Back to the garden

My garden is awesome but a little slow because it's been so cool. We just started to get tomatoes.
My son brought me two lugs of blueberries and two boxes of peaches from the Amish store this afternoon. I froze the blueberries already and now on to making peach salsa.
Then I think I will take a break from cleaning and organizing, even though I really don't want to, and make pickle relish and pickled cucumbers, pickled beets. And then hopefully by then the tomatoes will be really coming on and I can start on those. dh has been talking about bringing me corn also. My blogging days will probably come to a stand still, I'll try to twitter about it all though.
For recipes I tend to use the Ball Blue Book. The peach salsa recipe I got online from google. Haven't tried it yet but it looks very promising.

Laundry Revamp

Today is Laundry Day and I'm very happy to go down and get caught up. We had a busy weekend and NO laundry kept up. I'll probably have to rewash whatever is in the washer. But I think I can hang out. The forecast doesn't call for more rain but it does look cloudy and foggy out right now. I'll take a chance.

Our laundry system was not working like it used to for a few months. My chief laundry person had added goat milking and cheese making to her daily duties and she wasn't able to keep up with it all. We reassigned duties early in the summer and I drew the laundry card with an able assistant.

For a month I did the laundry and quickly realized that our family had outgrown the current system. Plus we had a big problem of 5 girls using the floor of their bedroom to store their clothes. We called it the Floordrobe. I know that this is a common problem among young girls. We also have a little girl, sometimes more than one, that changes her clothes on whim. She might wake up and put on a Cinderella dress and be a princess. After breakfast she decides to put on something else. Then two hours later when her activity changes she changes her clothes again. Then she has some sort of messy experience and changes her clothes again. And most of these clothes are returned to the Floordrobe.

Two things inspired my revamp:

In the spring I had visited a friend's home and she showed me her inventory system. I had heard about her sytsem for years and finally, I got the tour. : ) A little bit of background must be laid first. Her husband has a business in which he needs a very large shop. Several years ago, they built a shop with a an office on one end of the building. They chose to live in the office part of their building until they build a house. Last I heard, they might not build a house, their living arrangements are working out very nicely. If a person didn't know that their home was built to be a on office, you wouldn't know it, it's very nice and homey. At the back of their home there is an inventory system where they keep anything and everything. Think about an auto parts store. Shelving from floor to ceiling. If I remember right she has 3 sets of shelving, each about 15 feet long. She is a very organized lady and has everything in place. Anything that you would stick in a cupboard or closet somewhere in your home, she has in her inventory system. This room is right off of her kitchen. Kitchen tools, cookbooks, homeschooling books and supplies, and her family's clothes. Each person has a dirty laundry basket, hang up clothes area, and shelves for the rest right there in the shelving system. Also in her inventory room are her washer and dryer and her desk area. The floor is cement but it has a radiant heat system in it so it's not cold in the winter. The room is well lit, looks easy to keep clean, and like I've said, VERY organized. I was in awe. I wouldn't want to build a house either with this system in place. It was inspiring.

The other motivating thing that happened to me this summer was simply a conversation with another friend. She also had a passel of little girls who liked to change their clothes frequently and a floordrobe. She decided to keep all of her girls' clothes in the laundry room. The little fashion-istas clothes were put up high and required assistance to retrieve. Now she isn't rewashing clean clothes. There is no floordrobe. Less time washing, less time folding, less time restoring order to girls' rooms, less time getting irate with little girls. She had bought more shelving at Sam's Club in case you're curious.

A month ago or so, I set aside two days to redo the laundry room. It took me four days and a trip to Walmart for more Sterlite tubs. 4 days of early in the morning straight through to supper time. I was on a dedicated mission!
Our laundry room is the unfinished part of the basement measuring about 15 x 30. On the north are walk-out steps to my clothes line. Also on the north side are the washer and dryer (Bosch before anyone asks, and I like them a lot). On the east side are two deep freezes, and above that is a pipe hung from the rafters the whole length of the room that I hang the guys' shirts, out of season coats, any hang-up clothes that come out of the washer and/or dryer, and now the girls church dresses. On the south side is a door to the "fruit room", that's where I keep canned food and store garden produce in the winter. It's worthy of another post someday. On the west wall is the door to the playroom/family room and stairwell, shelves and cupboards for kitchen things that aren't frequently needed and take up big space, the furnace, water softener, water heater, etc. I had storage shelves and thought I needed more to revamp my system but I didn't! I sent a bunch of junk to Goodwill. The boys' clothes have been stored in the Laundry Room for years and that worked great. I also had tubs full of hand me downs and out of season clothes. They were organized--I thought, but once started I had quite a job to do.

