REAL Zero Waste

Because it’s summer, we’ve been using our freezers a lot. We have a small, non-defrosting freezer we bought as a back up when the fridge was dying/not dying the second time. The long-term plan has always been to get rid of it, probably next year.

That said, one way we work to keep it more energy efficient (and less of a PITA) is that we keep an ice scraper in it and when the door is opened, we scrape off some of the extra “snow.”

I debated what to do with this and found a solution. I toss it on the ground, push it around and use is as a sweeping compound. It picks up the dirt, leaves a very slight skim of water on the wood floor and when it’s dirty gets tossed into the garden. Water + dirt, and that’s it. No soap, no extra cost, no extra power used, nada.

I had used snow as a sweeping compound on the concrete floor of the bookstore, but it never occurred to me that I could partially defrost the freezer AND do this mid-summer!

I wish I could find 100 things like this, but 1 counts ‘eh?

J

More Work: Tues & Weds

More was done on the roof and new patio on both Tuesday and Wednesday. This makes doing extensive things in the house awkward, but not impossible.

Tuesday:

I bought a bookcase last Friday. It’s shallow (12″) but long (48″) and wonderfully, it has 5 cubbies, 3 of which fit my notebook boxes. Hurrah!

Because of the new bookcase, yesterday I cleared and cleaned most of the space between the jelly cabinet and the end of the stairs, along the stair rail wall. (It’s cutaway to let heat from the woodstove migrate upstairs in winter.)  Anyway, I removed the 3 bookcase boxes from that wall, cleaned things, sorted the books, etc. into “outs” and “keeps” and put the new bookcase into place along that wall with the only one bookcase box and the short bookcase box on top (it had been on top of 2 larger bookcase boxes). The decorative stuff and the CDs and field guides which live in the short bookcase box have been replaced. I need to refill the bookcase with “keeps” from the sort and box up the “outs” so that they can be further sorted into “try to sell” and “donations.”

The donations get donated ASAP, the others will be put up for sale for a limited time. If they sell? Great! If not? They become donations. I am only keeping expensive or signed books these days for possible future sale. Regular books < $20 aren’t worth my time any more. . . .

Anyway, that’s the next step for the house culling.

Otherwise I have to remove everything from the new cap for those drawer units so DH can make a riser to go under it and the top drawers will move again. Then the top will be replaced, and the bookcase will be empty! The milk crates will be put to use in my office and the bookcase will (hopefully) be put into the attic fairly quickly. (If you’re keeping count, the bookcase will be the 3rd piece (the others are one bookcase box from the living room and the trunk) waiting to go into the attic.

Clearing out the attic has become a priority! So I will work on it and my office a bit more today.

This morning I worked on the compost heaps. I need to distribute the compost from the old heap into the vegetable garden and EMPTY the bin. I have 3 pallets made into a U shape which form the original bin. After way too long, I now have two more pallets to add, so  it will be W shape instead! I need to buy the pieces I use to anchor the pallets. I don’t have any just now. When I get the second leg added, the structure will be complete. There’s a “yard” attached too, for a leaf pile. Right now, that is holding the 2nd (current) compost heap and the leaf pile is a mess piled up on the side. I want to make this a LOT neater!

I used the wood ash pile up this morning too. Then used a layer off the old compost pile. The effort to make the new pile, use up the old pile, and neaten up the leaf pile(s) is going to take time and a few sessions of working on it.

It just started to rain here, again, so it’s possible that no more work will be possible until tomorrow. If it dries out? Great! If not, well, tomorrow I guess.

What I really, really wanted to do late this morning on the attic effort was haul everything from the “island” in the middle of the attic out onto the lawn so that it could be sorted into culls and keeps. The culls could either go to the storage, the dump (Weds.) or antique store.

Sigh. I do not have a “good” Plan B. It’s approx. 11:30, I guess Plan B is to have an early lunch and then examine the stuff in the attic and see what I can do otherwise.

Wednesday:

They brought the posts over which will support the new piece of the roof, this is going to be real sometime soon — or so it appears!

Aside from that I spent a lot of Wednesday processing the end of last week’s produce so that the new batch I’ll get tomorrow will go into a mostly cleared out fridge.

Did 3 loads of laundry, the laundry is finally starting to get caught up. Hurrah!

Did 3 loads of dishes too, and DH did some. If I wasn’t chopping, etc. food thru the day the kitchen would be clean, but it isn’t, because things get used as fast as other pieces get washed and put away. Oh well.

Did a dump run this afternoon. DH and I did another this evening. The sheets got changed on the bed. Fourth load of wash in the machine, 3rd load in the dryer.

