Unfortunately, we now can't really consider potential and character as critical components of future housing as *potential* means the need for renovations, and *character* is really quite a superficial element in comparison to providing a healthy environment for our family to live in. Also the need to be close to our Dr is not as high, and the close school is no longer our preferred option.And from that I started to questions...What are the most critical things we need in a home?- Less toxic house (so no recent reno's or need to do reno's, no gas, minimal fragrant gardens, considerable distance to neighbours/other hazards plus other things as per my list)
- Bigger house (even just a 3rd bedroom would suffice) with lots of room outside for kids and vegies
- Located closer to our prefered school - which is in a semi rural area - so that covers the desire to be further out of town as well!
- Still be within our local Organic Fruit & Vegie companies delivery area!
I'm sure there's going to be more to add to this ongoing saga! These are just my scattered thoughts from this morning :D
Yes, today is the 31st of July - so the last day of my NaBloPoMo Pledge!
As I'm not one to make promises I can't keep, I knew I would stick with it, but I will admit that there were a few days when I simply did not want to even go near the computer...
I know that my blog is not one of the most exciting, interesting, intellectual or inspiring out there, and I'm certainly not a very eloquent author, but I do love to write - I always have and suspect I always will! So I have enjoyed this month overall. I was able to gain a few insights into my life simply by posting (ie why social interactions exhaust me so much!), and it was nice to just sit down and write every day.
In the future I will try and write a couple of times per week, but as I am trying to limit my internet usage, I wont be here everyday!
As for my initial excitement at being able to write about food, and work on my food photography... well, I didn't really get to do much photography at all did I?! Oh well, that's still something I'm sure I can work on in time!
But, I'm very thankful that Eilleen let me know about this and I have really enjoyed it - so Thank You E!!
And just for something completely unrelated, I thought that in response to Eilleen's question and my response to yesterday's post, I would actually put up the Pro's and Con's list relating to our house...
PRO's
- We LOVE the character of this house and would dearly love to see it restored to its former glory. We truly believe that our plans would have complemented the original theme but made it more liveable for our current era. Our vision would see it being a superb *inner city* (well as much as you can be up here!) townhouse with a lovely alfresco dining area outside taking in all the fragrances of the local restaurants!
- The location is so handy to everything! I am 1 block from our Doctor, 3.5klms from Kindy, and around the same to the local supermarket.
- As is, and with *regular* renovations, its an entirely affordable home for us - unlike the rest of our town/preferred areas to live.
- Moving does mean having to do a lot of research - we do at least know all the *devils* we are dealing with here.
- The additional costs of renting elsewhere and maintaining this house for tennants if we can't sell.
CON's
- The Indoor Air Quality issues - our Air Filter is run 24 hours per day 7 days per week and simply cannot filter our air so that it is relatively free of nasties.
- The need for Renovations - the house is run down, needs some maintenance and needs to be enlarged to happily house a family, but renovating is fraught with issues for a Chemically Sensitive Family.
- The proximity to neighbours - again, this is only a concern to a Chemically Sensitive Family - most would have no issues with the habits of our neighbours.
- The very busy street our house faces - again, not an issue for most people, but we are concerned about the vehicle emissions and their effect on our health.
- The cost of renovating using Low Volatile Organic Compound products and methods will add considerably to the project. There is also the concern that even using low VOC products and doing the project as slowly as possible and giving lots of off gassing time may not be enough and we may still react - this is an unknown.
- The school that we are now planning on sending our girls to, due to its Principal having dealt with Chemically Sensitive children before and being simply wonderful in helping me with my investigation, is out of town - its in a smaller location around 10 minutes out of town. So yes, it is still possible to drive them there daily, however I'd like not to increase our vehicle usage that much. (This is the area we would move to if we were to move).
So there you have it - the Pro's and Con's as to our current housing situation. Either way, we are up for additional costs than we had planned for - either by having to make up the shortfall here between rent received and repayments whilst renting elsewhere (unless we DO sell), or by doing the renovations as safely as we can...
