Category Archives: family life this old house

Ice Melt and Springtime. Ah, Water.

Posted on by
Reply

It happens every year. The icicles near the back door take over my life. The dripping makes the area by the door very wet, which freezes overnight, and the ice just piles up and gets slipperier and slipperier. I spend all kinds of time chopping the ice and spreading sand and salt on it to protect the family from sliding and falling. This corner doesn’t get any sun, either.

Sigh.

This year, I had a brainstorm. (Chuck would say I watched too much of a Homestead Rescue marathon, and he wouldn’t be wrong.) I thought to myself, what if I captured this water instead of letting it freeze in this inopportune location? Based on that thought, I grabbed a few five gallon buckets, positioned them under the icicles, and collected water. Lots of water.

My original plan was simply to dump the buckets into the grate at the end of our driveway. The water would go to the river with the rest of the rainwater and snowmelt that goes that way. But Chuck said, hey, why don’t we keep it? Set the water aside and use it? (Haha, yes indeed, he did watch quite a bit of Homestead Rescue with me.)

Just to be safe, I strained the water through a clean towel and then boiled it. After the pots cooled, I filled canning jars and extra bottles and a few pitchers with this lovely, cost free, potable water. Now I have water that’s already boiled if I need to use my sinus rinse. I have water for cooking, making coffee, and more. All that, and I’m on a good quality municipal water system, too. The ice melt we collected is all bonus. All extra.

Best of all, I’m not slipping on the ice every time I walk out the door.

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Winter with a Vengeance

Posted on by
1

I haven’t posted since…when? Oh, my. Anyway, it’s winter now. We had about 6 inches of snow yesterday. By the end of the week, we’re looking at below zero temperatures and the possibility of a Polar Vortex. Last time we had a major cold snap, Polar Vortex cold, we had a visitor – a Cooper’s hawk, on our deck, right next to the French doors. We were rather shocked that it settled in right next to the house like that. It must have been the closest, or the only, shelter it could find.

With another cold (Polar) snap ahead, I’m prepping to keep the family warm. By Friday, I hope to have the main family groceries purchased, including bunny food and the basic milk, bread, and eggs. You know the drill, I’m sure. That way, I can stay indoors when the thermometer dips.

Meanwhile, indoors, we’ll stay warm with a little help from our good Wisconsin logic.

All shades, blinds, and curtains will remain closed. Another layer, no matter how thin, helps keep the drafts out.

Warm clothes – layers, warm socks, slippers (from Muk-Luks, the best). I even have fingerless gloves on hand if I need them.

A humidifier in each room (well, the rooms where we spend the day) will help keep moisture in the air, which makes the air feel a few degrees warmer, even if the temperature doesn’t physically change.

Blankets! I’ve been washing blankets lately. It’s a spring cleaning in midwinter task. We’ll curl up with a book and a blanket or two and stay cozy. Amigo is good at that; he loves his audio books and a warm blanket.

Warm breakfast (oatmeal!) and lunch (soup!) and supper (whatever, just make it warm!) will warm the insides, too. I might even cook in the crock pot instead of on stovetop. The aroma will provide a little warmth of its own.

I could bake cookies, too – maybe. Or maybe I won’t want to use too much energy. The power company has come down on manufacturers for using too much heat energy to operate their plants. I haven’t heard them asking residential customers to turn it down by a couple of degrees, but it could happen. And if it did…

We’d put on another layer and grab another blanket. Coffee, hot cocoa, and we’ll be snug as bugs in a rug, despite the extreme Polar Vortex cold.

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

In Which Daisy Worries about all the Wrong Things

Posted on by
Reply

We heard scratching and bumping noises in the chimney. Oh, dear, something was living in there! We called an exterminator. He said nope, can’t help with that. We called the chimney cleaning crew. Nope, they didn’t deal with live animals. We investigated animal control and found out they would charge $150 to set a trap and hope the critter wandered into it.

Then the noises stopped for about a week. And then I noticed an odor in the room. Oh, dear, something had most likely died in there! So we called the chimney crew and got them scheduled. The earliest date on their schedule was two weeks out. In the meantime – I duct taped the door to the fireplace in the hopes that I could contain the odor and still watch my HGTV and Jeopardy without a clothespin on my nose or a full fledged gas mask. And I worried – what if we had a storm with a power outage and we needed a fire for heat and cooking?

We didn’t have any bad storms. And it turned out that there were no animal carcasses in the flue. Aw, heck. Maybe Amigo had BO that day. Heck, maybe I did! Maybe I didn’t change the litter box soon enough. And so on, and so on, and so on.

But all is not well in the O.K. Chorale’s fireplace. The crew couldn’t inspect the outer ring of the chimney, the opening for fresh air to get in. Our neighborhood electric lines are in the way. They have to come back another day with their full equipment so they can climb up the other side of the roof to get at the chimney.

