A Trash Story

 

 This is an old picture, because a) this is our truck DH hit the deer with and it is not broken in this picture, and b) there's no leaves on the trees.  It's actually from late fall, if I do remember right.  Anyway it was a while ago.

It shows a bunch of junk in the bed of the pickup.  That is not our junk.  It is junk--likely a countertop and cabinet from someone's remodel--that lay smashed on the shoulder of the road at the intersection where our road meets the main road about a half mile north of this little place here.  Don't know whose junk it is; one day I drove to that intersection on my way somewhere else and saw it.  I assumed someone had been hauling junk in a trailer and this bounced off and smashed on the edge of the road. 

A week later, it was still there.  The owner had not come and cleaned it up.  Did they know?  Well, if I had a trailer full of big things, like a cabinet and a countertop are, I definitely would notice when I got to my destination that one was missing.  I would probably retrace my steps and try to find it.  This person, apparently not.

Two weeks later, yep, still there.  Not only hadn't the owner cleaned it up, neither had anyone else.  A large pile of busted wood, some of which was laminated on one side, and a smashed concrete countertop with sparkly pieces in it.  Plus some metal drawer rails.

It didn't make it to three weeks blocking the shoulder of the road.  Neither DH nor I could stand driving by it any more.  One evening we took our truck down there and cleaned it all up.  We hauled home all the junk somebody else had left there. 

The busted concrete countertop ended up spread out in a low spot on our woods road that often floods and bogs down in the Spring.  It raised that up several inches and also provides tractrion for tractor and four-wheeler tires (although not for horse hooves; I wish DH would add a few inches of dirt on top).

The metal drawer rails went into our scrap metal bin.  The wood  was either burned (if it was a piece without a laminated side) or put into our trash bin if it was laminated.

Not a difficult task to dispose of at all.  Why it had to sit there for so long, I don't know.  It's not like we're the only traffic that drives through that intersection and saw it for days and days and days.

Even more irritating is the fact that for the first week, the county road commission had a "road work ahead" sign almost right next to this pile of broken crap.  They removed their sign, but left the junk right on the shoulder of the road where it lay.  I would have thought the road shoulder was their jurisdiction, not mine (who lives half mile down the road).  Apparently not.

Now I feel like an old fogey saying "What is this world coming to?!?" and shaking my head about the general lack of care about things.

Goodwill Treasures in June

 The week DH was out of town, I rounded up some of our stuff that we don't use anymore, and also a bunch of DD2's stuff that moved back with her in 2024 that she has since decided she no longer wants/needs, and I took it to the local Goodwill.  I had decided to stop debating the 'best' or 'most ethical' place to donate it to and just went with 'get this shit out of my house' and took it to Goodwill (which happens to be the closest and most convenient with drop-off times charity to this little place here). 

Ahh, the joy that a now empty 12 square feet of floor space in my house brings me is immeasurable.

After I dropped off a literal floor to ceiling backseat of a pickup load of stuff to the rear door of Goodwill, I drove around front, parked and walked myself in the front door of Goodwill to see what I could see.  You never know if you will find something useful or not, it's kind of like a treasure hunt.  What thing that I actually need would they have for sale today?

Well, I found a new summer dress, which I don't have many of that fit anymore (lost weight and also toned up core muscles in the last 18ish months).  I also found a few jigsaw puzzles.  But my two big 'wins' are actually things that don't take up much space at all.

Browsing the housewares, I spied a small heart-shaped springform pan.  I've had a hankering for cheesecake for literally months, but haven't made one because DH and I surely don't need to eat that much of a rich dessert in a few days and I wouldn't want any of it to go bad.  Neither have I, really, wanted to invite extra people over just so I can share cheesecake, and all the planned family gatherings haven't worked out for me to have the time immediately beforehand to make a cheesecake.

But with this little cheesecake pan, I could cut down a recipe to be just enough for two people to not overindulge in calories or have to endure unnecessary company.  Not only that, the sticker was the color of the week, which meant this little gem was a mere $1.24!!  WIN!  Into my cart it went.

Now I will be ready to make a just right sized cheesecake whenever the time is available and motivation strikes me.  

My second big find was also in the housewares section.  It is the perfect replacement for this, my favorite pan to make a grilled cheese (or ham and cheese, or turkey or beef and cheese) sandwich in.  It is older than my marriage, and is the last remaining piece of the pots and pans set I was gifted by a really good friend back in 1991 when I moved out of my parents' home and in with DH (who was my boyfriend at the time).  It used to have a non-stick coating, but, as you can see, that has mostly worn off.  It still makes a great hot sandwich, so I have kept using it.  But in the last year or so, the handle has started to crack and break where it is attached to the pan, and is getting looser and looser.  I have to be really careful how I hold it to not have it swivel and unintentionally dump the contents of the pan.

So when I spied this little (8-inch) ceramic frying pan on the shelf in Goodwill, I grabbed it for closer examination.  It appeared to be very lightly used, if at all.  I could find no scratches on it.  Maybe a very slight discoloration from beind heated and used a time or two, but it was so faint I couldn't say for sure.

Then I turned it over and saw this:

 

a good quality pan indeed

and I knew that it was definitely coming home with me.  (Googling it, I found that brand new this exact pan costs $40-50 near me depending on which store you shop at.)  Given that it was the perfect replacement for my beloved sandwich pan and it cost a mere $5.49 at Goodwill, how could I not buy it?

I have, since purchasing it (and washing it), tested it out.  It does indeed make a perfect grilled cheese sandwich.

I'm really glad I decided to just get rid of the space-eating pile of cast-offs in the manner that I did.  Not only did it gain me floor space and a happily less cluttered home, I found two very useful small items at very small cash outlay.

