Preservation

Grape Juice

 

We were blessed enough to be invited to pick grapes at a friend of a friend's backyard vineyard mid-August. He had a wonderful slew of vines, and we came home with a couple bushels of Concord and what I think were Reliance grapes. I can't wait for the day we have a lovely backyard vineyard. We picked wild grapes earlier a couple weeks before, but their yield is just not much compared to these juicy beauties.

 

These are the grapes draining. After I was all finished making juice, and had already tossed the spent skins, pulp, and seeds, my preservation group had a posting that said I could have used all of that to make fruit leather by putting it through my handy-dandy food mill. Something to try next year!

 

We ended up with 8 gallons of grape juice. Grape juice and apple juice are the only things that are safe to can in half gallon jars, and boy does that fact make processing go so much faster. I canned grape juice a couple years ago, but did it all in quarts that time and it makes for a lot of time spent canning. The Concords made a beautiful purple juice, while the Reliance, which were green to pink, made a lovely mauve-y pink juice. All those quarts up there are chicken stock and crushed tomatoes. It was a busy week :)

Crushed Tomatoes

Quart after quart of these beauties keep heading down to our basement pantry. I love preserving our own garden goodies!

Mother's Day Tea

I think part of being a good mother is instilling in your children a desire to serve others, no matter what the situation is. It can be difficult to show the importance of this to them at times, especially since our very nature from birth is rather selfish. Especially as a Christian it is imperative that we learn to look to make others happy, as that is one of the most important attributes of Christ, and the one He most emphasized in his teaching to "Love God and love your neighbors".

 

I thought a fun way to start helping my girls learn this, along with my lovely sister in law and her girls, was to host a Mother's Day Low Tea for our mothers, sisters, and grandmothers. For these early years Auntie S and I will be doing a lot of helping, but the eventual goal is to have the girls take over as they get older.

 

 Now, you may be asking "Low tea?", as most folks think a high tea is a fancy gathering of English ladies in big hats. Since we are homeschoolers, we had to make sure we were going about things correctly, and found that, in fact, high tea is more of a commoners' tea. It is called such since it was served later in the evening after folks got off of work for the day, at high tables in pubs with a menu consisting of traditional British fare like bubble and squeak, sausages, meat pies, and ale. Low tea or afternoon tea, on the other hand, was started by the Duchess of Bedford when she found herself peckish around 4 in the afternoon. Her desire for a dainty meal and tea started a trend in high society, and thus you have your fancy ladies in pretty dresses and hats drinking tea with their pinkies in the air and snacking on strawberries with clotted cream and scones. 

 

This was so, so much fun! It took some work and coordination, and as the years progress will get a little fancier and better organized, but we managed to host one lovely tea party Mother's Day. The girls learned about entertaining, house keeping, cooking, and propriety all while working towards developing a servant's heart and sense of respect for those who have spent so much time raising us to who we have become.

 

 We aimed to try to make our tea authentic, yet manageable. I brought a selection of my most friendly teas (those even non-tea drinkers would enjoy, and they did!) as well as my linens, and we let the girls set up most of the scene. We used heirloom china and dishes, which made it all the more special, talking about whose piece was whose. There were fresh flowers Pony Gal had picked from our flower beds, cloth napkins, classical music playing-it was very pleasant.

 The gals learned a lot in the kitchen, as well, as they went about making 10 different varieties of tea sandwiches, two different kinds of scones, and whipping up fresh whipped cream to accompany the strawberries and peaches.

We had a great turnout and are excited to see what next year brings. The plan is to alternate houses so no one is left doing too much cleaning each year, as well as just a nice change of scenery. It was beautiful this year, and we can only hope for as nice weather next year, as we may have to host on the patio next time. So, so glad that Auntie S and I were able to start such a fun, new tradition!

Noodles

I love how orange/deep yellow these are when made with eggs, just hours after our hens laid them.

Saving on Our Food Bill

Eek! It's been awhile since I have posted, after being so consistent. My new laptop decided, only a month after buying it, that the motherboard was no good, so she's been in the shop having a new one installed. All better now (I hope!), so back to work :)

Over the last several months I have been honing in on our grocery budget, trying to be as efficient and frugal with it as I can, while maintaining my sanity and our health. We've done pretty well. For example, there is nothing we *need* to purchase this week. Canned tomatoes are on sale at our Fareway at a good stock up price, so I may stop by on Saturday, since I noticed just a couple weeks ago we were nearing our last cans of tomatoes with chiles, but otherwise, we are good. That is such a freeing feeling.

So, we have had to back away some local buying for the winter, as we are also working on paying off all, yes, all, of our debt. I have wanted to do this for sometime, and finally Dad is completely on board. While we are working on that, prices dictate what we buy, and as much as I love to buy local, if it isn't the best price going for now (which, during the farmer's market season, it most certainly can be), we have to eschew it. We still have our bulk meat purchases, but most everything else, minus about one dozen eggs a week from our girls, is coming from local stores.

