A year ago, I made a lap blanket. But since then, we were given a number of quilts and other blankets, and it ended up in the closet.
Meanwhile, one of our smaller children began to need another winter sweater. I thought of using the lap blanket to make a little "bog jacket" or "bog coat", which is a simple and ancient jacket pattern that can be made from a single square of fabric, using the entire square. It is best known to weavers, but is called a "bog jacket" because one of those bodies found years ago very well-preserved in a peat bog was wearing one made of leather.
Knitter Elizabeth Zimmermann adapted the design for knitting, and put it in her book Knitting Around. At one point I knitted a baby-sized version, which has worked out well and was not quickly outgrown. I might as well add here that I accidentally mixed in a little wool yarn with the acrylics in this project; the wool felted and shrank, while the acrylics didn't, but I was able to give the shrunken areas a good pull and restore some of the lost width. The lost length didn't matter, because the design runs long on the baby.
There's an example photo here, without the extra fullness in the lower part that Zimmermann added to make room for a thick diaper.
Anyway, in her design the vertical slit that needs to be made is accomplished by dividing the knitting onto separate needles and balls of yarn at that point, while the horizontal slits are made by knitting in a strand of contrasting yarn, which is removed later, with the loose stitches being grafted elsewhere to make the seams for the sleeves and across the chest.
Since I was working with a finished piece of knitting, and I was in a hurry, I decided not to unravel and graft, but to sew and cut, and then sew again.
Knitters really hate cutting into their knitting, because they have a great fear of unraveling stitches, but if you sew in a line of short stitches along every edge that you want to preserve, before you cut, then it is safe to do. Some of my washcloths are portions of sweaters that I have sewn and cut in this way. I've had no problems with them unraveling. I've also altered sweaters.
In this case, because I wanted to keep the edges a little stretchy, I chose to use a short zigzag stitch. Be warned that this tends to make a curly "lettuce" edge, especially if you stretch it out while sewing, which is sometimes a desirable effect. After sewing around each cut I was going to make, I carefully did the cutting.
The final sewing was a little tricky, in making the right parts go to the right places, but it also went quickly.
To finish it, I found two old coat buttons, and crocheted yarn chains long enough to loop around them. I sewed on the buttons and loops, and it was finished--except for picking off a number of little bits of yarn, the loops that were severed when I did the cutting.
It came out a nice size for the child, with lots of room to grow.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Friday, December 27, 2019
Holiday interlude
I spent a bit of time thinking about how to spend my Christmas money, and ended up at the used book store.
Most of the time, I buy books from a thrift store or from the little book sale area at the library, so going into a real bookstore is like a trip to the candy store--except better, because you can read a book more than once.
Within the wider selection of books, I found a number of books that related to areas that I want to branch out into more.
My second stop was the craft store. I don't visit these very often either, because so many of the things in them, I could make for myself, if I wanted to put in the time and effort. What I did buy was basic materials: leather remnants, wool roving, and fabric paint.
My third stop was for the really mundane things: socks and a new toilet brush. I've had a remarkably hard time buying socks in the past, either because they weren't quite what I was looking for or needed, or because they were beyond my budget. I've settled on buying ankle socks a few pairs at a time, and using them as the feet for homemade knee-high tights.
I decided not to buy a new dish drying rack yet, but to just turn the old one around, so that the more worn-looking parts are at the back.
Also, I received a box of garage sale fabric from a visiting relative. There is a large piece of fleece that should be good for one or two pairs of child-sized pants, one and a half bedsheets, and more than enough upholstery fabric to cover the chair that I brought home from vacation. While I was busy with holiday preparations, my mending pile outgrew the small amount of cupboard space that I allotted for it, so I'm going to have to get to work on that again sometime soon.
Most of the time, I buy books from a thrift store or from the little book sale area at the library, so going into a real bookstore is like a trip to the candy store--except better, because you can read a book more than once.
Within the wider selection of books, I found a number of books that related to areas that I want to branch out into more.
My second stop was the craft store. I don't visit these very often either, because so many of the things in them, I could make for myself, if I wanted to put in the time and effort. What I did buy was basic materials: leather remnants, wool roving, and fabric paint.
My third stop was for the really mundane things: socks and a new toilet brush. I've had a remarkably hard time buying socks in the past, either because they weren't quite what I was looking for or needed, or because they were beyond my budget. I've settled on buying ankle socks a few pairs at a time, and using them as the feet for homemade knee-high tights.
I decided not to buy a new dish drying rack yet, but to just turn the old one around, so that the more worn-looking parts are at the back.
Also, I received a box of garage sale fabric from a visiting relative. There is a large piece of fleece that should be good for one or two pairs of child-sized pants, one and a half bedsheets, and more than enough upholstery fabric to cover the chair that I brought home from vacation. While I was busy with holiday preparations, my mending pile outgrew the small amount of cupboard space that I allotted for it, so I'm going to have to get to work on that again sometime soon.
Tuesday, December 24, 2019
Bedwetting hack
A book I have on natural remedies contains testimonials from several people on the power of honey to stop bedwetting.
The treatment is to give the child somewhere between one teaspoon and one tablespoon of honey before bedtime.
I'm pretty sure that the way that it works is to raise the child's blood glucose levels far enough that their body has to keep additional water in their bloodstream to keep their blood sugar from going too high, instead of sending the water to the bladder. So I don't consider this a very healthy solution for regular use, just one that is useful for those I-really-don't-want-to-deal-with-this-today situations...such as during the holidays.
Since the active ingredient is a form of sugar, plain table sugar should have this effect as well, and so should Christmas candy.
The treatment is to give the child somewhere between one teaspoon and one tablespoon of honey before bedtime.
I'm pretty sure that the way that it works is to raise the child's blood glucose levels far enough that their body has to keep additional water in their bloodstream to keep their blood sugar from going too high, instead of sending the water to the bladder. So I don't consider this a very healthy solution for regular use, just one that is useful for those I-really-don't-want-to-deal-with-this-today situations...such as during the holidays.
Since the active ingredient is a form of sugar, plain table sugar should have this effect as well, and so should Christmas candy.
Friday, December 20, 2019
Santa's workshop
I finished making three Christmas gifts today, and while I was out Christmas shopping, I had ideas for about four more projects.
I have to balance those with cleaning the house before our family gatherings, and also some rest, though.
I have to balance those with cleaning the house before our family gatherings, and also some rest, though.
Thursday, December 19, 2019
The usual
My life lately has mostly consisted of maintenance: the usual cleaning, tightening loose screws, and troubleshooting appliances.
I also finished knitting the hat I am giving for a Christmas present, and I looked up how to make the pompom for it. I have an additional little knitting project going on with the leftover yarn.
I cut another jar's worth of kitchen wipes, from fabric that I have no other use for, with the assistance of a tiny human who was happy to have the job of putting them into the jar.
The older children have been taking on some of the snackmaking work; wacky cake and popcorn, so far this week.
Wacky cake is very easy to make, and doesn't require milk or eggs, although we do use milk in ours, instead of water. The recipe I use is in this post.
My husband's work had some kind of a catered lunch, and he brought home quite a bit of leftover pasta and salad and bread from it, easily enough for two meals.
One of his co-workers has the interest, time, ability, tools, and space to work on cars, and has been helping him do some of the work that needs to be done on our aging vehicle.
I also finished knitting the hat I am giving for a Christmas present, and I looked up how to make the pompom for it. I have an additional little knitting project going on with the leftover yarn.
I cut another jar's worth of kitchen wipes, from fabric that I have no other use for, with the assistance of a tiny human who was happy to have the job of putting them into the jar.
The older children have been taking on some of the snackmaking work; wacky cake and popcorn, so far this week.
Wacky cake is very easy to make, and doesn't require milk or eggs, although we do use milk in ours, instead of water. The recipe I use is in this post.
My husband's work had some kind of a catered lunch, and he brought home quite a bit of leftover pasta and salad and bread from it, easily enough for two meals.
One of his co-workers has the interest, time, ability, tools, and space to work on cars, and has been helping him do some of the work that needs to be done on our aging vehicle.
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
An interesting take
Dorothy Sayers, in an address titled "Are Women Human?", which she gave to a Women's Society in 1938, gave an answer to the chauvinist objection that women were "taking men's jobs" by listing a number of female occupations in medieval times that had since then been taken over by men:
Sayers believed that work should be done by those who are best fitted for it, whether male or female, and that the work should be not only well done, but also worth doing well. Since industrialization had taken over much of women's traditional work, then women should be allowed to take on other kinds of work.
The more modern book Radical Homemakers, by Shannon Hayes, similarly chronicles the shift of industry out of and away from the home, and suggests ways to bring some of it back in. It has been a number of years since I read this book, but it is safe to say that she wasn't a conservative Christian when she wrote it. More like an anti-capitalist feminist.
Neither of these authors concerned themselves much, if I remember rightly, with the idea of home being the place for the production of new people. That is another thing has largely been outsourced, over the last few decades, in this case to other countries. In her speech, Sayers did mention the impossibility of housing a family with a dozen children in "a small flat", but she was perhaps forgetting the small size of many medieval peasant dwellings. Even my father-in-law grew up in a house that was under 450 square feet, and they weren't so far from having a dozen children.
There is a book that I used to own, The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible, that goes deeply into the economics of European life, a few centuries after the Medieval period. Most families owned only a few pieces of furniture. France at one point instituted a prize for families that reached twelve children, although it was not able to feed the population that it already had; the book said that there were many French families at that time with twenty children or more.
It is a formidable list of jobs: the whole of the spinning industry, the whole of the dyeing industry, the whole of the weaving industry. The whole catering industry and...the whole of the nation's brewing and distilling. All the preserving, pickling and bottling industry, all the bacon-curing. And (since in those days a man was often absent from home for months together on war or business) a very large share in the management of landed estates.... Even the dairy-maid in her simple bonnet has gone....
Sayers believed that work should be done by those who are best fitted for it, whether male or female, and that the work should be not only well done, but also worth doing well. Since industrialization had taken over much of women's traditional work, then women should be allowed to take on other kinds of work.
The more modern book Radical Homemakers, by Shannon Hayes, similarly chronicles the shift of industry out of and away from the home, and suggests ways to bring some of it back in. It has been a number of years since I read this book, but it is safe to say that she wasn't a conservative Christian when she wrote it. More like an anti-capitalist feminist.
Neither of these authors concerned themselves much, if I remember rightly, with the idea of home being the place for the production of new people. That is another thing has largely been outsourced, over the last few decades, in this case to other countries. In her speech, Sayers did mention the impossibility of housing a family with a dozen children in "a small flat", but she was perhaps forgetting the small size of many medieval peasant dwellings. Even my father-in-law grew up in a house that was under 450 square feet, and they weren't so far from having a dozen children.
There is a book that I used to own, The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible, that goes deeply into the economics of European life, a few centuries after the Medieval period. Most families owned only a few pieces of furniture. France at one point instituted a prize for families that reached twelve children, although it was not able to feed the population that it already had; the book said that there were many French families at that time with twenty children or more.
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Paleoclimate in Minnesota
I continue to prepare for my comments on our electric utility's plans to go to zero-carbon-emissions.
Since the whole point of their effort is to stop climate change, I thought I'd take a quick look at Minnesota's historic climate...all of it.
In the Permian Era, Minnesota was at the bottom of an ocean. At various later times, much of it was covered by smaller seas. Even today, a lot of it is covered by water; it's the "Land of 10,000 lakes" after all, although actually there are even more of them than that.
As recently as the Cretaceous Period, Minnesota's climate was tropical. During the Ice Age in the Pleistocene, Minnesota was under glaciers. One of these is much more habitable than the other.
Since the whole point of their effort is to stop climate change, I thought I'd take a quick look at Minnesota's historic climate...all of it.
In the Permian Era, Minnesota was at the bottom of an ocean. At various later times, much of it was covered by smaller seas. Even today, a lot of it is covered by water; it's the "Land of 10,000 lakes" after all, although actually there are even more of them than that.
As recently as the Cretaceous Period, Minnesota's climate was tropical. During the Ice Age in the Pleistocene, Minnesota was under glaciers. One of these is much more habitable than the other.
Monday, December 9, 2019
Finds
I got some of my Christmas shopping done at the thrift store, but I also found a couple of other things while I was there.
The first was four spools of cotton carpet warp thread. I can definitely use these, since I have found that crochet cotton thread is a bit weak for the warp of the things I am trying to weave.
The other was a copy of The Brothers Lionheart, a children's book by Astrid Lindgren, originally written in Swedish. Last year, in a different thrift store, I bought a Norwegian translation of it. With a little help from the pictures and a Norwegian dictionary, I read it all the way through, over and over, and basically worked it out like a hundred-page puzzle. Norwegian has a lot of similarities to English, although there is a twist to them, and that helped a lot. By the sixth time through the book, I could understand most of it, or at least I thought I could.
So it is exciting to have the English translation now, and see how well I did in figuring out the Norwegian. So far, it looks like I got most of it right.
The first was four spools of cotton carpet warp thread. I can definitely use these, since I have found that crochet cotton thread is a bit weak for the warp of the things I am trying to weave.
The other was a copy of The Brothers Lionheart, a children's book by Astrid Lindgren, originally written in Swedish. Last year, in a different thrift store, I bought a Norwegian translation of it. With a little help from the pictures and a Norwegian dictionary, I read it all the way through, over and over, and basically worked it out like a hundred-page puzzle. Norwegian has a lot of similarities to English, although there is a twist to them, and that helped a lot. By the sixth time through the book, I could understand most of it, or at least I thought I could.
So it is exciting to have the English translation now, and see how well I did in figuring out the Norwegian. So far, it looks like I got most of it right.
Saturday, December 7, 2019
Aspirations
When I started this blog, I planned on leaving politics out of it, but it turned out that politics doesn't plan on leaving me alone, and is having serious effects on my household's finances. In today's example, Minnesota is working hard to transform itself into the California of the Midwest.
It's all kind of intertwined, but at the foundation are a solid belief in climate change*, and a steadfast faith in the power of collective, government-led effort to get things done. There is a law on Minnesota's books, the 2007 Next Generation Energy Act, which mandates a 30% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels, and a 80% reduction by 2050. The state is not on track to meet those goals, but by golly, they're trying.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is considering adopting California's ZEV and LEV standards, as several other states have already done. The initial public comment period on this effort closed yesterday; fortunately I was working on some of these things yesterday morning, and I noticed the deadline in time to get my comments prepared and submitted.
The LEV (Low Emissions Vehicle) standard would require that most new vehicles sold in Minnesota meet California emission standards. Apparently, federal law requires that states wanting to set more stringent emissions standards must either use the California standards, or do nothing. The MPCA may take Colorado's LEV standard (which basically incorporates the California standard by reference) as a model for Minnesota's version.
I don't see how letting another state write your state's laws can end well. Population of Los Angeles metro area: 4 million. Population of the entire state of Minnesota: 5.7 million.
The ZEV (Zero Emissions Vehicle) standard would set delivery quotas for electric, hybrid, and hydrogen-fueled vehicles for car manufacturers wishing to sell new cars in Minnesota. From a news report, it appears that people wanting to buy ZEV vehicles in Minnesota at present are having a bit of a hard time finding them, though most of them manage to purchase one in the end.
It turns out that this slight shortage in ZEV supply is because California and several others states have adopted ZEV standards, so the manufacturers are delivering these vehicles first to the states where they are required to deliver them. In my comments, I pointed out that the economic forces at play will sort this situation out over time, without any government intervention at all. And that if government intervention sets the ZEV quotas above demand, then the manufacturers and dealers may start having to subsidize ZEV sales by charging more for higher-emissions vehicles.
This is another of those "unintended consequences" that keep popping up. They're never in my favor, either.
