Homestead Storage

"In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has." Proverbs 21:20

I've been thinking about household and homestead storage, and how we don't have nearly enough. I've also been thinking about the stuff we accumulate, and how we have way too much. Kind of ironic, huh?

When we built our house, we thought we were quite clever to design in a 4ft x 10ft pantry. As I've written before, we could clearly use 4 times that much, and ideally in an underground situation to help with electricity-less cooling. That's just for food storage. Other storage needs I've identified include storage for seasonally used large kitchen equipment (canners, meat grinder, cream separator, cheesemaking equipment), my soapmaking supplies, storage for medicinal herbs and tinctures, better weapons storage, along with a household work area - a woman's "shop" for things like extra fabrics and yarn, a spinning and weaving area, a place for extra canning jars, a general area for a woman's projects that won't clutter up the house. Men tend to object to women's clutter, even if it is productive clutter. The moral of the story is, when you build your homestead plan on 3 to 4 or more times the storage space than you think you'll need.

I talked to Dave on the phone this afternoon, he's been away from home for 3 weeks straight and is coming home tomorrow. He asked me what I was doing and I told him that I was going through the kitchen getting rid of things I didn't use. He said, "Don't you do that about every 2 weeks?" I said, "Yes, lately." He said, "Do you have anything left in the kitchen??" The truth is, I do have things left in the kitchen, blessedly things I actually use and a whole lot less in the way of distracting dust-catchers. It's a bit comical how when we first marry we have nothing we need and when we've been married 20 years we need little of what we have. I've mentioned before how we've slowly slipped back into grid dependence after our first 15 months on the land completely without electricity. I'm approaching my kitchen and household purging with an eye to an off-grid lifestyle. It's a great clutter-reduction tool, and goes a long way to improving the above mentioned storage dilemma.

Tomorrow will be an outdoor work day. Dave has instructed me to have campfire making materials ready, as after 3 weeks with the National Guard he needs down-to-earth homestead relaxation time. I suspect his relaxation will be short-lived and that by Monday morning he'll be once again using his days off working circles around everyone else in the family.

Today's tidbits:

From Dry Creek Chronicles, what promised to be an outstanding series on The Lost Tools Of Living

John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education, an eye-opening expose on the historical development of the public school system.

From Organic and Farming, November 1973, Raising Catfish In A Barrel.

Accountability tidbit: I did get the garlic in the ground.

Till next time, Blessings,

Judy