Cutting back and getting organized

This past week has been productive and fulfilling for the most part. Seth and I have cut off the water heater, the AC and we're getting ready to cut off the refrigerator. I borrowed a book from a friend, Bill Mollison's Introduction to Permaculture.
I was very familiar with the ideas and concepts of permaculture but had yet to actually study it in a book. This is a good book to start with, especially if you're comfortable with the school textbook sort of layout. It's set up in that way, but also very pleasant and easy to read.

We've been thinking, researching and planning. When we get home from our trip (we are visiting my family for a week) we are really going to get to work on the garden and landscape. I am excited. I've really been looking forward to fall and winter planting and the time is upon us!

We'll see if we can cut our electric bill in half or less and maintain it there. I've been using hot water from the hose instead of installing a legitimate solar water heater. It works well but I only get about a gallon of hot water at a time and I have to make that stretch for dishes and some clothes.
I've adapted to washing up with cold water. It doesn't bother me much.

We also have a great compost bin going. Everything goes into it. I've even been digging through the trash to salvage things that I think would be better suited to compost or something other than trash. As a result, this past week we haven't produced a single full bag of trash.

In a few months I plan to make a graph of how we are using certain resources. I've got about 6 months worth of monetary expenses and about 4 months of electricity, so I need to start looking at the quantity of trash we are disposing of.
In 6 months I'd like to cut our output to about half of what it is. Spending half the money, using half the electricity and disposing of half of the waste-- all while *increasing* production of other projects. Let's see how this goes....