I am back from my month long blog break.
I hope you all have been well and those of you that had plans to get caught up on things to do in your home, you were able to accomplish those things that you wanted to do.
We will never be done with work inside and outside of our home, it is not supposed to be that way because every day is different and we live in our home and make messes. But there are things that need to be done on a regular basis to keep our home maintained and then there are bigger jobs that need to be done.
Home maintenance is much more than the dishes in the sink waiting to be washed or the laundry in the hamper waiting to be washed, those every day chores. Home maintenance is a much bigger picture.
I am cleaning the old treadle machine named Clara. She got quite dusty and even a spider web was starting on the base of the leg.
Charles and I have been so very busy this year with trying to organize our space, adjust to a retirement budget since Charles retired eight months ago.
I have been blogging a very long time, and now I am much more elderly than I was when I started so I have slowed down quite a bit which makes me slow at most anything I do. I let things get unbalanced in our home and everything needed organizing and deep cleaned. I got a big dose of reality of how I let my Home Management get off course.
Back in April of this year (2026) Charles and I realized that we had to make some changes because our health issues have changed and we needed to make our home and garden easier to manage.
I am not a minimalist at all, I enjoy having familiar things around me and so does Charles. Neither of us like clutter, and to us clutter is when things are scattered and stacked and have no place to live.
But then there is the need for accessibility and this is where things live.
Charles retired eight months ago, he worked as long as he could but his advanced arthritis ended that chapter of his life. He has started a new chapter but it needs to be at a much slower pace than we expected.
I retired earlier than Charles because I needed to stop working to care for my Father, he came to live with us while on hospice, then my mother. Charles saw to the needs of his great aunt while he was still working and and then we moved Charles mother to our home and then her cancer and hospice.
I did not return to work after those years of being a caregiver, anyone that has been a caregiver understands the toll it takes on our body.
I have had heart issues for many years now, I have had four pacemaker surgeries, and I have other heart issues. I have balance issues due to Meniere's disease which is an ear problem and also a neck problem that also complicates my balance. Other things such as arthritis and degenerative spine issues have slowed me down quite a bit. Our history studies help to motivate Charles and I to get up in the mornings and to keep going.
One thing I am not doing is giving in to the health challenges but trying to find other ways to do things. Charles and I want to continue our history studies, and trying to live similar to how our ancestors did in the past as long as we can and then at that point we will see what is next.
I remember the day several years ago when we were doing one of our 1940s ww2 studies and Charles called me and said, "I may run out of gas, before I can get home!. We were rationing gasoline at that time in our study and Charles was very serious about this gas rationing study. He had been working an account out of town and was trying to get back to town but only had a small amount left with his rationing stamps. He has always been such a trooper about our studies. :)
I have been busy trying to bake that perfect rustic bread all of the month of May.
Please do not feel sorry for Charles or I about our health, I am just explaining that sometime there is more that we need to plan for that we forget about, and that is we may need to make adjustments in our home so that we can be safer in our older years. As we are still working, we often think about the things we will do "after retirement", but we probably need to do those adjustments before retirement because changes to our body seem to come faster than we thought they would and there are many that experience this same thing.
In the month of May we got busy and did some maintenance and made changes to several rooms in our home. The kitchen got a big change of moving items down lower so that I can reach the items I need without climbing up on a step stool. I am short and seem to be getting shorter. I am under 5' & 1/2". Many times when I do a photo at the counter I stand on a step stool. The blog post of the pie making was done on a stool.
We moved a cabinet to the other side of the bar so we could also re-arrange our kitchen/dining/sitting area. Those that have been reading my blog for a long time know that we moved our bed into the dining room and made us a little studio/flat of sorts to save money with heating and cooling.
We have been sleeping in the kitchen/dining area through two winters and two springs and one summer, up until this last week of May 2026. In the past eight months we saved a little over One Thousand one Hundred dollars on our electric bill by living in our little space reducing our heating and cooling. We based that on our utility bill which was electric, water, sewer and garbage all in one bill. We budgeted the amount our bill would be by what our usual bill was during all seasons.
We did not figure in all the time before the past eight months, eight months ago was when Charles retired until now. Most of our savings was from electric.
So moving to one side of the house and moving our bed into the dinning room /kitchen did work and very well but we were starting to feel cramped and it was a longer walk to the bathroom at night going from the carport side of the house across the dining room, through the living room, hallway and then getting to the bathroom in the dark at night on the other side of the house.
