In Defense of Clutter

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Angie

In my last post I harped about the monetary and mental health costs of having too much stuff. However, not all stuff is bad. Especially in a homestead setting, some stuff is necessary and even desirable. Here’s a counterpoint to the clutter conundrum.

Let’s do a little thought experiment. I’m picturing my house with all it’s stuff. Now, let’s subtract out all the stuff we own because we homestead. There goes the closet of tools; the coat-closet-turned-pantry full of preserves, cider, beer, and wine; the brewing equipment in our storage unit; the kegerator in the dining room; the brewing grain stashed upstairs; the grain mill attached to the kitchen table; the dehydrator and canning supplies stashed away in closets; the fabric and sewing supplies in our bedroom; the yarn, knitting needles, and crochet hooks tucked away here and there; the loom in Julie’s room; there go the gardening tools and compost tumbler littering up the back porch; out with the soil amendments, seeds, and plant-starting lights filling up our storage unit; goodbye to the books that tell us how to use all these things.

What’s left? Two adults; one toddler; a big, yellow dog; and not much else. Yes there would still be clutter but not as much as you might think. Assuming that we still cooked mostly from raw ingredients, our kitchen would still be pretty packed with pans, knives, and various instruments of vegetative destruction and there would still be a small deep freeze in the toddler’s room. Three of the six closets in this house would be completely empty, though, and we’d have a lot more room without the loom. We could easily get rid of half the bookshelves. The storage unit wouldn’t be necessary either.

We would also have to buy a lot more things – more food, more beer, more clothing, and more entertainment, just to name a few. (Homesteading is our primary source of entertainment, after all.)

So when I talk about reducing clutter, I don’t mean getting rid of the homestead. I mean culling the items that aren’t earning their keep. Our dehydrator earns it keep – it gave us two bushels of dehydrated apples chips, peach chips, and fruit leather this year. Healthy snacks made from local foods. My knitting needles earn their keep – three hats and two pairs of socks since October. You get the idea.

Do we need a water filtration pitcher that we haven’t used in 5 years? How about a coat that’s been sitting in the closet for 7 years? Or the handheld electric massager that hasn’t been used since it was a Christmas gift 4 years ago? Do we really need 5 spatulas? I’m pretty sure 2 will suffice.

That’s what I’ve been working on – culling out the stuff that’s unused, unnecessary, or unwanted. When we arrive at our new home we will be a leaner, meaner, (greener) homestead. Then it will just be a matter of managing the homestead clutter…

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The Cost of Clutter

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Angie

I’ve been spending a lot of time packing for our move in a couple of weeks (more on that later), so I’ve been thinking a lot about clutter – the accumulation of stuff to the point that you can no longer neatly stash it all away. Anyone who has seen our house knows that clutter is our natural state of being. Clutter can seem pretty harmless, after all it’s not like anyone died because their kitchen table contained a rotating assortment of odds and ends. As I’ve been sorting through the clutter, it has occurred to me that there is a cost to clutter – both monetary and mental.

First, the monetary. I don’t know about you but our house is packed to the gills. Almost every closet is lined with shelves full of stuff.  Kitchen cabinets are overflowing. We have bookshelves in almost every room. Things are stashed under the bed, behind the couch, and in every nook and cranny. And still we have more stuff than will fit. So a few years ago we started renting a storage unit to store our extra stuff. For us (and many others) our clutter has a very real and very direct cost – the cost of renting a storage unit every month.

There are indirect monetary costs, as well. How many people buy a bigger house so they can fit all their stuff. More rooms, more closets, basements, attics. All of these give you more places to stash stuff but also come with higher costs. Bigger mortgage payments, more insurance, more heating, more electricity, and more upkeep. The costs build up over time. Maybe it’s just $10 a month of extra mortgage. Another $10 for the bigger heating bills. Need a new furnace, water heater, or roof? Those will be bigger so they’ll cost more. Want a bigger garage for your second car? You get all the costs of a bigger home plus the insurance and maintenance of a second car.

Then there are the indirect, indirect costs. We don’t usually think about the value of our time. Time is a given (or at least we act that way) so we take it for granted. More stuff means more time to pick up, clean, organize, and maintain stuff. A bigger house means more space to clean and maintain, as well. At $10 an hour (far below the living wage) even one extra measly hour a week translates into $520 a year. I don’t know about you, but I could spend a lot more than an hour just dusting my house every week.