Make My Horse Life Easier Tip #9

 Cobwebs in the rafters.  It's a common ailment in horse barns.  How best to get rid of those cobwebs is a subject stable owners discuss among themselves.  Some like leaf blowers.  Some like to securely lash a broom onto a pole or old broom handle with duct tape in effect making a super long broom. Some like to use a shop vac with an extension or two added to the hose and then stand in the bed of a pickup brought into the barn for this purpose. Some ignore them and let them grow.

cobwebby ceiling

I do not like to ignore them and let them grow.  Cobwebs are dust catchers, which, like moldy chaff in the hay loft, has an adverse effect on air quality in the barn.  And, also like a build-up of chaff in the hayloft, cobwebs are a fire hazard.  I definitely do not want to increase the risk of a barn fire!  So I try to clean out all the cobwebs from the rafters at least annually (and those that build up on the stall fronts at least twice a month).

While a regular broom works well for stalls fronts, the rafters are harder to reach. What I have found works for me was to commandeer an extension duster we'd bought for using in the stairwell of the house.  It has a telescoping handle that lets it reach to 15 feet. Which means that 5' 7" tall me can stand in a stall and reach all the way to the peak of the ceiling in said stall. I can also slide the rod shorter and reach the top of the stall walls without having to awkwardly contort in order to fit my extra long pole within the confines of the stall.

reaching all the way to the hayloft

I can clean the slanted ceiling easily as I can the stall walls

Yep, that's the tool for me.  Not a taped up extra broom handle with one length option.  Not a leaf blower that leaves me crippled up the next day (true story from a barn I worked at in 2015) from lifting that thing over my shoulder while bending backwards to look up in order to actually reach into the rafter with the blown air.  Just a simple household stairwell duster.

Nice and clean and bright.

A New eBay Addiction?

 I've owned Tupperware for a long, long time.  I'm pretty sure I made my first Tupperware party purchase back in 1990.  I received Tupperware for my wedding in 1993. I went to a few parties in the mid to late 90s, and hosted a Tupperware party of my own in 2000.  In the late 2000s I switched to buying glass containers for things I didn't all ready own that size of container for (like microwavable leftovers to go in lunch boxes), but I did not give up using the Tupperware that I own.  Yes, it's plastic, but it's Tupperware and you can't make me give it up.  LOL.

Through the decades, some of the lids have died.  Warped, melted, cracked. . . some through misuse (I confess to boiling a few lids in 1992 in the name of sterilization after a mouse invasion of our student rental while DH and I were gone home for Christmas break his 4th year of college. Plastic lid in boiling water, yeah, they didn't fit the bowls anymore after that.  Rookie mistake.) and the rest just due to repeated use through the years.  Used to be Tupperware had a lifetime guarantee (except if you boiled the lids or otherwise damaged them by your own stupidity) and you could call up your local Tupperware rep, give them the broken item and it would be replaced free of charge.  

In the late 2000s, it got harder and harder to find a Tupperware rep (my friend who was one moved to Wyoming, so that wasn't gonna work for replacements anymore), and I started to stockpile my increasing amount of cracked lids.  I hoped to find someone local who was a Tupperware rep that I could get together with and exchange my broken ones for new ones.  But, even looking online, I couldn't come up with anyone within an hour's drive.  At least, not one who got back to me about free replacements.

In late 2025, out of desperation (and wondering why I had about a dozen broken lids in a box, and corresponding containers in my cupboards that couldn't easily be used without a lid), I searched on the Tupperware site itself not for a local rep, but for info on how to turn in broken Tupperware for a free replacement.  And found zero about lids.  A little bit, here and there, about a few other items, but nothing about replacing lids.

I even tried looking up just coughing up cash for new lids that were the same sizes and shapes as the ones I needed to replace.  On the Tupperware site, I found pretty much nothing.  I could order all new sets of containers with lids, but I could not order just a lid.  

After several more months of soul searching "Do I give away all these lidless containers?  Do I keep trying to use them with plastic wrap or foil as a lid (which really didn't work for me)?" I hit upon an acceptable to me answer: Buy new (old, used, whatever I could get) lids on eBay.  So I made a list of the model (serial?) numbers that were on my broken ones, finally threw out the box of cracked lids, and started watching eBay for Tupperware lids.

When I find a few in the size that I'm looking for, I add them to my watchlist, then wait.  No impulse buying allowed.  I compare price plus shipping, figure up how much I want to spend on each individual item, and wait some more.  Often, within a few days of a listing being added to my watchlist, the seller will send me an offer.  If I feel that discounted price is within what I want to spend, I accept.  Otherwise, I keep waiting and search again for that particular size lid after a few weeks have gone by.

At first, it was nice to just have not cracked lids on things like my big square storage containers that I use as flour and sugar cannisters.  A replacement lid was appreciated.

But recently, I scored a new lid for my biggest Wonderlier bowl, the one whose lid I'd accidentally killed by boiling after the mouse incident of January 1992.  I was excited to finally have a lid for that again.  Not just any lid, but the exact shade of the one I'd warped beyond measure.  I put it on the bowl after using the bowl to mix up a batch of cookie dough that needed to be chilled, and seeing that bowl covered by it's proper lid (not plastic wrap! not aluminum foil!) again after 34 years brought me such a thrill!*

So much so that I immediately had to jump on eBay and see what else of my replacement lid list might currently be offered.  And, not only if it was offered, but if I could get it in the original color I'd had. Add to watchlist. Wait.

I might be addicted.

But no longer will I have perfectly usable Tupperware bowls and containers languishing in my cupboards for lack of a lid.

