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You are here: Home / Archives for laundry

laundry

Busy Summer on the Mini-Homestead

July 22, 2010 by KerryAnn Leave a Comment

This summer has proven to be incredibly busy, much busier than I expected.  A few weeks ago, I felt like the Lord was tapping me on the shoulder and telling me to get organized quickly and declutter as much as we can. We have some elderly family members who might need assistance, and we need to prepare for that possibility.  So I have kicked myself into high gear, trying to school on our year-round schedule, do my job and handle the garden and daily chores in addition to the extra workload this presented.  And we have managed to accomplish everything on a shoestring budget while we save for some needed car and home repairs.

Despite spending time gardening and even expanding our garden, we have lost most of what we planted.  What the Mexican bean beetles and squash vine borers didn’t destroy, the chickens did when the town mowed down a post of our garden fence when they were tending the ditch with their machinery.  The chickens got in and decimated what was growing in short order.  What we have left is some green tomatoes we hope will ripen, about 5 sunflowers that are now over 10 feet tall, and we’re waiting now to see how the potatoes did.  The onions are still tiny, despite supposedly being close to time to be pulled.  We have replanted the winter squash on Monday and we’re now organizing to put the fall and winter garden in.

The last few weeks I have spent time at the farmer’s market, buying wholesale.  The Lord has plopped some incredible deals on produce in our lap.  While canning I worked a full week of VBS at our church and managed to wear myself out between the two.  We processed our extra roosters over a period of two weeks and sent them to freezer camp.  We cleaned out the freezer that needed defrosting and got everything organized in an effort to have enough space to hopefully purchase half of a cow this fall.  I found I had one whole shelf full of stock bones that I need to use. I also got all of the remaining meats grouped by type, to better help me plan our meals and use what we have wisely.

I have started setting up ‘centers’ for everything I do at home, where everything needed for that project is centrally located to where the work is performed.  I have created centers for laundry, baking, dry goods in use, personal care, herbs, school and work, gardening and more.  This inspiration came from listening to Vicki Bentley at the NCHE conference Memorial Day Weekend.  Vicki is an excellent speaker, and if you ever have the opportunity to hear her, I highly encourage you to do so.  I would be willing to drive to a conference just to hear her speak, she gave so much inspiration, encouragement and practical advice.  (You can purchase MP3s of Vicki’s presentations from the conference here.)  Her chore and star chart information alone has been a huge help to me in getting my kids motivated to do chores and take initiative without being asked.  Vicki said in one of her presentations that if you spend just 5 minutes looking for one item every morning and every evening, you waste over 60 hours a year.  I have found that I am going up and down the hallway and the stairs too often because things are not centrally located, and I wish to free up that time so I can accomplish more.

For the baking and dry good centers, I took one cabinet and placed my measuring cups and measuring spoons along with mason jars of xanthan gum, salt, baking soda, baking powder on the bottom shelf.  In racks hanging below the cabinet are all of my spices.  Each spice has a label on the lid so I don’t have to hunt for the correct one.  The rapadura, flours and dry goods are located behind me on a baker’s rack.  Each item in stored in a quart to half-gallon size mason jar with a labeled lid.  I do not have to take extra steps in the kitchen, saving me time and energy.  We also reorganized and deep cleaned the kitchen.

For the laundry center, we reorganized the laundry room so that we now have a rotating system for the clothes hangers, separated by type.  Each day when we get dressed, the empty clothes hangers get hung on each bedroom doorknob.  One child is tasked with the chore of retrieving all of the clothes hangers, taking them downstairs and putting each hanger where it belongs.  This has solved the problems with wrinkled clothing and additional ironing time because it had to be hauled up the stairs after coming out of the dryer while we hunt for the clothes hangers that fit the item.  And you know any time kids haul a piece of clothing, it’s bound to wind up wrinkled.  😉  All of the different clothing and fabric types now each have their own bin to facilitate quick sorting and washing of the laundry. We finally installed the utility sink that we purchased in 2007 in the laundry room.

