Easy Way to Organize Winter Accessories

Maybe I'm just strange, but as soon as Christmas is over and the holiday decorations are put away, I'm itchin' to start spring cleaning.  I think it must be something about the New Year, fresh starts, clean slates and all that.

This year has been no different.  I jumped right in with the cleaning during the last weekend of December, beginning with our coat closet.  I needed a good solution for storing hats, gloves and scarves. 

I remembered that I had an over-the-door shoe organizer that I was no longer using for yarn.  (Well, that sentence makes sense to everyone in my household...). 

I moved it to the inside of the coat closet door, and there you have it -- instant organization.

Old-Fashioned Decorating

Here's a tableau I saw once in a flea market
and recreated here at home.

It's an old step-ladder adorned with kitchen utensils and other household items that are old or made to look old.  Keeping
ribbons and greenery to a minimum enhances this simple look.

Can I Be Frank With You?

Let's see if I can "Frankenstein" $10 worth of thrift store clothes into a big freakin' mess Halloween costume for Kat. 

Into the lah-bor-ah-tory I go...

Back To Baking

You might remember this post, where I talked about how we'd keep our ugly, old gas range until it quit working.  If you follow Haphazard Homestead on Facebook you might also remember me mentioned a few weeks ago that my oven wasn't working right. 

Over the weeks, the oven got worse.  Last Thursday, for example, I turned it on to 350°F and it went to 350°, so I put my food in.  After half an hour, I thought it was odd that there weren't any good smells coming from the oven, so I peeped in and saw the temp was around 165°.  So I turned it off, turned it back on, again to 350°.  It shot up to around 400°.  Somehow I managed to get supper made without either burning it or serving it undercooked.  But I was done messing around.

Our options were:
- to have someone fix it (rough estimates were around $250),
- fix it ourselves with only a guess that the problem was the thermostat (parts were from $50-$150),
- buy new (low-end basic model was around $400),
- or buy used. 

We decided to check craigslist to see what was available in a used gas range and found this beauty for just $100.  It's 10 years old, but it looks like new!  Did I mention it's self-cleaning?  Or that it has a power burner and a simmer burner?

It was 50 miles from home, but Shane happened to be working just a few miles from where the stove was, so he was able to save us an extra trip by picking it up after work on Friday.  It had been installed to burn propane gas, so we had to convert it back to natural gas with manufacturer's directions that the owners had saved.  The only snag was that the fittings for the gas line weren't the same size as our old range, so Shane had to spend another $25 for a universal kit to get it hooked up.

$125 for a range in this condition is a bargain, no matter how you look at it.  Our plan for the old stove is to move it to our basement and set up a canning kitchen.  We'll see if that really happens or not - we've had lots of plans for the basement over the years and it's still just a basement.

Meanwhile, I have some baking to do.

Let the Garage Sales Begin!

It's garage sale season!  With the mild winter we had, they never really went away -- there were usually 1 or 2 to be found most weekends -- but last Thursday was the first day I found multiple garage sales to browse.  I think I went to about 8 or 9 of them.  Here's what I found that I "couldn't live without".

Bling-y gold flip-flops. These are so NOT me; I usually go for something more earthy.  But these were just 25¢ so I grabbed them. And I love them!

Burgundy sunflower candle pedestals.  There were three of them for $1 each, so I made them mine.  The one with the candle on top is one I already had, so now I have enough to make an arrangement or two.  Just need to find more sunflower yellow candles.  These are great decor for late summer and early autumn, but they match my living room so well that I leave them out year round.

I was a big spender at the church sale, were I found two new packages of cupcake liners for a nickel each.  They're just the basic pastel liners, but the price was right.

I also found a swimsuit  for $1 that may or may not fit Kat (didn't notice that the top and bottom weren't the same size), and a decent length of Weed Block fabric for 50¢.

Pretty good haul for less than $5.

Spring Break Kick-Off

Kat has spring break this week, and I mentioned last week that Shane is also off until some constructions job start up, so the whole gang will be home all this week.  We decided to "kick off the week off" by going to Springfield, Missouri, for the weekend.

We left early on Saturday, stopping at a discount grocery store and a small second-hand store in a town called Humansville on the way.  We are not preppers, but if any of you are, this particular discount grocery had lots of dehydrated foods in 5 gallon buckets and they seemed to be reasonably priced.  As for us, we only bought a couple of bags of pasta (fun shapes I don't normally find in the store) and a three pound bag of Sucanat.

Once we made it to Springfield, we spent several hours in one of the many large flea markets there.  The only thing I found for myself was a 3-yard piece of fabric in a seed packet print that I'll use to make a couple of aprons.  Kat found several things, both practical and whimsical.  Shane found nails...LOL!

