The shed is declared open for International Downshifting Week

Well, whaddya know!  If there was one thing missing in my life it was the attendance of an official opening, but not to fret, that's now done and dusted as tonight my good friend, author and broadcaster Tracey Smith, arrived in town and officially opened my shed!

Many of you might already know Tracey as the author of The Book of Rubbish Ideas, but her other passion is downshifting and this week she's on a tour of the UK to promote International Downshifting Week, which she founded seven years ago to help people discover simple ways to achieve a better work-life balance.

The week runs from 23 - 29 April and throughout her tour, Tracey has been visiting villages, towns and cities right across the country to encourage folk to think about not only what they can do for themselves but also how to help share skills amongst their communities.  Tracey's community blanket project is a good example of this, where groups of friends have been gathering together this week to share their knowledge of knitting and create blankets that will be useful to vulnerable people during the winter months.

So after attending a "knit-in" in a friend's garden in the heart of Suffolk - where I was proud to have contributed a couple of rows (anyone who knows me will easily recognise what an achievement that is) - Tracey returned home with me to officially open The Shed!

And it's not just any old shed you know.  It really is my gateway to a better work-life balance, so it is appropriate that despite it being erected last summer, it's now received its official opening during International Downshifting Week.

It's the place where I organise my seeds, blog, listen to the radio, read, catch up with my friends and on the odd occasion watch TV through the magic of Wi-Fi.  It's also been a physical place of temporary refuge where I once locked myself out of the house and huddled under a few blankets with the kids and some market provisions until my husband arrived home a few hours later.   I even had my first live radio interview from the shed in recent weeks too...a feature about sheds on our local radio station no less.

As Tracey Smith said whilst "opening" the shed this evening,  "Every woman should have one.  Tis a space to be creative and expressive".  I couldn't agree more.

So, should you ever be pondering a new 4x4 for your commute to work, I would strongly suggest a 6x4 instead.  It might not have wheels, but it's sure got legs and can take your inspiration and creativity to new places, leading to new opportunities of which you'd never previously have dreamed...even if those legs belong to the spiders who live there!

And bunting is of course optional!

"The Shed", as featured on BBC Radio Suffolk's
  Mark Murphy's Breakfast Show, 

For inspiration on how you can get involved with International Downshifting Week, more information can be found at www.downshiftingweek.com and if you are considering getting yourself a shed for either work or leisure-time, do check out www.shedworking.co.uk for ideas.

Almost Mrs Average meets Tracey Smith

"Oh dear, oh dear, I shall be too late!" I muttered, finding myself lost in Essex, feeling like the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland

Getting lost in Essex is something I rarely do. Lost in France may be, or even Cardiff Bay, but I've never lost myself in Essex.

First there was the missing road sign, which meant I had to navigate by hope alone. I tried the stars, but it was a cloudy night, so I used my natural instinct along the windy roads in the Essex countryside. When I finally thought I'd reached my bethlehem, it turned out to be wrong house!

The Wrong House!

The email said no 1....but the lights were out and no-one was home.

So... lost in Essex, with no phone signal, I was wondering what to do next.

If it hadn't been for the kind lady at no.2 spotting me from her lounge and asking me who I was looking for I would have missed my slot...a rare opportunity to rub shoulders with the Queen of Downshifting,... yes the one and only Tracey Smith...who just happened to be on holiday with her lovely family just a little further along the quiet idyllic road.

A very special lady, with a very special place in my heart.

I love Tracey. I love her warmth, her bubbliness and I adore the way she can laugh about things like solar powered vibrators without making me blush.

We first made contact three or four years ago with odd emails here and there about how an average woman can downshift. Then at the beginning of the year, things began to hot up with regular conversations, talking about nothing else but rubbish. How we laughed at some of my adventures in Zero Waste and how we celebrated the single plaster.

She also enjoyed talking trash with some of her fabulous friends as well as a whole bunch of celebrities including Brigit Strawbridge, Kim Wilde and Carl Honoré, whose latest book Under Pressure I enjoyed reading whilst in Switzerland. So you can see I felt very honoured to have enjoyed a slice of her time.

As an experienced broadcaster on Apple FM, she helped calm my nerves about the recordings for Woman's Hour. She did it again for my first live interview, but I'm not sure it worked on this occasion....as demonstrated by my nervous shout of "sanitary towels" on Irish Radio when probed for the one thing that should never go to landfill.

Tracey's been a brick and what I love best about her is that she accepts me for who I am, not a downshifter as such but more of a "downhill-shifter", with one foot throughly enjoying the exciting speed of 21st Century living and the other trailing behind at snail's pace, inticing me to slow down. She's encouraged me to swap some of my Phase Eight luxuries for Charity Shop bargains and ditch the office for my living room.

She knows I won't go all the way, with my love for modernity, the mainstream and mobile technology, but we still meet at the crossroads and laugh!

And here she is, the gorgeous lady, beaming at me like a ray of sunshine, about to give me something very, very special.



It had been wrapped up and ready to send in the post, beautifully packaged in compostable brown paper and string...which apparently is an unwelcome guest in automated sorting offices (for reasons of getting tangled in machinery), but which is more than welcome to me.