For our school supplies we use daily, we repurposed a rolling cart which is now located within reach of my computer.  We also located a bookcase and the filing cabinet beside my desk in order to facilitate school, bill paying and handling my job.  Now, when mail comes in, I can handle it immediately and drop it right into the correct file folder in the filing cabinet.  Paper doesn’t have to be handled twice, nothing gets lost and I don’t worry about any bills or other important paperwork getting missed.  We located a locking cabinet with doors in an unused area of the living room that holds shoe-box sized rubermaid containers.  These boxes contain our items that are in pieces, such as the math blocks and flashcards, as well as the games and the small-piece items such as K-nex and Legos.

I updated my household binder (Flylady style) and created binders for family recipes, every mailer I have published, our school records, and the gardening and homesteading records.  I also have one binder where I keep info on ideas or things I want to try, build plans for potential projects and the like.

I obtained two rolling carts, one for each child.  These carts now hold the library books and are parked beside the homeschool cabinet. These carts are incredibly handy and stop the problem of having to haul the books to the car and into the library, breaking my back.  This has just about eliminated our hunting for a book that is due and it keeps the books out of the kid’s bedrooms.

I created two memory card boxes.  I used the Simply Charlotte Mason Memory System and made one for our scripture verses and made one for the myriad of other things I wish my children to memorize.  We have included everything from family members phone numbers to poems, science and history facts, songs and more.  These boxes set atop our rolling school supply cart.

I still have to get the dining room chairs recovered so we can reclaim our dining room table.  We are also looking for an effective storage solution for our canning jars, both full and empty.  Both of these projects are likely going to take some cash, so I’m looking for the most workable solution that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

—

KerryAnn Foster runs Cooking Traditional Foods, the longest running Traditional Foods Menu Mailer on the internet. KerryAnn has over nine years of traditional foods experience and is a former Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader. Founded in 2005, CTF helps you feed your family nourishing foods they will love. Each mailer contains one soup, five dinners, one breakfast, on dessert and extras. You can learn more about our Menu Mailers at the CTF website. For a free sample Menu Mailer, join our mailing list. You can also join our forum to chat with other traditional foodists and learn more.

Filed Under: Frugality, Gardening, Homeschooling, Inside Organization, Kids, Uncategorized Tagged With: baking, budget, children, clothing, family, herbs, homesteading, kids, laundry, mason jar, meats, potatoes

Traditional Foods in a Small Kitchen

December 10, 2010 by KerryAnn Leave a Comment

Over the next few weeks, we’re transferring all of the articles on the website and my personal blog articles on food and health over to the CTF blog.  I hope you enjoy this week’s article.  This particular article was written before we moved to our current house.  When we moved, our first priority was finding a BIG kitchen!

—–

I’ve been asked a lot recently about how to do traditional foods in limited space.  Most people are surprised to find out that my house has a very small kitchen.  My kitchen is actually the smallest room in the house, smaller than even the bathrooms.  Our house was built in 1935 without indoor plumbing.  The kitchen was located in the largest room on the bottom floor.  When the house was remodeled 25 years ago, the family who remodeled it ate out 2 or more meals a day so the kitchen was a very low priority.  I have very little counter and cabinet space.  Instead of having bottom cabinets, I have a dishwasher and a trash compactor by the sink.  That only leaves three bottom cabinets, two of which are too deep to store many things in easily.

[Read more…] about Traditional Foods in a Small Kitchen

Filed Under: Home Matters, Inside Organization Tagged With: baking, blender, breakfast, bulk buys, dessert, family, food, grains, laundry, Menu Mailer, toaster oven

One Track Minds That Get Derailed: Quick Chili

January 9, 2011 by KerryAnn 1 Comment

We are, for the third time this winter, getting snow.  The snow is supposed to fall until Tuesday and we’re not supposed to go above freezing.  Their total prediction for this area is 4-6 inches last I looked, but we already have 3 inches and it’s supposed to snow through Tuesday!  They change the forecast hourly it seems.

Last year during the big 15″ snow, we had no power and I was hunkered down with cabin fever, alternating between loom knitting an afghan on a knitting board and planning the first garden revision via lantern and graph paper. I spent hours on that garden, even after the power came back on.  I became a one-track mind, weaving the garden and a massive expansion plan involving terracing and moving fences into our homestead master plan.  After multiple revisions and hours of discussion, we planted and worked… and worked… and worked.  And the garden failed due to alternating drought and flooding.  Failed miserably and painfully, after the hours of planning and toil.  It was disheartening to the point I decided to scale back for 2011.  With the amount of time and dedication a garden takes, I was scared to devote too much to it and experience another failure.

