Box of Books

is going to the dump’s swap shop and the I have an arrangement for someone to take the 3 boxes from me, for a bookstore, on Friday. Hurrah!

So that’s 4 more going away. Yay!

Tomorrow I go work on the storage again and pick up accounting info.

Then I’ll unload the boxes I bring home, put the 3 boxes in it and new books for the antique store booth (the books which are there have been there a month.)  The booth books will be entirely replaced. There’s not much there, but what is there will be gone. I need to get the book customers used to the idea that if they want it, they need to buy it. I have other ways to sell books, wholesale I admit. But wholesale is better than no sale and I’m getting out of the business, right? So, they’ll probably go to auction.

So, today I need to go through the end of the last load of books which came home in my car. (We loaded DH’s car up too, but there’s no way I can get through the end of what was in my car AND what was in his in the next 3 hours or so!)

Anyway, that’s the plan.

I may (or may not) take some books and donate them somewhere. We’ll see.

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Yesterday’s Culls & Today’s Progress

The drawers from one of the kitchen cabinets we removed (the case will go Weds.) a small box of books and a box of tube and spring pans.

At one point, I had the crazy notion I would make a Christmas Tree display for cookie cutters from tube pans, with the spring pans as a base. I never did. I never use pans like that, so the entire box went to the dump’s swap shop! I hope someone who needs/wants such things finds them before they get recycled.

Today? Today I started setting up my organizer. I had bought a journal in December or early January for this, when I decided that I would never find another copy of my beloved 2018 organizer. I had been looking for something which I could convert into the format I liked. I found one, then kept forgetting to get it out of the car. I finally did that Sat. morning when I knew I was going to the storage and needed all the room in my car for other boxes coming home.

What’s NOT in the house!

(This is still my image, but much of this is gone. Or I hope so!)

Anyway, I dug the blank journal I’d bought out this morning. Made up the monthly sections. Figured out the calendar design. Did January and February, and need to do the rest. But it’s in process instead of in a box, definite progress!

I had DH bring home food from one of our fav. restaurants today when he was working remotely. Dinner prep. for me will be making veggies, and that’s it. Easy.

I have another batch of books to go through, of course. There’s about 5 paperback boxes in the car, that’s another 250 books or more.

A bookstore (bless them!) may have someone who can take 3 boxes off my hands this weekend. That would be wonderful!

We’ll see.

Slog, slog, slog, same ol’, same ‘ol. Slog-slog-slog.

I will finish this before I die; right?

J

Delete Forever and Google

Google for a long time told me that I didn’t need to cull down my in mail boxes, because they had all the storage I’d need.

But lately, they’ve been bugging me to make the email file bigger on one of my portable devices. My reaction to that has been a serious deletion effort of my unread or unneeded emails. In the process, I’ve discovered there’s a few places which seem to go over the top sending email. (I’m beginning to hate Constant Contact, amongst other things), those companies I’ve unsubscribed from. I read about 1 email a week from these folks at the most, who needs the other 6?

The other category of email inbox fillers? Notifications. Notifications when someone likes a post here. Notifications when someone responds to a thread I was interested in. Comments by companies about products I looked at.

Also I belong to 4 local news sites. Much of the info on them is duplication, so I read one then scan the others. But it’s 4 emails, every day.

I have deleted literally 1,000s of emails in the past week. I’m still getting the request from google to increase the size of my email file on my portable device. If  when I get the email down to what I actually want to keep? If I’m still getting the requests, I’ll change email hosts. By that time, I will have cut my stored emails in 1/2 or less of what they were when I started this. If that’s not enough? I’ll find something other than gmail to use because I just don’t want to give them that much of my already limited storage on my portable device. Stubborn, I know. Contrary too.

That’s me!

(Don’t know where the image came from; I’ve used it here before, but it is NOT mine!)

Slog, slog, slog. . . .

There’s 75% of another book box dealt with. The box of used checkbooks has been gone through and I filed what I could — I ran out of supplies.

There’s 2 boxes of books to be donated at the swap shop Wednesday. A sealed box to go to the storage for the flea market, whenever. Two partial boxes in the living room also for the flea market, one books, one not.

Progress of a sort.

Did a little writing, a very little writing.

Have I mentioned that I hate winter? Everything, or nearly everything, gets put on hold, or feels like it should be.

DH on the other hand, got the 2nd set of new lights up in the kitchen. Hurrah! I can actually see in there when I’m cooking!!!  And we talked about my problem with the current kitchen cabinets. I want to paint them. Partly because to me they always look dirty; even when I’ve just cleaned them. I dont’ mind cleaning things, but I purely HATE cleaning things which still look dirty afterwards!

Today I did laundry, dishes, the checks, and books. DH did dinner, we had leftovers, so it was just reheating. I was all prepared to cook, but he reminded me that we had pot pie to eat, so no cooking for me!

Slog, slog, slog . . . .

And so it continues. I’m tempted to quote Tolkien: “The road goes ever on . . . .”

New?

My email provider has been bugging me to increase the size of my email file. I don’t want to, as the bulk of what I’ve kept are unread promo emails. So, I started culling email last night. I used to have I think it was 80,000 unread emails. These days that’s down to 28,000.

This morning I was standing in front of the wood stove, something I do in the winter a fair amount. I’ve discovered that the most productive thing I can do while standing there is sort papers. This morning it was going through the last of the yesterday’s ads and coupons. That’s done. Sometime later this morning, I’ll grab a slug of papers out of a box and start on those.  Or, I’ll go through the coupon folder and make sure I know what expires this week.