*You may be wondering why, if I ruined the lid in 1992, I didn't turn it in for a free replacement back in the 90s when there were still Tupperware parties going on frequently and I knew Tupperware reps.  Why did I wait until 2026 to replace the lid??  That's because in 1992 I didn't know about free replacement (and even if I had, technically it was my fault--and not the company's error-- that the lid needed replacing) and I threw the warped lid away.  Without a lid to turn in, I couldn't get a free replacement, and back in the 90s raising four kids there was rarely money to spare on a pricey (it seemed at the time) new lid when plastic wrap and aluminum foil could do the job (sorta, never to my satisfaction).

Make My Horse Life Easier Tip #8

I thought I would do a post on how I use up hay chaff from the loft during the winter rather than letting it accumulate and get moldy.  How often I do this really depends on the hay itself; some hays are more prone to producing chaff when the bales are moved around than others.  In general, I'd say once every six weeks or so I have enough chaff to fill a muck bucket (which, packed, is roughly equivalent to one flake of hay) and make the effort worthwhile.

My barn is a monitor-style, which means it has a two story center section, where the loft is located, and wings on both long sides that contain the stalls.  The sides of the loft are open to the stalls below.  On a barn where the loft floor does not open to the stalls below, this method of mine won't work (although you could open the loft door that goes to the outside and do the hauling up and down portion that way).

First, I rake all the chaff in a pile up in the loft.  I usually do this on a day when I've throw down hay for restocking the feed room.  There is an old metal-tined manure fork (circa 1980s) kept in the loft expressly for this purpose.

Back on the main floor of the barn, I grab a muck bucket (clean, of course), and thread a longe line through both handles, then clip it to itself.

Once that's done, I take the muck bucket (and looped up longe line) to the stall I'm going to put the chaff in, and I toss the longe line up into the loft.

Having done this, I go climb the ladder to the loft, and walk to where the longe line landed.

I use the longe line to haul the muck bucket up to the loft (it's too big to go up the ladder and through the hole in the loft floor where the ladder resides).

Loosening the line by sliding the clip along it, I pull it out of the way so that the opening in the muck bucket is unobstructed.

Then I fill it with hay chaff.  One nicely packed muck bucket of chaff is roughly equivalent to one decent sized flake of hay.  Good to know so you can accordingly reduce what you give that night at feeding time.

I adjust the longe line back over the top of the muck bucket, then using the line, lower in down into the stall below.

Once the muck bucket has reached the stall floor, I climb down the ladder out of the loft, and go dump the bucket in the corner where hay goes at feeding time.

.

This system does require a bit of climbing up and down the ladder, depending on how many buckets-worth of chaff is in the loft at the time.  But, I figure it has lots of benefits:

1. Good exercise!
2. Can be done on even a windy day (compared to tossing the chaff out the loft door to the ground below, then raking up and putting in the bucket for carrying to stalls).  Ditto rainy day.  Ditto snowy day.  Ditto day with horrendously muddy ground.
3. The chaff gets fed rather than piled up and allowed to mold for a once a year loft clean out just before putting in the new season's hay harvest.  So, more efficient use of hay/feed.
4. Since there's no mouldering chaff pile, the air quality in the barn is better.

I Just Want It Out of My House

 DH and I have lived at this little place here for not quite 22.5 years.  When we moved in, we had four kids.  At the time, we thought, coming from a house just around 1200 sq ft to this house with two stories and a basement totaling about 2700 sq ft, that we had a lot of stuff. 

I mean, it was six people's worth, right? Our old house had felt like it was bursting at the seams. And while it didn't fill our new house, it fit comfortably, but it still seemed like a lot.

Fast forward through four teenagers who accumulated more stuff, then four 'kids' that moved out and, except for one, moved back in again at least once, each of them bringing more stuff and sometimes more people and those people's stuff.  Not to mention the things DH and I accumulated over time: homesteading things, hobby things, crafting things. . . things we inherited when our grandmothers passed away. . .things for our grandchildren to sit in, eat on,  play with. . . things our own mothers have given to us from their own cleaning outs or helping to distribute usable goods of friends who have passed on from this world.

We did, over the course of 22 years, get rid of stuff we didn't think we needed to hold on to. Things that just didn't fit, or we already owned two of, or, honestly were not our taste. Yet, at this point, in 2026, my house is stuffed.  

Too stuffed.  Smotheringly stuffed.  I Hate It stuffed. Off and on, in the last five years, DH and I have tried to pare down what's here.  Kids who bought their first homes were told "Come get your stuff!" and, they did, for the most part, come look through what was left, take what they wanted, threw away what was unwanted/unneeded and unappealing to a second owner due to age or condition, and said "give away the rest".  

'The rest', is part of the issue here.  By leaving 'the rest', they passed on--to me-- responsibility for locating and transporting to it's proper passing on place.  There's also my own and DH's own stuff that is pass-on-able, that needs the same treatment: where to pass it on to?  How and when to get it there?

Some of it, I used to give away to various charities.  But in the last ten years or so, it seems that charities have gotten pickier about what they will accept.  You'd think a womens shelter would want clothing and bedding and towels. . . Around here, not so much.  They want those things only if brand new, not if used, and even more than brand new they'd rather just have cash.

Same with furniture, household, and children's items.  There are less places around me to give them to compared to a decade (or two) ago.  Yes, there's online give it away options, but I've found that posting things on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace these days is a real pain in the arse.  People want them, yes, but it takes time to weed through the replies, set up a day and time for pick up and then have the person no-show, so on to the next person who showed interest and start the whole process over again.

For big things, like some dressers I got rid of last summer (why have eight??? dressers in a house where only two people live?) I went through that frustrating rigamorole.  But there's such a volume of smaller things that it would be a full time job taking photos of and making postings for items then screening responses and arranging pick up appointments with people.

