A painting spatula, and a brush bag

I was just touching up the living room walls, and the paint can--now half-empty--was starting to get a little crusty and rusted, the way paint cans do.  

So, as I was taking care of this paint job and also transferring the paint to better containers, it struck that this is a good time to do a little homage to two small painting hacks I've adopted during the last decade: a paint-brush bag and a paint spatula.

These hacks exhibited here.

The paint brush bag: is this something everyone else knows already?  If so, I've been pretty clueless much of my life.  Basically, it's this: if I'm painting something that will require more than one coat, instead of rinsing the paint brush out between uses, I put the bristle end of the brush in a small plastic bag and seal the open end of the bag tightly.

Then, the brush doesn't dry out between uses, but also I don't have to spend time/water rinsing the brush out.  I even have a dedicated little plastic bag that I store with my paint supplies for just this use.  The only time I rinse the brush is when the entire job is done and I'm putting everything away.  When I finish one coat, I just wrap the brush up in the bag, and unwrap it when I'm getting ready to start the next coat. So simple!

As for the spatula:  getting the last paint out of a paint can is just as frugal as getting the last bit of mayonnaise or peanut butter out of a jar.  So when I realized I had acquired more thrifted rubber spatulas than I needed in the kitchen, I dedicated one rubber spatula to the paint supplies box.  For the living room project, I used the spatula to help transfer the paint from the increasingly decrepit can to a pair of glass jars, where it's easy to see and unlikely to go bad.  

I don't put new wine in old skins, but I do put old paint in new jars.
Even when the spatula is washed off,
it still sports a few old paint splotches on the handle.

Rags vs Water smack down: Rags win!

My husband and I spent a lot of time in the car lately, driving back and forth to see some of our distant children and killing lots and lots of bugs on the grille and hood of our car in the process.  When we finally arrived back home, the car was now speckled.

A bug-speckled car is pretty gross (and I'm guessing the bugs agree, not that they could express an opinion about it any longer).  So I set about to clean the car as it was parked along the street.

I used a technique that I learned about long ago from a book called "Speed Cleaning": it's one that is not only speedy -- as the title promises -- but also uses a heck of a lot less water than the way I used to clean floors and other large surfaces (like cars).  And basically, that technique is "more rags, less water".

I took two small buckets (basically, large bowls) out to my car.  When I started, one bucket contained some warm soapy water and about 20 rags made from cut-up t-shirts; the other bucket was empty. I'd use a rag to clean one section of a car until the rag was filthy, and then I'd dump the dirty rag into the dry bucket and pull out a new, clean rag. 

In particular, I never paused to rinse a dirty rag, and I never put a dirty rag into the soapy-water bucket, so the water stayed clean.  Hence, I spent zero time cleaning the rags, only cleaning the car.  And that one little bucket with its quart or two of water was the only water that went to cleaning the car: much less water than spraying with hoses.

For the particularly buggy places that needed a bit of extra scrubbing,  I also nabbed a small bowl of water and a scrubber to help loosen up the junk; I didn't mind dipping the scrubber back into the increasingly dirty water because once the junk was loosened, I could then wipe it off with a clean rag.  The job of the scrubber is to prepare the way for the rag, not to actually clean the car.

One of the things that I have learned to appreciate about this technique is that it's a lot easier to stop in the middle of a cleaning job and come back, if that is necessary. I can use a few clean rags to clean part of a kitchen floor, and there's no giant bucket on wheels blocking my way needing attention if I then decide to go take care of other business. 

When I finished, I had a small pile of dirty rags that then went straight into the laundry room; the washing machine is a much more efficient use of water and time for cleaning those rags out than I am, after all. I also had a small bucket of clean soapy water and a car that has been debugged and prettified. So satisfying!

I think it's official: I'm wealthy in canning jars

Amassing canning jars has been a lot like building up monetary savings, for me, at least. When I first started canning, it felt like there were times when I had enough jars/spending money, and times when emergencies would arise and I was scrambling to make it through.  I constantly had my eyes open for ways to thrift, and canning jars were part of that thrift: I'd nab curbside jars, gladly accept hand-me-down jars from other people's houses, even pay for 25¢ jars from yard sales.  Still, occasionally I'd have to break down and purchase more at full price.

It's hard to go from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset, not only with money but also with other things in my life. Even though I know I have enough money to retire comfortably, for example, I can still pull out the scarcity-supervillain-cape when it comes to my morning coffee: when I travel, I carry around both a water bottle and a coffee bottle, so I don't have to wake up in a coffee desert.  

But I think I'm ready to declare that, when it comes to canning jars, I have enough and more than enough: I am wealthy in canning jars.

Here is the evidence.  Firstly, the basement shelves with jars of food I've canned or stored.

If I go grocery shopping in the basement,
here's where I go.

I've got cherries, tomatoes, peaches, lemon brine, and even a few jars of chicken stock and green beans down here. I also use jars to store dry goods like beans, sugar, rice, etc, and I've got large quantities of those on the shelves as well.  I know that apple sauce canning is in the near future, as is turkey stock (post Thanksgiving).  That means I'll be needing to fill an additional 3 or 4 dozen jars, at most.

Those are the jars that are full.  There's a whole other shelf of empty jars.  And, at the risk of drawing envy from the outside world because of flaunting how vast my vault of canning jars is, I'm just going to bling it out here for you.

So many jars.  Jars, jars, jars.

In fact, that picture above is AFTER I rearranged and culled the jar collection.  That set of shelves was getting cluttered enough that I spent an afternoon reorganizing it.  I used chalkboard paint on the front of each of the boxes to give me space to indicate what's inside (I love chalk for labeling things). I sorted each box so it contained exactly one kind of canning jar (meaning not all boxes are full, but a surprising number of them are).  Empty boxes go upside down, for quick identification and also for keeping clean.

I really, really love labeling things!

And having done all this sorting/organizing/labeling, I realized I had both more boxes than would fit on the shelves (no wonder it felt cluttered: it really was cluttered!), and also . . . drum roll . . . more canning jars than I'd be able to use.  

Too much of a good thing: more boxes than I need.

Canning jars that sit in my basement gathering dust (and sawdust) are not part of helping make the world a more frugal, sustainable place.  So now that I know I'm wealthy in canning jars (and in other areas of my life, too) , I've started the process of canning jar philanthropy.  I'm going to start offering them back into the world, via Freecycle and word of mouth.  

It's a good feeling to be rich in jars, and it's even a better feeling to finally know it.