Renting vs. Owning

So what are your feelings on the rent-versus-own dilemma? With home prices steeply rising before leveling off at the end of last summer, as well as higher interest rates, many people who could own are now opting to just rent instead, indefinitely. 

Home ownership does, after all, come with a lot of surprise costs (you often don't realize something like a stove or an HVAC system is failing until it falls over dead). There's also a lot of regular maintenance, which coincidentally, did not get done on this current house and which allowed us to knock thousands off the asking price, meaning you can pay for it now, or pay for it later -- your choice.  But you will pay. 

Renting, on the other hand, provides a lot of freedom from responsibility but very little security; you can be asked to vacate your home in 30 days by your landlord, for a variety of very legal and valid reasons which have nothing whatsoever with the fact that you've been a great tenant. 

Living in and renting a company house for a year, we debated renting versus owning a lot. I was actually pretty happy renting since we had room for the chickens and raised beds and the freedom to do pretty much whatever we wanted with the place, but Big Ag hated renting. He wanted a place he could own outright. So he never really settled in there, despite having his dream barn/shop. What I didn't realize is that I hadn't really settled in, either. 

I know this because now that we're homeowners again, things feel completely different. I can't tell you why, but it just feels more like home. The things you laugh at in your rental, like outdated fixtures, you check the budget on in your owned home to see if you can afford to change them. It's like dating versus marriage. There are marriage deal-breakers that we all probably think are amusing and interesting in someone we're having coffee with, like having a pet python or finding out they painted all their bedroom walls black. But is that person marriage material? Oh hell no.

What's funny for me is the amount of old household habits that have come back now that we're in our own place again. I just made a batch of soap last week, we have two new raised beds installed, all ready to go for vegetables this summer, and I planted one of the raised beds over the leach field with sunflowers, hollyhocks, gladiolas, peonies, and zinnias. I've also been working on the front yard landscaping, just adding a few plants I miss from California and which also grow great here in Oregon, like rosemary, English lavender,  and Russian sage.

I had four raised beds in the rental that I never used, and plenty of chances to make soap if I'd wanted to. So why didn't I? Probably because of some subconscious feeling that I just didn't want to do things that would make me feel committed to settling in there. Coffee was fine. Marriage was out of the question.  

Perhaps it really does matter whose name is on the title deed. There may be a deeper level of settling into a place that only comes when you know it's yours -- when no one can ask you politely (or otherwise) to leave. 

And I'm sure "settling in" means different things to different people, but settling in is definitely what we do when we're home. 

And we are home.

Soap-making and other catch-up chores

I've known for awhile now that our soap supplies were winding down, but wanted to wait for a cool day before voluntarily standing at the stove melting the solid oils that are part of my soap recipe (which changes, depending on my mood and what I have on hand, but there is always at least one solid oil and one liquid one). 

Depending on the oils you use, sometimes it can take awhile and besides, there are so many summer activities that beckon during the warmer months... there are tomatoes to can, greens to harvest, tomatoes to can, beaches to walk on, and oh, did I mention tomatoes to can?  

Ya, but that's all over now. Soapmaking is a great fall/winter activity.

I generally make enough soap to last for about a year, which means that I can choose the day I make our year's supply of soap.  I generally wait until I have about three bars from the last batch left, as soap takes several weeks to cure, so a little time to sit in the cupboard will only result in a more gentle and mild soap -- a good thing for those of us with sensitive skin.

 Soapmaking is not difficult at all, but does require fairly careful calculations in order to assure your soap will be of a firm consistency and not too strong -- after all, lye is a caustic and if you're going to be using it to make something which will come in direct contact with your skin, you just can't be too careful. And it does require a close adherence to the directions, or the results can range from disgusting to downright dangerous.

But if you are willing to follow directions and observe a reasonable amount of comment sense, soapmaking is easy and fun.

The most amazing thing about making soap is that you can take a caustic substance and a bunch of oils and through a miracle called "saponification,"which happens when you mix the oils, the lye and the water together in a specific way, it renders the oils totally non-oily and renders the lye gentle enough to clean your skin without irritation. In short, it makes an entirely new substance.

This time around, I decided to make a deliciously fragrant soap out of cocoa butter, shea butter, olive oil, and vegetable oil.  The house smells wonderful right now, and soon I will have lovely bars of soap curing in their molds.

If you have any interest in soapmaking, there is a great website which can take you through each step, and which also has a great lye calculator so you know how much lye and liquid to add to your oils, as well as how to safely do it.

It's here: https://www.thesage.com/index.html

Later this afternoon I am harvesting some pomegranates for fresh juice (always a pleasure to have at this time of year) and planting some more onions.  It's nice to have an entire day devoted only to the homestead.  

Time, transitions and tasks

I just realized I addressed a very similar topic in a previous post called "The Simple Life."  Forgive the repetition.  Obviously this is something on my mind a lot these days!

The other night I started reading a journal I kept during the junior and senior year that our sons were in high school.  It's been a very enlightening walk down memory lane, and coincides perfectly with the upcoming anniversary of my husband and I moving to this area and our sons going to college. 

Children leaving home is one of those events that you know is going to change your life, much the same as giving birth does.  And just like giving birth, what follows is a period of readjustment -- of schedules, lifestyles, and interests -- and one's general happiness depends on how well we transition.

It took a few years for me to make the transition, but I think it's safe to say now that I have successfully transitioned now and am no longer mourning the loss of my role as a hands-on Mom to a family, and no longer wondering what comes next. What comes next has been happening for some time now. In fact, I've noticed that my social calendar is more booked with work, dinner parties and events than it has been in probably 20 years.

