Surprised

Having gotten clear of a demanding September, I dove into "quieting" and "hushing" the kitchen.  We packed away most of the things that were sitting out on the counters, table, and the smaller refrigerator, and then did a lot of cleaning.

I expect to be working on this room for most of the week, cleaning and organizing and eventually bringing some things back in.

Already, though, there are big differences:  some of the children sitting down to eat in the kitchen instead of grabbing food and running off into the living room, and when I glance into the kitchen now, the first thing I see are the beams of sunlight playing across the room.  

Which I have not seen in a long time.

My apologies

For a long stretch without posting. 

I have been working very hard on my home, particularly in our library/sewing/music room.  I dealt with a heap of boxes and bins that were blocking access to the closet, where some of our bulk foods are stored in buckets and popcorn tins.

Then I did something really counter-intuitive:  I brought a large piece of furniture into this already full room.  The reason is that a child had picked up a free curbside two-drawer filing cabinet in good condition from a neighbor, and thus was finished with the free curbside two-drawer filing cabinet that had done garage service from a different neighbor.  

This retired filing cabinet spent a couple days parked smack in the middle of the library, waiting for its next assignment, and it immediately became a frequently-used work surface...because the room had no other empty horizontal surface, besides the floor.

Not long after I moved the filing cabinet, unclaimed, out to the garage, yet another neighbor downsizing for a move along the property ladder set out a lightweight modern desk that was originally from Target.

I would normally have disdained it, but I had a stubborn sense of deserving to haul it home nevertheless, and it was light enough to carry by myself.

I made a place for it between the two main chairs in the library, sticking out into the middle of the room, and it immediately became a magnet for reading, drawing, and crafting activities such as beadwork and embroidering with yarn on dropcloth canvas and felt.  I've been keeping the desk mostly clear, except for a stack of books and the cat's new favorite sleeping basket, so there is always room to work.

As a side effect, I've been "hushing" the shelves and other surfaces.  And I was able to get several sewing and mending projects finished and out of the room entirely.

"Hushing" is not my term.  Myquillyn Smith's House Hushing book just came out this week, and I've been looking forward to it.  Yesterday I went out into afternoon early rush hour traffic and obtained a copy.  Her method of pulling an entire room at a time back to the bare basics is going to be very challenging to implement in my house, and realistically I am going to have to put off major upheavals until fall.

I also have her House Rules book.  Despite having a very different style than hers, I've found that every time I sit down and leaf through it for a few minutes, I get inspired with an idea for something that I can do to improve my home, and I'm off and running again.   

The second fridge discovers its destiny

The second, "stupid little apartment" fridge was due for a cleaning and defrosting, and then a child left its freezer door ajar for long enough that there was too much frost for it to close.

So, an unscheduled defrosting.  The good part is that wiping the ice and water off the interior more or less took care of the cleaning part, although I did also clean behind and under it.

There's been a bit of a dead mouse smell around, which I thought might be from back there, but it wasn't.  The smell was worse outside, and we looked all over along one whole side of the house several times without finding anything.

It seems to have been in one of the gutter downspout extensions; it went away after we finally got some rain.

Anyway, after getting the fridge dried and plugged back in again, I had an idea.  Instead of being The Overflow Fridge, or The Weird Ingredients of My Husband's Fridge, it could be The Leftover Fridge.

It is smaller and shallower, so there's not room for things to be lost in the back.  Also, if it gets full, I can easily see what can be thrown out to make room.

So far, this is working very well.

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For the toy bin, I found a fabric basket/bag I had made some years ago.  It sits in the bin and holds most of the toys.

First things first

"This seems to be axiomatic--going ahead with the work makes the tools show up.  They also seem to come in threes....Determination is a magnet."  -- Roy Underhill, The Woodwright's Shop:  A Practical Guide to Traditional Woodcraft

I have been lacking determination to finish any projects, except for building a toy bin to go under a play kitchen.  The bin helps get the toys off the floor, but since it is mostly open on the front, they still look like clutter.  I might put a little curtain on it.  I'm planning to put a finish on the bin to visually unite it with the play kitchen.  They are joined with leather straps on the back, and I should anchor the whole thing to the wall when I'm done.