I just want it out of my house.  I don't want to have to clone myself in order to have time to do all my normal daily tasks plus deal with the rehoming of goods.  Honestly, there's some days I look at the piles and totes and stuffed closets and wish I had lower ethical standards and could just get a dumpster and spend a few hours tossing everything in, then happily wave goodbye when the trash company came and hauled the dumpster away.

But I can't.  Because I'm too frugal, too environmentally conscious, too aware that there are people out there, somewhere, who would love to have this stuff  perhaps even need some of it and can't afford to buy it from the second hand shops (like Goodwill, where we used to donate all our used but still usable clothes and housewares to).

I'm toying with the idea of having a 'free' sale this summer.  Although that's all the work of a garage sale with zero of the profits.  And, living in the boonies, garage sales around this little place here really don't draw a big enough attendance to solve the problem of getting rid of useful items we don't want/need anymore which was the whole reason to have a garage sale in the first place.

Earlier this winter, I did donate a large bag of coats and a second large bag of nice ladies clothing to the local food and clothing bank.  It didn't make a dent in the amount of things still here that would be perfectly useful to someone else.  I have several bags of bedding, towels, and old sweatshirts that animal rescues are happy to have.  Problem is, those animal rescues are all at least a half-hour drive from here, in directions that neither DH nor I have a reason to go in hardly ever.  And that's the moral dilemma again:

Trash?  It would be so much easier time-wise and in cost (gas, wear and tear on the vehicle used).  We hardly ever even half-fill our trash bin that gets picked up weekly, I could, over time throw away all these things without it costing more for trash removal.  But I know every item is a useful thing, and doesn't belong in a landfill yet.  Oh, the guilt of the thought of throwing it away rather than taking an hour or more of time, plus making an appointment for a specific day and time (and arranging my schedule around it) to drive it to a place that would make use of it.

Donate?  Where?  And when will I be in that area without a special trip and several hours devoted to just that?  This right here is the main reason I still have so much stuff that just needs to get out of my house.

I just want it out.

Things That Make Me Go "Hmmmm". . .

 Microplastics in the water supply.  It's a topic of more than one news article/news report in recent months.

And yet, advertisements for laundry detergent pods and dishwasher detergent pods abound.  Everybody seems to love them.  So convenient and easy to use.

Hello?  If we are alarmed by the scientific findings of microplastics in our water (and in our own body tissues), why are we using these handy pre-measured plastic-wrapped (a coating that 'dissolves' in water) things rather than scooping/measuring/pouring out powdered or liquid detergents ourselves?  Do we not wonder just where this 'dissolved' plastic from these pods goes to?

Things that do down the drain, be it the sink drain, toilet drain, shower drain, drain on the washing machine, don't just magically disappear.  They still exist.  

Maybe their existence is not something people on municipal water and sewer systems thing about?  At least, not as much as the people with private wells and septic systems they have to keep maintained think? 

Then again, I'm amazed at how many people who do have septic systems at their homes but don't have the foggiest idea what is 'good' to put down the drain and what is harmful to the septic system.  Can bacteria eat it, get nutrients from it, and easily break it down to a liquid?  That's generally 'good'.  Is it hard to dissolve/not organic and doesn't get eaten by bacteria?  That's gonna be a septic issue sooner or later that you'd rather not have to deal with.

And plastic?  It may dissolve, somewhat, in order for the contents of those little pods to be accessible for your washing machine and your dishwasher to clean your clothes or your dishes with.  But it's still in the water going down the drain.  And it's not nutritious for bacteria, even if they do try to ingest it.  While there, purportedly, are bacteria that do eat and 'break down' plastics into even smaller plastic particles, not all bacteria do.  And what eats, digests, or otherwise totally gets rid of those even smaller plastic particles that are the waste product of the plastic eating bacteria?

Hmmmm.  My brain hurts.  For decades, if not even a full century at this point, people got along just fine having to measure out their detergents.  It's really not that difficult.  So why can't we all just go back to doing that?  Probably, at this point in the big plastic-in-the-environment picture, it won't make a huge difference, but it would stop continuing addition of plastics into the water supply from that source.  Little things count.

Any Given Saturday

 Last Saturday, I was (again) home alone for the majority of the weekend.  While there were some 'must dos' on my list for the day, I decided to, for the most part, tackle whatever I felt like doing around those have to do items.  For funsies, I kept a list of everything I did that day.  (Well, not everything, as I obviously didn't record bathroom breaks or brushing my teeth and hair, getting dressed, etc).

Anyway, if you're bored interested, here's what my Saturday looked like on that given day:

I fed horses their breakfast.

I fed myself my breakfast: a couple pieces of ham (I'd put small baggies of 2-4 slices of ham into a gallon sized freezer bag and put them in the freezer last year for such purposes as this) and two chocolate chip pancakes (also from the freezer, leftover from last time the grandkids spent the night).

Then I boiled six eggs and when they were done in the hot water and ready for their cold soak, I 

-went out and turned out horses

-cleaned stalls

-replaced the grossly-full-after-less-than-a-month fly ribbons hanging above the horse stalls

Also before noon, I was able to 

-clean past-their-edible-phase fruits and veggies and non-meat leftovers from the fridge and put them in the compost bucket, which I dumped in the compost bin out by the garden

-clean out the still sorta edible (like not moldy or slimy or gross) but I wasn't going to eat it things like shriveled blueberries, leftover peas (I'd already had some of the peas twice that week), and overripe watermelon from the fridge and give it to the chickens, which I let out of their coop at that time.

