rambly accounting

[dame_grise]

It's hard to track what comes in. We do get a lot of strange food from a local food bank and a friend who delights in decluttering her cabinets by giving us old food. To be honest, the sell-by dates aren't often hard and fast, so we take things with the idea we'll open them and determine if they're still food or not. But it's a lot. Right now, I think we have something like 6 cans of applesauce and more than 300 tubes of instant tea for water bottles. Anyway, it's hard to count food in and out, although I'm determined to figure out a way to get what we have to fit properly in our cabinets without overflowing onto the table and such.

We've had very few non-food objects come in after the new year. One late Christmas present and a book I bought myself the day before yesterday are all i can think of from the top of my head. So that's two in.

Now out. I wasn't doing very well earlier. I'd picked out several things I wanted to donate or sell, but didn't move to do anything about. But the last few days, I got busy.

I have a box (not quite full enough to leave) to donate with a lot of small things in it, including a collection of pouches I'd inherited from a friend who moved away. I threw away a broken china teapot, a broken straw purse, a hat hanger that didn't work, and shredded two boxes of papers that needed shredding. I sorted the socks and threw away about a dozen pairs (mostly mine). The donation box has a lot of things in it, but it's still less than 2 cubic feet of volume.

One thing I'm having a hard time letting go of is the larger rice cooker that seems to have lost its lid while it was in storage. I can't use it without the lid, but I'd prefer it to the smaller one I am currently using. I keep hoping to find a replacement lid somewhere so I can get rid of the smaller one instead. Meanwhile, it sits on a lower shelf in our crowded pantry taking up space. I'm also trying to figure out what to do with a mattress/box springs we have in storage. I am suddenly not comfortable selling it, but I hate the idea of throwing it away.

Comments

[all_adream]

When we want to get rid of mattresses and boxsprings and that sort of stuff, we ask the homeless shelter and battered women's shelters, because even if they don't need them themselves, they know people who are looking for that stuff for free--

[dame_grise]

I used to work for a place that took donations like that, but they shut down. I'll have to call around to find a new place, but that is an idea.

[holyschist]

Does the rice cooker need a special kind of lid with a vent or will any suitable-sized glass lid do? I often find thrift stores have a wide selection of orphaned Pyrex-type lids, if one of those might work...they might even have orphan rice cooker/pan lids.

Otherwise, how much would it cost to just get a new large rice cooker? Is it really worth hanging onto both the small one and the one you can't use until you find the right lid?

[beachlass]

*like*

Good ideas, holyschist

[dame_grise]

A new one isn't really an option, because of finances. And it takes a lid with a vent hole. I've had a hard time finding one.