The MPCA claims that the LEV and ZEV standards would only affect manufacturers and dealers. That is baloney; new car buyers would also be affected, as well as used car buyers in a few years as these vehicles trickle into the used car market.
Colorado's LEV standard exempts passenger vehicles over twelve passengers; I see a fifteen-passenger high-emissions van in my future. Our family is large, but not that large. It's not a gain on the climate change front, either.
On the utility front, our utility is proposing to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2030, and to get to zero-carbon electric generation by 2050; not only meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement**, but exceeding them. They are asking for permission from the Public Utilities Commission to retire all of their coal-powered plants ten years early, and to build a lot more wind and solar power generation capacity.
The problems, of course, are that wind and solar electricity generation often don't track with electricity demand, and that it is very hard and expensive to store excess electricity in large quantities for the times when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining--which could be for days or even weeks.
Their solution is *waving the magic Technology wand* to use the power of technology to manage demand rather than supply. That looks to me like it is going to involve some kind of real-time pricing: very cheap electricity when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, and very expensive electricity when they aren't.
Minnesota does have a nuclear power plant, but from what I've read, it sounds like they are working only on keeping it open, and not on building another one. The environment lobby Force is very strong in Minnesota, and it does not always act coherently.
Buried deep within the bowels of the utility's Carbon Report, I have found an implied wish list: 1. Substantial tax subsidies for their "de-carbonization". 2. That Minnesota be converted to a "high-electrification state, requiring that electricity be used for cooking, water heating, space heating, and passenger vehicles. 3. That private generation of electricity (at least at the level of large businesses, etc.) be banned.
So, their brilliant plan to stop climate change and save the world is to use my tax money to force me to use electricity for everything, and then, when their zero-carbon-emissions electricity proves unreliable, to bar me from making my own electricity.
I just finished reading Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, which makes a strong case that socialism always requires some sort of a common cause, and always ends up using coercion by force. I am also in the middle of a book about the history of the Baptist church in Russia. Under the Soviet Union the Communists found it politically convenient to set the Church up as the internal enemy of all good Communists--as opposed to creating an external enemy that they might end up having to fight a war with, if passions ran too high.
More and more, I am starting to see climate change as the modern unifying cause of the socialists, the justification that they are using to take over control over more and more of the world's physical economic activity. Climate change cannot be separated from economic activity, because in their view economic activity causes climate change. The climate modelers are having to incorporate manufacturing and land use and so on into their models, and they already are showing a distinct tendency to want to control those activities in order to control climate change. This will not end well; it doesn't even end well when the economists are in charge.
---------------------------------------------------
*The short version of my opinion of climate change is that we are working very hard to solve a problem that may not even exist.
**I read the Paris Agreement. It's only sixteen pages, but it has already spawned a complex of committees busily generating large quantities of documents written in bureaucrat-ese. The character of the Paris Agreement can be seen clearly in its practice of calling a regular international assessment of progress toward reducing carbon emissions a "global stocktake"--overt Newspeak, in an Orwellian global program. The U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, but the process will take some time.
It's all kind of intertwined, but at the foundation are a solid belief in climate change*, and a steadfast faith in the power of collective, government-led effort to get things done. There is a law on Minnesota's books, the 2007 Next Generation Energy Act, which mandates a 30% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels, and a 80% reduction by 2050. The state is not on track to meet those goals, but by golly, they're trying.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is considering adopting California's ZEV and LEV standards, as several other states have already done. The initial public comment period on this effort closed yesterday; fortunately I was working on some of these things yesterday morning, and I noticed the deadline in time to get my comments prepared and submitted.
The LEV (Low Emissions Vehicle) standard would require that most new vehicles sold in Minnesota meet California emission standards. Apparently, federal law requires that states wanting to set more stringent emissions standards must either use the California standards, or do nothing. The MPCA may take Colorado's LEV standard (which basically incorporates the California standard by reference) as a model for Minnesota's version.
I don't see how letting another state write your state's laws can end well. Population of Los Angeles metro area: 4 million. Population of the entire state of Minnesota: 5.7 million.
The ZEV (Zero Emissions Vehicle) standard would set delivery quotas for electric, hybrid, and hydrogen-fueled vehicles for car manufacturers wishing to sell new cars in Minnesota. From a news report, it appears that people wanting to buy ZEV vehicles in Minnesota at present are having a bit of a hard time finding them, though most of them manage to purchase one in the end.
It turns out that this slight shortage in ZEV supply is because California and several others states have adopted ZEV standards, so the manufacturers are delivering these vehicles first to the states where they are required to deliver them. In my comments, I pointed out that the economic forces at play will sort this situation out over time, without any government intervention at all. And that if government intervention sets the ZEV quotas above demand, then the manufacturers and dealers may start having to subsidize ZEV sales by charging more for higher-emissions vehicles.
This is another of those "unintended consequences" that keep popping up. They're never in my favor, either.
The MPCA claims that the LEV and ZEV standards would only affect manufacturers and dealers. That is baloney; new car buyers would also be affected, as well as used car buyers in a few years as these vehicles trickle into the used car market.
Colorado's LEV standard exempts passenger vehicles over twelve passengers; I see a fifteen-passenger high-emissions van in my future. Our family is large, but not that large. It's not a gain on the climate change front, either.
On the utility front, our utility is proposing to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2030, and to get to zero-carbon electric generation by 2050; not only meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement**, but exceeding them. They are asking for permission from the Public Utilities Commission to retire all of their coal-powered plants ten years early, and to build a lot more wind and solar power generation capacity.
The problems, of course, are that wind and solar electricity generation often don't track with electricity demand, and that it is very hard and expensive to store excess electricity in large quantities for the times when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining--which could be for days or even weeks.
Their solution is *waving the magic Technology wand* to use the power of technology to manage demand rather than supply. That looks to me like it is going to involve some kind of real-time pricing: very cheap electricity when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, and very expensive electricity when they aren't.
Minnesota does have a nuclear power plant, but from what I've read, it sounds like they are working only on keeping it open, and not on building another one. The environment lobby Force is very strong in Minnesota, and it does not always act coherently.
Buried deep within the bowels of the utility's Carbon Report, I have found an implied wish list: 1. Substantial tax subsidies for their "de-carbonization". 2. That Minnesota be converted to a "high-electrification state, requiring that electricity be used for cooking, water heating, space heating, and passenger vehicles. 3. That private generation of electricity (at least at the level of large businesses, etc.) be banned.
So, their brilliant plan to stop climate change and save the world is to use my tax money to force me to use electricity for everything, and then, when their zero-carbon-emissions electricity proves unreliable, to bar me from making my own electricity.
I just finished reading Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, which makes a strong case that socialism always requires some sort of a common cause, and always ends up using coercion by force. I am also in the middle of a book about the history of the Baptist church in Russia. Under the Soviet Union the Communists found it politically convenient to set the Church up as the internal enemy of all good Communists--as opposed to creating an external enemy that they might end up having to fight a war with, if passions ran too high.
More and more, I am starting to see climate change as the modern unifying cause of the socialists, the justification that they are using to take over control over more and more of the world's physical economic activity. Climate change cannot be separated from economic activity, because in their view economic activity causes climate change. The climate modelers are having to incorporate manufacturing and land use and so on into their models, and they already are showing a distinct tendency to want to control those activities in order to control climate change. This will not end well; it doesn't even end well when the economists are in charge.
---------------------------------------------------
*The short version of my opinion of climate change is that we are working very hard to solve a problem that may not even exist.
**I read the Paris Agreement. It's only sixteen pages, but it has already spawned a complex of committees busily generating large quantities of documents written in bureaucrat-ese. The character of the Paris Agreement can be seen clearly in its practice of calling a regular international assessment of progress toward reducing carbon emissions a "global stocktake"--overt Newspeak, in an Orwellian global program. The U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, but the process will take some time.
Thursday, December 5, 2019
Almost a routine
I found this post at Laine's Letters...Revisited! a few months ago, and it has been very helpful.
In particular, I took the advice about setting down my daily routine on four index cards. Nothing is scheduled by time, it is just a sequence of tasks to go through. Start at the top, and work my way down, and when there are interruptions, that's okay. When one card's tasks are finished, flip to the next one. I do try to make sure that our meals land at regular times, though.
It very nicely solves the perennial daily problem of Too Many Things To Do And No Idea Where To Start.
In particular, I took the advice about setting down my daily routine on four index cards. Nothing is scheduled by time, it is just a sequence of tasks to go through. Start at the top, and work my way down, and when there are interruptions, that's okay. When one card's tasks are finished, flip to the next one. I do try to make sure that our meals land at regular times, though.
It very nicely solves the perennial daily problem of Too Many Things To Do And No Idea Where To Start.
Monday, December 2, 2019
A pot scrubber and a new knitting project
My homemade pot scrubber was wearing out, and it was time to make a new one. I have some plastic mesh produce bags tucked away in my craft drawer, but I also had a few narrow lengths of tulle, salvaged from gift wrapping. I chose to use the tulle this time.
I didn't follow my pattern from before, but instead did a chain ring, followed by a round of half double stitches, followed by a round of slip stitches, increasing as necessary to keep it flat. The result is denser than what I usually do. I probably would have been better off doing a single round of double stitches; I don't think there was enough tulle to do triples.
For the knitting project, I've started knitting a hat to give as a Christmas present. I bought the yarn a while back, and did a gauge swatch, and figured out how many stitches around it would need to be. I also decided to make it double-layered, as I did for my own hat. Today I actually cast on and knitted the first inch or so. With my recently improved knitting speed, I should easily be able to finish it before Christmas.
I've also been selectively cutting down the dead plants in the flower beds. Some I am leaving there until spring, because I like to look at them. Since I learned this year that you can get usable fiber from nettle plants, I've been looking forward to harvesting the patch of nettles that is well-established in one of our flower beds, but by the time I got to them, there were only a few of them still standing, and the rest were down and mixed in with some other tall plants.
I didn't follow my pattern from before, but instead did a chain ring, followed by a round of half double stitches, followed by a round of slip stitches, increasing as necessary to keep it flat. The result is denser than what I usually do. I probably would have been better off doing a single round of double stitches; I don't think there was enough tulle to do triples.
For the knitting project, I've started knitting a hat to give as a Christmas present. I bought the yarn a while back, and did a gauge swatch, and figured out how many stitches around it would need to be. I also decided to make it double-layered, as I did for my own hat. Today I actually cast on and knitted the first inch or so. With my recently improved knitting speed, I should easily be able to finish it before Christmas.
I've also been selectively cutting down the dead plants in the flower beds. Some I am leaving there until spring, because I like to look at them. Since I learned this year that you can get usable fiber from nettle plants, I've been looking forward to harvesting the patch of nettles that is well-established in one of our flower beds, but by the time I got to them, there were only a few of them still standing, and the rest were down and mixed in with some other tall plants.
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Covering a hole in the wall
We had a new water shut-off valve to an outside faucet put in. This required cutting a hole into the top of the wall in our basement family room.
Afterward, I struggled for a long time trying to figure out what to do with the hole. Part of the trouble is that the valve handle projects out about an inch from the wall surface. And we need to be able to get to it, occasionally, and turn it.
I started making a sort of panel to cover it, but gave up after a while because of the access issue.
Eventually, I got the idea of just making a little curtain to cover the hole. I found a piece of fabric, and figured out what size to cut it--usually a curtain should be at least 1.5 times wider than the opening you want it to cover, for fullness. I hemmed it on three sides, and made a tunnel for a rod on the other.
In our hardware stash I found a short tension curtain rod that was a good length for this project.
The next thing was figuring out how to hang it all up. I saw that since the hole was at the top of the wall, and the curtain and rod were very light, one possibility would be to hook onto the ceiling drywall.
A slight disadvantage is that the curtain would not hang any wider than the hole at the top, because of the hooks. Below, it could fan out a little.
For hooks, I first thought of using wire in the shape of upside-down Ls. But it seemed to me like the downward pull of the curtain rod would tend to make the hook tip, rest only on the corner of the drywall, and then possibly slide right off. (I later confirmed this with a small paper-clip model.)
My second idea was to bend the wire in the shape of a 6, with the top curved over enough so that the weight would rest on the drywall on a single point, which would be safely away from the edge. The curtain rod ends would go through the loops of the sixes.
For wire, I found two handles from Chinese take-out boxes that I had saved at some point. I bent them to match, and tried them out. They worked well, and the curtain is definitely an improvement over the bare hole. The folds of the curtain even disguise the projection of the shut-off handle.
Afterward, I struggled for a long time trying to figure out what to do with the hole. Part of the trouble is that the valve handle projects out about an inch from the wall surface. And we need to be able to get to it, occasionally, and turn it.
I started making a sort of panel to cover it, but gave up after a while because of the access issue.
Eventually, I got the idea of just making a little curtain to cover the hole. I found a piece of fabric, and figured out what size to cut it--usually a curtain should be at least 1.5 times wider than the opening you want it to cover, for fullness. I hemmed it on three sides, and made a tunnel for a rod on the other.
In our hardware stash I found a short tension curtain rod that was a good length for this project.
The next thing was figuring out how to hang it all up. I saw that since the hole was at the top of the wall, and the curtain and rod were very light, one possibility would be to hook onto the ceiling drywall.
A slight disadvantage is that the curtain would not hang any wider than the hole at the top, because of the hooks. Below, it could fan out a little.
For hooks, I first thought of using wire in the shape of upside-down Ls. But it seemed to me like the downward pull of the curtain rod would tend to make the hook tip, rest only on the corner of the drywall, and then possibly slide right off. (I later confirmed this with a small paper-clip model.)
My second idea was to bend the wire in the shape of a 6, with the top curved over enough so that the weight would rest on the drywall on a single point, which would be safely away from the edge. The curtain rod ends would go through the loops of the sixes.
For wire, I found two handles from Chinese take-out boxes that I had saved at some point. I bent them to match, and tried them out. They worked well, and the curtain is definitely an improvement over the bare hole. The folds of the curtain even disguise the projection of the shut-off handle.
Monday, November 25, 2019
Mileage
Driving around in pursuit of bargains is not free; there are costs in both time and money.
The IRS's mileage rate for business use of a car in 2019 is 58 cents per mile. This includes both fixed and variable costs, so it's an estimate of total cost per mile.
I used their mileage rate a few years ago to determine if walking to the more expensive neighborhood hardware store could actually be more economical than driving to a larger store with lower prices. It turned out that the neighborhood store was indeed the better deal overall...although it closed its doors not long after that, possibly because their service was rather poor.
When we do drive longer distances to buy things, it is usually not about lower prices, but to get better quality, or a wider selection.
The IRS's mileage rate for business use of a car in 2019 is 58 cents per mile. This includes both fixed and variable costs, so it's an estimate of total cost per mile.
I used their mileage rate a few years ago to determine if walking to the more expensive neighborhood hardware store could actually be more economical than driving to a larger store with lower prices. It turned out that the neighborhood store was indeed the better deal overall...although it closed its doors not long after that, possibly because their service was rather poor.
When we do drive longer distances to buy things, it is usually not about lower prices, but to get better quality, or a wider selection.
Saturday, November 23, 2019
When the toddler wants to paint
My husband bought a "Buddha board" recently. It is a flat, square surface on a stand; the stand also has a reservoir for water and a place to rest a paintbrush. The idea is to paint on the surface with plain water, which will dry within a few minutes, leaving it ready to "paint" again.
This gave me the idea of letting the toddler paint with water on construction paper on a tray. The paper can be dried and reused a time or two, if it doesn't get too crumpled.
This is an idea I should have had a few years ago, though, when the arboretum put in a new nature play area, including a bare-wood playhouse, a water source, and lots of paintbrushes. Every time we were there, there were a half-dozen or more little children industriously painting the playhouse with water, over and over, as the water dried quite quickly.