Then there are the mental and time costs. I don’t know about you but I find it hard to relax when the floor is littered with toys, the tabletops are covered with stuff, and the clutter presses in from all sides. Do you find yourself unable to relax because of the clutter? Do you have to “get out” in order to unwind? In monetary terms stress has unseen costs as well – the cost of medications for stress-related conditions and the cost of vacations and “stress-relief activities”.

Putting clutter in perspective is helpful for people like me. By nature we are pack rats; the but-I-might-want-it-one-day kind of pack rat with some I-don’t-want-to-waste-things thrown in. When you look at an item and see dollar signs it makes you think. Does this item pull it’s weight enough to warrant the room and board it requires? A lot of items don’t make the cut. Even if you do want an item later, the savings of getting rid of all those things will more than cover the cost of repurchasing the few things that you do want down the road.  And as for waste – well, that’s what Craigslist, Goodwill, and Freecycle are for.

It is actually very freeing to pick up an item and, instead of packing it away, toss it in the charity box.

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Dog tired but happy

Posted on August 28, 2011 by Angie

We’ve had a lot of late nights lately. We’ve been up late gardening. We’ve been up late reorganizing the house (more on that later). We’ve been up late preserving. And we’ve been up late watching movies and knitting to relax after a long day of gardening, reorganizing, and preserving. Other than that last one, it’s been time well spent. The pantry and freezer aren’t quite bursting at the seams but they’re showing signs of strain.

As I blog we’ve got peaches in the dehydrator, more waiting to be made into preserves, and I’m waiting on water to boil so I can can tomatoes. Yesterday, I made made and froze tomato sauce. (Had to freeze instead of can since I didn’t use a recipe and couldn’t be sure of acidity.) Earlier this week I spent a whole day on green beans.  A neighbor kindly let us have all that his garden could offer while he visited the Grand Canyon. As it turns out his garden could offer a lot – to the tune of 6 quarts in the freezer.  We’ve spent all week turning a half bushel of peaches into peach leather, dried peach chips, and, now, peach preserves. Add that to the quick dill pickles, pickled beets, and jam in the pantry and the blackberries, strawberries, and rhubarb in the freeze.

Tonight will be another long night. Tomatoes will be canned. Peaches will be preserved. And we will grind grain and prep for brewing beer tomorrow after church. All while drinking beer and watching movies as cans boil on the stove and we turn the grain mill crank. A long night, sure, but a good one.

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How does your garden grow?

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Angie

I’m trying to get back on the blogging bandwagon after falling off for two weeks. (Was it really two weeks?) As always, the more that’s going on around the homestead, the less time I have to write about it. It’s been a busy couple of weeks with work deadlines and other boring but necessary details.  A good bit of our time has been spent out in the garden, though. I’ve not talked much about the garden this year so it’s time to catch up.

Matt tilling the garden

The best laid plans....

The gardening year got off to a good start by me throwing my back out and being laid up for two weeks right about planting time. And then we were out of town for a week. And then we were out of town for another week. Amazingly the seeds we had started survived despite levels of neglect that were extreme, even for us. The plant lamps helped immensely as did light timers.

Little sprout sowing seeds

Two seconds before seeds went flying.

With more than a month head start on us, the weeds have been a big problem this year.  Add to that the near drought conditions and things haven’t been doing so great.  More time in the garden would always help but nowadays I do my gardeningd with a toddler underfoot. Gardening with a toddler is an exercise in patience. Or futility. Not sure which.

Blackberry-covered toddler

Blackberry thief caught red faced.

So how are things doing? Well, normally we’re up to our eyeballs in blackberries but this year only our knees were covered. (Of course, a certain toddler learned quickly to pick and eat the berries so it’s a little hard to get exact numbers.) We only got 10 raspberries total. Tomatoes got planted out late and had problems with blossom drop so we’re just now starting to get some tomatoes ripening. And not that many either. The squash plants we had so carefully started all died in extended indoor seedling-hood and only one of the direct sown seeds started. Half the greens didn’t even sprout and the potatoes died when the spuds were just golf ball size. Beans, spring root crops, and spring cole crops didn’t even get planted.

Garden in August

Starting to perk up...

