Thrifting My Own House

Eight years ago, I closed up my home-based business, gave away my desk, bought a pull-out sofa bed, and turned my home office into a den/guest room for when my adult children visit from out of state. 

I don't miss my home-business, and I love that we have this place in our home where our family can be comfortable and feel welcome. 

The only problem has been that over the eight years since I closed up my business, I have found that I've spent some time working remotely for other people, and so, while I never missed the home office, I did miss having a specific place, at  home, where I could do my job. 

In addition to the contract work I am doing these days for Relay Publishing, I also work from home at least one day per week for my full-time employer, and so having a place - other than my kitchen table - to do my work has been something I've been trying to set up for a while now.

Deus Ex Machina and I have discussed a number of different options.  

The first option was to purchase a laptop sofa desk, which I did.  It looks something like this one.

My laptop fits on the table, but if wanted to use a mouse (which I needed for at least one of the jobs I did as a freelancer during COVID) or take notes, the desk wasn't big enough.

I started looking at all sorts of other options from a rolltop desk to adding a hinged shelf to one of our book shelves for a DIY secretary desk.  Nothing really seemed to be the right answer.  All of the choices would require that we move things around, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but we would also need to giveaway or sell some of the pieces of furniture we have, because there wasn't really room for more. 

Then, we started working on a different room.  We painted the ceiling black and found the perfect new-to-us sofa on FB Marketplace - and they delivered!   The new couch was twice the size of our old loveseat, and the room, suddenly, became much smaller.

Compound that with the fact that we have a lot of shoes, and no place to really put them, which was a problem, because the larger couch takes up more floor space, which means, we were tripping on all of the shoes.  

I decided to give away the beautiful, solid wood Spanish Colonial armoire we'd purchased over two decades previously.  It was actually one of the first pieces of furniture that we bought, and it's definitely one of the nicer pieces we own.  

But it's really large and bulky, and it just didn't fit the space anymore, and I couldn't imagine where else in our house it might go.  So, I listed it on my local Buy Nothing group.  

I received an almost immediate response. 

And then, I spent several days reaching out to giftee to reschedule, when he no-showed, yet again, until finally, he said he wasn't interested afterall.  "It won't fit in my car."  

Umm ... ?  The measurements were in the original post.  Whatever.

As it turns out, the guy did me a huge favor.  Out of curiosity, I looked it up, and new, this cabinet retails for over $1000.  

But that's not why, I ultimately, decided to keep it.

As I mentioned, I've been looking for a desk so that I can set up a home office, because I work from home at least one day a week, but I don't want a regular desk, because we wanted something that would close up and keep the work stuff contained, especially when family visits.

I bought shoe cubbies, and I raided my tool cabinet for some hooks for coats.  We have a new entry way. 

After we shuffled some furniture around, relocated a piece or two to other rooms, and cleaned out a filing cabinet we hadn't opened in five years (and which still had receipts and invoices from my closed business dating back a decade and a half), Deus Ex Machina and Precious moved the armoire into the den/guest room.  

I'll add some lighting, install a pull out shelf for the desk, and get a bar-height office chair, and I'll be all set.  

My new "desk" cost nothing.

And I didn't have to giveaway one of the prettiest piece of furniture we own.

I'll add some lighting, install a pull out shelf for the desk, and get a bar-height office chair, and I'll be all set.  

My new "desk" cost nothing.

And I didn't have to giveaway one of the prettiest piece of furniture we own.

Ode to a Crock Pot

Working the 9:00 to 5:00 grind.

No time to cook a meal. No money to buy one.

But I found that magic machine.

Cold, raw food goes in.

And eight hours later

Hot dinner on the table.

Easy BBQ Ribs

Ingredients:

1 package of ribs

Enouth BBQ sauce to cover

1.  Pour enough BBQ sauce to coat the bottom of the crock.

2.  Add ribs.

3.  Top ribs with more sauce, enough to mostly cover.

4.  Add 1/4c water.

5.  Rotate ribs in sauce to evenly coat.

6.  Put lid on crock.

7.  Set to low.

8.  Cook 6 to 8 hours until meat falls off bone.

Serve with choice of sides.  We like it with cole slaw, potatoes, steamed green beans, drunken apples, and/or a green salad.

Prepping the Space

Several years ago a friend started a remodeling project.  The plan was to gut the kitchen and completely rebuild it to make it more age-friendly.

I've thought a lot about that over the last few years, when I became a woman of an age,  I'm not getting younger, and there may come a time when living in my house - the way it is right now - might be difficult for me.