This gave me the idea of letting the toddler paint with water on construction paper on a tray. The paper can be dried and reused a time or two, if it doesn't get too crumpled.
This is an idea I should have had a few years ago, though, when the arboretum put in a new nature play area, including a bare-wood playhouse, a water source, and lots of paintbrushes. Every time we were there, there were a half-dozen or more little children industriously painting the playhouse with water, over and over, as the water dried quite quickly.
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Adjustments
I had some free time and was at loose ends, so I picked up my copy of Myquillyn Smith's Cozy Minimalist Home and started reading.
It helped me open my eyes and see that the room I was in, our school room which I had Cozy-Minimalized before, was getting cluttered up again and was short on breathing room. The chalkboard easel was back in there, and the dollhouse-that-never-gets-used-for-dolls had wandered in, homeless. There were also a number of smaller things that just needed to be put away.
It didn't take long to deal with most of them, and as I was moving around the house doing so, I did some more tweaking here and there. The dollhouse found a new home in the family room, the paper pumpkins the children made are arranged on top of a kitchen cabinet, and I made some headway on the general mess in the family room.
It helped me open my eyes and see that the room I was in, our school room which I had Cozy-Minimalized before, was getting cluttered up again and was short on breathing room. The chalkboard easel was back in there, and the dollhouse-that-never-gets-used-for-dolls had wandered in, homeless. There were also a number of smaller things that just needed to be put away.
It didn't take long to deal with most of them, and as I was moving around the house doing so, I did some more tweaking here and there. The dollhouse found a new home in the family room, the paper pumpkins the children made are arranged on top of a kitchen cabinet, and I made some headway on the general mess in the family room.
Monday, November 18, 2019
Warren makes me tired
She doesn't just want to go in for another round of screwing up health insurance, she also wants to completely overhaul the energy and housing sectors. As in M4A, this would involve massive amounts of taxpayers' dollars and incredibly complex tangles of laws, regulations, and brand-new government programs...for a sustainability score of 0, right off the bat.
Our local electric and gas utility is already proposing changes to radically reduce carbon emissions, including early retirement of all their coal-powered plants. The state Public Utilities Commission is asking for public comments, and I certainly have some to give them.
For housing, Warren is promising to "lower rents by 10%". While at the same time promising under her 100% Clean Energy proposal to refurbish 4% of existing buildings and houses each year to make them "green". Supposedly this will be done through the magic of federal funding.
If I do a quick estimate, guessing that there are 150 million buildings that would be affected, with an average cost of $50,000 to upgrade each building, that would be $300 billion per year, or $0.3 trillion; $7.5 trillion over 25 years. Plus a few gazillion dollars to "decarbonize" electricity generation, and a few gazillion more to take away most of our fossil-fueled vehicles. This makes it a modest proposal, actually, compared to the multi-trillion-dollar annual cost of her Medicare for All plan.
I found this laughable:
Given the difference in time between filling a gas tank and charging an electric vehicle (currently in the tens of minutes with Teslas, for a partial supercharge), I don't think that is going to look exactly like she thinks it will. The charging stations would have to be much more widely accessible than gas stations are today, and the sensible thing to do would be to place them mostly at peoples' destinations.
Her affordable housing plan will do little to improve my family's housing affordability or security. It would help if we weren't paying out the equivalent of another place's rent every month for health insurance, thanks in part to Senator Warren's Yes vote on the Affordable Care Act. There was, a few years back, someone who did the math and compared their monthly health insurance cost to the mortgage payment on a $400,000 house; they weren't wrong.
Happily, even if Warren were to win the Presidency, she wouldn't be able to get any of this legislated without the Democrats retaking a majority in the Senate.
Our local electric and gas utility is already proposing changes to radically reduce carbon emissions, including early retirement of all their coal-powered plants. The state Public Utilities Commission is asking for public comments, and I certainly have some to give them.
For housing, Warren is promising to "lower rents by 10%". While at the same time promising under her 100% Clean Energy proposal to refurbish 4% of existing buildings and houses each year to make them "green". Supposedly this will be done through the magic of federal funding.
If I do a quick estimate, guessing that there are 150 million buildings that would be affected, with an average cost of $50,000 to upgrade each building, that would be $300 billion per year, or $0.3 trillion; $7.5 trillion over 25 years. Plus a few gazillion dollars to "decarbonize" electricity generation, and a few gazillion more to take away most of our fossil-fueled vehicles. This makes it a modest proposal, actually, compared to the multi-trillion-dollar annual cost of her Medicare for All plan.
I found this laughable:
I’ll also invest in electric vehicle charging infrastructure, including ensuring that every federal interstate highway rest stop hosts a fast-charging station by the end of my first term in office, and ensuring that charging stations are as widespread and accessible tomorrow as gas stations are today.
Given the difference in time between filling a gas tank and charging an electric vehicle (currently in the tens of minutes with Teslas, for a partial supercharge), I don't think that is going to look exactly like she thinks it will. The charging stations would have to be much more widely accessible than gas stations are today, and the sensible thing to do would be to place them mostly at peoples' destinations.
Her affordable housing plan will do little to improve my family's housing affordability or security. It would help if we weren't paying out the equivalent of another place's rent every month for health insurance, thanks in part to Senator Warren's Yes vote on the Affordable Care Act. There was, a few years back, someone who did the math and compared their monthly health insurance cost to the mortgage payment on a $400,000 house; they weren't wrong.
Happily, even if Warren were to win the Presidency, she wouldn't be able to get any of this legislated without the Democrats retaking a majority in the Senate.
Friday, November 15, 2019
Staples
We recently made a trip to Costco to stock up.
Since I had all the packaging handy, I could easily figure the cost per 1000 calories for some of the things we bought:
Oatmeal $0.53/kCal
Flour $0.14/kCal
Sugar $0.26/kCal
Rice $0.21/kCal
This doesn't include the annual membership fee, though, or the cost of driving further than the distance to our usual grocery store. For the number of times a year that we go to Costco, it probably costs us about $12 each time to get over there and in the door.
Even so, by comparing against the chart I made of typical grocery store prices, Costco comes out fairly well, especially when I consider the quantity of food that we usually buy there.
For just those four items on this trip, we spent $35, and got 141,375 calories. No, these are not the only things that we eat.
Since I had all the packaging handy, I could easily figure the cost per 1000 calories for some of the things we bought:
Oatmeal $0.53/kCal
Flour $0.14/kCal
Sugar $0.26/kCal
Rice $0.21/kCal
This doesn't include the annual membership fee, though, or the cost of driving further than the distance to our usual grocery store. For the number of times a year that we go to Costco, it probably costs us about $12 each time to get over there and in the door.
Even so, by comparing against the chart I made of typical grocery store prices, Costco comes out fairly well, especially when I consider the quantity of food that we usually buy there.
For just those four items on this trip, we spent $35, and got 141,375 calories. No, these are not the only things that we eat.
Thursday, November 14, 2019
Phase Three
After reading this post and this post about maintenance and the lack thereof, I decided to post a thought I had a while back:
Which pretty much explains the fall and rise of civilizations.
It also reminds me of something I read somewhere, perhaps in a midcentury book about farming. The writer or the person being quoted by the writer said that all the failed farms he had ever seen had one thing in common: none of them had an oil can.
Destruction is easy and fun. Building is easy, but not fun. Maintenance is neither easy nor fun.
Which pretty much explains the fall and rise of civilizations.
It also reminds me of something I read somewhere, perhaps in a midcentury book about farming. The writer or the person being quoted by the writer said that all the failed farms he had ever seen had one thing in common: none of them had an oil can.
Tuesday, November 12, 2019
Fifteen and fifteen
We have learned that our health insurance will be going up by another fifteen percent. The new plan actually offers somewhat better coverage, but it appears that it will cover a narrower range of services than before. We still have some number of years before it becomes impossible for my husband's employer to offer "affordable" health insurance as defined by the Affordable Care Act, and we all get sent off to the exchange, but the trend is definitely in that direction.
On the brighter side, an elderly woman with a large fabric stash is downsizing and giving her fabric to the sewing circle at my church. She brought in a big stack of flannel, and I came away with something like fifteen yards of it. I will be making pajama pants, cloth diapers and wipes, a few cloth menstrual pads, and from the leftover scraps, some little disposable kitchen wipes.
I have some other sewing planned as well, and did a bit of a cutting-out party yesterday. I like doing the planning, designing, and cutting-out of sewing projects, but not the actual sewing so much. I'm going to move my sewing machine so that I can sit at it for a day or two or sewing; sewing while standing keeps the machine away from the toddler, but gets tiring if I'm doing a lot of sewing.
Also notable is that we recently received several bags of children's clothing from families in our church, whose children had outgrown them. We have very rarely had to buy our children new (or new used) clothes.
On the brighter side, an elderly woman with a large fabric stash is downsizing and giving her fabric to the sewing circle at my church. She brought in a big stack of flannel, and I came away with something like fifteen yards of it. I will be making pajama pants, cloth diapers and wipes, a few cloth menstrual pads, and from the leftover scraps, some little disposable kitchen wipes.
I have some other sewing planned as well, and did a bit of a cutting-out party yesterday. I like doing the planning, designing, and cutting-out of sewing projects, but not the actual sewing so much. I'm going to move my sewing machine so that I can sit at it for a day or two or sewing; sewing while standing keeps the machine away from the toddler, but gets tiring if I'm doing a lot of sewing.
Also notable is that we recently received several bags of children's clothing from families in our church, whose children had outgrown them. We have very rarely had to buy our children new (or new used) clothes.
Saturday, November 9, 2019
A poncho and a headband
I did a very quick and very simple sewing project: a child-sized poncho out of remnant fabric. I knew that you can make a poncho by joining two rectangles of fabric; the geometry is a little awkward, but I figured out how to do it.
There's a diagram here, third image in the post.
The recipient of the poncho looks very cute in it.
I also did a relatively quick knitting project: a headband in garter stitch, to go under the hat I made. Sometimes I want a bit more over my ears than I am getting from the hat. I had enough yarn left from the hat for two-thirds of the headband, and then I found a similar color in my stash to finish it off. Once again, I'm glad that I taught myself how to knit in the continental style, which is much faster; I was able to start and finish the headband on the same day.
There's a diagram here, third image in the post.
The recipient of the poncho looks very cute in it.
I also did a relatively quick knitting project: a headband in garter stitch, to go under the hat I made. Sometimes I want a bit more over my ears than I am getting from the hat. I had enough yarn left from the hat for two-thirds of the headband, and then I found a similar color in my stash to finish it off. Once again, I'm glad that I taught myself how to knit in the continental style, which is much faster; I was able to start and finish the headband on the same day.
Wednesday, November 6, 2019
"Property values" wins again
Background is here.
The voters did approve our school district's request for a 108%-plus increase in property tax levy for operating revenue.
The bright spot is that the margin of victory was much lower than that of the previous measure, which funded renovations and expansion; message sent.
The voters did approve our school district's request for a 108%-plus increase in property tax levy for operating revenue.
The bright spot is that the margin of victory was much lower than that of the previous measure, which funded renovations and expansion; message sent.
Monday, November 4, 2019
A frugal transformation
The neighbors gave our family a lamp and a small side table. We did need the lamp, for a reading light in one of the children's bedrooms, but we didn't need the table.
The table hung out for a bit in the living room, but it clearly wasn't sturdy enough to survive for long. Looking more closely at it, the top was a hollow box made out of hardboard.
I also noticed that without the legs, the top could be turned into a painting, and hung on the wall as artwork. There was an empty section of wall in the family room that had been needing decoration for a long time.
For colors, I decided to go with the existing family room decor colors, which are basically the rainbow colors, plus white. There's also a lot of pale blue, but I left that out of the painting.
For a design and painting technique, I decided to do patterns of dots. I'm much better at placing dots than at spreading paint where I want it to go, and a structured pattern would counteract some of the visual chaos that goes on in the room. The table top was already red, so I left it that way as the background color.
Then I did the dots, in patterns that varied by color. It came out fairly well--I picked a good stopping point and didn't overwork it--but it's definitely an amateur effort.
With the help of some hardware from our hoard, I hung it up. The wall it's on is not well-lit, so the white dots are by far the most prominent, followed by the yellow dots, and the rest are much harder to distinguish from the background, without moving closer to it.
The table hung out for a bit in the living room, but it clearly wasn't sturdy enough to survive for long. Looking more closely at it, the top was a hollow box made out of hardboard.
I also noticed that without the legs, the top could be turned into a painting, and hung on the wall as artwork. There was an empty section of wall in the family room that had been needing decoration for a long time.
For colors, I decided to go with the existing family room decor colors, which are basically the rainbow colors, plus white. There's also a lot of pale blue, but I left that out of the painting.
For a design and painting technique, I decided to do patterns of dots. I'm much better at placing dots than at spreading paint where I want it to go, and a structured pattern would counteract some of the visual chaos that goes on in the room. The table top was already red, so I left it that way as the background color.
Then I did the dots, in patterns that varied by color. It came out fairly well--I picked a good stopping point and didn't overwork it--but it's definitely an amateur effort.
With the help of some hardware from our hoard, I hung it up. The wall it's on is not well-lit, so the white dots are by far the most prominent, followed by the yellow dots, and the rest are much harder to distinguish from the background, without moving closer to it.
Friday, November 1, 2019
Warren's Medicare for All
I'm reading Elizabeth Warren's proposal for Medicare for All and how to pay for it now. I have not forgotten that she was in the Senate in 2010 and voted to pass the Affordable Care Act health care reform that was supposed to make health care affordable for all. [Unladylike snort]
Warren believes that removing the risk of bankruptcy from medical bills and the risk of death from unaffordable health care is worth a massive expansion of government bureaucracy, and also an expansion of IRS power to go after "the rich" to get money to pay for Medicare for All, along with an expansion of immigration and a large reduction in combat and counter-terrorism spending.
She claims that she can eliminate health insurance premiums for the middle class while not raising their taxes. Buried in the details, though, she mentions that the income that the middle class would no longer be using to pay health insurance premiums would be subject to the Medicare tax--substantially increasing the amounts that households are paying toward Medicare, even if the tax rate stays the same. This income would also be subject to Social Security and income taxes.
She claims that no one would have to save for medical expenses any more...something that I do not believe will be possible until Revelation 22:2 comes to pass. No earthly plan can cover everything.
She claims that her plan will cover "every single person in the U.S.". That's one heck of an incentive for the illegal immigration of sick people, some of whom will die painfully on the journey.
She plans to limit growth in health care spending so that it tracks growth in GDP, thus attempting to repeal by fiat the "cost disease" that has caused health care costs to grow far more rapidly than the quantity or quality of health care services. I was at one point working on a post on cost disease, but I got stuck. In some cases, it is clear that the perceived "good" of the service makes people inclined to purchase it even at an unreasonably high or opaque cost, and it seems that sometimes these social perceptions can bubble up to absolutely unsustainable levels. Warren is all the way up at "Health care is a human right!" in social mood, but she plans to sustain it by beating the costs down and the revenue up in any way that she can.
The cornerstone of Warren's Medicare for All plan is to turn employer contributions to health insurance premiums into employer contributions to Medicare. Supposedly she will scale them down a little and save employers a bit of money, but her plan is to make employers pay Medicare contributions based on the average health care costs of their employees. Since Medicare for All will offer more generous coverage than many employers do now, this is likely to increase costs for some employers, and it does nothing to reduce job discrimination against older and sicker people. There is also no guarantee that employers will pass any cost savings on to their employees, except that under collective bargaining agreements, employers can reduce their Medicare contributions by doing so. Which creates an incentive on both sides for increased unionization--and helps the Democrats win back union votes.