I first moved all my shelving into a long row down the middle of the room. The shelves were not efficiently arranged before. Then I started going through tubs. I gave each size it's own tub. And of course sorted by boy/girl. In the middle level of shelving are all the current sizes, each person knows their tub. In the tub, winter is on the bottom, summer on the top. So far it's working out. I had some questions about that arrangement. The big girls' clothes were so large that they have boxes for their winter and their summer clothes. Out of season and off size clothing tubs are stored on the high shelf or the bottom shelf. We have a tub for girls' swim gear and another for guys. That has been handy for swimming outings, we just grab the entire boxes. There are two dressers that make up the end of my inventory row that sit back to back. One for each of the big boys.
When I went through the old boxes there were clothes that were, for example, size 8 but in the size 6 box. More often than not it was because the size 8 was inappropriately sized. I took my Sharpie and put a 6 on the tag. Some clothes had the tags cut out and I had to guess. A person could take a clothing marker and mark the size. I just left them. They know who wears what and I'm the chief laundry person and know also.
One other discovery I made was that some sizes have way too many clothes. Sizes 8 and 10 in girls are two that I can think of off hand. I left the boxes exploding but it's something I will tackle when the seasons change. That's typically when we throw out the stained, holey, worn out clothes with a vengeance. I only keep the best. Interestingly, there were tons more girls than boy clothes in the hand-me-down boxes.
I made a tub of winter dress shoes for the girls, a tub of summer girls' shoes that didn't currently fit anyone, and a tub of athletic shoes. I used a tall laundry hamper for boots. And I had an assortment of shoes that didn't have matches. I kept them for now because I suspect that when we get the rest of the house cleaned and organized, they will appear.
And sometime I need to asses all the shoes in the garage and make a workable system for that mess!

We've had this system for a good month and it's been working well. I taught them to go to their box to get their clothes and then take them and a towel to the bathroom before their shower. After the shower they are to hang up their towel and throw their dirty clothes down the clothes chute. So far so good except in the girls' bathroom BUT that room is on the list that Mom is visiting very soon! They need some lessons on throwing their dirty laundry down and some consequences enforced. It's going to happen this week.
I'm going to spend the day down their and I look forward to it! Last week I thoroughly cobwebbed and swept and wiped so this week the cleaning will be easier.

At one time I had severly limited the number of towels in the house and bought special embroidered towels for each person. We need to return to that system. That would help out with the amount of towel laundry!

A halt until next week

Yesterday we had an extremely successful morning cleaning the house. We're not done yet, but we had cousins overnight and for a play day today. I really doubt that anything big will get accomplished until next week.
No pics yet, my resident photographers are too busy and I am too.
You'll have to imagine about the house.
We built it ten years ago when we had four small children. After adding a couple of children we quickly realized one big problem. The mudoom was built for a family of 4 that lived in town and did not get muddy. In the last ten years we have rearranged and rearranged to accommodate a big family. It hasn't stopped yet. We just moved the big girls bedroom.

It is a two story house with a basement so three levels. There is a front porch. You walk into the living room which is to not have any toys. But of course they wander in there. The living room has two wing chairs and an antique sofa that I got for $40 at an auction last spring. It weighs a ton but matches the room perfectly. There is a table between the wing chairs that we put current reading material on. There is also an antique pie safe that we call Sarah Margaret because it belonged to my husband's great great great grandmother or something like that and came to Iowa in a covered wagon. I keep special dishes in it. Opposite the wing chairs is the piano and beside the piano is a small book shelf full of music. And the guitars. On the east wall is a big wardrobe where we keep our "town coats". It has a hard floor that looks like walnut wood but is not. We tore up 9 years of disgusting carpet last winter and put in this laminate. I love the laminate floor. It's not as pretty as wood but I have learned... many things. There is a wool area rug. We use the piano bench for seating when we gather in this room. It's pretty much "company" room.
When you walk in the front door there is also stairs that go up to the second floor.

From the front door you also see across the Living Room straight into the Dining Room/Kitchen. This is a big room 15 x 24+. The Dining Room part has a ten foot table that we had specially built the same year that we built the house. It has been through a lot with a big family but we can refinish it someday. : ) On the walls in the Dining Room are a white board where we put up current projects, our prayer list, verses we're memorizing, notable quotes, vocabulary words etc. There is another smaller whiteboard that always has a scripture to memorize on it. On one wall is another pie safe that I keep good dishes in. And another dish cupboard that is glass fronted on the top, has a buffet, and then cupboards below. I keep our tea party things in the top behind glass and in the cupboards below I keep the preschool activities that we use during school time. The Dining Room/Kitchen have a hard wood floor that we put in when we built the house. I love it. It has taken a lot of abuse and still looks pretty good. We can refinish it someday. : )

The other end of the room is the kitchen. It has one wall of doors to the pantry, the basement, and the library (the south wall). Two walls are typical kitchen(north and east walls). In between is a 6 foot bar that I love. It is an awesome workspace. There is also a deck off of this room (north wall). Also on the east wall is the entry to the mudroom. In the mudroom is another frig (where the washer and dryer used to be) and a big utility sink. We use the frig for milk and cheese, and the sink is for washing the milking equipment. There is another sink for handwashing which each person is to do whenever they walk in the garage door. And there is a toilet/shower room.