After that, aside from being sick and reading through a stack of free Christian historical novels from the library, I began working through deep-cleaning various household biohazards.  In particular, my eldest child and I cleaned the refrigerator.  It is an early-90's model that is extremely simple and reliable compared to the dysfunctional 2010's fridge at our previous rented house.  

I discovered, through the advanced-level technique of reading the owner's manual that the previous owners thoughtfully left for our landlord, that the drain tray underneath is supposed to be cleaned monthly, instead of never.  There was a whole ecosystem in there.

I also cleared out some rotten onion "mush bombs" in the basement, and cleaned out the utility sink and both of the bathroom sink drains.  I have a length of wire with a little loop at one end like a fishing pole, and a handle at the other which keeps it from falling down the drain, for fishing out clogs.

Next on the deep cleaning list is the second fridge, which is a stupid little apartment fridge that frosts up badly; simple, but not in a good way.

Finally fall...

 ...after almost five months of August:  May was August, June was August, July was August, August was August, most of September was August, and even some of October has been August.

We didn't have the air conditioning on at all this year, so fall weather is a reprieve and a chance to really get moving on projects again.

In particular, dealing with all the things that have piled up all over the house.

I don't even have a craft project going on at the moment, except that I delegated one experiment to some bored children by having them draw on fabric with scraps of soap.  I will iron the fabric, wash it, and see if any grease stains from the soap survive the washing.  I'm looking for a way to give plain fabric a subtle pattern.

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Myquillyn Smith, "The Nester", is putting up transcripts with her podcasts now; an example.

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Locally, I'm watching the school board election and the referendums for funding that they have on the ballot.  The school board candidates are unimpressive.  The information from the school board on the referendums managed to outdo our last school district, by putting a lie on the first page instead of the second:  "This publication is not circulated on behalf of any candidate or ballot question."  That was at the bottom of the page, but it says "IT'S TIME TO RENEW" at the top, in much larger letters, and then they go on to do everything but fill in the "YES" ovals in the sample ballot questions.

They're trying to push through a big increase in their operating levy and have it increase with inflation.  Also, they're trying to trying to renew the technology levy, which is actually larger than the current operating levy.

A school district in one of the Twin Cities inner-ring suburbs recently called off in-person school for a day for the upper grades with only two hours notice, after some sort of threat.  I expect there will be much more of that in the future.

It's that time of year again...

 ...when the school district requests that I submit Form ED-01650, "STUDENT REPORT FOR AIDS TO NONPUBLIC STUDENTS", so they can make budget estimates.

This form is actually only required in the fall, required by the Minnesota Department of Education to be submitted to the school district, and I put in some effort last year to confirm that it is only actually required for the nonpublic schools who are requesting certain services:  partial reimbursements for textbooks and materials; health services; guidance/counseling.

The Department of Education and the school districts find Minnesota's homeschool laws somewhat confining, and as usual the bureaucracies demand as much information as they can get away with getting, the better to manage you with.  Birth certificate applications practically want what the mother ate for breakfast now.

In other, more productive activities, I've put up a clothesline, after getting unstuck about where to put it.  I got the idea of tying one end to one of the weed trees in the berry patch, but then I found a better spot.

The weather this month has gone from big snowstorm to 88 degrees back to cool spring weather, with occasional thunderstorms and two rounds of small hail.  I have several warm-weather projects lined up, and have been chugging through indoor spring cleaning and organizing while waiting for the right conditions.  

The children and I have been spring cleaning in the bedrooms.  For me, I got my closet tidied up and brought out the back-up sewing machine, now that cabin fever season is ending and I don't have to be so protective of open floor space.  I'm also in the middle of re-tidying my main fabric drawer.  The older children very competently dealt with their rooms, and the middle children assisted me in getting their room done--in the process, we came up with some good ideas for making it work better.

I saved myself some time by deciding not to do a couple of projects.  A reupholstered armchair was stored in the garage, and I thought I would have to de-upholster and de-critter it, but I looked it over and it is okay as is.

A green hardwood branch came down in the snowstorm, and I've been harvesting pieces of it for various purposes with my pocket knife, which has a saw:  some straight sticks, some pegs, and maybe later some knobs.

We've made a couple of expeditions to the thrift store, and I spent some time reading labels on clothing.  They had a lot more natural-fiber clothing than I expected, but you had to really seek for it.

