Waste

Food waste, to be exact. We got a new to us fridge a few months back. I had a system for rotating food through the old one. I figured that system would work in the new one, it doesn’t.

I just tossed food from August… not much, but there shouldn’t be anything in the fridge, fresh food, that’s older than 1 month, and there was a lot.

So I told DH he needs to help me come up with a new system.

What I had done was: I had a shelf for leftovers. I had 3 shelves I rotated the produce through, because a lot of what we eat are vegetables, especially spring – fall. The new fridge, because it’s a bottom freezer doesn’t have that many shelves. The top shelf is something I can barely reach, so the leftovers that aren’t in front get shoved into the back and forgotten. I only have 1 shelf for loose produce at the most and an inadequate bin.

Overall, I think the fridge that we bought was a mistake. I think the space is divided up so that it suits DH’s wants/needs but not mine. I agreed to the changes, but I’m sorry I did. I’ll have to live with it, there’s no way we can afford to replace it.

We got a bottom freezer instead of a side by side. We got a counter depth fridge instead of a full size one. The freezer has drawers in it. All of those I agreed to. All of them are a PITA that give me actually less storage than before.

However, like I said, I have to live with it… so I need to find a work around. Not sure what that will be?

It worked fine when the big fridge/freezer wasn’t stuffed. When the bulk of the incoming stuff could go there, the new fridge worked just fine. But it really doesn’t work without that. At the moment, that appliance is full of frozen produce and it will be more so after next week.

I need to figure this out, ASAP. I have winter produce I need to deal with and that will keep coming until the week before Thanksgiving. Then the lean times and eat down starts. That’s 6 weeks away now. That’s six more slugs of produce coming: squash, onions, carrots, celery, celeriac, potatoes, sweet potatoes. It has to go somewhere! Much of it can go into the pantry. I suppose I could try root cellaring, again. I’ve never managed to make it work well, so I gave it up. The crates I’d used for it are out in the yard with tools and such in them. If I’m going to do that, I’ll need to do a lot of clean up of the crates, including sterilizing them, rearrange the area where they were stored, and get more wood chips, because I spread the end of the last bag in the yard — why keep it?

Sigh. I have a lot to do!

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11/2021: Just did another major fridge purge, much the same as that talked about above. The obvious answer was to use the bottom shelf for the left overs. That won’t work as it’s the only shelf which will take a full celery, or bunch of leeks, or a bok choy, or napa cabbage.

So, there was, again, a lot of waste and although mindful of the situation, I just don’t have an answer that doesn’t require me getting on a step ladder once weekly and culling the left overs. Much of the problem is that mid-summer we just have too much produce coming too fast.

I’m picking up our last farm box today. This is a mixed box, not a wholesale bag or bin, but it will again completely fill the fridge. At the moment, I have beans soaking for a soup. We’ll probably have a spinach salad with it, as we’re getting fresh spinach in the box.

After this, greens will show up here few and far between until spring. I might make some jarred salad, but unlike in 2020, we didn’t finish the last 2 batches I made early this year, so if I do make it, I’ll make a small batch. That means that I need another green cabbage recipe.

There’s stuffed cabbage, but that’s not a fave here, we eat it when I make it, but I don’t make it more than about once every few years… I also need a recipe for napa cabbage, come to think of it…

There’s onions in the last farm box, those will go to a neighbor. I’m probably going to talk to the church where the local food pantry donation box is, to see if I can’t give them 10 lbs of loose onions. I just have too many.

More Moving in the Right Direction

Today I’m picking up a possible investment book set. If I’m right, I’ll turn them around and make some $. If I’m wrong, I can almost certainly sell them for what I paid for them. As usual, when auction people aren’t book people, they don’t give all the data needed to make discerning book purchases. That’s to my profit today, I hope. The books aren’t exactly what I hoped for, but if I’m lucky and can sell these? I’ll make about 3x what I paid for them. Not the potential huge profit that I might have had, but certainly respectable! When I started in the book business, 100% mark up was the norm. That sounds like a lot, but the average book used to sit on a bookdealer’s shelf for a year. So, if you bought it for $1 and had to keep it for a year, that $2 price had to cover the rent, electric, phone, salary, etc. for that percentage of your business for 12 months. By the time I quit? Standard markup was 3x. My guess is that I’ll sell 2 of the 7 books and that will yield me what I paid for all 7. If I do any more than that? I’ll make a profit. We’ll see.