So we did some figuring how to get closer to the bathroom and only heat and cool one extra room. Since we are not getting younger we decided to move to the next room and that would be the living room.
So to continue on following us two old people that keep moving rooms in their house, we moved out the furniture in the living room and painted a fresh coat of paint on the walls, we stayed with the same color paint.
Paint still drying at the top of the wall.
No queen or king size bed for us just the same old regular size bed.
The white paint still needs to be scraped and sanded off this floor above but it will need to wait for now. We did scrape, sand and finish one of the bedroom floors a few years ago shown on my blog how we did it.
Paint dry, bed put back together in a new room.
When I told my daughter that we moved our bed into the living room, she said, the room that nobody goes in? I said yes.
Even with the bed in our kitchen/dinning room everyone still gathered in that room. Even on the bed, seems the Grands liked it that way. Lol
This is the old living room, now our "new" Bedroom and the only room that we have never slept in until now (we moved to other rooms during our caregiving years with our parents). We put my treadle machine Clara at the foot of the bed and plenty of room to sew. I am looking forward to finishing the curtains in this room just off the kitchen (and the bathroom) :).
We have found a way to circulate the cooling from the kitchen/dining room into this room without a lot of extra cost. We still must keep the electric bill down because cost keep rising and we need somewhere to save to pay the increasing cost. We made our regular bedroom a guest room because that gives our guests their own bathroom (it is a half bath).
Our master bedroom we leave for family to use. The old typewriter is used to type messages to and from family that come to visit.
This is one of the two guest rooms. Bathroom door to the back left of the photo. During the month of May we cleaned all of the rooms in the house and organized. It feels good to have things back in order.
This is the blue room/ the guest room/ the craft room/ the sewing room/ that did not get shown all of last year because it was also the sorting room and I am so glad to have the sorting done and finished. This treadle machine came from Charles mother's house it is a 1926 treadle. Both of the treadles work and when the family comes everyone loves to sew on the old treadles.
My rocker in the kitchen area, my old desk there on the left beside the Martha Washington sewing cabinet. I can reach things better being on the counter and the first shelf in the upper cabinets has dishes that I can reach because nothing is stacked on top of them. This is much safer and easier.
We can sit 10 people in this dining/kitchen/sitting area and 12 if we put the other two chairs at the table.
Charles chair I call "low rider" is on the bottom left of this picture not shown because he is sitting there reading. He has a small side table beside his chair. My rocker is at the bottom right that you saw in a previous picture. There is more floor space around things that it looks like in this photo.
Home management is about balancing the home, the needs of the family, and adjusting when things change. Never leave something the same way just because it has always been like this when arrangement change would help improve a situation.
Home management is about budget, meal planning, laundry care, taking care of our health, understanding that to keep up a house it will need repairs and cleaning or it will decay. Window cleaning, caulking, and organizing what we have so that we do not purchase duplicates because we cannot find the things we already have.
It is about bookkeeping, having a working calendar, keeping track. Someone needs to be responsible to fill that role of Home Management or at some point debt could get out of control, things could get very complicated if they are not already.
Home management is also about when to let go and when to store and how to keep stored things manageable.
This month of May, Charles built us a small storage area under our carport that holds totes that can pull in and out without having to pick up a box or tote off of another so that we do not injure ourselves lifting something heavy.
This small storage area holds things that we are not ready to let go of, or extras such as yarn. When we do leave this earth we hope to have things in good order and have our "extras" organized and inside of totes ready for family to take to donations or keep or whatever they want to do with them. At least it will not be all jumbled up all over the house.
Our house has very small closets, there is no coat closet or extra storage closet and both of our clothing is in this small closet behind that curtain. Two totes in the bottom of the closet floor, one with mending and one with fabric.
The closet in the bigger guest room, the master bedroom, also has a small closet. We seem to have a lot of severe storms now, we just had a tornado hit in our town last week. We leave that closet empty except for the shelf above to have a safe place to go should a tornado be heading toward us. Charles has been working on reinforcing the hallway for storms.
The old chair in the photo above is my favorite chair I sit in when I mend and hand sew. This is the blue room, the second guest room. I spend time in here when the weather is nice and the windows can be open and no need for heating and cooling. We do not always just use the other side of the house, it all depends on the weather and the need for heating and cooling or just fresh air.
