I know
tradition says to get a clean start in the spring, but think about your life in
the spring. The garden needs put in, the
flower beds tended, kids have baseball, soccer, graduation, lots of spring
babies both four legged and two legged to tend to and the list goes on and
on. Who has time to spring clean? Who wants to spring clean when the weather is
so warm and inviting? Not my family for certain. Speaking of warm, cleaning is
a lot of HOT work and who wants to heat up the house cleaning it when it’s
already 80 degrees and climbing outside.
So we deep
clean in the fall and winter months instead, I also do a lot of my canning,
freezer filling, food drying and such during those months as well. Not only because I generally have more time,
but for the HEAT!
So as the
cooler days and nights are starting to show up more and more here in OK I am
finding myself more and more in a deep cleaning mood. First thing we did was shut off the air
conditioner and throw open all the windows any time it was warm enough outside
to do so. This helps pump fresh air into
the house and remove the musty smells before winter sets in. It’s free, and unless you are super allergic
to fresh air it’s a good remedy for what ails your house. Definitely cheaper
than purchasing a “smells like fresh air” room deodorizer.
Next my
husband switched the dryer vent from outside to inside the house. Why blow all that wonderful hot air outside when
we need it inside for the winter? It
won’t “heat” the house, but it will add some warm moisture to what can
sometimes be a very dry heat in our wood heated home. It also adds that “freshly laundered linen
scent” again without the cost of a room deodorizer.
Then we
start on one room/area of the house and work our way through. Vacuuming, dusting and culling out unneeded
items as we go.
The culling
of unneeded items is a great way to save money on heating and cooling as well
as helping you keep the home tidier during your busier seasons.
One book I
read (It may have been one of Amy Dacycyzn’s Tightwad Gazette books) referred
as the objects in our homes as other living beings that needed to be attended
to.
The author
of the book pointed out that everything in your home must be heated, cooled,
cleaned, moved around at one point or another, insured and just generally be
tended to. By removing the excess from
your home you eliminate all these actions.
While I’m
not suggesting you be like Jeff “Professor Dumpster” Wilson and get rid of everything you own except what will fit
in a backpack and live in a dumpster for a year
to cut down your cost of living I am suggesting that you do not need 50
t-shirts and 30 pairs of jeans—especially the ones that don’t fit in your
life per person in your household.
All those
things take a lot of work, and money to maintain. This is the theory we’ve been working on with
the Princess Plan and we are finding that
less is truly more as a result. More time in our lives, more cleanliness in our
home, more money in our pocket—hey cleaning is expensive if you aren’t careful!
While I do
not have my home completely culled yet—will I or anyone ever have it completely
done? My family has made huge progress
in doing so and more importantly because we have culled so much during the cooler
months of the last few years we’ve found we are able to maintain those areas
much easier in the hot months and it takes far less to cool the house as a
result.
But cleaning
and culling are not the only changes we make this time of year to help cut our
heating bills during the cold months. As
I’ve already mentioned we turn the dryer heat inside.
Because we mainly
use wood heat we also generally have at least one pan of spices simmering on
the wood stove top to help keep moisture and a wonderful fragrance in the air.
Our
combination is usually a citrus peel of some sort, whole cloves, and cinnamon
sticks. I purchase the spices in bulk off
of amazon, at big box stores and sometimes through co-ops and generally only
have to add more to the pan about every 2-3 weeks or when we notice the scent
has started to fade. Far cheaper than
running some fake over powering air freshener in the months ahead.
I also take
advantage of the winter months to do a lot of bulk cooking to can and
freeze. My dehydrator runs a lot more
during the winter months too. I know
that sounds strange to those of you who are just now finishing off a food
preserving season, but who wants to do all those things when the weather is
100+ degrees?
While I do
preserve food year round I do the majority of it in the winter months. I have more time and the heat is a welcome
addition to our home. It cuts down the
need for firewood for us (or a power source for you) to heat, and the
availability of many items we wouldn’t normally have is outstanding.
While things
like tomatoes aren’t in season citrus fruits, apples, nuts, fall potatoes,
cabbage, squash and their brother the pumpkins are coming full on now. These are the things I’m looking at
preserving.