After the flea market we went to visit my sister and brother-in-law for a couple of hours and went out for a Chinese buffet dinner before we headed to our hotel room.

Some of you may know of the AmericInn chain of hotels, mostly in the northern states.  This weekend, we stayed in th only AmericInn in Missouri, but Shane stayed many, many days in one while working in Garden City, KS, much of last year and accumulated many, many points toward room discounts.  When we went to Colorado last summer we stayed in one of their hotels and had all kinds of problems, but the location we stayed at this weekend is the nicest of the the four we've visited, and with the discount it only cost us $30 for the night. 

Kat loves the pool, and swam both Saturday night and Sunday morning.

We had to check out by 11:00, but it might really have been 10:00.  Hard to tell with the time change.  On a whim, we decided to stop by the Bass Pro Outdoor World.  We have a couple of Bass Pro Shops here in Kansas City, but they aren't as impressive as the original in Springfield.  Kat doesn't remember going there as a toddler, so she was very taken with the animals, both live and taxidermic. 

Live 'gator.

Three live turtles and one cardboard turtle.

Mother and child.

Live alligator gar.

I was taken with the huge fireplace, the outdoor cooking gear and some hillbilly novelties. 

I want this in my house.  The doors on that thing are 5 or so feet tall.

Redneck champagne flutes.

Because I have an adolescent sense of humor.

Looking at all that venison on the hoof makes a person hungry, so we met up with my sis and BIL again for lunch at America's Incredible Pizza Company.  Think Chuck E. Cheese on steroids.  Pizza buffet and games galore. Rest assured that this would not have been my first choice in eating establishments, but the games made Kat happy and the buffet made BIL happy, so we were all happy.  Besides, it was raining, so there wasn't a lot we could do outside.

By then it was 2:00 or 3:00 -- again, I'm not sure which -- and time for us to head home.  It was a quick ride, considering I can't seem to stay awake in a car anymore.  I slept half the way, read the other half, and we were home before I knew it.

It was a good weekend, starting off what I hope will be a good week, but it's going to be a madhouse around here.  I don't promise to post every day, but I do promise to try.

And now, before I leave...here's a family portrait...

Money-Makin' Weekend and Random Thoughts

• Like Goldilocks, sometimes you have to figure out what's "just right".  Shane said he wanted to work on something, but didn't know what.  I suggested the basement, but the look he gave me let me know he wasn't up for that.  So I suggested just the one corner of the basement that holds the camping gear that we don't use now that we have a camper.  That was a project that was just right for him.  He was able to put about 1/3 of it into the camper, 1/3 of it out to the curb to give away and the rest is listed on craigslist.
   
• Because our logic is a little skewed, selling camping gear logically led to us selling an old Atari game system and several games to go with it. We didn't have the cables needed to hook it up to our TV at home, and the people at the used game store couldn't figure out how to hook it up at all, so we never did figure out if it worked or not.  The game place gave us a little less than $20 for all of it, but that was ok, because we only paid $10 for it at a garage sale a couple of years ago.
   
• We also sold some gold rings that we no longer wore or wanted.  I guess I always figured those "We Buy Gold" storefronts were scams and that they wouldn't be willing to give more than pawn shop prices for jewelry, but I was wrong.  We received FAR more than I ever imagined we would.
   
• On Sunday, we decided to work in the garden.  But somehow that morphed into taking our pop-up camper to the car wash and cleaning it up so we could set it up, get some pics and list it on craigslist.  We had it sold within two hours to the first person who inquired, and had three people lined up that I had to turn down.  Think we underpriced it?  Maybe, but it couldn't have been by much.  I think it's just getting to be the time of year people want to get out in the wild.  I don't blame them.  I can hardly wait to get our bigger little camper out for a weekend.

Bye-bye pop-up.  (Token post photo so that Mark stays happy.)

• All told, we made a good chunk of money this weekend and had only one casualty.  The older of our two deep freezers finally bit it.  It was 11 years old, so we got a lot of use out of it, although we'd hoped it would last longer.  Unlike Shane's usual MO, I don't think he's going to try to fix it.  We'll probably just give it away on craigslist to someone who wants it for locked feed storage or something like that.
   
• We didn't lose any of the deer meat, turkey, chicken or containers of lemon juice in the dying freezer.  Thankfully, all the pork was in our other deep freezer, but we did lose three pounds of shrimp.  I guess the salt-water content in them is why they thawed when nothing else did.  Shrimp was on the menu for Saturday's supper, which is how we found out we were having a problem again.  With nothing else thawed, we decided up going out for Mexican food and margaritas and called it date night.
   