The white cabinet to the left and right are storage for crafts, gardening seeds, medical supplies etc. The bottom two drawers in the white cabinet to the back left hold toys and games for the grands and great grands. I have hangers on the side of the white cabinet on the back right to hang my dresses and our night robes. Also the ironing board is standing next to my chair and the irons are in the white cabinet. The blouse top is hanging to dry where I had just washed it.
There truly is no way to tell someone how to organize because it takes us clearing and cleaning our spaces because we all live differently and have different expectations what clean and organized means. It is a matter of we do it or we do not do it and the truth is, we cannot clean our home if the clutter is not removed. If there is no place to put it, at least move it and clean the area it was, clean what you moved and put it back and now it is clean.
I have learned a lot during the month of May. Try not to let other things get in the way of good home management. Stop what we are doing to get our house in order, and get back on track with my one room proper cleaning method. This keeps us from panic cleaning when we find someone is going to drop by for a visit.
Charles and I got off track from putting all of our energy getting our garden ready, still cleaning out Madges house and cleaning and sorting her stuff to go to donations or trash. It has been a monumental job for us because we have to go up and down a hill safely without falling to get it to the back of our truck. We have gotten sick from doing this several times so we had to start pacing ourselves. We will most likely put it up for sale by the end of this year. It also has had many repairs we had to do. Sometimes things happen in our lives that can overwhelm us and this is also an overwhelming time that we are living so that robs our energy.
We received a call from my brother saying that they decided at the last minute to drive down to the beach from Tennessee and spend the week. They asked if we wanted to come down. We decided to make a day trip down there to visit with them. We live only an hour and 50 minutes from where they were staying at Blue Mountain. We drove over to Grayton Beach just next to Blue Mountain.
We went out to eat at a Restaurant called the Red Bar in Grayton Beach Florida. Charles and I had eaten there many years ago.
Charles and I have not eaten in a Restaurant for several years so this was a special treat. We enjoyed our visit with our family and much too short of time, but I was relieved to get home and off the high traffic roads. I am quite a homebody and so is Charles.
Fresh drawer paper always inspires me to organize the drawers, I thought this was a lovely pattern.
This new month of June I want to sew curtains for the sitting area in the dining, sitting area. Then I want to start the new curtains in the blue room, that fabric has been waiting a long time for me to sew. I will enjoy treadling away with the treadle sewing machine called Clara in our new bedroom and by the way we are adjusting very well to our new path to the bathroom. I don't know if moving bedrooms helps our mind stay healthy or makes us more confused but we haven't gotten lost.
About changes to the blog and Forum
I am adjusting my blogging for twice a month.
I have more fatigue now and Charles is having issues with his hip which is getting concerning. Both of us need a slow pace, it is not easy to hurry anything. I can do things I need to do if I just take my time. The garden is just getting to where it is producing some vegetables, we have picked three cucumbers from the vines and we were going to pick our first tomatoes yesterday morning but a racoon or something got to them before we did. left a part of one tomato.
I need less computer time, so I can sew curtains and sitting too long is not a good thing for me. At least when I use the treadle machine my feet are peddling and that is a good thing.
I have talked with my Son and he showed me how to do some changes on my blog when I need to such as on the forum. When I do a blog post on a Monday then I will leave the forum open Monday through Friday and close the forum for comments until the next post.
My schedule will be that I Post a new blog post on the First Monday and the Third Monday of each month.
The Forum will be open for comments the First Monday through Friday and the Third Monday through Friday.
I know that some of you are trying to have less screen time too so hopefully this will be good for you too.
The blog and the forum will remain open for reading, it is just the forum that open and close and the reopen and close and so on.
Homemade strawberry butter.
I cannot wait to hear from all of you to see what you have been doing during the month of May.
Please let us know what you have been doing at your home and those of you that are doing the 1942 ww2 Study have you rationed your sugar? Sugar was rationed here in the United States on May 5th 1942.
Many people do not eat as much sugar as they did in the past. It was common for sugar in coffee and home baked pies and cakes, cookies and puddings. Then there was canning, during fruit season especially.
For the month of June 1942, in the United States, we have 2 pounds of sugar per person in our household for 4 weeks. People canned during this time so it really mattered and the government had to adjust a special exception during canning season.
The government made changes to rationing all throughout out the war years, so we have to watch for changes.
What is rationed for the month of June 1942 in the country where you live?
See you in the forum, Grandma Donna
