Organizing: Spring Cleaning in January

Week three of the EAT TO THE BOTTOM OF THE FREEZER CHALLENGE and we are doing really well.  I have stuck to the plan and only broke down for a bag of hamburger buns that we could have done without but we were having company so I splurged!

I never have time to do much spring cleaning in the spring so thankfully the mood still strikes albeit a few months early - usually in January.  I think doing the Eat To the Bottom of the Freezer Challenge this month helps.

Last week I cleaned out every cupboard in the kitchen.  My kitchen is small by magazine standards - I know it could be smaller yet but to give you the idea my brother was once working in it and he said:  Anita this is a one "backside" kitchen! (that's not quite verbatim since I can't print what he actually said!)  It certainly is but that doesn't stop me from stuffing the cupboards full and making it work.  Somehow in the fall when I am busy canning not everything gets put away where it should go and eventually I end up with a few of those avalanche cupboards - you know - the ones where everything comes flying out when you open the door.


I really like useful gadgets and tools.  Some of the older ones I have already posted on the blog previously.  I have a hard time resisting kitchen items like rolling pins, or flour sifters, or measuring cups and spoons.  I have a thing for dishes too - I have several sets that I change out every so often.  There's a red theme of course! One set is all glass - purchased BEFORE we moved here.  I'm back to my red dishes now and they make me smile every time I set the table.  I have a few sets of "breakfast plates and bowls" with nostalgic scenes of chubby-faced children eating Rice Krispies.  When children come to visit I use those dishes and they are usually quite excited about them.

I am switching as many storage containers over to glass as I can.  I've never been a fan of plastic - somehow it never feels clean to me.  I love glass everything and that's not necessarily a match made in heaven for someone with hard water since it  makes for spotty dishes if you don't dry them right away.  Oh well.

I have been given several boxes of those beautiful old canning jars that I've written about many times before and although they might be fine for canning pickled beets or the like according to my older neighbour I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that so I have slowly switched out my regular canning/storage jars for those old beauties.  I am so glad I can still get the rubber rings for them.  I store most of my dry grains, dehydrated vegetables, seeds, spices etc. in them.    I like the look of them when I open the cupboards!

My cupboards are getting a paint job in the next few weeks - my daughter has offered to help since we're doing inside and out which is a messy project.  She's a great painter and I am looking forward to a freshened up kitchen.

Yesterday in my continuing rampage of cleaning I tackled the master bedroom.  It's a bit of a joke in this house because most people in new houses have closets bigger than our bedroom.  It just fits the bed and a desk and room to get in.  No closets, no extra anything.  I've always stored things under the bed in an attempt to make good use of the space but a few nights ago I was awakened to a symphony.  One man snoring.  One dog snoring.  One mouse under the bed chewing on something.  GREAT.  It's rather disconcerting to hear hurry-scurry two feet away from your head!!  I made up my mind right then that I was going to remove the basket under the bed and do some cleaning.  The carpet has always bothered me in this room because of my allergies and it's advanced age so out it came piece by piece as my daughter and I manoeuvred around the furniture.  There's some really cool tiles under the carpet so they will do just fine for a few years...and  MUCH better - nothing for the mice to chew on at least it was quiet last night anyway!

I guess it's that nesting snuggle-down-in-the-warmth-of-hearth-and-home feeling that sets off these mid-winter clean ups.  It's a good feeling to accomplish things when the weather is not calling me to be outside.  If I keep it up at this pace I'll have everything on my long-to-do-list done before spring but then again there's always time for another cup of tea.

How's your Challenge going??  Has it spurred you on to cleaning too?  Maybe I'm just the odd-ball!

Great Expectations and Goal Planning

Another year.  Another chance to start over with a brand new page on a new calendar and another chance for most of the world to make those pesky New Years Resolutions.  I don't do New Years Resolutions because although I enjoy the clean-slate-fresh-start-excitement of it all I have failed too many times.  My resolutions tended to be short sighted and mostly wishful thinking that came after 2 weeks of parties and fun and not enough sleep!

That doesn't mean I don't have a plan but it took a lot longer than a few hours to put together and it's something we work on all year long - revising as we need to but always with the goal of moving forward and seeing progress.

Having a farm has increased the need for a long term plan dramatically and thankfully we learned a few lessons in the past that bare directly on this goal setting mission.

We lived in our home in town for just over 20 years. That's a long time to not have a real plan but we were so busy living our lives and raising our family that I didn't give much thought to long term planning at that point - I was just trying to survive until nap time!  

One of the greatest lessons we learned was about having a plan.  I'll call this one The Lesson of The Kitchen Floor.

