Pioneer Woman at Heart

One Flourishing, Frugal and Fun Family!

One family learning to live off the land, cut back on expenses, and to live a simpler and a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

Adopted Motto

"Eat it up,
Wear it out,
Make it do,
Or go without."
~A Pioneer Sampler, by Barbara Greenwood~

Showing posts with label Extreme Clean. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Extreme Clean. Show all posts

Thursday, August 10, 2023

Tomatoes ~ Clothesline Day ~ Hot Peppers

 One of my extreme clean projects (craft binders) landed on the kitchen table, and it made me realize, I need the table for tomatoes.  Yikes.  

Tomatoes, although we are getting black rot on some, are rolling in, so I have set up a small camping table for the extras, as they are not all turning red at the same time this year. 

The sound of locusts outside, reminded me to wash our bathrobes while I still had good clothesline weather.  Plus, they were on the bathroom door, and I need that door taken down to paint anyway.  Eventually. I didn't get a photo, but that clothesline was full.  I washed all the towels, clothing and anything else to beat the rain.

Speaking of laundry, my washing machine is now acting up.  I am getting codes, and it will stop completely.  We got it running again, but it is 14 years old.  It may be the next appliance to be replaced.  

So, what would eat jalapenos?  I have one plant almost eaten completely down.  Never, ever, have a seen this activity.  I went back out and did a good look-see to check for tomato worms too.  It could have been done by the last horn worm I removed.  I didn't see any other activity out there.

It's not a great year for my hot peppers.  Plants are smaller, peppers are smaller, and I had several rotten hot banana peppers on a few plants.  My cayenne didn't make it. No habanero this year either.  Just a weird year for them I guess.  My husband said someone took jalapenos to work, from their garden, and they too, were not hot.

We got a bit of rain last night, but not enough in my opinion.  It will be another hot day today.

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Saying Goodbye to Goat Supplies and Other Tidbits

 In the process of swapping out the old and new refrigerator, I found a tote with more goat supplies I was keeping.  We have already given away the milk pail.


I guess I was hanging on to all of this, just in case things got very bad in this world, and we needed to invest in dairy goats again.  We decided to let it go.   The "zebra" goat coats were sewn from old pajamas from the kids.  I made them myself actually.  The other was made from old sweatpants.  I guess you could say this is my only purge this week.  



We are still enjoying fresh cucumber salad, cucumber salsa, and I tried a new yellow squash casserole (which lacked flavor).


The green/wax bean plants were yanked.  We enjoyed some of the freshly picked ones.  It's too late to fall plant them.  We had a good harvest this year.  We got 37# this year.  I gave some to the kids, we ate some, and froze some.

After several weeks, we finally got 90% of the flower beds weeded.  I still need to weed the herb garden as well.

I don't know why I started going back to the library.  I had books due back (crochet, cookbooks) before I even had a chance to look at them.

It rained, but not a really good soak.  I took advantage of the day and became the zucchini Houdini.  I have more squash to deal with yet.  





Breakfast was Chili and Cheddar Egg dish, and some local blueberry sausages.

I boiled some eggs for snacking or light lunches.

I used some zucchini for chicken teriyaki, and some yellow squash, so I made homemade teriyaki sauce for that.  My husband was bugging me for zucchini bread, so I baked 2 loaves, and one went to work with him, and I made BBQ beans with the last of the freshly picked beans.  We have leftovers for days here.  

The sun is out today, and back to the 80's.  Yesterday, it was an oddly low 70's day.



Friday, July 14, 2023

I can't believe it's Friday already . . .

The recent rain gave the garden a sip of glory, but not a full drink so to speak.  There is a good possibility for a good soak tomorrow.   The gardens are doing well, and my green onion is springing back to life.  I check it daily, as those squash bugs can lay eggs in a hot minute, and I have to keep the sensors on my motion sensors out there clean, and make sure they are charging.

