Spring cleaning and Keeper of the home

If we take our modern home and strip it down to how things were long ago, we, as the keeper of our home, could learn a thing or two of how far we have gone off the path of living sensible. 

As it is today, the instant our feet hit the floor in the morning, we start adding to our incoming bills.  Just by living in our home, and what we use, determines what the bills are going to be.  Electricity is very expensive and so is water. We are in control of what we use.  

The same goes for food, if we do not have a plan, our food bill can be over budget the first week of the month.  

We need a budgeted amount for electricity, water & sewer and food.  We also need a budget for everything else.  We have this many dollars to spend and so we break it down.  If I have $50.00 to spend on food, I must figure out what I can make and know the cost of the items to make that food.  

We all know this, but do we do this?  So much money is wasted with not planning and figuring the numbers. 

Charles and I even have studied our portions.  We took notice to how much we put on our plate to where we feel full,  not too full but satisfied.  We cut back what we cook and measure out much less than we did.  We measure our macaroni to make mac and cheese. If we have leftover we know to cut back even more.  How much cheese do we use to make it taste just right.

We cut back on how much rice that we measure out to cook.  We are very careful because we have realized that we keep cutting back more and more and one bag of something goes much further now.

We have cut back on meat and eat more beans.  When we do cook meat we use it differently and cut it in smaller portions.  We have more meatless days now than we did before.  

Charles and I keep track of our electric and water use each day. We swap out for electricity savings.  We cut something off to use something else.  I think the thought, did they even have this? 

Our generations before us born early 1900 went through pandemics, recession's, a great depression, two world wars, rationing and  they had to figure out how to get through very tough times. Many learned to be cautious and remained living a simple life.  

There is one thing that gets overlooked at how did my grandparents get through those difficult times?  During the times of the great depression, people hunted and fished more than they do now.  They also recognized wild edibles.  Some of those plants are still here today but people do not consider it food they can pick and eat.  This is something people do not even consider today to help them when they need food. 

But time moves on and people follow trends.  My grandparents did not follow trends, my parents did.  

Where would we be today if we can no longer pay that electric bill?  What if we cannot pay for gasoline to get to where we need to go?

What if the stores start being out of supplies?  

If you have been reading my blog for awhile now, I hope that you are better prepared than most are to be able to get over the humps in the road.  

It is spring here and so we started our spring cleaning this week.  We cleaned all of our windows inside and out and gave the window ledges a good scrubbing.  We need this spring cleaning because upkeep is necessary to prevent repairs.  We put repairs on our list as we see they are needed.  We will need to scrape and pain sometime this year or the next. 

We recently had a long roof trim board replaced. 

I have been putting off cleaning the silverware so I got that done and am working on the inside of the drawers and giving a good scrub to the flatware organizers.  Somehow crumbs and dirt get into our drawers so we should clean them too.

 It has been nice to work outside and enjoying the spring blooms all around us.

Red honeysuckle or also called Trumpet honeysuckle. 

Time seems to be going faster than we can keep up with.  Charles and I noticed that we are rushing more as if we have a deadline.  I am not sure why we are doing this since Charles retired this past October.  We feel that one reason is the confusion and uncertainty of this time that we are living.

We are concentrating on living as frugal as possible, being able to eat even if the stores start having shortages.  Fuel shortages high prices affect most everything and right now many countries are already starting rationing, being asked to cut back on electricity, water, and especially travel.  Food shipments to the store can affect price and supplies. 

Since we are eating less meat, we are storing more beans and rice.  We air seal them in canning jars.   

Spam, rice & onions, great northern beans and brussels sprouts.

We have purchased extra pinto and great northern beans because they do not take very long to cook if you first soak them for 24 hours.  I know this plate is not full of colorful items but it tasted good to us.  The meat, rice, beans and onions were in the pantry, the brussels sprouts were in the freezer.  

If you soak the pinto and great northern beans for 24 hours they will take little time to cook and be done in about thirty minutes with a "low" boil and then turn them off and let them rest for another thirty minutes.  This prevents the skins from peeling off.  

I do not know if the altitude makes a difference on cooking.  We avoid cooking navy beans because they take so long to cook.  

This is spam, I added onions and made a gravy.  We eat what we keep on our shelves to keep the food rotated.  Soon we will have fresh vegetables from the garden.  My suggestion for anyone that lives alone, to freeze part of the canned meat that you do not need for your serving so that you can stretch that canned meat item.  

