Protecting Home Canned Foods From Freezing

Packing Boxes For Our Move To FL In 1994!

There is no question about it, our homesteading life can be hard. It is much harder if you do not organize your house as well as your time. Many jobs around the homestead can be eliminated if you have organized your home. I know from experience. I was far from organized the last few years. Boy, would I get stressed! Where to start? What can I do? Then I found Flylady!

"Shine Your Sink!"

Did I change overnight? No! Have I always been this way? Heavens no! I was once the most organized person in the world. I kid you not. What happened? Life happened. Moving to and then back again from Florida in 1995 was the beginning of my disorganization. Actually, it was when I move there in 1994, that did it. The house was way too small and had barely any closets or cupboards to put anything in. It seems after that, every house I moved into did not have enough room for my stuff.

Home Canned Foods

I was so overwhelmed by the job of storing my home canned foods once my husband started work on our battery room. It meant the cellar would be open and would now get too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer to store jars of food. It also made it accessible to critters during the night. So I put them in my pantry. Then the mice came in and got the jars all dirty on top. I would cover them with plastic to protect them. It was a nightmare!

Empty jars are on the bottom now.

Soon I started buying plastic (And you know HOW MUCH I hate plastic!) containers, like the Rubbermaid ones. Now I keep my jars of food and almost everything else inside them. There was still one problem. In the winter now, my pantry gets really cold. So the containers that had home canned food in them could freeze if they were sitting on the floor. Which they were.  Now they are off the floor and sitting on containers of empty jars. Easy to get to when I am in the middle of canning and need jars. Plus, they were stored upstairs taking up valuable space. Now that was a good solution to that problem.

Copyright © 2012 Kathleen G. Lupole

All Photographs Copyright © 2012  Kathleen G. Lupole

Running Your Own Business From Home

Photo Source: Jon Sullivan

I have written on here before about my business of selling used books online at Bonanza. In my post, Selling On Bonanzle, I told you all about it. The last few weeks I have been busy accumulating more books to sell. I love books and more times than not, I look at the book as I am listing it and end up reading it. The other night I read a book all the way through because I could not stand to list it and have someone buy before I finished it. I pick up these books at used book stores, thrift shops, garage sales, freecycle,craigslist, anywhere I can find them.

You may not think it is worth the effort. But every little penny counts in this day and age. Bonanza was originally called Bonanzle and they changed their name recently. It takes some getting used to. After having basically sold mostly on eBay in the past years, this site is a welcome change. For one thing, the other sellers are helpful and are not rude to you if you ask a question. The discussion boards on eBay can get VERY nasty at times! Anyway, I am not writing this to compare the two sites or to convince you to sell on either one. I want to share my ideas to make a living from home.

I have listed many of my own books, deciding it is time to rid myself of too many books among other items. Many times I have held onto something out of sentimental value. They are just things. So onto my quest of living the good..........but, simple life! I am thinking about taking the guitar strings out of the Bonanza booth and opening a booth just for them. It would be easier. The nice thing about Bonanza is that you can do that. Doesn't cost you any more money!

Of course, this is mainly a side line for me. Selling guitar strings on my two main sites is really my business. I have had one of the sites up since 2002 selling my husband's music CD. On that site, Larry Gene Music, I also sell my eBooks, but the guitar strings are the main thing. I tried other things, but this is now my niche. I have another site that is only about guitar strings and that is String Baby. All these little ways to make money, add up to what is called, "many streams of income". I am sure you have heard that mentioned online before. That is the way you can work at home and not have all your eggs in one basket.

My sales have been slow, but I have started getting more. My bill at Bonanza is not killing me like it did at eBay and at Amazon. So I can list my books and let them sit until they sell. I will keep listing as I know, the more you list the more you sell. That is the the golden rule of selling online. So leave me a comment if you work from home. I am interested in home based businesses, and if you have many streams of income too. Many times you may not even know you are doing that. But if you are gaining income from more than one source, that is exactly what you are doing! Time to network together!

Copyright © 2010  Kathleen G. Lupole

All Photographs Copyright © 2010  Kathleen G. Lupole unless otherwise stated.