abby « Robin Writes

With the start of the school year, we’ve changed to only working at the farm on weekends; that means approximately 48 days, weather depending, to get everything ready for the spring move.

Last weekend, we spent the entire time—except for a little gardening and a little shopping—inside the house.

The gardening resulted in fewer weeds, cucumber and yellow squash harvesting, a little burning, and one less damn copperhead.

The shopping nearly filled our supply unit and added some drywall to our collection.

And then we worked our butts off.

The living room/kitchen dividing wall frame has been drywalled and painted! Actually, we finished the second coat on the ceiling in that half of the house and almost all the painting.

We still need to get paint for the doors on that side, which is the same for the bedroom/office/bath-side walls, and we need to hang the door to the lean-to. And of course, the kitchen remodel/rearrange/additions.

But this coming weekend, we’ll be moving the bedroom/office into the living room and finishing drywall, ceiling repair, and more painting.

After, of course, the skim coating. Ick. So tired of that, but the alternative is worse . . .

And yes, we’ve started moving. To a point.

Originally, I wanted to wait to move just about everything so we wouldn’t have to do it twice, once to the barn and then again to the house. In light of certain economic issues—the world, not ours—we’ve started the process a little early.

Pretty much anything that we won’t need or use between now and spring is headed out the door.

Extreme? Perhaps. But it needs to be done sooner or later and I hate to drive a few hours down there with an empty truck. And we have to LIAH, there would be items that I couldn’t take but would miss.

Now that I have a supply closet in the barn, I can take stock of what supplies I have and what I still need. It’s much easier when everything is organized, and in one place.

Back in STL, I had a shelf in the garage, plus overflow onto the pool table, plus the upper kitchen cabinets. Now, I can walk into a 8 X 8, 6-foot-tall storage unit and see everything on the shelves.

So, what do we have?

Three cases of water bottles. We use these on occasion; they are the most practical to store at this time. When working outside, we use refillable bottles, and we do have a well and a pond. We also have various containers that will hold water, along with other empty containers to repackage certain foods.

Commercially canned vegetables. Not ideal, perhaps, but if one is hungry one tends to worry a whole lot less about GMOs or preservatives and additives. The key is being prepared to ward off starvation, if it came to that. We buy these on sale, a few at a time.

Home-canned fruits and preserves and dried herbs and vegetables, as well as pickles. Okay, so I went a little overboard on the pickles…that’s another subject! Once we make the move, I’ll have more time to do more canning, and we’ll purchase a new deep freeze; I much prefer frozen vegetables to canned.

Commercial spices. These, too, are purchased on sale. Even icky stuff can be made more palatable, which brings me to the icky shelf. You know those food items you accumulate somehow, the ones you’d never eat but immediately find their way into the food drive box? I have a shelf for that. Naturally, I stock and store things we’ll eat—just as I plant the garden—but you never know. Someday, that tin of sardines or whatever might sound good. I doubt it, but ya never know!

We also keep a supply of personal care items: shampoo, soaps, deodorant, toothpaste, etc. We have shelves for first aid and OTC meds, as well as keeping 90 days or more of prescription meds. And of course, household items, such as detergents, dish soaps, paper towels, toilet paper, and so forth.

Now, you don’t have to have a huge supply closet—you can easily tuck things away here and there, in regular closets, top kitchen cabinet shelves, your garage. But you should always keep track of those things: first in, first out. Make a running list and keep it up-to-date so you always know what you have.

That was my problem. I had so many places to store things, and occasionally someone besides me would re-stock the pantry or bathroom. Ahem. It was pretty rare, but it did happen. So I got to the point where I wasn’t entirely sure what I had and what I needed.

You’ll also notice in the picture that there are a few plastic tubs. These are for things that a mouse might find particularly tasty, and yes, that includes toothpaste. Doesn’t do a bit of good for you to store things that are ruined by rodents. We do everything we can to keep their population down, but sometimes they still can find their way inside.