Follow Up on Today's Frog

I set my timer for 15 minutes and headed for the garage. Although I originally wasn't going to clean up the other areas, I kind of found myself in the situation where I had to.

I'm shocked at how much area I covered and what I uncovered. In that 15 minutes, I nearly cleared half of the garage. By tomorrow, we should be able to park the little car in there.

I now have three bags of items to be recycled and a box and a bag of things to be tossed. Nice!

I'm debating whether to toss the sewing machine or take it out to be fixed. Not sure how much it will cost to fix--the entire bobbin casing jumped ship, but I know how great it would be to have it for emergency preparation purposes, so sounds like that's a decision I'm going to have to make pretty soon.

Besides the sewing machine, I ran across these useful items:

• 2 food-grade large plastic bucket (no lids yet)
• 3 water bottles
• 1 mess kit + a spoon and a knife

I cleared an entire shelf, but I still have quite a bit of garage to clean. I just have to control myself and not fill it up. On the shelves above are plastic containers of water--to which I added two more that I've had sitting on my kitchen counter for the past few days--and above that are #10 cans full of stored food. Above that are boxes of empty Mason jars. Is there any chance I can get through this experience without canning my own food? I know many people do it and love it, but in my mind it's like wearing the clothes I've made for myself--I never can bring myself to do it because I know my own flaws, and I'm afraid the thing'll fall apart. I don't trust the food I can. A couple years ago, I took the apples from the tree in our yard and made applesauce. When I pulled it off of the shelves, I saw all kinds of air bubbles in it, and it made me nervous. Am  I just being silly? Terrible not to be able to trust oneself, huh?

Anyway, I wasn't raised by a canner, so I really don't know the first thing about it. I'm happy to freeze things, but canning's just so foreign to me. Maybe, as time goes on, I'll become a bit more brave.

The first thing I found when I stepped into the garage was a long rope. I wound it up and put it in one of the wheeled garbage cans that house our 72-hour kits. I also placed a sleeping bag back where it belongs on the top shelf. I figure that when I'm done, at least I'll know where we can grab things if we ever have to.

Things are coming together. I'm now going to wash out the food-grade buckets and put the water bottles into the dishwasher. I should probably wash the mess kit too. I know it was used this summer, but I wonder whether the last user remembered to wash it for real when he got home with it last.

So, it seems that one big frog leads to a bunch of smaller frogs for me to eat. Who knew frogs reproduced so quickly?