The second item I bought was a new filing cabinet. This one is smaller than what we have. It’s probably aluminum instead of steel, like the one we currently own, and it has inset handles, so it fits my mandate of no protruding handles for our retirement home. It’s steel and probably as big as the one we already own, sigh. The handles are a plus however.

The thing about using inset handles except on room doors is because we’re trying to move into our downstairs, effectively 1/2 the space we currently use. Given that, those 1-2″ protruding handles add up! Filing cabinets, appliances, drawers, cabinet doors, and filing cabinets. If you look around your home, how many could you eliminate? I figure I’m probably getting at least 6″ of our floor space back and no matter what, that’s not trivial.

The buying smaller or “downsizing” effort is also why we’re looking to replace our couch with a loveseat, have a 12″ wide coffee table, have a tiny dining room table, have pullouts in the kitchen and removed the cabinet doors.

We also removed a large and awkward, farm cabinet from the dining room. We’ll probably replace our kitchen cart with something smaller.

The next big piece is to replace the drop in range/stove with a two-piece unit, a cookstove and smaller, but built-in oven. Three things have to happen first: we have to finalize our new kitchen plans, figure out exactly what we want and save the money. The cooktop can be put over other kitchen cabinets and the built in oven can be put almost anywhere we want as well.

But the first step? It’s the same first step. Continue to eliminate excess stuff until there isn’t a storage unit or boxes in every room of the house. Hopefully the storage unit will be closed by Halloween. If I’m diligent and lucky? The boxes may happen by the end of 2021.

Then I get to start over and have a life that isn’t full of vestiges of my PTSD/abuse laden childhood. I’m looking forward to it, and I’m sure DH is too!

Seasonal Shift

Sept. 1, you might as well have pushed a button. Literally, overnight it was early fall.

One of my chores today is to do a deep cleaning of the bed and change from spring/summer sheets to fall/winter. Although that didn’t happen, we decided to put on the spring/summer percale sheets one last time…

Another of my chores this week is to wash the shower curtains and put them back up, with the dark one facing into the room.

Aside from that, I have an organizational effort started.

I have a new (to me) desk, the old one is waiting to be hauled to the dump. This one is higher quality than the other one and was an unexpected find at a ReStore… Of course, this required a huge cleaning effort. But in the desk, the space made for a computer “tower” (remember those?) fits the mailer collection almost perfectly. That’s great! It removes one source of visual clutter in the office and puts the mailers literally within arm’s reach.

Another piece of the “floating clutter” and visual clutter was longer rulers. I had a way to store yardsticks and small rulers, but nothing tidy and organized for those in between. The new desk’s drawer is deep enough to store those, where the old desk’s wasn’t.

I have 4 pieces of art to mail, and the last slug of books/magazines to mail as well. After those go, I don’t have any more pending. I’ll have to quote some more or send something else out to auction, or find a new customer — which I may have. More on that, later. You’ll find what’s new below.

I heard from the book auction person, which is great. They do mostly comic books and I had 4 boxes of those to sell, so that effort will take a while…

That’s what is going on. Preparing to work extensively on the online work, when I’m done hauling boxes of books, etc. home from the storage. Hopefully, I’ll be able to close it, by the end of the month?

There are holes in the attic and kitchen storage. Also, stacks of items to be mailed or going to auction or antique store in the kitchen, dining room, and kitchen storage area.

You get the idea, right? We’re doing a lot of work, preparatory to closing the storage, working on the web site data, the cleaning and frugality book, etc.

It all counts. It’s all…

Progress!

The new customer is a bookdealer. He’s going to meet me at the storage and buy what he wants… One of my new jobs in the next 2 weeks is going to be going through what remains at the storage and going through what’s stored here. If it’s for sale? It goes to the storage.

I may be out of the book business by Halloween! Yay!!!

