Category Archives: Flylady

The Storm is over for now.

Posted in bread, California, cooking, Flylady, home stuff, Uncategorized by

We made it through although it did get pretty intense for 5-6 hours. We didn’t lose any trees but they sure were swaying giving us heart palpitations. The rain tapered off but the wind kept going. Today seems to be a break and then another storm is headed in. I’m not sure how that one is forecast.

So yesterday’s PT went well. I do think the exercises are helping a great deal. I also saw my PC. He’s ok and does listen. He upped my Lisinprol dose as my BP’s been higher than normal @ 145-155 so we’ll see how the upped dose works. My guess is that since I’m not walking every day, or swimming, my aerobics are off, and thus, my BP. He mentioned that his wife has lived with no ACL for 20 years and is a runner. So that gave me hope that I’ll get through this.

I came home and did the kitchen zone. B had Bender going so the vacuuming got done.

I’m baking the sourdough boule this morning and doing odds and ends. I might make some polenta for dinner with tomato sauce. Since I don’t have an IP anymore I’ll make it on the stove. I’ve thought about getting another one because for certain things it is convenient. Beans, chili, and polenta were my go-to’s. But at this point, I’ll keep doing it in a regular pot. Maybe I can find one on Facebook Marketplace.

Organizing is not decluttering

Posted in budgeting, California, decluttering, Flylady, home improvement, home stuff, simplicity by

I’ve been on another round of decluttering. I don’t have lots of stuffed areas in my small home but I do have things that I no longer need or find useful. I didn’t make the connection for myself about visual clutter till way into my decluttering journey. Now I realize, that because I’ve always been a visual person, I need to see space around me in my home. That’s also the reason all the rooms of my house, the bathroom excluded, are painted Simple White by Benjamin Moore. I need that continuity.

If you’re just organizing your stuff, you’re really just rearranging stuff that probably needs to go. Moving stuff around doesn’t get rid of it. reI like organizing things using the container method. This method by Dana K White is about keeping only what fits in any container. The rest is decluttered. It’s a good method and very efficient at getting to visually see what you have in any given space. 

This month we took a bunch of things to the Placer Food Bank. Some of this was the ‘pandemic’ food I just knew I would never use but someone else might. Especially all the Mountain House dehydrated food meals that I thought someone homeless could use as they are complete meals. I still have a few random things to give them but I’ll wait till at least it’s a bag full.

We also took a load of ‘nice’ things to the Assistance League thrift. This included 2 pairs of dress-type shoes( Merrells, and Naots), and some other misc. I’ve already got a few more things ready to go including the Food Saver vacuum sealer that I haven’t used since summer and then it was only for frozen corn. I also have the beautiful quilt frame ready to go. I have it on Pay it Forward but so far no takers.

It’s important to reevaluate where you are in life and what things are helping in your space and what things are just in the way or cluttering up your home. I have decluttered pretty extensively since 2011( I checked an old file I had from when I started Flylady). So much has left my home and storage areas but it doesn’t really stop as there’s always something to get rid of. I’m a firm believer that the things I don’t need may benefit someone else. Plus, now being in my 70’s, there’s a whole other level to what I need/want. I need things in my home to be simple and easy to maintain. Plus, there’s the safety factor of how things are. We know we’ll need to change out the tub for just a shower unit and I’m planning on working that into a project for this summer. Since we only have one bathroom, summer will be best because we can use Rubi’s bathroom while we do this. The floor will need to be redone and sink, toilet while we’re at it. Of course, this is going to have to be budgeted for. But what we do know is the tub needs to go for safety.

We still have some boxes of photos to go through. B has been putting some on the cloud to preserve them. I also have gone through these boxes previously and gotten rid of tons of photos that were duplicates, of random nature pictures, and just blurry or strange.

Once the weather changes, I’ll go back out to the barn and clean the restaurant shelves, and decide what to do with the empty bins. There are maybe 8 bins or so. I might take some of the older bins we have and switch to these as they are smaller in size and fit those shelves perfectly. But, we are in a rainy period here in Northern California so it might be a while. The next week is forecast to be raining off and on.