When we moved in the floor was covered in alternating black and white tiles - we could have played people-sized-checkers on it.  It was not in terrible shape but it was our new home and we wanted to make it ours. The decorating bug overcame me and I wanted that floor GONE.  Ohhh - nice clean linoleum flooring - no cracks for crumbs to get in between - easy to mop up - this was going to make life easier for me-who-happened-to-be-8-months-pregnant.  All went well - we managed to lay the flooring.  It looked great - until we moved the fridge in and gouged a huge chunk of the flooring right in front of the main entrance to the kitchen.  OH NO!  We were too broke to redo it and there didn't seem to be anyway to fix it so we lived with it.  (and have you ever tried to keep a WHITE linoleum floor clean with little kids in the house??)  

Three years later - which nicely coincided with an equally pregnant-me - we decided to make the kitchen a little bigger which meant renovating the floor again - this time going for a more "country" look by replacing the floor with painted pine boards.  I loved my new floor and the best part was when I got tired of the colour I could paint the floor again and have a whole new look.  I must have done that 3 or 4 times - it was barn red for awhile, then it was sage green...

Fast forward several years and a total kitchen renovation was in the works.  We were putting in new kitchen cabinets so that was the end of my wooden floor as the huge gaps and the demolition finished it for good.  But on to better things - lets get ceramic tile!  Oh-so-clean and easy to care for (anyone who has tried to install ceramic tile in an old house is already shaking their heads at our naivety) but we ploughed ahead and had the floor installed - insert several naughty words here to get the full effect of process. Of all the flooring this was by far the worst!  Momma Mia - it cracked, it split, it was cold - I HATED IT!  We sold the house with that floor and I wasn't sorry to leave it behind!

The moral of the story???  ...I think we exhausted all the possibilities - all on ONE tiny kitchen floor.  What a complete waste of time and money.  We could have saved ourselves lots of both if we had taken the time to make a long term plan for that kitchen.  We could have lived with the black and white tiles, made a more informed decision about our options and spent the money ONCE on a renovation that would have lasted more than a few years. 

That floor is in the  forefront of my mind when I think about renovations here at the farm - there is definitely work to be done inside and out but so far we haven't done much more than PLAN.  I do not want to repeat that scenario again.  Of course the plan doesn't always work.  We had a satellite dish installed for our internet a few weeks ago and afterwards realised it is not in the best place considering the placement of the soon-to-be-installed wood stove chimney.  Sigh.

Thankfully nothing here is so bad that we can't live with it.  When we moved here we thought we would rework the house in a certain way but after living here for 2 years we realised those plans were ill conceived for various reasons.  It's taken actually LIVING here to see what needed to be done.  The patience required is a little easier to come by at this age then it was 25 years ago.

I had someone come to visit us about a year ago and he was surprised that THIS was my dream home.  Not this house?  he asked repeatedly  (while I wanted to bonk him in the noggin) YES - THIS HOUSE!  I can see it as it WILL be although I love it - crooked walls, creaky doors and all but I have a PLAN to make it even better.  

Our lists of plans take up pages.  It's a constant work in progress and one that wouldn't get very far without constant attention. My husband and I have priority meetings regularly to stay on track.  It is probably the number one thing that keeps us getting things done on time and in order.  There's a common way to set goals using the SMART system. 

Make your goals:

Specific. 

Measurable.

Achievable.

Realistic.

Timely

This skill - and it is a learned skill - is something that carries over into other areas as well.  Planning food storage for example.  Write the plan first THEN proceed to purchasing food and or supplies. 

For practicality sake I use my favourite computer program OneNote to keep all the notes and lists.  Some people like paper copies but I do really well with notebooks made in the OneNote program.  There's a FREE program called Evernote that is similar if you're in to that kind of thing.

I have organizing and paring down my huge book collection, reorganizing my kitchen, and our annual eat-to-the-bottom-of-the-freezer-challenge on the list for January. Do you have any resolutions or goals for the year you would like to share?

Happy New Year!

One Year Food Storage Organization System

One of the things I struggled with in the area of food storage was keeping track of everything and making sure I was storing enough.  That gets complicated when you are wanting to store enough food for ONE WHOLE YEAR for a large group of people. 

I've talked lots about WHY I am crazy enough to even want to attempt this so I'll just carry on from there.

 I've tried several food storage calculators and messed around with my own versions but was never satisfied until recently.  I was looking for a simple way to keep track so I came up with a system that's easy to read and see at a glance.  It can be used for any length of food storage and include any of your favourite foods. It can also be expanded to include non-food items that you want to store but for simplicity sake I keep that information separately.

For some interesting facts about canned SPAM click here.

I used various sources for my calculations.  I started with the basics come from the most recent LDS manual that you can download for free here.  I expanded my lists by considering foods that store well and that we eat regularly.  I also made allowances for food sensitivities in our family - less white rice and no white flour for us and more variety in whole grains and gluten free grains.  These lists have come out of a few years of practice and note-taking as to what we eat regularly.  I have also made a concerted effort to include some of the items we do not eat regularly but store really well and make them a part of our monthly menus.  We still have a long way to go but all of this is a process!

