Catie George

I believe ours is around 1912 ! Defiitely well past a century,  definitely still sewing along...

My mother irked museum staff recently when she admired their singer (younger than ours), and suggested they oil it and put a belt on it to get it running, because it was seizing from lack of use in an unclimate controlled museum building. The lady would only touch it with cotton gloves, and looked horrified by the suggestion someone might USE an antique.

We'll see whose is in better shape, 20 years from now...

You can always change a title if you arent comfortable with it, but I like it.

The idea of the spoon theory is everyone has a certain number of spoons in a day, some have fewer spoons than others. And some tasks may take more spoons for you than they do for someone else.

Perhaps you arent disabled. Perhaps you have more spoons than some people. Or perhaps you have fewer spoons than some people who are "disabled" but not in an energy-limiting way. Or perhaps you just have an occasional low spoon day or week... Just because you may have "more spoons" does not mean your spoons arent limited, too.

So yes, EVERYONE can use spoon theory. And in some ways, it only works as an analogy if we apply it to more than just disabled people. If we were to start labelling anyone using spoon theory as disabled - then i would be very offended. Or saying everyone who is disabled needs to describe their life in this one weird analogy. That would be silly.

I say this as a disabled woman with an energy limiting disabilify.  I used spoon theory long before i became disabled. If i suddenly became well, i'd still use it!

Personally, i find it helpful for more people to be exposed to the concept that energy is finite, and varies day by day, and talk about it! More discussing and thinking, less gatekeeping.

Do you have any sawmills nearby?

Where i am, you can buy several types and species of wood siding for considerably less than a hardware store, directly from the mill.

If you do use your own trees, i think board and batten was originally intended for green lumber.  There is a gorgeous board and batten house i drive by. They've used board and batten for the lower bit, and shakes under the eaves, then painted it with a semi transparent blue grey stain. Stunning.

My longest storing winter squash 2 years ago was a pepo... a patty pan squash i saved seeds from. It lasted in good shape until i needed  the seeds.

Last years longest storing squash was a moschata that i keep ignoring. It's over a year old now, still in good condition. I really should whack it up one of these days but part of me's just curious when it will finally start to go bad! Moschatas can be decent as summer squash too.

The patty pan squash itself is insipid as a winter sqaush. Pale and not much flavour. I find zuchinis don't store as well for me, when allowed to mature. I wonder if it's the same reason i prefer eating patty pans as summer squash? I find zucchinis to be more watery than the patty pans i grow. I also find the mature  pepos to have really hard skin, which i dislike.

One of my main  criteria for seed selection is squash that last in my basement. The first few years nothing much lasted, including storage varieties.

I think we've stopped doing this as we spend more time indoors where doorways are an issue, and have more access to vehicles and level roads.  Why not just sling the thing in a vehicle and drive it?

I have always liked doing it but have never gotten well balanced enough i can do anything large without a supporting hand. I got some odd looks from neighbours as i carried a chair home from a garage sale on my head one day...  And coincidentally, just carried a pallet dropped off by a friend yesterday across the yard by slinging it on my head- far less awkward for my short body and inflamed shoulder tendons than trying to haul it beside me? Drag it? Put it under my arms? I find myself putting things on my head mostly when outdoors, and carrying something that is rigid and oversized for my body - plywood, furniture, cardboard boxes...  I have some wooden chairs i drag outside fairly often that carrying them on my head works well for. Also not dirty...a heavy bag of leaves is awkward, but i don't want leaf juice in my hair! I suppose a headscarf would help with that, too.

I love the idea of making a pad to be able to carry things with hard angles. I've used a jacket or a sweatshirt, but find them floppy and annoying.

Personally i find the most difficult part is having enough strength to lift the item over my head. Once it's up there, it's not too heavy. (Rule of thumb, if you can't lift it above your head with your arms, don't put it on your head?)

May i add for consideration the bonus skill of using a yoke or a pole  to balance and carry one or two heavy items and still have access to at least one hand? Of course, a yoke is the  easiest way to carry a canoe, but i've often found myself using a canoe paddle to carry extra bags while a friend carries the canoe, thus preventing having to make a return trip (and also leading to some hilarious pictures).  Transfers the weight to your shoulders, leaves you a free hand, and is somewhat easier to maneuver on a forest trail. I do it once in a blue moon in regular life when i need to carry a bunch of bags or other floppy things AND something like a broom or a 2x4.