Chugging along

I've been doing a lot of organizing and cleaning, and also a little decorating.

The plastic blinds in the kitchen were very bad when we moved in, and I just took them down and bagged them up--I hate mini-blinds too much to spend money on buying new ones.

I finally got around to washing them in the bathtub.  Hot water, dish soap, and spray cleaner had little effect on the thick, tenacious goo that was on them except to soften it a little.  What did work was to scrub with a drippy mixture of baking soda and water.  They came out looking almost new.

To dry the blinds before storing them again, I figured out a way to suspend them from the shower curtain rod by hanging two clothes hangers on it first, and then slipping each end of the top of the blinds into a hanger.

I came out only a little ahead in the end, though, because some little child decided to break one slat, and then another, of the bathroom blinds. I will splint them back together.

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I did a quick decorating project of covering a half-painted canvas--that my husband picked up from some curbside a while back--with fabric, and hanging it on the wall.  I used tacks salvaged from one of my de-upholstery projects.  I put the nail into the wall a little too low, and then compensated by putting a small wooden spool onto the nail before hanging the panel back up.

I used to cover pieces of plywood with fabric, stapled on, and lean them against the wall to hide electrical outlets from the baby, or put them under crates that would otherwise scratch the floor.

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I looked through the mending bag, and found that I have an even dozen pairs of children's pants waiting to be mended.  I'm going to have to switch thread on the sewing machine.  The thread in it now is very prone to jumping free of the thread guides and creating slack that then tangles down inside the machine.  I was making a quick pillowcase for a seat cushion, and had to pause every few stitches to make sure the thread was behaving itself decently.

The seat cushion was for the deconstructed chair in the library.  I also added one piece of the wood to the back, with short drywall screws, and worked out a way to semi-attach the chunks of redwood beam that it is sitting on to each other, so they're not shifting and letting the chair fall over.

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In other tinkering, we replaced the light bulbs in a bedroom with ones of a warm color temperature, and found out why the glass shade was on upside-down--it is too small to accommodate full-size light bulbs.  I worked out a way of suspending it a little lower using a bolt, a nut, and a couple of washers, with the bolt running up through the center of the original hanger, and being secured from falling back out with the nut.  It was a three-handed job, and I might go back and add a short tube as a spacer to steady the shade.

Cutting up, and weaving

I went through my mending basket, and decided which items were worth repairing.  The remainder I cut up, and filled the kitchen wipes jar, and a bag with more wipes, plus I filled a drawer with larger rags that I can cut up as needed, or just use as back-up towels.

I also unearthed my homemade loom and got the project on it going again.  I'm going to have to build up some muscles in my arms and upper back before I can weave for very long at a time.  There is a lot of reaching involved.

I have a plan to make a couple of little Christmas ornaments from juice can ends.  I try to make some kind of ornament every year, in sufficient quantity so each child has one of their own.

We made room for our Christmas tree, somewhat complicated by the fact that my improvised living room table will not fit through any of the interior doorways.  It is going into the back corner, which is a popular napping place because of the heating vent there.

   

Marking time

Both of the governor candidates here want to allow expansion of sports gambling to mobile devices, for the tax revenue.  The city government has put a pause on the sale of marijuana-derived products, probably so they can figure out how to tax it.

I've continued to make small improvements around the house.  For two shelves in shallow cupboards, I put a board across the front of the shelf to turn it into a built-in bin.  The board just rests against the inside of the cupboard's face frame.  The shelves hold small towels and washcloths, which I don't take the time to fold and stack neatly.

I sewed up ripped leather on a child's shoe with dental floss. Needed my leather thimble to push the big needle through the leather.  I also finally got around to mending a few items of clothing.  Still have some slippers and braided rugs and I don't know what else to repair.  Neighbors handed a very nice large rug down to us; it is in good condition except for wear at the edges, which I think I can deal with with some turkey stitch (tufted) embroidery.

I gave up on my bedroom closet office plans, and started using the space for craft supply storage.  I finally found my misplaced bedsheet, which I had cleverly stored among some spare pillowcases.

The weather has been very dry, but I saw that rain was finally coming, and got most of the rest of the leaves raked up before it hit.

