Wednesday 21 September 2011
Monday 19 September 2011
The Frustrations of Being a Short Arse
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I've been working on the whole "being tidy and organised" thing. So far it isn't going all that well. One of the reason is accessibility. I'm 5'3", I know it's not THAT short, but it's not tall either. I can shop in the kids clothes/shoes department, so long as I don't have to reach the top shelf. And around our home, the top shelf is a major issue. Or rather the top three shelves.
Our house used to be owned by a builder, a tall builder. This is not an advantage on a lot of levels. Given the choice I'd never buy a house that has been lived in by a builder ever again. It's like he spent all day building, so didn't want to spend lots of time on his own home, but also didn't want to pay anyone else to do the work. He boarded up the stop cock, because clearly no one needs to switch the water off at the mains. Instead of laying the kitchen floor, then installing the cupboards, he realised it'd take less tiles if he did it the other way around. Which means that the cabinets are concreted to the floor. He also managed to make the space for the washing machine 5mm too narrow for a standard machine, normally that'd mean pushing the cabinets 5mm apart, a job of 10 seconds. Instead we had to hack a whole section of tiles out of the floor. The boiler was 13 years old, but he put a 5 year old casing on it. You don't want to know what he did in the bathroom.
Anyway, he installed all the wall-mounted cabinets at a height appropriate to someone 6'6" tall. All the cabinets have three shelves and I can only see into the lowest of them if I stand on tip-toe. I can't see into the other shelves without a step ladder. I wouldn't be able to use any of our kitchen cabinets at all without one of these folding steps, but I still have to resort to the "fling stuff into the back of the space and hope you never need it again" storage method. This problem also means that we usually end up with multiples of things because I think we've run out because I simply cannot see them.
Since I' also have a wealth of mobility issues, that mean there are many days when I can't bend or kneel, I can't really use much of the space in the base units either. The market is full of products to help organise cupboards but most of them require that you be able to get into the cupboards to begin with. They're almost universally expensive too. Do I really want to spend £10 on a bit of plastic to make an extra shelf, when I could probably make the same thing with old cardboard boxes?
I dream of a kitchen with pull out larder style units, where everything is visible and easy to reach, preferably with some kind of fold out step system so I can get into the high spaces without constantly tripping over the steps. But for now I'm going to have to find a way to make do with what I have, hopefully before I break a rib trying to clean the cooker. Again.
[/caption]I've been working on the whole "being tidy and organised" thing. So far it isn't going all that well. One of the reason is accessibility. I'm 5'3", I know it's not THAT short, but it's not tall either. I can shop in the kids clothes/shoes department, so long as I don't have to reach the top shelf. And around our home, the top shelf is a major issue. Or rather the top three shelves.
Our house used to be owned by a builder, a tall builder. This is not an advantage on a lot of levels. Given the choice I'd never buy a house that has been lived in by a builder ever again. It's like he spent all day building, so didn't want to spend lots of time on his own home, but also didn't want to pay anyone else to do the work. He boarded up the stop cock, because clearly no one needs to switch the water off at the mains. Instead of laying the kitchen floor, then installing the cupboards, he realised it'd take less tiles if he did it the other way around. Which means that the cabinets are concreted to the floor. He also managed to make the space for the washing machine 5mm too narrow for a standard machine, normally that'd mean pushing the cabinets 5mm apart, a job of 10 seconds. Instead we had to hack a whole section of tiles out of the floor. The boiler was 13 years old, but he put a 5 year old casing on it. You don't want to know what he did in the bathroom.
Anyway, he installed all the wall-mounted cabinets at a height appropriate to someone 6'6" tall. All the cabinets have three shelves and I can only see into the lowest of them if I stand on tip-toe. I can't see into the other shelves without a step ladder. I wouldn't be able to use any of our kitchen cabinets at all without one of these folding steps, but I still have to resort to the "fling stuff into the back of the space and hope you never need it again" storage method. This problem also means that we usually end up with multiples of things because I think we've run out because I simply cannot see them.
Since I' also have a wealth of mobility issues, that mean there are many days when I can't bend or kneel, I can't really use much of the space in the base units either. The market is full of products to help organise cupboards but most of them require that you be able to get into the cupboards to begin with. They're almost universally expensive too. Do I really want to spend £10 on a bit of plastic to make an extra shelf, when I could probably make the same thing with old cardboard boxes?
I dream of a kitchen with pull out larder style units, where everything is visible and easy to reach, preferably with some kind of fold out step system so I can get into the high spaces without constantly tripping over the steps. But for now I'm going to have to find a way to make do with what I have, hopefully before I break a rib trying to clean the cooker. Again.
Wednesday 14 September 2011
Monday 5 September 2011
The Chilli Experiment
[caption id="attachment_18" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Chilli Fruit"]
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We're currently in the process of building a set of raised planters for next years growing season. Growing your own veg seems like a lot of effort (and sometimes it is) and sometimes it's not worth it (potatoes, take up too much space and not enough return) but there are situations when it's a good use of your time. Have you tried home grown courgette (zucchini for the Americans)? They actually have a flavour! I never knew that until the inlaws started growing them and we were inundated with them. A single courgette is about 60p from the supermarket. The seeds are 5p each and you get more than one fruit per plant. You can grow them in bags and courgette tastes just as good frozen. I punch those numbers into my calculator and it makes a happy face.