9/23: Have 3 boxes for the bookstore in the living room, ready to go. Have another box of “research/sell this” books in the kitchen storage area. Antique store drop/restock/pull tomorrow is the plan.

New Idea

Looking at the stuff here, I realized we have two or three major types of loose stuff, floating clutter.

1. Project pieces for projects which are put off, midway, or planned.
2. Stuff for sale which hasn’t been put up for sale, or sold, yet.
3. Things we want to keep, but don’t have a designated home.

The 3rd I dealt with using the china cabinet. See here. The 2nd is in process, but that process is both overwhelming and going to take some time. The 1st hadn’t been dealt with. It is now.

We decided this morning that the downstairs “bedroom” will hold project pieces/supplies. That makes sense as it holds the end of my craft supplies.

The trunk which went with the auction person Tuesday had been storing project fabric: for chair upholstery, cushion covers, and curtain tie backs. The fabric became small piles around the living room and kitchen when I emptied the trunk. That’s now been boxed and “put away.”

I boxed the tweeds, labelled the boxes and put them away. The fabric is no longer on the edges of the kitchen or in the living room. Yay! I need more boxes to finish cleaning up the decorating fabric, but that will remove more from the dining room as well as the last of the loose fabric in the living room. That’s done.

I started boxing up books in labelled cartons: keeps, donations, to antique booth, to antique auction, to book auction, and trash.

I have 3 boxes of fabric and 5 boxes of books. I have 2 more boxes of books, etc. to go to the antique store and the beginning of yet another box to go to the antique auction…

A Partial Solution

Because I’m going through so much stuff, I keep running into pieces I want to keep. I don’t necessarily have a place to put these things away and so they’ve been put down, again and again. They get moved from one room to another, one box to another and then it happens again…

I’m sick of that! My partial solution has been to sell or cull many items I really love, because I just couldn’t see where they’d fit with us living downstairs, with so much less room and no storage or shop space.

One of the pieces I’ve gotten to that place with it my china cabinet. I love it. I’ve loved it since I first got it, at a flea market here about 25 years ago. It needs to be painted. But.

But? I have nowhere to put it now. When we moved the new to us sideboard into the dining room, almost all the things which had been stored on or in the china cabinet moved to the sideboard.

The plate rack, which had been atop the china cabinet, is currently for sale at the antique shop. But the china cabinet has sat, on the edge of the dining room — empty. There’s too much stuff in the way to move it into the attic, where I intended to put it. So it has sat, mostly empty, for a couple of months now. And I had no idea what I’d do with it or when I’d be able to move it.

This evening, I started, like I do most days now, going through boxes. I’m looking for merchandise to send to auction or take to the antique store. Especially near the edges, all the obvious trash has already been dealt with. And I keep running into those pieces, the pieces I’d really like to keep but don’t have a specific place to put whatever it is.

And I had a brainstorm. I filled the china cabinet with the “I want to keep these and don’t know where to put it” items. There’s less “floating clutter” around. The cabinet which had been just an empty boat anchor is useful and I have an easy way to do a space budget. (See below.)

SPACE BUDGET = A given amount of space for a certain type of thing…like a box to hold candles. If the box can’t hold all the candles, then I sell/donate/trash/give away enough items so that the remaining items will fit the SPACE BUDGET. It’s easy for me to think I’ll find alternate storage for just an item or two. I’ve kept lots of stuff that way. The SPACE BUDGET gets me to cull the (whatever) collection, and reminds me space is NOT infinite in my home, and costs money.

When the cabinet is full, I’ll do a space budget. In the meantime, if I find places to use/put away some of the items, I know where they are. That’s also been part of the problem. I find a place I want to use X, but then haven’t been able to find X, so it doesn’t get put away.

I am PSYCHED — I have turned a non-useful item into a tool to help me deal with a roadblock.

Go me!

7/29: The antique auction closes in a few hours, so all of that stuff will be gone. I just sent a note to the auction house asking if they’d be ready for another pickup a week from tomorrow? I’ve got the inventory started for that as well.

I still don’t have a big piece, a piece of furniture for this one, but we have various candidates around: extra coffee tables, shelving units, etc.

How my Days Get Affected, Examples

A Level 02 Day:

8/20 — I went to three farms yesterday and got lots of produce.