[Read more…] about One Track Minds That Get Derailed: Quick Chili

Filed Under: Beans, Beef, Casein-Free, Egg-Free, Gardening, Gluten-Free, Grain-Free, Lazy Cooking, Main Dish, Menu Mailer, Nut-Free, Recipes, Soups, Soy-Free, Sweetener-Free Tagged With: beans, beef, breakfast, butter, December, dessert, family, food, garlic, laundry, Menu Mailer, onion, rice, soup

Happy Blogiversary! Braised Chicken with Pears

January 11, 2011 by KerryAnn Leave a Comment

The CTF blog is one year old today.  Let’s celebrate with a recipe!

We’re still buried in snow.  I did four days worth of cooking and we all worked to get the housework and laundry done in advance, so today I am going to spend some family time with the kids.  We’ll do school then spend the rest of the day playing board games.  That was the original plan for if the power went out, so I see no reason why it can’t happen that way anyway.

 

Braised Chicken with Pears

From the Menu Mailer

To braise is to brown then cook in a small amount of liquid until tender. It can be done with meat or vegetables. This is a very tasty dish that we thoroughly enjoyed. You can substitute apples for the pears, if you prefer.

 

4-8 chicken thighs, with bone and skin
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
3 Tbs coconut oil, butter, ghee or schmaltz
1 onion, diced
½ Tbs rapadura
2 pears, peeled, cored and cut into wedges
2/3 cup chicken stock
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/8 tsp sage

Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper. In a skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the chicken, skin side down, and cook for 4 minutes. Flip and brown for another 4 minutes. Remove the chicken from the pan. Add the onion and sauté for 5 minutes. Add the rapadura, and pear and cook until the pear is browned, about 5 minutes. Whisk in the chicken stock, vinegar and sage and cook for 1 minute, scraping the bottom of the pan to bring up any stuck bits. Return the chicken to the pan and reduce the heat to low. Cover and simmer until the chicken is done, about 20 minutes, adding more stock if needed.

 

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Filed Under: Casein-Free, Chicken, Egg-Free, Fruits, Gluten-Free, Grain-Free, Main Dish, Menu Mailer, Nut-Free, Recipes, Soy-Free Tagged With: apple cider vinegar, butter, chicken, chicken thighs, family, kids, laundry, meat, onion, rapadura, vegetables, vinegar

What will you do when you get that call?

March 9, 2011 by KerryAnn Leave a Comment

A few days ago, my best friend got that phone call that everyone dreads.

Your daddy has had a heart attack. The doctors don’t think he’ll make it through the night.

GET. HERE. NOW.

She did what everyone would do. She grabbed enough for a road trip, threw it in the car and took off for a long drive. All she could think about was getting there as fast as possible.

On the way there, she called me to let me know what was going on. Trying to stay calm, she recounted the conversation and what details she knew. She told me later that she didn’t even think about food until she hung up the phone with me, about half-way through her drive. She was headed to a large military town, but it only has one grocery store chain and no health food stores. She has multiple food allergies and doesn’t fare well when exposed to an allergen.

Her daddy did make it through the night. She was having to go to her mom’s house do laundry and had to run by the store to buy basic necessities. She was then faced with the dilemma of having to go to the limited-selection grocery store and find safe food, figure out what to fix without having any of her recipes with her, find safe pots and pans to cook it in at her mom’s house, and keep it safe and segregated in the fridge while a trail of friends and family come through the home. It took time away from being at her daddy’s bedside and provided to be a considerable stress.

Of course, if you have a cast iron stomach and can handle fast food, pot-luck, or hospital cafeteria foods for as long as you need, you’re ok in the food department. But what about clothing? Toiletries? In a rush to get out the door, would you forget something? If you have children, would you have to suffer through their boredom and confusion while you’re going through what can arguably be considered one of the most stressful events in your life?