The children have been doing good work.  It's been fun to see the older ones teaching the younger ones.

Activities

Dehydrated some cabbages.  Sewed a shower curtain.  Replaced the covers of various chair seats, re-using tacks from earlier armchair.  Put a second bar across a closet to support a laundry basket holding all of the family swimming gear.

Have also been watching the squirrels chew up all of the black walnuts and spit the shells onto the driveway.

The local homeschool association has been putting more effort into the diversity statement on their website than into providing accurate information about homeschooling laws or keeping the membership sign-up page updated.  Doubt that's going to end well.

Mother-in-law has been doing some interesting experiments with natural dyes...avocado pits to produce a rose pink.

Homebound

For various reasons, I've spent the month very much at home.

I've done a lot of the usual recycling of one thing into another:  new cloth diapers from a flannel sheet, and kitchen wipes from worn-out diapers.  I'm making toddler pants out of some 25-cent yard sale sweatshirts.

I laminated some more pretty papers and fabrics for shelf liners.

I decluttered some things that needed to go.

We made a bunch of birthday decorations from paper, including paper coffee filters.  Most of them are still up.

I got a small crochet hook, so now I can crochet my crochet cotton properly.

Making do

I've been doing lots of sewing, organizing, cleaning, and optimizing.  Mending towels. Cutting up worn-out fabric for kitchen wipes. I found that scrap paper is also not so bad for wiping out greasy pans.

I unearthed some items that have been wanted for many months.  Still looking for the extra sheet for my bed, which at one point I stored so cleverly that I haven't seen it since. I've been borrowing a sheet from my fabric inventory.

The big universal pot lid of my husband's fits my mixing bowl very nicely, which is handy for when there's bread dough rising.

I have finally more or less pulled together enough seating for the whole family to have a sit-down meal in the kitchen, all at the same time.  (The second refrigerator is needed, but is very much in the way.)

I made a list of low-cost family activity ideas, which we have not drawn on much yet, but it is there.

Thanks to the cold weather, I've not had to do much with the yard yet.  Many of the black raspberry canes were mowed down over the winter, so I'm expecting fewer berries this summer.  Waiting to see if the bulbs we planted last fall are going to come up.

A big load of Easter breakfast leftovers were sent home with us on Sunday.  We have a secondhand vacuum sealer that no longer vacuums but still seals, and I bagged up most of the leftovers for the freezer.

I messed around a bit with painting paper coffee filters and making flowers out of them.  They turned out well.

Eggs cost $7.99 for a flat of 30 now, roughly double what they cost before, but a flat weighs nearly four pounds, so they are still relatively economical.

I've been thinking a lot about a window covering for the library, to replace the temporary paper one I put up.  I've made a number of experimental samples, but haven't found anything that I like enough to invest the time into making in a full-size version.

I knit a dishcloth from the crochet cotton left over from one of the experiments.

It's as good as it gets here...

 ...in terms of getting the house organized and decluttered in between the busiest seasons.  I washed many of the windows before the weather turned cold, and have been able to conquer most of the messy areas.

I started an embroidery project for a Christmas gift.  I bought an embroidery hoop for it, but already had everything else.

I also have a couple of woodcarving projects in mind.  My husband brought home a woodburner, and we've been trying it out.  From looking at comic series art, I think the way to go with that is to do the shading first, and then add the fine lines and details.

The Twin Cities had some protests following the Rittenhouse verdict, but nothing near us.

We are well-supplied for Thanksgiving, and are thankful for what we have.  

The children have requested six different kinds of pie.

Yes, we have no black walnuts

The squirrels chewed through them all over the summer, and there are absolutely none left.

The kitchen is overflowing, though, with garden harvest:  tomatoes, peppers, and beans.  It was already super-tight on space before.

I built a sleeping loft for one of the children, and there are others in line for lofts of their own.  I ended up using hand tools a lot more than I had planned to, so I am still in recovery mode.  I was many years younger when I made the original loft, which is still in use.  Which reminds me that we bought extra bolts this time to replace the ones in that loft that have broken.

I've also been working on spiffying up our library room, which is my favorite room in the house.  The new rug ended up in there, and I made progress on cleaning the wood blinds that had years of dust on them.