I need to deal with it.

It’s also a dump day and with all the produce leavings in the garbage (what doesn’t go in the compost, corn silk, for example) with the heat? It will stink to high heaven if I don’t get the garbage out! So a dump run is definitely in the queue for today as well.

8/25 — I went to two farms yesterday and got produce, but not nearly as much as I had 8/19.

Today’s agenda is mostly LEVEL 02 (Systems) again, but… not quite the same because the amount of food is considerably less. The level numbers are (00) next to the action item:

Clean out/organize my big freezer. (04 – large appliance) X Work done, not complete; in process

Go to the dump. (02 – systems: waste) Deferred

Make up herb mixes and salsa for the freezer. (02 – systems: food) X Some done, not complete for the season,but I didn’t expect it to be!

Go through the attic looking for books and other goods to send to auction. (07- stuff) X Done, more to do but the effort was made.

Work on my office. (07 – more stuff) X Done, more to do but the effort was made.

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The STUFF (07) is still a major part of what I have to deal with, but there are other levels as well. These days, I’m doing much better about paying attention to that. That said? The ALPHABETICS or 15 minute cleaning blocks have been neglected.

So, progress, but it isn ‘t where it needs to be, yet.

Soon I hope?

8/26

All of these need more work, but progress was made, except for skipping the dump run.

What’s left:

FREEZER CLEAN OUT/REORG: Mostly organize and make a tally. Top shelf organized and cataloged.

HERB MIXES: Actually, part of the above item as well.

ATTIC & OFFICE CLEAN OUT: Remove more items, catalog those going to auction. Put the absolute outs in the dump bins. Do some FILING!

And, I need to get the actual cleaning back into the mix as well.

X De-goopified the bathroom sink’s drain w/ DH’s help. 02- Systems: waste

My Name is NOT Betty Crocker

Well, I cut up old bread this morning.I hate food waste, so there was a dehydration tray lined with cheesecloth and filled with dry breadcrumbs atop the oven waiting to be put into the approriate jar.

I got the croutons in a broiler pan, ready to go into the oven. Had nowhere to put it, so I put it atop the breadcrumb tray. Picked up the pan/croutons, the cheesecloth from the dehydration tray/breadcrumbs came too.

Breadcrumbs everywhere

So, my clean/swept floor got swept, again, twice. (When I transferred the remaining crumbs into the bottle, it scattered more, and the floor needed to be swept, again.) The oven/door needed to be cleaned too.

The life of a domestic goddess isn’t easy. I am not now, nor will I ever be Betty Crocker, Ann Pillsbury, or Suzy Homemaker. If there’s a way to F up something simple, I find it. If there’s a way to do something to mess up an area I just cleaned? Well, I find that too.

It’s a talent or skill, right?

I better get used to the idea that I have that talent, because being a domestic goddess is just not something I will likely ever manage.

Sometime, About August…?

I have a post I’ll make that I’ve been working on for some time.

What’s going on now? DH’s job is changing, so our income is changing. Maybe retirement, maybe not. But it has given us a deadline to try and finish as much of the cull, move, rearrange, etc. here as possible before the end of July.

So, we’re busy, really busy. It’s also high summer and I have a fridge full of food to deal with from the farms. That also keeps me busy. I had a book to finish working on for the unpaid “day job.”

And, before all of this, I had dizzy spells and hyper clumsiness issues that were bad.

So, we’ve been very busy and preoccupied.

Sorry! Real life got in the way…

J

Playing with the ALPHABETICS (Corrected!)

If you want to use the ALPHABETICS, but how I use them doesn’t suit, here’s a chart which may help?

One reason I organized the work this way is that using the alphabet, 26 characters, is easy to sort them evenly into a year’s worth of weeks, 52 (2 * 26).

My original scheme had me doing 26 items each week.

My revision has me doing the same amount of items each month.