-wash and hang two loads of laundry on the clothesline 

-ran down the road to look at some hay I'd been offered to buy off the wagon after it was baled later that day (same family that does my hay was cutting and baling a neighbor's field about two miles away)

-rinsed my cucumbers that had been doing a limewater soak the three times rinsing and resoak in clean water 1 hour each time called for by my go-to customized dill pickle recipe

-set up the canner to heat the water to a boil and also set up another pot with the vinegar, water, canning salt and turmeric brine to simmer.

Then I fed myself lunch, which was two more pieces of ham from that breakfast baggie and some thin-sliced smoked gouda cheese made into a grilled ham and cheese sandwich on homemade bread with about a dozen sweet cherries on the side.

Wow!  I was kind of amazed when I looked at my documented activities from the morning.  Not bad.  I actually had done a lot and wasn't feeling tired/overworked yet.  So I continued after lunch.

I made deviled eggs with three of those hard boiled eggs I'd cooked that morning; the other three eggs I left for eating on salad in the coming days.

I peeled and sliced some short but fat cukes from the garden and made them into refrigerator pickles for DH to enjoy after he returned home on Sunday.

I canned dill pickles made from those cucumbers I'd limed the night before and rinsed that morning.  Three quarts and one pint worth.

While waiting on the canner, I emptied the dishwasher of clean dishes, swept the mudroom and kitchen, and vacuumed the living and dining rooms plus DH's home office.

After that I tallied up how much it had cost to raise the broiler chickens this year.  DS2 and DD1 each had wanted me to raise a few for them with promises that they'd reimburse me the costs of each bird they took.  I was unhappy to find that it cost me $18 per bird--although each bird weighed between 5 & 6 pounds after processing--because my original guesstimate based on last year's costs was only $13-14 per bird.  That extra $3 per bird processing fee having to not use my planned on processor really was a hit.  All the other price increases--like on feed and the purchase price of the chicks themselves--were tiny compared to that.

Plus, I also

-moved a dresser we don't need/use from the upstairs down to the garage so I can get rid of it (will list on local free pages)

-emptied the water in the dehumidifier

-weeded the four rows of peppers in the garden and 4 of the 6 rows of cucumbers

-walked to the mailbox and got the mail

-fed myself dinner of a salad and a protein bar (too hot to feel hungry)

By then it was time to bring in the horses and feed them their dinner.  Once that was done, I

-picked beans, cucumbers and zucchini

-made a chocolate zucchini cake

-loaded the dishwasher

-shut in chickens and gathered eggs

-sat on the porch swing and read Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts while listening to cicadas singing in the nearby trees

--ate a big hunk of zucchini cake still warm from the oven (YUM!)

 And that was what I did with my Saturday.

Happy Things This Week

 While I may not have taken any days off, or gone anywhere that would be considered fun this week (I do not consider the grocery store fun), and I was incredibly busy all week, that doesn't mean it was a bad, draining, unhappy week.

Am I exhausted, sitting here typing this on Friday evening?  Oh heck yes, I'm ready for a twelve hour snooze (as if that ever happens, even on the rare vacation).  The heat and humidity are ramping back up, and I certainly feel that pressure on my body.  But, as tired as I am, I can still see things that made me happy.

For one,--and don't judge me for the first picture, which is partly a before and partly an in-progress photo--I got the master bath shower scrubbed.  It hadn't had a good scouring in about a year (and, honestly, not even a half-assed one in six months or more) and was looking pretty skanky. Gotta love well water, especially iron-rich well water (and yes, we do have a water softener but it can only accomplish so much. . . )  

Part of the lapse was because I was out of my go-to wonderful shower cleaner, and found out several months later that it had been taken off the market (it was pretty potent stuff, so probably not the greatest environmental- or health-wise, but dang it did a good job with hard water stains.)  A different brand was finally recommended to me by someone else who has very hard water, and I was able to get ahold of some of that to try.

Before/During

The after picture looks much more appetizing.  'New' brand did the trick, although it says no scrubbing needed, just spray on and wipe away and I most definitely had to scrub, even with a scrub brush in some areas. Now to keep it this way. Perhaps a monthly cleaning will only require a spray on and wipe away. . . 

After

 I didn't, technically, enjoy scrubbing out that nasty shower, but I am loving how bright, clean, shiny and generally more pleasant it is now!  (Do you think I can give myself a cash bonus equal to what it would have cost to pay someone to do this unpleasant task?)

Much more fun than taking a mineral deposited shower back to pristine brightness (or as close as it gets after almost 22 years of use), was cutting a bunch of black eyed Susans from the front flower bed and bringing them inside to beautify the dining room table.  

The 'vase' is actually an antique blue glass Ball canning jar that previously belonged to DH's paternal grandmother. When she died about 20 years ago her daughters divided up her canning jars and, since they knew I was the only one of this generation (the grandchildren) who cans and preserves food like they do, they shared some with me.  The blue ones I don't use for canning, but use them for display instead.

I have been trying to get DH (and myself) to eat salad of some type--not counting pasta salads-- at least three times a week all summer.  We had an especially colorful one with our dinner the other night (along with marinated and grilled chicken breast from one of our freshly butchered broilers).

After not being home enough the last three weeks to work on anything in the Finish The Tack Room category, DH installed the light fixture I'd bought for it.  It's LED and SO BRIGHT!  But I wanted bright, like full sun daylight bright, because 1) it's a 12' ceiling and 2) there's going to be a 18" or 24" wide shelf around three of the four walls at approximately 6-7' from the floor for storing totes of out of season or otherwise not used daily/weekly horse-related stuff and that shelf is going to kinda block light coming from above.

This is the light I got, with two moveable panels so that I can kind of aim the light 'under' the future shelf, which is where the saddles and bridles will be stored.

