Joy of Country Living

Learning to survive in the country after living my whole life in the ‘big’ city was a real challenge.  However, I find myself  looking a new direction regarding survival what with the economic climate such as it is.  That being said, David and I have decided we need to hoard.  Not just anything.  But mostly focus on non-perishables like paper goods, soaps, toothpaste, shampoos, laundry detergents – that sort of thing.  May even try our hand at sugar and flour if we can figure out a good way to keep the ants out of the bags.  That may require a new freezer!

As my first step in this direction, I tackled the pantry last weekend with a thought to re-arranging it.  Moving out all non-essentials to what we call the ‘red barn’ – really David’s workshop where he had cleared 3 large shelves for me.  I started by moving out dusty cookbooks, shoe boxes of duplicate kitchen utensils, too large for the cabinet pots and pans – and anything else I hadn’t used since we moved in 10 years ago.  Who would have thought I could have crammed so much junk into such a small space?!

It took me 2 days (working off and on) to get the pantry cleaned out and re-arranged.  Confession:  As an avid Snoopy collector I couldn’t bring myself to move Snoopy out – banish him to the barn! – no matter what I thought I might be able to store in the space he now occupies on the top shelf in the corner next to the 5 cans of coffee. He stays!!

I plan on filling up the empty spaces buying extra necessities on each trip to the store.  This may take a little while as we only do ‘major’ shopping about once every 3 weeks. I went to the store at least 3 times a week when we were in town. But yes, I have learned to survive without fresh milk, bread and eggs for breakfast.  Powdered creamer works wonders in anything needing milk (especially sauces);  frozen flour tortillas make excellent wrap-up sandwiches in lieu of bread and well eggs – there’s always a few kolaches in the freezer we suffer through when eggs aren’t on the menu for breakfast. 

We’ve learned a lot about ‘making do’ here in the country in a lot of different ways. One we’re mildly excited about is a new business venture we’ve just found for earning money on the Internet and if it works as promised – in about 2-3 months I’ll tell you all about it.