>One family’s stash becomes another’s treasure: notes on the rummage sale

Posted on June 28, 2009 by Daisy

>I had good intentions of getting before, during, and after pictures. Business was booming as we opened, however, and I was too busy to reach for the camera. Note to self: take pictures early or the night before the sale. Later in the morning the tool table looked like this.

Elmo, Ernie, and Rubber Duckie (sing it with me!) all sold separately. Note to self: try harder not to cringe when a potential customer activates Tickle-Me Elmo.

Ten cents a box or jar: this “table” (a long board between ladder and actual table) was packed full of jars and boxes of various screws, nails, bolts, and other tiny tools of the building hobbyist’s trade. By ten in the morning, when I took the picture, it was half gone. Note to self: In this case, seeing the shelf half empty rather than half full was thinking positively!

>Questions on the eve of a family rummage sale

Posted on June 27, 2009 by Daisy

>Where on earth did all this stuff come from? Will we ever, ever be able to park our cars in the garage again?

Tools, familiar and not so familiar. What size is this bedframe? Why, oh why, did the in-laws keep so many of these in their shed for so many years when they weren’t using them at all? Will anyone actually buy them? Did we price them low enough?

The toy and collectible table: Husband did some research online to find accurate prices for some of these older items like his brother’s old 007 lunch box and his own Land of the Giants thermos. Will his time and effort pay off?

And will the toy table keep kids away from the sharp objects on the other end of the driveway?

And finally: What the heck is this? It looks like I should hook it behind a horse and pull it through the fields, but it is definitely a hand tool. Ideas, readers?

>Recession gardening, Victory Gardens, and Family Tales

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Daisy

>Last season, the news was full of a new term: Recession Gardens. Folks across the U.S.A. were figuring out what we backyard gardeners already knew: fresh home grown veggies are inexpensive and delicious, with less risk of contamination in the harvest or shipping process. Whether I call it recession garden or kitchen garden, this plot of soil will produce the produce my family loves.

Mother-In-Law recently shared a story about her childhood in Milwaukee. MIL spent her formative years on Milwaukee’s north side, around 41st Street between Silver Spring and Capitol Drive. They lived in a small house, and her father bought the two lots on either side when the owners were in arrears on their taxes. “He got them cheap!” she told Husband. Using the extra lots, the family started what she refers to as their Victory Farm in the city of Milwaukee.

They grew vegetables, they raised chickens (she remembers having about 500!), and near the back of their extended lots they grew the grain to feed the fowl. She, as the only daughter, canned their produce as it ripened. When they had more than the family needed, she would work out trades with the neighbors and/or the small grocers in the neighborhood. She remembers trading berries she’d canned for a crate of peaches. As she canned the peaches, she threw a few peach pits in the backyard, and (you guessed it!) ended up with two peach trees. As these hardy cold-weather trees began to bear fruit, the family had one more crop of their own.

I’ve read that at one time Victory Gardens produced 40% of the nation’s food supply. That figure seemed rather high at first glance, but if a lot of city families did what my MIL’s family did, 40% could be a realistic estimate. MIL told Husband that the family started their Victory Farmette before WWII, toward the end of the Great Depression. It must have been fairly well established by the time the Victory Garden became the trendy thing to do.

My backyard plot – call it Kitchen Garden, Recession Garden, or just my patch of dirt – won’t come near Victory Garden quantities. I can only hope it’ll grow stories that I can tell my kids when they have kids of their own. Maybe they’ll talk about how their mother liked to play in the dirt all summer long and added home grown spinach to everything they ate!

Enjoy the home-grown and local food, everyone, and keep telling the family tales. That’s the kind of growth and stimulus our country will always need.

This is a compilation of two earlier posts, reworked and revised for Scribbit’s June Write-Away Contest. Her theme is “Food.” Win or lose, growing some of our own food is important to me, so this post is a good fit. Deadline for entries is Sunday, June 21 at midnight Alaska time.

>Not more with less, but more with the existing garden resources.

Posted on May 22, 2009 by Daisy

>Doing more with less in a school setting can lead to burnout. In the garden, I’m focusing on doing more with what I already have available instead of doing more with less. My goal: feel productive, not overwhelmed.

Compost, of course. I’m adding paper this year, that which can not be recycled due to food residues. Husband puts in the grass clippings, I add some of the soiled bunny litter box contents, and of course any suitable kitchen scraps. The grass clippings keep the temperature hot and help decompose the rest.

The rain barrel is already a success. I use it to rinse the litter boxes, rinse the emptied compost bucket, water the rhubarb, and more. We’ve only used the outside tap when we need the high water pressure for washing the lawnmower.

Tomatoes have new supports, supports that I already owned. The bean trellis is the same one I’ve used for years. I’m using a few old tomato cages for pepper plants and snap peas, and I think I’ll sell the rest at our June rummage sale. I really have too many. Hmmm…if La Petite would wash and paint them, maybe they’d be worth a little more. Maybe?

All this productivity with minimal investment helps my morale. I feel frugal for reusing and repurposing. I feel accomplished for getting the garden in and tending it. I feel thorough for doing my research and nurturing the tomatoes to do so well.

But lock your doors; if my zucchini is too prolific, I’ll have to get creative in giving it away.

>Going green means staying green

Posted on May 7, 2009 by Daisy

>”GO GREEN!” screamed the email from the wellness coordinator. I joined in, of course, and then laughed when I saw the program’s suggestions. It’s great for beginners, but for an eco-conscious family like mine, most of the ideas were habits already built into our everyday lives.