But there's more than that, actually.  I'm not as worried about needing to be able to navigate through my house with a wheelchair, but I would like that living in my home be as low-cost as possible.

I've mentioned before that my goal has always been to be off-grid - to be producing our own supply of electricity or gas, or whatever it is that we're going to use as fuel.  We don't have a solar array or a windmill or a methane digester.  We don't have any way of producing our own fuel.  So, instead, for us the focus has been on reducing our usage.

I was looking at my Facebook memories the other day and one popped up from thirteen years ago.  We were really working hard to get our electric bill down to the absolute minimum we could manage.  At that time we were using 300KWh per month.  Depending on the source, the average Maine household uses around 900KWh per month.  Back in the day we were pretty far below average.  

A series of crazy things happened, including the need to replace our waterheater, and we thought the best option was to replace the on-demand propane heater that had gone belly-up with an on-demand electric waterheater. 

We had no idea. 

Our electric bill doubled. 

I was bummed.  

Fast forward a few years, and we decided to (finally) get rid of the old furnace, which we hadn't used in a decade.  We installed a heat pump as a secondary (the real world considers it our primary) heat source.  It also cools, just FYI.  Then, last year, we installed a heat pump waterheater to replace the on demand electric unit that used so much electricity.  This past summer we purchased a washer/dryer combo.   The heat pump technology in the combo units uses a lot less electricity than our traditional machines.  In fact, according to one source, the all-in-one washer/dryer uses 28% less electricity that the two machines use.  The combo unit also uses less water.  So, it's a win all the way around, for me.   

I'm not sorry, or embarrased, or apologetic, for jumping back on the modern appliance bandwagon.  I got a lot of flack when I got rid of my dryer.  I'll probably get a lot of hate for bringing that appliance back into my house.  What-evs.  

For me, it's about the numbers, and the numbers say that the all-in-one is more cost-efficient for electricity usage than even just my washing machine.  Even without adding in the cost of running a traditional dryer, the washing machine I had before, combined with my air dried clothes drying option used MORE electricity that the single unit that does both.  The new unit uses less water and less electricity than just my washer alone, and I no longer have musty smelling clothes, because I washed a load and then, it either rained or I just didn't have time to get it on the clothesline.  I can put a load of laundry in the washer before I leave for work or in the evening before we go to bed, and when I get home, or the next morning before work, I take the clean and dry clothes out of the machine (no forgetting to switch the loads, either!), fold them, and put another load into the machine.

The only downside is that all of the laundry is washed, which means I've realized how many clothes I actually have.  

ThredUp is a great place to buy gently used designer clothes at discount store prices.  I'm not embarrased that I have a really nice wardrobe, either.  Just sayin'.  

The other day our average electridal usage for the month was right around 500KWh.  

It's more than we were using at our lowest, but less than Maine's average, which is less than the national average.  It's the one thing I enjoy being below average on.

We also painted the ceiling black and installed some really cool lights.  

Big Little Sister says the room has a micro-brew feel.  I like it.  I'm also working on finding the furniture I want for the space.  I found a great couch that I think will really look awesome in the space. 

My next project is setting up a (new) home office.  I worked from home for 20 years when my kids were young.  When I took an outside job, my home office went away and the room became a den/guest room with a pull-out couch.  

Now, I'm finding that I need a home office again, but we still need the guest room/den.  So, I'm lookinig at options.

Believe it or not, all of those things are part of the prepping mindset. 

The new appliances reduce our overall usage so that we can, one day, install an off-grid system to produce what we need to keep things powered.  

The home office will allow us to move our work back into our home, perhaps. 

The remodeling things, like painting the ceiling, just make home feel more fun and cozy, and really, that's important, too.  Home should be a place where one wishes to spend one's time. 

A friend remodeled her house to add an ADU - accessory dwelling unit.  Apparently, Maine law allows ADUs as a property owner's right.  I've been thinking a lot about it recently, as my kids have gotten older and are looking at their housing options.  

Buying a home is a costly venture when one is young.  

Owning a home can become more difficult as one ages, especially, if the home is sized for a large family.

I've been thinking a lot about these ADUs, and looking at my house and wondering how I could break it into smaller units - one for Deus Ex Machina and me and one for one of my children and her faimly.  At some point, our house may become too much for Deus Ex Machina and me to take care, and if we have already invested in the ADU, it will make the management of the house easier, because we'll have a younger person there to help with the silly stuff, like painting a ceiling and planting the garden.