Even buying from the store can cost you a lot. We, through various local bloggers, found that ad shopping specifically helped out tremendously, as well as being willing to set space aside for stockpiling. We already used a large deep freeze to store meat, but found with the ad shopping it became even more useful. I also had already started to stockpile a little as I wanted to be prepared for the unknown-more economic difficulty, family illness, job loss or zombies-so I just have had to expand this, which I also wanted to do anyway. By those small changes, and the occasional use of coupons, we have whittled our weekly costs down to around $70. That is an average; if there is a lot on sale we may write a check for $150, but then not need to go to the store the next week, or only need milk.

How this works-first of all I have implemented the use of a household notebook. This is a binder where I have a variety of different lists and calendars to track what food we currently have or should have in our pantry and freezer, what has been on sale week to week (so I can track cycles and plan purchases accordingly), envelopes with clipped coupons, bills, and our general schedule. I also have a little notebook I use to track what the lowest price I've found on something is, though I have been slacking on updating it lately. That little book is really important, though. Looking at it often, I now have a good idea of what the best prices for things are, and can walk through the store and spot when something is a good deal. Having the book on hand is always handy, though, too.

Last summer I went shopping at most places in the metro area to compare prices on the things we were purchasing regularly. This included Hy Vee, Fareway, Aldi, Sam's Club and Costco. I have memberships to the latter two set to expire in May. After going back and forth on whether to renew them, just a couple weeks ago I decided not to. Here's why-they cost more than they save, at least for us. I figured costs, adjusting for the cost of membership, and the few, and there are only a few if you know how to shop ads, items that are cheaper do not make up for the cost of membership, time or gas, for us to use these places. If you watch ads, and don't even worry about coupons, you can easily save far more money just stocking up when things are on sale. I also found that prices between Aldi and the warehouses (and often Wal Mart, too, but I thoroughly dislike shopping at Wal Mart; it is too big and too busy and too easy to impulse buy) were often comparable, after figuring the membership fees. So, you can forgo the fees and pay the same price, but for smaller sizes. (Note-I compared price per unit or ounce, so that everything was comparable, no matter what size was being sold. A tricky way to get people to pay more for something is to sell it in the jumbo pack and make it seem like you're getting more for less, when you aren't, actually.)

Now, size is another thing that I found to be important. I don't know about other families, but we use things in smaller, more manageable sizes, far more efficiently. The larger sizes equal a lot more waste, though not intentionally. It just was often the case that things would spoil or deteriorate in quality before we were able to get through them. This was also a major reason we decided that the big stores weren't as big on savings as we thought. A gigantic bag of tortilla chips might be a few cents cheaper (they actually came to 1 cent per ounce cheaper at Costco than Aldi's normal price, and several cents more expensive than watching ads for 99 cent bags, which happened just a couple weeks ago, and stocking up), but because of the nature of tortilla chips, even closing them tightly whenever we were finished with the bag, they still were stale before we got through them. Now, I can use stale chips on casseroles and such, but we don't buy them for that purpose, and we would have to open a new bag to eat with salsa so it wasn't saving us anything. Some things could be frozen, but that meant a lot of work to repackage them into smaller portions for easier use later, and though I absolutely didn't mind, the time and mess involved made it not worth my time. Homeschooling and a newborn has me busy enough.
Not renewing that membership means that come May, no more big box stores for us. That leaves Wal Mart (which I prefer to not go to, but they do have a great price match policy. Many of the other grocery stores in town will match nearby competitors, though, and I generally shop in Altoona where this is the case.), Dahls (too expensive, in general), Hy Vee, Fareway and Aldi. Most weeks we are heading to Fareway or HyVee, depending on who has the better ad. This varies a lot, as often what we are stocking up on is a store brand, so it is more difficult to match prices (though Fareway often does a great job of doing this anyway, and without even having to bring an ad along. They just mark their stuff down to compete.). Often produce will be the breaking point, determining where we head. It is incredible how much more we spend on food because we don't take the time to think about what we're purchasing or planning ahead. I was really, really guilty of it.
Now, I should mention that we make most of our meals at home. Dad, since starting to pay off debt, has even started to take his lunch to work most days. We have a few items that are processed we get, like canned chili, box mac n cheese and cake mixes. All of those are for those times when we are completely frazzled, or we're going camping, or for emergencies when fresh alternatives aren't an option. I don't know what a difference in a grocery bill buying a lot of processed goods would make. We also use cloth napkins and towels, and make most of our own households cleaners. Those we don't make we are pretty picky about, so we splurge a little. Paper products and cleaners can get really expensive.

Something else to keep in mind is the necessity to keep track of the food you have or knowing creative ways to store things on sale. For examples, those canned veggies will eventually not be too terribly palatable. Rather than squinting at a date each time we go down we do two things: rotate stock or face it, as it was called back when I was a grocery store employee, and we also took a tip from a couponing lady, and write in a big black marker on the front of the can what the date it expires is. Easy to read and understand and those rules work for everything. We also keep like items together-canned goods, baking goods, boxed, bagged. We can easily send the kids down to grab something we may need in a pinch.

Creativity is often needed to use or store those store bought items. I posted previously on our solution for mushrooms-making a base for cream of mushroom soup, or even just sauteing them in butter and freezing, or they dry beautifully. The same goes for other produce-often they'll freeze as is, or can easily be made into something else that will store better. 

