MORE INSTRUCTION BOOKS DEALT WITH - WHY ARE ORDERS ARE ALL COMING DAYS LATE THESE DAYS?c

 Well, another week gone by.  I have scanned some more instructions books and just discarded some for items we no longer have.  The last several weeks of books have not been thrown out as I am going to tied them together and put them out when next I put out recycling as I did with the earlier scanned ones when I last put out recycling.

In normal times I out recycling weekly for pickup.  A stack of tied together newspapers, magazines, etc.  and a cardboard box of cans, bottles, and jars.  I recycle the boxes we get into the house this way as some years ago the second plastic box we had from the township for recycling was taken (as was the first one) by the garbage crew as they decided it was too broken to use.  So I keep boxes in our side porch – small ones – for a normal week in normal times and we used 4 soup cans and nothing else to put in.  Big ones for weeks when there is a holiday and I do a lot of cooking with a lot of things to recycle, and medium sized boxes for in between.  These days we can use only one can or two cans in a week.  Combine this with we not are temporarily not getting our newspapers in hard copy, and most weeks if I put the stuff for recycling – it would not be seen.  So I have been putting out the recycling when the carton I use to collect it all in is overfull and I put it in the larger can they gave everyone some years ago – this holds about 2 months worth, maybe more with how many items we are using these days.

So the instructions to be discarded sit in a bag in our office set aside to go out.  

We did go get to go food shopping yesterday – a good sized fill in trip.  Though much more relaxed than the 2 months major shopping we had done through most of the pandemic.  Even used a coupon – we complained about a frozen meal we had bought (main course – lacking in meat) and they apologized and sent a coupon for the next purchase.  I almost forgot not only to use it – but how to do so – husband remembered.  

I ordered 2 pairs of jeans – yes, we ONLY order something if we cannot get it any other way.  I noticed the knee of one of my pairs jeans had a hole – looked in Walmart – they no longer carry these jeans and have no acceptable (to me) alternative.  Husband looked up the jeans company – and we ordered from them.  Jeans were to be delivered today – no, now they may not come for another couple of days, so we even if we wanted to run errands we have to stay home to wait for them now as they are left in front of our house – easy to be seen and taken as we live on a main road.  Add to that bad rain storms over the next couple of days and we could not go out if we wanted to.  Same thing happened with some items husband had to order for his handcrafted business and a different delivery company – also got notice at last minute that not coming on day specified by them.  (Is this a new trend?)  

So more time to scan instruction books and do other housework which needs to be caught up.  Right now, as normal for when I am writing on Wednesday night – our washing machine is washing our clothing.  When same goes into the dryer – the towels go into washer.  When clothes come out will fold in bed while going to sleep tonight and towels will go into dryer.  Towels will be folded tomorrow night while going to sleep.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Lately more things seem to go wrong.  Do you find this to be true?  Just have to go with the flow and take things as they come – and I am not someone who likes that loss of control.

How is your organizing going – anything special which works for you?

COVID 19 #28 FOOD SHOPPING

 Another week gone by  - and I am a day late, my apologies.  

We went on one of our Covid food shopping sprees yesterday.  The shopping took about 3 hours and then wiping down and storing the items another couple of hours when we got home.  We last went food shopping in mid January on a similar adventure.  We have been doing our food shopping trips to a Walmart Neighborhood Market.  The Walmart stores around here are much smaller than elsewhere and have only small food departments not the large supermarkets that Walmarts have in other area.  Walmart has among their other chains, one called Neighbor Market.  These stores are supermarkets and pharmacies and what is normally carried in stores such as this – not the big assortment of items carried in their regular stores.  This particular Neighborhood Market is their highest grossing in the US and has been turned into a “retail lab” to find out why – I could tell them why without all the work of making it someplace I really don't want to go, it is the only Walmart supermarket in the bi-county area! The Neighborhood Market is 2 miles along the road from the local regular Walmart near us (where we get our prescriptions) – so it is sort of an add on to the local regular Walmart.   We did fill in bread and some items once or twice between January and now at our local Walmart when we went to renew prescriptions or needed something right away.  

When we started doing these food runs last May (2020)we were not as organized as we thought and yesterday's trip was actually the most organized and relaxed of all our shopping trips since we started staying at home last March (2020).  I am guessing that I have written about our first trip – by the time we were done shopping husband felt so bad that he had to wait in the car for me while I checked out – we later figured out it was due to his blood sugar having fallen from the (negative) excitement, his panic, and the sheer amount of running around we had done.  