But even if one of our children doesn't want to live in the unit, it wouldn't be a waste, because we could rent it.  Then, we have an income in our later years that will allow us to pay the property tax, and maybe go to a movie occasionally.

When I was younger, I was prepping for the end of the world as we know it.  As I get older, I realize that I'm still prepping for the same thing, because as I get older, the world as I know it, changes.  

Every new beginning is another new beginning's end.  Two points if you know the reference ... :).

  

Once a Prepper ...

I often think fondly of those days, almost two decades ago, when there were so many of us here, on blogger or wordpress, in those pre-Facebook and Instagram days, when we spent time drafting out our thoughts and ideas and actions.  We were "influencers" before that was a word.

The Crunchy Chicken.  Sharon Astyk.  John Michael Greer.  James Howard Kunstler.  Dmitry Orlov.  The Dervaes.  Miranda.  Daisy (who is still writing and sharing and prepping at The Organic Prepper).

I JUST learned that Jules Dervaes, Jr. passed away in 2016.  I mean, just now. Just this minute.  He's been gone almost 10 years.  It feels like the end of something ... and I missed it.  RIP, Jules.

Those people - all of those above and many more - had such a profound impact on what I was doing, what I was building as a future for myself and my family here in the suburbs of southern, coastal Maine.

In a lot of ways, those were pretty amazing and intense days, and I am so incredibly grateful for all I learned during that time.  My children had such a different experience than I had as a kid.  It's not a good thing or a bad thing.  It's just a thing.  Sometimes they tell me stories of experiences they have with other people where they will share some knowledge they gleaned from living the way we lived, and that person with whom they are interacting will ask, incredulously, "Why ...?  How do you know that?"  In a snarkier moment, they'll respond with, "Why DON'T you know that?"  

There's a saying about apples and trees.  We all know where they get that snark.

My life is very different now that my kids are grown.  Precious is the only one of my large brood who is still living at home, but she's a grown-ass adult with a full-time job and an active social life.  It's very, very different from days of yore when my children were the center of my attention and everything I did evolved around what they needed in that moment and the prepping I was doing in the hopes of having a more comfortable future.

There was a lot of living in the future.  As a prepper, that's what we're doing, but not.  Not "living" in the future, but every day is spent preparing for tomorrow.  

There were so many things that needed to be done NOW: splitting and stacking wood; planting, tending, and harvesting the garden; tending the animals; butchering; canning; preserving; cooking; eating; sewing; crafting ....  It was very much about doing what had to be done today, because today is the only day that it can be done.  Tomorrow it will be too late.  Everything had a time, and it had to be done in its time.  Chicks arrive in the spring.  Strawberring ripen in the summer.  Apples are picked in the fall. 

I spent most days just doing what had to be done to get ready for the next thing.  There isn't a lot time to be worrying about what's gonna happen next week, when you're dealing with what's for breakfast today.  And having so much to focus on every day doesn't leave a lot of time to worry about what happened three weeks or three years or three decades ago. 

In those days, my dream was to be a full-time surbuban homesteader - to be off-grid on my quarter acre, producing our own electricity, growing or raising most of our own food, being debt-free, and working at something to earn a little cash to be able to pay the property tax, and maybe go see a movie, occasionally.  My goal was to get everything ready and in place so that someday both Deus Ex Machina and I could be home full-time and just be doing things we loved to do, or just needed to do for survival purposes (like stacking wood.  Nobody loves to stack wood, and if they say differently, they're lying).

I still fantacize about being a full-time homesteader, and I think, when I retire, I'll go back to it.  Maybe even start a home goods or craft-centric side-job as a way to generate a little bit of an income stream.  

The other day, Deus Ex Machina and I were working wood (yes, we still heat, primarily with our woodstove), and I found three little birch logs.  I held them up to show Deus Ex Machina, and quipped, "I could wrap some twine around these and sell them for $15 at the Farmer's Market." 

I'm not going to make a living just selling birch log decor, but I have a few other skills I could use.  I still have my trusty sewing machine.  There's probably some fun, little thing that I could stitch together - like an apron.  People still use those, right?

Maybe I could start a gluten-free micro-bakery in my home kitchen and sell muffins and cookies at the Farmer's Market.  There's probably a niche for that sort of thing.  

For now, though, I'm working full-time, and I like my job.  It's a desk job, but if one has to do a desk job, it doesn't get much better than working in a theater.  

