Should I get a mangle? Sensible and not-so-sensible energy-saving ideas

We're off grid - we have no mains gas, electricity or water.

Gas is easy. It comes in big orange bottles which, when empty, you exchange for full ones from garages or the gas man who comes into the village every Wednesday morning.

Under the house is a massive concrete cisterna which stores rainwater drained from the roof. When there's no rain we can get Juan the water man to fill it up from his lorry (90 euros per delivery - last time we shared it with our neighbours), or we can put a water cube on our trailer which we can fill for free from the well in the village. The water gets from the cisterna into the house by an electric-powered water pump.

Electricity comes from our solar panels on the roof, our little wind turbine on the highest point on the hill behind the house or our generator.

Even though I've always tried to be frugal with resources, the whole world changes when you can no longer take them for granted. Here are some of the sensible - and a little bit crazy - procedures I've been putting in place.

1) Not flushing the toilet very often. This saves gallons of water, plus lots of electricity as the water pump takes a great deal of power. Am I a little bit strange for telling visitors who come from the world of plenty that they're very welcome not to flush? NB if you go to a party in an off-grid home, it's perfectly acceptable not to flush.

2) Re-thinking clothes washing. The washing machine has to run directly off the generator. It takes about an hour and a half and 3 or 4 euros-worth of petrol to do a wash. The waste water gushes straight out into a bucket so I can see the huge amount of water that it's using. I'm thinking hard about whether clothes are really dirty before they go in the machine, hand washing some more clothes in the outflow (the water is used twice that way), and beginning to wonder if I could stop the machine before the spin cycle and rely on the sun and the wind - or even a mangle (it's one of these, kids) - to do the drying.

3) Trying to read by candle-light. That doesn't work very well.

4) Buying more batteries. We've been running the CD player off batteries so that we don't have to worry about it draining the electricity system. But do old batteries pollute the world more than us having to put the generator on a little more often?

5) Unplugging things when they're not in use. We've been told for years that phone chargers suck up power, even when they're not charging your phone. I never bothered with unplugging them when they weren't being used - I do now.

6) Trying to work out what volts, amps and kilowatt hours are. I'll get back to you about this.

7) Saving water. I take a bucket into the shower to collect the water that I'm too chicken to wash under before it's warmed up - I'm getting about three litres a day from this, which is enough to water quite a few plants. We're using eco-friendly washing up liquid and clothes washing liquid so that we can throw the grey water onto the garden without worrying about poisoning everything. Obviously, turning the tap off when teeth-cleaning. And doing the washing up all in one go rather than turning the tap on every time a cup is dirty.

8) Not opening the fridge - unless it's absolutely necessary. Because every time you open the fridge it warms it up so the power has to kick in to cool it down again. No more staring into the fridge idly wondering what to have for lunch - a decision has to be made fast.

9) Loving sunny, windy days. This means power!

Some days are better than others

It's not all wonderful views and non-stop fiestas, you know. Today isn't going well.

We had been feeling really pleased with ourselves for learning to manage our off-grid power system. We've been diligently making sure that everything's well charged up and we've been trying to be as nice as possible to the batteries (how to care for batteries is the source of much debate among the off-grid community). Then this morning, just as we plugged in the generator to boost the system, suddenly all the power disappeared from the batteries. They'd been reading that they were 97% charged and they plunged to 0% for no apparent reason.

So it's now 6.30pm and we've had the generator on since about 9.30am trying to get them back up to 100%. We're still only on 62%. I've been trawling the internet to try to find out what went wrong. All I'm finding is more things to worry about (why we're not getting a full charge, whether the solar panels are working properly, whether we've got too many things pulling power out and not enough going in...).

On top of that, there are loads of wasps taking a peculiar interest in my pot of mint outside the front door, and I'm too scared to move it. I moved all the other plants in case they too became similarly affected and I've just discovered that the protective lid has blown off the salad seedlings and they've all perished in the sun.

I got attacked by a swarm of black flies earlier. The tiny mosca negra is much dreaded in these parts - some people are allergic to their bites and they're said to plague the Ebro region. I hadn't worried much about them as I hadn't seen many - until today. So I went into panic mode, coated myself in some honey moisturiser which is supposed to fend them off and sprayed fly spray around the house in case any had come inside. (I know fly spray is bad, but there is a time and a place for it.) The cat then ran back inside the house - right into the toxic fumes - so I had to dive in after her - fireman-style with my hand over my mouth - and pull her out. The spray didn't kill any flies anyway.

And in addition to the generator thundering away all day, David has been strimming while I've been trying to concentrate on work. So much for peace and quiet - grrr.

A few festivals

I've been so busy working that I haven't had a chance to update the blog. (If you're interested in how the UK's fastest growing, biggest and most impressive social enterprises are doing, check out www.socialenterpriselive.com/se100 next Monday night for the release of a big report that I've been editing. What's quite satisfying is that on most days my computer, printer and scanner have been powered only by the sun and the wind - more about our alternative power system later.)

Of course, as we're in Spain, a few more feasts, festivals and celebrations have whizzed by in the meantime. On Sunday 26 June, the villagers celebrated Corpus Christi by getting up at the crack of dawn to cover the streets in decorative carpets made out of different coloured stones and dyed rice husks. On their hands and knees kids and adults worked from the cool of 7 in the morning until the solid heat of lunchtime. In the past, they used flowers, but the wind blew them away. Designs ranged from the conservative floral stuff to Dora the Explorer. Here's some of what they made...

Later there was a procession and a church service, but we missed out on those as we were invited to a barbecue instead. The next day it was all swept away, like it had never happened.

There was also a Catalunyan holiday to celebrate St Joan (or St John). We completely missed out on this one except we could hear the music from one of the night clubs on the seafront thumping up through the hills at 5 in the morning.

One of the local villages was celebrating a saint of fishing too.

I think there are some fun beach party festivals coming up later in the summer.

Oh, and the weather has been great - lots of warm sunshine plus a few very loud thunderstorms at night.