After our third shopping trip I figured out that what we needed to do was to make TWO shopping trips at the same time.  First we go into the store and buy all the items we need which do not have be kept cold – canned and jarred foods, boxed foods, bagged foods, cleaning supplies, OTC medications, soap if we need, any office supplies and such.  We then check out and bag all the items – we have to bring our bags or buy paper bags from the store due to a change in law which went into effect in the middle of the pandemic and the paper bags they have are small.  I bring A LOT of bags and pre double bag them.  We take the bags out to our car, in this case our van as our car is in for service for over a month as they cannot figure out what is wrong, and our van is better for this anyway as it holds a lot more.  We then locked the van and took our cart and more bags back into the store.  We then bought all of the cold items – refrigerated, meats, and frozen items and then checked out again.  We even remembered to use 2 coupons for several dollars each – sent to us by a manufacturer due to a problem with a product a few months ago.  By the time we were done we had 16 double bagged bags plus 2 (not really) “gallon” pails of ice cream.  Amazingly we were not exhausted and not yelling at either as we have been on these food runs in the past.  Two good is that I drink as little water as possible with lunch as I don't want to have to visit the ladies room in a store right now and – husband finally realized this – he has to eat enough for lunch before we go to have enough glucose in system for his blood sugar not to fall while we are out.  We also go around 2 pm so the stores have smaller crowds in them – people working, children coming home from school etc then – easier to move around and almost no line checking out – plus not as many people means more space between us and them right now.

When we come home we wipe down most items with alcohol on paper towel.  I say most items as some items are double packaged – such as dry cereal in a bag in a box or fruit bars which are individually packed in a box – with these items we open the outside packaging and dump out the inner packages instead of wiping down the outer package and toss the outer packages right away.  It is an exhausting process and I came up a way to make it a little less.  Since I don't have to worry about canned and jarred goods being out as they will not attract bugs or other vermin, I leave the cans and jars in their bags and set aside the bags until later in the evening.

This entire process took us about 5- 6 hours this week not including later wiping down and storing the cans/bottles.  But we won't need to food shop again, other than some fill ins for about 2 months.  Why do we do this?  Well, we don't want to go out more often than we need to.  Hopefully by the time we need to do a full shopping trip again – it will be safer for us to do so, especially as we should get our second vaccinations next week.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

How organized are your shopping trips, especially now?  Do you buy only items which are needed (to be honest we were doing that  before “stay at home” came into being and I did not like it)?   Do you plan ahead to make sure that you don't run out of things?  Do you make a list as you run low on food and related items so you will know what you need.  (Since we started doing these food runs I actually inventory everything we have and make a list in computer spreadsheet than sit with husband to decide what and how much we need to buy of items – also since stay at home, I sort the list by, more or less, which aisle in the store the items we need are in – and print out the list of what we need to buy and take it with us.)

COVID 19 # 24 FOOD - STORING IT, KEEPING TRACK OF IT, AND USING IT IN TIME

 Another week, another post.  I had an idea this morning for the post, but by tonight it is gone.  So let me tell you how we are dealing with food right now as we only go out once a month to a month and a half to food shop (and did not shop from mid March to Mid May at all).

Husband, as I have mentioned, is a panicker.  To allay his fears we  now have, since the start of the corona virus, more food, toilet paper, paper towels, soap, dish soap, laundry soap, denture adhesive than we can use in several years.  My dining room table is covered in unopened canned, jarred, and bottled food and packets in gallon sized plastic boxes.  I have two huge plastic boxes that we normally use for food storage under my side of the kitchen table.  We also use these same types of boxes in the house for other storage.  I donated one of my bear figure storage boxes and he donated two of his woven items storage boxes to “the cause” and they are in the dining room filled with food.  

As with anything organizing what is where is important.  In our case we also want to make sure that we do not attract ants or mice – both of which we have had problems with in the past, so any food that is not in sealed glass, hard plastic or metal container is put in a plastic box – whether a large package in the huge boxes or the individual packages in the gallon containers.  

I covered the dining room table with heavy towels to protect it from damage – I want to use it as nice looking table again one day.  Cans, bottles, and jars are arranged in lines by what they are – a line of each type of soup cans (and the different lines of soup are next to each other), a line of canned tomatoes, a line of canned beans... or sometimes small groupings – 4 cans of evaporated milk (was 6 cans originally) sitting in 2 rows of 2 cans, and so on.  There are also gallon sized plastic containers (recycled large ice cream containers) stacked 2 high in a grouping on the far corner of the table.  These have things such as packets of ramen noodles (husband has me has me add half a package to half a can of soup for lunch sometimes) in two of them (ordered online from Walmart – we got a LOT of ramen packages).  One has packages of husband's instant grits (my apologies to anyone from the South) and another has packets of my instant oatmeal.  ½ cup containers of applesauce in another.  Powered milk packets in one container and powdered mash potatoes packets in another.  A quick circle of the table – okay cannot actually fully circle the table as there is stuff from my family home to be sorted through and excess baking pans on the far side of the table on the floor – lets one see how much we have of various items and find what we are looking for.  