Simple Sunday

Posted in budgets, California, cooking, decluttering, Flylady, Pantry, Uncategorized by

Wow, lots of rain yesterday. This morning is still a little drizzly. Sadly, there is no Sunday walk but once I see the PT I’ll ask if I can even do a little. I don’t see them till near the end of the month unless there’s a cancellation. Definitely difficult for me but also don’t want my knee to buckle and then if I fall cause some other problem.

We did venture out in the rain to get the monthly Costco done. I was quite surprised it wasn’t packed. We found a place to park near the entrance and had no problem going down the aisles. We even got to the register without waiting. By the time we were leaving though cars were circling the parking lot because of the pouring rain.

Today I plan on doing the Flylady zone of the bathroom and I’ll add the bedroom too. I usually do these together as both don’t take very long. I also want to write down the meal plan for the week and see what needs using. We had freezer stuffed peppers last night and I also have some chicken enchiladas that I took out so I’ll have those tonight. I have some rice so I thought I’d make my favorite Greek lemon rice soup. Plus I have a lot of Meyer lemons that were given to me to use.

I have put a few things on Facebook market place I’m not using to try and sell. One is the Food Saver vacuum thing. If it doesn’t sell then I’ll put in a box for the Assistance League thrift store. My food saver hasn’t been used this year except when I did the corn this summer. I can just use ziploc bags for that this summer. I did use it when we were in the pandemic for oats and such but now I’m not interested in that kind of food storage. We gave the food bank all the Mountain House food I’d gotten during the pandemic and lots of cans of things I don’t need. That felt good to do that. The barn pantry now is officially closed and I’ll only keep bulk items in the house either in my jars or in the 2 under the bed bins. I still have plenty of beans, rice and canned goods plus my own shelf stable foods I canned. I’ll have to think about what might need to get stored out there as I have the nice bins I bought for food and I’d like to see them used for something.

This just arrived from Williams Sonoma. It’s my Christmas present from my daughter. I’ve been using it constantly and it’s really great. The rice came out perfectly. If you’re going to invest in Staub, be sure to wait for the sales. Most of the time you can get 50% off if it’s around Christmas.

This week I’m planning the gym once if I feel my knee can get me in there and I need to drop books off at the library. If I’m wearing the knee brace my knee does feel more stable.

Simple Sunday

Posted in Blood test, books, bread, California, cooking, Flylady, Uncategorized, Walking by

Yesterday we were out the door at 6:20am( unfortunately, not to swim as that is my normal leave time to go the pool), but get the MRI on the knee. It all went very easy and even though it wasn’t an open MRI, my head was outside the tube. I’ll be glad to get the results and then go forward with whatever. For now, I won’t swim or go walking till I know the scoop.

I was done within 1/2 hour so we went to a new to us breakfast place. It’s called Pottery World Cafe. Just over the freeway from the imaging building. It was quite nice and the food was good. From there we drove another 5 minutes up to where Trader Joe’s is and picked up some groceries. All in all, it was a fine morning.

Then the rain came in quite heavy around 12 noon. It pretty much rained all day. Today is very cold but nice and sunny.

I do plan on going to the library Tuesday or Wednesday depending. I have 6 books on hold. At least I’ll have something to read.

I have to call the PT office and schedule seeing someone. I’m not sure how booked they are so that could change the week. If there’s a chance I will go do upper body weights and at least keep something going. 😦

I have a tentative menu plan for the week:

  1. black bean chili and cornbread

2. roast chicken, potatoes, salad and something for the vegetarian.( I have some tempeh to use).

3. lentil soup and homemade bread

4. A freezer meal, maybe cheese tamales

5. pasta with red sauce and salad

6. leftover chicken something, quesadillas? or pot pie?

7. either pizza or something which resembles pizza.

Of course, every day is different so I’ll decide what to cook each day.