An aside: I believe that unions are only really sustainable when they create enough value for the consumer to justify the costs of the union benefits. In the old triangle of Better, Faster, Cheaper (where you pick two at most), unions won't be cheaper, and won't really be faster either, so they had better be Better.
Over time, Warren wants to transition the employers' Medicare contributions to a per-employee rate based on a national average cost of health care. This would be quite nasty for employers in lower-income areas, especially when compared against the promises that she is making to adjust some health care providers' pay rates based on regional differences.
Besides workers and employers, her other sources of revenue for Medicare for All are: tax evaders, the financial sector, big banks, large corporations, multinational corporations, ultra-millionaires and billionaires, legal immigrants, naturalized illegal immigrants, and defense spending. Altogether, her revenue estimates for these only add up to $20.498 trillion, not even half of the nearly $52 trillion that she estimates Medicare for All will cost over ten years. Much of the rest seems to be expected to come from redirected state and federal spending on health care, including the health care benefits paid to government employees, but I can't see how she expects to get to $30 trillion.
Interestingly, she doesn't say anything specific about the money from the premium subsidies currently being given to people buying health insurance on the exchanges. It took some digging to find a national number for this, but from this article it appears that it was $55 billion in 2018, which over ten years would be $0.55 trillion. Only about 10 million people receive these subsidies, according to this page.
Warren's plan only looks forward ten years, which I believe is too short a time frame, especially when it is based so much on soaking the mega-rich, who tend to not sit still for that kind of treatment. And there are only so many of them.
She has no plan for the thousands and thousands of workers in the health insurance industry who would lose their jobs thanks to Medicare for All.
If you take that number of $52 trillion, and divide by 10 to get the annual number, and then divide again by the approximate population of the United States, 330 million, you get a per capita cost of Medicare for All of $15,757.58. Unsustainable, in every way.
In the second-to-last paragraph, she says that Obama supports Medicare for All. They'll get it right this time, for sure!
Warren believes that removing the risk of bankruptcy from medical bills and the risk of death from unaffordable health care is worth a massive expansion of government bureaucracy, and also an expansion of IRS power to go after "the rich" to get money to pay for Medicare for All, along with an expansion of immigration and a large reduction in combat and counter-terrorism spending.
She claims that she can eliminate health insurance premiums for the middle class while not raising their taxes. Buried in the details, though, she mentions that the income that the middle class would no longer be using to pay health insurance premiums would be subject to the Medicare tax--substantially increasing the amounts that households are paying toward Medicare, even if the tax rate stays the same. This income would also be subject to Social Security and income taxes.
She claims that no one would have to save for medical expenses any more...something that I do not believe will be possible until Revelation 22:2 comes to pass. No earthly plan can cover everything.
She claims that her plan will cover "every single person in the U.S.". That's one heck of an incentive for the illegal immigration of sick people, some of whom will die painfully on the journey.
She plans to limit growth in health care spending so that it tracks growth in GDP, thus attempting to repeal by fiat the "cost disease" that has caused health care costs to grow far more rapidly than the quantity or quality of health care services. I was at one point working on a post on cost disease, but I got stuck. In some cases, it is clear that the perceived "good" of the service makes people inclined to purchase it even at an unreasonably high or opaque cost, and it seems that sometimes these social perceptions can bubble up to absolutely unsustainable levels. Warren is all the way up at "Health care is a human right!" in social mood, but she plans to sustain it by beating the costs down and the revenue up in any way that she can.
The cornerstone of Warren's Medicare for All plan is to turn employer contributions to health insurance premiums into employer contributions to Medicare. Supposedly she will scale them down a little and save employers a bit of money, but her plan is to make employers pay Medicare contributions based on the average health care costs of their employees. Since Medicare for All will offer more generous coverage than many employers do now, this is likely to increase costs for some employers, and it does nothing to reduce job discrimination against older and sicker people. There is also no guarantee that employers will pass any cost savings on to their employees, except that under collective bargaining agreements, employers can reduce their Medicare contributions by doing so. Which creates an incentive on both sides for increased unionization--and helps the Democrats win back union votes.
An aside: I believe that unions are only really sustainable when they create enough value for the consumer to justify the costs of the union benefits. In the old triangle of Better, Faster, Cheaper (where you pick two at most), unions won't be cheaper, and won't really be faster either, so they had better be Better.
Over time, Warren wants to transition the employers' Medicare contributions to a per-employee rate based on a national average cost of health care. This would be quite nasty for employers in lower-income areas, especially when compared against the promises that she is making to adjust some health care providers' pay rates based on regional differences.
Besides workers and employers, her other sources of revenue for Medicare for All are: tax evaders, the financial sector, big banks, large corporations, multinational corporations, ultra-millionaires and billionaires, legal immigrants, naturalized illegal immigrants, and defense spending. Altogether, her revenue estimates for these only add up to $20.498 trillion, not even half of the nearly $52 trillion that she estimates Medicare for All will cost over ten years. Much of the rest seems to be expected to come from redirected state and federal spending on health care, including the health care benefits paid to government employees, but I can't see how she expects to get to $30 trillion.
Interestingly, she doesn't say anything specific about the money from the premium subsidies currently being given to people buying health insurance on the exchanges. It took some digging to find a national number for this, but from this article it appears that it was $55 billion in 2018, which over ten years would be $0.55 trillion. Only about 10 million people receive these subsidies, according to this page.
Warren's plan only looks forward ten years, which I believe is too short a time frame, especially when it is based so much on soaking the mega-rich, who tend to not sit still for that kind of treatment. And there are only so many of them.
She has no plan for the thousands and thousands of workers in the health insurance industry who would lose their jobs thanks to Medicare for All.
If you take that number of $52 trillion, and divide by 10 to get the annual number, and then divide again by the approximate population of the United States, 330 million, you get a per capita cost of Medicare for All of $15,757.58. Unsustainable, in every way.
In the second-to-last paragraph, she says that Obama supports Medicare for All. They'll get it right this time, for sure!
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Again?
Our school district is in the middle of $0.165 billion worth of construction work--which the voters approved in 2017 by an overwhelming margin. I had a hard time understanding why it passed on the first try, and finally concluded that it came down to Property Values.
Now they are back asking for a combination levy renewal and increase, for operating expenses. They have been obscuring the hard numbers, but that's okay, I can make an estimate from the few numbers that they did give. My estimate comes out at an increase of $0.168 billion dollars over the previous levies--this is over the ten-year period they are asking for. Their brochure suggests it might be more like $0.120 billion dollars, but it's hard to put things in context when they are hiding the baseline.
Now that I've found the actual text of the ballot question, it looks even worse. They are proposing to MORE THAN DOUBLE the existing levies. Also, to index it to inflation. And, it is based on a per-student rate, so if enrollment increases, then so does the amount that they collect.
In the brochure, on page 3, there's a graph that is worth looking at. Just recently I read several of Edward Tufte's very interesting books on elegant graphical displays of information. So when I look at that graph, what I see is how elegantly it both shows and obscures the doubled levy request. At first glance, it looks like two streams merging and continuing together with the same total quantity, because the top and bottom heights don't change, but on the right side of the graph, the middle is filled in, with the increase in shaded area representing the 108% increase in levy.
One fact to know about this school district is that about 1 in 10 students come from outside the district, through open enrollment. They've closed this in the lower grades, for lack of space, so the proportion in the higher grades is even higher. It is also apparent from the things that they brag about in their media, and the things that they don't, that they are heavy on reputation and impressive-sounding activities, but not as good as they ought to be on academic quality.
In 2017 there were highly-coordinated efforts to get the bond request passed. In 2019, I am seeing more of the same; we have received multiple mailings.
The local newspaper was uncritically supportive of the 2017 proposal, something that I did not forget when the paper was asking for voluntary subscriptions. I was just about to donate, but then I changed my mind when I remembered their coverage of this issue. These past few weeks, the paper seems to have gone inactive. I can't say it's a clear case of cause and effect, but I suspect there's a connection.
Now they are back asking for a combination levy renewal and increase, for operating expenses. They have been obscuring the hard numbers, but that's okay, I can make an estimate from the few numbers that they did give. My estimate comes out at an increase of $0.168 billion dollars over the previous levies--this is over the ten-year period they are asking for. Their brochure suggests it might be more like $0.120 billion dollars, but it's hard to put things in context when they are hiding the baseline.
Now that I've found the actual text of the ballot question, it looks even worse. They are proposing to MORE THAN DOUBLE the existing levies. Also, to index it to inflation. And, it is based on a per-student rate, so if enrollment increases, then so does the amount that they collect.
In the brochure, on page 3, there's a graph that is worth looking at. Just recently I read several of Edward Tufte's very interesting books on elegant graphical displays of information. So when I look at that graph, what I see is how elegantly it both shows and obscures the doubled levy request. At first glance, it looks like two streams merging and continuing together with the same total quantity, because the top and bottom heights don't change, but on the right side of the graph, the middle is filled in, with the increase in shaded area representing the 108% increase in levy.
One fact to know about this school district is that about 1 in 10 students come from outside the district, through open enrollment. They've closed this in the lower grades, for lack of space, so the proportion in the higher grades is even higher. It is also apparent from the things that they brag about in their media, and the things that they don't, that they are heavy on reputation and impressive-sounding activities, but not as good as they ought to be on academic quality.
In 2017 there were highly-coordinated efforts to get the bond request passed. In 2019, I am seeing more of the same; we have received multiple mailings.
The local newspaper was uncritically supportive of the 2017 proposal, something that I did not forget when the paper was asking for voluntary subscriptions. I was just about to donate, but then I changed my mind when I remembered their coverage of this issue. These past few weeks, the paper seems to have gone inactive. I can't say it's a clear case of cause and effect, but I suspect there's a connection.
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Costume bits and pieces
I haven't done a lot with children's Halloween costumes this year, partly because years ago my mother-in-law bought my children well-made dinosaur costumes, which have only needed minor repairs since then, so we keep on re-using them.
I did sew one costume piece for a child. It was partly fun, and partly challenging. Fun, because it didn't need as much finishing work as a regular garment would, and challenging because it's shape and structure required some rather fiddly sewing. But it came out well.
One child wanted an astronaut helmet. I kept forgetting to check the bakery section of the grocery store for products sold under clear plastic domes, but eventually I thought of cutting the top and bottom off a clear plastic 2-liter pop bottle, and then making a slit up one side and uncurling it a bit. They put a lot less plastic into packaging than they used to, and it opens up far enough for a face shield fairly easily. I am thinking of wiring the top and bottom edges so that it stays open by itself, though. The rest of the helmet we are going to fake up from fabric or something.
Another child wanted to be a bird. I figured that I could use different colors of chalk to draw feathers on his clothing, and then use hair spray as a fixative, so it would last the evening, but still wash out afterward. But then he changed his mind.
I did sew one costume piece for a child. It was partly fun, and partly challenging. Fun, because it didn't need as much finishing work as a regular garment would, and challenging because it's shape and structure required some rather fiddly sewing. But it came out well.
One child wanted an astronaut helmet. I kept forgetting to check the bakery section of the grocery store for products sold under clear plastic domes, but eventually I thought of cutting the top and bottom off a clear plastic 2-liter pop bottle, and then making a slit up one side and uncurling it a bit. They put a lot less plastic into packaging than they used to, and it opens up far enough for a face shield fairly easily. I am thinking of wiring the top and bottom edges so that it stays open by itself, though. The rest of the helmet we are going to fake up from fabric or something.
Another child wanted to be a bird. I figured that I could use different colors of chalk to draw feathers on his clothing, and then use hair spray as a fixative, so it would last the evening, but still wash out afterward. But then he changed his mind.
Saturday, October 26, 2019
Fixing a rip in a suede boot
I used a glover's needle and some brown waxed thread, but an embroidery needle and dental floss would have done all right too--except for the color of the dental floss.
For these kinds of bringing-the-edges-back-together repairs, I prefer to use what I call a "Frankenstein stitch". My needlework reference book (a reprint of de Dillmont's very thorough volume) calls it an "antique seam". There's a slightly darkened version of the illustration here; it is one of the lesser examples of the hundreds and hundreds of beautifully-done engravings in the book.
Anyway, the way the stitch is made is to always bring the needle up through the material, first on one side, then the other, and repeat.
For these kinds of bringing-the-edges-back-together repairs, I prefer to use what I call a "Frankenstein stitch". My needlework reference book (a reprint of de Dillmont's very thorough volume) calls it an "antique seam". There's a slightly darkened version of the illustration here; it is one of the lesser examples of the hundreds and hundreds of beautifully-done engravings in the book.
Anyway, the way the stitch is made is to always bring the needle up through the material, first on one side, then the other, and repeat.
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Minimalist country style
While on vacation, I read a book called Country Wisdom, by David Larkin. It is a collection of interesting tidbits, not a comprehensive guide.
One of those tidbits was that thatched roofs were really only practical in damp climates; the moisture was needed to keep the fire risk down. That is why the American colonists didn't use them much.
Another one, that I have been thinking about off and on ever since, is that early American country interiors were much more sparsely furnished than most of us believe. The idea of them being cluttered came from a collector, who crammed as many items from his collection as he could into interiors to be photographed. I want to say that this was in the early 20th century, and that the guy's last name started with B, but I'm not sure now. From records of property made at time of death, it can be shown that people's household goods were functional and not plentiful in those days.
One of those tidbits was that thatched roofs were really only practical in damp climates; the moisture was needed to keep the fire risk down. That is why the American colonists didn't use them much.
Another one, that I have been thinking about off and on ever since, is that early American country interiors were much more sparsely furnished than most of us believe. The idea of them being cluttered came from a collector, who crammed as many items from his collection as he could into interiors to be photographed. I want to say that this was in the early 20th century, and that the guy's last name started with B, but I'm not sure now. From records of property made at time of death, it can be shown that people's household goods were functional and not plentiful in those days.
Saturday, October 19, 2019
The children design a fall craft
Three-dimensional paper pumpkins: crumpled paper on the inside, surrounded by orange paper--possibly thickened by folding to form the "ribs" of the pumpkin--with rolled green paper for a stem, and green pipe cleaner tendrils at the base of the stem; all held together by a layer of clear packing tape.
They figured almost all of this out by themselves. I did steer them toward the crumpled paper filling, and away from cotton balls, and I let them into the big box of office and art supplies that is usually off limits; toddlers, pipe cleaners, and electrical outlets could be a bad combination.
They figured almost all of this out by themselves. I did steer them toward the crumpled paper filling, and away from cotton balls, and I let them into the big box of office and art supplies that is usually off limits; toddlers, pipe cleaners, and electrical outlets could be a bad combination.
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
A deeper mitten basket
I had two baskets for mittens, one at the front door, and one at the back. Both were made of crocheted strips of cotton fabric, mostly old sheets. Since I've been trying to establish a single Coatroom Zone, I needed a single, larger basket, instead.
So I unravelled one of the baskets and re-used the strips to extend the other one and make it deeper. There was more than enough.
Then I cut down on the number of mittens and gloves a bit, so they would actually fit in the basket. I should do another round of this, as it is still quite full. I want the children to dig through it, not throw everything out so they can find something.
So I unravelled one of the baskets and re-used the strips to extend the other one and make it deeper. There was more than enough.
Then I cut down on the number of mittens and gloves a bit, so they would actually fit in the basket. I should do another round of this, as it is still quite full. I want the children to dig through it, not throw everything out so they can find something.
Monday, October 14, 2019
Punch needles
I've had the book Hooking Rugs: New materials, new techniques, by Gloria E. Crouse for a while. It is an older book, and it is interesting not only for the punch needle techniques that she used, but also for the ways that she used adhesives and other materials to make mixed-media rugs and wall hangings--she's tried everything--and for her tips on how to design, start, and finish a project.