• I've heard some people say that microwave ovens are dangerous.  Now I know why.  After letting a couple loaves of bread rise in microwave, I was transferring the pans to the gas oven below it.  I managed to smack my scalp on the open microwave door hard enough to break skin. Forget radiation.  Head injuries are the real danger here.

So, how was your weekend?  I hope it you sold something and that you didn't get hit on the head.  :)

Catching The Rain

Look! A Saturday post! This won't happen often, but I wanted to post about our rain catchment set-up so I could link it to a thread on Facebook. This is picked up verbatim from my old blog, from March 31, 2010. Enjoy!

Our backyard still needs a little spring cleanup, but I thought I'd go ahead and post about our rain gathering system, since gardening season is beginning.

We first got the idea for using these translucent white food grade tanks for our rain water when we were stalking my bloggy friend Sharon's house one evening.  She and her husband Kevin have similar tanks.  Basically, we've diverted all rain that falls on the house into the top tank, which sits on the house's original back stoop.  When it's full, we empty it into the lower tank and let the top tank fill again.  While we will use water from either tank, we usually will draw from the top tank if possible, because gravity makes the water flow faster.  Eventually we may get a pump for the lower tank to solve the flow issue.

At first, we blocked the downspouts on the other end of the house, but found that the tanks were getting full while the gutters were overflowing, so Shane opened the other end up again.  Currently, we aren't collecting rain on that end, but it's definitely an option for us in the future.

We found the tanks, which hold 275 gallons each, on craigslist; we paid $130 for both.  We've seen them both cheaper and more expensive since then.  Shane recalls that he had to buy some of the downspout material, some brackets and a couple of hose fittings for the spigots were also purchased.  The total cost for the entire setup was about $175.

What I do know is that we saved a bundle on water last summer.  We planted out in April, before we bought the rain tanks, and our first billing after planting was 50% more than our average!  After we bought the tanks, our bills went back down to average for the rest of the season.  We believe the money we saved in the first season recovered most of the cost; soon we'll be seeing nothing but savings from our rain barrels.

Granted, each season will be different and the savings will fluctuate.  When there is a lot of rain, we collect a lot of water, but we don't need to use as much of what we collect.  During a dryer season, we'll collect less, but will use more (or all) of what we collect.   Still, any savings is a good savings, both for our budget and for the environment.

Exhausting Weekend, But In A Good Way

Thanks to rain on Friday, Shane had another three-day weekend.  He spent part of his day off in the doctor's office, though, getting meds for a sinus infection he'd been fighting all week. 

He was already feeling a lot better by Saturday morning, so out we went.  First to drop Kat at her mom's for the weekend, then to Lowe's to pick up a special dryer vent, to a thrift store to drop off a mountain of donations that were in the back of the van, and to the credit union to make a payment on our camper in person because they forgot to include a February ticket in our payment book. 

That was followed by an hour-long drive to pick up an almost new tiller from someone who'd listed it on craigslist (the same new one at Lowe's was more than twice as expensive!), followed by a stop to see Shane's dad and step-mom, install the dryer vent we'd bought earlier, and to have lunch with them.

After leaving the in-laws' house, we went to a health food store for some soap making oils, went to a freight salvage store just for fun, stopped at Sam's Club to get a few things I'd missed last time I was there, and we finally ended our day by going to a Chinese-and-sushi buffet before heading home.

We were out for 12 hours straight, and I barely stayed awake until 10:00.

On Sunday, I put in my monthly volunteer hours at the recycling bins.  Our city is getting 24/7 recycling bins soon, instead of the one-weekend-a-month bins we have now.  That means recycling will be easier for everyone here and no one will have to monitor bins anymore.

It was too muddy for Shane to work outside, so we worked together nearly all day making two small batches of bath soap bars, one batch of shampoo bars, and a batch of solid lotion bars.  No pics of any of it yet, but I'll probably take some as the goodies come out of the molds.

We rebottled three batches of kombucha, some with fun flavor combinations, and we got two new batches started.  We also used our juicer to make some orange and pineapple juices. 

When Kat came home around 5:30 , we made some roast beef wraps with lots of veggies (sub-shop style) and watched a couple of kids' shows on TV with her.  By the time she went to bed we were wiped out!  We were in bed with our books by 9:00 and were asleep before 10:00.

That's two good weekends in a row for us.  We got a lot accomplished and had some fun doing it.

How was your weekend?

Diggin' In

Clutter.