We finished the Reacher Amazon Prime series and it was very good. If you like Reacher as a character, the show is well done. Now we need to find something new. We really only watch maybe an hour and a half at night, sometimes less even but it’s nice to have a series where the episodes are 60 minutes or so. I had gotten the Season 10 of Father Brown and that was fun to catch up on. I think we stopped watching back in Season 7 or 8 so there had been changes but still, it was fun to watch and who doesn’t love the Cotswolds.

I’ve already done the kitchen zone for the week, so I don’t have any big house stuff to do. I need to run Bender, dust plus water some plants.

Simple Sunday

Posted in California, cooking, Flylady, home stuff, meal planning, Uncategorized, Walking by

A cloudy but not too cold of a morning walk. The park had a few people showing up to do things Christmas related at the community center.

We are expecting quite a bit of rain this week so we’ll see how the driving to Roseville goes. The only day I have to go is Wednesday for infusion. If it’s miserable out, I probably won’t drive down to the gym/library.

On the agenda today is to tidy the house, vacuum, do the bedroom zone(done), and do a meal plan for the week with freezer /pantry meals. So far I have cheese tamales, mushroom spinach crepes, the meatballs from Costco, and baked potatoes. I might do a spaghetti night too.

I plan on doing some decluttering around the house. Mostly, misc stuff that just needs to go or seems to be unneeded. The end of the year is a perfect time to look around at what is being used and what is just in the way. Especially since I’m neurodivergent when it comes to visual clutter or even just visual things around me. I don’t like and/or get stressed at too much color, and patterns or things on the surfaces of things. Right now with Christmas, I’m stressed about the added stuff around which is probably why I put some of it away already. Well, it’s always a good idea to look around our homes with a fresh perspective.

Simple Sunday

Posted in bread, budgets, California, cooking, Flylady, Halloween, Pantry, seasonal things, Walking by

A rainy simple Sunday. I’m grateful for the rain. Fire season is safely over. It’s hard to sense whether we are in for a hard winter or mild. With global warming, I guess all bets are off. Still, it is such a strange October to have temperatures close to 90 degrees. That’s never happened before.

We started out with our walk and it hadn’t started raining yet. It was quite balmy in fact. A very nice quiet walk. Most of the Canada geese are gone and the 3 little white duckies are gone too.

I came home and got the KBS bread maker going with a whole wheat sourdough. It seemed to not display the menu right and I had to do a reset that B figured out. Not sure what is the problem but I’ll have to check how long before it is that I can return it if necessary. It did go to the dough cycle after the reset. ?? humm, we’ll see. Anyway, it’s doing it’s first rise in the bread pan.

I did some weights at the gym and didn’t stop anywhere except our PO box. I’ve had 2 things lost this week and yesterday a VERY expensive Ebay item(christmas) it said delivered but no one came up to the house. So I’m freaking out a little as to where it is but can’t call the post office till Monday. Our post office has gone down hill this last year with things continually being lost, damaged, put in wrong boxes etc. I’m not sure what their problem is. But also, the person from E bay was not very nice and essentially said too bad. But I will open a dispute if it doesn’t show up. Anyone have an ebay item lost/not show up and get a dispute resolved. If it was just a few bucks I wouldn’t mind but this is in the 100’s. A very specific item.

My house tidying up is almost done. I just need to finish the kitchen. There’s one small load of laundry going. I vacuumed yesterday so that’s done. this week with Flylady, it’s the bedroom zone. I plan on moving all the rest of my canning jars out to the garden shed as I don’t plan on doing anything soon. I know I want do at least one other shelf stable meal, but haven’t decided what yet. We did love the white bean stew. Plus, it was vegetarian so B could have it.

Another blogger was showing some Halloween decorations she had out and I said I’d post a few photos of my 1940’s collection.

This one is probably 1950’s.

Vintage are items are VERY pricey as I’m guessing a lot of it got used and then tossed.

Simple Sunday

Posted in Blood test, bread, California, camping, cooking, decluttering, Flylady, freezer cooking, Lake tahoe, minimalism, Sashiko, simplicity, swimming, Uncategorized, Walking by

A lovely walk this morning with a few people there. Sundays are my favorite day to walk as usually there is no one. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the weather turns.