Last Sunday evening, DH and I had a small campfire (really to burn some brush and paper garbage we'd accumulated), and while sitting out there watching the fire, I was able to do some knitting.  

Back in March, when we'd taken K3 and Toad to Sedona on Spring Break for a hiking trip, I had started working on a new pair of socks.  It pretty much got a few inches knit on that trip, and then I didn't touch it on a regular basis after Easter.  However, it was to a point that two hours of knitting on Sunday brought me to the needed foot length for beginning the toe decreases. And once you start the toe decreases, well, you get kind of obsessed about just finishing the dang sock already!

I finished the toe and grafted it closed last night while DH was watching TV.  So now I have one sock knit this entire year! Woo Hoo! I'm hoping to at least find a half hour someday soon to cast on and get the cuff knit for it's mate; maybe by Christmas I'll have a pair I can wear.  The yarn is some Trekking XXL that I've had in my stash for probably 10 years.  So if I make it into socks, does that count as decluttering my house?

What 'simple' joys did you find in your week this week?

Make My Horse Life Easier Tip #2

 This is another tip in regards to polo wraps.  I discovered, a while ago, that if I hung my used, sweaty/wet from dew, polo wraps on the hayloft ladder, the breeze coming in the front door of the barn would typically dry them by the time I returned for the night feeding.  Cleanish ones (ie, just damp from dew or sweat) could then be rerolled for use in the next training session.  Dirty ones could go in the house to the laundry and not become a yucky, damp, and potentially mildewy mess by the time I had several sets of polos in need of washing. (Especially helpful when the Poetess wasn't getting worked but once or twice a week and it took awhile to get a load of horse laundry built up.)

When DH built me the new hayloft ladder, I was happy to discover that it not only does the same drying task handily, but that it also performs another service: it holds the wraps fairly taut when I reroll them. Having them be taut makes the task so much easier!  

I attribute the difference in tension when rerolling to the fact that the old ladder was propped up and at more of an angle than the new ladder, which is installed pretty much vertically.  Whatever the reason, I'm loving how handy it is for both drying and rerolling the wraps.

So, for those of you who might also use polo wraps on your horses, and who have a ladder in your barn, my tip is to put the ladder to use as a wrap dryer!

Low-Key Cleaning

 Recently, DH said to me "I have an idea, kind of a New Year's Resolution but let's start on April 1st, since the year began almost four months ago.  My idea is, everyday, let's find something to throw away.  Something that's been laying around that is either junk, or broken that we're never going to fix since we haven't all ready, or things we don't even know why they're here anymore."

Since he's usually one to not clean until he gets this fit to clean an entire room/garage/basement NOW and it takes an entire day or weekend and involves me no matter what I'd actually had in mind for that day/weekend, I though this dispose of one thing per day idea was a great one.  Something that's low-key, should be fairly easy to maintain, and over time will result in less clutter.  Plus, it's a good way to start a new habit: looking at what he/we tend to save and learn to let go of it sooner rather than years (or decades) later.

So far, so good.  Some days I see two things and I throw them both away rather than saving one for tomorrow.  And he's managed to see/find one thing each day no matter how busy his day is; like the day he had to go to work in person plus had a Board of Ed meeting that evening and was gone from home 11 hours of the 16 he was awake.

I have to admit, in case the obvious trash-bound items start to get harder to see on casual observation, I jotted down a list of things to look through, or places to look for long-forgotten unnecessary items.  Like the drawers in the low-table that's been down in the basement for about a decade and a half.  What's even in those drawers??  I haven't opened them in at least five years.  More than likely everything in there can go.

Since we tend to keep stuff until it's totally worn out, and even beyond that point, most of our destined for the trash can items are not in any condition to rehome. "Good" stuff with life left in it is going in a different place; a box that will either be donated to a charitable organization or listed online for free/cheap once a month.

Another low-key cleaning method I find myself employing when I don't want to be overwhelmed by the concept of doing one room top-to-bottom (mostly in the case of decluttering a room) is what I think of as stream-of-consciousness  cleaning.  I'll start in a room and say "What doesn't belong in here?"  Then I'll pile together anything in that category that go together in a different place (say, papers needing to be filed).  I usually end up with a couple of piles. Once I've been around the room, I'll take the biggest pile and put it in the room it actually goes in. While I'm there, if I see something in that room that doesn't belong, I'll grab it and put it in the spot/room it does belong.  Then I'll return to the first room, grab another pile, and repeat the process.  

If I actually get the first room done, all piles removed and put away properly, if I still feel like cleaning or have time in my designated cleaning time slot to spare, I'll look around whatever room I ended up in (the final pile from the first room) and ask myself the key question "What doesn't belong in here?" And the pile-making begins again.

It's kind of backward from what most cleaning gurus recommend to do, but sometimes it's the only way I can stay motivated to finish a room.  By leaving the room even for a few minutes and then coming back to it, I feel less like it's a dreaded task I have to fulfill and more like something I want to do during that time slot.  Like I'm not restricted to that spot until the room is spic and span (which makes cleaning feel like a dreaded task) but that I'm free to come and go at will, as long as I take something with me and put it away while I'm gone.

Yarn Thief, the Mighty Sheet Hunter

 There's a game the Yarn Thief and I play each week when I change the sheets on my bed. For some reason, she loves it when I take the old sheets off and put the new sheets on.  She watches, with huge eyes and a swishing tail, as I strip the bed.

Then, as soon as I grab the clean fitted sheet and start to unfold it, she leaps onto the bed and starts grabbing at the corners. Often times, I manage to get the sheet unfolded and spread out onto the bed, then tuck in the corners without encountering a claw.  Other times, there's blood shed.