Sorting paper while standing in front of the wood stove is remarkably productive and gets a job done which isn’t my fave (how I got all the papers to start with).

We didn’t make it to the dump yesterday and when we went Saturday, we just took 2 bags of books. I’ve generated another small bag and DH has it and will donate those today.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

This is exactly like the frugal food idea, that is, have a method in place (a recipe) to deal with the excess and use it, regularly. It’s new for me.

I have cookbooks for using left-overs, but I hadn’t, until recently, made up a list of what to do with specific items.

(Image not mine, don’t know where I got it, sorry!)

I didn’t have a plan, for email or for food stuffs, until recently. The paperwork I’ve been doing for a while, especially going through the Sunday papers before we acquire a new set, but not necessarily the going through the file/toss papers — receipts, bills, etc.

So, less stuff: unwanted electronic data, paperwork, books, and less food waste. It’s all good!

More Food Musings

Because of the frugal food analysis, I also got down the seed box.

I got discouraged with our veggie garden a couple of years ago, I planted 4 tomato plants (at a cost of $8 each for mid-size, organic, yellow tomato plants) and something ate two of the plants down to the ground. We got 4  fully ripe tomatoes from the other 2 plants and about 4 smaller green ones before the season ended. Tomatoes for $4 each just didn’t seem worth the effort, right?

So last year I just let the garden go. We had a wonderful crop of weeds.

I remembered what I wanted from my garden tonight, even with the farm food, and that is grow things I can’t really get enough variety or quantity from the farm: greens, beans and not red tomatoes.

So I started looking at seeds at my favorite supplier and got down the seed box. Which, because I haven’t planted a garden in two years of any size was chock-a-block full of seeds, some as far back as 2010! I put 52 seed packets in the trash can with seeds in them and 2 empty packets, which I’d kept for some reason.

(Image isn’t mine but from images.google.com .)

No seeds in the box are from last year, most are from 2016. This means I’ll spend weeks testing seeds and more will get trashed. But that’s good because it will make me do another cull BEFORE I order seed! (I thought I’d culled the box last year when I moved it. Apparently not, I just put the lid on the box and put it away untouched.)

So, today I took 2 bags of books to the dump’s swap shop and tossed 52 seed packets.

We have been working hard on figuring out what’s next for the house: what we want and how to do it. One thing we decided we wanted is prohibitively expensive, unless DH builds it and even then it’s not cheap. That got tabled and we decided he should work more on the other projects. The big DIY project uses jigging and the company which sells that has a sale or two each year. We decided to try and buy the jigs on sale and maybe that’s it this year and tackle the project itself, materials and hardware, next year.

Things are selling at the antique store, which is really nice, since I only have 3 more weeks in that booth! On the other hand, I don’t think anything has sold in the new book booth, but I need to redo things a bit before that will happen I guess?

 

Frugal Food, New Ideas

Two or three things.

• Because of the government craziness, I decided I would buy $10 (on non paycheck weeks) or $20 (on paycheck weeks) of shelf-stable food and donate it to our food pantry. Even with food stamps still being given out, there’s about 50,000+ new people and their families who might need those resources. There’s no way the system can just absorb that much without extraordinary help. This is what I came up with that I can do.
• Because of that, I’ve been working hard at trying to figure how I can use what we already have, in new ways:

I went through the entire list of veggies, etc. available from the farm in 2018 and figured out what I’d do with all of them. This has been an on-going issue. I end up with green slime in my fridge every year and tossed  veggies and I hate that!

The answer? Use/designate what you want to use fresh for a week. Have a plan in place to deal with the overage of any extra and deal with it, so you start fresh each week. I have done some of that previously, but hadn’t done it EVERY WEEK, which is my new idea. I did it with greens at the beginning of last season, so I started winter with a jar of dried “savory” greens.

I also tried to make piecrust, with the typical result, that is, that it didn’t work as planned. What do you do with this ball of dough with a stick of butter in it? DH came up with an answer for that one, he made a loaf of brioche. Worked fine! (I will try pie crust again, sometime.)

Last week I bought some fresh flat-leaf parsley and thyme. I used most of the thyme in a chicken dish last night, yummy and no left overs. But there was extra thyme. It got dried this morning and will be added to the spice bottle.

Because I have no recipes which actually use my dried greens — I have a pot of soup:  dried greens, potato, celery, leek, and stock simmering for lunch. (I’ve been just sprinkling a little in soups or stews and always had to toss about 1/2 a jar or more in the spring.)

(Not sure where this image came from, but it is NOT mine. It’s an image I’ve used before here, but I am not laying claim to it.)

I generated a list, by week of products from the farm, and how to put  any extras aside. This is ingredients rather than finished meals, like OAMC.

1. Greens
2. Herbs & Spices
3. Stew/Soup Veggies and Greens
4. Stewed Tomatoes
5. A few dried Veggies
6. At least one herbal tea mix

I’ve done this before, but not consistently. I don’t think I’ll put aside enough to get us through winter, but that’s the idea. And, of course, in the spring, there will be hardly anything left.

I’m out of farm greens, onions and celery. I have 2 more leeks. The carrots I’d put in the fridge are gone. That’s week 3 of 12.

Anyway, that’s my new idea. Have a plan in place to deal with any unused food, and get that done.

What do you do to avoid feeding your trashcan?