There are basically two ways to make a hooked rug. One is to use some sort of a hook to pull yarn or fabric strips up through the backing material. The other is to use a tool to push the yarn or fabric strips down through the backing (from the back to the front)...usually this tool is a punch needle. This needle is a slit tube with a hole near the pointy end, set in a handle. The speed needle version is mounted on a set-up like a non-electric egg beater, which moves the needle up and down as the handle is turned.
I went to an estate sale recently, and I found a little box of punch needles for $3. When I got it home, I found that it contained three:
First, an inexpensive basic needle, non-adjustable. I had one of these once, but it didn't last long before it broke, because of how the needle and handle were joined.
Second, a similar needle with several depth-of-loop adjustment notches. The needle is mounted inside the handle instead of outside, which makes it much sturdier.
Third, a Columbia Minerva needle just like the one in the book (besides her trusty speed needle), with two sizes of needle tip. It has ten depth settings and a little slide to keep the needle where it has been set. In the book, she tells how she modified hers to get three more possible settings out of it.
I've been playing with it a bit--with something like one hundred hours of work left to do on my other rug projects, I'm not starting another right now--and it is indeed fun to stab through the fabric over and over to lay down lines of loops. The needle is a little tricky to thread, but there are some hints in the book. I used a small embroidery hoop to hold the fabric taut; for a rug, I'd want to build a frame.
There are basically two ways to make a hooked rug. One is to use some sort of a hook to pull yarn or fabric strips up through the backing material. The other is to use a tool to push the yarn or fabric strips down through the backing (from the back to the front)...usually this tool is a punch needle. This needle is a slit tube with a hole near the pointy end, set in a handle. The speed needle version is mounted on a set-up like a non-electric egg beater, which moves the needle up and down as the handle is turned.
I went to an estate sale recently, and I found a little box of punch needles for $3. When I got it home, I found that it contained three:
First, an inexpensive basic needle, non-adjustable. I had one of these once, but it didn't last long before it broke, because of how the needle and handle were joined.
Second, a similar needle with several depth-of-loop adjustment notches. The needle is mounted inside the handle instead of outside, which makes it much sturdier.
Third, a Columbia Minerva needle just like the one in the book (besides her trusty speed needle), with two sizes of needle tip. It has ten depth settings and a little slide to keep the needle where it has been set. In the book, she tells how she modified hers to get three more possible settings out of it.
I've been playing with it a bit--with something like one hundred hours of work left to do on my other rug projects, I'm not starting another right now--and it is indeed fun to stab through the fabric over and over to lay down lines of loops. The needle is a little tricky to thread, but there are some hints in the book. I used a small embroidery hoop to hold the fabric taut; for a rug, I'd want to build a frame.
Friday, October 11, 2019
If you're going to do wood countertops...
...this is the way to do them.
I've used the spar urethane that they used on the countertop a few times before, and I like the stuff a lot. One project was a set of shelves with a projecting counter, built of 2x4s, 2x2s, 1x10s, and plywood, which I built for additional shelf and counter space in our tiny apartment kitchen. Several moves later, we still have it, but now it is serving as a somewhat wobbly workbench in the basement.
After reading her post, out of curiosity I went to see how well the urethane on the counter of that shelf had held up. Originally, I put two good coats on, and called it good. Now it is very much dented and scraped up by tools, but it is all still there, except for a couple of chips on the edge, and one place where someone sawed into it a little.
I also used the stuff on my plywood hot tub, the furo, way back when. I put at least ten coats on the inside. Spar urethane does not fill in gaps, I found, without some assistance (toothpicks, in this case). It did leak just a little after a few years of use, but it was set up in a shower, so it didn't matter.
The most recent project was the bathroom stool, where the urethane is holding up very nicely...unlike most of the other finishes in there.
I've used the spar urethane that they used on the countertop a few times before, and I like the stuff a lot. One project was a set of shelves with a projecting counter, built of 2x4s, 2x2s, 1x10s, and plywood, which I built for additional shelf and counter space in our tiny apartment kitchen. Several moves later, we still have it, but now it is serving as a somewhat wobbly workbench in the basement.
After reading her post, out of curiosity I went to see how well the urethane on the counter of that shelf had held up. Originally, I put two good coats on, and called it good. Now it is very much dented and scraped up by tools, but it is all still there, except for a couple of chips on the edge, and one place where someone sawed into it a little.
I also used the stuff on my plywood hot tub, the furo, way back when. I put at least ten coats on the inside. Spar urethane does not fill in gaps, I found, without some assistance (toothpicks, in this case). It did leak just a little after a few years of use, but it was set up in a shower, so it didn't matter.
The most recent project was the bathroom stool, where the urethane is holding up very nicely...unlike most of the other finishes in there.
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Beans
There's a toddler helping shell beans in my kitchen tonight. My husband planted a few pole beans this year, and despite not being able to care for them much, they've produced well.
Last year, with an older child or two helping, we shelled about five pounds of bush beans in two hours or so.
Last year, with an older child or two helping, we shelled about five pounds of bush beans in two hours or so.
Monday, October 7, 2019
Fall wardrobe tweaks
I did a quick assessment of my wardrobe for fall, and was happy to find that I already had just about everything I need. Most of what needed to be done was to forcibly retire some items.
From past wardrobe inventories, for example the one in my Wardrobe in a Week effort, I know that 95% of my daytime wardrobe needs to be "working casual".
I did sew one thing, a skirt from a synthetic fabric out of my stash. I have nailed down the style and length of skirt that I like best, but I'm still experimenting a bit with the fullness. For this one, I tried a narrower skirt than I usually make, and I found that I like the result, but that I wouldn't want to go any narrower.
The time needed to cut out and sew the skirt was about two and a half hours, including doing a zigzag stitch around the edges of all of the pieces, to keep them from fraying--which was very necessary with this particular fabric.
The fabric's color didn't go well with the rest of my wardrobe, so I overdyed the skirt. I have been trying to get away from dyeing things, because the chemicals involved are quite toxic, but sometimes it is the most economical solution.
The fabric took up much more of the dye than I had expected, but in the end it looks a bit chintzy. I think it could benefit from a lining to give it more body, but I don't think I have the fabric for that right now.
From past wardrobe inventories, for example the one in my Wardrobe in a Week effort, I know that 95% of my daytime wardrobe needs to be "working casual".
I did sew one thing, a skirt from a synthetic fabric out of my stash. I have nailed down the style and length of skirt that I like best, but I'm still experimenting a bit with the fullness. For this one, I tried a narrower skirt than I usually make, and I found that I like the result, but that I wouldn't want to go any narrower.
The time needed to cut out and sew the skirt was about two and a half hours, including doing a zigzag stitch around the edges of all of the pieces, to keep them from fraying--which was very necessary with this particular fabric.
The fabric's color didn't go well with the rest of my wardrobe, so I overdyed the skirt. I have been trying to get away from dyeing things, because the chemicals involved are quite toxic, but sometimes it is the most economical solution.
The fabric took up much more of the dye than I had expected, but in the end it looks a bit chintzy. I think it could benefit from a lining to give it more body, but I don't think I have the fabric for that right now.
Friday, October 4, 2019
The Prudent and Prepared Homemaker
Sallie Borrink has made her Prudent and Prepared Homemaker materials available in her Community Discussion Area. There is a lot of good material there, and I'm in the middle of working my way through reading it and thinking about what I need to do in my own household.
The cost of handmade clothing
I came upon a historian's analysis about how much labor was involved in making clothing before the Industrial Revolution.
She took an example from the Middle Ages:
I believe linen was one of the major fibers, at least in northern Europe, but processing flax is also very labor-intensive.
Her estimate of a weaving speed of 2 inches per hour is exactly what I had estimated for my own speed making the rug.
In a sock-knitting booklet, I found a short history of socks that claims that before the time of Queen Elizabeth, people wore hose made of woven fabric, sometimes cut on the bias (diagonally), and that the fashion for knitted stockings only began when someone presented the Queen with a pair of knitted silk stockings.
I don't think my sock-knitting speed is as fast as two inches per hour, so I find this somewhat believable, although I also believe that someone, somewhere, must have worn knitted socks before Queen Elizabeth's time.
I've noticed how much emphasis in Proverbs 31 is placed on the manufacture of textiles. Another example would be in Greek myths, where noblewomen are often described as highly-skilled weavers. I have concluded that spinning and weaving are harder skills to master than growing food, and are very necessary skills to keep alive. That is part of why I built my little table loom and started learning to weave rugs.
The textile industry in the U.S. has been almost completely wiped out by cheap imports, with both the labor and the environmental damage being moved overseas. There is production of high-quality, sustainably-made fabric going on the U.S. still, but on a small scale, and it costs about ten times more than an import would.
She took an example from the Middle Ages:
So, 7 hours for sewing, 72 for weaving, 500 for spinning, or 579 hours total to make one shirt. At minimum wage - $7.25 an hour - that shirt would cost $4,197.25.
And that's just a standard shirt.
And that's not counting the work that goes into raising sheep or growing cotton and then making the fiber fit for weaving. Or making the thread for the sewing.
And you'd still need pants (tights or breeches) or a skirt, a bodice or vest, a jacket or cloak, stockings, and, if at all possible, but a rare luxury, shoes.
I believe linen was one of the major fibers, at least in northern Europe, but processing flax is also very labor-intensive.
Her estimate of a weaving speed of 2 inches per hour is exactly what I had estimated for my own speed making the rug.
In a sock-knitting booklet, I found a short history of socks that claims that before the time of Queen Elizabeth, people wore hose made of woven fabric, sometimes cut on the bias (diagonally), and that the fashion for knitted stockings only began when someone presented the Queen with a pair of knitted silk stockings.
I don't think my sock-knitting speed is as fast as two inches per hour, so I find this somewhat believable, although I also believe that someone, somewhere, must have worn knitted socks before Queen Elizabeth's time.
I've noticed how much emphasis in Proverbs 31 is placed on the manufacture of textiles. Another example would be in Greek myths, where noblewomen are often described as highly-skilled weavers. I have concluded that spinning and weaving are harder skills to master than growing food, and are very necessary skills to keep alive. That is part of why I built my little table loom and started learning to weave rugs.
The textile industry in the U.S. has been almost completely wiped out by cheap imports, with both the labor and the environmental damage being moved overseas. There is production of high-quality, sustainably-made fabric going on the U.S. still, but on a small scale, and it costs about ten times more than an import would.
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
Two new things
We spent part of our vacation in a place which has notably better salvage opportunities than our suburban neighborhood does. I did a lot of walking around and looking at things and considering possibilities. I was mostly looking for a replacement for my string art piece.
I knew that I wanted a more or less oval shape, and a rather large one. I figured that whatever I found, I could clean up and paint white.
I saw no ovals, but a lot of circles. Our school room already has enough circular shapes in it, and most of the ones I found were either far too heavy to quickly hang up on the wall, or too lacking in character.
I've learned that when I'm hunting through clutter for potential treasures, I should go back through and look a second or even a third time; I just can't visually take everything in all at once.
It was on the third or fourth time past one particular pile, when I found an accent window, probably from an RV. The shape is sort of arabesque, with two rounded corners and two pointy ones. The window itself is dark, curved plastic imitating smoked glass, and is intact. I felt like it wanted to be rescued and used.
I brought it home, washed it, and have been working on painting its aluminum frame. I found that plain white is too cold for the room, which has mostly warm colors, so I mixed a little yellow into the leftover paint, and gave it another coat. I need to look at it again in daylight to see if I like it or not; it may be too yellow now.
The window is on the wall now, but needs to be hung lower. I thought at first that I would hang it vertically, but it looks much better hung the other way, as it probably was placed originally in the RV. It is smaller than what I had planned, so I am going to look at how its scale works in the room also.
The other thing I picked up on vacation was a light armchair that I already owned, which has been in storage at my parents' house. This is for our living room, which was the first room that I did the Cozy Minimalism technique on. I had that room all done, but then I stole one of the rockers out of it for the school room. One of our director's chairs stood in temporarily, but it is not really durable enough to be there, and the children like to pull the fabric back off and let the arms flop down, and use it as a pretend airplane.
This armchair rocks a little bit. The base was still off from the last time I moved it, so I had no trouble fitting it into the back of our vehicle. I was happy to see that I had been smart enough twenty years ago to bag up the screws and tie the bag to the chair's arm.
The upholstery is very worn on the back, and will soon be worn on the front, but the frame and the springs are in good shape, and the stuffing is good enough for now. I still have the seat cushion that my grandma made me for it.
The chair did need some cleaning, starting with vacuuming, and it took me a ridiculous amount of effort to get the screws back in--working against the spring mechanisms, which needed to be wedged open, and for some reason one screw just wouldn't engage with the nut insert that it was supposed to screw into. The screw is into the wood far enough, but it will probably work itself back out now and then.
I knew that I wanted a more or less oval shape, and a rather large one. I figured that whatever I found, I could clean up and paint white.
I saw no ovals, but a lot of circles. Our school room already has enough circular shapes in it, and most of the ones I found were either far too heavy to quickly hang up on the wall, or too lacking in character.
I've learned that when I'm hunting through clutter for potential treasures, I should go back through and look a second or even a third time; I just can't visually take everything in all at once.
It was on the third or fourth time past one particular pile, when I found an accent window, probably from an RV. The shape is sort of arabesque, with two rounded corners and two pointy ones. The window itself is dark, curved plastic imitating smoked glass, and is intact. I felt like it wanted to be rescued and used.
I brought it home, washed it, and have been working on painting its aluminum frame. I found that plain white is too cold for the room, which has mostly warm colors, so I mixed a little yellow into the leftover paint, and gave it another coat. I need to look at it again in daylight to see if I like it or not; it may be too yellow now.
The window is on the wall now, but needs to be hung lower. I thought at first that I would hang it vertically, but it looks much better hung the other way, as it probably was placed originally in the RV. It is smaller than what I had planned, so I am going to look at how its scale works in the room also.
The other thing I picked up on vacation was a light armchair that I already owned, which has been in storage at my parents' house. This is for our living room, which was the first room that I did the Cozy Minimalism technique on. I had that room all done, but then I stole one of the rockers out of it for the school room. One of our director's chairs stood in temporarily, but it is not really durable enough to be there, and the children like to pull the fabric back off and let the arms flop down, and use it as a pretend airplane.
This armchair rocks a little bit. The base was still off from the last time I moved it, so I had no trouble fitting it into the back of our vehicle. I was happy to see that I had been smart enough twenty years ago to bag up the screws and tie the bag to the chair's arm.
The upholstery is very worn on the back, and will soon be worn on the front, but the frame and the springs are in good shape, and the stuffing is good enough for now. I still have the seat cushion that my grandma made me for it.
The chair did need some cleaning, starting with vacuuming, and it took me a ridiculous amount of effort to get the screws back in--working against the spring mechanisms, which needed to be wedged open, and for some reason one screw just wouldn't engage with the nut insert that it was supposed to screw into. The screw is into the wood far enough, but it will probably work itself back out now and then.
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Appliance woes
It's the Two Laws of the Modern Household:
1. All plumbing will eventually leak, and
2. All appliances will eventually fail.
We had trouble this summer with our refrigerator. Similar trouble to before: the door gasket on the freezer compartment partially fell off, but it wasn't visible, because the freezer is on the bottom. Plus smaller children tend to open the freezer, and then not quite close it completely, which isn't very visible either.
So humid air got into the freezer compartment, condensed, froze, and blocked the air flow up to the refrigerator compartment. Yes, it has a fan to send the cold air up.
We didn't lose much food, because we have a chest freezer, and several coolers. We also had three bags of ice left over from the church picnic. I did find that one cooler had lost its drain plug, but I was able to dig through our hardware stash and find a rubber cap that fit. I put it into the hole from the inside, so that pressure on it would only push it in more tightly.