This year was hardly a wash though. As always, volunteer coriander and dill made a good showing. We also got a really good crop of peas, both from the ones we planted and the ones someone else planted accidentally in our garden plot. (Oops.) The peppers we started from seed are doing great as are the direct-seeded squash and the replacement squash plants we bought. Judging by the number of blooms and tiny, unripened fruits we may get a decent tomato and raspberry harvest yet this year. We just planted out the cole plants we had started for the spring. They managed to survive all summer thanks to light timers and plant lamps (not recommended) and are promising a good fall crop. Now we’re working on seeding fall crops: carrots, beets, peas, and greens.

Julie in Mama's gardening hat

Future gardener and chief mud pie maker

It was also a good gardening year is less tangible ways. Julie is growing up with almost daily outdoor time. She has eaten sugar snap peas fresh off the vine, braved over-zealous blackberry brambles to get fruit, made mud pies (well, mud at least), and picked flowers. (And green tomatoes, but that’s a post for another day.)

So how is our garden growing? Quite well, thanks.

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The Fall of Empires

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Angie

Matt and I can get into some interesting discussions on the long drives to and from family visits. For instance, on a recent trip Matt was reading Cottage Economy by William Cobbett, an 1820′s book about household economy. (Get the ebook for free from Project Gutenberg.) For much of Southern Indiana Matt would read aloud snippets and we would discuss them. The most interesting discussion of the trip was our discussion of the fall of empires.

The most famous fallen empire is the Roman Empire. As the Roman’s expanded their Empire, they enslaved the peoples they conquered and shipped their resources to the heart of the Empire. By the end, the Roman’s were shipping much of their food from Africa and many other natural resources from other outlying areas of the Empire. Such a system is bound to fail. The heart of the Empire is cut off from the resources is relies on – either through the uprising of the subjugated people’s who produce these resources or through natural disasters and shipping delays – and the Empire crumbles from the inside out.

Moral of the story – when a people no longer produce their primary needs, they are as vulnerable as the weakest link in their supply chain. And when the people who produce the resources are also the poorest in the system, then the system is also vulnerable to social disasters. The bigger the system, the longer the supply chains, the more people involved, the more opportunity for failure. Heck, the only reason the Roman Empire lasted so long is that they offered conquered people’s a way to earn citizenship if they were good slaves. (The historical equivalent of rent-to-own.) As long as Rome kept expanding, there would always be some new slaves lower on the pecking order for the new citizens to lord over. I guess it took a while for them to realize they were all just working to support the select few at the heart of the Empire.

At the time that the British author wrote this book the British empire had shifted from one comprised of households each supplying a (usually large) portion of their own needs to one that was highly dependent on external inputs to maintain itself. Getting those external inputs required subjugation of peoples in distant lands with little to gain by the relationship and no real affinity to the British Empire. At a gross level, this is a system very similar to that of the Roman Empire prior to it’s fall and, sure enough, just like the Roman Empire, the British Empire fell when the exploited, subjugated people’s on the fringe of the empire rose up. In this case it was Gandhi instead of Visigoths but the effect was the same.

This would be nothing more than an interesting parallel drawn by two non-historians if this was the beginning and the end of the discussion. The discussion actually began when Matt pointed out that the “American Empire” is in a similar position to the position of the British Empire at the time this book was written. Most Americans rely on the American Empire (i.e. the ephemeral “market”) to supply their needs. In order to meet these needs, the American Empire relies on vast quantities of goods and services from peoples in distant lands with little or no connection to the American Empire. In our case, this relationship is held up by Free-trade agreements instead of slavery and colonization but the overall pattern is the same: the people at the heart of the empire, the American public, no longer provide directly for their own needs. Instead they rely on peoples in distant lands to produce their food and goods. These people are free citizens of other countries but they are still impoverished compared to the masters at the heart of the empire. How long til natural disaster cuts us off from the resources we need? How long til the peoples we have subjugated through unfair trading practices throw off their intergovernmental shackles? How long ’til the sweat shop workers rise up and toss our cheap plastic goods into the proverbial Boston Harbor?

Ok, now I’m mixing up my historical metaphors but hopefully you get the idea. A globalized system is no better an idea today than it was a couple of thousand years ago. A civilization comprised of households that cannot supply their own needs is subject to failure when natural or social disasters cut off resources. The bigger the empire, the more the external inputs, the more opportunity for breakdown in the system.