I started weeding the herb garden and flower beds, but it will take several days.  We did not mulch the flower beds, as we had plans to expand one flower bed (for easier mowing).  It is on the back burner for now.  

  

I'm still working on the utility room, by washing up hats, scarves, gloves, sweaters, and coats, and drying them on the clothesline.  Anything I haven't worn for the last 14 years, is going in a donation box.  That all came out of one coat cubbie, including more sweaters that I put to dry inside on hangers.



One coat cubbie scrubbed clean.  These are the only coat closets we have in the house.  No linen closets etc.  Each one has two hooks in the back.  We installed rods to hold coats, jackets, rain coats, and sweaters.  These were installed by the last homeowner, and have no doors on the cubbies (other than the one we installed recently.  There are small cupboards above and below, and I am going through every single one, purging, cleaning and re-organizing.  It will take some time, now that the garden is producing.

I have found some "are our serious?"  items found way back in a corner, and some "what were you thinking" items, ha ha!  I have added two more plastic storage drawers to the garage project.  I cleaned another upper cupboard, and now have an official storage (out of sight) for our paper towels, napkins, and toilet paper.


(There are about 50 more of these to take off the walls upstairs, ha ha!  Kids!!)

On the upstairs updates, I bring down anything that the kids left every trip up there.  I am almost done cleaning out what was left in the other closet, but progress is being made.

I'm compiling a trip to town, with several lists, and two donation drop off locations.  I found a home for 3 binders that had craft instructions for any type of handmade craft.  I saved pages from magazines, printed stuff, and kept free patterns and instructions from the craft store  (elementary classroom parties, teaching crafts at MOPS etc).  I knew that if I took them to donate to the thrift store they would toss them out, so I inquired with the recovery place, and they were excited to take them.  They do a "creative" weekly, so I am happy I found a good home to donate them.

I'm still adding to my lists, and dreading the trip to town.  My hometown has road construction at every (literally) entrance into town, and adding many round-abouts (we all feel are ridiculous), and we all have to go many miles out of our way to get to and from places in that town.  It will be bad for the next 30 days.  The town is a hot mess, and we try to avoid it as much as possible.

I have placed a few online orders, but that is becoming a joke too.  I may share my experience with that in another post.  I can't believe it's Friday already.  

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Tuesday Tidbits

 We did get rain over the weekend, followed by some cooler nights, so I had to give the garden a few days to dry up a bit.

Grab a cup of java.  I tend to get chatty some days, ha ha!  It's probably a boring post as well.  

On the inside of the homestead, there has been much work being done on the utility room purge.



The Before. . .





Pattern purge.  Oh my....had several binders of craft instructions from when I took part of MOPS.  Ha!  That is a group of Moms with preschoolers.  Good gravy!


Two cupboards above cubbies were cleaned and lined.


Painted the added trim.  I used leftover door paint from the kitchen bathroom repairs/renovation project.



Broke out the label machine to properly label binders.


Saving these to possibly help organize the garage, when we start that purge/re-organization project.  Here, all those years I thought I was keeping my yarn organized.  Ha!  I was creating more space to store more I think.  Not anymore.  My focus, is to use up that yarn this summer. It was mostly all cotton yarn.


The yarn filled an oversized shopping bag!





I revisited the binders.  It was long over due.  I found I had re-printed some patterns, thinking I lost them and they were just filed in other binders.  

I think I tossed out about 4-5 of the binders (they were all recycled binders from the kids when they were in school), purged a lot of craft and other patterns, and put about 4-5 in the donation stuff.  I have more to purge, so the binder project is not over with just yet. 

There is one binder that is all Christmas crafting - magazine pages, printed patterns, old magazines etc.  It will take the longest to purge.  I loved to participate in the kids classroom holiday parties, and always made something new for the kiddos.  It's time to purge/toss!  

I emptied, and removed all those containers of yarn.  