But I have a houseful of stuff to deal with. If you don’t, and you’d like another way to use these? Here are some suggestions:

Repeats	Qty/How Often	Repeats/Year	Comments
Weekly	26/week	52	Original ALPHABETICS
Monthly	26/month	12	Revised ALPHABETICS
Quarterly	8-9/week	4
Semi-Annually	2/week	2
Annually	1 every other week	1

When I set this up, I deliberately grouped things out of alphabetical order. Why? Because you end up with insanely busy assigned weeks and then dead ones. I had a really hard time coming up with things in my home to clean or cull starting with Y and Z, for example.

So, I grouped them differently. The original and revised assignments are listed below, then suggestions for quarterly and semi-annually.

I had this as a chart. Worked wonderfully in my word processor, but wordpress messed it up. Every time I tried to fix it, it got worse. So apologies! The data looks much simplier in a column, but I can’t get it to not cut off the ends or top and bottom of things!

Note: If you tried to make sense of the original numbers I had here, apologies! Doing this sort of work makes my head hurt…

The numbers should make sense now. Also, the annual list has been changed so that there’s a full month OFF. I figured if I had my stuff under control, I sure wouldn’t want to be doing this work during the holiday season!

ORIGINAL: 104 items each month, 26 each week. Repeats 50x a year, with 2 week vacation. [A-F-K-P-U-Z, B-G-L-Q-V, C-H-M-R-W, D-I-N-S-X, E-J-O-T-Y]

REVISED: 26 items each month, 6-7 each week. Repeats 12x a year, no vacation. [A/B-I/J-Q/R/S, T/U-C/D-K/L, M/N-V/W/X-E/F, G/H-O/P-Y/Z]

QUARTERLY: 8-9 items each month, 2-3 each week. Repeats 4x year, no vacation. [A, Z, C, X, E, V, G, T, I, R, K, P, M, N, O, L, Q, J, S, H, U, F, W, D, Y, B]

TRI-ANNUALLY: 6-7 items each month, Repeats 3x a year. [A-E-I-M-Q-U-Y, B-F-J-N-R-V, C-G-K-O-S-W-Z, D-H-L-P-T-X]

BI-ANNUALLY: 13 items each month, Repeats 2x a year. [A-G-M-S-Y, B-H-N-T, C-I-O-U, D-J-P-V-Z, E-K-Q-W, F-L-R-X]

ANNUALLY: 2-3 items each month, 1 every other week. Repeats once a year. Takes 1 month off! [A-L-W, B-M, C-N, D-O-X, E-P, F-Q, G-R-‘Y, H-S, I-T, J-U-Z, K-V]

Assignments are based on a 5 day work week.

The plan is to offer a complete set of the full ALPHABETICS as a one-time download. I’m working on getting at least one website up and running. That site should have some shopping cart availability. When it’s working, I’ll edit this post and add a link!

Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash

Month 7

WordPress has again changed their formatting/editor. Last time they did this, I went off and worked in Word until they made it so that you could still use their classic editor. This time, it’s worse. I have websites I’ve been getting ready. If this gets to be too much of a PITA, I’ll just move the blog over to the website and build the content with Word, although the nuts/bolts are WordPress, but that’s my webmaster’s problem, NOT mine!

Anyway, I apologize for a month’s worth of data all at once, but that’s why. This post WAS written in Word and then published here.

Also, this post was written using color to help differentiate between the weeks and make the piece a bit more interesting to look at. WordPress took that out and I’m not sure how to get it to give me anything other than blue and gray… Apologies AGAIN!!! I added the drop caps in an effort to make this a little less tedious.

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Week 1 (A/B, I/J, Q/R/S)

ANNUAL SEPTIC or WATER SERVICE – We try to either get our water tested or our septic pumped every year. This has been scheduled!

BOOKS (Again) – The large order for the bookstore goes next Monday, so most of my time this week will be taken up with getting that ready. I went through 6 double sized boxes today.

I arranged with a customer to buy a box of books, those have been added to the “culls” below. But I need to work on this Tuesday – Saturday this week, as the van is being picked up and loaded Sunday.

The person who wanted a specific author has agreed to look at all of the books I had by them. SCORE! That won’t happen for 2 weeks, but still, it’s a chunk o’ books which might just go away…

I gave a box of books to a local bookstore on Thursday.  I also worked in the storage on the books in the large order for next week. I will do that again at least once if not twice this weekend.

