Category Archives: Homemaking

Simply Baking

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Decluttering is not just about throwing out the piles of junk gathering dust in the basement.  Nor is minimalism about having a sparsely furnished apartment with almost no sign of human habitation.  They are words which are open to interpretation but the over-arching concept is to simplify our homes and lives so that we can make time and space for living.

It is important to keep baking and cooking simple.  Creating meals from scratch can easily lead you to acquire all manner of ingredients.  All too often these are used once and then end up relegated to the back of the cupboard.  I have a well-stocked pantry that has the basic ingredients that I use to create the meals we eat.

I also regularly make substitutions to new recipes so that they fit my ingredients.  It is easy to be conned into having many varieties of one ingredient, such as sugar.  There is caster, white, soft brown, raw, Demerara and numerous others.  I use raw sugar for most general use.  I also keep soft brown sugar and caster sugar.  If a recipe demands a specialty sugar that I feel cannot be satisfactorily substituted I discard the recipe.

Flour is another example of many options available – white, wholemeal, organic, stoneground, plain, self-raising.  I prefer to keep both white and wholemeal.  I use white flour for pastry, pasta and making roux for sauces but other than that I tend to use wholemeal or half and half if I want a lighter texture.  I only buy plain flour and add baking powder to make self-raising flour as required.

2012-03-28 01I buy my flour in 5kg bags from  Simply Good.  I also buy my baking powder in bulk from the same store.

2012-03-28 02The baking powder is sold from bulk bins so I fill a recycled paper bag with it and then decant into the large glass jar. which is in my stock cupboard.  I refill the small container in the pantry as required.  Please do not not confuse bicarbonate of soda (bicarb) with baking powder.  Baking powder is a combination of bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar.

2012-03-28 03With basic ingredients to hand it is easy to bake for your family where you know exactly what is in the food.  I made these muffins this morning with the last of some bottled cherries I had bought a couple of years ago – not sure why?  The recipe was the basic muffin recipe from the book, “Down to Earth” by Rhonda Hetzel.  You can find out more on her blog.

2012-03-28 04I made a zucchini quiche for dinner at the same time.  I always try to cook more than one dish when I have the oven turned on so that the power is used efficiently.

Have you tried to simplify the ingredients in your pantry?

Shuffling the Deckchairs

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When I was dusting and cleaning in the living room I realised that although we have six chairs in our dining suite only two of them are used regularly.  In fact there are four at the table.

The table extends to an oval and then seats six people when required.

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One of the extra chairs is used in my sewing room.

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The other is in the corner of the dining area.

I have decided that in order to keep them all in good condition I will rotate the chairs at intervals of six months.  This will ensure that there is not one in the corner which consistently exposed to the sun and also that the same two do not get constant wear and tear whereas the others are rarely used.

Do you have things that you rotate so that they all wear evenly?

I also rotate the bedsheets (3 sets), bath towels (4 sets) and teatowels.  I always take from the top of the pile and replace the freshly washed ones on the bottom.

Home Sweet Home

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There is nothing I enjoy more than a weekend at home without any major commitments.  After a busy week (and this week has been busier than most) I am ready to take my time doing simple tasks at home.

My plans were thwarted slightly this evening as the train is running late.  This was due to congestion from an earlier police incident at on of the central city railway stations.  I made a conscious decision not to let this stress me but I have used the extra time to catch up on some internet reading and now writing my blog.

I am tired after a full week of work and a late night last night, as we went to see Ross Noble, a very funny and irreverent comedian.  I have an easy dinner planned, we will be eating baked potatoes topped with bolognaise sauce and served with some salad.

Tomorrow I intend to get the house back into order now that the bathroom is finished.

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last couple of days along with the brevity of this one as well as no photos.  I promise I will make amends over the weekend.

Have a fun and fulfilling weekend.

Press Play

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I feel as though I have had the ‘Pause’ button on as everything has been on hold while the bathroom was being done.  Now I can see the things that I want to do.  These include:

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  • Dust and polish the furniture in the front entry
  • Replace the ornaments and china from the sideboard (these have been residing on my sewing table)
  • Sort out the other clutter that has also accumulated on the table
  • Get back to doing some sewing (including more gift bags which I have cut out)
  • Sweep and wash the verandah – this has some sawdust remnants from the building work

2012-03-20 02Mention of the gift bags reminds me that I did not do an update post for Lazy Brownie Day in February (25th).  I hope to have lots to post for March and get back on track to have a planned, organised Christmas.