Our dehumidifier also was not working well...two days after the warranty expired. But apparently we won the dehumidifier self-destruct lottery, because after a couple of days it started working normally again.
I say "self-destruct" facetiously, but really I do think in some cases these electronic appliances are designed to quit working prematurely.
Better engineering also can lead to products being designed to just barely survive the warranty period, mechanically.
If I were an unscrupulous manufacturer, I would direct some of my advertising budget into making a small percentage of my products built so well that they would last for years and years. Our refrigerator has a 10-digit model number, with both digits and letters. I have to wonder what information is being encoded in it.
Friends of ours moved into a new house two years ago, and since then have had to replace four major appliances, and have had half a dozen service calls on a fifth.
1. All plumbing will eventually leak, and
2. All appliances will eventually fail.
We had trouble this summer with our refrigerator. Similar trouble to before: the door gasket on the freezer compartment partially fell off, but it wasn't visible, because the freezer is on the bottom. Plus smaller children tend to open the freezer, and then not quite close it completely, which isn't very visible either.
So humid air got into the freezer compartment, condensed, froze, and blocked the air flow up to the refrigerator compartment. Yes, it has a fan to send the cold air up.
We didn't lose much food, because we have a chest freezer, and several coolers. We also had three bags of ice left over from the church picnic. I did find that one cooler had lost its drain plug, but I was able to dig through our hardware stash and find a rubber cap that fit. I put it into the hole from the inside, so that pressure on it would only push it in more tightly.
Our dehumidifier also was not working well...two days after the warranty expired. But apparently we won the dehumidifier self-destruct lottery, because after a couple of days it started working normally again.
I say "self-destruct" facetiously, but really I do think in some cases these electronic appliances are designed to quit working prematurely.
Better engineering also can lead to products being designed to just barely survive the warranty period, mechanically.
If I were an unscrupulous manufacturer, I would direct some of my advertising budget into making a small percentage of my products built so well that they would last for years and years. Our refrigerator has a 10-digit model number, with both digits and letters. I have to wonder what information is being encoded in it.
Friends of ours moved into a new house two years ago, and since then have had to replace four major appliances, and have had half a dozen service calls on a fifth.
Friday, September 20, 2019
The other two
Since I've been digging into some of the presidential candidates' campaign promises for health insurance and health care, I decided I might as well look at Buttigieg's and Harris's as well.
According to Buttigieg's campaign site, he is proposing Medicare for All Who Want It, as a public option. Supposedly this will put pressure on private health insurers to improve their products and service. His site says that over time, however, this will propel a transition to Medicare For All.
Having a public health insurance option and forcing private health insurers to compete against it is also a feature of Biden's plan. However, the playing field is clearly not level in such a scenario, being heavily tilted in favor of the government program, which can draw on tax dollars and practically write its own rules. I'm really getting tired of counting the avenues through which Democrats have attacked, are attacking, and are saying that they will attack in the future, private health insurance.
Not that I think private health insurance companies are good; but on the whole they can do much less damage than a nationalized bureaucracy can. The right to vote with your wallet is a very important one.
Another similarity between Buttigieg and Biden is that their plans include expanding automatic enrollments of people in government health programs. So much for Privacy and Choice.
Kamala Harris, according to her campaign site, is proposing a ten-year transition to Medicare For All, with automatic enrollment of newborns! Under her plan, some of the Medicare plans will be offered by private insurers. She promises to keep them on a very tight leash.
The ability of any of these candidates to reform health insurance coverage is going to be very limited, unless the Democrats can recapture the Senate, since the President does not have the power to legislate. I don't know how many seats will be up for grabs in 2020.
I also found an article on the American Medical Association site that describes some of their resolutions. Apparently the AMA supports the Affordable Care Act, proposes some changes to it--including fixing the "family glitch", hopes for universal health care coverage, and has concerns about the costs of Medicare For All--up to $32 trillion dollars in increased federal spending over ten years?!? There are some older articles about dealing with the 2017 changes in Medicare payments, and how doctors can navigate the pay-for-performance structure.
The problem with performance incentives for doctors is that they lead to compliance directives for patients...so much for Privacy and Choice...again.
I was looking at the AMA site because I believe that health care costs could be lower if the supply of doctors was larger. Some years ago, I looked at the doctors-to-population ratios of the United States and a couple of other countries. The United States was not that bad, but seemed to be not all that great, either.
According to Buttigieg's campaign site, he is proposing Medicare for All Who Want It, as a public option. Supposedly this will put pressure on private health insurers to improve their products and service. His site says that over time, however, this will propel a transition to Medicare For All.
Having a public health insurance option and forcing private health insurers to compete against it is also a feature of Biden's plan. However, the playing field is clearly not level in such a scenario, being heavily tilted in favor of the government program, which can draw on tax dollars and practically write its own rules. I'm really getting tired of counting the avenues through which Democrats have attacked, are attacking, and are saying that they will attack in the future, private health insurance.
Not that I think private health insurance companies are good; but on the whole they can do much less damage than a nationalized bureaucracy can. The right to vote with your wallet is a very important one.
Another similarity between Buttigieg and Biden is that their plans include expanding automatic enrollments of people in government health programs. So much for Privacy and Choice.
Kamala Harris, according to her campaign site, is proposing a ten-year transition to Medicare For All, with automatic enrollment of newborns! Under her plan, some of the Medicare plans will be offered by private insurers. She promises to keep them on a very tight leash.
The ability of any of these candidates to reform health insurance coverage is going to be very limited, unless the Democrats can recapture the Senate, since the President does not have the power to legislate. I don't know how many seats will be up for grabs in 2020.
I also found an article on the American Medical Association site that describes some of their resolutions. Apparently the AMA supports the Affordable Care Act, proposes some changes to it--including fixing the "family glitch", hopes for universal health care coverage, and has concerns about the costs of Medicare For All--up to $32 trillion dollars in increased federal spending over ten years?!? There are some older articles about dealing with the 2017 changes in Medicare payments, and how doctors can navigate the pay-for-performance structure.
The problem with performance incentives for doctors is that they lead to compliance directives for patients...so much for Privacy and Choice...again.
I was looking at the AMA site because I believe that health care costs could be lower if the supply of doctors was larger. Some years ago, I looked at the doctors-to-population ratios of the United States and a couple of other countries. The United States was not that bad, but seemed to be not all that great, either.
Thursday, September 19, 2019
'Tis the season...
...for the annual letter from the health insurance company saying, "If you like your plan, too bad, because we're discontinuing it."
Incredibly, last summer Biden stepped very close to repeating Obama's "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan" promise. From the health care page on his campaign site, I see that Biden is proposing to build on the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare, by increasing subsidies for people buying insurance on the exchanges, and greatly expanding Medicare, and increasing automatic enrollments into Medicaid.
Did you catch that bit? --Increasing subsidies for people buying insurance on the exchanges. These people are already eligible for subsidies, up to an income limit of 400% of the federal poverty level. He wants to increase the subsidies, and increase the income limits.
As for the people caught by the "family glitch" that I've already written about, all Biden is offering is a chance to buy into a government health plan. No, thanks. And Mr. Biden, don't stand too close to me, or you'll get badly scalded by the steam that is coming out of my ears.
In other health insurance news, I found an older post by The Silicon Graybeard that outlines some of the issues with Obamacare quite well. The ACA is very long and complex, and much of what it did was to amend several other long and complex pre-existing laws, including the Social Security Act, in an intricate sort of way. That is part of why it is very difficult to repeal.
His description of the trade-offs between efficiency and responsiveness is by itself well worth reading; it is an issue that I run into all the time as a mother.
Incredibly, last summer Biden stepped very close to repeating Obama's "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan" promise. From the health care page on his campaign site, I see that Biden is proposing to build on the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare, by increasing subsidies for people buying insurance on the exchanges, and greatly expanding Medicare, and increasing automatic enrollments into Medicaid.
Did you catch that bit? --Increasing subsidies for people buying insurance on the exchanges. These people are already eligible for subsidies, up to an income limit of 400% of the federal poverty level. He wants to increase the subsidies, and increase the income limits.
As for the people caught by the "family glitch" that I've already written about, all Biden is offering is a chance to buy into a government health plan. No, thanks. And Mr. Biden, don't stand too close to me, or you'll get badly scalded by the steam that is coming out of my ears.
In other health insurance news, I found an older post by The Silicon Graybeard that outlines some of the issues with Obamacare quite well. The ACA is very long and complex, and much of what it did was to amend several other long and complex pre-existing laws, including the Social Security Act, in an intricate sort of way. That is part of why it is very difficult to repeal.
His description of the trade-offs between efficiency and responsiveness is by itself well worth reading; it is an issue that I run into all the time as a mother.
Monday, September 16, 2019
Core dump
As I was taking my Sabbath rest, I picked up my husband's copy of David Allen's Making It All Work and read a bit. Allen is the creator of the Getting Things Done method of self-management.
According to Allen, the biggest obstacle to productivity is all the thoughts of undone tasks that are floating around in our heads; the mind won't let go of them until it knows they are safely done, or at least written down.
So his first step in Getting Things Done is to write all these tasks and projects down in a list.
This seemed like a good idea to me; I have a system where I capture most of my to-dos, but some of them slip away before I can write them down, and others have gotten left behind in the flow of life and written notes.
So I started my list, and I ended up with over two hundred things that I have been thinking about doing. Many of them are quick, five-minute tasks, and some are full-scale projects.
If they were all five-minute projects, it would take me only 17 hours to complete them all, not including the time spent on transitions, equipping, interruptions, and clean-up.
According to Allen, the biggest obstacle to productivity is all the thoughts of undone tasks that are floating around in our heads; the mind won't let go of them until it knows they are safely done, or at least written down.
So his first step in Getting Things Done is to write all these tasks and projects down in a list.
This seemed like a good idea to me; I have a system where I capture most of my to-dos, but some of them slip away before I can write them down, and others have gotten left behind in the flow of life and written notes.
So I started my list, and I ended up with over two hundred things that I have been thinking about doing. Many of them are quick, five-minute tasks, and some are full-scale projects.
If they were all five-minute projects, it would take me only 17 hours to complete them all, not including the time spent on transitions, equipping, interruptions, and clean-up.
Saturday, September 14, 2019
Caramel popcorn without corn syrup
A child wanted to make caramel popcorn, but we were out of corn syrup, so I found a recipe online:
Caramel popcorn
10 Cups popped corn
1 Cup (2 sticks) butter
1 Cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Melt the butter in a saucepan, mix in the brown sugar, and bring to boil on medium heat. Boil for 4 minutes without stirring. Add the vanilla and boil for one more minute. Remove from heat and stir in baking soda. Pour over popcorn and stir to coat.
-----------------------------
That is the full recipe. What I do is to halve the caramel part of it, to get caramel popcorn that is less gooey and sweet and liable to stick to little teeth. I leave out the baking soda, which makes the caramel foamy and more spreadable. If needed, caramel popcorn can be put over low heat in a pot on the stove or a pan in the oven to soften the caramel and help it spread; stir as needed.
-----------------------------
We also accidentally tried a version with 1/2 Cup butter to 1 Cup brown sugar. This made a very hard caramel, almost like peanut brittle without the peanuts.
Caramel popcorn
10 Cups popped corn
1 Cup (2 sticks) butter
1 Cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Melt the butter in a saucepan, mix in the brown sugar, and bring to boil on medium heat. Boil for 4 minutes without stirring. Add the vanilla and boil for one more minute. Remove from heat and stir in baking soda. Pour over popcorn and stir to coat.
-----------------------------
That is the full recipe. What I do is to halve the caramel part of it, to get caramel popcorn that is less gooey and sweet and liable to stick to little teeth. I leave out the baking soda, which makes the caramel foamy and more spreadable. If needed, caramel popcorn can be put over low heat in a pot on the stove or a pan in the oven to soften the caramel and help it spread; stir as needed.
-----------------------------
We also accidentally tried a version with 1/2 Cup butter to 1 Cup brown sugar. This made a very hard caramel, almost like peanut brittle without the peanuts.
Monday, September 9, 2019
How to do something that you don't have time for
Three ways:
1. The Gordon MacDonald way (from Ordering Your Private World): schedule it far in advance, and let the other obligations flow around it.
2. What I am doing now: give it a temporary boost to top priority, and do it before everything else.
3. What I should be doing: work faster to get everything else done, to make time for it.
1. The Gordon MacDonald way (from Ordering Your Private World): schedule it far in advance, and let the other obligations flow around it.
2. What I am doing now: give it a temporary boost to top priority, and do it before everything else.
3. What I should be doing: work faster to get everything else done, to make time for it.
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
Fix it or lose it
I've been playing a game around the house that I call "Fix It or Lose It". This is for our possessions within the house, not for the house itself.
So far I have repaired a wooden toy and a child's rocking chair, and I have decided not to repair (or re-repair) another wooden toy and another chair, because I couldn't fix them well enough for them to last much longer.
Repairs are not always something that you can just push through on the spot. Sometimes you have to wait for the right time, energy, parts, tools, or ideas. For the rocking chair, that meant not fixing it first thing in the morning yesterday; I didn't have the energy. Later in the day, I went back to it and everything came together without too much trouble.
So far I have repaired a wooden toy and a child's rocking chair, and I have decided not to repair (or re-repair) another wooden toy and another chair, because I couldn't fix them well enough for them to last much longer.
Repairs are not always something that you can just push through on the spot. Sometimes you have to wait for the right time, energy, parts, tools, or ideas. For the rocking chair, that meant not fixing it first thing in the morning yesterday; I didn't have the energy. Later in the day, I went back to it and everything came together without too much trouble.
Monday, August 26, 2019
The health insurance post
For years, I avoided comparing our current health insurance premiums with those from the years before the Affordable Care Act went into effect. I knew I wasn't going to be happy with what I found.
Finally, I dug out some numbers, and indeed I am not very happy with them. Our premiums in 2018 were double those of 2012. Our income rose during that time, but it certainly did not double.
Remember, the ACA was passed in early 2010, with most of it not going into effect until 2014--after the 2012 election. Plus, my husband's employer did what they could with the renewal dates to delay adoption of ACA-compliant plans for their employees until very late in 2014.
This doubling of premiums was not for the same plan or coverage. In 2012, we had a high-deductible plan (HDHP), which had the nice feature of a very high level of coverage once the high deductible was met, up to the lifetime limit. There was a health savings account (HSA) offered, which we signed on for and used, and it worked out well for us to have that money saved, because we did meet the deductible that year.
Our plan in 2018 had somewhat lower deductibles, much higher premiums (doubled), along with much higher co-pays and co-insurance. We had the option of a moderate reduction in premiums by going with a much smaller network of providers, but we ended up not doing that; snafu story omitted. We were a few years older, which added a bit to the cost. Because of the ACA, there is no lifetime limit, but that requires that at least one of us can stay healthy enough to work and keep paying the premiums through an expensive and possibly medical scenario.
That has left us with theoretically "better" health insurance, but in a much worse position financially for actually using it and getting health care. Let alone all the other things that our very frugal family could be doing with an additional several thousand dollars a year; the ACA carries an enormous opportunity cost for our family.
Of the current crop of presidential candidates, Senators Warren and Gillibrand were in office when the ACA was up for vote, and both of them voted for it. Neither of them is saying anything about the affordability of health insurance on their campaign website now. I find this a disappointment in the case of Warren, who co-authored The Two-Income Trap, and who knows a bit about the strained finances of American families. She has chosen to focus her presidential campaign more toward other demographics.
