Progress, yay!

Yesterday I harvested all of the celery, washed it, cut off the tops and chopped and froze those. I wrapped the rest of the bundles of celery in a large dish towel and slid into a plastic bag. It's all waiting for me in the fridge to deal with the rest (or use) at a later date.

I also picked the last of the rhubarb and washed it.

The celery was in the bed where I had wanted to plant 2026's garlic. So this morning I worked that bed and added compost. Then I planted 130 cloves of garlic. Another thing scratched off my list!

And this afternoon I pruned the fig tree a little more and harvested all of the unripe figs from those branches. I brought the figs inside and made 2 more quarts of sweetened, spiced unripe figs, my last preserving work of unripe figs for the year!

While I waited through the various stages of preserving unripe figs, I used the rhubarb, along with some apples, to make a rhubarb-apple cobbler for tonight's dessert.

Tomorrow I will dig the rest of the carrots, cut off the leafy tops and wash those. Then I'll chop most of the carrot greens and freeze for adding to soups this winter. I'll leave some carrot leaves in the fridge to use in salads this fall.

That will leave the second half of the crabapples (make sauce, jelly, and juice from them), all the turnips, all the beets, one last head of cabbage, and what's left of the Swiss chard for my harvest list. 

I can do this!

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

5 Things in My House of Which I Have Too Many

I'm not a minimalist. I'm also not a maximalist. I like having the right tool for the job, and I like to think ahead to possibilities when I might need an object before deciding to get rid of it. But my house doesn't look overly cluttered with stuff. And yet, I was thinking today of all of the items that I own that are not being used and may never be used by me.

1 -- wooden spoons

I first began thinking about this idea when thinking about my crock filled with wooden spoons. I don't use wooden spoons for cooking as they don't seem hygienic to me, like bacteria could get trapped in the wood or something. Anyway, I've been gifted a lot of wooden spoons over the years, and every single one of them is pristine in appearance aside from dust. I need to donate these. That tiny corner of my kitchen counter would look more tidy if I just got rid of the spoons.

2 -- pillowcases

We all know that sheets wear out. This is especially so with the bottom or fitted sheet. I will often find a use for the top sheet when the fitted one is too worn for use, such as an outdoor movie screen, a paint drop cloth or a dust cover for the parts of our artificial Christmas tree. The pillowcases don't seem to wear out. They sometimes look dingy after many years of use, but they don't wear thin or develop holes. I'm not sure how to trim down my pillowcase excess or find a repurposed use. I'm open to suggestions.

3 -- mismatched plastic containers and lids

I'm thinking of all of those plastic food containers and lids that are jumbled together in a drawer in my kitchen. I'm also thinking about larger storage bins and lids. With both kids of plastic containers I seem to have mismatched containers and lids. Pieces crack and are thrown away/recycled. But then I'm left with parts that don't work together. With the food containers, I do go through that drawer about once a year, find lids that work with about half of the containers and recycle the rest. But what can one do with larger storage bins that have lost their lids?

4 -- old pairs of shoes

I'm not talking about simply out of style shoes that I don't wear any longer. I'm talking about worn out sneakers that I've replaced. I save a couple of old pairs to use when painting, mowing the lawn, tromping through mud, or for when my better pair is soaked from a walk in the rain and my feet still need shoes. I think I need to set a limit on how many old pairs of sneakers I could realistically need and dump the rest.

5 -- outdated technology items like cords, floppy disks, dial-up modems

My daughter was looking for a slim box the other day. We came across the laptop boxes from their 2013 university laptops. Inside one of the boxes was an unused power adaptor extension cord. In another closet was a box filled with old tech stuff that really has no purpose for us any longer. This stuff is really my husband's domain, so I don't feel I can just get rid of it. But it's still taking up space that could perhaps serve us better storing something we actually use.

What things in your house seem to multiply faster than you can get rid of them? Are you good at decluttering? Do you have a preference between donating stuff to a thrift store vs. repurposing it in your own house?