As far as easy to grab meals, we have a few solutions there, too. I splurged on a giant box of restaurant grade food containers, pint size (though I think I'll end up going back for quarts, too), to store single serving size portions of meals in. I generally make more than we need for meals. Not always intentionally, but we never know how hungry we're going to be. Some nights we'll eat an entire pot of beef and noodles, others we'll have a bowl and be satisfied. I am not going to waste that food I worked so hard to get at a good price and prepare, but Dad doesn't eat leftovers (at least not knowingly in their original form, mwah ha ha ha ha ha) and often there will be more than even the kids and I can reasonably eat, so our new MO is to freeze them in those brilliant containers. I know we try to avoid plastics, but there are some places where they are just so handy, and the freezer is one. By freezing in single serving portions, they are perfect for sending in lunches, or if the kids just want sandwiches for lunch but I want something hot, I can pull one out. Another thing they have proved handy in is helping others. Dad's grandpa loves a hot meal, but his grandma is not as nimble as she once was, and it is hard for either to be in the kitchen much. Those single servings are perfect to send an assortment of meals his way (she tends to eat sparingly, and mostly raw fruits and veggies). He can keep them in the freezer for when he needs them, and has instant home-cooked meals handy rather than processed food that often contains far too much salt and sugar for what his varied health concerns necessitate. Big leftovers, like another meal's worth, we freeze in aluminum casserole pans or gallon sized ziplocks for our use later. I hardly call them leftovers, though, as often it is intentional that I make enough to freeze an entire meal for later use.

Another thing we do is include the kids in our food situation. They know that we buy on sale items or items on the list, help us find things on the shelf, count items as we put them in the cart, help carry them to the house and put them away. This helps them understand why we buy what we do and where we store things. This is all training for when they are older, something I didn't have but would sure have enjoyed once I was on my own. Too many families buy on a whim. It is amazing what plans can do! As they get older they will be invited to be more involved in the planning process, too. For now, just talking the entire time we're shopping and putting things away helps them to understand. They also have a great grip on why we buy certain foods and not others. Come this spring they'll help with our garden again, too, and the preservation process. Food is so vital to life and health and yet we treat it so nonchalant. If we put as much time in training our kids about food in our lives (as well as money and God) as we do using technology, it would be amazing what a difference in health and happiness we would see in our country.

It may seem like a lot of work, but once you get a good plan or set up, it really flows nicely and is so worth it. I would rather take the nearly $80 (!) we save each week and take the kids out for an occasional dinner out or buy a movie (or for now, pay a little extra on a bill) than spend it on food. Oh, and I should also mention that we also try to meal plan, too. I don't stick hard and fast to it, but having a basic plan, knowing what we need week to week, helps a lot. It also takes stress off of the "what should we eat" problem that arises around 5 o'clock each day.

Try doing just one thing different the next month and see what happens. We have implemented all these strategies a little at a time-change isn't easy. But, by doing so we have seen major difference and great improvement, in a lot of different areas.

More Spring Busy-ness

I am not getting the chance to post much here lately. We have two ducklings in the laundry room right now. We have 32 chicks in the basement kitchen (see our sister farm's great post on starting your own chicks here along with pics of what the other half of our chicken order looks like). We have flowering fruit trees and seedlings popping up in the vegetable garden all over. We have lambs and goat kids. I am working on my own "kid" which is tiring even if no evidence is apparent yet. That re-organizing bug so common in the spring has caught on and the basement is in pieces as we re-do the storage room, and make plans for new wood floors throughout most of the main floor and built in bookshelves in the master bedroom. Things are just nuts. Things are just the way we like them. :)

Meal Planning and Monthly Shopping (long post alert)

