One thing, day 3, is a deviled egg tray, with a cover. Why I bought that, I have no idea. I don’t even like to cook stuff like that. We eat them at gatherings. My mother-in-law makes awesome deviled eggs. But we do not.
We brought it up to the little house. Again, maybe thinking we would magically become deviled egg makers. (Laughing so hard my eyes are watering as I write this.)
Goodbye sweet deviled egg tray, with cover. Someone who makes deviled eggs should own you.
As I mentioned yesterday, we are pretty simple people in what we use and maintain. High maintenance dishes are not our thing. But we get off the beaten path from time to time.
Time was, we had given one of our sons our Corelle dishes, purchased some white dishes, loved them, and then saw some very pretty blue pattern dishes advertised on a TV show. All in we went! Dishes, bakeware, trays. One time in the oven and we heard a tray crack. A couple times and the casserole cracked. Even so, we kept the dishes and we decided to use the loaf pans to “hold stuff” – you know – breakfast bars, water flavoring mixture packets. Right? Be creative. One by one the dishes cracked and chipped. Eventually we were left with one dinner plate, a couple small plates, and some bowls. Many with chips. And we are not hard on dishes.
We brought them up to the little house up north – and barely used them. Meanwhile we had gone back to the sturdy everyday china, white, we already had, and also bought some for the little house up north.
We brought the few unused blue bowls back when we brought everything back. I have no idea why. The silly things you do.
All in all, it was a good lesson. You live and you learn, and you stop buying things you really do not need just because they look great on TV.
Continuing yesterday, we recently decided to sell the small house we had bought in northern Minnesota as our “when we retire” home, before grandbaby came, and other “need to change direction” events. We moved the stuff back to the townhouse, we had an “ahhh” moment – mostly thankful that dreaded work was done – and then … The fall reality set in, more time in the house, summer is over, and “what are we going to do with all this stuff?” Back to decluttering again.
It occured to me that while, yes, the garden is still blooming away with sedum, and the fall colors are starting, and there is still some work to be done, my “garden”, the place where I encourage “bloom” from October to March, is, once again, transitioning to more inside than out. We can look out, walk out, sit out, but we do not “live” as much out Nov-March.
I looked around last week and said “not peaceful, need a plan”. I am not in a place to take on a big project right now. I need to keep it fun and simple. It occured to me – 1 thing per day goes away. Not overwhelming. No decision fatigue. No 30 day challenge where I am looking for 30 things to get rid of on day 30 and resort to 30 sheets of paper from old files.
One thing. Big or small. That’s it.
I will share. I hope you enjoy. Sometimes I will be laughing as I compose. Life can be that way 🙂
Let’s get started.
Day 1 – A rice cooker, vegetable steamer thingy
We had a wonderful rice cooker for years. It was super simple – a cooking element, a pot inside, a lid with a steamer vent. I think we got it for free with Coke Rewards (remember that program? :)) We literally used that rice cooker up until the non-stick coating started to flake off – at which time we knew that was not pepper. We couldn’t find a replacement pot. We went back to cooking rice on the stove. And then, we were walking down the aisle of our favorite household staples store where you pay a membership and buy larger quantities of stuff than you really need, but at good prices, and we saw – a rice cooker, with a vegetable steamer bonus! How fortuitous we thought. We were trying to eat more vegetables! This is going to be great!!!
Yah, no. It is huge for us, and it is a pain to clean compared to the rice cooker we loved.
As a last ditch attempt at trying to use it, we brought it to the little house up north. Like we would change being “us” up there 🤣. It was still a “not for us” item up there. When we moved everything out, we realized we had used it once, to keep Velveeta and Jimmy Dean sausage dip warm for a New Year’s Eve gathering.
We moved it back, only because we know where to donate here. In the donate box it goes. I really hope it blesses whoever owns it next. It is just not us.
I consider us to be fairly good at keeping the townhouse pretty free of un-needed, non-joy producing stuff. I don’t mind storing a reasonable amount of consumables (think the tp shortage of 2020), but the townhouse is too small to keep much stuff for “some day when”. And our kids have long ago moved out and years ago stopped replying to my texts with pictures, asking, “Do you want any of this?” Code for “No”.
I have a pretty low clutter threshold, and clutter above that for more than a few days really affects me. Plus, hanging on to stuff that we used to use but no longer do, while someone else may be able to use it, just seems, well … wasteful.
Our recent condensing of the stuff from the little house up north has been interesting. We kept that place very minimal (like “when are you going to decorate?” minimal), so there wasn’t a huge amount to bring back, but still … Think kitchen items, and consumables, household staples, things that go in cabinets, but now had no place to go at the townhouse. Thankfully, there was a minimal amount of furniture that needed to come back. There were also leftover renovation materials we had no plans for, like the 500 LINEAR feet of floor trim that was left over when I, on a Black Friday order early in the morning, having never done a renovation, confidently calculated we needed 3 TIMES the amount of floor trim we actually ended up using. Yes, I did get a call from our contractor saying, “That’s a lot of floor trim!”. Hahaha!!! We should have returned the unneeded trim, but we didn’t.
And then … AND THEN … there were the gardens. The precious daylily seedlings, the Blue Mouse Ears divisions, the lift and shifts, and all the trellises. Not to mention all the hand placed rocks I used for borders …
My personal challenge regarding the gardens was: Do you have a space for those to come back? Answer: I could make way for a bit – for the super struggling, deer eaten, decimated hostas that would just die up there if I leave them.
I can’t have trellises at the townhouse over 4′ and the bear(s) up north by the camper would just play with them. So the trellises stay with the new owners
As for the daylilies, the realtor assured me the new owners said they would love it if I left the daylilies, both mature and seedlings. The deer, miraculously, left the sedum and daylilies alone. In the end, I reminded myself of the joy I get from leaving a trail of my garden creations, and I decided “All but the decimated hostas should stay”. Bless the new homeowners of the little house up north with the gardens I started. Hopefully they will maintain them them far better than I ever could part-time, and enjoy them, and maybe even add on to them.
When the deer are creating something noone will recognize or appreciate, and you are pretty sure that will not improve in future years – it’s time to find them a tad safer home.
Early summer I potted a couple zucchini plant starts I was gifted. Now, I know zucchini should be easy to grow, and indeed the surviving plant was healthy and proliferous. It’s just that the bunnies loved it so much! Every time it got a bloom – next few days, gone. It did make a few very small fruits, however the bunny got those too.
Fun, bloomful, but not able to make it to “fruitful”.
What a wonderful sight! Honey bees enjoying the late summer, almost fall garden.
You live, and you learn. The raised bed gardens at the camping land up north need to go. Those silver metal boxes do not at all match the natural beauty around it.
We tried to pull the boxes out of there (notice one side is now higher than the other!), but have come to the conclusion disassembly is going to be required.
This will be a project, for sure!
The First Frost hosta has formed seed pods. I am so tempted to harvest them. But knowledge tells me that if I want more First Frost hostas, I need to divide it. And I have no more room for hostas. And the deer just eat hostas to the stem up north.
I will give First Frost a haircut, and let the seed pods go.
Susan's Daily Garden 