Yesterday I picked up some crochet cotton that a friend bought for me in a sale.  I am going to use this to knit some dishcloths.  There are lots of patterns available but I think I will start with the one that Rhonda has in her book, ‘Down to Earth’.

2012-03-20 03I am also pleased to report that almost everything that I listed on Freecycle under the generic heading of ‘Handyman Materials’ has been collected.  I love the fact that someone is going to be able to use these things and it has freed up some space in the workshop.

I am busy at work this week (working off-site for the next 3 days) so it will be the weekend before I make much progress.  Tonight I have finished folding the washing that dried on the indoor airer over the past few days and now it is time to catch up on some ironing.

Going, Going, Gone….

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Today we have spent the day at home catching up on several jobs.

The Duke painted the ceiling of the bathroom and I did the edges of the cornices and also the new architraves on the window and doors.  The ceiling is finished but the architraves need another coat.  We have had the dehumidifier running in the bathroom for most of the day to get the paint thoroughly dry.

Here is a photo which shows the new lights and also the painted ceiling and window frame.

2012-03-18 01I also sorted out various things in the workshop and space under the stairs.  Then it was time to list some things on Freecycle.  Sometimes I do not have much success and other days everything is wanted.  Today was a good day as I have found new homes for 3 small tins of paint, 2 spraycans of paint, a bathroom stool, the old showerscreen, some excess tiles from the laundry, tiling materials (adhesive, grout etc) and some timber slats.  It is great that other people will be able to use them and we have freed up a bit of space.

We moved the cupboard that had previously been at the foot of the stairs and it is now ensconced in the workshop.  All of the paint and painting equipment is now sorted and stored in the cupboard.

As is often the case, the re-arranging is a work in progress so is actually looking worse than when we started but that will soon change.

The showerscreen and mirror should be installed tomorrow so I am looking forward to that.  It will mean that I can then replace all of my china and ornaments back on the sideboard.  These were removed before the bathroom renovation so they would not be damaged when equipment was being brought in and out of the house.  Things will soon be back to normal.

As Poppet would say, ‘what is normal?’

Putting It Back

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Today was a fairly rare occurrence as we went shopping.  Not grocery shopping but to a couple of large stores.  My first goal was to buy some containers/dividers for the bathroom drawers.

We went Howards Storage World and I bought these.

2012-03-11 01They are acrylic and have small silicone feet on them to stop them sliding in the drawer.  This is how they look in the drawer.

2012-03-11 02I have  done the top two drawers like this, the third drawer is empty and the bottom drawer has the hairdryer in it.

Even though I have culled the contents of the bathroom cabinet a couple of times, most recently when I had to take everything out of the room for the renovations, there was still more to do.  I carefully evaluated every single item before I put it back into the cabinet.  There are still a couple of things that need to be used up and will not be replaced, however, it is almost to the point of having only those things that I actually need or use.

This is the top drawer.

2012-03-11 03The second drawer.

2012-03-11 04This is the cupboard.  I used to have 2 plastic boxes – one was first aid stuff and the other was extras of medications, sanitiser gel etc so I have now condensed them into one slightly larger box.  The bonus is that it is high enough that everything is able to stand up in it.

2012-03-11 05These are the baskets that I had previously used in the bathroom drawers.  They were slightly too big for the space so had got a bit squashed and one was cracked.

2012-03-11 06The broken one (not shown) went in the bin but I scrubbed the others and have now used them to contain some of the small items in the drawers in my sewing room.  They have replaced some cardboard boxes that were a bit the worse for wear after nearly 20 years!

All I have left to do is scrub the 2 plastic boxes from the bathroom cupboard.  One, which has an airtight seal will probably go back to being a food storage container.  That was its original purpose.  The other was previously used for storing toys when Belle and Missy were small so I may offer it to Belle if she needs it for a similar purpose.

