How I Spent My Thanksgiving Vacation

Situations and revelations often bring about change. Over the past few years, my husband and I have really made changes to how we live. We raise chickens for eggs and try to grow a good chunk of our groceries as well as put up fruits and veggies for out-of-season enjoyment. We brew beer and make a variety of fruit wines and embrace a do-it-yourself kind of life. However, with these changes came an influx of supplies like canning pots and jars, brewing equipment, peat pots, feed bins, and tools. Our organizational band-aids can no longer handle the clutter.

Oh yeah, did I mention that we’re selling my husband’s truck? We’ve been operating as a single-car family for about a year now and realized that transportation isn’t an issue.

However, that back end of the truck filled with tools is a huge issue. Those tools have to go somewhere, and no, my living room is not an option. I just got the radial arm saw out of there!

Let me add in here that we’re kind of on the poor side. A shed would be the perfect answer for my husband’s tools that are in the truck and for the ones in the house. The tools leaving the house then frees up space for organizing the other supplies and our pantry. Unfortunately, we have to sell the truck in order to have the money to buy that shed. I think you can see my conundrum. It’s like one of those sliding picture puzzles where you use an empty space to slide the pieces around until you put the picture together correctly. In my case, the picture was messed up but someone filled the much-needed empty space!

Enter Freecycle and a wonderful blessing from the Lord! A FREE 6’ x 8’ shed in great shape! All we had to do was pick it up. Not a problem!! Tom and Jared took off with a bucket of tools and a couple of hours later hauled the disassembled shed into the backyard. The perfect empty space for our sliding picture puzzle!

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, my dear husband and son put that shed in place and moved our other shed across the yard.

Then they built shelves for both sheds and organized Tom’s tools and the garden equipment.

With open space on the tool shelves in the basement, we emptied the “Cave,” a room we use for storage but was so disorganized that it was more of a dumping ground than useful storage.

Tom and Jared lined half the Cave with shelves for all the jars of food I’ve put up over the last couple of months as well as the extra jars, canning pots, and beer and wine making equipment.

Write directly on the jar with a Sharpie. It comes off in washing with no residue unlike labels that can leave a mess behind.

The other half of the Cave, behind the shelves, will become a music room for Jared so he has space for his drums, keyboard, and guitar. He’s pretty excited to have a space for music and clutter out of his room!

We aren’t completely finished with this huge project yet. We still have a few puzzle pieces out of place. The tool shelves in the basement still need work before they can hold all of the coolers and bins we use constantly for our on-the-go lifestyle and some other miscellaneous things like grow lights, water jugs, propane canisters, etc. Jared’s area isn’t set up yet either because we still have some lumber stored there, but we are well on our way to living a little more efficiently. I’m pretty excited about seeing the finished picture in our puzzle!

Thanks for stopping by! By the way, I am confident that the entire project will be finished in a timely manner. Why? Christmas is coming, and we want to decorate! That, and we have a 4-H meeting in 2 weeks, and we need the living room back by then.

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

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