Deep Clean with a Vengeance
So I bet you thought I gave up on Deep Clean Week, that I was going to simply wuss out and hope you forgot. That was my original plan.
But then I discovered that some people we know are moving to our area, and need a place to stay for a couple months. I offered the guest room and my craft room. Both are soon going to be occupied, so I have been cleaning like a mad woman. My plan now is to pull everything out of the craft room, sort through it diligently, get rid of things, and then store the remainder upstairs in our bedroom.
So far I have learned a few things:
1) It helps to start with “before” pictures. I totally neglected this, and now I only have “during” pictures, which mostly just show boxes and piles of chaos.
2) It’s a lot easier to store boxes in Hubby’s closet while he’s at work.
3) I am taking a hard look at my craft projects, and narrowing down which ones I want to bother completing. If a project starts to feel like homework rather than fun, decide if you want to dedicate your limited time to completing it, or if you’d rather work on something else. Do you even want to own the finished product? I put this half-finished denim quilt on freecycle, and 20 minutes later someone came to my house and got it, along with the denim to complete it.
4) I keep finding things I didn’t even know I had, which means I don’t need them, and won’t miss them.
5) It takes way more trips up and down the stairs than seems humanly possible, and I still don’t have amazing calves. I really should, by now.
6) The sound of cat, dog, and even ferret snores are insulting when you are exhausted from working so hard. You can see Mushroom at the bottom of this picture “helping”.
You can see I’ve made some progress; the closets are mostly empty.
The way all this stuff accumulates just shows that I have too many ideas and not enough time.
I have no idea where I will put all my Batman stuff, or my giant Jack Skellington. I also have several thing I’ve crafted over the years that I feel like I have to keep because I made them, but they’re not necessarily practical or useful anymore. That colorful disc at the bottom of the picture is a table top I decoupaged in college. The table has not been assembled since we moved here, but I can’t decide what to do with it. Let that be a lesson to you all: once you craft something, you maybe stuck with it, so make sure you work on projects you’ll want to keep around.
I found this in some of the yarn my Grandmother gave me, and I thought it was funny.
I also found this! I always wanted a parts price list for a Remington Pump Action Shotgun!
I’m very proud of myself, because this is all the yarn I had, and the container and sack on the left are both going to a better place.
That’s as far as I’ve gotten so far. I have sorted through and discarded fabric, art supplies, construction paper, and scrapbooking stuff. Some of it has gone to friends, a huge pile will go to Goodwill, and a bit may go on eBay. I am exhausted from moving so much stuff, and I just want to chuck a ton of it. We’ve made a lot of progress, but we’re probably only halfway done, if that. Stay tuned for more progress reports, or to watch my descent into madness, whichever comes first.
Batch Cooking
I read lots of articles on how to save money. I get sick of reading “stop going out to eat!” Uh, no crap. Maybe you could tell me something useful? Apparently common sense isn’t as common as we’d all hope, because lots of things I’d consider basic ways to save money (“Paint your own nails instead of getting manicures!”) make up entire articles on other sites. Not this site! I believe you all have brains of your own, and don’t need me to spell every little thing out for you. You’re welcome.
One idea I have read many places, whether it’s saving money or eating healthier, is batch cooking. Most articles referring to this suggest that you, for example, make two casseroles, eat one and freeze one. I think this idea is on the right track, but with a couple flaws. 1) I only have the freezer space available in my side-by-side. I don’t believe that buying a whole other freezer is worth the tiny amount I’d save by buying and freezing my own vegetables while they’re in season, not to mention the extra electricity it would take up. Plus think of the clutter! Uck! And what if the power went out and all that food got ruined? Forget it. It’s sounds like one more hassle I don’t need. 2) If I made 2 casseroles, don’t I now need 2 casserole dishes? At least? If I was doing that habitually I should either buy stock in Pyrex, or get a ton of those aluminum catering dish things. It sounds pretty wasteful and cluttery, again.
Obviously I wouldn’t be writing a blog post just to complain. Well, I would, but I’m not at the moment. I put all the clever little gears in my brain to work on the best way to do batch baking, and have I got a bitchin’ idea for all of you! (That’s your reward for fighting your way past my ranting. Give yourself a pat on the back!) Why should you cook just the same thing when batch cooking? My plan is to bake lots of basic elements that can be made into tons of meals. So we start off with veggies.
During this time of year, lots of veggies are in season, and therefore super cheap. I hate cutting vegetables, so I bought probably about 20 pounds of broccoli, zucchini (or courgettes, if you’re feeling fancy), cauliflower and other veggies that were around $0.88 per pound. I busted out my food processor, and let it chop them all to bits for me! Usually, I wouldn’t get it dirty just for that, but I was also baking my Tomato Glut Sauce the same night, and I knew it would be getting dirty regardless.
This is my oven with pans of veggies and sweet potatoes in it cooking. At the same time, I had the crock pot going with beans, and a pot of soup for dinner.
I’m calling these “beans noir” because they looked pure black and white in real life. This was a mix of black beans, northern beans, and black eyed peas.
All those little bitty chopped bits that always occur when you chop vegetables? Where can they go?
That’s right! In the soup! This is the chick that pioneered the almost free soup. Of course it’s going into soup! Plus, little bits of green stuff in soup make it look more appetizing, and like you did lots of work to make it. It’s all psychological, people.
I baked an oven full of veggies, an oven full of meat (mostly chicken), made a pot of soup, and a pot of beans in one night. The rest of the week, all I had to do was basically microwave food, and then eat it. The whole idea here is to minimize the amount of time I have to spend in the kitchen, and to heat up the kitchen only one day a week. I’ll post what I made with the batch cooking later this week. Noms!
