Some Useful Links

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Cumberland General Store

Some posted about this place on AODA. Has all sorts of cool home stuff. Kind of like Lehman's although it may be more extensive in some areas... only just started exploring it today. Stuff for veggie and meat preserving, games, crafts, lighting, books and more. Both small items like replacement oil lamp wicks or monkey socks to large items like a porch swing. Camping supplies/accessories too.

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And for those who haven't checked it out, here's Lehmans

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A place for food preservation supplies: Canning Pantry Among other things, you can order just lids here, if you're re-using canning jars from previous times canning.

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And a friend posted this link to a site with some nice-looking knives:
Discount Cutlery

This particular page is for Opinel knives.

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And today's post by Sharon Astyk is another helpful post on stocking one's pantry. Comments by readers are often also useful. I don't read all of her posts, especially if they're too long and convoluted, but the how-to types are generally useful.

I liked that she pointed out today stocking up on some items for future projects, not just food. While I don't want to have an entire hardware store's worth of stuff here, some things are useful to have all the time, like boxes of whatever screws and nails you like to use for fixing things, putting up shelves, pictures, etc. Also, I'm on the Jo-Ann's Fabric (chain local to us) mailing list because things like thread are expensive but very useful, so I always buy it on sale. They had a sale just recently of 50% off thread so I bought a bunch in a variety of colors. Notions sales are handy too.

Aside from concerns about future price increases or possible job loss, Sharon also mentions, and I agree, that it's nice not to have to run out to get various supplies all the time. Save gas, money, and time!

Remembered this sometime in the past few weeks, but kept forgetting to post it. Earlier this summer I wrote about disaster preparedness, and one of the things was making sure you had enough water. A few folks mentioned not having a lot of space for storage, although we all came up with a few creative methods (behind the shoes, if you have a deep closet, for instance).

But when I was a kid we didn't have bottled water. I'm sure it existed -- at least the expensive Perrier mineral water, and suchlike. Whenever a really big storm was going to come through and it looked like we might lose power, water, etc., we would fill all the biggest cooking pots with water, and a bath tub. Instantly, you have some water for drinking, cooking (assuming a way to cook or a food that just needs to soak for a while), and minimal washing.

For those who don't have a nice big bath tub, if you have any sort of plastic bins (Rubbermaid, Sterlite, etc.) -- you could empty it/them out and store water in them. I'd use that water for washing, mostly, but as long as they were clean to start with, the water should be tolerable and safe enough for a week or so -- just keep the lid on and keep it in a cool place out of direct sunlight.

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House Update

The floor in upstairs bathroom is leveled and mostly tiled. L is working on it more today.

The crew on Saturday got window and door trim cut for the living/dining room, and primed some of the upstairs hallway and stairway walls.

I've applied what I think is the final layer of joint compound to the nasty stairway wall.

I did some touch-up work on the ceilings in the kitchen and living/dining room.