This new approach has been working out wonderfully-which is great. I have tried for YEARS to get a meal plan that fit our family. The weekly thing wasn't working-for one the more time we spend in the store, the more we buy, which is not out of the ordinary, it seems. I also tended to stray from the weekly meal plan, a lot. I tried doing a different theme each night to make it easier to fill in the blanks, or thought it would be easier to try new things since we had planned them. Yeah, not so much. I also hate having to shop several different places to get a bargain, or to just get all we need. I am not a very good coupon clipper. I clip some every once in a while, or use them for going to eat pretty well, but for groceries it didn't work. One big reason for that is that I am not a brand slave. A few items we end up buying brand name, like the occasional Reece's Peanut Butter Cup, as Dad insists all others will not suffice, but for the most part I want cheap, but quality. I am in the middle of doing a bunch of cost comparison between the places we have frequented in the past. So far, with the cost of membership added in for Costco, Aldi is winning the race. I have to look at my data for Fareway and will need to stop by Sam's Club, but my educated guess is that Aldi will end up winning. With having to basically re-distribute my purchases from bulk clubs to make them flow with our routine, time is an issue as well. One plus of not shopping there is that my items come in all ready-to-use sizes. I like being able to buy a lot of some items. I think I have gotten past needing to do this at bulk stores, and rather, am starting to build our pantry and emergency food storage through just buying a little extra each month, and watching sales.
Though I fail at couponing, I do do pretty well at watching the circular ads I get in the mail to see when super deals pop up. Recently that meant running to HyVee outside our normal in-town days in order to take advantage of a deep sale on chicken and pasta sauce (I only had stewing chicken left in my freezer from our own birds), both things that will store well in the freezer and pantry. I bought as much as the ad would let me, and won't have to buy either for months now, helping out the monthly grocery budget. It also helps me build our emergency pantry, and all it takes is reading the ads, which come in our mail once a week, for free. I keep track of what the average cost of what we usually buy is on top of that, so I know when something is on-sale for just a little less than we usually pay, and when something is on sale enough to warrant a special trip and special deviation from our usual grocery budget.
Our newest venture in the shopping arena is to only shop once a month. This takes planning on my part-I need to know what we eat for snacks, meals and little extras, and estimate how much we will need in a month by looking at previous months. Whoever said running a household was easy stuff didn't take their job seriously :) From that I generate our grocery list, divided into sections for pantry, refrigerated, meat, frozen and fruits and veg. This list should not change month to month, with the exception of months when fruits, veg and our dairy animals, are in season. In those months I make a point to preserve what we aren't eating fast enough for use through the winter, and so far each year we have canned just little more than the last, and we feel the help it gives in the grocery budget. For pantry items, even if we do not need the amount put on the list, I buy it anyway. My grocery bill remains the same each month (for the most part), so I can budget that out, and I build our pantry storage by just buying our usual items. We just don't always go through everything. There may be a birthday or anniversary dinner out that saves that dinner's items. We may have a spontaneous breakfast out on a weekend just for fun. We may entertain guests and use a little more. I think many people are concerned with not spending too much each month on food, but not enough are concerned with not spending enough. That little extra is better spent on a little storage and meal insurance than it is on something else. Don't get me wrong, we are working on wittling down debt, but that happens by cutting other areas, and by shopping smart in the first place, not cutting our food back to nearly nothing. During the summer when fresh produce will be coming straight out of the garden, I will still spend the same amount on groceries-just on items we can stock up on like grains and sweeteners. I think the biggest thing is looking at the big picture and having a plan-then sticking to it. It is different for everyone, this is just what is working for us.
So, all of that leads to our meal plan and grocery shopping list. This is what we have so far, though we are still tweaking everything. We find a meal that just isn't flying with everyone or a new favorite that needs worked. During the summer fresh produce will be added and some meals adapted for outdoor cooking.

One Month Meal Plan~
I keep all of this in a binder divided into each week, with the recipes for that week put in behind for easy access. Recipes that are used more than once are placed at the front of the binder in a "basic" area for easy reference. I also keep my recipe for our gluten-free flour blend and a few easy desserts for family nights or when we're entertaining here, too. I have a whole other binder for other recipes that we aren't using all the time, but are ones we want to save for special occasions. Also housed in that are recipes we want to try. I flip through them from time to time and pull a new one out. Otherwise, I've found our plan works best when we stick to tried and true family faves that I am comfortable cooking-especially after a busy day of errands.

Basic Recipe Section:
Banana Bread
Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies
All-Purpose Gluten Flour Blend
Gluten Free Thin Crust Pizza Dough
Pancakes
Waffles
Potato Farls
Gluten Free Artisan Bread in 5 Brioche
Apple Crisp

Week One:
Sunday-Breakfast is potato farls and eggs;  
Lunch out, most likely visiting great grandparents;  
Dinner is Wisconsin Swiss Potato Soup
Monday-Breakfast during the week rotates according to the kid's desires from scrambled eggs, cereal and toast with nutella and fruit;  
Lunch is homemade lunchables (all reference to lunchables throughout is homemade-crackers, cheddar or colby cheese, sliced, and lunchmeat-ham or turkey, plus fruit and veggies) and fruit, eaten in the truck since we run errands this day and  
Dinner on Mondays is our chance to try new things, though I have standbys planned many nights in case we just don't feel like it. Right now this Monday is open.
Tuesday-Lunch is tuna melts;
Dinner is Broiled Chicken Thighs with Peach Salsa with a tossed salad, cottage cheese and some pickled veggie
Wednesday-Lunch is Ham and Cheese sandwiches and
we share dinner with our fr-amily the Reids, otherwise if we have to cancel for some reason, I pull out a freezer meal
Thursday-Lunch is lunchables in the truck again for art class and errands, and
dinner is Tacos. Thursday is Beef/Goat/Lamb night.
Friday-Lunch is leftovers/pasta.
Dinner is pizza with tossed salad. Every Friday night is pizza night at our house.
Saturday-Since Dad is home we have big breakfasts on the weekend. Waffles and turkey/beef bacon. Lunch is Dad's signature sandwich, potato panini with chips, veggies and dip, and
Dinner is Meatloaf, cooked in the crockpot.

