A Random Collection of Housekeeping Things

I've been collecting these tidbits to post at some time or other, so today is the day.

First, for all you canners out there: Lehman's Hardware in Kidron, Ohio sells canning jar lids in bulk. A sleeve of them contains 354 lids, and it's $42.95 plus shipping (I think my total was about $55.00). This is just lids, not the rings. It's a little cheaper than I pay at the store, and a lot more convenient to have all the lids I need right here and not have to worry about not having them when I need them. I think one sleeve will last me through the canning season. They also sell reusable lids (who knew there were such things!) and the old kind that use the rubber gasket, along with all sorts of other useful canning and homesteading supplies. Their specialty is non-electric items, since they are in the heart of Ohio's Amish country.

Did you know you can buy USPS postage through Paypal? It's a lot easier than the USPS website, friends! And so simple to pay too. You need a Paypal account, of course, and it's not easy to find the service on their site, but this link will get you there. I buy online postage for my sales on Amazon and eBay but sometimes I need to buy it for other things I'm shipping and this Paypal service saves me a trip to the post office.

I am drying my peppermint and other herbs for teas and wanted to make them into teabags to share with friends. I looked online for resealable teabags and most were just too expensive--might as well just buy the tea. But at San Francisco Herb Company you can get 50 of them for $2.12. The rub is that you must order at least $30 worth of stuff from them--which isn't hard to do considering their prices and the items they offer for sale. I used to buy from them years ago and forgot them when I went to work. It's nice to reconnect with such a good company. They offer bottles, bags, herbs, dried foods, teas, and all sorts of other interesting things.

A couple of things for general household cleaning:

Put a bay leaf in your flour and dried grains to keep the miller moths out. I've been battling them for the past year and I think I have finally won. All it takes is one item that gets infested with them and you're sunk. They get into dried beans, rice, flour, oats..even baking chocolate and your garden seeds! I took most items out of the cabinet and put them in the fridge, cleaned the cabinet and waited. The moths were still there. I eventually located the source of the trouble--dried apple and orange garlands I had stored in another cabinet. Who would have thought? Then I remembered my mother's trick with the bay leaves. I scattered them throughout my cabinet and tucked them into the jars of flour and oats. No more problems...at least, not for the past 3 months.

My granddaughter taught me this trick: if you have a pan with really stuck-on cooking (like cheese, gravy, meat drippings, etc), fill the pan with soapy dishwater and put it on the stove to boil. Once it's boiling, use a spoon or spatula to scrape off the stuck stuff--it will come right off. Amazing. It took me 60 years to find out about this trick!

Make your own window cleaner with Dawn dish detergent, ammonia and water. This is what the commercial companies use and it doesn't need to be wiped down after cleaning like Windex does. You can adjust the ingredients to get the kind of sudsing you want. Or you can visit Tipnut.com for a lot of ways to make window cleaner, mostly with things you already have on hand.

Got a jar with a stuck lid? Try running very hot water over the lid--often the contents in the jar are sticky and the hot water will soften the sugars enough to let you remove the lid. If it's a two-piece canning jar lid and that doesn't work, take a table knife and run the blade under the top lip of the jar (the place where the ring seats on top of the flat lid). Dampness can cause the ring to rust to the lid and you can break the rust loose this way. The ring, however, might be ruined because it might not seat properly on the lid again. But it beats throwign away a whole jar of something you worked hard to put up.

That's my list for today. Do any of you have little tricks you'd like to share? I am betting you do!

Why Didn't I Think of it Sooner?

I am one of those people who like things organized--in closets, cabinets, drawers, wherever. You might not guess that immediately on seeing my house, but it's true. As a child I liked to collect small boxes. I didn't use them for much because I didn't have much to put in them, but I liked the way they stacked so neatly in my dresser drawer. Maybe it was the possibility of organization that attracted me.

So. My husband, I suspect like many other husbands, does not share my fascination with putting things back in the same place after use. If he needs a paring knife, for example, he knows that I keep knives in the old treadle sewing machine drawers I now use for storage in the pantry cupboard. He will go straight there to get a knife. If I was the one putting away the dishes, the knife will be in the drawer. If he put away the dishes, the possibilities for the current location of the knife are endless, and mysterious. The knife may not be seen again in our lifetime.

I'm funny about bed linens too. I like matched pillowcases and matched sheets. They don't all have to match each other, but there should be two of each pillowcase and the sheets should at least be color-coordinated. I know, it's silly, right? But I buy them that way--the rose-flowered fitted sheet to go with the pink-edged top sheet, and the pink and green pillowcases. It's not high style, more like shabby chic, but I like the eclectic look. It just has to have some semblance of having been planned that way. Plain ol' shabby is just...well, shabby.

The thing is, I'm usually at work when Larry decides to change the sheets. I'm not complaining about him changing them, mind--that's a blessing. But you know, once the sets are mismatched it takes forever to get everything clean and back with its mate! It's one of those little burs under the marriage saddle that irritate but aren't important enough to make a fuss over. Well, take that back. I have made a fuss over it,  but it doesn't change a thing. I tell myself, shut up, you have clean sheets on the bed!

