Dryer Lint

     Since I began my little escapade to stop being so wasteful, I started saving my dryer lint.  I have about 3 gallon size Ziplock bags full of it.  I say I have but I meant I had.  I have found a very good use for dryer lint.  As you probably know, dryer lint is very flammable.  My family loves things that catch on fire.  The 4th of July is a  bigger holiday around here than Christmas.  I spend the entire year trying to gather up all the debris left from igniting hundreds of dollars worth of exploding happiness, that is the fire-cracker.  We have a very large fire pit that we use to roast marshmallows and  hot dogs.  My husband refuses to grill on anything other than real pecan wood.  His pallet is not that finicky, he just likes to build fires. We burn our trash and have a fireplace that is not gas but has to be carefully lit every night.  I hope our insurance agent never reads this.  Anyway, we love fire.  In the past we have spent quite a bit of  money on lighter fluid and when we don't have that we have been know to use a little gasoline to get a fire going.  That has not always worked out so well.  I have found however the perfect mix of flammable and safety.  I did not figure it out myself.  I learned it when my son was in Boy Scouts.  We saved up the cardboard egg cartoons and dryer lint and purchased canning wax and candle wicking.  You stuff each egg compartment with lint, slip into it a piece of wick about an inch and a half long, then pour melted wax into each compartment.  This simple concoction makes a perfect fire starter.  We have even started fires with soaking wet firewood with these things.

     You might not have a use for such a thing if you do not live in the country or with a pack of fire fanatics.  But if you like to camp or cook out over real wood they are the bees knees.  It gives you a use for lint and egg cartons.  I save up the butts of my candles so I very rarely have to buy wax.

     Some may say that the time it takes to make the things is wasteful.  A person can just run down to 7-11 and get one of those fire starter logs.  I made 24 of the things in less than 10 min. the other day and it cost me only pennies to make.  I think it is a good use of time. :)

No one normal can live without bacon

     I have never met a man that did not love bacon.  For that matter, I have never met a person that did not love bacon.  I hear they exists, these bacon haters, but I have never met one.  My precious daughter-in- law has been a vegetarian off and on for quite some time.  She wants to hate bacon, but, she can not.  It is too delicious, too smokey, and too versatile.  Bacon is good on everything.  I have started making my pancakes with bacon bits cooked right into the cake.  Forget serving it on the side.  Put the gift from heaven right in the batter.  Cover it with syrup and cry with delight when you take the first bite.  I have even started substituting the oil in the pancake recipe for bacon grease.  Warning...don't try this if you want to live past 50. 

     The problem is that bacon has gone up so much in the past year.  I used to be able to get a full pound of bacon for $1.99.  Now I will admit this was not thick slices or even consistent slices.  It was a brand called Corn King.  It was very unpredictable, but the taste was consistent.  In the past year they have decreased their package size to 12 oz. and have raised the price to 2 pkgs.  for 5 dollars.  That is if it is on sale, which is the only time I will buy it.  I got to a point that I could not bring myself to buy bacon.   The solution.  Crest and Wal-Mart have a thing called ends and pieces.  It is 3 full lbs. of bacon loveliness.  It is very unpredictable but, I have never ever been disappointed.  You get more meat and less fat.  It is like buying the center cut bacon.  The only thing is you have to sort it yourself.  It is vacuum packed in hunks.  I get it and bring it home and sort it through.  There is a bag for bacon bits, one for seasoning bits, and one for slices.  It takes about 10 min. to sort it through.  I cook the bacon bits all at one time and bag them up and freeze them.  In the long run it saves me time.  I bag up the fattiest pieces in handfuls for beans.  You never have to buy smoked hocks again.  Then I sort out the perfect slices.  This time I have about 2 lbs. of very lean slices.  I have never been disappointed in the amount of meat vs. fat.
     Bacon is not a luxury.  It is very much a necessity.  Men can not live for long periods of time without  bacon.  Don't let the rise in prices stop you from satisfying your man.  They need bacon.