Week 2
Sun: B-Bacon and Cheese Casserole
L-Out or with Grandparents
D-Great Lakes Salmon Chowder (this is a new recipe we haven't tried yet. It may get changed)
Mon: L-Lunchables, out running errands
D-something new
Tues: L-leftovers
D-Chicken Tortilla Soup
Wed: L-Leftover or Mac and Cheese
D-With the Reids or Freezer Meal
Thurs: L-Lunchables, art class
D-Steak night with tossed salad and cottage cheese
Friday: L-Ham and Cheese Sandwiches
D-Pizza and salad
Sat: B-Pancakes and bacon
L-Potato Farls
D-Taco Salads (meat cooked in crockpot all day)

Week 3
Sun: B-Eggs, Bacon and hashbrowns
L-Out or with Grandparents
D-Beef Stew
Mon: L-Lunchables
D-Salmon Patties or something new
Tues- L-Ham and Cheese
D- Tortilla Pie with Chicken
Wed-L-Leftovers
D-Reids/Freezer Meal
Thurs-L-Lunchables
D-Beef Stroganoff Stuffed Potatoes
Fri-L-Pasta/leftovers
D-Pizza and salad
Sat-B-Waffles and Bacon
L-Potato Panini/Sausage Kale and Potatoes
D-Chili Dogs with salad and chips

Week 4-
Sun-B-Egg Casserole
L-out or with Grandparents
D-Hot and Sour Soup; this week we'll be with the Reids for the Superbowl, though
Mon-L-Lunchables
D-Spaghetti Pie
Tues-L-Ham and Cheese
D-Chicken and Ginger Stirfry over rice
Wed-L-Leftovers/Pasta
D-Reids/Freezer Meal
Thurs-L-Lunchables
D-Beef Enchiladas
Fri-L-Leftovers/Pasta
D-Pizza and salad
Sat-B-Pancakes and Bacon
L-Grilled Ham and Cheese Sandwiches
D-Goat Posole

Then we start over after four weeks with another trip to the grocery store and new rotation of the weeks. I keep things like grilled cheese sandwiches, quesadillas and hamburgers on hand for those nights when we just run out of time, or are really tired or just don't want to eat what is planned, which doesn't happen often.
So, that leaves the shopping list. I came away spending $160, plus I had to pick up chocolate milk mix (ovaltine or Nestle) elsewhere. I also am a member of our local food buying group, and try to purchase local goods through them when we can. In the deep of winter in Iowa, choices are limited. I have memberships to a few natural goods mail-order groups, too, where I get random items that are hard to find or hard to get at good prices here, like the specialty flours I use for my gluten issues and spices/herbs and beauty supplies. I don't order there more than once every month or two, so it doesn't add too much to my bill. I will work on the master list post later, as this post is pretty long. I have list that lists what we need to have on hand all the time, then there is the list that is store specific. I also try to stop by Fareway once every week or two and check out the scratch and dent shelf, as well as produce clearance. I make some great finds there.

Homemaking is an ART. Don't let anyone else tell you differently. Each area of the home has specific needs and to do it well it takes time, practice and patience. Each family will find what works best for them, or suffer through chaos. My mind functions best when things are methodical, and so planning and having lists to work from makes me comfortable, just like clearing clutter and having a routine does.

Cleaning Up!

As part of the Frugal Blog Tour (Hey all you visitors!) I am posting this week on frugal home cleaning. If you have ever stopped to really look at the aisle of cleaners at the grocery store, from laundry soap to dish washing soap, to carpet cleaner, there are a) a dizzying array of choices; b) some crazy money being spent there to be "clean" and c) some serious chemical overload going on.  The crazy thing is, it is so darn easy to just make your own cleaners at home. There are great "green" options out there to cut back on the chemicals, but they can be pricey unless you're good with coupons and sale watching (I fail here. I can clip the coupon, but rarely get around to checking sales ads). There currently is the Norwex fad, which I have not jumped on board with, but it does serve as an option for the thrifty minded from the sounds of it. I find around our house keeping just a few simple ingredients around, we can clean just about anything we want. I do buy our dish soap--in bulk from Costco--and our dishwasher detergent (though there are recipes for homemade/frugal soap here, too, they just don't seem to cut it in my dishwasher). Here is how we make things work on less (and healthier, too!).

Multipurpose cleaner~I use a spray bottle that I've either saved from something I've bought (and THOROUGHLY rinsed out) or picked up cheap (love Harbor Freight for this) and mix up in that. We use our multipurpose spray on just about everything. I love it. I clean counter tops, tables, around the toilet and quick spots on the floor with it. We also use it on windows and mirrors-and the way we keep it from streaking is with microfiber cloths. If you watch sales ads, these are so handy to have around. We use them to stuff cloth diapers, so we have a serious stash, but I recently scored some pretty cheap at Costco and have been using them for cleaning and loving. Clutter control is high on our list, and that includes things like cleaners. I love opening the sink doors and seeing just a couple bottles that do all my work for me. With the use of a microfiber towel, I eliminated mixing up a bottle of cleaner just for windows. I hadn't enjoyed rubbing newspaper all over my glass, but it worked until I found these guys. Love it. I use this recipe:
Multi-Purpose Cleaner
600 mL water
100 mL castile soap (we buy Dr. B's in bulk through various co-ops and buying clubs. A little goes a loooong way, so it is worth it, plus we use it on a lot of stuff)
10 drops grapefruit seed extract (this is an anti-nasty stuff agent, working to help kill some of the beasties that can start to grow on your counters). If you do not have access to this, many people add about 1/2 c vinegar to their solution to add acidity which should help with cleaning. Definitely an option.
A few drops of your favorite essential oil. Lavender oil, tea tree oil and thyme oil all have anti-microbial properties which would serve well in this situation, but aren't necessary.
We also use the multipurpose as a spot/stain cleaner. The key here is getting to the spot as quickly as possible, and changing rags as you go, so you are not continually rubbing the stain back into itself, whether on clothes or carpet. For carpet stains that are really bad, my husband has been known to bring in a nasty, but handy in our household big gun-brake cleaner. It has taken nail polish, among other things, out of the carpet, as necessary. We try to not use it, but if it is something major, we do have it on stand by.