Meanwhile, I hope we don’t have a major storm that would take out our power and make necessary a fire in the fireplace for heat and/or cooking. Oh, gee. What else could go wrong? Wait, no. I didn’t say that. Nope.

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Market Day with a Missing Kitchen

Posted on by
1

it’s Farm Market season again!

Lettuce, spinach, parsley, strawberries, blueberries, peas, kettle corn (for me!), pomegranate lemonade (for me!) – did I miss anything?

It’s Saturday, and it’s the first Saturday of the downtown farmers’ market. It’s also hot. Hot, muggy, steamy, sweaty. I heard several little kiddos complaining that they couldn’t walk anymore or that they were hot and sweaty. I saw even more young ones with beverages in hand. Families were smart and kept themselves and their kids hydrated.

But other than that, it was a normal and pleasant market. I got a good parking space in my usual ramp, there was still time on the meter, and I grabbed my rolling bag and headed out to stock up on good food for the family. I may have come back with more food than planned and a lighter wallet (dropped tips in three buskers’ cases), but it was a good First Market of the Season.

However, prepping is a challenge because we have no kitchen. I have no sink. Half of the colanders and bowls I usually use are stored in the basement. My favorite knife for shelling peas is also stored somewhere – where, I wish I knew. I rinsed the lettuce and spinach in big colanders with the hose – yes, you heard me, the garden hose. The peas were small enough to rinse in the bathroom sink. I had to set aside the strawberries and the asparagus – just no time to figure out how and where to get them cut up and cleaned.

The next few days may be ridiculously hot. I can spend my time inside, prepping strawberries and asparagus.

Share and Enjoy !

Shares




Coping without a Kitchen

Posted on by
1

“How do you survive without a kitchen?”

“Are you using paper plates?”

“Do you get delivery and drive through fast food?”

Actually, we’re doing quite well. It’s not easy, but we planned for it and we’re keeping up fairly well. Planning ahead, then and now, is essential to coping while the kitchen is under construction.

Making Chicken Dinner

Rice: Minute white rice and Uncle Ben’s ten minute brown rice, cooked in chicken broth (the freezer is full of good things like this) in the microwave

Chicken breasts: thawed and cooked on grill a few nights ago as “planned-overs.” I diced and reheated the chicken in the microwave.

Beverage: Sun tea, made on the deck on a (what else?) sunny day

Chicken Dinner!

A few pieces of leftover zucchini and onion, and there it is: chicken dinner, all prepared without an actual kitchen.

Not bad! But seriously, I look forward to having a kitchen again – and what a kitchen it will be!

Share and Enjoy !

Shares




Demo Day!

Posted on by
1

This kitchen project has been consuming us since…since…oh, at least since December. And finally, finally, it’s happening. The guys were here today. They hung a plastic tarp so the dust didn’t fly all over the house (it only piled up in the dining room), and they did demo. Big time. I can show you better than I can tell you, though.

Here’s one angle.

Here’s another way to look at it.

And that’s that. Nothing left. No sink, no stove, no dishwasher. And that’s where my good old Girl Scout ingenuity came in. We might go to paper plates sooner or later, but Daisy the Compostermom isn’t ready to go there yet. I washed dishes the way I learned at Girl Scout camp, minus the dunk bag.

One bucket with water and dish soap, one with hot water for rinse.

The result?

Air dry for a bit, and then we’re done.

And Chuck was surprised I found the dish soap under the bathroom sink? Hah. I’ve only just started to show my coping skills.

Share and Enjoy !

Shares




Demo Day on the Way!

Posted on by
Reply

You read it right, folks. Demo on the kitchen will begin Tuesday – the day after Memorial Day. We’ve been steadily emptying cupboards, stashing some things where we can find them and others where we can get them when we have a kitchen again.

The emptying process is complicated, too. It means clearing a space somewhere else in the house, and then cleaning out a kitchen cupboard by moving the contents into the just-emptied space.

Some of these moves were big and permanent. Did I mention the main computer desk and its matching bookshelf? All day long. It took a full day to empty them and move them and then put the computer and all of its attachments back on the desk. There was enough space in the room because I’d already emptied a file cabinet and Chuck had moved the cabinet to the basement to await its time in the summer rummage sale.

I’m sure there will be pictures, folks. Pictures of the empty space where there used to be a kitchen, pictures of the temporary kitchen in the living room, pictures of all the things we didn’t predict (like, where will the stove go? The dishwasher? We think we have a plan for the refrigerator) and some that we predicted wrong.

It’ll be a survival mindset for several weeks. No kitchen, routines changed, all kinds of noise and dust and mess.