We made an excursion out of town to see the northern lights, but at this latitude it was mostly a glow along the horizon.  Did have a nice view of the stars, and some constellations that I haven't seen for a long time.

Turning things over

Sallie Borrink has a new community called Christian Women Seeking Truth going, with a mix of free and subscriber-only content from her.  She's a wise, mature Christian woman with a gift for searching out interesting and informative links.

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I've covered two more boxes with paper for the shelf, and I'm still working hard on my big project, which is now passing through The Stage Where It All Goes to Crap, and entering the Maybe I Can Still Stick the Landing phase. 

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I've also done a lot of organizing of children's clothing. A family at our church regularly hands down their children's outgrown clothing to us, and so I received two more bags to sort out and put away into our "kids' clothes pantry", which now contains sizes from baby all the way up to teenager.

A crate

I turned some of our lumber pile into a crate about two feet long, with a lid, to be used for storage.  Most of the wood was pine in 2x6, 1x6, and 2x3 sizes, but I also used some of the oak frame pieces from the child's upholstered chair that I disassembled a while back. 

Even with using power tools until I had to move operations into the kitchen, it took me most of the day. I used screws instead of nails, and drilled a pilot hole for each one.

Boxes

I thought of various alternatives for making storage boxes for the shelf, and ended up with paper-covered boxes as a medium-term solution.

I happened to have a larger box on hand that I was able to cut apart and reconstruct as two smaller boxes of the size that I wanted.

For the paper, we did another round of shaving cream marbling. This time I tried mixing a base color all through the shaving cream, and then swirling in a second color. It turned out all right, but I think this technique works better if some of the shaving cream is left white, to help the gaps where it doesn't touch the paper harmonize with the marbling.

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A journalist finally got the percentage of Minnesota coronavirus deaths with a serious underlying health condition out of the Department of Health:  94%, with an additional 4% "unknown".

Apples!

We've been blessed this year by a couple of families who have shared the fruits of their apple trees with us.  And then some, because their trees are very tasty varieties.

Earlier in the fall, they gave us more than a five-gallon bucket full, and then last week my husband went out with a crew of helpers, and came back with something like five bushels more.

So we've been making applesauce, and dehydrated apples, and apple pie filling, and apple juice, and apple crunch, and filling up all our freezer containers. 

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The other thing I've been working on is making a little more storage space in our living room, for everyone's little odds and ends. I was thinking of building some sort of shelf for this, but decided that it would be better just to make better use of the tall, narrow, mostly empty bookshelf that is in there. So I made a new shelf to replace one that I originally left out, because of an awkwardly placed knot in the wood, and I am thinking about how to make baskets.

 

Putting things together again

No curfew in Minneapolis or St. Paul last night, only continuing violent crimes.

Coronavirus numbers in tests, hospitalizations, and deaths in Minnesota have held quite steady since mid-June. I suppose an uptick should be expected in early fall, once school and other fall activities get going a bit. Summer is very much the off season for most organized social activities around here, because the people who do the organizing go out of town to their families' cabins.

I made progress on many things last week.  I mended more clothing, and some knitted dishcloths, and a mitten. I aligned the reel mower. I moved two bags of toys out of the living room, back down to the basement where they belong. I established a better workflow for a refinishing project that I am working on, and am finally making progress on it. I found my what-to-do-next cards, which I had completely forgotten about, and am getting back into a routine. I am also easing into exercising with hand weights again.

I've been gradually moving some pieces of decor around, trying things in different places.

More deliveries

Another week of having people grocery shop for us, because of Symptoms. Again they were more or less able to get everything on our list. People from church dropped off some additional things, which were welcome.

I have been learning how to make artificial flowers from coffee filters. Except that I don’t have coffee filters. What I do have is several boxes of unused letterhead paper, which is harder to cut, so I’ve been making one less fold than in the video. I also don’t have food coloring, only paints.

I’m also planning on covering another cardboard box with fabric, for prettier storage.

The trend of confirmed cases in my state remains more or less linear, with gradual increases in the numbers currently hospitalized and in the ICU. The state has a summary of available medical resources up now.

The state is also publishing a list of the larger senior living places that have confirmed cases, which is now over forty, and scattered over many counties. The median age of confirmed cases has increased slightly, as expected.