We have vinyl, tile and carpet flooring in our house, and had wood in the last. For the carpet, we do have a steam cleaner, which we were lucky enough to inherit from some family. I never use the carpet cleaner sold in it. It gives me headaches, and my kids play on the floor too much for me to feel comfortable using something I can't recognize the ingredients in to clean with. All the hoo-jazz about having to use *their* specific cleaners and additives, I have found, aren't necessary. I use castile soap. It is a serious multitasker in this house. To the clean solution tank, I fill the water to the fill line, then add about a third cup of castile soap (peppermint scented adds to the seasonal smells right now!) and then start cleaning. To the recovery tank I add a 1/2 c of vinegar. This aids in the smell control if someone (cough, me) forgets to empty the tank when they're done using the cleaner. If I seem to have a lot of soap left in the carpet, I will go back over it with just hot water in the cleaner.

For our hard floor surfaces I love Murphy's Wood Oil Soap. I never buy this stuff. Never. What I am able to do, instead, is get it for free at the Regional Hazardous Household Waste Recycling Center. (The one for the Greater Des Moines area and many surrounding counties is located just outside Bondurant on Hubbell Ave). That is also where we get paint whenever we need it-for free. Everything at the center is free, except for custom whites and tans they mix up in 5 gallon buckets, but even those are cheap. This is the place people go to drop off the items they aren't supposed to throw away in their regular trash. I find things we need there frequently-paint for indoors and outdoors, craft paints, stains for artsy projects and the outdoor decks and furniture, sealants, spray adhesive, plaster of paris, various cleaners and solvents, citrus paint stripper. All sorts of stuff. Even if I had to buy Murphy's, the stuff is cheap and made with honest ingredients that I know are okay for the family.

For tough scrubbing jobs, like the kitchen sink and the stove top, I love, love, love baking soda.

I use it in the tubs and showers, as well. Just soda. I buy giant bags of it-either from Costco (this kind I can use for baking with, as well) or Harbor Freight sells giant bags of it for media blasting that can be used for just cleaning. I simply lightly wet the surface of what I'm going to clean, and then sprinkle baking soda liberally all over that area.

It will adhere to shower walls and the sides of tubs when they are lightly moistened with water. Then I let it sit just a little while. After it has sat a while (maybe 10 minutes) I grab a wet rag, add a little more water so I have a paste and scrub away.
With no chemicals in my face, minimal cost and just a little effort I can make just about any surface in the house shine. It takes up most stains, as well. When I'm done, I just rinse it all off and go back over spots I may have missed.


Baking soda also works wonders in stinky trash cans (we always have a little in the bottom of our cans to help with smells) and baking soda and vinegar sent down a drain then flushed with hot water will often clear clogs.

Laundry around our house is easy, as well. We make our own detergent, as after looking at the cost of buying stuff that didn't contain a lot of icky stuff and at some natural options like soap nuts, the most cost effective option was just making it. We do a lot of laundry between my husband being a mechanic, running a small farm, letting the kids get dirty while playing, cloth diapering and using cloth instead of paper products in most towel instances. That means a lot of soap. We do not use fabric softener, unless it seems necessary, and in that case just add about a 1/2 c vinegar in the softener spot on the washing machine. No fabric softening sheets, which are actually dangerous in the residues they leave on lint catches, and add a lot of residue to clothes. Many people think clean clothes means perfumed clothing. In actuality all that perfume serves no purpose but to perfume, and often degrades clothing faster. We sort our clothes according to color groups-more than just light and dark-which aids in keeping colors in clothes looking better longer as there is less color transfer between clothes of differing groups. Our laundry soap recipe is contained here. We use both soaps from local soap artists and when we can get a discount on simple store-bought soaps. As far as some people's concern with borax, which I have heard about in other posts, we don't fret on it. Many items in the house can be toxic to children, even if natural. If the kids got a hold of lye based soaps, which are many of the artisan soaps you buy, they could seriously burn their eyes if not flushed properly. Ingesting too many essenital oils could fatally injure someone. The key is keeping an eye on the members of your household and being careful in how you handle things. We mix up our soap in the kitchen, but are careful to wipe the counter down fully before it used for food preparation and clean all utensils used in the process, as well as using the rag that cleaned up for everything but dishes until it has been cleaned. Really being an observant parent is key in all applications.

