Redistribution of Wealth

We have been very busy this past weekend redistributing the "wealth" of previous owners. When we took down all the "added" walls to the house, this left us with a huge pile of wood. By huge, I mean the pile was wider than me and almost as tall.  The longest boards measured over 80" and consisted mostly of 2 x 4s and 2 x 2s. So, we redistributed this wealth of wood into a new pantry...with a lot more space!

This blank wall now features a wonderful set of shelves and a beautiful curtain! (Thanks mom for the apple tree fabric....it is perfect for the pantry!).

Much better! The best part of the whole project was that it cost us four boxes of wood screws. That's it!

Previously, we had a couple of old shelves to use, but these were starting to bow pretty badly and I was concerned about all the weight on them. In addition to the shelves, we had re-purposed a bakers rack to try and store everything. This worked for a while, but now we have room to expand.

We have designated this area for the home canned vegetables. Previously, some of these had to be split onto different shelves and on different sides of the pantry just to contain it all. Each shelf can hold 56 jars of goodies. A huge improvement....so I can definitely plan on canning even more this coming summer!

This nine-cubicle storage unit has also been replaced with more custom shelves, thanks to my wonderful husband! And while the gray shelving worked for a while, they simply did not provide us with enough space and resulted in a lot of "dead" space above. All of this is now fixed!

All of the canning shelves measure approximately 8" high, which is perfect for all sizes of canning jars. We decided to divide the canned fruit section into two so that I could store all of the jams, butters and preserves together and all the syrups and processed fruits together. All of the shelves consist of four boards, with some spacing in between each to ensure good air flow.

The bulk of the original shelves were on this wall, but the spacing did not work really well for us. We did the best we could with what we had, but I like my new shelves so much better. I now have plenty of room to stock up on what I consider to be staples for any pantry.

All the way around the pantry, we started the first set of shelves approximately 20" from the ground. This allows us to store rolling carts, like you see above, as well as some wine and whiskey half-barrels for long term root storage. I am hoping to order a few of those over the summer. It also gives us plenty of room to store water and so much more.

The final wall was originally empty and so we had used some more gray shelving to hold the additional canned jars that I processed this summer. As you can see, just about every square inch of available space was full and I did not know where I was going to expand to when I went shopping this month. Believe it or not, we were starting to scrape the bottom of the wood pile once we got to this wall. Anxious to finish it up and surprise me, my wonderful husband worked late into the early morning hours....

I now have everything categorized and every food item not only has its own place, but I have room to add to some essentials. I am hoping to buy some more "pretty" boxes or baskets for the top shelves and a few other things, but for now, this space is finished and I love it!

Our redistribution did not stop there. Oh, no it did not. My wonderful 18 month old daughter has learned to climb stairs. A feat that she is quite proud of herself for accomplishing. I have spent most of the last couple days running to the sound of an older sibling that "Harley is on the stairs!". As if that were not enough, our 5 month old black lab has decided that he likes it upstairs....regardless that it is forbidden territory for him! All of this has been solved by re-purposing the door that we removed when we took down the extra wall in the basement.

This is only temporary but it works. Someday we will have an original styled door, with beautifully stained trim and charming original hardware.  Someday. But today, I can rest easy and relax. For a moment. While I may not agree with the redistribution of wealth that our wonderful politicians like to speak about, I definitely like redistributing the "wealth" of previous owners!

Canning Season Is Over

Canning season has come to an end for 2012 with the processing of the pumpkins. While in the midst of it all, it seemed like I was canning every day. Now that we are done, I was surprised at how little I was able to get done out of our garden. I am thankful for the Back to Eden approach and am looking forward to doing it again next year, but I was really surprised by the total overall. I had such high expectations for our first gardening experience! I am trying to keep in mind that this year we were suffering from a horrible drought and some of our plants just didn't seem to produce, such as the Brussels sprouts.

I have updated the food preservation page to include the totals of everything preserved for 2012. Now that the season is over, I was able to put it into alphabetical order and sort it by size, so it is a little easier to read. It will be interesting to see how 2013 will do compared to 2012 now that we have a better grasp of the garden and canning. I also have to remind myself that this was only my second year of canning, too!

In all, we put away 8.5 gallons (freezer bags) in the big freezer and 93 half-pints, 84 pints, and 187 quarts in the pantry. We are still in the process of organizing our pantry, adding additional shelving and just getting it organized overall. Once we finish getting it cleaned up and organized for winter, I will post some pictures to share with everyone.

We are already in the process of looking ahead to 2013 and are considering a few new things. We are researching greenhouses and are actually thinking of replacing our shed with an assemble-yourself greenhouse. This should help with seed starting come February. I also watched a phenomenal video on youtube that taught how to start seeds to ensure proper growth. I am really excited to try out some of their ideas. We are looking at expanding the garden into the flower gardens around the house by planting the culinary herbs, herbal tea plants and medicinal plants close to the house. This year, we are ordering our heirloom seeds from a provider that we recently heard about, www.mypatriotsupply.com. With the new herbs and medicinal plants, I had to order a book so that I could learn how to use them! Finally, I also ordered a book on owning a root cellar. We used to have a root cellar in our basement that someone cemented over. Hopefully this book will give us some ideas on how to either restore or build a new root cellar for more storage options.

Now that summer is over, we are back to working on various projects around the house. Thus far, we have reorganized the laundry room. All year long, the washer and dryer have been driving me crazy by "walking" around! I was also having trouble adjusting to having the washer on the right and the dryer on the left as I lived with it in a reverse formation for the past eight years. We initially tried balancing the appliances using cardboard, but they walked right off that too! It was getting really frustrating and annoying, especially since we have a metal capped sewer pipe of some sorts right in that area - and the washer seemed to be constantly hitting it, making even more noise. We finally solved all the problems by switching the two appliances and getting everything adjusted. I am so happy! (Isn't it amazing how the simplest things can put a smile on our face?). Our last improvement to the laundry areas was the addition of a shelving unit like we are using in the pantry. This gives me a great place to store laundry supplies and other project odds and ends.

We also hung the original pantry door back up. The door was found lying on the floor against the outer pantry wall. Unfortunately, it was buried behind so much clutter that we could barely get to it. As part of our basement clean up project, we got that area all cleaned up and decided to hang the door. We weren't really sure why it was taken off to begin with, but suspected it had something to do with the hinges, since they were missing. To our disgust, we discovered that the door had been removed because the piping to the furnace was hung too low, causing the door to only be opened a few inches. Thankfully, this was an easy fix - we simply had to move a supporting block of wood and hang a few inches higher the pipe supports. Now the door can swing open freely. The door needs some work and we are missing some of the hardware, but it still is a neat thing to see, especially since most of the original doors were removed prior to us owning the house.

I'm sure that we will be working on a lot more projects in the house over the winter months - such as working on the wood floors! Unfortunately, we need to use our heat guns to do that project and, really, who wants to use a heat gun in the middle of summer!

Next time, I'll try to have more pictures. Til then, God bless!