There’s about 75 62 boxes of books to go in the big order. A box of 85 books was mailed this week. I have more to quote out to various people.

(A box of 60+ books was mailed week 2.)

Sold 7 books, week 3. (Also listed in culls for that week.) Donated box of ? books to local bookstore.

Sold 2 books, week 4. Sent 5 pieces out on consignment. One book stolen, apparently.

INVENTORY – I do this 2x a year: I inventory the storage foods and supplies. This helps me see what I need more of, before summer is gone and shows what we’ve used. I inventory in mid-February and mid-August, as doing it at the end of the year/end of June just didn’t work! I had a vague niggle in the back of my head this was soon, and then I got the reminder from my calendar.

Doing the inventory will cause me to finish cleaning out the cold storage. I reorganized the pantry last week, so  now is a good time.

“JUNK” –We have a lot of this! I started this morning organizing one category: flea market or sale supplies. Normally, these stayed out and would have been used several times this spring/summer, but no flea markets or sales this year… So, I put a receipt book, some tape, and other supplies in a plastic bin, put the lid on and labeled it, for future use. I reduced the clutter and disorganization by one category. Hurrah! A small step, but something I need to do more often.

Q [Nothing starts with Q] –  I have at least a large grocery bag full of items to shred. This needs to make its way to Staples so it will be out of here!

REDUCTION PLANNING – I need to do more concrete planning on the continued culling. Clothes and food have been pared down to just what we need, now  and are pretty well taken care of. We still have excess furniture, books, and other stuff.

Aside from the goals I’d previously set, see here, I have come up with a few more concrete measures of when I’m done:

• There’s still too much stuff if you can’t get to all the edges or corners of the rooms.
• Pay attention to what works and doesn’t! For example:

 My feet get tired/hurt from standing and prepping a meal. That means that frequently after a meal I do NOT want to go back into the kitchen and immediately do dishes. Give me another hour or so? It’s not a problem for my feet.

Emotionally? I hate going back to face a huge mess, although I do it. I decided the only way this wasn’t going to be a continual issue was if I did things differently. So, I’m working on it. I’m trying to clean up/get the dishwasher going or clean the dishes well before dinner so that the pots, pans, etc. used to prepare dinner can be put into an EMPTY dishwasher as I cook. That means that after dinner, putting food away and dealing with the dinner dishes, should be minimal. That I can do right after dinner.

This means being proactive about cleaning up as I go, more than ever, but if I can alter my habits this much, the kitchen should stay cleaner. I also won’t face, pretty much daily, the dilemma of after dinner clean up with painful feet or the delayed mess.

I’m working on it!

This works, but it will take some time to get used to the new ways!

SPRING/SUMMER BEDDING:  The seasonal bedding shift. To wash, winter: sheets, blankets, duvet, pillows. To store: sheets, blankets, duvet. To wash, summer: sheets, blankets, duvet, pillows. [Summer sheets washed 9/8]

Culls: 50+ books, 8 mugs, ? wire bangles, box of books to bookstore, stained fabric items to dump, books to dump, misc. papers to dump.

Used/Found New Home or Use: The retail supplies mentioned above, a plastic bin, more house decorating fabric, 2 boxes, Sold 2 bundles of spoons at the antique shop. Many boxes of books set aside for bookstore delivery next week. Two boxes of books for local bookstore. Three volumes set aside for website owners who wanted  my dupe annual volumes which filled in the holes in their collection. (Not yet checked.)

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Week 2 (T/U, C/D, K/L)

TOMATOES – I have a lot of tomatoes to prep for the freezer.

UNDERWEAR DRAWER – I need to remove everything from the top drawer of my dresser, clean it and put everything back. Haven’t done this for a while.

CHILIS – I tend to end up dealing with chilis one day each summer. That seems to be today ! I’ve got cherry peppers ready to be stuffed (and put aside those which need to be a bit riper, first). I’ve put Anaheims aside for the freezer. I’ve roasted bell peppers for soup. I’ve strung peppers in a ristra. And I have more to do! Chop jalapenos, pickle some, saute some, make more salsa, make chili powder, etc. This will take all day.