More housing decisions to make, or at the very least, we need to come up with some back up plans...We have our house on the market as we believe it's adversely affecting our health and we can't really do the renovations we had planned whilst we are living here due to our chemical sensitivity. However, after almost 6 weeks there has been not a single enquiry and some contacts in the Real Estate business here tell us that an almost instanteous stop happened here around a month ago - not a thing is selling anywhere after still having quite a good turnover of properties despite other areas declining markets and rising interest rates.So, we need to come up with some back up plans in case our house doesn't sell. We realistically can't sit around for too long waiting as we need to consider our health. We have decided we need to set a time limit and then have some back up plans in place to follow.The two options that we seem to be considering the most at this stage are to rent our house out and rent somewhere else ourselves (as we can't afford to purchase another property if we still own this one), or to stay here and do the renovations - taking as many cautions as we possibly can to reduce their impact on our haelth. Both plans will cost us money - we certainly wouldn't cover the repayments from any rent received here, so would need to make up the shortfall as well as covering our own rent elsewhere. And doing the renovations VERY slowly and with products designed to cause less reactions, will also add considerably to the project budget. These are short term costs of course... Once the renovations are done, they won't need to be repeated, and if we keep this property we would hope to have some capital growth in the long term. I'm just not very good at looking at these types of long term benefits though - I'm more focussed on what we need to do NOW.But, an even more important consideration (to me at least!) than money is our health... I don't think you can put a price on it and I want nothing more than to have happy, healthy children. Obviously we don't have a crystal ball to help us know if our sensitivities are going to reduce rapidly or if we are going to have them for the longer term, so we can't really put off making a decision until we know.We also need to decide if we would ever move back here... If so, then perhaps we could renovate whilst others are living here helping to cover the costs, and then move back once complete and fully offgassed. If not, then I think we need to think about what we really want... Is there any point having this property as an investment if it means we can not buy our own home again in the near future? Do we actually want to buy our own home again? We have often discussed the financial benefits of not living in and owning our own home, as in our financial situation, cash flow is greatly improved if we don't own.. but then that has to be offset against the stability and ability to do whatever we want to our house that comes with owning.
I think a lot more soul searching and talking about this is needed, but I guess in my heart I know we need to move soon, I doubt our house is going to sell quickly, so I think I'm leaning towards moving out, renting the house out and renting something for ourselves. I just don't think I can put us through the renovations wondering if even low VOC products may still cause a reaction - we just don't know and I wouldn't want to get half way through the reno's and realise that we simply HAVE to go...
I'm afraid I'm feeling quite out of sorts today... I think I've had a few too many chemical exposures during the week, and its absolutely taken its toll on me... oh and I'm terribly stressed about selling our house!
We've had our 3rd Open House today, and to date we have had no one show up at any of them, no one has even enquired on our property from the newspaper advertisements, web advertising, being harassed by our agent or in store signage :( We have had one party through to look mid week before last, but they were only humouring their agent (our agents husband!) - I could see they were just there for the ride because they were doing and saying such similar things that I have done in the same situation!
Now we KNOW we can't live here as is - the house has really poor air quality and is full of problems, NEEDS to be renovated to give us the room we need (50m2 is just not enough when we need to spend so much time indoors escaping rain or stinky neighbours!), and we can't renovate safely without adding considerable time and cost to the project. BUT, what happens if we can't sell our house???
We could rent it out and rent somewhere else ourselves, but the problem with that is that we aren't really in a situation to be able to do that as we wouldn't come close to covering the loan repayments.
So, I think what we'll end up doing (if we can't sell) is renovating... VERY CAREFULLY... I'm not looking forward to that at all, but something is going to have to happen one way or another...
I think what we need to do is set ourselves a time limit on when to just bite the bullet and admit that the house may not sell and we need to consider renovating... more discussions to be had...