Typically, the Yarn Thief ends up between the fitted sheet and the mattress.  She'll sit there, an unmoving lump, until she hears me step away to get the top sheet. Before I can start unfolding the top sheet, she shimmies herself, under the fitted sheet, to one edge of the bed and pops out onto the floor. Where she readies to spring into action for battle with the top sheet as I try to smooth it out onto the bed.

After that, it's a race to see if I can get the top sheet centered, smoothed, and tucked in without her claws finding my fingertips.   Some times I win.  Other times, I try not to bleed on the clean sheets.

Repeat with the blanket, but not the quilt, as that one is heavier and doesn't lend itself to being shifted into crookedness by her paws.  She does, however, like to be made into the bed and will sit under the quilt until she hears me walking out of the room.  At which point she will crawl out from under the quilt and settle herself on top of it for a nap.

Until next week, when the game starts again.

To Find Order, First You Must Make a Mess

At least, that's how it seems to go for me. Whenever I'm doing a deep clean, or reorganization, or just plain trying to get things back into the system that works for me (versus reacting to everyone else or everyone else cramming their stuff willy nilly into my system. . .) things get messy before they get clean.

DH has been working long hours again lately, including days away traveling. So, I took that opportunity to trash our living room.

Well, destroying the living room wasn't really the intent, but it was a side effect of the project.  What I really was focused on was cleaning out the closet in the 'sewing room' aka my sons' old bedroom aka the bedroom Toad sleeps in when the grandkids are here overnight.  Through the last several years that room and closet have become increasingly crammed with stuff.  Most of it intended for sewing or knitting or quilting, but yet, it was a jumbled chaotic mess.

First, I pulled out all the bags and boxes and piles of old jeans (worn out at the knees, or in the thighs, or with broken zippers) that my grown children have graciously bestowed on me in the last handful of years.  They knew that no longer wearable jeans are the base material for denim quilts, and that I'd also mentioned maybe trying my hand at throw rugs made from jeans, so of course they would gift me with this resource rather than tossing them in the trash.

Except that with the exception of the quilt I made DD1 & Honorary Son for Christmas, I hadn't made a jean quilt since 2008.  For the Christmas quilt, I used part of a bin of old jeans that have been around that long.  Ones I'd already cut the unusable parts off of.  So the 'new' old jeans that have come in since 2014--when I cut up the other batch and put them in the bin-- ended up in a hodge podge of piles, cartons, etc. Where ever they could be stuffed at the time that the sewing room/bedroom needed to be usable for an overnight guest.

What I ended up with, once I'd rooted around and found every last pair of jeans, was a pile more than knee deep on my living room floor.

whole lotta jeans

 A pile that I commenced to reducing by cutting off the unusable parts, and setting aside the legs, which are what I sew with.  That tallied two 13-gallon size trash bags of scrap to throw away, and an entire 18-gallon tote of denim for future quilts or rugs.

trash

denim fabric

Once that task was done, I moved on to my stash of fabric.  Again, I rooted through the closet (and piles here and there about the house) until I found every last piece of fabric.  All of it went to the living room where it was sorted by type: cotton for quilting/sewing, canvas/duck, flannel, corduroy, fleece, etc; and by color.  I have so much fabric!!  Way too much fabric.  But, that's what happens when things become a disorganized mess and you don't know what you have.  Plus, well, I have grandkids and cute fabric is cute fabric and I can't resist buying fat quarters and entire yards with the intention of making it into something the grandkids will love.

It's a good thing I did this while DH was out of town, because I had fabric everywhere while I sorted it.  The living room really wasn't usable for sitting or watching TV for a couple of days.

DH definitely could not have sat in his chair

or on the loveseat

or the couch (except for note "my" spot is clean, so I can knit, LOL!)

Even the ironing board got brought down to the living room temporarily.

While the sewing room and closet aren't totally done yet, all the major stuff in them (jeans, fabric, and old stained & outgrown knit shirts--for future rag rugs), have been sorted through and organized by kind.  It's a good start on reclaiming use of my sewing room.  Although, honestly, I've been thinking for over a year now that maybe I should move my sewing space into the basement (maybe once DD1 has moved all her belongings and household goods from it to her own house) and set up the sewing room with bunk-beds, toy box and bookshelves and turn it into a grandkids visiting space.

Yarn Along: March

I am joining Ginny today for the monthly Yarn Along.

In the past month, I've done quite a bit of knitting.  I started two projects: a pair of Cadence socks with the yarn my Mom sent home with me in early February, and a Beachcomber shawl destined to become a birthday present for Surprise next month.

My intent was to work on them simultaneously; on the socks because I'd gotten the urge to make socks while finishing the Kempii shawlette I talked about in February's yarn along post, and on the Beachcomber shawl when I was in need of something with larger needles. No hurry on either one as long as the shawl was finished in April.

What I found was that once I'd started the shawl, it was quite addictive with it's color changes, stripes, and lace panels and I pretty much worked on that alone until it was finished in less than two weeks.  It is still in need of blocking, but looks pretty good even without it.

I really loved the ease of this pattern, and just the whole look of the shawl.  It's big, asymmetrical, and being knit in a cotton/linen blend, is lightweight for the size.  I envision making at least one more of these--DD1 saw it in the works and loved it--and have a new color combo in mind for one for myself (someday).

Once that was off my needles, I turned back to my barely started sock for Mom.  I had made these socks before, for myself, and once I got into the charted part of the pattern, I remembered that these, too, are addictive knitting.  The charts are easy to follow and knit up pretty quickly.  So quickly that I'm nearly done with the first sock.