We can make a chicken pot pie from canned chicken.  

Fuel has gotten so expensive for truck drivers that the prices will most likely go up and also there could be shortages.  Some countries have already asked people to go back to working from home for those that can. 

We have been planting vegetables, and Charles has been working on our compost pile.

Photo above is lemon verbena the light colored large round pot.  To the lower right of that pot is lemon balm.  The countyline tank is multiplying onions.

The two back tanks, the back left is potato onions and the empty back right is where the ginger and turmeric will be planted.  We stored last years left over turmeric and ginger that we grew in crocks with newspaper like we do each year and then plant it back out in the spring.

Things look a bit of a mess because we are cleaning up from winter and setting our spring garden. 

We have removed the frost covers and netting from all of the tanks so we can clean up the tanks and plant the spring vegetables and herbs.

Because of our age, we started buying cattle tanks to use for raised beds.  We purchased one or two per year and kept going until we felt we had enough raised garden space to get a harvest. 

I am trying something new this year, I have cut the bottoms out of grow pots and placed zucchini and yellow crookneck squash in the middle of my large garden pots of oregano to try and keep the squash bugs off of the plants.  I hope that it goes well.

Above is okra and sweet potato.

We have to get it started with the seeds, cuttings or slips, and then nourish it to grow so it can nourish us.

The afternoon sun was shinning in so pretty the other day and making the lace patterns on the door.  This was after we had finished washing all of the windows. :)

Last post I talked about starting our spring cleaning, we use table top fans in our house and they can get really dusty so we clean them every couple of months because they act as dust collectors. Since we are spring cleaning we are jump starting and getting all of the fans cleaned up at the same time. 

I have changed my kitchen counter and added easy to reach jars of many of our regular use items. 

I like it like this since I seem to be getting shorter, and to reach into the cabinets is getting more difficult. 

For part of the spring cleaning I started organizing the canning equipment for the future fruit picking to come.  As I organize and have things pulled out I clean that space. 

I will be making ghee tomorrow to get some on the pantry shelf.  Purchasing Ghee is too expensive for our budget but we use butter and it would help to have some on the shelf.  I am trying to get us more shelf stable so less trips to the grocery store.  

Someone needs to be keeper of the home.  That person is the one that keeps things running smoothly.  The one that figures out the solutions when there are disruptions.  The one that keeps the home from decaying and the clothes mended.  The one that makes sure to purchase wisely. 

Several years before Charles retired we started purchasing items that we felt would help us to live without using equipment that cost to run it.  More like they did it in the past before electricity.  

We need these thing so that we can live off our social security and if we have high utility bills this would break our budget.  We knew we needed to be able to do as much as we could ourselves because hiring people is so expensive. 

 So we found ways to cook without electricity or expensive fuel. Tools to do the work ourselves.  A way to continue to grow a garden without getting down on the ground to plant and harvest.  Things to help to reach better to be able to continue to wash our windows. We knew that the house would need painting the first or second year of retirement so we bought the paint before retirement. 

As I have mentioned before, we put up portieres over our doorways to control the temperature in the house and we try to heat or cool the rooms we are using. I bring this up often because it really works. 

We also have been adding fruit trees to the garden. 

I just thought this would be a good time to recap on some of these things because even if it were not retiring and living off social security it could be the many people that have lost their jobs.  

Finding a new job today is very difficult and it is so impersonal.  The things people have to do just to get an interview is extreme.  I never in my life thought I would see how difficult it is just to apply for a job.  Gone are the days to walking into a business to apply for a job.  

We have a forum here on my blog and a wonderful group of people in the forum.  It does not cost anything to sign up. 

So my questions for todays blog,

Have you started spring or autumn cleaning?

Are you experiencing changes due to the fuel shortages war impacts where you live?

Are you planting a garden, a container or trying to grow something for the war garden for the study?  

Have you made any changes in the way you cook due to food costs?  

Remember we are from all over the world, we can talk about anything but politics

Grandma Donna

This link below is from an old post I wrote May of 2018 when we were doing a study of the year1944 and I was keeping a pantry.  There is a photo of a home canning pantry during this time of 1944.  

https://gdonna.com/old-fashioned-organizing/before-a-storm-or/