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Speaking of pantries…

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Angie

Urban Pantry bookI just picked up this book from the library. How appropriate given my recent post about pantry stocking. I haven’t quite finished the book but so far I’m really liking it.

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How to Eat Local: The Pantry

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Angie

PantryWhen we first joined our CSA we were often perplexed by the items that showed up in our weekly produce pickup. What does one do with 5 pounds of swiss chard, we asked ourselves, and what is a kohlrabi? A quick internet search would turn up a recipe that, while delicious, required us to go to the store and pick up more ingredients. We would then use half of said ingredients and, since we had no idea what to do with this stuff otherwise, it would either get tossed or go into the cabinet-that-time-forgot.

Eventually we learned to combine seasonal produce with a set stock of basic ingredients to form an almost-infinite variety of recipes. Having a pantry of basic ingredients means that you can buy rhubarb to make muffins without having to look up a recipe and go to the store to buy extra ingredients. It also means you can save money by stocking up on pantry items when there are sales. Having a well-stcoked pantry in our proverbial back pocket means we can cope with the oddball vegetables much more easily. (Except kohlrabi, which still has us mystified.) In the last installment of the How-to-Eat-Local series I talked about meal planning and recipe formulation, this time we’ll be talking about setting up a pantry of go-to ingredients to round out those recipes.

First, get organized. Get your pantry off to a good start by investing in good storage containers. We recently upgraded from quart-size plastic yogurt containers to quart-size mason jars for storing most of our pantry ingredients.  Now we can see each item and easily find what we want without having to read labels. (In all fairness, when we started I couldn’t tell brown rice from green lentils so the labels were probably necessary anyway.)

Labeling each container with a super-fancy pen-on-masking-tape label is helpful for identifying ingredients that you can’t tell apart on sight (couscous vs. bulgar, for example). You can also save yourself some time down the road by writing cooking instructions on the label. (No matter how many times I cook rice, just rice, I still can’t remember how much water, for how long, etc.)

Second, what to stock? Deciding what to stock in your pantry may be tricky at first. It took us years to settle on a list of items to keep stocked at all times. One way to tackle this to to start cooking with whole ingredients. When you find a recipe that you love, especially one that can be adapted to seasonal produce, keep the basic ingredients on hand. Over time you’ll start to see a pattern in what you use.

Another way to tackle this is to see what ingredients are available in bulk at your food co-op or natural food store which brings us to…

Third, keep it cheap. To save money, find a food co-op or a natural food store that sells items in bulk. Buying in bulk is almost always cheaper than buying the same thing packaged in a pretty box or bag. Some stores will even let you bring your own container to fill so you save one more plastic bag from a landfill. Once you’ve settled on a list of items to keep on hand, you can save some serious cash by restocking your pantry when your bulk supplier has a sale.

Once you’ve settled on the items that you want to keep on hand, shopping will be a breeze. Just check which containers are empty or which items are missing. We keep a list inside the cabinet that serves as our main pantry so it’s easy to track what we need to buy. I have aspirations of one day making a whiteboard with each item written in permanent marker. When you run out or run low, just cross it off with a whiteboard marker. One day, one day.

Fourth, right but what do you keep on hand. Alright, here’s what’s on our current list:

Grains: rolled oats, steel cut oats, quinoa, short brown rice, long brown rice, arborio rice, bulgar, couscous, popcorn, and pasta

Legumes: black beans, navy beans, black eyes peas, red beans, kidney beans, lentils, and split peas

Baking: Whole wheat flour, white all-purpose flour, whole wheat pastry flour, sugar, brown sugar (we make it ourselves with sugar and molasses), baking soda, baking powder, yeast, cocoa, salt, and cornmeal

Other dry goods: raisins, cranberries, walnuts, chocolate chips, honey, molasses, and vegetable bouillon

Wet items: white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, vegetable oil, lemon juice, bourbon, milk, and butter

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2011 Preserving update

Posted on July 21, 2011 by Angie

Pickled beets 2011The pantry is slowly filling up with preserves for this winter.  A  few days ago I canned some pickled beets. My Mammaw got us hooked – even Julie can’t keep her hands off them.. (For those of you that don’t speak Southern, that’s my grandma.) A couple of years ago I started canning them myself to ensure a consistent supply. We’ve never been successful at growing them but if the fall crop amounts to anything, I’ll be canning up another batch.

