Year One Clean-Out

Moving is a great time to clean things out and downsize, but it's also a very stressful time and therefore not always conducive to fine-detail organizing, like sorting through paperwork, tchotchkes, and other miscellaneous items left in drawers and file cabinets.  Most of the time we just pile it all into moving boxes and figure we'll sort everything out once we've moved and dumped it into our new drawers and closets.  A sofa?  Pretty easy to decide if you're taking it or not.  The eight butane lighters in your kitchen drawer?  Not so easy, for some reason.

Organized!

So the season of year-end tossing time has come, here at the homestead.  I've been sorting through file cabinets and kitchen drawers, and shredding or getting rid of what's no longer needed, what is duplicated, or what is too old to matter anymore (like duplicate 1099 tax forms for escrow interest on a house bought 20 years ago, and 3 year-old receipts from Lowe's for drip system emitters.  Why do I keep this stuff?  Why?  Why?).

Since we're going to be remodeling the kitchen soon, I thought this would be a good time to organize and de-clutter the kitchen drawers, something we didn't even do before moving out of the old place.  While I was at it, I also got into the file cabinets in the library as well.  It felt good to organize and get rid of stuff, and since we've been here almost a year, it's time to make good on the promises we made when we left the old place -- telling ourselves if we still hadn't used something after living a year in this place, we'd chuck it.  Chucking is occurring as we speak.

I did the same thing in my clothes closet, using what I think is a good technique.  I told myself if I hadn't worn it in awhile, and did not think I would be wearing it again, I'd put it into a box and, if it remained there by the time a year had gone by, I'd have the courage to pass it onto Goodwill, where hopefully someone who likes it can give it a new lease on life.  That italicized phrase allows you a loophole for keeping some specialty items of clothing, like evening wear or heavy coats, understanding that you may only need those once every few years.  But the usual shirts, slacks and blouses that always seem to get passed over when you peruse your closet all go into the box to wait out their year.  

Some items I did, in fact, go looking for, and I was happy I hadn't thrown them out.The rest of the box, filled with things, I haven't missed, will go away now.

What's left after a year -- bound for Goodwill

De-cluttering is one of those tasks you may not like doing, but will make you extremely happy with the results.  We all accumulate far too much stuff in this life, and lightening the load always feels freeing.

Sunset

A peaceful but still productive day followed by a gorgeous sunset over the Coast Range.  Doesn't get any better.

Back to work

I've been working on a somewhat reduced schedule here on the homestead due to my mom visiting from London.  She went home today, and so it's back to work and the regular routine for me, Big Ag and the family.  

Funny how those little breaks from the routine are.  We enjoy the fun things we're doing, but also feel a little guilty about not doing the usual chores.  Today I'll be hilling my potatoes, trimming crabapple bushes, planting berries and grapes, and just tending to things in general around here.  It feels good to get back to the routine.  My mother's routine in London is filled with theatre, lunches and charity events, so this week I tried to squire her around town and show her the best of the California's central coast

But here's something funny, too:  My mother has the habit of wandering around behind me, watching whatever I do.  Perhaps this is because she only sees me once a year and feels like she has to work in a year's worth of looking over several days, but it does sometimes become disconcerting.  As long as we keep moving through a variety of activities in town all day long, it's fine, but when we have downtime, I often feel as if I'm being watched, whether I'm crossing the room, grating carrots, weeding, or reading.

So when she goes home, I often find I have mixed feelings about it.  Sure, I am sad to see her go, but on the other hand, it's actually quite relieving not to have that feeling of being watched all the time.

She is 80 years old, so I know I cannot cure her of this little oddity, I just make sure I never stare at my own kids too long and make them uncomfortable!  Sometimes we learn how to do things from our elders, but sometimes we also learn what not to do from them.  And it all serves to make us better parents and people in general, I suppose.  

Either way, the only eyes on me now belong to a bunch of chickens and a couple of cats and dogs, and that's only because I am the Food Lady and it's lunchtime.  And that, I can deal with.

It takes a village, or at least a family

This morning it was driven home to me just how important family and community are in rural life.  My mother is visiting us this week and I needed to take her to the emergency room, quite suddenly, for a potentially serious stomach issue.  But while I was waiting in the ER, I realized I hadn't had the chance to check water on the chickens and the dogs, and the temperature was supposed to hit 99 degrees.  So I texted my son Groceries, who luckily was coming home from class and was able to make a stop at home before heading to work for the afternoon.

My mom is back here now and resting, and will be on broth and toast for a day or two, both of which I'm thankful to have on hand, in abundance.  So today also made me realize that it's not just people we need in our personal "village," it's also supplies.  

Preppers always talk about stocking up for the zombie apocalypse, war, or major disaster, but the fact is, your next disaster could just be a bad case of the flu, when there's no one around to run to the store for you for potentially several hours or, if you live alone, a day or two.  Having canned soup or frozen broth around can be a lifesaver, along with juice or Gatorade (I realize it's not homestead chic to laud the antifreeze green liquid known as Gatorade, but it's saved my life on several occasions when I've taken ill suddenly and couldn't hold any food down).  