Jay Angler wrote:Congratulations on having a functional clothesline!

A big issue with a long clothesline is that as you load it, the all the "wire stretch" submits to gravity and the center of the line will droop.

Do you have what is called a "clothesline spacer"? We have both a plastic and a metal version. The plastic has more resistance, the metal one with rollers has more risk of getting tangled in stuff - particularly if it's windy. I still recommend a couple of them if you're going to dry big things or heavy things, as it will distribute the weight over both wires more evenly.

I do! I have the plastic s clip style which tend to fling themselves around the yard. Open to other options i don't need to go hunting for in the grass.

With the line up and the first tiny load of clothes up, now i'm mulling finding a few pavers for the space under where i'll stand to hang clothes to keep me out of the dirt.

With the extra long (250 ft) clothesline, i managed to get it up and hung. I even have leftover clothesline for... something. You can see from the photos that the spruce tree is rather sad. It (like all my other spruces) has a fungal infection,  and it's being eaten alive by grape vines. I'll clear the grape vines out... eventually. I need to get/borrow loppers on a pole, or a pole saw...

I used two types of tighteners since it is so long. A typical winch style joiner on the clothesline itself, which still left it very saggy even when  i could no longer tighten it. I would not be happy with just this one. Then a turnbuckle behind the pulley at the garage which made a huge difference.  I still have more adjustment space left on it, for when the clothesline eventually stretches. I love that it goes up hill, and starts fairly low to the ground by my garage. It should be fairly easy to load, but still allow things to not flap against the ground.

Now i just need to handwash more clothes, and try it out!

Jay Angler wrote:

Aimee Bacon wrote:You could get a freestanding drying rack.  They make many now that are quite large.  

They tip over in the wind and the clothes lands in the dirt. We do put racks outside occasionally, but on a calm day in a wind-sheltered spot. Catie George is in a humid area, so she *needs* wind or at least airflow to get the clothes to dry.



@ Catie George: how are you going to attach the two pulleys?  Our tree end was a wire rope around the tree, but putting some blocks of wood so the wire rope can't cut into the tree would be good.  The garage end will need the stress well distributed. My sister had a phone wire from the pole to the house, held at the house end by a hook into wood and it pulled right out of the wood. I fixed it... it won't be pulling out again!

Yup - stuff on my sheltered free standing rack is taking a day and a half to dry!

Honestly, was thinking of just lag bolting into the tree.  It's a somewhat unhappy spruce and i dont want to lash that tightly around it, but my experience is trees heal over small wounds pretty well.

Agree on the garage end - will be bolting through a stud. The siding is cheap vinyl and I wouldnt trust it to hold up a string of christmas lights!

The clothesline at my mom's couldnt handle anything heavy, or it would break the wall of the ancient wood shed it was attached to  and her neighbours clothesline, on an old telephone pole broke last year at the base - clothes lines put a lot of stess on things!

More irritated searching later, it is possible to buy 250 ft clothes line!

My local hardware store only has 150 ft line (75 ft by the time you put it on a pulley), and the other store i went to only had 200 ft clothesline and plastic pulleys. My line will be about 110 ft, to go between my garage and the nearest tree.  

So!  If i purchase parts from 3 stores (why, if you are a store selling 250 ft clothesline, do you not sell 8" pulleys? Why, if you sell 8" pulleys, do you not sell a turnbuckle?) And borrow a ladder (the tree is up-slope) i can get a very good heavy duty line that hopefully won't sag horribly, albeit one at a rather odd angle.

Still doesnt solve the problem if someone else was working with bedrock  - may i recommend planting trees 30 years ago in a convenient location?

My experience with pulley lines has been that they break things they are attached to and have a lot of force/lever action at the base due to their height.

I  really liked the gabion or concrete idea, but they'd have to be massive to not topple over for a pulley line. Setting a rotary post (which hss less single direction tension on it)  in a big concrete block would probably be the best bet, as you'd need less concrete.

If my clothesline doesnt work or the tree breaks (its not a particularly healthy specimin) i think i'll try the rotary clothesline in concete or a gabion basket idea and move the clothesline elsewhere for those really heavy a few times a year things, like duvets and tents.

Thank you everyone!