DISHES – I found a set of enamel plates. We’re trying out the idea. If these don’t work, they’ll go into the booth and we move on. We were going back and forth a about the idea, so this is a trial. Also see week 4 culls and pieces used.

KITCHEN TOWELS – Mine look grungy. Part of this is that I buy them used whenever I can. Part of this is that we have a lot of rust in our water. Part of it is that I don’t bleach things either. However, when I have the bedding at the laundromat, I can also run the kitchen towels with some bleach.

LINENS – See KITCHEN TOWELS. Same problems, same solution.

LABOR DAY – Normally, I go to a Labor Day sale and this would be used to clean what I bought, for resale or use and cull, as needed. But the sale was cancelled this year due to Covid. So, instead, I will look around here and use this as a task to clean the things which I’ve gotten there in years past. I can think of one right off, I’ll count this as complete when I find and clean 3 items…

Culls: 62 boxes of books delivered! Another box packed but not yet mailed, at least 60 more books out. Two plates broken. Rusting ball jar lids/rings. Have a decorative piece going to a friend.

Used/Found New Home or Use:  
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Week 3 (M/N, V/W/X, E/F)

M

NICHE –  This “area” needs to be emptied. I’ve made major headway about this in the past year, but the job isn’t finished and needs to be. [Done: x x x x x x x x x x ] The number of  boxes in the “done string” is a guess! I have no idea how many boxes there are!

V

WINTER BEDDING —  Because of COVID, the wool blankets and comforters weren’t washed before being put away in March. They still need washing. My washer and dryer are too small to clean them adequately. The other bedding was cleaned before storage. The summer weight bedding is clean too.

X [nothing starts with X] —

EMPTY – I need to cull/purge/sort the 4 boxes of books in DH’s closet. [Done: x x x x]

FANZINES – I acquired some of these when I had the store. I sent an email re donating them to the appropriate people this week. I will send them along when they verify that they need them. At least one for sure is being donated and there’s one other they don’t need and so it’s going to the paper recycling this week.

Culls: Two mugs, a basket, 2 small vases, a mailer, a dresser scarf, misc. books, a partial bottle of furniture polish, 3 crates, an unfinished cat tree toy, ? large bins of leaves, 3 cracked plastic bins, 1 heavy plastic ice cream crate, rusting paperclips, bags of leaves, 2 bins of twigs, 2 plastic jars which had held the paperclips/erasers, 4 cross stitch books, an enamel stock pot, many bags of leaves and twigs, minor construction debris, fanzines

Used/Found a New Home/Use: 7 books (sold), 7 book sleeves, 2 mailers, 1 uncracked bin to go to the antique store, part of a bag of fertilizer, the end of a bag of grass seed, tabletop drawer unit, erasers and paperclips now in drawer unit.

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Week 4

(G/H, O/P, Y/Z)

G

HABITS – I’m working on changing my habits so that I can get more done, hopefully without a panic attack. I’ve been paying attention to the areas where I continually say, “I should…” or “I wish I could be that way instead of this…” .

See the block cleaning in week 4, one thing I’ve tried!

I have to habitualize a routine, if I can,  of the day-to-day necessary cleaning. I’ve gotten it to where I can do maintenance cleaning, but it’s not always complete. What I changed is a huge step, but the house is still a mess and that’s not acceptable. (See above.) So… more work!

HSC = Horizontal Surface Clearing

• If I start in the Laundry Room. I can move a load to the dryer, put a load in the washer and pick up whatever is clean/dry and take  it into the Dining Room. HSC: tops of machines.
• The table is getting cleaned every night. What has to happen in the Dining Room is the house cloth stuff needs to be put away (napkins, placemats, rags, dish towels) and a pick up. HSC: counter, edge of table, bookcases.
• Kitchen – The dishes are getting cleaned and put away regularly, but not all of them. The hand-wash stuff lingers. So, doing the handwash and then putting away the dish drainer would be helpful. HSC: dish drainer, cutting board, counters, stove top.

That’s just 3 rooms. I wonder how long it would take me to do what’s talked about here?

15 minute blocks

 1: I set a timer. I got a clean, wet load from the washer. A new load in the washer, a load finished in the dryer and the second started. The Laundry HSC was done, the clean laundry dumped onto the dining room table. Not all of the rags, dish rags, dish towels, napkins, etc. got put away.  