Kind of funny that when I made them the first time, in 2016, I talked about how I'd probably make this pattern again in the future.  You see, when I went to give my Mom her fingerless gloves for her birthday, I happened to be wearing my Cadence socks.  And when she gave me this current skein of yarn and requested that I make her a pair of socks 'when I had time', I asked if she had a particular pattern in mind.  She replied: "I like the ones you have on.  Could you make a pair like those?" So, I guess it's fate that I am making Cadence socks now.

In addition to a lot of knitting, I apparently did a lot of reading this past month too.  In the photo above, you can see the book I am currently reading: Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver.  I have read some of her books before, and enjoyed them, but because of the topics and tone (so real) I have to be in the right frame of mind to read her works.   This one is really good so far, and yet personally touching me in a way that makes me hope I can continue the book all the way through; I might have to set it aside for a while.

The books I read and finished since the last yarn along are:

1. The Girl on the Dancing Horse  about Olympian Charlotte Dujardin.  It was interesting, yet not quite what I had thought it would be.
2. How to Walk Away by Katharine Center.  This book I could not put down!  I literally stayed up until 1:30 in the morning to finish it--and I am not a night owl.  I will definitely be looking for more books by this author.
3. Naughty on Ice by Maia Chance.  Another Prohibition Era murder mystery by the author I discovered last fall.  Her books are funny and intriguing.
4. Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. She is another author that I greatly enjoy.  The depth of her stories is amazing.  I cannot imagine the hours of research she must put into her fiction-yet-almost-nonfiction story lines.

I've also thumbed through, but not yet read, the latest issue of Taproot, Issue 31: REVIVE.  In it, I found the perfect pattern for a needed item I'd recently told DH I wanted to make: little knit coasters for under the metal feet of his recliner.  I'd crocheted some (kind of ugly and very free hand thought up with no pattern) years ago for under the legs of our couch, but did not make any after purchasing his chair.  It had occurred to me, a few weeks ago, that those little coasters not only keep the couch legs from scratching the wooden floor, they also make it really easy for me to slide the couch out and back when I want to clean/mop underneath it.  Something I cannot do alone: move DH's big heavy recliner to clean underneath it.

Wouldn't you know that this newest issue of Taproot has a pattern for knit hexagons (which are knit in the round, then blocked into hexagonal shape) to make afghans, hot pads, throws, etc out of.  At approximately 6" in diameter, and left as circles, they are the perfect size and thickness for furniture coasters.  Yesterday, I made three, and today I am working on the fourth.  Then I'm going to get DH to tip up his chair so I can put them under the feet, and forever more I shall be able to slide that chair around to clean the floor underneath!

Blessing in Disguise

Injuring my wrist has been frustrating.  It has really limited the sorts of things I can get done around this little place here, just when there are tons of outdoor and indoor tasks needing to be taken care of.  Anything involving pushing or pulling with my right hand is out.  Anything involving carrying more than a few pounds with my right hand is out.   So, no weeding, no scrubbing, no kneading bread, no carrying of furniture or boxes as DD2 packs and leaves for school and DD1 unloads the rest of her boxes and furniture that she is moving in.  No stacking firewood, no carrying rocks from the area by the road that DH is cleaning up of dead trees and brush and discovered a rock pile just under the surface.

But on the other hand, it has been a blessing in disguise.  I have had a lot of downtime since I can't be physically going all out like I normally do when there is so much work to be done.  I've used that downtime for a lot of mental tasks, such as planning and researching.  I've also been able to keep up on the food processing that so far needs to be done.  

Peas have been picked, shelled, blanched, and packaged for the freezer.

Green beans have been picked, topped and tailed, snapped, and canned in the pressure canner. It's been a few years since I actually canned beans, and boy, was I so glad yesterday that I had gotten down to business and processed this current batch.  The kitchen smelled so good, of canning beans, and it took me back to summer days in southeastern Ohio helping my grandmother put up green beans.  Some great memories there.

The handful of ripe cucumbers were caught at the perfect size for making refrigerator pickles, rather than getting overlooked until they are golden yellow because I was too busy weeding and working to do a daily check of the cucumber row.

I've picked my Red Haven peach tree at just the right moment, and been rewarded with delicious, juicy peaches to eat fresh, to can, and even to share with a friend.

Broccoli heads are cut at the right time, instead of several days or a week later, when I have to cut out the open flower buds.

I've 'found' zucchini before it gets to baseball bat size.  We've even eaten small ones in shish kebabs on the grill!

On the planning front, I've spent time with both daughters helping them sort through their things and decide which items they no longer want or need, which items they use regularly, and which items are things they don't use now but will in the future that can be better stored in the attic than in the house.  Slowly, this house is getting a little less cluttered, and I'm feeling a little less anxious.  I feel like, bit by bit, I'm getting things back under control again.

Also on the planning front, I've made a few lists of easy projects DH and I can do to help finish rooms and make them more functional.  It's hard to believe that we've lived here nearly 14 years and still have a woeful lack of storage and use of vertical space.  All those 'little' things that we said we could finish once we moved in, yet life with four kids happened and so we either had no time or no money (or both!) to work on those seemingly inconsequential things like the floor to ceiling bookshelf for the study, or an actual room with walls for the laundry room (instead of a counter held up by 2" x 4"s butted up against the washer and dryer in one corner of the basement).  Even a nice shelf or two in one of the bathrooms would help it operate more easily and look less messy (and keep the floor and counter area empty for quick cleaning and washing on a regular basis).

I've even done a little bit of knitting on the sock I started in Alaska.

When I first injured my wrist, I was really overwhelmed at the thought of how far behind I was going to get in chores.  But, really, while I'm behind in some things, I've gotten ahead in others.  And, since DH feels kind of like he's to blame for my injury (I'd asked him to have DS1 come help instead of me having to lug furniture into the house), he's been helpful on the important tasks, and not complaining about the ones that are being left undone until my wrist is healed.