So... in the words of Rolf Harris, "Can you tell what it is yet?"

If you need any clues at all, it's got something to do with her disappearing off the face of the planet for months on end, bent over at her desk under a single lamp in her pyjamas....

....tapping at her keyboard...

...until...

...she got all her thoughts off her chest and emailed the final manuscript to Alastair Sawday...or rather his editor...and revealed to the world

...the beautiful thing she created...

...as shown here.

And it's not the compost bin...although that is a lovely sight in itself.



Yes Ladies & Gentlemen, I feel very privileged to be personally presented with one of the first preview copies of Tracey's fabulous new book...The Book of Rubbish Ideas, which comes with a special message, which I will treasure forever more.

Despite having very little free time on my hands, you can see that I couldn't wait to get cracking on it and settled myself down.

Okay, I confess, you've caught me out enjoying a moment of self-indulgence, reading the huge mention of The Rubbish Diet on page 105. And no better location eh, leaning comfortably against the compost bin, next to the slugs, for the beginning of an enjoyable read...

...allowing some time-out to flick through the rest of the content, a room-by-room guide, revealing a whole wealth of hints and tips about how you can reduce, reuse and recycle and even pull in the cash at the same time. There are even sample letters to encourage the silent but latent activists out there. It is the perfect addition to the Sawday's environmental range.

Of course, Tracey speedily pulled me up off the floor and we soon got back to our previous levels of excitement. Sitting in the front garden of her holiday home, on a sofa awaiting collection by a Freecycler, we cursed bars in Bury St Edmunds that don't recycle glass bottles, praised a company that recycles...er... vibrators...(oh, yes, see page 75)...and admired the bats that circled over our heads.

How surreal, being presented a book by Tracey with a message that reads "Get Writing Missus", at a time when she's finished her manuscript and I am enjoying the beginning of mine...just think eh...in 2009, we'll be doing the same again with The Rubbish Diet.

We've laughed before about being the Trinny and Susannah of bins, it's certainly beginning to feel that way...or is that Hinge and Bracket? (LOL...sorry Trace)

So join me in a toast to the lovely Tracey Smith, congratulating her on a major achievement, The Book of Rubbish Ideas, which can be bought for just half-price if you're quick and pre-register before it's published at the end of September.

As for me...I'm already dipping in...yes it's that type of book. So what are you waiting for? Come on...off you go.

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Bin there, darn that, and even bartered the T-shirt

I'd like to extend a warm welcome to readers of The Times, who have found the blog in today's Body & Soul supplement, as well as a huge thank you to columnist Anna Shepard for the mention in her Eco-Worrier section.

What a busy few months it's been since I started my council's Zero Waste challenge three months ago. Did I say three months...?

That means for a whole quarter of the year, I've been talking rubbish!

Who could have guessed there would be so much to talk about. Even curiouser, who would have thought it would get into the papers, the radio and on TV or that I would be interviewing Oliver Heath about his own recycling habits.

Anyway, for one week I'm going to ditch the trash-talk and avoid all forms of temptation to touch the subject.

It's not that I don't like it, it's more that I love it so much that I can't stop, whether it's the chat, the blog or indeed the offline ideas. However there are times when a woman has to think about other things, not least her children, husband, cats...oh yes and herself. And don't forget the cake! Cake is important too.

So as it's International Downshifting Week, I've decided to follow some top advice and slow down, take a few days off and spend some extra time with my family and friends, doing lots of fun things.

I'm also going to volunteer some of my time to help out in the world beyond the giant, at my son's primary school, which is very exciting indeed.

Then there's the big clear out. Being the Queen of Clutter, I need to look after my husband's interests, especially as he prefers the minimalist look. So a declutter exercise is on the cards! If the folks from my local Freecycle or LETS group are looking in, you can expect a few give-aways being advertised very soon.

So what are the chances of me staying away from the blog?

Probably as likely as staying off the chocolate, but I'll have a go.

However, if like me you are a rubbishoholic and you need some extra inspiration to keep you going, there will be plenty to keep you entertained. While I am away, feel free to have a nosey around the blog, where if you're a newcomer, you can find out how things went during Zero Waste Week and how I managed to get away with just one plaster.

If you still want more info, Peter at Junkk Male will keep you up-to-date with all things current. For an international feel, it's also worth having a peek at Say No To Trash in Canada as well as America's Wasted Food.

However, please don't forget Bury St Edmunds' very own Ruby (and my very own 'guinea pig'), who is following her own Rubbish Dietplan. Ruby has written an update on her progress. As I'm off this week, you'll be able to find it on her own blog, Living in Bury St Edmunds. If you get a chance, please pop over and encourage her along...I know she will appreciate your help.

So while I am relaxing, please feel free to comment and chat amongst yourselves. Just keep it clean and above board. I will return even more enthused to share my latest rubbish news, including details of another volunteer who is attempting to slim her bin.

In the meantime, I'm grabbing a cup of tea, putting my feet up and relaxing with the paper...

Now, where was that cake?.....


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