Lots of work getting done around here. I think I should get another job, I might be less busy!

Next Steps

So, it’s supposed to rain this afternoon, delaying the roof/patio project.

Here’s what’s new:

1. Worked on the attic. Pulled out 6 citronella candles which we’ll use on the porch if and when.
2. With help from DH stacked the drawer units in my office and got a top made for it. Needs to come down because of something we didn’t expect to be a problem, one more time, but at the moment, the drawer units have a top, there’s a “hole” in my office, the bookshelf I’m trying to empty has 2 empty shelves (on the stack and in the drawers).
3. A box of books was removed from the office yesterday and went to the flea market/antique store as was 3 rolls of wallpaper, which sold. There are 2 more boxes of books to remove from my office (well there’s more than that, but there’s 2 more egg boxes).
4. The attic got worked on Saturday. There’s enough room for the trunk in the kitchen to be put away there. I looked at things and decided I wanted to keep the trunk for sale (now in the storage) and take another to the dump, it’s in the worst shape and is currently full of mildewing clothes.(Ick!)
5. For a long time we’ve kept empty boxes for big ticket items. We’ve decided we’re going to limit this, which is good, as it’s just storing air, yes?
6. In the process of working on the trunks, I discovered why the Christmas cull was so easy last December (see here) there were TWO trunks of the stuff in the attic I didn’t touch, sigh. I’m not culling them right now. I have an “island” of stuff to get through in the middle of the attic first. After that, I’ll cull the things along the sides.
7. That said, I’ve already talked about the fact that I needed to cull china. I did. I need to do it again, probably at least 2 more times. There are pieces I’m not sure where they are. There are pieces which I don’t know if they’re really only the 2nd copy or the 5th? There’s at least 2 boxes of china, glass, and other kitchen stuff unaccounted for. When the missing pieces have been located, or given up as lost forever,  then I’ll do another china/glass kitchen cull. For example, the piece of furniture I call my “china cabinet” at the moment has < 10 items in it, not a single piece of china. Still too much in flux to do more than a really minor culling!
8. I have books in my car to give away. They were supposed to be gone last week, but didn’t make it because the car has been full of flea market stuff and the house has been chaos because of people working on the roof. I gave a magazine away yesterday, but that’s pretty much it.

More Stuff to Get Rid of

Worked on the attic some a few days ago. Pulled some paper out for the paper bin (wood stove fodder), some drawer units for the fridge, and cleared a space to get the now-empty trunk out of the attic and the other black one in. I didn’t accomplish that, but did work towards that goal. The idea is that I want to take the trunk coming out of the attic to the antique store some time very soon.

8:33 p.m.: The trunk which will be sold is out of the attic. Hurrah!

I should be able to do that, tomorrow I hope.

I am running out of things to sell. Well, I’m not, but I’ve gone thru the easy stuff that’s been “on top” mostly. The things have sold, been donated, put in the booth, or they’re still here/in storage. But I’ve gotten rid of so many things lately that the collection is greatly diminished.

It’s time to start digging into the assorted boxes o’ stuff. I grabbed a box of paperbacks ( I have no idea what’s in it) from the storage today when I went to fetch the fixtures and stuff to sell. Tonight, when it gets a bit cooler (it’s 80 degrees now) I’ll get into the attic to see what I can find to cull/take to the flea market tomorrow.

The one thing I know needs culling is china. I have “good” china and extras of my daily stuff. The daily stuff is dinerware, mix and match. The good stuff is German china which was my mother’s. I probably should send it to auction, it’s mid-century modern, high-end stuff, collectible, and I never use it. But. . . . I haven’t gotten there, yet. However, I know I have too much, so I need to cull the collection, no matter what, even if I don’t get rid of Mom’s china. There’s just too much of it.

Beyond that I’m not sure what’s in the attic any more. There’s  a lot of books, naturally, and some smaller furniture, but I’m not really sure after that.

New Antique Booth

The new booth has been a success. So far I’ve sold an enamel lamp shade, 3 canisters, a bowl and a coffee grinder. Roughly the same amount of money as I made last month at the old place. Hopefully, the trend will continue. (I sold a salt & pepper set after I left Sat.)

Because I moved in on 5/31, I got a small check. One day’s rent less the lamp = < $20, but hey a check is  CHECK!!!

Today the flea market was a bust, oh well. Next to no one showed up, customers or vendors. Happens sometimes!