Coupons revisited

     When I was a young married gal, I used coupons and went to the double coupon day at Safeway.  I found out however that I really was not saving anything because Safeway charged twice as much as other grocery stores.  When Buy-4-Less came in I started clipping again.  I used to set Jacob and Anna down with a pair of scissors and the Sunday coupons and told them to only clip the things they were familiar with.  What ever we were able to save at the store they got to keep.  That was their allowance.  That worked well for three reasons.  Them clipping them kept me from being tempted to buy things that I didn't really use. It also helped them understand money better.  They added, subtracted and compared all the time to make sure they were getting the best deal.  Reason three, I was going to give them an allowance anyway so why not make them work for it?  Where I made my mistake?  I didn't follow through and do it for very long.  I got lazy and started letting it slide.  When Jacob got older, I would have him add the grocery bill up in his head as we shopped.  If he got it right he got a reward.  That also helped me tremendously because I can;t add in my head to save my life.  He is to this day the best "head counter" I know besides his Dad. 

      Today, I started using coupons again.  I saved over 50 dollars!  Elizabeth is my youngest and she did the clipping.  She helped me compare and organize all the stuff.  I am going to split our savings with her.  Twenty five for her and twenty five for me.  Times have changed and she is a teenager.  She needs more money than the little kids did.  The benefits are the same.  She helps me control my urge to buy things I don't need, she is counting and comparing, and I am going to have to give her money anyway.  Why not use her help? 

Saving energy makes me cold

    In an effort to save on propane costs,  I have had to make a substantial investment in socks.  I am cold almost all the time.  The only time I am not cold is when I am in the car or working my very large fanny off.  I have learned though that being  motivated to get moving is not a  bad thing.  There is also the temptation to curl up under a blanket and stay there with my little doggies keeping  me warm, but a person can only sit still for so long.  They say necessity is the mother of invention,  in the same way, I say turning the thermostat down is the mother of getting your hiney in gear. 
     It  makes me think of all the women of the past who did not have the luxuries we have.  They had to lug their water, chop their firewood, and scrub their dirty clothes by hand.  But you know, they never had to worry about getting enough exercise, fresh air, or vitamin D from the sun.  They did  not obsess over every calorie. In fact they probably had the opposite problem, to get enough calories to get them through the day.  How our lives have changed.  It is now relatively easy to keep our homes clean and food on the table.  We have to pay money to go to gyms and classes to keep our bodies healthy.  We might pay someone to mow our grass  but then we put on our fancy running shoes and run through the neighborhood.  I have been begging my husband to pay someone to strip my floors and refinish them but I whine because I can't afford a personal trainer.
     This is my goal.  I am going to do my best not to waste the benefits that come from taking care of my home and family.  I will try to look at every chore as a type of exercise or enrichment for my mind and my body.  This is going to  be quite a stretch for me because I HATE HOUSEWORK.  I am a okay housekeeper at my very best.  I have ADHD and I am the baby of my family so therefore I am spoiled rotten.  Only by the grace of God will I  be able to change the way I look at housework.

Time Fighting

     One of the things that I probably waste the most of is time.  Time playing silly computer games or watching stupid TV.  I can say that the one thing I waste time on is really, really studpid.  Time fighting.  I fight with my kids over what they are doing or wearing, I fight with my dogs about where they can sit or lay, I fight with the old men in town about politics, but, the worst by far is time fighting with my husband.  He is a Nimrod at times no doubt.  He is a horrible communicator and an even worse time manager.  The thing is, I am stuck with him for the rest of my life.  Not because I am stuck because of religious beliefs or family dignity, but because I love him.  I can not imagine my life without him.  I could not leave  him if my life depended on it.  So why? Why fight?
     As I am writing this, I am saddened by news that a couple from our Church, recently had a fight that ended very very badly.  Tonight he is in jail, and she is dead.  Everyone is in shock that knew them. He seemed so loving towards her.  I believe he did truly love her.  The problem was not love, the problem was hate.  I am making some assumptions here but follow me for a  minute.  This was obviously not their first fight.  Something happened to cause some kind of evil hate inside of himself for her, the person he loved.  My guess is that they wasted too much time fighting.  Fighting almost always ends in resentment.  Country love songs where he says he sorry and how stupid he had  been make great stories but it doesn't really happen that way.  When we fight, we almost always say things we wish we could take back.  Those are the things that build up and fester inside of us.  They hurt us. 
     My thoughts for today are simply this.  If you love the one your with, don't waste a bunch of time fighting.  This is a really tough one for me.  I kinda like to fight because it makes things exciting,  but it is destructive.  It is something I need to learn to live without.  So tonight when he comes in the door, an hour later than I think he should be, I am going to keep my mouth shut. :)

