Hibernation

This week has been the first week of the season with a heat index of 100 or higher every day. This makes it extremely hard to be outside doing the things we love, and it marks the beginning of the downhill spiral for all our plants and flowers.

It's been hot, y'all. There really is something to be said about "dry heat." This ain't that.

Predictably, we've withdrawn into our sheltered, shaded, air-conditioned spaces, and just as predictably I've started eyeballing the nooks and crannies around the house that have fallen into chaos and disorder. My kitchen pantry caught my full attention today.

In the last few days (with the help of the steroids), I've canned four quarts of chicken stock and 27 1/2 pints of homemade jellies.

Yes, I said twenty-seven and a half.

But when it was time to put my lovely jeweled jars away on their shelf, I found there just wasn't any room.

Exhibit A:

So this afternoon I tackled the clearing of the shelves with vigor and actually got the kids to pitch in! In purging the expired pantry items (we had a jar of Nutella that expired the Christmas after Henry was born!) and gathering together all the odds-and-ends that were tucked here and there with no rhyme or reason, a funny thing happened; we found ourselves moving from the pantry to the cabinet over the appliances, and from there to the cabinet over the microwave, and from there to the cabinet over the chest freezer... and we probably could have kept going.  

By the time we needed to break to make dinner, my dogs were barkin'! But we had a neat-as-a-pin pantry (with lots of freed-up shelf space!), all our canning jars back together in one space, room for all our coffee mugs to be in one cabinet, and all my crocks and fermentation weights together in their own space. 

Exhibit B:

If I can keep up this motivation for the rest of the oncoming summer swelter, we'll be pretty well off for it come fall! 

(But who am I kidding, I only have 3 more days of steroids left and then I'll probably be done.)

I'm happy for the progress we made during these first few days of summer hibernation, though, and look at all that room for the salsa and canned pears and apple sauce to come! Even if we don't lift another finger to purge or organize, I'm feeling pretty good about it all.