The Pharmacy door trim was painted, and door installed.  I completely cleaned the cupboard above the coat cubbie , and my pattern books are being moved to there.  All the kids games were removed and put in the donation items as well.  I can't work in that room all day long.  It has no windows, and is off of a hallway, so it gets very little AC in there.  A fan helps, but it gets pretty warm when you are zipping around working.

I have much more to clean, but making some progress in there.  That cubbie with the new door needs purged and cleaned.  

Today will be a hot one in the 90's.  I need to check my raspberry bushes first thing this morning, and get some tomato plants weeded.  The rain may be returning.  I say "may" because the forecast changes constantly here.

Wednesday, July 5, 2023

Garden ~ Kitchen-ness ~ Utility Room Purge (the room that holds way too much ha ha!)

 

Our 4th of July started out very foggy, but the remainder of the day was in the high 80's, and sunny.  We spent the morning tying up tomato plants, until the heat index turned 91°F.



  Those tomato plants are not all of them, I have a main tomato patch as well.



Our zucchini plants are about 5 feet wide this year.  Never in our life, have we seen them this large.  Don't mind the weeds, I'll get those when the ground is a bit more dry out here.  You can see the small whirly-gig, and can compare that to the plant.  Amazing!
  
I'm still trying to resurrect the green onions.  Golly they took a hit with the heat and recent drought.  I was hoping for the rain to help, but it will take some work to bring them back to life.


I like to keep healthy snacks prepared for hot days.  Some days we don't feel like eating a large meal, so I whipped up some hummus, and added spinach this time.



One of our favorite breakfast casseroles with chili peppers and cottage cheese.  

 

Craft containers on a shelf in the utility room - the purge/extreme clean has started.

 

I dumped out 3 containers, of the "jewelry" making craft supplies.  I went through them to either toss, donate or keep, and filled a bag to donate.  However, I think one daughter wants to look through it first.  Keep in mind, we have 6 kids, and that was years and years of crafting with them.  The girls really used these, and there was a mess in the bottom of each container.  I found a small set of screwdrivers, that will go to the garage.


All of my patterns were put back into a binder, but my binder ring in the center broke.  I'll revisit that project when I have a new binder, but the patterns are all in there, and in their properly marked section.










Monday, July 3, 2023

Happy Homemaker Monday

It's a doozy of a post today, ha ha!  I cut part of the post out, and will post it tomorrow.

I took advantage of the holiday weekend sales, and finally ordered a sheer, double rod curtain, for the side door.  My Mom was always upset people could see directly in ha ha!     I already have the new rods, so I am looking forward to that update being done.

As for the "honey-do" list for these rainy days, we got the walk-in closet inside trim back up,  moved an antique desk from utility room (put there during renovations) to the spare room upstairs, along with the newly painted bookshelf, the last ceiling fan installed, ceiling paint touched up, camper items put in camper for the season, and started on rectifying the utility room.

Before:  Desk buried, with pharmacy door buried.

The utility room was originally the back of the house, so it was an addition before we moved in.  I unburied the desk and gave it a good cleaning.  I already had a nice chair upstairs for it.  I will cover it all with a sheet for now (upstairs).





I tossed out two large paper mache art projects collecting dust, found a shoe box of check book copies, got rid of the board games to the kids, donated one board game, started another box for donations, washed up our rain coats, some doilies, and stuff to donate.  My husband said, "oh we could play Scrabble" and I just laughed.   We haven't played it for over 14 years. 

 That is the problem with cupboards that don't go all the way to the ceiling.  Stuff like games and kids art projects get stored there.  I'll admit the deer is very life like, but if she didn't take it with her, it gets tossed.  We can't save everything.

My husband wasn't happy with his honey-do list, but with a full day of rain in the forecast, I made sure we stayed on track.  However, by 2:30pm, we did not get one drop of rain, and he was upset for not going on a motorcycle ride.  It was very, very humid out, and the rain eventually arrived.

He is already making his own to-do list, as we talked about the fact some projects were sitting un-done and becoming an eye-sore.  We are on the right track to getting it all looking spiffy around here.