Finally I have hit on a solution. I bet you all figured this out long ago and here I am 59 years old and just getting it. It requires me putting away the sheets of course--which I usually do, trying to put all the matching pieces together so he can just pull them out as needed. (Doesn't work--he still manages to mismatch them).

My solution? (Drum roll, please) Fold the matching pillowcases and sheet sets together! I fold the top sheet in half, lay it on the bed, fold the fitted sheet in half and lay on top, then fold the two sheets into one bundle. Same with pillowcases--two pillowcases, laid on top of each other and folded together into one neat package. Now all he has to do is pick up one sheet and he'll have the matched set. Pick up one pillowcase and he'll have the set.

Cool, huh? And I bet you've been doing this all along! Now as I type I'm thinking, "Wait! I could fold the pillowcases in with the sheets!" Sigh. Next time, that's just what I'll do.

Why did it take me so long to figure this out?

Book Review: How to Sew a Button and Other Nifty Things Your Grandmother Knew

Some books just need to be written, and to be written at a specific time. Erin Bried's book, How to Sew a Button is a prime example.

Readers of this blog know that I am all about self-sufficiency. I was fortunate enough to be raised by a mother who lived through World War II in rural England. Mom knew how to do and make do and she never un-learned those lessons. We were taught to sew at a young age, first edging handkerchiefs and then moving on to make aprons, curtains, skirts and eventually our own wedding dresses. Mom could make a roast of beef last almost an entire week, even for our family of thirteen children.

My mother would have been a prime candidate to be one of the grandmothers who advised Bried as she wrote this book of how-to hints that cover everything from cooking a whole chicken (although she does not tell you how to actually kill and dress the bird) to building a fire, sharpening a knife, unclogging a toilet, and yes, sewing on a button.

Bried was not raised to do-it-herself. After college she landed a good job at Self magazine and lived the life of one who has others take care of things. She candidly admits that she never balanced a checkbook or developed a household budget. Reading the introduction, I found myself either laughing aloud or gasping in disbelief. It's difficult for me to grasp that there really are people who do not know how to do the things I consider basic to survival--like cooking, sewing, and gardening.

And yet.

There are more people living in urban areas today than there are in the country, and more people who were raised in suburban settings with two working parents. The stay-home mother is not so commonplace now, and even those who do stay home may not have had mothers or grandmothers who still practiced the ages-old household arts.

And that is what inspired Bried to write this book. She realized that she didn't know how to do the most basic things, like sewing on a button. And she knew she was not alone. Since her grandmothers had passed away many years ago, she recruited some women who had survived the Great Depression to advise and teach. Her education is the basis for her book, and there will be many women who will thank her for writing it.

Today frugality is all the rage. I admit I laugh when I read blogs that espouse "frugality" by telling readers about great deals to be had at various big-box stores or online sources. The truly frugal know that saving is not about spending, it's about using what you have on hand. There is another level of frugality, however, that does not just make do, it does so elegantly and with style so that life is enriched in the process.

This isn't just a book about housekeeping, however. Relationship in need of help? Baby won't go to sleep? Need to find no-cost entertainment? Bried offers suggestions and helpful advice on all of these topics too, recognizing that too often we look to the outside for solutions that might be within our own homes and hearts.

How to Sew a Button will help readers do-it-themselves in a creative, relaxed and entertaining manner. Feeling stressed about that chicken? Drink another glass of wine, Bried advises. Snake in your garden? After you chase it out, share your tale of bravery with your friends and get a cat. (You wanted one anyway, right?)

For an old homesteader like me, there's not a lot of new information in How to Sew a Button. But for those who weren't raised by a frugal mother or grandmother or who haven't spent years in the country, this book could well become an indispensable guidebook into the mysteries of the simple life.


How to Sew a Button
Ballantine Books; December 15, 2009
ISBN-10: 0345518756
ISBN-13: 978-0345518750
$15.00

How-To

At an auction recently, I bought a box of linens that also contained a newspaper clipping from the 1960's, as far as I can tell. Now I loved the yellow tablecloth and hand-embroidered linens in the box, but the clipping was cool--s0meone obviously liked the 'home remedies' for household problems.

Which made me think about other household shortcuts I know, like:

*scrub your white leather athletic shoes with toothpaste to clean stains and brighten the white

*scrub your hands with sugar to remove stains and odors (works pretty well after chopping onions!)

*put a couple tablespoons of vinegar in the pressure canner to make the water boil more quickly, and to make your jars come out clean and sparkly

*salt makes a good scrub too, for cast iron and aluminum pans

*use a used slice of lemon to wipe down your sink and give your kitchen a fresh smell

*put your kitchen sponges and scrub brushes in the dishwasher to clean and disinfect them

*we've put plastic shower shoes and flip flops in the dishwasher too--they come out nice and clean!

*you can wash your plastic shower curtain liner in the washer, and then hang it back up to dry--or tumble briefly in the dryer to smooth the wrinkles before hanging.

*wipe the mirrors in your bathroom with your bath towel when the mirrors are covered with steam to clean them quickly and easily

*simmer a little whole pickling spice to make the whole house smell good; or, use cinnamon sticks and whole nutmeg to do the same thing

These are just a few of the tricks I use. What are your favorite shortcuts or low-cost methods of getting things done around the house?