We can do this, we tell ourselves. We made it through the upstairs renovation with bathroom and second floor laundry. I had to use a laundromat for several weeks, and all of us shared the first floor bathroom. I slept with a flashlight next to my bed so I didn’t walk into any 2 by 4s – and some were so old, they were really 2 inches by 4 inches!

And when it’s done, it’ll be worth it. Keep repeating as needed: it’ll be worth it. It’ll be worth it.

Share and Enjoy !

Shares




Stop Creating Emergencies.

Posted on by
Reply

Sometimes I call it “panicking over nothing.” But then I have to remember that whatever’s causing the panic might not be important to me, but it’s important enough to upset someone else.

In the book Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, there’s a chapter that advises the readers not to create their own emergencies. For example, it’s okay to buy cookies from a bakery instead of baking them from scratch. Pick up an already cooked rotisserie chicken instead of prepping and cooking a big meal. It’s not what I’d do every day on normal days, but sometimes it’s wise to step back and avoid creating unnecessary emergencies.

Right now, those emergencies are either kitchen or garden related. The kitchen remodel is coming sooner or later – most likely sooner. We have a lot of clearing and purging and emptying to do before demo day. We had to clear space in the guest room/office so that we could move the computer desk in there, and soon we’ll need to move the computer desk, the shelves on top of it, and the computer itself and all its cords into that room.

Garden! I started tomato seedlings and herb seedlings, and now I need to prep the containers. Yes, that’s right, the tomatoes are going in containers this year. I have the containers, I have the bags of soil, and I’m ready to start making those ready.

In addition to the containers, I have the pallet. It was glorious last year, and I have plans for the pallet garden again. I just haven’t had a moment to pull out the old, dead plants and fill it in with new soil and move it to its new home six feet away from where it is now – you get the picture. I want to do it all, and I want to do it all right now.

So, Daisy, why can’t you get outside and do it all right now? What’s stopping you? Regular readers, friends, and family all know that I’ve been sick lately. It feels like the last three weeks have lasted more like three months. I’ve been spending a lot of time resting, rehydrating, resting, icing or heating a sore back and sore knee, and resting. You get the picture. In between, I’ve visited doctors and pharmacies. Somehow, I managed to teach a few days and grade a lot, and I do mean a lot, of research projects.

It’s when I’m resting that it’s hardest. I might be sitting on the couch with an ice pack on my lower back and a glass of a refreshing beverage by my side, but I’ll be thinking that I really, really want to break up the soil in the main garden plot. It’s common to find me closing my eyes for a bit and then coming back to wakefulness with an Oh, No, I Need To — fill in the blank.

I’ve managed to sidestep cooking emergencies with the help of a crock pot and a well stocked pantry. I even filled the Stamp Out Hunger bag for the Post Office food drive. But as I patted myself on the back for that, I remembered that the spices will need a new, temporary home, along with the taco mix and my favorite sloppy joe mixes.

And then I say Stop. Little by little, all will be well. For now, I’ll rest and recover so I’ll have enough strength to cope when a true emergency comes along. I don’t need to create my own.

Share and Enjoy !

Shares




Kitchen Planning

Posted on by
Reply

Have I mentioned that we’re remodeling the kitchen at the O.K. Chorale? It’s all consuming, and we haven’t even started demo. We’re still planning. Details, details, details!

Chuck and I made a trip to Lowe’s – again. We have wandered the aisles in search of wisdom in cabinet design, color (paint or stain?), handles and knobs, under-cabinet lighting, and more. I didn’t know that so many decisions were involved.

Add to the sheer number of decisions the fact that Chuck and I work opposite shifts. We communicate a lot by text message and email, but any true conversation and discussion have to happen on a weekend. This is dragging out the process longer and longer.

We’re close, though. We’re close to calling the designer and telling her, “We’re ready! Here are the details! Let’s make an order!” And then the real work begins.

Due to the age of our house (built 1890), every single element has to be custom. We’ll place the order, and then we’ll wait for the cabinets to be built. Meanwhile, we have a long to-do list to prepare for this project.

  • Empty the cupboards, upper and lower
  • Store the contents of the cupboards somewhere – anywhere.
  • Set up a temporary “kitchen” in another room.
  • Set up coffeemaker in another room.
  • Invest in disposable dishes OR make a plan for washing dishes without a sink.
  • Empty the refrigerator and freezer to prepare for moving this appliance.
  • Make room for computer desk and bookshelf currently in dining room
  • Find temporary storage for dining room table and chairs
  • Cancel cleaning service until project is done
  • Remind selves that we will enjoy the new kitchen for many years before selling even comes on the radar, at which time the lovely kitchen will be a major advantage.

Meanwhile, life as we know it continues.

Share and Enjoy !

Shares