2: I got most of the items on the table edge’s and cat bench sorted. Got the end of the laundry put away in the kitchen or dining room. The dining room table HSC is done.

Got part of the cat bench cleaned off. Started on the lower counter. I generated a lot of stray items.

When I’m doing this, I need places to park:

• Laundry which is put away in another room. A box would work, I don’t have a laundry basket.
• Paperwork to file. A folder.
• Paperwork to review. Same folder as above, a divided folder. I have some – somewhere!
• Item DH has to determine what happens to them. A location or 2^nd box.
• Items for sale. A box.
• Items which need to be put away in another room, not laundry. Same idea as the laundry.

In between here, we had lunch and I started soup for dinner.The clean up from that will not be included in this effort~

3: I will start, again, in the dining room, as I hadn’t finished.

I made one of each of these:

• 1’ cube box of books for me to review: keep or outs,
• 1’ cube box books to go out (not to the dump),
• a partial 1’ cube box of paperwork to file or review, and
• a plastic basket of “I don’t know where to put this” items which are not paper.

The low counter is cleared/cleaned. The breakfast bar counter has been started, but isn’t finished.

The dining room had become a dumping ground.

The room needs at least another partial block. I know if I try and do this right now, I’ll get stressed, I can feel it. Also, the 2 book boxes are FULL and need to be reviewed before I go on.

O

PURGE – This needs to be to the bone. I’ve recently purged the dishes in the kitchen dish cabinet. But of course, there’s still too much in there. Let’s see, if I make an artibrary “standard” for that cabinet: 1 thing on the top shelf. 3 things on the 2^nd shelf, the dishes on the bottom 2 shelves. The laundry room was recently purged, as was the pantry. The bathroom cabinets could use it, again. And the attic definitely just needs to be purged altogether. DH is working on cleaning up the property, sheds and other storage. There’s 4 “sink holes” here: the storage corners of the kitchen and bedroom, the attic, and the other office. I’ve been whacking away at all of these, but not a concerted effort on any of them. And of course, there’s also the storage unit…which had 62+ boxes removed from it last month… but needs about the same thing to be done again…

YARD CLEAN UP – It’s Labor Day today, so early fall. The leaves need to be raked up under the trees, the fallen branches added to the kindling, etc. We’ve taken 5 bags of leaves and a few bins to the dump already. The 6^th bag is full.

Z [nothing starts with Z] – OUTSIDE STORAGE – With the new shed in place, we’ll be able to put away many things which had previously just stayed out in the yard all winter. I will count this effort as complete when the new shed is erected and filled! The old shed is empty. DH’s goal for today is to move it and start the footings for the new one.

Culls: Sold a book and 2 weed vases. A bottle of white buttons for resale, sold 5 more books. We culled socks. A slotted spoon, a mug. Sold another book. A friend agreed to take 2 books on consignment. Gave a box of books to the local bookstore Friday. Four  9” dinerware dishes culled. An uncomfortable piece of clothing. Sold another book and it appears someone stole one. A leather dressing brochure. Four more books. Two 12” dinerware plates culled. Two stainless refrigerator containers sold. A hat, a magazine, 3 plates I just can’t sell,

Used/Found New Home/Used: Used the first part of the mulch on the bed it was bought for – finally! Had gifts to ship: 2.5 sheets wrapping paper, 1 roll of ribbon, parts of 2 other rolls of ribbon, 2 packages of lace ribbon, 2 mailers, 1 box, and some tape. Otherwise, found new homes for:  2 card indexes, a small stack of 3 x 5 cards. Organized the ribbon/rickrack drawers, wrapping paper storage and seam binding boxes. Got DH to help me empty the freezer. Also got him to take down the plates on the top shelf. We agreed they’re lighter than what we’ve been using, so they’ll replace the 9” dinnerware (culled above). Card, envelope, sticker used. Two boxes and 2 mailers used. The other, bigger plates from the top shelf are being used. Three small containers of fertilizer were used.

I need to mail a picture, a sculpture and a drawing board. Also some clothes.