What would you do? You’re lucky if all of your family lives locally, you can just call a friend and have them swing by your house and drop off whatever you might need and you can run home for food and sleep. But if you have any family out of town, how can you prepare so that you don’t have to worry? Is it possible to just grab-and-go, knowing you have what you need?

You need a bug-out bag.

[Read more…] about What will you do when you get that call?

Filed Under: Bug-Out, Elder Care, Emergency Preparedness Tagged With: breakfast, chicken, children, chocolate, clothing, cookies, emergency, emergency preparedness, Enjoy Life, family, fast food, food, food allergies, hospital, kids, laundry, soup, stress, Toiletries, travel

Homeschooling- Time for a Change, Time4Learning

February 15, 2011 by KerryAnn Leave a Comment

I’ve been invited to try Time4Learning for one month in exchange for a candid review. My opinion will be entirely my own, so be sure to come back and read about my experience. Time4Learning is an online educational program that can be used as an online homeschooling curriculum, afterschool tutorial or as a summer study tool. Find out how to write your own curriculum review for Time4Learning.

I have recently been putting in a lot of 60-70 hour weeks while we work on launching a new product, launching a new website and combining the website, forum and blog into one big site with a new design.  Talk about a tall order!  It’s been so difficult to juggle homeschooling both kids, the business, housework, laundry and cooking along with caring for my parents when they need me.  I don’t want my kid’s education to suffer, but I’m committed to homeschooling them.  So I have decided that while we go through this very busy season, to turn to an online schooling option so I can be assured that the kid’s education will not suffer and they can still remain at home and I direct their education.  Most online options are run by full school year and you can’t do one semester or even a portion of a semester.  I have chosen to try Time4Learning, because it is on a month-by-month basis, and is extremely flexible in scheduling.  You can find where your child is in each subject and pick up there. It also came highly recommended by several friends who homeschool, so I decided this would be or best option to finish out this semester and fill in the gaps through summer before we start next year.

Time4Learning Covers language arts, math, science and social studies.  We will continue to do handwriting worksheets and Bible lapbooks together.

We only have a half-day of school on Fridays, and the kids often ask to do some school on the weekends.  We also go year-round.  So we don’t have as heavy of a daily load as some families do.  It’s a flexible program that will allow your child to work one grade up or down from there they are, so if they’re a little behind or head on one subject, it isn’t a problem.  You set the schedule, so you don’t have to default to someone else’s timetable as to what they think your child should be doing. It also grades the work for you and has a parent’s area where you can view the scores and track their progress.  I like that it even allows you to see how long each child took to complete an item.

So keep an eye on the blog, I’ll post about our experiences over the next 30 days and what the kids think about the program. If you decide to take a look, please let them know that KerryAnn Foster referred you.

—

KerryAnn Foster runs Cooking Traditional Foods, the longest running Traditional Foods Menu Mailer on the internet. KerryAnn has over nine years of traditional foods experience and is a former Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader. Founded in 2005, CTF helps you feed your family nourishing foods they will love. Each mailer contains one soup, five dinners, one breakfast, on dessert and extras. You can learn more about our Menu Mailers at the CTF website. For a free sample Menu Mailer, join our mailing list. You can also join our forum to chat with other traditional foodists and learn more.

Filed Under: Homeschooling Tagged With: breakfast, dessert, family, homeschooling, kids, laundry, Menu Mailer, soup

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Meet KerryAnn

I'm KerryAnn Foster, a crazy vibrant Jesus Freak with a heart full of hope. I'm not afraid to love on the least of these or get my hands dirty. This blog is my journey from ineffective, uptight, obese wallflower to a woman on fire for God and living the most vibrant, passionate life possible!

I live in the mountains of Western North Carolina with my husband, Jeff, and our two teens. I blog about self-confidence, health and home, homeschooling and living a vibrant, wide-open Jesus-centered lifestyle. I have over seventeen years of real food, natural lifestyle and health experience. We have homeschooled our children since birth and both Jeff and I run home-based businesses. We're crazy, we know it, and we love every second of it!

Read about my journey to health through celiac disease, PCOS, food allergies, obesity, adrenal fatigue and heavy metals.

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