The three large boxes on the floor in the dining room (stacked to save room) contain items such as fresh(ish) bread that is currently being used (we buy several loaves, start use one loaf, then usually start the second before it has to frozen and any loaves past two are frozen right away when we bring them home.  This includes white bread, rye bread, hot dog rolls and burger rolls.  There are also some packages of snack cakes that we bought.  Items that come multiple in a package and are individually wrapped are removed from their outer package – so the individual snack cakes are in the box, the boxes that, say 8 of them, came in was tossed and never came into the house – chances are no one has touched the inner packages or at least not just before we bought them are in a plastic bag with the bread.  Cookies are also in this box and some other individual items.  The next box down holds things such as boxes of cake mix, stuffing mixes, dry cereal, and two largeish cardboard containers of raisins.  The bottom box holds macaroni – both the boxes of spaghetti , penne, elbows and bow ties and the packaged macaroni and cheese boxes.  (Husband ordered the first three from Bjs in his big order from them, he told me 4 boxes of each were coming – 8 boxes of each came – so they will take awhile to use up.)

In the pantry closet in the kitchen I keep started macaronis in glass canning jars and other started packages of food in either hard plastic locking boxes, old Chinese soup containers, or other glass canning jars.  (I used to can.)  

We have do not have a huge refrigerator  (18 cubic foot) or freezer.  We have the small freezer on the top of the refrigerator and a dorm fridge sized freezer in the basement (from when we used to grow vegetables in the back yard and froze them for the winter).  

Mostly I can see the items in the refrigerator but I try to deal in a way that makes sense and I can remember.  We got this refrigerator a year ago.  It does not have what is normally called “a snack drawer”.  I kept the bin for ice from the old refrigerator, which went from back to front of the old refrigerator's freezer so it is well sized.  I put it in the right side of the refrigerator's top shelf and we use it for smaller items – currently it is being used to hold cold cuts and cheeses so they are together – and I can take them all out for lunch if husband is not sure what he wants by just pulling the bin out of the refrigerator.  We may have to root through the bin a bit to find which item husband wants, but they are all in there (unless they were hanging around too long had to be frozen).  

Shortly after we bought the refrigerator I bought a largeish plastic bin that looks woven, so it has openings around the four sides, to use to store small items in the freezer.  This works well.  It may be heavy, but I can take it out and see all of the smaller items in it easily to keep track of them.  

So now everything has a home – but how do I remember what is where?  I have been writing up lists of what is in each freezer (don't do so for non- cold items or for refrigerator items, at least not so far).  There are 4 lists.  Two are for the downstairs freezer and two are for the upstairs/refrigerator freezer.  One of each list is called “meat”, but it actually should be entrees – I list what meats, frozen entrees, and things such as frozen ravioli and tortellini or leftovers on these lists.  The other two lists are the upstairs “other” and basement “other” list.  This is where I list foods such as frozen vegetables, breads, and so on.

Of course maintaining the lists is important.  Since we are shopping in large quantities (husband almost passes out when he sees the huge amount on the receipts) I redo the lists when I shop each time and try to make sure to cross off or change the count of used items as I take items out – or move them from up to down list or the reverse if items have to moved.  We shopped last week and I have not yet had a chance to go through the freezers and make new lists so I am still working off the old ones.  This allows me to know what I have downstairs without having to run down the stairs to see what there is and lets me know that somewhere in the refrigerator's freezer is 2 more hot dogs.  

I have two other lists on the refrigerator also.  One is the list of “meals”, sort of a home menu.  If I ask husband what he wants for dinner and he says “what do we have” I can read him the list (my hand writing is not always readable by me, so I won't make him try to read it).  The second one is a shopping list.  Any suggestions we come up with or see we are running out of I add to this list.  (I periodically copy the items into the spreadsheet program file I started in my laptop since being home for Covid-19.)

I should mention that there are sections of food – especially cans, jars, bottles, and packaged items – which we have not used up the items we bought months ago when the pandemic started or soon after it did.  It may be years before we can use up all that we have.  We try even harder than normal to keep track of the dates on packages so food does not go bad.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Buying food that you need to have in the house if you are not food shopping often these days is a good thing, but you have to keep track of what you have to figure out what you need to buy and you need to keep track of dates on packages and also of when you started using a package as food in opened packages often go bad faster than in still sealed packages.  (We learned that we really need to buy mozzerella and ricotta cheeses in smaller packages as they both go bad too quickly when the package is open.)