So I took a little break from the blog again.  Four months is a “little break,” right?  Well, this time I’m pretty sure I have an excellent excuse: I was finishing my PhD!  So now my imaginary readers can call me Dr. Christine.  Along with the new degree comes the search for a new career, and it looks like that’s going to involve a move to the Washington, D.C. metro area.  So I’m probably not going to be sharing a lot of great recipes or crafts in the coming months.  I need to keep the house looking perfect at all times in case someone wants to come see it.

Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free TrialI’ve spent the past couple weeks cleaning out all of my hidey holes in the house.  I know it sounds crazy that a single woman could fill up all the cabinets and all the closets in a 3 bedroom house, but here’s the deal: I have a lot of hobbies.  Beekeeping supplies, empty jars, a pressure canner, specialty baking pans, and craft supplies take up a lot of space!  I know that I need the closets to look as spacious as they really are, so I rented a storage unit for all my supplies.  I called and got prices on storage units about six weeks ago and at the time 10’x10′ units were about $39/month.  As I was on the way to rent one, my parents convinced me that I could just store my stuff under the stairs in their garage.  This felt like a trap; my father has a long history of fucking with shit.  For instance, I used to keep my Christmas lights at his airplane hangar.  Two years ago when I went to get them, I had about a quarter of the lights that I remembered having.  It turns out that he had “consolidated boxes,” as he is wont to do, and many of my lights somehow ended up in his yard (I know you’re thinking “Christine, how the hell do you know that they were your lights in his yard?”  Easy.  I had purple, lime green, and orange rope lights that he did not have before and all of a sudden his tree was filled with those colors!)

Anyway, I fell for this shit again and didn’t get the storage unit.  And of course, he fucked with my shit.  So weeks after getting the initial quote on storage units I had to scrounge around and try to find one on Memorial Day.  All of this long-ass story is to let you know the following: storage unit prices are based on supply and change weekly.  So the 10’x10′ storage unit that was supposed to be $39/month was now $150/month!  I was able to find a 5’x10′ unit elsewhere for $50/month, but that place has shorter hours and no air conditioning.  Not the end of the world, but I thought you’d all want to know that the prices change that much!

One of the boxes I didn’t want to take to the storage unit was my box of essential oils.  I use essential oils for so many things: beekeeping, candle-making, soap-making, cleaning supplies, etc.  I knew I wasn’t doing any candle- or soap-making, but I definitely wanted access to the essential oils for use in my diffusers.  As much as I’m trying not to cook anything smelly while my house is on the market, I know I don’t have that kind of discipline and the essential oil diffusers help a lot.

I don’t know how other people are storing essential oils, but I keep mine in a Sterilite tub in my utility closet.  Part of my decision to keep them in there is that I like having my closet filled with identical, labeled boxes.  That way they stack well and the whole closet feels under control when I open the doors.  Anyway, the essential oils have been in one of those boxes for years but this system hasn’t worked as well as I’d like.  The big problem is that the bottles roll around in the box and sometimes the bottles leak.  And by “sometimes” I mean, “why haven’t I thrown out that one bottle of cinnamon oil?”  That bottle is always the culprit.

So basically, this entire post is the following tip: fill your box up with rice and stick your essential oil bottles in that.  Now my bottles don’t roll around, plus if there was an accident the rice would help absorb the spill.

 

 

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