Once I get the rest of the floor cleaned up in the utility room, I'll be starting back on this project:


Our handy man put the outside trim on to make it fit, now I will need to paint that trim, and have the door finally installed.  I'll share the story behind this door in another post.

New Recipe Tried:


It's a ground turkey/quinoa casserole (online at iFoodreal.com), and suggested toppings of fresh tomatoes, and snipped green onion from the herb garden.  I'll admit, this was a lot of ground turkey and quinoa, but we like it.   The one thing I will do next time, is add more spices/herbs to it.  I would add more spinach to it as well.  It was good, and has 4 cloves of garlic, but we both felt it needed just a bit more flavor.  It's very healthy, and can be frozen. 

I think other toppings would be good on this as well.  I'd try it with freshly made salsa on top.  Hm.  Maybe I'll add jalapeno to the dish next time.  It's a nice recipe to make if you have any leftover quinoa as well.

Popcorn was a fail crop this year.  The drought may be the problem, so that area of the garden is going to be tilled up.  We got 5 stalks in 4 rows.  First time to have a fail popcorn crop.  Did you have a fail in your garden this year?







Today I am joining Sandra at Diary of a Stay at Home Mom. I will link up when she posts.

The weather . . .
Hot, humid, and raining.  I'm pretty sure it's too wet in the garden for any work.

As I look outside my window . . .
There is a haze in the air, and the sun is trying to shine, but rain is in the forecast.  There is little to no traffic.  The weekend traffic was crazy going by here.

Right now I am . . .
Writing my to-do's for the day, and sipping coffee, slowly getting my energy to get a start on this day.  We worked very hard yesterday, and I was exhausted by dinner time.


Thinking and pondering . . .
If the garden is too wet to walk in today, and if the heat dries it up by morning, the plan may be to spend the 4th of July in the tomato patch, followed by an full afternoon of purging the garage.  It's all weather permitting of course.  The garage organizing is long over due, and one daughter may be visiting, which would be perfect for her to go through all the Christmas totes she left in the garage.


Listening to . . .
80's rock

How I am feeling . . .
Exhausted from yesterday, but pleased with our progress.  It's strange to have the weekend with my husband, then for him to get up to go to work for one day, then have another day off.  I'll take it.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm just wondering why his company just didn't let them have Monday and Tuesday off.  Most places around here are closed.


On the breakfast plate . . .
Cheddar and Chili Egg Casserole


On the lunch plate . . .

Leftover dinner from last night - Ground Turkey/Quinoa Casserole, topped with fresh tomato and some snipped green onions from the herb garden.

On the dinner plate . . .
No idea just yet.  Possibly cauliflower crust pizzas with home canned pizza sauce.

What I am wearing . . .
Still in pajamas, taking today a bit slower than yesterday. 


What I am reading . . .
Switching to this book, as I picked it up from the library.  I picked up a crochet book, because I am looking for a "hippie" beanie pattern (hat).  The library really reduced their selection, so I have to order from other libraries.


On my TV . . .
Older movies on Netflix


On the menu . . .
-Buffalo Chicken Meatballs, Quinoa, and
-Cauliflower crust homemade pizza with veggies and home canned pizza sauce
-chicken fajitas
-leftovers


Looking around the house . . .

To-do list . . .
-dishes
-laundry
-pay a few bills
-clean both bathrooms
-dust
-sweep and mop floors
-water porch pots
-check zucchini
-exercise


Extreme Clean this week:

 -put all these patterns back in the binder.  It may take all week, depending on days I get to work outside, but they have been like this since we removed the carpet from our bedroom and closet.  It's time to get them in their home.

-working in the utility room now, and trust me it is over due.  I had it clean and spic and span, then we started repairing and renovating.  Everything was boxed and moved to other rooms, and I found two more boxes of stuff in the utility room that were from the living room repairs.  



From the camera . . .



I used leftover door paint from the bathroom remodel, and it turned out great!  Love it!  We put it in the spare bedroom.  