This is a room in our house.  It doesn't have a theme, or a color scheme, and it's often a victim of neglect.  Except for the bathroom, it's the smallest room in our home, yet it does the most work. 

Mess.

It's our home office, computer room, craft storage room, and catch-all space all rolled into one.  Some of our books live here, as do the few movies and music CDs that we own.  We toss thrift donations in here until there are enough to bag up and take to the store; eBay or craigslist items are housed here until someone buys them and they are out the door.  Oh, also...the cats' litter boxes are in here.

Piles o' crap.

It's a little room and hard to keep clean and organized.  Since we got our laptops, it's been even messier because we aren't in there to see or deal with the clutter as much as we used to be.

Every quarter (maybe even twice a quarter), I get fed up with the mess and start diggin' in.  Yesterday was "office cleanin' day" for the first quarter of 2012. 

It's not a perfect room and never will be, but it looks better, doesn't it?

Still need to tackle that big basket of filing in the background.

The eBay/craigslist shelves and things that need to be returned to family and friends. I vow that all of it will be gone, one way or another, by the end of February.

Oh, look!  It's a place for people to sit.

Aah!  So much better.

And five boxes of stuff going to the thrift store.

Thoughts on Second-Hand Stuff

Last week I wrote about our decision to NOT replace a part on our kitchen stove.  In the comments the conversation turned to repairing instead of replacing, replacing with second-hand parts, and hanging on to what you already own.  That's where I want to pick up the conversation again today.

In the last two weeks, a couple of second-hand items have come into our home.  One was by design and the other was by chance.

After seeing our friends' Jack LaLanne Power Juicer like the one above over the holidays, learning how well it worked and how easy it was to clean, we decided we wanted one of our own.  Shortly after, Aldi stores had a similar Crofton juicer on sale for $35 plus tax -- much cheaper than a brand new LaLanne juicer.  As far as I could tell, it worked the same way.  I've bought the Crofton brand before and have always had good luck with it, so I went ahead and picked up one of the two juicers left in our local store.

But on the way home, I wasn't completely happy about my purchase.  I decided I'd look on craigslist for a used Jack LaLanne juicer.  I found several listed and three within my price range.  It took all day, but one of the people I contacted finally responded and we worked out a time for me to see the juicer the next day.  I ended up buying it for $40.

Now why would I pay more for a used item than a new one?  First of all, after sales tax, the new one was about $38, so I only spent a couple dollars more for the used one.  Second, I already knew how the used juicer worked and I knew I would like it.  Third, by buying the pre-owned juicer, I didn't create an artificial demand for more juicers to be produced.  Fourth, I may have kept it out of the landfill; if the previous owner didn't sell it, he might have just thrown it away.  And fifth, it came with no packaging for me to have to recycle or throw away.

I was much more comfortable with this purchase and took the brand new juicer back to Aldi the next time I went there for groceries.

The second item we got used was a 42" flat screen TV.  Shane's boss' neighbor was going to throw it away and asked said boss if he'd take it and put it in a job site dumpster (not sure of the ethics of that, but that's for a different post).  Boss called Shane and told him it was available, that it supposedly worked but had some color problems, and asked if we wanted it.  Shane told him sure, we'd take it.

As it turned out, it did work, but it had some screen issues.  It wouldn't work on wide-screen view, but worked ok on full-screen view.  It didn't seem to have any color issues, but it didn't have as good a picture as our current TV.  We ended up listing it on craiglist as a free item, explained it's problem, and had lots of calls from people wanting to give it a new home.  The first person who called us decided to take it.  Everybody involved was happy and the television never saw the inside of a dumpster.  At least not on our watch.

By the way, our current TV was also given to us by Shane's boss.  The boss said the color was dull and upgraded to a flat-screen a few years ago.  We were happy to get it because our old TV was really too small for our living room. The one he gave us is a rear-projection big screen model and all Shane had to do was open the cabinet and dust off the projection bulbs.  That made a big improvement, but after fiddling with the freebie flat screen last week, Shane decided it was time to clean the projection bulbs in our TV again.  Only this time, he also cleaned the mirror that reflects the projection bulbs.

The picture is unbelievable now.  I suppose it doesn't take much to impress us, but we all three sat for the longest time and marveled at the difference a good cleaning made.  I expect this TV will have to flat-out quit working before we consider replacing it.  Unless, of course, the boss decides to upgrade and give us his "old" one again. ;)

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that not all used acquisitions, whether purchases or freebies, are going to work out.  On the other hand, there are lots of reasons that justify giving a new home to second-hand stuff.

What kind of used items have you adopted lately?