Off the south wall of the kitchen is an entry to the Library. There is a very short hall with a closet. The closet was originally intended for coats but I don't think I ever used it for coats. Matt put shelves in and it has been a place for my 5 gallon buckets of grains (on the floor) and large pots etc. on the shelves.

In the Library: The west wall is a desk where my computer is. It is about ten steps from the stove. So I can check email and cook oatmeal in the morning. ; )
There is also a door on the west wall to the Entry/Living Room. But it's not used and a lot of time it is blocked off with whatever the current arrangement of the room is. I have put the big boys in here for school on occasion. On the south wall is a CD shelf. A cart with the copier, Phonics Museum box, paper supplies, laminator, etc. On the East and North wall are built-in bookshelves with cupboards on the bottom third. These are awesome and I'm so glad we did that when we built the house. This room was on the "plan" as a dining room. It was quite obvious at the time that it was small and made for a family of 4. Total. And maybe the family of 4 could have 2 guests.
A couple of years ago we sorted all the books, categorized them by genre and time period, and put stickers on the spines. I can't remember the name of the store where I got the stickers but it was online and it was a library store. The best stickers were the long ones that you could write more on. I gave the time periods a long sticker and then a circle sticker for the type of book Reference, Fiction, etc. You could also get stickers that were specifically for Biography, Classic, etc. The stickers changed things dramatically around here. People could find what they were looking for quickly and it made returning books to the right place easier. That said, there were about a hundred books lurking in corners that didn't get labled but eventually made their way to the library. And we bought more books. Yes I am a bibliophile.

Back to the Dining Room: At the west end of the room is the entry to the "family room". For eight years it was the family room and we did school around the dining room table. But a year ago we moved all the furniture down into the basement play room, tore up the disgusting carpet, put in laminate floor (looks like unstained pine), and turned it into our school room. It is another thing that I am very happy we did. One of the biggest reasons why is that when we all go into the room on school days our brains change course and we all put our heads down and get a lot accomplished. I didn't see that happen at the table. I'm not saying that learning did not occur at the table. We did school around the table for 8 years plus the years in our old falling down house. But we really switch gears when we walk into the new "school room". The school room has bookshelves, desks, tables, and the wood stove that we heat the house with. I painted a black board on the wall and an alphabet. Above one window I painted a scripture verse. It's a fun room.

That is the first floor and all I have time for today. And it's clean! Except for the library which I did not finish the other day. But I'll come back to it next week! Unless my sister and sister-in-law want to help me today. They are book lovers. They might want to. I hope they do. Please, pretty please?

Too much to chew

Yes, I am trying to squeeze too much in.
No, the condition of the house is worse than I thought. Instead of a day for each area, I need a week. Or, I work a bit in each area each day?
Think Think Think

I'll take a look at the Worse Case Scenario Handbook.
Yes, every room in the house is a mess.

When you get irate during the day about an area of the house that is not working for you or a chore that the children should know how to do but aren’t doing, then instead of losing your temper, write it down. By writing it down you can let it go and not be bothered by it all day. You can say, “I will make a plan for fixing ____ later.” Then smile. At the end of the day or on Office Day you will take this paper and you will make a plan for how you are going to address the problem.

Yes, that is me--irate.

Pray with the children for God’s help in restoring your home.

Ah, ha.

Set your timer and work for 15 minutes.

Forgot about the timer!!!


OK, I'm printing it off and this will be the plan for today.


Did I really write that Worst Case Scenario Handbook?

Office Day

Today is not my Town Day. I'm staying home again. YEAH! I am so happy to stay home and focus all the things that need done here! Yippeeee!

Today I am going to have an Office Day. I have two drawers of things to deal with and stacks on my desk. Our kitchen junk drawer fell apart and everything from the drawer was put into boxes which were then put in our Library/Office. There is also a big box of garden stuff that for some reason is also here. Toys. A stack of school stuff having to do with the oldest son's transcript preparations and college. Two big stacks of 4-H paraphernalia. Party supplies. An old car seat. And last but not least the brand new flooring that was supposed to be installed in this room LAST FALL. hahahahhahahahaha

I have two goals:
To empty the drawers and pay all the bills
and
Put everything away so that this room is ready to have the flooring installed. Then nobody can blame it on me. ; )