No one ever regrets having a stocked pantry and someone around we can call to check on our livestock, that's just a fact.  Because you never know what tomorrow may bring.  It may bring the zombie apocalypse, but more than likely, your next disaster will probably just affect just you or just your own family.  

All the more reason to be stocked up and ready.

Jury Duty and the Homesteader

The court system is such a caricature

So even though I've lived here less than a year, the ever-generous county of San Luis Obispo has chosen to call me for jury duty later this month.  Crap.

Jury duty is, in my opinion, one of those things where a super-bureaucratic government extends its outstretched hand a little too close to my face and leaves it there, saying "Does this bother you?  Huh?  Huh?  I'm not touching you.  Does this bother you?" like an annoying classroom bully.  The idea of a jury of our peers is a good one, of course.  It's how the government goes about getting it that bugs me.

This is not going to turn into an anti-government rant, I promise you.

I just think there are people out there who can not afford to spend a day, or several days, not at their jobs.  People like hairdressers, writers, waitstaff and folks working the night shift. And I'd add homesteaders to that list.

See, I need to be here every day to watch what's going on.  I have chickens, and have invested a lot of money on crops which will not only feed us, but in the case of the tree crops, might eventually make us a small profit at the farmer's market if we sell our surplus.  The work around the house doesn't stop just because I'm gone, either.  If I want bread, I need to bake it.  If I want soap, I need to haul out the lye and oil and get to work.

But the handmade life takes time, and it takes a presence.  It won't happen if I'm not here.

And so it bothers me that I have to change my entire lifestyle in order to accommodate a bunch of bureaucrats who like working 8 - 5.  After all, what's to stop having night or weekend court, where people like me who can't do the 8 - 5 thing could still serve?  How about a morning or afternoon court, where short cases could be tried without taking people off their jobs all day long?

No, the courts run the way they do because most people who work there don't need to be home from 8 - 5.  They are not people who value self-employment, hourly work, or stay-at-home parenting.  They want to put in their 8 hours, pick up some take-out food on the way home and then sit on the sofa and watching "Wipeout" while surfing the internet and eating Cheese Doodles.

And while I will be inconvenienced having to drive a full hour, each way, to the courthouse if called to serve, it is nothing compared to the folks who work part-time and will lose income that could be paying the rent or putting food on the table if they are chosen.

Just one of those ways that sometimes makes it difficult to be different.  Maybe we should have professional jurors the way we have professional judges.  That way the people who want to hang out with lawyers, civil servants and criminals all day could do so, and the rest of us could stay home and make soap, or whatever.

Hog Coming

My sister-in-law had one of her hogs butchered a few weeks ago and our half is finally ready for pick-up!  Mmm, chops and bacon and sausage and roast.  This will get us through the summer BBQ season nicely.

Learning Curve

We're still underneath the mountain of information we've gathered in preparing to make our attic more energy efficient.  This has been a 20-hour crash course in knowledge, often conflicting, sometimes disappointing.  But in the spirit of education, I will share it here, in case you ever need it and would like a truncated course in what we've learned. Here's what we know so far:

1.  Our home has an incredibly under-ventilated attic, which is kind of a crime considering the climate zone we live in. Yes, a construction crime.  I think a badly wired electric chair should be in order for that, but that's just me.

Anyway, in general any house needs about one square foot of net-free ventilation per 300 square feet of home.  That means, for a well-ventilated attic, we would need about 7 feet of ventilation, since our house is about 2100 square feet.  We're way behind the curve there: currently have about 2 feet.

2.  Fire safety has to be taken into account.  The less well-ventilated your attic is, the greater your fire risk from degraded electrical wiring (Duh. Wiring will degrade faster in a 160 degree attic than a 120 degree one).  But in a wildfire area such as ours, you have to be very careful to install ventilation that will not allow embers to enter the attic, in the event of a wildfire.

3.  Most contractors do not believe power fans in the attic, solar or otherwise, are a good idea, except in two story homes.  In a one story home, all they do is draw cool air up from the house, into the attic.  In a two story home, they draw cool air from the ground floor up to the second story (then into the attic), so they are of some help.

As you can see, a simple wish to install an attic fan and whole house fan has turned into a doctoral thesis on ventilation, but at least we are more educated now.  I suppose I should be grateful, as a lot of people would probably have just installed the fans and then wondered why it didn't make much of a difference on their electric bill.

The attic fan is now off the table, for the reasons listed above, and we need more ventilation in our attic before we can make a whole house fan work for us.  Next week we are planning on having a roofer come out and see if we can install some fire-safe ventilation, which may, just by itself, lower the temperature in the attic.  Then, we will move on to the whole house fan.  So we are getting there.  But as Murphy's Law of Life teaches, whatever it is you want to do, build or grow will probably take twice as long as you think and cost twice as much. 

I'm exhausted from the learning curve now and just want to go do some manual labor, or have a drink, whichever comes first.  Or maybe do both at the some time, which could provide some interesting results.

Speaking of which, has anyone been watching the YouTube series of "My Drunk Kitchen?"  Absolutely hilarious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atCfBuLmTxo