47 & Falling

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After weeks of very humid weather we finally have some respite.  We have a hygrometer which sits on the bench between the kitchen and dining room and when I got up this morning it was 47% relative humidity – that is about half what it has been recently.  During the course of the day it fell even more to 33% at one stage.

This may not seem particularly exciting to those of you you are not living in humid, high rainfall areas but believe me, it is exciting when your lounge chairs look like this.

2012-10-03 01The back looked worse – if that is possible.

2012-10-03 02They have been getting worse over about a week or two but it was no point in cleaning them while the weather was so wet.  In fact The Duke could not work out how it go so wet the other night – the rain does not blow in – until I pointed out that both of the chairs were completely wet simply due to the humid conditions.

Today I cleaned both recliner chairs and the 2 seater sofa.  I have a small jar with about 100ml of olive oil and some lemon essential oil.  The lemon oil is because I like the aroma and also it is supposed to be a spider deterrent.  I am not sure how effective that is.  I added 5ml of clove oil to the mix and then with an old t-shirt wiped, rubbed and polished for a couple of hours until I had all of the leather cleaned, free of mould and gleaming.

Here are the ‘after’ photos.

2012-10-03 03And the back.

2012-10-03 04I also keep a spray bottle with 5ml of clove oil diluted in 500ml of water.  Using this and a clean cloth I also cleaned all of the kitchen cupboards and kickboards as well as quite a few of the door frames and skirting boards.  Keeping the mould at bay is a never-ending battle in this climate so I make the clove oil a regular part of my cleaning routine.

If you are interested in more information about reducing the humidity in your home as well as the use of clove oil you can type ‘mould’ into the search button on the right-hand side of the blog and you will find all of my other posts that deal with this issue.

Finally, if you are concerned about humidity in your home I would strongly recommend purchasing a hygrometer.  It is a real eye-opener to actually know what the humidity reading is.

Surprise From the Freezer

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This morning I took a lidded Pyrex dish from the freezer which contained 2 serves of lasagne.  I left it on the kitchen bench to thaw.

When we were on our way home this evening The Duke asked what was for dinner so I assured him we were having lasagne.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it was one of my creations which was actually pasta (2 different types), re-fried beans and a little shredded chicken topped with grated cheese.  Considering the pasta and cheese it is not entirely surprising that I mistook it for lasagne.

I use a random selection of containers for freezing meals, leftovers and produce and have never come up with a really effective method of labelling items for the freezer so I simply don’t do it.  This does lead to the occasional blunder but generally nothing that cannot be solved reasonably easily.

My funniest experience was the day I took a small container of frozen pumpkin soup to work for my lunch.  I also had a slice of home-made bread which I was going to toast and have with my soup.  The soup was still partly frozen at lunch-time so I loosened the lid and popped it in the microwave.  After a period of time I decided to check if it was warm enough.  I dipped my finger in to check and it was only warm.  Upon licking my finger I discovered that the pumpkin soup was mango puree!!  The toast was already cooked and I did not want to waste the ‘soup’ so lunch that day was warm mango puree and a slice of toast!

How do you keep track of what is in the freezer?

 

Bathroom Progress

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Two and a half weeks later the end is in sight.  The plumbing, door knobs, mirror and showerscreen are yet to be done.  There are 2 double towel rails plus a towel ring

2012-03-06 01Here is the wall showing the finished recess.

2012-03-06 02The floor of the shower showing the grate with tiled insert.  Also, you can see the spare toilet roll holder and the holder for the toilet brush.  I love them being on the wall which means they don’t need to be moved to mop the floor.

2012-03-06 03I will post some final photos when it is all finished – probably next week as we have to wait for the shower screen and mirror to be made to order.

We are very happy with the way the renovation has turned out.

Rhythm & Routines

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In the midst of the upheaval of flooding and other extreme weather events coupled with the uncertainty of some personal issues it is comforting to know that some things remain constant.

This evening we have followed our regular pattern of making and eating dinner, preparing lunches, doing the dishes and of course the ironing.  I know that ironing is one of the jobs that many of us love to hate but even that provides a stability and certainty in the turmoil of the moment.

What routines do you have that keep you grounded, regardless of what is happening within and beyond your life, and over which you have no control?

Thank you all for your lovely, thoughtful comments.  I have not responded to all of them yet but will endeavour to do so soon.