Green sometimes means an investment that will pay off later. Cloth napkins, for example, cost me a few bucks (I’m a bargain shopper, so I do mean only a few). Since I bought the first batch, however, we haven’t purchased paper napkins at all.

Dryer balls cost a little, and I do mean a little. I spent less for the pair than I normally do for a bottle of Downy, and I expect them to last longer. Less $$, fewer chemicals, and it’s a winner with me! I’ve heard that an old pair of tennis balls will have the same effect. I plan to keep my eyes open at rummage sales and try this technique, re-using and re-purposing: both frugal and green.

As I updated my Go Green participation record, I noticed that the one-point activities were second nature. Recycling at home and at work, using a reusable lunch bag and a washable coffee mug at work, printing/ copying on both sides of the paper; I do these as a matter of course. The high-point earners, the permanent changes, are either things we already did or a little less common. Start a compost pile, install a programmable thermostat, insulate the water heater: these are all 4 point activities, investments we made years ago. Install aerators on the faucets, low-flow showerheads and low-flow toilets, vote for a green candidate: well, we do those 3-pointers, too. We can do better, though: we could easily refurbish furniture, change to a few more CFL bulbs, and lower the water-heater temperature.

Go Green’s list suggests caulking or weatherstripping windows. We’re taking that a major step farther by replacing several old windows that may be original to the house (c. 1890). They’re lovely, but leaky. The investment in new windows will be a good one. I gulped and gasped when I saw the bill, but in reality, it’s reasonable. It will pay for itself within a few years in energy savings. We may get a rebate for energy efficiency, too, if Husband’s research is correct. As for comfort, better windows can only improve the indoor climate. No more drafty kitchen when the wind blows! The back hallway/ pantry might not be cold enough for a psuedo-root cellar any more! Oh, wait, maybe that’s a small disadvantage….

The Go Green program limits participants by not allowing any one activity more than once in a given day. Even with few four-point pieces, I’m easily reaching the maximum nine points each day. That tells me that integrating small habits can be a big deal. Yes, Kermit, it is easy being green.

>Does Sears know it’s Earth Week?

Posted on April 20, 2009 by Daisy

Green, frugal, or both, I decided to use a mall gift card on Sunday. The card was a student gift that was still burning a hole in my purse. The mall’s parent company had been in the headlines because they just declared bankruptcy, so I decided I’d better use the card ASAP, PDQ, before it lost its value.

I started at Sears. They had pruning clippers on sale. Craftsman (warranty), on sale (frugal), sharpen-able (is that a word?): I bought one. While the clerk was running my gift card through the register, I pulled out my chico bag and said, “I don’t need a bag. I have my own.” The clerk replied, “Oh, you can’t use that here.”

WHAT??!!? I can’t use my own shopping bag? You’re forcing me to take your worthless piece of plastic? He insisted, saying it was because I’d be stopped by security if I carried merchandise in any bag but one clearly labeled Sears. I fumed and grumbled my way through the rest of the store, avoiding the clearance racks and other deals for fear of collecting any more wasteful packaging.

At my next stop, Target was actually giving away reusable cloth shopping bags to the first several hundred customers. I sighed with relief and headed to Bath & Body Works for foam soap. They let me use the Target bag and commented on how much they liked it. My last stop, Williams-Sonoma, didn’t have the cloth napkins at a price I liked, but they had some sale merchandise from Easter (okay, chocolate) that cost just enough to use up the gift card. They, too, were happy to allow me to use my own shopping bag.

Sears? I’ve heard rumors that they’re not weathering the economic downturn very well. The small plastic bag they forced on me didn’t cost the store much, but if they lose many eco-conscious shoppers like me, that’ll hurt.

>The Virtual Great American Bake Sale

Posted on April 13, 2009 by Daisy

The Great American Bake Sale has gone virtual!

In real life, bake sales bring in minimal profits. Sometimes a non-bake sale brings in a better total. Instead of baking, people donate the amount they would have spent on their donated baked goods. Typically, any fundraiser is most successful if it can target an audience that isn’t already paying for the service. For example, a child care center selling t-shirts will only take in money out of those parents already paying tuition. But Girl Scouts selling cookies will sell to people who are not paying dues to the troop, and therefore will bring in a fair amount of usable funds.

When I heard about the Great American Bake Sale, I read through the information and decided it was worthwhile. I gave them my Mosaic Muffins. Adapted from another recipe to use my own garden produce, these muffins fit today’s sensibilities by using homegrown ingredients and having a fair amount of nutrition. They taste so great that your family doesn’t need to know they’re good for you.

Money raised from the Great American Bake Sale will benefit Share Our Strength, a group working to eliminate child hunger in America. As unemployment increases (it’s at a 25-year high right now), families have less money, and children have fewer regular meals. I see this every day in the students who concentrate better after lunch because they didn’t eat breakfast, the kids lined up for free breakfast at school because they didn’t have much to eat the night before, those who enviously eye the healthy snacks their wealthier friends brought from home. If children are going hungry in my relatively stable community, there are thousands worse off in other parts of the U.S. Share Our Strength spends a lot of time and money supporting after-school and summer meal programs.

You can help by spreading the word, making a donation to Share our Strength, or ordering the ebook. There’s a button on the sidebar for the VGABS e-cookbook. Remember, if my muffins are in it, it must be good! I can’t wait to see the other recipes.

Most of all, I’m happy to spread the word and increase contributions to help minimize – better yet, end – childhood hunger.

The Complete 2009 VGABS Recipes Ebook