Ruffled Feathers and Spilled Milk

Farming with ducks and dairy goats, chickens and children.

Sometimes You Just Know.

Posted on | August 23, 2012 | 6 Comments

As soon as you see it.  You know.  And you think to yourself, “That’s it!  That’s for me!”

Sometimes you’re looking for it.  And you can’t believe how lucky you are that you found it.

Sometimes you’re looking for something else when it just falls into your lap.  And then it goes beyond luck.  It’s more like….Destiny….Fate….Divine Intervention!

Take, for example, the fact that I was looking on Pinterest for some storage ideas for the garage.  The garage that I am building inside my house.  I realize most people have a garage attached to their house.  Or detached from their house.  Not inside their house.

But what used to be our garage was converted to living space when the second child was born.  And then the money for a new garage was used to add on more bedrooms by the time we had four children.  Whatever money was left after that was eaten up by the barn animals.  A fine tradition that continues to the present day.

Unfortunately, even though we don’t have a garage, we have all the stuff that a family of 6 accumulates that should be stored in the garage.  So I am converting the office/spare bedroom/craft room/exercise room into an office/spare bedroom/craft room/exercise room/garage.  I realize it’s a lot of pressure for an 11′ x 12′ space.  But, hey, we all wear a lot of hats around here.  If I had to list all my jobs with slashes in between them we’d be here all day.  Plus it would seem like whining bragging.  So let’s just move on.

I found a way to hang The Other Half’s extra uniforms and dress clothes that we don’t have room for in our bedroom closet.  Luckily he doesn’t have that many dress clothes so I also had room for the bags of dog food.  And the kids’ bike helmets.

Note that the kids’ helmets are stored according to the organizing tenet that the things you use most often should be kept in accessible places.  We never use the helmets.  I’m not sure helmets are actually required for biking on a long stretch of gravel driveway bordered by ditches, field fencing, and wildflower beds.  If the kids lose control on the hill they primarily throw themselves into one of the above items and a helmet really isn’t effective against those kind of brush burns.

Oh, I suppose if they made it to the paved road, the helmets would come in handy against the blacktop.  But the odds of them making it to the road are pretty slim.  The majority of the time they have to throw themselves down to avoid hitting a free range chicken, guinea, duck, or goat kid still small enough to squeeze through the field fencing.  Getting all the way to the perennial beds without striking a farm animal is kind of like the country version of Frogger.  So helmets are on the top shelf.

The fishing rods were hung on the ceiling rod rack we got from Cabela’s.  That little gem is pure genius.  Clearly, it was created for other people building garages inside their home.  Also, for the people who used to store their poles piled in a corner of the water heater closet and could never pull that huge tangled mess out without getting a fish hook embedded in their thumb.  I’m just sayin’.

We hung the baseball bats and badminton rackets on some simple hooks.  This serves a double purpose as the bats are close enough to our home’s entrance to serve as an emergency back up.  If an intruder gets past the snarling German Shepherds.  Or the wasp spray we keep on top of the fridge for the kids to use if necessary.  And before we have to break out the big guns.  Literally, big guns.  But, primarily, keeping the baseball bats hung on hooks means they are not on the floor in the kids’ rooms, waiting to logroll us to our death when we enter in the dark for a goodnight kiss.

Then the kids and I built a ball holder.  We modeled it after this DIY Kid Friendly Ball Corral we found online.  Obviously we had to adapt their idea to suit our indoor garage.  After all, tearing the drywall down to the studs might compromise the room’s identity as a spare bedroom.  Using leftover lids and tuna cans to store baseballs on the top was an amazing spark of ingenuity on my part.  Even if it meant the kids had to eat tuna sandwiches for lunch for 3 days.

Although this made all the sports balls easily reachable in order to encourage outdoor play (plus easy to put away!), it did have a downfall.  Luna, Pretty’s dog, discovered the baseball mitts were reachable, too.  And there was a regrettable mitt chewing incident.

Mmmmmm, leather.