The beauty
of these items also is they are not short term store items either. You can buy them on sale now (or bring them
in from your garden) and store them in a cool dark place—be careful what you
put apples and onions near as they put off a gas that can cause some foods to
ripen faster, and then come January you can freeze, can and dehydrate like
crazy while heating your home with the heat such work generates. Far better
than heating the house up in the summer and making your air conditioner work
double time to keep you comfortable.
You don’t
have a root cellar you say. You don’t
need one. There are a lot of ways to
“root cellar” foods without having a basement.
An excellent
book for this is “Root Cellaring: Natural Cold
Storage of Fruits and Vegetables” by Mike and Nancy Bubel. If you click
on the hyperlink you can read more about this wonderful book on Outside a Dog, my media review blog.
Anyway, I
purchase these items on sale now, store them in the root cellar until I have
time for them and then make jams, jellies, preserves, dried fruits and
vegetables, can and freeze to have all these great items in the summer
months. Trust me, lemonade made from home dried lemons in August is
divine.
This is also
the time of year I pull the tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables I didn’t
have the time or inclination to deal with in the heat of the summer out of the
freezer and can or dry them.
Bulk cooking
becomes a big part of my winter months as well. I tend to have my crockpots
going daily or a pan of something simmering on the big Ashley stove in the
sunroom. Because of our limited freezer
space I tend to can up jars of slow simmered applesauce, pasta sauce, stew,
chili, beans, cooked meats and fill my food storage as I go.
Websites
that include new to me recipes for beans and similar other low cost foods are
haunted heavily by me in the winter months.
One I just became familiar with is http://www.pulsecanada.com/food-health/what-is-a-pulse
Not only
does it cut down on my grocery bill year round to do this, but many of the
needed ingredients are going on sale during the fall months as fall butchering and
harvesting begins. Come spring the cost
of meats will be up and we will go back to living off our food storage until
the meat sales begin again.
In another
week or so turkeys will be on sale.
While only two in my household eat turkey I will be purchasing several large ones
while they are on sale. These will be
roasted or smoked and then either dried or canned so I don’t have to heat the
kitchen up come summer for turkey for the two of us. I will also be making a lot of turkey jerky
as a treat for our dogs. Which is far healthier and cheaper for them than
anything commercially available. We all
benefit from the heat now of the cooking and the ease of just quickly heating
it or turning it into cold salads come summer.
The added
heat from the preserving of these foods is a welcome addition to any household
in the cooler fall and winter months. Not to mention the wonderful smells it
produces. Again why buy pumpkin pie
spice air freshners when you could be making pumpkin pie filling?
If home food
preserving is not your cuppa then consider using your crockpots on a daily
basis. Yes it can be done and done so
cheaply. In fact Stephanie O Dea made a
New Year’s Resolution back in 2008 to do just that. She used her crockpots every day for a full
year, guess what she’s still doing it now five years later. You can read about her and get her recipes
at: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2009/01/2008-flashback-entire-year-in-order.html or check out her feedburner feed at:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/AYearOfCrockpotting
Crockpot
cooking is easy, and generally uses less energy than traditional cooking. Not to mention it requires so little
attention being paid to it than every day cooking. Who couldn't use less work in the kitchen in their daily schedule?
I do a lot
more bread making in the fall and winter for all the same reasons. Sourdough starter, Amish Friendship Bread Starter, Refrigerator Potato Bread Dough and Artisan bread starters
reappear on my cabinet top and in my spare refrigerator.
Which leads
to another way we add “free heat” to the home.
As soon as I am finished with the oven, dishwasher or other similar
appliance I prop the door/lid open and let that heat escape into the room
around it. While it is just a little
extra heat, why waste it?
Drag out
your sweaters and snug sacks Add draft dodgers
to the bottoms of doors, window quilts to
your windows, especially the north ones.
Don’t forget to caulk all your leaky windows and similar things are all
best done this time of year.
I also tend
to burn more candles during the winter months, but with six cats we do stay
very close to the candles while they are lit.
It’s not money savings if the house burns down.
So while
most folks are looking forward to the slowing down of the summer months with a
slight pick up in things to do around the holidays I am headed into my busy
time of the year to save on energy.
Jan who says
she may be a little backward, but then it works for her in OK
No comments:
Post a Comment