But you can't grown courgettes in September in England so more on that subject will have to wait til next year.
I was surprised to find that a pack of three large red chillies cost up to a £1 from the local big name supermarkets. That's 33p per chilli! And they're not even the fancy burn-your-face-off varieties, these are just generic medium hot chillies. We cook 90% of our meals with chilli in some form or another. Those numbers did not make a happy face. So I decided to grow my own.
You can do this, even in England in September, provided you have a nice sunny windowsill. Our kitchen window gets full sun from 1pm til sunset every day so it's perfect. If you live in a very cold climate I'd move the plant into your warmest room over winter, but we've previously grown chilli plants successfully during winter in a single glazed house without any heating, so you'll probably be fine.
Here's what you'll need-
[/caption]We're currently in the process of building a set of raised planters for next years growing season. Growing your own veg seems like a lot of effort (and sometimes it is) and sometimes it's not worth it (potatoes, take up too much space and not enough return) but there are situations when it's a good use of your time. Have you tried home grown courgette (zucchini for the Americans)? They actually have a flavour! I never knew that until the inlaws started growing them and we were inundated with them. A single courgette is about 60p from the supermarket. The seeds are 5p each and you get more than one fruit per plant. You can grow them in bags and courgette tastes just as good frozen. I punch those numbers into my calculator and it makes a happy face.
But you can't grown courgettes in September in England so more on that subject will have to wait til next year.
I was surprised to find that a pack of three large red chillies cost up to a £1 from the local big name supermarkets. That's 33p per chilli! And they're not even the fancy burn-your-face-off varieties, these are just generic medium hot chillies. We cook 90% of our meals with chilli in some form or another. Those numbers did not make a happy face. So I decided to grow my own.
You can do this, even in England in September, provided you have a nice sunny windowsill. Our kitchen window gets full sun from 1pm til sunset every day so it's perfect. If you live in a very cold climate I'd move the plant into your warmest room over winter, but we've previously grown chilli plants successfully during winter in a single glazed house without any heating, so you'll probably be fine.
Here's what you'll need-
- 1 shop bought chilli (choose the variety you use most)
- all purpose compost
- 3 pots per plant - small, medium, large (yogurt pots and plastic coffee jars work fine, you don't need to buy any!)
- cling film / saran wrap
- water
- crop safe plant food (optional)
A Plant I Haven't Killed Yet!
[caption id="attachment_13" align="alignnone" width="604" caption="Clematis Piilu"]
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Greetings!
[caption id="attachment_9" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Du Demands MOAR Cat Pictures!"]
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I'm in the process of switching to working for myself full time, and I've decided to separate my personal life from my art blog at www.phantoms-siren.com to tighten the focus on the art and to keep the cat pictures to a minimum over there.
I also felt like making a record of my slow journey from undomesticated goddess to competent housewife. There are an awful lot of blogs out there made by confident together women full of helpful tips and excessively pretty recipes. Frankly, I'm jealous of their skills, but I'd also feel like I should stand up for the other end of the scale. Those of us for whom dusting is an alien concept and who didn't know there could be more than two types of flour. I do not have it all under control, in fact I seem to have lost our guest bed under a mountain of clean laundry. But I'd like to learn to be in control. I'd like to walk across a room without tripping over piles of abandoned stuff, I'd like to bake fancy bread and fill my house with pretty crafts.
I'd also like to test out some of the claims on the other sites, are those recipes really as good as they look? Can you really make your own cleaning products at home? Do those pretty PDF day planners actually make a difference?
And does everything HAVE to be cream with shades of pastel and the occasional bit of turquoise? Can you be a goth/metal/steampunk housewife?
[/caption]I'm in the process of switching to working for myself full time, and I've decided to separate my personal life from my art blog at www.phantoms-siren.com to tighten the focus on the art and to keep the cat pictures to a minimum over there.
I also felt like making a record of my slow journey from undomesticated goddess to competent housewife. There are an awful lot of blogs out there made by confident together women full of helpful tips and excessively pretty recipes. Frankly, I'm jealous of their skills, but I'd also feel like I should stand up for the other end of the scale. Those of us for whom dusting is an alien concept and who didn't know there could be more than two types of flour. I do not have it all under control, in fact I seem to have lost our guest bed under a mountain of clean laundry. But I'd like to learn to be in control. I'd like to walk across a room without tripping over piles of abandoned stuff, I'd like to bake fancy bread and fill my house with pretty crafts.
I'd also like to test out some of the claims on the other sites, are those recipes really as good as they look? Can you really make your own cleaning products at home? Do those pretty PDF day planners actually make a difference?
And does everything HAVE to be cream with shades of pastel and the occasional bit of turquoise? Can you be a goth/metal/steampunk housewife?
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