Most sources say 400lbs of grain per year per person is a minimal goal.  The first question you may ask is - how many buckets is that??  Here's a handy chart from www.foodstoragemadeeasy.net

Food Item	#10 Can	5 Gallon Bucket
Wheat	5 pounds	37 pounds
White Flour	4.5 pounds	33 pounds
Cornmeal	4.3 pounds	33 pounds
Popcorn	5 pounds	37 pounds
Rolled Oats	2.5 pounds	20 pounds
White Rice	5.3 pounds	36 pounds
Spaghetti	N/A	30 pounds
Macaroni	3.1 pounds	21 pounds
Dried Beans	5.6 pounds	35 pounds
Lima Beans	5.4 pounds	35 pounds
Soy Beans	5 pounds	33 pounds
Split Peas	5 pounds	33 pounds
Lentils	5.5 pounds	35 pounds
White Sugar	5.7 pounds	35 pounds
Brown Sugar	4.42 pounds	33 pounds
Powdered Milk	3 pounds	29 pounds
Powdered Eggs	2.6 pounds	20 pounds

If anything I erred on the side of abundance with the suggested amounts from these sources.  I've copied an sample below to show you how it works.  I used an average of 33lb or 15kg per bucket for the grains which means I need about 12 pails in total to make up the 400lbs per person recommended.  Then I listed the grains I wanted to store and decided how I was going to divide up the storage.  As you can see below I am actually aiming for 15.5 - 5 gallon buckets per person per year.  I like variety.

I've done the same with all the categories - Grains, Beans/Meat, Cooking oils, Salt, Milk/Dairy, Fruit, Vegetables and Other Necessities.

Since this is MY list is really will only serve as a jumping off point for others.  Our family doesn't need to store eggs - we have chickens.  We eat much of our vegetables in the summer from the garden and hope to improve our productivity over the next few years so I have only included the vegetables that we actually store long term by canning, freezing or root cellaring.  I also don't store a lot of store bought dehydrated or freeze dried foods - just my personal choice.

The chart below is fairly self- explanatory.  There's room on this chart for 5 people but it can of course be expanded.  The "X's" represent the number of pails I have already stored.  I use the highlighter function to remind me that I have bought the product but still need to properly package it for long term storage.  So in the example below I have 2 pails of large flake oatmeal in storage and enough for one more pail that will be packed in a pail with mylar and an O2 absorber as soon as I have a few more buckets to do at one time.

Farther down the list I have some canned goods and instead of using "X's" I just write the number in the space provided.  eg. for tomato sauce I write "20" or if I am working up to that 12 or 15 or whatever I have so I will be able to add my new purchases and carry on to the next "person" (per) on the chart.

I debated whether or not to include the details of WHAT I store because I believe that everyone's food storage needs to be personalized to their own needs.  HOWEVER we all need to start with something and I like seeing charts like this myself so I am sharing it anyway!

The amounts listed for each item are based on how much of them we already eat.  It's sometimes hard to imagine how much food it takes for a whole year simply because we are disconnected to it by not having to prepare much of it ourselves.  Imagine having to bake every loaf of bread, grind wheat to make every muffin and cookie you eat - that's a lot of food!

Here's a link to a food storage calculator.  It will allow you to input your families ages and be given a basic list - consider the one below Anita's expanded list!

GRAINS 400 lb min	12pails	1 per	2 per	3 per	4 per	5per
Wheat kernels soft	2	XX	XX
Wheat kernels hard	3	XXX	X
Steel cut oats	1	X	X
Large flake oatmeal	1	X	X	X
Brown rice	1	X	X
Pasta	2	XX	XX
Parboiled rice	2	XX
Millet	.5	X	X
Quinoa	.5
Spelt	1	X	X
Buckwheat	.5
Quick Oatmeal	1
BEANS/MEAT 60lb min	5 pails	1 per	2 per	3 per	4 per	5per
Dried beans kidney	1
Dried beans chickpea	1
Lentils/red or brown	1
Yellow/green peas/split peas	1
Dried beans black	1
Canned chicken/turkey	50
Canned salmon	50
Canned sardines	20
Home canned meat	25
Falafel mix	5
COOKING OIL 10quarts	20lb	1 per	2 per	3per	4 per	5 per
Butter Powder	1
Olive oil	2
Coconut oil	4
Mayo	2
Peanut butter	2
Vegetable oil	3-5L
Nutella	2
SALT 8lb min	8	1 per	2 per	3 per	4 per	5 per
Pounds of salt	8
MILK/DAIRY 75lb min	75lb	1 per	2 per	3 per	4 per	5 per
Milk powder	40lb
Canned evaporated milk	12
Almond milk	24
Powdered cheese	2
Coconut milk	10

