Happiness is a polka-dotted basket

Check out my new basket! I found this lovely polka-dot-lined basket at the thrift store this weekend for 75 cents, and it's my new friend. It goes where I go, so everything I need is close at hand. In it when we headed outside today...

-my crochet pattern notebook
-the book Lucy asked to bring outside
-the book the older children asked to bring outside
-my clipboard for taking notes for the children's portfolios (a future post, I think...)
-my awesome new sewing-project bag--a gift from a friend--containing a soaker-in-the-works.

And sure enough, when the kids were making mud-pies and their play was so much more rich without interference from me, I was able to sneak in a few rows of crochet while watching from afar.

Perpetual to-do list

No, not that list--the one you wrote a million to-dos on that will never get done. I mean one that gets used again and again and again. Like this:



In our house, if the dishes don't get washed at night, or the laundry's heaped on the couch, 5 other families are going to see the mess when they bring their children in in the morning. Not only is that super embarrassing, but it's important to me to create an organized, uncluttered environment for the children: it settles them and helps them focus their thinking and play. And in addition to normal family chores, we have extra prepare-for-tomorrow's-group-of-kids chores (like changing the bedding on 5 nap mats). Trying to get all that done--while simultaneously preparing, eating, and cleaning up dinner, spending a bit of time together as a family, getting Lucy to bed, and trying to have a few minutes of the day when we're not working--has presented, shall we say, just a wee bit of stress. (Do you hear the sarcasm there?)

We needed a system. Something to keep us on the same page so I wasn't nagging all the time. Of course, my thoughts went first to a to-do list (we both love crossing things off a list). I thought about typing it and printing a ton of copies, but what a waste of paper! So one night, I grabbed one of the kids' chalkboards and used a sharpie to write out our morning and evening chores. It sits on our kitchen counter, and we use it daily to keep track of what's been done and what's left to do.

Now, I can't say that the house is always spotless when the parents arrive in the morning. (In fact, I can pretty much promise that it's not. I work far too many hours a day and have had to give up the hope of a perfectly clean home.) But I can say that the things on the list are finished. And that helps me start the day on a much more peaceful note. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go change the mats so I can cross it off the list.

What's on the basement shelves?

So why all the food preservation talk around here? A few years ago, (after reading Barbara Kingsolver's then-brand-new book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, of course), we decided to make a much more concerted effort to buy only locally-produced food. As with many other decisions we've made, we decided to see how far we could go, and never turned back. For us, it's come to look like this:

We eat only locally-grown produce (with the exception of lemons, which we haven't been able to do without. And dried coconut. We all have our weaknesses.) Because we live in New England, this means we have to preserve a lot of food in order to eat in the winter.

We try to choose locally-produced other foods, whenever possible.

We try to avoid buying packaged, processed foods. We do better or worse at this depending on how crazy our life gets. This winter, I am determined to return to baking bread, and making yogurt, for example, but for now, we're buying those.

It became clear early on that we'd need a system to keep track of what we'd stored, to help us use it up efficiently, and to help us remember from year to year what worked and what didn't. Above, you can see the system we're using now, our food storage inventory. On graph paper, we keep track of "item," "date," "source and recipe," "quantity and status," and "notes." (You can click on the picture to see it larger.)

Under "item," we list the name of what we've stored, using specific recipe names if applicable so we can remember which recipe we'd used. We list everything from dried herbs to frozen veggies to canned jam to storage squash all on the same inventory. Some day, I might further organize things by type, but for now, it's all organized chronologically.

The "date" part helps us remember what's in season when so we don't miss mulberry season, for example.

Under "source and recipe," we note where we got the food--which farmer, friend, or foraging spot. And we write down where we found the recipe so we can find it again. "CBHP," in the photo above, for example, is the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.

Under "quantity and status," we make a slash in a box for each item, and write below what size it is: gal. bag, or 1/2 pt. As we bring it up from storage, we put another slash through it, making an X, to mark it gone. This way, we can see at a glance what we have lots of and what we should use sparingly. As I plan meals, I use this tally to help me figure out what we should eat.

In the final "notes" column, I write down if we loved or hated it, if I altered the recipe, if I bought too much and it all rotted, or whatever might be useful the next year.

Now, back to the kitchen. There's lots more pages to fill if we're to keep to this commitment this year!

Learning not to think

I'm a thinker. I mull things over, obsess, worry. I spend so much time thinking about how best to do something, sometimes it keeps me from doing it. I am not spontaneous. In college, I quit the clarinet--which I'd played well for years--because the next stage would have been for me to play improvisationally, and I just didn't have the nerve to do it. I love ballroom dance (it has rules; I can follow), but am self-conscious just moving to music. I love to sing, and can learn and hold a second-soprano part with ease, but ask me to make up a harmony on my own? Forget it.

So it's interesting that my favorite quilts tend to be the improvised ones, rather than those that follow a pattern.

When I began my crazy log cabin quilt, I was thinking too much. Each block took me a very long time, because I'd cut a piece, search and search for the best piece to go next, think about which pieces should come after that, think about what size and shape I wanted the pieces, etc. Then one day I just cut a whole bunch of pieces randomly, so I'd have a bunch ready to just grab. They were in nice neat color-sorted piles, and I was still spending a lot of time looking for just the right piece.

Then last night, I took my color piles and jumbled them up into baskets. I liked it so much better already--I could see at a glance what I had, and the juxtaposition of pieces beside each other in the baskets suggested possibilities.



I knew I wanted to start a block using a small piece that featured a girl in bed with a rooster on the bedpost. That meant using a very wide piece against the center block, making it almost double-centered. But I didn't obsess about it. I glanced, made a quick choice, and sewed. (In fact, I was being so spontaneous, I messed up--you'll see it if you've made log cabin blocks before. Oh, well. I chose not to worry about it and kept on.)



And in the end, I love how it came out. I did another block using the same method, working too quickly to think it over too much. I generally knew which color I wanted next, and I sometimes chose and rejected one piece before settling on another, but that was about as much thought as I gave it. And it worked.

How wonderful. Sometimes, not thinking is exactly what I need. Now if only I could apply it in other areas of my life...