Today will be a busy day for preserving. We’re leaving town in a few days which means that anything that won’t keep until we get back has to be frozen or canned. (I’m putting kale in tonight’s shepherd’s pie for similar reasons.) So far two quarts of blackberries and two quarts of rhubarb have made it into the freezer and there’s still a pile of cucumber on the counter waiting to be pickled and strawberries in the fridge for jam.  It’s either going to be a very, very long evening or the strawberries will be frozen and jammed later. We’ll see.

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Perspective

Posted on July 19, 2011 by Angie

Blackberry-faced babyI have a bad habit of being a teeny, tiny bit hard on myself sometimes. (Ahem.) Especially when it comes to the “I should’s”. As in, “I should have a perfectly clean house”, “I should be taking my daughter to every available enrichment opportunity”, “I should really fold that pile of laundry”,… Ok, that last one is probably legit, but mostly “I should’s” are unrealistic expectations disguised as vitally important priorities. Lately, I’ve been getting a dose of perspective about such things.

The first was a couple of days ago when I was chatting with the other moms at the local indoor playground. All of these moms were well dressed with styled hair and matching jewelry. Their children, who were all Julie’s age or younger, wore designer clothing with matching barrettes and none of them showed the slightest hint of wearing their lunch. I looked down and realized that my hastily thrown on t-shirt showed definite signs that I spend most of my days with a large dog and a small child. Julie wasn’t faring much better.

But then it hit me. By 3pm I had already spent a couple of hours weeding and harvesting in our garden, taken the dog (and toddler) to the park for a game of fetch, potted up herbs for a back porch herb garden, and worked a couple of hours at my free-lance job while my daughter napped. And that’s while also being a full-time stay-at-home mom with laundry, cleaning, and toddler duties. So yeah, Julie and I might have dirt under our fingernails, our hair may not be magazine-perfect, but there was a good reason for that. A reason that involves a toddler with her face covered in freshly picked blackberries.

My second dose of perspective came over a business dinner. Last week was hectic, even by my standards. I had a board meeting Monday evening, a publishing meeting Tuesday morning, a business lunch Tuesday evening, another publishing meeting Wednesday morning followed by a business lunch, and a board event Wednesday evening. I was late to dinner Tuesday evening due to car troubles and, apparently, while waiting on me the other local members of my publishing team were telling tales to the visiting publishing rep. When someone you just met who works 70 hour work weeks is amazed at all you’ve got going on in your life, you should cut yourself some slack about the pile of unfolded laundry at home.

So this month I’m learning to fend of the “should’s”. My house may not be perfectly clean but it is safe and sanitary. My daughter may not be getting carted all around town to story times and toddler gym, but she gets plenty of books, mud pies, and playground time. And that pile of laundry… Well, it isn’t going anywhere.

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Cheap, green, and clean floors

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Angie

I don’t like most “convenience” products. They save you time which you then have to spend going to the store to buy refills and going to work to pay for them. Plus all the ridiculous waste generated by the disposable nature of these “convenience” products. Let’s face it, global climate change is not convenient. But some items really do pull their weight.

A while back I accepted the inevitable: if I want to see my kitchen floor sometime between now and when our daughter leaves for college, I would need a Swiffer Wet Jet or similar. This sucker is the very definition of what I hate about “convenience” products. You have to pay for three types of refills – the pads, the cleaning solution, and batteries – and that’s after paying the huge up front cost for the contraption itself. Mother earth doesn’t like it any more than my bank account. The pads are disposable and after you use up all the not-earth-friendly cleaning solution you have a big, plastic bottle to dispose of.

So why do I own one? Well, I do have a large dog and a small child. Plus, I found a way to do it without making my bank account or Mother Earth hate me.

  1. I posted to my local Freecycle webpage looking for a WetJet. I was rewarded with a free one for the effort of driving a couple of miles to pick it up.
  2. After the cleaner was all used up in the bottle I inherited, I hacked the bottle and refilled it with a green cleaning solution I concocted from inexpensive ingredients.
  3. I made reusable pads from sewing scraps.

Ok, ok. The last part is theoretical, I’m still going through the partial box of disposable pads I inherited from my Freecycle benefactor.  But I will make them. Really. Sometime between now and when that last free pad is used up.

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