Devotional, Bible Verse, Prayers . . .
Prayers for the family of the deceased man on the bicycle (see yesterday's post).  He was 60 years old, and riding his bicycle on the sidewalk.



 

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Moving along and tossing out. . .

There is nothing to harvest in the garden, but the rain is speeding that process up for us.  I know that I will be very busy out there when it dries up ha ha!  However, the rainy days are speeding up my indoor progress.  

Sorry if these cleaning/purging posts are boring.  It was a long time coming.  The big purge/clean.  This is a long post, so you may want to grab a cup of coffee, ha ha!

 My indoor purge/clean up is moving along.  I checked off another area off my clean it list, so that leaves two more areas.  

I will need the assistance of my husband for the last two, as it involves putting some tools and fix-it items away.  The garage will get a complete do-over this year.  It's just not on the "do it now" list.

Anyway, at one point in my early life, I was really into freelance writing.  I had articles published and kept articles in files.  I still had poems I wrote at a kid growing up.  I tossed those.  We got a chuckle out of some of the poems, but I can't believe I still had those.

In that box, and I kid you not, was a bag with brand new rolls of crepe paper for our youngest daughter's grad party (that never happened).  It was still in my office when we packed up the entire office area in the kitchen to cut up the floor and repair it over a year ago.  

It's all been boxed up to donate, tossed, or filed in the right place. 

Like I said, I didn't want to handle stuff twice, so I am cleaning/purging it all as if I was moving.  I ask myself, "would I move this to a new home" and it really helps the deciding factor.  Toss it, donate it, sell it, or give it away free.

I have "divorced" myself from so many craft supplies, and to be honest, it feels great.

I have heard from the recovery place, where I donated my craft supplies.  The women are knitting blankets to gift family when they visit, they are making jewelry, and they used wall paper samples to cover binders.  I'm so happy they are enjoying the supplies and finding uses for it all.


Stay tuned!  We both finally had a conversation about this bookshelf.  I bought it almost 12-13 years ago for $15 at the thrift store.  It was used for craft supplies until now.  It is solid wood, so we decided to keep it and paint it with whatever paint we have on hand, and put it in the spare bedroom upstairs.  


Just ignore the dust, but look at that new growth on Mom's cactus!  I will give it a shower when it gets watered again.

Our youngest daughter has left her career as hair stylist/nail tech.  It became too difficult in the financial world, and she has already started a new job and loves it.  She may go back to hair down the road, but in this world and day and age, you need a steady partner in your life to support that sort of job.  We are proud of her regardless.

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Rain and Storms and Rainy Day Indoor Cleaning/Organizing

 Thankfully my husband got the AC back up and running.  Whew!  We will have to replace it next year for sure.  

It's been raining, hot and humid here the last few days.  We are thankful for the rain, but could do less with the tornado warnings or watch alerts.

I took a quick look at the garden, and I will definitely need to tie up tomato plants on the next dry day.  Everything is looking good however, other than the popcorn and spring planted garlic.  Some of my newly planted Gladys in the flower bed are now coming up too.  I'll definitely be busy weeding and tilling on the next dry day.

The upstairs AC was installed, and we are pricing new units for next year (don't want to end up without AC again).  

I brought down two trash bags full of stuff left from one daughter, and there is more to bring down.  I'm starting on the flooring in that room this week ( or next week ).


A dozen crocheted hats were spilling over on a bookshelf in the living room.  Along with the recent scarf I finished, and a few crocheted flower pots (still need the leaf coasters made).  Anyway, that was all put away, but honestly, I think the finished items take up more space to store than the yarn itself ha ha!  Oh boy.  

We actually talked about a camping trip, and we even sat down to check dates.  It didn't happen.  The next 3 weeks are all booked at all the campgrounds we go to.  I will have to do some looking around at other ones maybe, but for now, camping is not happening.

I apologize.  I think I accidently deleted a comment on my post for the garlic scape/radish spread.  I must have been coffee depleted while working on the blog.