Where do I put this crap

     It is starting to settle in that at some point I am going to have to find places to put all this stuff.  I have cleared a drawer in my kitchen to handle little things like rubber bands off the produce and twisty ties.  I have trash bags on the back porch for all my recyclables.  My problem at this point is that I live in the country and strangely enough people out here don't really care about recycling.  I asked a few people in town about recycling and they said "Honey just dig a big hole and bury it".  I have several "holes " like that on my property.  When a piece of land sits empty for a long time like this one that sat for 100 years without being occupied, people around just kinda think of it as public property.  People have hunted and fished freely on this land for a long time, they also had been dumping their trash here for a long time.  I have several ditches full of airconditioners, freezers, washers and dryers.  That stuff is not going to just go away.  At some point we are going to have to haul it out of here.  I guess if it had set for another 100 years, maybe no one would have known or cared. 
    
     I can't help but compare it to the footprint that the original homesteaders of the property left behind.  I had seen on a map and had been told by neighbors about where the original homestead was.  It was built of logs and sod so the structure was long gone.  One day in early spring I was up mowing around the area where I believed the old home stood.  I saw something bright purple and I assumed that it was some type of trash that had blow up and gotten caught in the briers.  As I got closer I saw that it was not plastic but beautiful Iris blooms.  Not the wild little Iris called Dutch Iris but huge purple, lavender Iris blooms.  I knew then that the neighbors were right.  I could just see some little lady planting those right in front of her house facing the south so they would get plenty of light.  She left something of real value behind.  In a field full of briers, poison ivy, and trash dumped is a beautiful stand of Iris. 

     I don't want to leave behind big pothole dumps of trash.  I want to leave something that people will think kindly of me when they come across it not curse  my name because they are going to have to have it removed. 

     I guess I will encourage you today to empty out a drawer full of real junk.  Organize it and make room for little things like string, rubber bands and twisty ties that come off of packaging.  It is not a big thing but it is a step in the right direction.

The Dark Side

     I wonder if hoarding is a new disease or if it has been around for centuries.  I can not remember in my childhood ever knowing anyone that had a house so filled to the brim that you could not move around in it.  I knew lousy housekeepers, and people that raised chickens in their kitchens, but I don't think I ever saw anyone that just had a house full of crap like the people you see on TV.  If you have never watched the show "Hoarders, Buried Alive"  you should.  It will make you feel good about yourself, unless of course you are a hoarder.  In that case it will make you feel very bad.  What goes on in someones head that makes them crossover from being thrifty to being a hoarder?    I just want to make sure that does not happen to me.  This is the first time I have really allowed myself to indulge in this squirrel mentality.  Will I go over to the dark side?  Soon will my house be filled with used mounds of used Ziploc bags, will there be piles of clothes waiting to be worn with the tags still on them, will the doggie police come and take my animals and tell me this is not a safe place for them??????   That always kills me when they do that...they take the animals because its is too unsanitary for them to live there but they let the people stay.  Anyway, is this going to happen to  me?  I can already see the beginning of it.  Before New Years I had been saving my plastic shopping bags, I had gathered them all up to take them back to Wal-Mart and I realized they were gone.  My husband had thrown them away.  I actually thought about digging through our dumpster to fish them out.  Thankfully he stopped me.  You know what I think it is? Fear.  Yoda said it best "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering."  I don't know what that has to do with waste but it sounds good.  I think you cross to the dark side when your not just trying to do the right thing, you become obsessed with it, to the point that you are fearful that something  bad will happen if you don't save it.  I can see  myself crossing over very easily.    I have to keep my head on straight.
     Yesterday I talked about throwing crap in the yard for the worms to eat.  As I went to empty my composting bowl, a hoard of flies came out of it.  As I dumped it I could see that the bowl was full of maggots.   I immediately began gagging and screaming.  I threw the bowl as far as I could.  I had been complaining about the flies in January for a few days.  Now I knew where they came from.  Do you know how bad that must have smelled!  In my defense, my entire family has been down with the flu for a week so no one can smell anything.  I have got to come up with a  better plan for getting my kitchen scraps outside in a timely manner, lest the doggie police come and remove my animals for they are living in an unsafe environment.