DH and I dragged the empty black trunk out of my office tonight. I cleaned it. It's the trunk in the best condition of a batch of them I bought a few years ago. Most of the rest of them have gone away. There's a blue hobnailed one, which has a square top, that's in the attic. I think the one which used to hold Christmas decorations was taken to the swap shop. If not, it will go to the booth and maybe it will sell? If the other trunk isn't still in the attic, maybe I'll replace it with this one.

[The image is from images.google.com, the url originally was from ebay. This isn't my image or my trunk!]

Not sure yet.

It IS still in the attic and it has had the end of the Christmas decoration boxes in it. I thought I’d gotten rid of that trunk last December!!! Okay, it’s now empty. The few remaining things in it have been sorted into piles: going out/trash, going out/for sale, empty boxes to reuse, 3 small boxes of things to keep. All of the separate categories have been dealt with. When I get a chance (tomorrow) I will pull the trunk out of the attic and clean it, prepatory to taking it to the booth.

My main job tomorrow is to clear one side of the front stone wall, so that the work on our back roof can start on Weds. *grin*!!!

Busy, busy, busy…cull, cull, and cull some more!

J

The Road Goes Ever On. . .

Okay. Today we did the “great fridge move” and pulled the 2nd cabinet out of the kitchen to go to the antique store.

Right this instant, it’s a disaster down there. The fridge part of the big fridge has been cleaned, but not the inside of the door, the freezer section or the outside. The little fridge has been cleaned, relocated, and refilled. The outside of it could use cleaning too, but that’s it. The freezer has had a layer of frost removed from it (I use an ice scraper, the stuff is really soft).

The cabinet is in the middle of the room. The area where it stood has been swept and has been partially refilled with asst. other stuff.

As I said, the kitchen is a disaster. The sink is full of the dishes which haven’t been washed as well as various containers holding “science experiment” foods and containers of food which just need to be pitched and the containers washed.

Clearing the kitchen counters alone is about an hour’s work. That plus the rest: removing things from my car, putting the cabinet/top IN the car along with whatever else I can fit will take some time and effort. I would dearly love to be nearly done for today, but I’m not!

We’re doing some kind of “instant” dinner. Maybe more of the breakfast burritos we bought for flea market mornings (The market opens at 6 a.m. I’m not cooking breakfast at 5 in the morning!)

J

Spring Cleaning

I am slowly, but surely going through the cabinets & drawers in the kitchen. So that I remember what I’ve done (and haven’t) as I’m doing this on an “as possible and I have time” basis, I’m putting labels inside each cabinet or drawer I clean with a note that I did it and the month/year.

I have no idea if this will work in terms of helping me keep things clean. I do something similar when I go through the dry stores and cull them. I put a label on the outside which is the contents and the date, but inside the lid I put a note which tells me when the canister was last cleaned. As some of my dry stores are kept for more than 1 year, it helps me to keep things clean. There’s so much stuff in this house and so many things to clean (shelves, cabinets, drawers, closets, etc.) that this is the only way I’ve found which doesn’t lean on the PTSD and I manage to get some sort of ordered cleaning done. I’ve been doing this off and on for the past year. We’ll see if I can sustain it!

I updated the post I wrote in December (January?) about house decorative items. I’d forgotten that I’d had a goal to reduce the decorative locations from 4 to 3. I’ve done that.

The front door now has my “spring/summer” straw hat on it. It’s a straw hat with fake silk flowers around it as a band. Does two things: it’s nice and spring-like and it’s handy when I’m going out into the garden. I replace the hat on the door when I’m done. No clutter in the house. Nothing extra to store. Works fine.

This post was started a few weeks ago, and I’m still whacking away at the cabinets, counters, drawers, etc. in the kitchen and elsewhere. I defrosted the freezer last week, for example. On the agenda this week is the “great refrigerator move.”

When our big fridge died last year, we moved a small fridge atop a corner cabinet and put it next to the stove. The big fridge was moved off to the side of the room so that it was out of our way and easily accessible for service people. It’s still there. Both of them need to be cleaned and put back into their previous home.

Today I go and talk to someone about new retail space. My problem with the old retail space is that the only consistent way I had to make money was to sell furniture and I don’t sell enough of that to make my overhead more than about 1/2 the time, which is unacceptable. The new shop is brighter (the new location of the antique store is cave-like) and I think suits me better. We’ll see!

The new plan may mean using the Hoosiers as sales fixtures for a while, which would be fine, as it would get them out of here and not in the storage. After the 2 Hoosiers, I have a double dresser/mirror and a wrought iron/marble table to sell, both high-end pieces. If the Hoosier currently in the antique store isn’t going to the new space, then I’ll haul it to the storage today and to the auction house next Tuesday.