September 10, 2017

When I was coming up, I can't tell you how many times I heard the phrase "a place for everything, and everything in it's place."  I don't think at that time it really registered with me just what that meant.  After I had my second child and decided to stay home full time, I was sinking fast in that direction until I wrote myself a job description, picked up all the books I could at the library to "sharpen my saw", and was lucky enough to come across the book "Sidetracked Home Executives".  This book taught me organizational skill and how to be clean and uncluttered.  I don't know if you have noticed, but homesteading requires a lot of "stuff".  For every different set of animals on our farm, there is more "stuff".  When you move onto your homestead, it is a great idea to live there for at least a year to figure out what you are going to use and where you are going to use it before you decide to try to get organized.  Of course, it is also best to find out if an item deserves to have their own place, even before you bother.  Sometimes you get what you thought was going to be essential and it just gathers dust. . .

Closet before with air intake LARGE

Then there is the fact that you have been brain washed your whole life to think a certain way is just the way it is done, and since everyone else is doing it, it must be the best idea.  One case in point is putting your clothes in a dresser.  Well, if you are the one that puts away the laundry, you might notice that when your hands are full of laundry, you have to wrangle with all of these drawers, one after the other, many heavy with clothes.  My son decided a long time ago that he didn't like dressers, and now I can see why.  Shelves are ever so much easier to use and you don't have to open and close them when your hands are full.  When you can put them in a closet so you don't have to see the clothes laying out, all the better.  We finally re-did our closet, took out the dresser and built some shelves.  I absolutely love how much easier this is making my life.  We also cut down an oversized air intake that was taking a large portion of our closet (after consulting an HVAC guy).  Here is a VIDEO of our made over closet.  The boxes at the top of the closet are made out of some cardboard copy paper boxes covered in fabric with a see thru pocket for labeling.  With the leftover clear vinyl, I made door flaps for the dog house to prepare our dogs for the winter and to keep me from having to wash and dry a lot of dog blankets.  I believe that if something is sitting around and not being used, it is junk, and if it is used, then it becomes useful
instead of junk.

Processing Station

In other news around the farm, we processed 20 chickens, and put two coats of Cabot stain in Fireside Cherry on our calf barn and trimmed it in white.  Now we have the red and white barn that
we have always dreamed of.