As I have written before, my response to the passage of the ACA was to stop buying paper towels. I figured that the passage of the ACA had cut ten years from my expected lifespan. A couple of years ago, from a newspaper article I learned that the number of people buying insurance on the exchanges was about half the number of people who were going without insurance and paying the penalty instead. (The individual mandate penalty has since been reduced to zero.) With a bit of mental extrapolating, I guessed that you could extend this 1:2 ratio to a 1:2:10 ratio: for every person benefitted by buying health insurance on an exchange, there were about ten people who wanted to see Obamacare nuked from orbit.
That the Republicans, once they regained Congress, failed to repeal Obamacare was quite stunning to me, and is probably the primary reason for their losses of House seats in 2018.
In my research for this post, I learned that there is a phrase for our situation: the "family glitch". My husband's premiums with his employer-based coverage are "affordable" by ACA definitions, therefore we as a family are not eligible for subsidies in the exchange, even though our total cost is well above the "affordable" threshold. Supposedly there are 2-6 million families in the same situation. That number looks a bit low to me, and probably there are millions of couples also affected.
I no longer bother complaining about these sorts of things, because I'm fairly sure that They are Doing Them On Purpose. If you remember, the ACA was shoved through to President Obama's signature quite rapidly, leaving little time for public comment or in-depth analysis. A law that long and complex is almost certainly bad somehow. It has been my opinion all along that the Democrats' intention with the Affordable Care Act was for it to pave the way for universal government-based health care. Their plan seemed to be that people with unaffordable health insurance would beg their employers to discontinue coverage, so they could then get affordable subsidized insurance on the exchanges. Edited to add: Another piece of the plan was that the ACA mandated that people applying to buy insurance through an exchange would be funneled into a government health program if they qualified. Also, under the ACA, some hospitals can determine likely eligibility for government health programs, and sign uninsured patients up on the spot. From there, it would be a short step to universal health care.
What actually happened is that many people just tightened their belts elsewhere and made do, and then went out and voted Republican. Democrats have since proposed fixing the family glitch, but the fact is, that they have lost too many elections and no longer have the ability to do so. The Republicans in Congress certainly aren't going to help them; the ACA gave them back control of Congress...gift-wrapped.
I see in my analysis here further reason to doubt the long strings of stories in the media from 2016 to 2019 about how the election of Donald Trump to President definitely, for sure, had to be because of "Russian interference!". After the Mueller report was released, the preferred explanation became "Racism!", now pivoting into "White Supremacy!". The idea that making millions of voters' health insurance even more unaffordable was a large factor in the Democrats losing the presidency is completely verboten.
Our other options for health insurance coverage are also unattractive. Buying insurance on the exchange without subsidies would cost more than we are paying with the employer's plan. Medical sharing ministries are another possibility, but I have always felt hindered in my spirit from them; I don't know why, but possibly cheats and scammers are working their way into that field. We have avoided government insurance programs, for reasons that people who support the Right to Privacy and Right to Choose should understand. Also, in some cases some of these programs (Medicare, notably) can claim a share of a person's estate after they die, so they are not necessarily free money, but function more as an extended, no-interest loan for life.
I don't want government health care. I don't even want government subsidies for health insurance. What I want is to be able to buy the level of insurance that we can afford, and that best meets our family's needs. The government's job is to make sure that the insurance companies and health care providers play fair.
Finally, I dug out some numbers, and indeed I am not very happy with them. Our premiums in 2018 were double those of 2012. Our income rose during that time, but it certainly did not double.
Remember, the ACA was passed in early 2010, with most of it not going into effect until 2014--after the 2012 election. Plus, my husband's employer did what they could with the renewal dates to delay adoption of ACA-compliant plans for their employees until very late in 2014.
This doubling of premiums was not for the same plan or coverage. In 2012, we had a high-deductible plan (HDHP), which had the nice feature of a very high level of coverage once the high deductible was met, up to the lifetime limit. There was a health savings account (HSA) offered, which we signed on for and used, and it worked out well for us to have that money saved, because we did meet the deductible that year.
Our plan in 2018 had somewhat lower deductibles, much higher premiums (doubled), along with much higher co-pays and co-insurance. We had the option of a moderate reduction in premiums by going with a much smaller network of providers, but we ended up not doing that; snafu story omitted. We were a few years older, which added a bit to the cost. Because of the ACA, there is no lifetime limit, but that requires that at least one of us can stay healthy enough to work and keep paying the premiums through an expensive and possibly medical scenario.
That has left us with theoretically "better" health insurance, but in a much worse position financially for actually using it and getting health care. Let alone all the other things that our very frugal family could be doing with an additional several thousand dollars a year; the ACA carries an enormous opportunity cost for our family.
Of the current crop of presidential candidates, Senators Warren and Gillibrand were in office when the ACA was up for vote, and both of them voted for it. Neither of them is saying anything about the affordability of health insurance on their campaign website now. I find this a disappointment in the case of Warren, who co-authored The Two-Income Trap, and who knows a bit about the strained finances of American families. She has chosen to focus her presidential campaign more toward other demographics.
As I have written before, my response to the passage of the ACA was to stop buying paper towels. I figured that the passage of the ACA had cut ten years from my expected lifespan. A couple of years ago, from a newspaper article I learned that the number of people buying insurance on the exchanges was about half the number of people who were going without insurance and paying the penalty instead. (The individual mandate penalty has since been reduced to zero.) With a bit of mental extrapolating, I guessed that you could extend this 1:2 ratio to a 1:2:10 ratio: for every person benefitted by buying health insurance on an exchange, there were about ten people who wanted to see Obamacare nuked from orbit.
That the Republicans, once they regained Congress, failed to repeal Obamacare was quite stunning to me, and is probably the primary reason for their losses of House seats in 2018.
In my research for this post, I learned that there is a phrase for our situation: the "family glitch". My husband's premiums with his employer-based coverage are "affordable" by ACA definitions, therefore we as a family are not eligible for subsidies in the exchange, even though our total cost is well above the "affordable" threshold. Supposedly there are 2-6 million families in the same situation. That number looks a bit low to me, and probably there are millions of couples also affected.
I no longer bother complaining about these sorts of things, because I'm fairly sure that They are Doing Them On Purpose. If you remember, the ACA was shoved through to President Obama's signature quite rapidly, leaving little time for public comment or in-depth analysis. A law that long and complex is almost certainly bad somehow. It has been my opinion all along that the Democrats' intention with the Affordable Care Act was for it to pave the way for universal government-based health care. Their plan seemed to be that people with unaffordable health insurance would beg their employers to discontinue coverage, so they could then get affordable subsidized insurance on the exchanges. Edited to add: Another piece of the plan was that the ACA mandated that people applying to buy insurance through an exchange would be funneled into a government health program if they qualified. Also, under the ACA, some hospitals can determine likely eligibility for government health programs, and sign uninsured patients up on the spot. From there, it would be a short step to universal health care.
What actually happened is that many people just tightened their belts elsewhere and made do, and then went out and voted Republican. Democrats have since proposed fixing the family glitch, but the fact is, that they have lost too many elections and no longer have the ability to do so. The Republicans in Congress certainly aren't going to help them; the ACA gave them back control of Congress...gift-wrapped.
I see in my analysis here further reason to doubt the long strings of stories in the media from 2016 to 2019 about how the election of Donald Trump to President definitely, for sure, had to be because of "Russian interference!". After the Mueller report was released, the preferred explanation became "Racism!", now pivoting into "White Supremacy!". The idea that making millions of voters' health insurance even more unaffordable was a large factor in the Democrats losing the presidency is completely verboten.
Our other options for health insurance coverage are also unattractive. Buying insurance on the exchange without subsidies would cost more than we are paying with the employer's plan. Medical sharing ministries are another possibility, but I have always felt hindered in my spirit from them; I don't know why, but possibly cheats and scammers are working their way into that field. We have avoided government insurance programs, for reasons that people who support the Right to Privacy and Right to Choose should understand. Also, in some cases some of these programs (Medicare, notably) can claim a share of a person's estate after they die, so they are not necessarily free money, but function more as an extended, no-interest loan for life.
I don't want government health care. I don't even want government subsidies for health insurance. What I want is to be able to buy the level of insurance that we can afford, and that best meets our family's needs. The government's job is to make sure that the insurance companies and health care providers play fair.
Saturday, August 24, 2019
Garden update
This has been a rough year for the vegetable garden, as my husband was unable to work in his plot for much of the summer. Some fellow gardeners pitched in and helped with watering and weeding, though, and we are getting some things out of it now: cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, basil, peppers, and beans. He had enough cucumbers and tomatoes to give some away, and in turn others have given us kale, summer squash, zucchini, and eggplant.
Thursday, August 22, 2019
What I've been doing instead of exercising
August is not my favorite month. But since it is miserably hot, it is a good time for taking on a miserable project or two.
We had a small upholstered chair with worn-out fabric, sagging webbing, and, as I found when I started tearing into it, foam padding that was turning into powder. Over the course of a week or two, I stripped it all the way down to the frame, and then dismantled the frame.
It was messy work, what with the dust and powdered foam. Also, de-upholstering involves dealing with large numbers of pointy little staples and nails and screws, most of which are difficult to remove.
In the end, what I am keeping from the chair is a small pile of fabric, a small pile of rough-sawn hardwood from the frame, and a few screws. Also, I am keeping the legs. I try to bring things into my house that are made of good materials, ones that I can re-use later.
We had a small upholstered chair with worn-out fabric, sagging webbing, and, as I found when I started tearing into it, foam padding that was turning into powder. Over the course of a week or two, I stripped it all the way down to the frame, and then dismantled the frame.
It was messy work, what with the dust and powdered foam. Also, de-upholstering involves dealing with large numbers of pointy little staples and nails and screws, most of which are difficult to remove.
In the end, what I am keeping from the chair is a small pile of fabric, a small pile of rough-sawn hardwood from the frame, and a few screws. Also, I am keeping the legs. I try to bring things into my house that are made of good materials, ones that I can re-use later.
Monday, August 19, 2019
Direction
I've been thinking about the runner some more, and looking at the materials that we have.
Eventually, it occurred to me that I could pray and ask for one.
The answer that came back immediately was that I already had everything I needed to make it.
I take that as meaning that I should go with the best option that I have on hand, the repurposed jute, and for coloring it use acrylic paints that I have.
As I mentioned previously, knitting it will use the quantity of jute that I have most economically. This knit rug will be going over the existing bits of carpet.
Earlier I researched possible knitting patterns, and did a test swatch. I think I can get away with using multiple knitting needles across the width, so I won't have to make longer needles.
The reason I was hesitating to use the jute is that it is not really a very strong or durable fiber. But if I color it with diluted acrylic paint, that will help it a bit.
In a previous attempt to use paint as dye, I had problems with it not dissolving evenly, so this time I am going to thin it down more gradually, and it will probably help that I have better-quality paint than I did then.
Eventually, it occurred to me that I could pray and ask for one.
The answer that came back immediately was that I already had everything I needed to make it.
I take that as meaning that I should go with the best option that I have on hand, the repurposed jute, and for coloring it use acrylic paints that I have.
As I mentioned previously, knitting it will use the quantity of jute that I have most economically. This knit rug will be going over the existing bits of carpet.
Earlier I researched possible knitting patterns, and did a test swatch. I think I can get away with using multiple knitting needles across the width, so I won't have to make longer needles.
The reason I was hesitating to use the jute is that it is not really a very strong or durable fiber. But if I color it with diluted acrylic paint, that will help it a bit.
In a previous attempt to use paint as dye, I had problems with it not dissolving evenly, so this time I am going to thin it down more gradually, and it will probably help that I have better-quality paint than I did then.
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Coming together
I am a bit amazed at how the bench and the table fit so well up against each other.
I've been brainstorming a list of runner possibilities. I have studied making homemade rugs for quite a few years, so I have plenty of ideas. Here are some of them:
Use the jute from my crocheted bedroom rug to make a rug that goes over the carpet remnants. I've already unraveled it. To make it cover the area that I want probably requires knitting or weaving; crochet uses much more fiber to cover a given area. Then I would dye it to the color I want.
Overdye the carpet remnants. Did you know that dyeing your old wall-to-wall carpet was possible? The internet says that it only works for nylon or wool, though. The way to tell if it's nylon is to take a little bit of the fiber off, and burn it (under controlled conditions, of course). Supposedly burning nylon should melt and form a small, clear bead on the burnt end. The other way is to immerse it in a little chlorine bleach overnight; if it is nylon, the bleach will eat it away entirely within 12 hours. So the internet says. Wool will smell like burning hair when it is burnt.
When I tried the burn test, however, it didn't look like nylon to me--I think it is probably acrylic--and in any case, it is dirty and probably wouldn't take dye very well.
Make a braided rug, probably from wool yarns. This would be somewhat time-consuming, and definitely expensive. The advantage of using yarns over fabrics is that you don't need to fold the raw edges in, so it goes much faster.
Weave a rug. That requires finishing my current weaving project, which is currently stalled at 25% complete.
Flip the carpet remnants over and paint the backing, which is woven plastic. I'm not sure how well the paint will adhere, though, and I would consider this a temporary solution at best. The painted texture is not going to sit well with some family members.
Find a used runner and overdye it.
Use my drawer full of shrunken wool clothing, which could be cut up and applied to a backing and dyed. I did a bit of searching for local sources of industrial felt, and haven't really found any.
Buy enough yarn to get started, and knit a rug in a loop stitch.
Buy a length of canvas, and make a floorcloth.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
An art
I made "an art" to put on the wall in our school room. Because the room is full of varnished wood furniture, I decided it would be a painted piece. The chair below it set the scale for the size. The rest of the room is very organized and regimented and visually weighty, so I wanted to do something in a looser sort of style, and much lighter, in a textured sort of way.
These considerations led me to playing around with string and paint left over from my wall doily project.
I got out rubber gloves and a piece of giant graph paper, turned the ball of string into a looser ball of string, and kneaded paint into it. It would have been better to make a looser coil of the string, tying it in a couple of places, and to make the end more findable; it ended up rather tangled, and untangling gooey string was a challenge, although I was able to get it mostly straightened out.
Then I started laying the string out on the paper in a big oval shape, in a loopy sort of way, around and around. At this point the toddler woke up, so I pushed through the rest quickly, ending by patting the string down hard onto the paper to make it all cohere.
When it was dry, I tore the paper away from the outside edges, but not from the center, which shows some interesting marks from being touched by the painted string.
I hung it up in its place, and it does all right there as a prototype--it has given me some additional and better ideas.
These considerations led me to playing around with string and paint left over from my wall doily project.
I got out rubber gloves and a piece of giant graph paper, turned the ball of string into a looser ball of string, and kneaded paint into it. It would have been better to make a looser coil of the string, tying it in a couple of places, and to make the end more findable; it ended up rather tangled, and untangling gooey string was a challenge, although I was able to get it mostly straightened out.
Then I started laying the string out on the paper in a big oval shape, in a loopy sort of way, around and around. At this point the toddler woke up, so I pushed through the rest quickly, ending by patting the string down hard onto the paper to make it all cohere.
When it was dry, I tore the paper away from the outside edges, but not from the center, which shows some interesting marks from being touched by the painted string.
I hung it up in its place, and it does all right there as a prototype--it has given me some additional and better ideas.
Saturday, August 10, 2019
Nearly there
A few things remain to be done in our school room, but it is almost done. My to-do list:
1. Find or make a runner to replace the carpet remnants. I've found fabrics around the house with approximately the color I want, and have spread them out there to test it, and it does work well there. The challenge is that our budget is still basically zero. I have some materials that I could use to make a rug, but it would take a lot of dye to get the color I want.
2. One of the lamps is a bit puny for the place it is in. Also, its shade is beginning to fall apart.
3. Make "an art" to go in that last empty piece of wall.
While I've been thinking about or waiting on these things, I've been getting back into some other projects, mostly sewing; the point of having the room "done" is so that the business of living can go on without having to think about it too much. I sewed some summer toddler clothes from my mother-in-law's leftover quilt fabrics, and turned an old knit skirt into a T-shirt for me.