I guess we are, sort of, still doing some mindful prepping, but we're prepping differently.  We're prepping for a future in which we are still active.  So, we're going to the gym and doing a weekly full-body workout with weights.  I practice Yoga, taking classes three days a week.  We're watching our diet more closely, both for health reasons, and because I'm trying to lose a few extra pounds I seem to have decided to store.  When I became a "woman of an age", I found that I needed to relearn how to live in this body.  Eating chocolate after dinner when dinner is after 7:00pm means my body wants to hold onto all that chocolate goodness.  Did you know that chocolate is really heavy?  Ask my scale.

I'm learning to adjust to the new me.

I got a tattoo on my forearm a few years ago.  It says, "Kein tag aber heute."  

Recently, I was told that spending too much time dwelling on the past creates depression and thinking too much about the future creates anxiety.  I laughed in recognition of those roller-coaster emotions.  I know, I know, I keep saying "Do what you can with where you are," and then, I spend all my time analyzing what I did and worrying about how it will impact me later.

So, I'm working on remembering - Kein tag aber heute -  No Day But Today.  And for those who aren't theater folk, it's a line from the musical, Rent with the message being that we can't change the past and tomorrow isn't a given, and the only time we have to really enjoy life is right this minute. 

Deus Ex Machina and I celebrated 30 years this year with a renewal of our vows in the place where we first said them.  

We aren't who we were 30 years ago.  Every couple who has been together as long as Deus Ex Machina and I have been will say the same thing - it's been a long, hard road, blah,blah, blah.  The fact is that we're still on that road, after 30 years, and that's pretty incredible.  Most days, we even still like each other enough to hold hands and laugh at each other's silly jokes.  

We raised meat birds this year, and bought a cow share and a pig share.  We still have our laying hens and share a lot of eggs with friends during the summer.  The rabbits have been gone for a while now.  

I planted a garden, as I have for the past twenty-five years.  We harvested a bunch of tomatoes, lettuce, and broccoli.  The cucumbers were a failure, as was my cardboard box potato experiment.  The Brussels sprouts may get big enough to leave for harvest later, if it doesn't snow anytime soon (I think we might have JUST had our first frost this past week).  The chipmunks ate the blueberries.  The birds ate the  grapes.  The squirrels ate the apples.  I don't know what ate all the raspberries, but it certainly wasn't me. 

In short, I'm not doing a lot of prepping - like I used to do, but we did get a membership at a regional warehouse store (by the way, we have a Costco - not a fan!) that carries a surprising number of local-to-me products, and I'm doing some stocking up on fresh and frozen things I can buy there.  

Life is still pretty good.  I'm not living the dream, but there's probably still time.

For now, Kein Tag aber Heute.  No day but today, and that's okay.  

Helping Hands

For those of you who know me and have known me for a while, you know that some years ago, I dragged my teenaged daughters into the local food pantry one afternoon where we inquired about volunteering. 

After a few months of showing up weekly to help with food distribution, I was asked to serve on the Board of Directors, and over the following two years, we would continue to be very active at the Pantry, including organizing fundraisers in collaboration with a local restaurant; picking up food donations from local grocery stores and the day-old bread store; and assisting with setting up a satellite pantry at our local library.

The food pantry was a very important part of my life in those days, and it was with a great deal of reluctance and regret that I ultimately had to resign my position when life got too busy and something had to go. 

Food insecurity is still one of those topics that's at the top of my list of egregious characteristics of the modern world.  We have infinite knowledge at our fingertips and an abundance that is unprecedented in human experience.  The world produces enough food to feed the entire world population, and that starvation still exists and there are people in this world who don't know where they will get their next meal has more to do with greed and waste than it has to do with actual scarcity. 

And here in the US, if things don't move forward, like, today, there will be people here in my community who may find themselves hungrier.

But there's this video, and it gives me hope - at least in my local community.

What he says stuck with me:  None of us can help everyone, but all of us can help someone. 

It's the story of the little girl and the 10000 starfish.  She can't save them all, but she can save some of them, and that's worth doing.

I have a membership at a regional wholesale club, and for the next little while, I will be purchasing an extra case of something each time I go to share at my food pantry. 

If you were food insecure, what would you want that something to be? Asking for a friend ... :)

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

― Benjamin Franklin

More than ever, this quote is relevant.  

Over the last year few years, my life has changed - a lot.  

• My children grew up.  
• I took a job outside of the home. 
• I left said job.  
• I survived a Pandemic.  
• I wrote a novel.  
• I took another job outside the home.
• I realized I'm getting old ... fast.
• I left my part-time job to take a full-time position at the job I left during the Pandemic.
• I just bought a washer/dryer combo.  I haven't had a clothes dryer in so many years ... I don't remember when it left my house. 