But, seeing as we've all been chemically exposed this week and have been reacting, I'm really really cautious about this and will need to do a LOT more research.
So just some pointless rambling tonight!
I have been waiting for some rhubarb to appear in either my organics ordering system, or the local supermarket and finally, yesterday, I found some!
So, I'm making Rhubarb slice today :D Yummo!!! I had never tried Rhubarb until we started on our program and I have to say I really really enjoy it now! If I remember I'll take some photo's - but its in the oven as I type...
Obviously the little things like finding fresh rhubarb are exciting to me these days LOL
I'm also making some more biscuits with our other biscuit cutters - the cupcake and butterfly cutters this time... the fairy wands were a huge hit, but I wanted to try the others. The birthday cake is almost all gone (thank goodness - the icing makes for a very messy meal time!).
In other news, we had another Open House this morning, and again, no one came to look at our house. So on we soldier, just waiting for that perfect person to appear and buy our house.
This is a typical short and sweet weekend post I'm afraid... I had a bit of a slide down the bottom half of our stairs yesterday morning, so in addition to just being in a weekend frame of mind and trying to do my usual weekend cooking catch up, I'm rather sore and feeling a bit tender so sitting still in one place for too long is just uncomfortable :( I have some bruising coming out now though so hopefully it wont be long and I'll be back to being able to sit without being too sore! The last time I slid down our stairs though (yes, this is my second trip down them), I actually managed to get one of my legs caught under me and severely damaged all the nerves along my shin in my left leg and they still aren't 100% yet - 6 months on, so I'm quite pleased that this is just my bottom and lower back that are hurt and nothing more serious.
oh and just to make my day... my almost brand new stick blender stopped mid-way through some bleinding today :( So now I have to take it back to the shop and get a replacement... Luckily it has a 12 month replacement warranty!
I think my weekend posts are going to be short and sweet compared to my weekday posts!
We've had a really big day today and I'm just about to get my darling girlies ready for bed and I think I will be heading the same direction very soon!
Nothing really exciting happened.... just the usual chaos in our house! I made sausages this morning, so there went the best part of a couple of hours, Pete made bread (thank goodness!), and of course I cooked lunch and dinner too...
Oh, and we also went house hunting! The agent selling our house was telling us about a new listing of hers that she thought would be ideal for us... so we decided to go have a little look - we figured she would have some added incentive to sell our house if her sale of the other place was dependant upon our sale! The house is lovely and suits us perfectly - it even comes on 2.5 acres. So, we'll see what happens...
Tomorrow I am doing a lovely roast lamb for lunch, so I'm really looking forward to that!
A very unexciting, non food related post from me today I'm afraid!
In just over half an hour I have an appointment with the paediatrician for my youngest to be sure her pneumonia has resolved, and then seeing as tomorrow is our Open House to try and sell our home, I need to get to work!
So far we've done lots of decluttering, and I have the washing machine going and an enormous list of jobs to do...
Once we get home from the paediatrician, I will be cleaning as much as possible so that tomorrow all I should have to do is vacuum all the floors and mop the few mopable ones!
I did buy something quite frivilous yesterday with no regard for its ethics or sustainability though... a florist in town is closing down and had 50% off all artificial flower arrangements... so I bought a little arangement of gerbra's in a little ceramic pot that tones in wonderfully with our house! We can't have real flowers due to all our hayfever and other sensitivities, and rather than having nothing, I decided that spending $30 on an arrangement like this was justified as we are trying to do everything possible to enhance our home for sale at the moment.
And I'm not about to just throw them out after the house is sold! They are really quite a cute little bunch of flowers and I have a feeling that if they don't go on display somewhere nice and high my lovely Miss Almost-4 will claim them to play with - she wants to water them and take care of them apparently!
Ok so I'm outta here until tomorrow! I'll probably post after the Open House!