But within that change, or any change we go through in life, for homesteaders the question can become one of integration.  For much as I learned how to integrate my homesteading activities with the kids' schedules when they were in school, I have now had to learn how to integrate them as a working, mostly-empty-nester.   

For me, it means I've had to learn to say "no" again. Frequently. Last Wednesday, for example, Big Ag and I were invited to a dinner party.  the same day, a family friend wanted to come up for a visit.  A group I'm active in scheduled a board meeting that night.  And a couple we like to socialize with came into town and wanted me to go wine tasting with them during the afternoon.

I said no to all of those lovely happenings except the dinner party, because there is only one of me and only so much time in a day.  And more than just having things that I also needed to do here, there were things I wanted to do here...things that I consider part of the good work and the good life we live.  And I wanted to be here doing those things more than I wanted to be doing any of the other things (although make no mistake, all of the aforementioned social activities would have been fun.)

So, for me, the biggest lesson I've learned is that if I want to keep growing my own food and doing all the other homesteading activities I enjoy doing, I have to give it priority scheduling, which means turning down other things.  Unless I want to be making soap at midnight, or canning at dawn...slogging through chores during times I'm sure to not enjoy doing them.  

We choose our friends.  We choose our work.  And we also get to choose how we spend our time.  But in choosing the homesteading lifestyle, sometimes we have to choose our own homemade soap over a day of wine tasting, or a morning spent watering and weeding over coffee in town with a friend.  

These may not be easy decisions, but if you value what comes out of your kitchen or your garden, they are necessary.  And they carry with them a peace, a mindfulness, and a tangible reward that is extremely satisfying.

Because saying "no" to one part of your life can often mean saying "yes" to another.

Adventures in Soap-making

I looked in our storage cupboard yesterday and noticed we were running a little low on soap, so yesterday and this morning, I made some more.  For the first batch I decided to use coconut milk instead of water for the liquid, as I thought it would make a nice, soothing soap.  It was a classic kind of spur-of-the-moment-and-destined-for-failure idea I'm famous for, because while the concept of coconut milk soap sounds fabulous, when the lye is poured into whatever liquid you're using, it heats up that liquid to about 150 degrees.  Got (scorched) milk, anyone?

Some Very Unlovely Coconut Milk Soap bars

 So, yes, when I poured my lye in, it immediately scorched the coconut milk and smelled beyond awful.  If you've ever smelled scorching coconut milk, it's every bit as nasty as curdled cow's milk. No, I take that back.  It's worse.  And as you can see, this soap also looks like it may be a bit brittle. It will have to cure for a couple more weeks before I try it out, but if it's got a good fat content and lathers well, I'll keep it around.  If not, I'll grate it and use it to make laundry soap.  

(As of this morning, the disgusting smell is pretty much gone, so it actually may end up being a decent batch.  Talk about snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat.  And curdling, smelly defeat at that!)

But even if it all works out, it's still not a physically attractive bar of soap -- and I use my soap all over the house, including the guest bathroom.  Sometimes I even give some away. So this morning I made a second batch, using water as the liquid (the usual method) and adding some olive oil in addition to the usual coconut and soybean oils, just for fun.

  

Some Much Nicer Olive Oil Soap bars, still setting in their molds

This batch came out fine, so it looks like our family and friends will be lathered up and clean for the next several months.  Always a good thing when you live with a houseful of men.

**Update!!**  It's been 24 hours since I took the stinky batch out of the soap molds and the smell is completely gone!  I'm left with the slight orange-y smell from a small amount of orange extract I put into the soap, in the hope of diffusing the scorched milk smell.  Gold star for me today....doesn't happen often, but once in awhile, it DOES happen!

Back in the groove

Lately I've been experiencing a certain cognitive dissonance from my life revolving around moving.  To some extent, it was unavoidable -- the house needed a major clean out and spruce up, including painting, scrubbing, sweeping and even scheduling and babysitting some contractors who came in to fix some tile and a slightly cracked window. 


There has been loan paperwork to fill out and realtor agreements to sign.  Silly things need to be done before we can show the house -- replacing all our energy efficient CFL bulbs with regular ones in our bathrooms because they look better, taking our clothesline down so the yard looks more "normal," and keeping the kitchen in a constant state of counters-cleared-and-spotless in order to make the house more appealing to the average buyer.  It's been necessary, but removing the soul of who you are from the place you live is not fun.


And living the pristine, clean, model-home life left me feeling ill-at-ease and restless.  And I couldn't figure out why, except that moving is stressful and I was a victim of the stress.  Then I realized all the preparing the house, plus driving west to look at properties had, to some extent, taken me away from the things I love most -- homesteading activities.

So this morning I hauled out the coconut oil, olive oil and lye and cooked up a big batch of soap, and I will make some more laundry soap a bit later on.  I will bake some cookies for the kids in the solar oven this afternoon.  These are the things that define who I am, wherever I happen to be living.  Take me away from them and I feel somehow un-rooted.  To some, they may seem pathetically simple, but living simply is how I define my happiness.


I also have to exercise patience, which is faith put into practice. I believe that not only is this move supposed to happen, but that God has his fingers in the details, which assures all will be well for me and my family.


So God is doing his job, but I need to get back to mine.  By keeping up with the things that define who I am and what's important to me helps me keep busy, which in turn helps keep me patient.  


Motto:  When all else fails, have some faith and make some soap.