I am working full-time outside of my home for the first time in over two and a half decades.  

It's been really hard, and we've sacrificed a lot.

• We didn't go strawberry picking last summer.
• We didn't go apple picking last fall.
• I didn't can anything last year.
• We didn't tap trees this year.

Instead, we're relying on stocking up what we can buy.

But I guess we still have the knowledge of those things we learned to do while I was at home, working from home, and being a full-time Mom/housewife/caregiver. 

I miss those days, for sure.

But in the end, needing money for when I retire won and so I have a job.    

Life is sad.  

English Muffins

I've been thinking a lot about life back when ... 

... when I was actively trying to homestead, just a decade ago.  FB regularly reminds of things I was doing to make our lives more self-sufficient.  One of my recent memories reminded me of the year that my goal was to can 200 jars of *something*.  I wasn't too terribly picky about what went into the jars.  What I mean is that my goal wasn't:

x jars of pickles
x jars of applesauce
x jars of soup stock

The goal was to have 200 jars of home-canned food with the logic being that 200 jars would give us one jar of something preserved per day for the winter.  During the summer, we have the garden and stuff we can forage, but without some preserved food, if we lose access to our on-demand supply of groceries, we'd be very hungry.  One jar a day would keep us fed, if not full.  

That said, not all jars of food are created equal.  That day when the jar was pickles, divided five ways, would be a much hungrier day than the day when it was canned chicken.

Of course, THAT said, the ultimate goal was also to have 200 jars of home-canned goodness AND a pantry stocked with dried goods, like rice, pasta, and baking supplies.

I thought a lot about that time recently, when I had occasion to visit my ancestral home deep in a hollow in the hills of southeastern Kentucky mining country.  I spent some time with my uncle, who is still homesteading the old homestead, and I brought home six quart jars of his home-canned tomato sauce, a bowlful of Chinese chestnuts we collected from the path under his chestnut tree, and a huge clump of Hen of the Woods (maitake) my uncle and I foraged from his woods.

I didn't can any tomatoes this year.  In fact, I didn't even process any tomatoes for the winter.  I only grew grape tomatoes this year, and we ate them almost as quickly as I could get them off the vines, which were incredibly generous, but rather than preserve my harvest, like I should have done, I gifted a good portion of my harvest to a local friend.

Looking at those jars of tomato sauce from my uncle and thinking about my very poor preparations this year had me kind of nostalgic for the way my life used to be ... before I started working a job outside the home ... when my JOB was the home.  

In those days, most of what I fed my family was homemade in my kitchen, including the bread stuff.

I haven't made a lot of bread recently.

I missed it.

So, today, I did. 

There's a loaf of applesauce bread cooling on the back of the stove, and these English Muffins will go into a lightly greased pan to fry until golden brown, as soon as they've had a second rise.  

Then, instead of running to the store for breads, I can make Deus Ex Machina his daily breakfast sandwich for the rest of the week, with a couple of muffins leftover for both of us to have sandwich before music class on Saturday.

Making homemade bread is time-consuming.

It's, kind of, funny that my kids grew up and moved on, no longer needing me to facilitate their education or chauffeur them hither and yon, and some how I wound up with less time to do all of those things that I used to just do, because that's what we did.  

Don't get me wrong.  I still cook, from scratch, more nights than not.  Eating out is very expensive, and we're saving up for retirement :), but also, as a loved one recently observed - when one learns to cook, especially if using fresh, local, in-season ingredients, the food just tastes better.  No offense to all of those restauranteurs out there, but the food I prepare at home is better.  It's always exactly what I want, exactly the way I want it, and I know what's in it, which means there's no chance of getting contaminated with ingredients that can make Deus Ex Machina's body hurt.  

I still have my garden, and my chickens, I still make my own soap ... but I just don't spend as much time or energy doing the homesteading things I used to do - like canning. 

The first thing I learned to can, back when I first started down this path, was applesauce.  There's a bushel of apples in my kitchen, picked when my son and daughter-in-law visited at the end of September, which will end up sauced and dehydrated.  I figure, perhaps, going back to my beginning might get me back to where I was before I veered off the trail, when I started working outside the home five years ago.

With the way things are going in the world, kick-starting my prepper life is probably not a bad idea.

And home canned applesauce with pork chops from our pig share and oven roasted potatoes, just tastes better than anything mass produced and sold at the grocery store.

What about you?  As life ebbs and flows, do you find yourself falling off of and climbing back onto your self-sufficiency path?  Do current events have you revisiting all of your homesteading efforts?