The first part of October was winter-like; the second part was lovely… if you like rain. We had the wettest month in history – a week and a half ago – and the rain kept coming.
This past weekend was dry and sunny and lovely and I was finally able to get a little work done in the yard. I mulched the front yard on Saturday and most of the back yard on Sunday. Even with as wet as it had been, the leaves were dry enough to mulch pretty well.
Laundry One of the issues of a wet October has been drying my laundry. It has been difficult, but I have managed so far (doing several loads on those days when it is dry enough to line-dry clothes). For those of you across the globe who have never had a dryer, this is probably pretty common. It has been a little difficult for me. I spent my entire life with the luxury of a dryer at my immediate disposal, and making due without it has been a good lesson.
Insulating I have been doing a bunch of reading on how others have decreased their carbon foot print while investing just a small amount of money. Here are a few new ones on me that make sense:
- If you have single-pane windows, use a spray bottle to create moisture on the window and place bubble wrap over the window to create an additional barrier. This will let light in, however, it does distort the view (and there are a few windows where I find this a real plus). You can put it up, and pull it down if company comes over – whereas the plastic that one normally puts over the windows is pretty much there for the entire winter (and I’m not a fan of the way it looks if entertaining). I had some bubble wrap sitting around and have used it on a few windows so far. I have also seen rolls of it at the dollar stores.
- Door extenders. I have a storm door that is shorter than the door frame (it was this way when I bought it) and every year I stuff a towel in that area during the winter and step over it every time I use the door. I found a two piece door extender that expands front to back to different widths of doors, and was extra wide. I cut it to size, but was unable to get the screws (provided) to go into the metal storm door. I covered the inside piece of the this hard plastic extender – the part that goes against the door – with liquid nails, attached it to the door and let the door sit open for a day. I now have a very tight seal with that door, and I don’t have the bright white outside piece (that didn’t provide any insulating factor) up against my newly painted dark green door. It works very well. I love liquid nails!
- Caulking the floor. I live on a slab (no basement) and in my sunroom I have noticed that there is a slight gap between the floor and one of the walls. I took some silicone caulk and caulked over it. I recently tore out baseboard heaters that hadn’t worked since I bought the house 10 years ago, and did not see these gaps until the baseboards were pulled. Who knows how long those gaps had been there to let in insects (ants especially appeared from no where) and cold air. No more.
- Something as simple as finding all the heating vents and making sure they are not covered by some piece of furniture, sounds like a “duh” – but I found two vents that had been covered up almost since the day I moved in over a decade ago.


And this is what this looks like now. Of course, you can’t see the new brace boards and I still need to put on a new sill and do some finishing work — but the new 2×4 that was put in fits like a glove. We dated and signed this new piece of wood (it is something we just do from time-to-time when working on home projects).






