Yesterday the pool was quite busy and I shared a lane. I noticed more of the ‘regulars’ there so it must be the news is out that the pool is open. It was still great. This week will be different as I have 2 days of doing other things and then next Sunday we’re off to Tahoe for the week. We do plan to use the gym at least 2x and walk when we can.

Here’s a sample of the Sashiko I’m doing on a pair of old jeans.

I got these 2 books from the library. Both are quite good with patterns. I liked the one on the left more.

Working with the denim was more difficult but it’s just a patch so I’m not concerned about even stitching. Just random running stitches.

Here’s a picture of the sourdough rye I made. It had good flavor and it did a fairly nice spring for being rye. Rye is hard to do but I’ll do another loaf eventually.

I’ve been playing around with sourdough focaccia too. I still haven’t gotten the top all crispy like the YouTube channel showed. I’m thinking the oven needed to be hotter?? Not sure, but I’ll keep trying. I wanted to perfect a bread that we could use for sub sandwiches and the focaccia seemed like a good option.

This morning, I plan on going to the gym for just weights, no treadmill as I walked this morning and I don’t want my knee to be overworked. Then I have double-stuffed potatoes to make and freeze. Yesterday PGE had our power off all day so I couldn’t use the oven.

Flylady zone is the bedroom. If you follow along a tip I read from Peter Walsh was ‘ask yourself what the room in question is for’, so like the bedroom is to sleep, rest, etc. So remove anything from the bedroom that doesn’t support that. No electronics for instance. After having done Feng Shui for years, I do think what you have around you does affect you on some level. I don’t do FS anymore but the principles of FS and minimalism are quite similar. Keeping things harmonious and uncluttered is key, along with subdued color palettes.

I get my labs tomorrow so I should know by Friday what we’re going to do with treatment.

Simple Sunday

Posted in bread, California, camping, cooking, Flylady, home stuff, Lake tahoe, seasonal things, Uncategorized, Walking by

I made it around the park 3 times so that’s a big improvement. My knee is definitely improving. I didn’t use the treadmill though at the gym as I thought that might be too much. I did the weight machines twice.

We’ve been having supper out on the patio all week and even had 3 evenings of a fire in the fire pit before we come in to watch Bosch. I only watch TV for an hour or an hour and a half is pushing it. Even movies, we split into 2 nights. We watched Otto this week for 2 nights. It’s a good movie, maybe not a great movie, but still enjoyable.

After the gym, I put the bread in the oven. This is a new sourdough recipe from ‘Everyday Sourdough’ and it uses whey from yogurt making. Since I had just made yogurt I saved the whey. It uses a Pullman pan which sadly I do not have yet. So we’ll see.

Then I did the bathroom zone, vacuumed, tidied the bedroom, and dusted the LR zone. That’s about it for zone cleaning.

My daughter harvested most of the basil and I made four 4-ounce jars of pesto for the freezer.

The next batch of tomatoes you see behind the pesto, I will freeze till I have enough for sauce.

This coming week looks light. No appts, but we may go to Costco. I’ll wait and see what I need. I know I’ll go before our Tahoe trip so I have 2 weeks.

Simple Sunday

Posted in books, bread, California, cooking, Flylady, home improvement, home stuff, kitchen remodel, Uncategorized, Walking by

I’m trying out some new sourdough recipes for burger buns. This is the second recipe. It has an egg and milk so it’s a soft dough. Not a lot of rise so I may try one that just uses instant yeast. Last night we had tofu burgers with the ones I did yesterday. They had excellent flavor but were on the smallish side.

Whoa, Nellie!! It is hot!!! Today is supposed to be the hottest at 106. I hope it doesn’t get that hot.

I just finished closing all the windows and the thermo curtains. These are the ones I bought from Amazon. I originally bought them for the entry way windows as they get full afternoon sun. They do a great job so I ordered a set for one of the bedroom windows and then 2 sets for my office windows that get full morning sun. They are affordable and do the job. I wanted to get the natural colored ones for myoffice but they were double what the grey ones were so that won out.

