We’re starting 2015 with a huge project. It overwhelms and exhausts me just to think about it. I have to get the business end of making soaps, salves, balms and butters moved out of my kitchen/dining room/living room/spare bedroom/office and whatever other parts of the house (read: horizontal surface) I have taken over. At this point, I can’t have guests. Shoot, I can barely find a spot open to feed my husband. We have a plan to turn the basement into my work area. Well, we call it a basement. It’s actually just a room under the house. The people that built this house wanted to put in a full basement but hit rock. If you can imagine rock on this hill we reside on (insert sarcasm font). The room in the basement was unfinished when we moved in. I had dreams at one point of making part of it into a cold storage/root cellar area, but the way it was finished with an exterior door and a couple of east facing windows made that plan not impossible, but difficult. We’ve developed a few Plan B’s for a cold storage/root cellar, just haven’t chosen which one to go with yet. Anyway, we (meaning Slick) hung sheetrock a couple of years ago to hide all the insulation hanging from the ceiling, giving the room a true “creepy basement” kind of feel. Then he put up some old grocery store shelves and we have been using that space to store mostly my canned foods and empty canning jars, some larger items like the cider press and an old stove etc. You know, basement stuff. So all that stuff has to find a new home now. This project will also allow us to finally use some of the stainless sinks, tables etc we’ve collected over the past several years. Obviously it only makes sense for the canned goods to be moved into the pantry. Which means I have to make room in the pantry. There we find, you know, the typical food, spices and paper products, along with my rather large canners, cheese press, grain grinders, various small appliances, some serving dishes etc etc. You know, stuff that takes up space. The pantry is just a small, open room. There were no shelves when we moved in, so we’ve made it work using a few of those standing wire shelf units on wheels. While they look nice and work for holding “stuff”, they don’t fit the space well. And there definitely isn’t room for anything else in there. Especially hundreds of jars of canned goods. Sigh. I do have room in the laundry room right next to the pantry to store most of the items that need to be moved from the pantry to make room for the stuff from the basement. It would make sense to move it there, and it would flow well in the rush of canning and making of meals, but the laundry room is currently full of herbs, oils, butters, waxes, bowls, molds, mixers etc for making soaps, salves, balms and butters. I have to be able to access and use all this during the process of turning my house upside down to create a work space that will eventually house all of the above mentioned supplies, not to mention the product inventory that is spread onto all available horizontal surfaces in what is supposed the be the living areas of my home, and the boxes and boxes of jars, tins and labels currently residing in the guest room. Sigh. I spent most of the weekend feeling overwhelmed at the task and walking in circles. That was effective (again, sarcasm font). I also managed to move a bunch of stuff from the pantry into a temporary home in a spare room on the second floor. The room that is supposed to be home to my loom. Will I ever get to weave again? I managed to make a huge mess in the process. All over the house. Then I walked more circles. Finally, sitting at dinner at the corner of the table I managed to clear, we decided maybe the task that made the most sense was to build some shelves in the pantry. Nothing fancy, using plywood and boards that are on hand. But it would make better use of that space and create room for all jars and food. Yeah! A Step 1 in our plans. I love Step 1’s! So the plan is this week to finish moving the stuff that will eventually live in the laundry room up to my weaving room on the second floor and clean up the mess I created. I am certainly queen of mess making. Then, next weekend we will build shelves in the pantry and I can begin the process of emptying the basement. Slick can do his thing down there, which will consist of a final mudding of the sheetrock so I can paint, installing a large work table, a sink, counters, lighting, hooking up that old stove etc. Work his magic. I may even give those old grocery store shelves a coat of paint to make them look clean and new. ☺ Then I can move the herbs, oils, butters, waxes, bowls, molds, mixers etc for making soaps, salves, balms and butters from the laundry room down to the basement, along with the product inventory that is spread onto all horizontal surfaces in what is supposed to be the living areas of my home, and the boxes and boxes of jars, tins and labels currently residing in the guest room. The shelves in the laundry room will then be clear so I can move everything that is temporarily housed in my weaving room back downstairs and maybe, finally, get my loom set up and do some major spring cleaning. All this while continuing to run a farm and a business. There lies the bigger challenge. It will be worth it in the end. Right? Think well be done in time for spring planting?
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 14:46:37 +0000
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