 Another easy cleaning trick a good friend told me about recently: pumice stones. She uses them to scrub sink surfaces instead of a scouring pad. I re-use the plastic webbed produce bags you sometimes get shallots or garlic in from the produce section and stuff my dish cloth in there. This works will instead of a scouring pad and can be reused over and over again, simply putting your soapy, wet dish cloth in and taking it out when you're done each time. Another thing I do is write on the container what my "recipe" is for the cleaner inside. I don't have to worry about losing that particular recipe and if someone needs to know right away what is in there, it is easily accessible.

One last biggie at our house is not having to buy paper towels, paper napkins, tissues and wet wipes. All of these items we use in cloth form so they can be used over and over again. We pick up napkins from garage sales and towels in bulk from Costco, Harbor Freight or othe rbig box stores. They are all also easy to sew from old clothes. Scrubbing rags that we may want to toss when we're done we make from (hee, hee) old underwear that was going to get tossed anyway, as well as old holey t-shirts. I haven't had to buy paper goods (save toilet paper, which can be cloth as well, but I think that deserves a different post :)  ) for a long time. Wet wipes we keep in either a wipes warmer we picked up at a garage sale or in little pul lined snack sacks or a ziploc, all with a homemade solution of castile or a natural baby soap and water. Just a few squirts in the water will make a nice solution that works wonders in place of the quick wipes for all applications.

There are all sorts of little tricks out there that make cleaning both more pocket book and family friendly. These are our main tactics, though I have numerous books and magazine articles for those times when you need something really specific. Just keep your eyes peeled. This is an excellent start, and our grocery bill has dropped substantially since implementing them. If you compare costs, it is crazy, even when adding in a one gallon bottle of castile soap-the most expensive thing on the list. Our bottle was about $36, and has lasted almost an entire year, and we are only half way through it. Washing soda and borax run around $3 a box, baking soda is terribly cheap, as is vinegar. Most of what you need is right there, as compared to one bottle of multipurpose spray running at least $3 a bottle and laundry soap being outrageous these days. Give a few of these suggestions a try and you'll be surprised at how simple and thrifty it all is!

Enterway Coat Closet Organization

If I were pregnant, I'd accuse myself of nesting. Seriously. I have let my OCD take over the last couple weeks, and slowly but surely, all the organizing I have wanted to accomplish for the last *years* of late I have been doing. There is still a lot to do, but in little spurts I am getting there, and I must say each little bit I get done makes keeping the house up, and including the kids in doing so, that much easier. I also put up (not pictured here, I did a couple days later) color coded hooks for Superboy and Pony Gal to hang up their coats on the door, which they can reach themselves.
This is the coat closet cleanup. I used the command hooks so I didn't put in holes in the door, cleaned through the hats, gloves, shoes, coats and all and put in the Goodwill pile what we don't use, plus whittled everyone's collection down to two or three sets of everything, putting priority on those items which were handmade. Dad still needs to sort through his shoes, but otherwise things look good. The top shelf of the closet (which I forgot to take a picture of) is reserved for items that need to go home with someone else, and I have a little shelf in there for holding work gloves (of which we cannot have too many) and reusable shopping bags. I could just stand and look at each of my organizing projects for hours. I love them *that* much. Yes, I know I have a problem, but it works to my advantage, you know? :)

:)

I thought about turning on the radio while working around the kitchen, but the low hum of the dishwasher and washing machines, the wind whispering around the house and the kids laughing as they played on the swing set was music enough for me... :)

Kitchen Organization

This is my center island...I moved our eating dishes from the cupboards so the kids can better help put things away and set the table for meals. So far (as in, one dish cycle :) ) it has worked well.
I am slowly moving my spices from the cupboard, which is too close to the stove for good storage. I found these magnetic bars at Harbor Freight, and am reusing the metal tins that the lotion I use come in. I have decided I will just take things slowly, and only switch things out as I go through lotion, rather than spend extra funds to just buy the tins outright.
One cupboard, rearranged to hold some canned goods, though the bulk is still on shelves in the laundry room. This just makes it easier to grab what I need quickly as I make meals.
And this cupboard holds more staples, which as I went through, I had doubles and triples of, quite accidentally. Having set spots will help me to see when we are actually out of something.
The snack cupboard/cool storage. Also, I was pretty tickled with my canning ring storage, which had been a problem. This way, the wide mouth rings are separate from the standard size and they stay out of my way instead of in drawers here and there.

Intro to Sewing Class at Prairieland Herbs

This is how I like to spend my weekends...in great company (thanks Ladies!), teaching something I love to do (any homemaking skills in general). My dear friend, Sarah was my co-pilot for the afternoon, and all our pupils made terribly cute, fully functional aprons by the end of the class. I had originally put making cloth napkins on the itinerary, as well, but it took our full two hours to do the aprons. I am looking forward to finding a spot to fit a skirt sewing class in again soon, as well as all the other classes I have planned for the fall and winter there. You can check out the class list here, and see Sarah's post on on our class here.

My Favorite New Toy

I love my new pressure canner. I have canned green beans, summer squash, okra and meat stocks like mad here lately, freeing up freezer room. I also have used it to make dinner in a jif-a stew that usually takes hours took 20 minutes and was delish and tender. I am considering getting a smaller model to use specifically for dinner purposes. It definitely makes using tougher cuts of meat easier as they are sooo tender when cooked in one of these puppies. Worth every penny!