Good thing the office/spare bedroom/craft room/exercise room/garage has a door that can be closed to prevent future incidents.

But despite all those indoor garage enhancements, I still had a lot of work to do.  There’s still all this:

Eh.

Which is why I went back to Pinterest to find some storage ideas for sewing and hunting supplies.  But before I could even figure out whether to search for “sewing” or “hunting”, the main page of Pinterest popped up with a picture of this:

Sopapilla Cheesecake.

I mean, I didn’t even ask Pinterest anything yet.  Nothing.  Just opened Pinterest.com and there it was on the main page.  Like if Pinterest knew that was exactly what I needed.  And it was!

Because I saw that yummy picture and all thoughts of hunting and sewing flew from my mind.  And I knew, I just knew, that what I was really looking for was a good Sopapilla Cheesecake recipe.  I know what you’re thinking.  That’s not Destiny, Fate, or Divine Intervention.  That’s just plain, simple Distraction.

OH, YE OF LITTLE FAITH.  THERE’S MORE!  Because when I read that recipe, the ingredient list took my breath away.

Because I already had cream cheese in my fridge!

And I already had sugar and cinnamon and vanilla in my pantry!

I even already had a can of strawberry pie filling as suggested by others who made that recipe before me!

And I had already made plans to go to the store for biscuits, toilet paper, and Nerf gun bullets (the usual) so I could easily pick up crescent rolls while I was there!

I ask you, if that isn’t Destiny, Fate, or Divine Intervention, then what the heck is??!!!

I am not one to argue with the forces of the universe so I made that Sopapilla Cheesecake. A big 13X9 pan of it.

With some strawberry pie filling.

And it was just as good as Pinterest said it would be.  Just like I knew it would be.  ‘Cause sometimes you just know.  People with garages in their house are intuitive like that.

Comments

6 Responses to “Sometimes You Just Know.”

  1. Terry Golson
    August 24th, 2012 @ 5:23 am

    Impressive organizing! Re: the bike helmets. My sons are now older teens. We went into a Toys R Us for the first time in eons. Did you know that plastic wagons now have seat belts? My first thought was, “and what happens when the kids crash into a weedy ditch?” I didn’t have the heart to see if the Cozy Coup (the best-selling car in America, you know the orange and yellow plastic foot controlled vehicle) has seat belts.

  2. Carolynn
    August 24th, 2012 @ 9:06 am

    I love organizing. It’s so satisfying. If that makes me a nerd, then so be it! And, while we’re at it, I like lists too. These are some excellent ideas, chewed up leather baseball mitt, not withstanding. I’ve lived my entire adult life in homes with 800 sq. ft. or less, so I’ve had to become quite creative with storage ideas and selective about what stays and what goes. You’d be amazed by how much space there actually is in a home that goes largely unused. The ceiling storage for the fishing rods is an excellent use of available space. Well done! Oh…and the cheesecake, I’ll be coming back for that recipe…

  3. Lisa D
    August 25th, 2012 @ 5:58 am

    Let me know what you find for pile of out-of-season equine crap piled in the corner of our garage 🙁

  4. Kim
    August 25th, 2012 @ 3:38 pm

    Those plastic bags to store clothes/bedding/fabric/rubbish you cant throw out are great, use the vaccum cleaner to suck out the air and it collapses into a skinny thing to shove under the bed – joy! I love that invention…… and cheesecake.

  5. Sue
    August 29th, 2012 @ 11:26 pm

    A brilliant sorting out, and yes, sometimes fate shows you cheesecake and you just have to….dont you!!

    Sue xx

  6. Anne Kimball
    September 3rd, 2012 @ 6:55 am

    O.M.G.
    I just found you through the comment you left on my (Life on the Funny Farm) blog and I am both deliriously joyful that I found you and spittin’ mad that it wasn’t sooner.
    I.
    Love.
    Your.
    Blog.
    Will be adding it to my bloglist toot sweet. Or is it suite? Whatever. NOW.

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