I’m now two months into the Ikea “Live Lagom” project (if you don’t know what that is, read my first post here) and I’m pleased with the progress we’re making.
We got off to a shaky start with the pressure cooker (as my fellow Live Lagom’ers know all to well – more on that in a moment) but we’re now really feeling the impact of our efforts.
So, whilst I haven’t come to any conclusions yet, I wanted to give a little update on how things are going with the various aspects we’re trying to tackle during the project…
Rugs
The biggest revelation of the project so far has been the rugs. We chose two large rugs (though we could quite easily have chosen more) because our ground floor is entirely wooden floors. Whilst I really love the look of a wooden floor, it has its downsides too, and they are many.
The most important (and relevant to this project) are how cold and un-insulated they can be. So the new rugs we now have in our lounge and the children’s bedroom (both wooden floors) have made a MASSIVE difference to our everyday lives.
The one in the children’s room covers nearly their entire floor, and seems to have warmed their room by at least a couple of degrees – as well as saving them from a fair few splinters, too!
The one in the living room, which gets a lot more wear-and-tear, has been coping admirably and is a really pleasant experience in a normally-chilly room. Here it is in action:
Light bulbs
The effectiveness of the new bulbs we got for the project is a trickier beast to judge – for one very simple problem: rather than come home and swap all the old bulbs for the new, efficient bulbs, I decided that doing that would be a slightly wasteful (both from a money and resource perspective) thing to do. So instead I’ve been replacing old for new when the other bulbs ‘go’.
All of which means I’ve only actually replaced 4 of the bulbs so far. That being said, the ones we HAVE replaced have been brilliant – both literally and metaphorically. Energy-efficient bulbs in 2016 seem to have come on in leaps and bounds – there’s almost no delay when you switch them on, they’re just as bright as a ‘normal’ bulb and they seem to be lasting really well.
As well as the classic bulbs, we opted for a couple of string-lights to use around the house – one of which you can see in the photo below, hanging in the children’s bedroom. Naturally we have them all on timers, meaning we don’t have to fiddle around with switches and can carefully monitor how long we have them on for. Bonus!
Waste Efficiency
The new recycling bags we opted for have revolutionised our day-to-day recycling efforts, though not just in the ways I had expected. The size of the bag means we can go a lot longer without having to empty the bag into the on-street recycling bin – a win both for my laziness and the fact that you feel more obliged to recycle as much as possible.
Obviously with the winter only just coming to an end we’ve not had much of a chance to tackle the outdoor-based solutions, like a compost bin (still to purchase!). But hopefully by the time Phase 1 of the project comes to an end I’ll have a better view of how effective that has been.
So, that’s my progress update so far. I’ve probably missed out a few things, but these are the ones which are having the biggest impact in our lives to date. Fingers crossed by the time the Spring is fully in-flow we’ll be able to see how effective our changes are in a different climate – I’m excited to find out!