FRUIT 170 quarts		1 per	2 per	3 per	4 per	5 per
Applesauce	25 quarts
Dried apricots	10 pkg.
Coconut	.25 pail
Mandarin oranges	20 cans
Pears	20 quart
Peaches	20 quart
Pineapple	25 cans
Raisins	1lb
Dates	4 pkg.
Figs	10 pkg.
Jam	20 pint
Apple butter	2 pint
VEGETABLES 200 quarts	200 qu	1 per	2 per	3 per	4 per	5 per
Beans	50
Beets/plain/pickled	25  pints
Carrots	10
Onions	10lb
Peppers frozen	2 bags
Pickles	10
Canned Potatoes	10 quarts
Rhubarb	5 froz
Sauerkraut	5 quarts
Spinach/kale	10 froz
Tomato sauce	50	50
Home canned soups	20
Diced tomatoes	20
Salsa	2
Boxed potatoes	1
Canned corn	5
Sweet potatoes	10 quarts
Chili sauce	1
BBQ sauce	1
Sprouting Seeds	1 quart

OTHER NECESSITIES		1 per	2 per	3 per	4 per	5 per
Baking powder	2
Baking soda	10
Sugar	1 pail
Brown sugar	.5 pail
Apple juice	12 cans
Hot chocolate mix	2 can
Instant yeast	2 brick
Garlic powder	1 quart
Cinnamon	1 quart
Carob chips	.25 pail
Cocoa powder	1 can
Ginger	1 quart
Ketchup	2 bottle
Mustard	2 bottle
Relish	1 bottle
Lemon juice	1 bottle
Black pepper	1 quart
Maple syrup	4L
Honey	5lb
Stevia	2 bottles
Crackers	5 box
Cold cereal	5 box
Walnuts	2lb
Almonds	2lb
Hemp seeds	2lb
Flax seeds	5lb
Dehy.Veggie flakes	1 pail
Vinegar	10 bottle
Apple cider vinegar	2 bottle
Mrs. Dash	1 jar
Pickling spice	.5 quart
Herbal tea	5 boxes
Caf-lib	1 jar
Tea bags	50
Coffee	1
Parmesan cheese	2 can
Bouillon	12 cubes

I've expanded this list over the years.  I started with the most basic things and added more items as I thought of them.  Some of these things I could do without but they are nice to have. Some items like hot sauce I currently have in the fridge but we are not huge hot-sauce-kind-of-people so I don't actually have it on the list - I think the last bottle of hot sauce lasted two years.

There are other items I could have added and may add in the future but for now this is what I am working on.

I watch for sales to add to my stores.  For example this week pasta was on sale so I purchased enough to fill several buckets.  It was on sale for .77 for 900gr.  900 gr. is approx 2 pounds. It takes 21lbs of macaroni to fill a bucket so that's 11 packages. 11 x .77c = $8.47 per bucket. O2 absorbors and mylar liner take the cost up to approx. $10.00 in total if you can get a free bucket. Not a bad deal.

I am also careful to keep things balanced - no sense having pasta for 10 people for a year and no sauce.

One of the eureka moments I've had over the past years with food storage and organization is to divide it into five different components.  

1. Long term storage - it's packed in Mylar and rotated out in 15-30 years.
2. Long term shelf stable food - our personal grocery store - wet pack foods, boxed foods we rotate within 5 years.
3. Freezer items - we rotate out in 1 year and replenish
4. Upstairs pantry - our every day eating - not counted in food storage and probably enough for several weeks
5. Fridge items - on a weekly/bi-weekly rotation

I keep track of long term storage but I don't count everything in fridge and freezer - I just consider it extra food.  By eating primarily from the fridge, freezer and cold cellar we continue to rotate the most perishable foods first without having to add and subtract from the food storage lists.  We store vegetables and fruit for 6 months over the winter in our basement which we eventually hope to extend further with a proper root cellar.  Then we eat fresh from the garden as much as possible in the warmer months.  Season extenders such as cold frames and a greenhouse  are on the list for the future.

If you are feeling discouraged at the length of the list and the planning involved - know this:  you have to start somewhere. "What is not started will never get finished." —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

Start with a three day supply of shelf stable food.  Expand it to a week, then three weeks, then three months.  Remember to store foods you like to eat.  Who cares if SPAM is on sale if no one likes it! YUCK!  

There are lots of plans out there and ANY plan is better than NO plan.  Keep working towards your food storage goals - step by step.  Whether it's for three months or one year I hope seeing my One Year Food Storage Organizational System will help you to make sense of your own.