Maintaining a clutter-free home
by Debbie Bowden of Organize Now
Let’s say you get your house organized. You’ve worked hard, probably with a knot in your stomach, but you are rewarded with no junk, no clutter, no extraneous stuff. Good job. Now you can move on to the real secret of being organized – maintenance.
Maintenance isn’t nearly as time consuming as initially organizing, but it does call for diligence. This step in the process of being completely organized calls for a change in habit. Like any habit we change it means doing things differently and establishing a new pattern.
Here’s a tip that is a tremendous help with maintenance, and only takes 5 to 10 minutes a day. Go through your entire house and pick up stuff. It doesn’t matter what time of day as long as it is around the SAME time each day (I do this when I get home from work because I am NOT a morning person). To start this new habit, literally walk through every room. Look for stuff that is out of place and put it back in its spot. Remove items that don’t belong and put them where they do belong. Most importantly, finish the room before moving on to the next.
Let me repeat that – finish the room before moving on to the next. It is too easy to get distracted by trying to tackle multiple rooms all at once. Distraction is probably the number one culprit of not having a good maintenance routine.
When you first start a maintenance routine it may take you longer than 10 minutes. But each day the time you dedicate to maintaining will shorten. Before you know it, your house is consistently organized, and that is a habit you can definitely live with.
Let’s Can Apples
by JR Coffey
The smell of cooking apples seem to say Fall. It is that smell and taste that we want to capture in the canning jar. I believe Fall is one of the busiest times in regard to canning and preserving. Many fruits are in during the Fall season, including grapes, apples, pears, plums and figs. Let’s get started canning!
The varieties of apples are endless. I prefer Golden Delicious to can for Baking, Ginger Gold for Apple Chutney, Winesaps, Grimes Golden or my favorite Northern Spy for applesauce and apple butter. The early apples such as Summer Rambo and Transparent are good for sauce and cooking as well. I use the same apples for pies as for sauce.
Apples for Baking
1 gallon apples, peeled and quartered
1 C. sugar
1 t. Fruit Fresh
Mix sugar and fruit fresh and sprinkle over apples. Cover and let stand overnight. Next morning, pack apples into clean jars, leaving ¾” headspace. Add hot water to juice left in container and dissolve sugar and divide liquid among the jars. Add more water to fill jars to within ¾” headspace. Wipe jar rims, seal and process (cold pack) 5 to 10 minutes in boiling water bath. Do half gallon jars 15 minutes. Do not process too long or they will turn to sauce instead. Golden Delicious are excellent canned this way.
A slight variation is to use 2 to 3 pounds sugar for a 5 gallon container of prepared apples. To serve, put your apples in a casserole dish. Sprinkle with about ¼ C. brown sugar and dot with about 1 or 2 T. butter. Bake at 300 degrees for 45 to 60 minute.
Apple Pie Filling
Please see Peach column for my pie filling to can recipe. Just add 1 T. ground cinnamon per double batch of glaze for each ½ bushel of apples. This will can 14 to 16 quarts each time. You could add some apple pie spice (1 to 2 t.) instead of or in addition to the cinnamon. Some also like about a teaspoon of vanilla as well in apple pie filling.
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