1. Find or make a runner to replace the carpet remnants. I've found fabrics around the house with approximately the color I want, and have spread them out there to test it, and it does work well there. The challenge is that our budget is still basically zero. I have some materials that I could use to make a rug, but it would take a lot of dye to get the color I want.
2. One of the lamps is a bit puny for the place it is in. Also, its shade is beginning to fall apart.
3. Make "an art" to go in that last empty piece of wall.
While I've been thinking about or waiting on these things, I've been getting back into some other projects, mostly sewing; the point of having the room "done" is so that the business of living can go on without having to think about it too much. I sewed some summer toddler clothes from my mother-in-law's leftover quilt fabrics, and turned an old knit skirt into a T-shirt for me.
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Surfaces and accessories
The next step in the process of cozy-minimalization was to deal with the surfaces in the room. Some surfaces I am intentionally keeping empty, as places to put things down, or just to leave clear for breathing room. Most of the remaining surfaces are either for holding stacks of books, or various people's projects. So there was very little accessorizing that needed to be done, and I only used things that we already had.
Plants fall under the category of accessories, but I had mine in place already. I did repot one of them into a larger and nicer planter.
There were several leftover items that found homes in other parts of the house.
I found a mirror at the thrift store, to replace the one I took from my bedroom closet. It happened to be on sale, so the cost was just over $5. It is faux vintage, but still endearing in its inauthenticity, and I like it.
Plants fall under the category of accessories, but I had mine in place already. I did repot one of them into a larger and nicer planter.
There were several leftover items that found homes in other parts of the house.
I found a mirror at the thrift store, to replace the one I took from my bedroom closet. It happened to be on sale, so the cost was just over $5. It is faux vintage, but still endearing in its inauthenticity, and I like it.
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Walls almost done, and thinking about a runner
I filled the empty space on the wall with my elf house (which has acquired a few more elvish furnishings over the years). That puts it in a much more visible place than it was before. I also put the rope that I was hanging kid's artworks on back up.
With those done, the walls are just about done. There is one more area that seems to need filling.
I also backed up a step or two in the process and thought about what to do with the entry runner. We've had the landlord's carpet remnants there continuously, and I would like to do something different and better, in a very dark green color.
I remembered that we had some fake grass (aka Astroturf) in the garage. I never used it before because I didn't like the plastic texture, and because it sheds little bits around the edges.
But I pulled it out, and found that we have two pieces of it, one of which is almost exactly the size I want. In color, it was quite a bit brighter than I wanted, although not as bright as I remembered it being.
Family opinion was deeply divided on the texture. Several of the children thought it was a perfect place for a picnic, and for scattering toy "flowers". Another one joined me in hating the feel of the plastic.
One problem was discovered: spills go straight down through it. Since the runner is the place where most of the snowy boots get parked, it needs to have absorbency. A second problem is that the bright color makes the rest of the room look faded and worn.
So I decided to put the fake grass in the bedroom of the children who love it--the carpet in there is a hideous greige--and keep using the carpet remnants until I find something better.
With those done, the walls are just about done. There is one more area that seems to need filling.
I also backed up a step or two in the process and thought about what to do with the entry runner. We've had the landlord's carpet remnants there continuously, and I would like to do something different and better, in a very dark green color.
I remembered that we had some fake grass (aka Astroturf) in the garage. I never used it before because I didn't like the plastic texture, and because it sheds little bits around the edges.
But I pulled it out, and found that we have two pieces of it, one of which is almost exactly the size I want. In color, it was quite a bit brighter than I wanted, although not as bright as I remembered it being.
Family opinion was deeply divided on the texture. Several of the children thought it was a perfect place for a picnic, and for scattering toy "flowers". Another one joined me in hating the feel of the plastic.
One problem was discovered: spills go straight down through it. Since the runner is the place where most of the snowy boots get parked, it needs to have absorbency. A second problem is that the bright color makes the rest of the room look faded and worn.
So I decided to put the fake grass in the bedroom of the children who love it--the carpet in there is a hideous greige--and keep using the carpet remnants until I find something better.
Friday, August 2, 2019
Minimizing the smoke detector
This is the one that is smack in the middle of a wall that is one of the room's main focal points. The smoke detector is still there, I haven't moved it, but what I have done is to bring in strongly-colored and more attractive objects at a lower elevation, to draw the eye downward, and to let the white smoke detector visually fade into the upper wall.
This approach I would say is partially successful. There's some empty wall space at a middle height that seems to want to be filled.
This approach I would say is partially successful. There's some empty wall space at a middle height that seems to want to be filled.
Thursday, August 1, 2019
Mirror up
I decided to move the mirror from my bedroom closet to our school room. The mirror is just what I've wanted for the school room for a long time, while almost any old thrift store mirror would be fine for the closet.
I did some testing before I hung it, though, to see what would be reflected in it! This is something that Cozy Minimalism emphasizes.
As it turns out, the place beside the door where I wanted the mirror to be has good reflections from almost any angle, showing the bookshelves and lamp at the other end of the room, or the windows in the adjoining wall. It is also good to have something larger and shiny in the room; all of the other shiny things are small.
I did some testing before I hung it, though, to see what would be reflected in it! This is something that Cozy Minimalism emphasizes.
As it turns out, the place beside the door where I wanted the mirror to be has good reflections from almost any angle, showing the bookshelves and lamp at the other end of the room, or the windows in the adjoining wall. It is also good to have something larger and shiny in the room; all of the other shiny things are small.
Monday, July 29, 2019
Still working on the walls
I've been too busy with other things to make progress on the school room, except that I took out one piece of potential wall art: a handed-down pine cone wreath. It is a bit of a family heirloom, but is a bit lacking in visual appeal, and I am ready for a break from it.
Taking it out of the room definitely made an emotional difference; it had been weighing on me more than I realized.
Taking it out of the room definitely made an emotional difference; it had been weighing on me more than I realized.
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
On to the walls
The past couple of days I've made only incremental progress in our school room.
First I had various misadventures trying to do touch-up painting on the walls, starting with using the wrong color of paint--not hard, in a house that has three or four different shades of beige on the walls. Then, after I found the paint can with the right color, it was still the wrong color, because the paint was so old. Those Magic Erasers for walls have been very helpful.
Then, I pulled out the things that we used to have on the walls, and tried them in various places to see which ones I wanted to use. The results were inconclusive, because most of them are too small, except for one or two that are much too large. Also, the nails in the walls are much too high, and I am very reluctant to make additional nail holes, now that I know that I can't touch them up very well.
Today I did something that I should have done earlier, and moved my homemade coat hook rack into the school room. It fits in well, somehow makes that wall look much more finished, and connects the colors in the school room with the ones in the dining room. It is also needed there, since my husband has decided that parking the car in the relatively warm garage in the winter only makes the road salt eat holes in it faster, so we use the front door in the winter.
I was curious and measured the width of the coat closet, which is about two and a half feet. That is fine for a family of four in California--ranch style house--but not for a much larger family in Minnesota.
The other thing I accomplished was that some small assistants helped me determine that next to the front door would be a good place for a mirror of moderate size. I have one that would work, but I am very reluctant to move it off my closet wall.
First I had various misadventures trying to do touch-up painting on the walls, starting with using the wrong color of paint--not hard, in a house that has three or four different shades of beige on the walls. Then, after I found the paint can with the right color, it was still the wrong color, because the paint was so old. Those Magic Erasers for walls have been very helpful.
Then, I pulled out the things that we used to have on the walls, and tried them in various places to see which ones I wanted to use. The results were inconclusive, because most of them are too small, except for one or two that are much too large. Also, the nails in the walls are much too high, and I am very reluctant to make additional nail holes, now that I know that I can't touch them up very well.
Today I did something that I should have done earlier, and moved my homemade coat hook rack into the school room. It fits in well, somehow makes that wall look much more finished, and connects the colors in the school room with the ones in the dining room. It is also needed there, since my husband has decided that parking the car in the relatively warm garage in the winter only makes the road salt eat holes in it faster, so we use the front door in the winter.
I was curious and measured the width of the coat closet, which is about two and a half feet. That is fine for a family of four in California--ranch style house--but not for a much larger family in Minnesota.
The other thing I accomplished was that some small assistants helped me determine that next to the front door would be a good place for a mirror of moderate size. I have one that would work, but I am very reluctant to move it off my closet wall.
Monday, July 22, 2019
Seating, surfaces, and storage...
...are most of what I have been working on in our school room lately. I brought in a rocker from another room, to make an additional reading chair. I got the book storage straightened out. I put a little rack of coat pegs up where it was before, and put out the boot trays. I reduced my fabric stash slightly so that it would fit into five drawers, leaving a whole cabinet to become a new home for the cookbooks.
Some of the surfaces will be left empty, for breathing room and places to set things down.
I also hung the curtains back up.
Some of the surfaces will be left empty, for breathing room and places to set things down.
I also hung the curtains back up.
Saturday, July 20, 2019
Toilet seat paint job update
This summer I gave the toilet seat another repainting; it really needed it.
Looking back at my original post on this, and the one on the repainting after that, it looks like a toilet seat paint job will last for about six months in my busy household.
The initial cost was about $8, and I think I still have enough primer and paint left to do one more round. So it is costing us about $2 per six months, or $4 per year, to keep the current toilet seat going. That doesn't count the labor involved, which is roughly two hours each time, though much of that is
spent waiting for the paint to dry enough to put on the next coat.
A new seat would last us 3-4 years, and would cost something like $10 per year. That puts my "hourly wage" for this work at maybe $1.50 per hour, which is lower than what I usually aim for.
Looking back at my original post on this, and the one on the repainting after that, it looks like a toilet seat paint job will last for about six months in my busy household.
The initial cost was about $8, and I think I still have enough primer and paint left to do one more round. So it is costing us about $2 per six months, or $4 per year, to keep the current toilet seat going. That doesn't count the labor involved, which is roughly two hours each time, though much of that is
spent waiting for the paint to dry enough to put on the next coat.
A new seat would last us 3-4 years, and would cost something like $10 per year. That puts my "hourly wage" for this work at maybe $1.50 per hour, which is lower than what I usually aim for.
Wednesday, July 17, 2019
Some observations
Our school room, without all the books and the rugs and the curtains and the coats and shoes, is LOUD. The sound bounces all around the room, sometimes doing more than one lap, I think, and it's not just the sounds generated within the room, but also those from adjoining rooms and outdoors.
It made me appreciate how much the carpet in the other areas of the house are quieting them, even though I thoroughly loathe that beige carpet.
I had the furniture more or less arranged, but I kept getting Ideas, and with the shelves empty, I could try them out fairly easily. I tried using one bookshelf as a sort of room divider, separating the entry area from the rest of the room. It was an intriguing option, but I decided against it, because it was blocking light and kind of fighting against the architecture of the room. There was also the matter of anchoring the bookshelf securely so that it wouldn't tip.
That particular bookshelf actually ended up somewhere else entirely: downstairs, where there is a niche in the hallway that I have been thinking of making a bookshelf for. It just fits, and only because the light fixture there has the ability to swivel; I'm still discovering things about this house, after living here for several years.
Today I moved most of the books back. I think we may have too many.
It made me appreciate how much the carpet in the other areas of the house are quieting them, even though I thoroughly loathe that beige carpet.
I had the furniture more or less arranged, but I kept getting Ideas, and with the shelves empty, I could try them out fairly easily. I tried using one bookshelf as a sort of room divider, separating the entry area from the rest of the room. It was an intriguing option, but I decided against it, because it was blocking light and kind of fighting against the architecture of the room. There was also the matter of anchoring the bookshelf securely so that it wouldn't tip.
That particular bookshelf actually ended up somewhere else entirely: downstairs, where there is a niche in the hallway that I have been thinking of making a bookshelf for. It just fits, and only because the light fixture there has the ability to swivel; I'm still discovering things about this house, after living here for several years.
Today I moved most of the books back. I think we may have too many.
Monday, July 15, 2019
Cozy minimalism in the school room
I was going to put off dealing with our school room until later in the summer, as the next few weeks are quite busy ones for us, but I decided to squeeze it in this week.
I'm glad I did; there was a lot that needed to be done in there.
I started by listing the purposes for the room: it is our school room, our library, my office and craft room, and our main entry. It also has the biggest patch of bare floor in the house, which is used for sliding and dancing.
The biggest issue with it was Too Much Stuff. I have for some time been fighting the urge to buy even more things to put in it; a big reason why I wanted to deal with the room sooner rather than later.
The room also has a balance problem; massive bookshelves along one wall that seem to pull that whole side of the room downward. At the other end, there is a smoke detector hanging smack in the middle of prime wall space. Storage for coats and boots and shoes and hats and mittens and gloves and socks and sometimes snow pants has always been challenging.
The first step in the Cozy Minimalist method is to gather inspiration. I zipped over that, mostly, because the budget for this room at this time is zero dollars, and if I have anything that is inspiring for that room right now, it is the word "Gothic".
It took me only several hours to get the room cleared of everything but the main pieces of furniture. I say "only" because of the large number of books involved, over thirty boxes worth. Then I took a few more hours to wipe things down and dust and vacuum under and behind everything. It was a lot of work, but it was good to get it all done at once, instead of trying to chip away at it a little at a time.
I've started a list of the other things that need to be tended to in the room.
The next thing was to work on the furniture arrangement. I highly prefer to measure the room and furniture and make little scale cutouts that I can scoot around on a graph paper room, although the book recommends just moving the real furniture. It helps me to see possibilities that I wouldn't think of otherwise.
But in the end, the furniture mostly came back to where it started. A cabinet got promoted into a position in one of the room's focal points, and has been given the job of drawing attention away from that smoke detector. That displaced a so-so bookshelf, which is in a subordinate position that hopefully will help the cabinet balance the other bookshelves.
Next step is to work on rugs and lighting.
I'm glad I did; there was a lot that needed to be done in there.
I started by listing the purposes for the room: it is our school room, our library, my office and craft room, and our main entry. It also has the biggest patch of bare floor in the house, which is used for sliding and dancing.
The biggest issue with it was Too Much Stuff. I have for some time been fighting the urge to buy even more things to put in it; a big reason why I wanted to deal with the room sooner rather than later.
The room also has a balance problem; massive bookshelves along one wall that seem to pull that whole side of the room downward. At the other end, there is a smoke detector hanging smack in the middle of prime wall space. Storage for coats and boots and shoes and hats and mittens and gloves and socks and sometimes snow pants has always been challenging.
The first step in the Cozy Minimalist method is to gather inspiration. I zipped over that, mostly, because the budget for this room at this time is zero dollars, and if I have anything that is inspiring for that room right now, it is the word "Gothic".
It took me only several hours to get the room cleared of everything but the main pieces of furniture. I say "only" because of the large number of books involved, over thirty boxes worth. Then I took a few more hours to wipe things down and dust and vacuum under and behind everything. It was a lot of work, but it was good to get it all done at once, instead of trying to chip away at it a little at a time.
I've started a list of the other things that need to be tended to in the room.
The next thing was to work on the furniture arrangement. I highly prefer to measure the room and furniture and make little scale cutouts that I can scoot around on a graph paper room, although the book recommends just moving the real furniture. It helps me to see possibilities that I wouldn't think of otherwise.
But in the end, the furniture mostly came back to where it started. A cabinet got promoted into a position in one of the room's focal points, and has been given the job of drawing attention away from that smoke detector. That displaced a so-so bookshelf, which is in a subordinate position that hopefully will help the cabinet balance the other bookshelves.
Next step is to work on rugs and lighting.
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