The window coolers are doing a good job keeping things cool enough. I have them set on the lowest setting and the 2 that are digital I keep at 78-80 and they come on automatically. Last night I turned them all off at 8 and opened windows.

We had a nice walk this morning and it was cool enough. Lots more people out early though to walk before the heat kicks in.

We took one side of the kitchen cabinets down yesterday.

We’re going to put up one 2×12 shelf using the hand forged brackets from Signature Hardware. B will paint it today and then get the shelf up. Then all the shelves will match except the other side which we’ll take down next week. I don’t have the brackets for that side yet. They are pricey but I love the look. Originally I was going to do Elfa shelving from the ceiling down but I don’t need that much shelving and plus I wouldn’t be able to reach anything. One shelf will be enough. I keep my bread up there and my basket of vitamins/prescriptions. There will be a few cups as well.

After I bake the burger rolls I’m going to the gym and do some weights. I plan on cooking a chicken while I’m gone so the oven can be off after 10 am. My oven is very efficient though and does not heat up the kitchen. Still, it’s on and there probably is some heat residual.

FlyLady this week is the bedroom but I’ve already done that so I’ll just do a quick once around and tidy some areas that need it.

I just finished Rhonda Hetzel’s book’ Down to Earth’. It’s a very fine book and worth buying. I got my copy off ebay. I doubt you would find it at a used book store. There weren’t a lot to choose from. It’s nothing all that new to me, but I like her perspective. Her husband, Hanno, died last year and it’s been a hard time for her. She actually closed her blog just recently. She has kept up all the posts and they are worth taking a read.

Simple Sunday

Posted in bread, California, decluttering, Flylady, simple foods, Uncategorized, Walking by

photo from The Nesting Place

I’ve been working a bit on decluttering and changing things up a bit. I decided to iron the linen duvet cover and put the comforter inside. It might be too warm this time of year but I’m trying to keep the comforter clean as it is white. So the big basket I kept that in and our one other blanket I have ready to go to the thrift store or the Pay it Forward group. Honestly, I’ve had very little luck with that group. People say they want something and never show up.

I finally got the second box of peaches from Stackhouse Orchards( Local in the valley), so I waited about 5 days for them to ripen and made a peach pie.

Not the prettiest lattice top but hopefully it tastes good. The peaches were very sweet. update: We had this with vanilla ice cream last night and it was yummy.

We had a nice walk this morning with no one else around except the Canada geese. All the families are grown up and they should start flying lessons soon.:)

I just started the oven to preheat for a loaf of sourdough. I’ll get that going before I go to the gym.

I was thinking back to routines when my children were younger. Since we did Waldorf schooling there is always a rhythm to the day and week. Rudolf Steiner, although weird, did create an exceptional educational model. Each day had a color, and like wise, each classroom in Waldorf is lazured ,painted, a certain color. For instance kindergarten is an orange pink, all the way to 8th grade which is usually a violet blue.

I think the rhythm of the day and year were important in how my kids developed. We always ate dinner together and often did school craft projects together too. My daughter who is an incredible artist often did watercolor painting with Z.

That’s probably where my love of routines comes in. I didn’t start Fly Lady till later, probably around when my son was in 4th grade. It was an instant fit for me to do the 15 minutes a day and that’s how I started decluttering. Most of the major decluttering is done except for keeping up with what’s relevant now in our lives. Things come and go. But the zone cleaning keeps me on track and even though I know it without even looking at a list, I like to have the lists as reference. What I did eventually was write down each of my zones and what needed to be done according to them. That’s what still use today.

We had a ready made meal last night from the pantry. It was the white bean ragout and then my daughter and I had the chicken chili verde with some of the white beans. It was a hit. I need to write up a menu for the week. I know one night I’m doing a spinach frittata. I also have some ricotta to use so I may make a couple of cheese lasagnas.