This post is part of Simple Lives Thursday, hosted by A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa!


Also (accidentally, but so nevertheless, hee hee) part of Two For Tuesdays

Laundry Room Face Lift

The addition of the metal shelves made such a huge difference and I gained so, so much storage room. Love it!

A glimpse of the new office

Kitchen Purge, Repair, Reorganize

Will post the after pictures later...

Dryer Love

Where, or where, has an electric dryer been all my adult life (so far)? Oh. my. gosh. I had so many people comment on how dumb it would be to switch from a propane dryer to an electric one. Really? Because, even without my dream of having my own electric source (like a wind turbine or solar panels) the thing is great. It takes electric to run the gas dryer, folks. Propane, well, it is not cheap, and has to be vented outside. With my electric dryer, I can vent inside, which recaptures the energy that would be lost doing so outside, in the form of much needed humidity, especially with Pony Gal's asthmatic tendencies, and heat. That dryer heats the upstairs level to well above what the furnace is set to faster than the furnace usually can,and with less energy cost. It also dries faster than my gas dryer due to the fact that being vented inside leaves it with less length to travel. The gas dryer was fairly inefficient due to the length of vent hose needed to make it outside from where the dryer sat in our laundry room. Many folks like to comment on the indoor venting issue, arguing that during the summer it makes the house unbearable, and also increases the risk of mold and mildew issues. But, during warm months, I dry on a clothesline outdoors,and we can totally hook the hose back up to the outdoor vent if needed, but really shouldn't be. As far as mildew, not an issue if the thing is run regularly, and not in already humid, warm conditions that fungi like to thrive in. So in short...I love my new laundry set up (I also got an he wash machine. Not my first choice, but in weighing the options, price and the fact that Dad insisted on a matching set, well...). I am actually caught up for the first time in ages. I have been avoiding the first poopy pants run, but will get to it soon, as the bucket is getting full. Luckily, Superboy is potty training very well, and poopies are his easier to catch movements. Pee is easy to wash, so yay for that!

The Laundry Saga

My dryer was repaired this morning. Seven months after it had broken. I have been content to use my clothes line, but with some wetting issues with the kids and just plain getting behind, I needed the dryer to get certain items dried, NOW. So I finally called. I am glad I did, too. It will be handy as a heat source in the winter. The repair guy was just a small business from Knoxville, as I wanted to be as local as possible. With the economy and such he and his wife had gotten into some trouble on their house loan, and had been living at a campground for a couple weeks while they waited to see if they could get a new loan, after being evicted on only ten days notice. I felt like it was a good indication of why it is so important to shop locally. By giving him my business, I helped to perpetuate this service availability in my area. The amount of money he takes away from working for himself rather than for say, Sears, where he used to work, is far greater. He was also very honest, and explained the protocol for Sears repair guys fixing the problem with my dryer,compared to what he was doing, which after numerous explanations from my husband made perfect sense for why it was necessary to install two parts rather than one. I am not saying Sears is bad, but working with local businesses is just so important. It is the way things used to be. I have his cell phone; I won't be put on hold. He lives 20 minutes away and carries his stock with him (as well as his dog who was patiently waiting in the truck today). My clothesline had broken about a week ago. Dad fixed it Saturday, but I still was ready to have the dryer fixed for our backup drying source, as one indoor drying rack works fine when I am caught up during stormy/cold times, but when I get behind there is no way to catch up without doing several loads a day, requiring the outdoor line or the dryer.

Curfew

About two weeks ago I got fed up. Fed up with being out late places, whether running errands or visiting or eating out. Fed up with cranky kids after a certain hour. Fed up with no personal time to do anything, whether for me or catching up on a little housework. Thus, I decided upon a curfew-for most of the family. No matter where we are, come 8 p.m., we leave. We go home, get the kids ready for bed and settle in for the night. That is just part of the equation, though. Since we are homeschoolers, I never really worried about getting the kids to bed at a certain hour. They basically plopped when they plopped, and got to sleep in as late as they like. But, when I set up the curfew, the new plan was also that they started going to bed at nine. I would lay Pony Gal down first, reading her a bedtime story or two, then go lay down with Superboy, nursing him to sleep in his bed-yes, his bed. This does several things-affords me a small window of cleanup time from 10-10:45 or so, though it doesn't generally take that long when I am keeping up with things, then husband time until we fall asleep. With Superboy in his bed part of the night, we get some "alone" time and I get some real sleep for just awhile. It varies from night to night how long that is. Some nights I get two hours, some I get 6. When he wakes up, I bring him back into our bedroom to nurse back to sleep until morning. It has only been recently that I have been able to do that part of it, as he has been a heavy night nurser since we brought him home from the hospital. I must say I have really been enjoying my evening time, even getting to knit and sew a little more. I also have been sewing for a certain craft show I will be at in the late fall, and been able to do a lot of that crafting during Dad's later nights out bowling. I also think I have been able to keep the house up better as I keep rearranging and decluttering until EVERYTHING has its place. I have spent a little extra money on shelves, but it is so worth it to have things have permanent homes.