Author: Wolsey

I am a boring middle aged man. I am an author and a maker. I do a lot of cooking and gardening.

Unicorn Spit & Rough Wood Projects

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There is this gel stain finish called Unicorn Spit. (This is not a paid for spot, because nobody would ever pay me!) Its claim to fame is it’s near universal in what it covers, and it’s very vibrant. It comes in a rainbow of colors. If you want the official user’s handbook on their website, you will have to pay $27 for it. I’m not really up to paying someone $27 for how to use their product so I read the directions, and watched some clearly promotional YouTube videos.

I had two projects I was working on. One is a large wall mounted spice rack for my approximately 10 billion spices, and the other is a basic box for a coffee table made out of plywood.

After I finished making and sanding my projects, I used an old chip brush to paint on the Unicorn Spit. If you use it straight it doesn’t cover raw wood very well, and takes a lot of stain. However, I found using a spray bottle filled with water really worked well. I would dab a bit on the wood, spray spray spray, then brush it back and forth. It covered shockingly well. I was very impressed with that.

I did several coats, and put my brush in a ziplock bag and froze it between coats so I didn’t have to wash it out. The brush thaws right out, and it’s like you never stopped, when you have to take a break. This works with latex house paint as well, incidentally.

They actually recommend to dilute it and seems like you can dilute it with a lot of options per their directions. I wanted a super deep color so I went with my spray bottle technique and it worked out well.

There were spots that I had a hard time getting, but I just kept touching it up until I was satisfied. I used a rag to rub it around for maximum coverage after I did the first coat.

Yes I do use my can goods to prop up my projects when I paint them.

When it dries, it dries to a chalky texture. The website had some options for finishes, and I was going to use a wax sealant initially. I just wasn’t sure it would cut it. Just touching the wood would give me a light blue dusting on my skin, so I needed something more than that. I decided to use Minwax clear poly on it, and put on three coats, with light sanding between it.

You have to be careful if you use poly to seal, I did my second coat too soon, and smudged off the blue in some areas of my 1 x 4 spice rack. I fixed it by mixing some acrylic blue paint with some triple thick varnish and you can’t even tell. So nothing to worry about too much.

Here is the finished coffee table top. It’s hard to get a photo of the color. In this photo it looks like washed out patches, but in real life, it’s really stunning and nice. It’s like a sea of blue variegations.

This is all I wanted in a coffee table. It holds my crochet bag so the cat can’t get to my yarn, and my pot box, and soon to be home for my Arizer. No longer living in an apartment means I don’t have to hide everything in a closet anymore, so I wanted my coffee table to have space for it all.

I looked at all sorts of options for a coffee table, but I just didn’t like any. It had to be a bit tall because my couch was tall, so I just made a simple plywood box. The ones online seemed overpriced, and cheaply made, and weren’t the right height. Plus, I like to keep my feet on it, and eat off of it so it had to survive me.

For the spices, I have tried numerous organizational processes in the new house. The problem is, I have a lot of spices, and I make my own blends. I can’t digest garlic, it seems, so I do all my own blends for my most used items. Add to that, I cook a lot of different styles, so I need spices for Indian food, Chinese food, Japanese food, Italian food, you name it. My wife also bakes, so we need that too. What we have on hand is usually indicative of what we’ve been cooking in the last 6-9 months or so.

Even better, we can see them all. My wife has ADHD and if it’s out of site, it doesn’t exist. To a certain extent, having them all crammed back in a tiny cupboard meant I was over buying as well.

I will probably use the Unicorn Spit again. I have bedroom night stands I am making out of plywood, so I will probably use the same blue Unicorn Spit process for them.

While I sanded the coffee table, the plywood was still too rough. I think if I do it again, I am going to really sand the crap out of it. The spice rack was sanded 1 x 4’s and it was so glossy smooth and the color came out so great.

I am still learning to work with wood, so while this is a really rough beginners project, I am still super happy with it.

Garden – Bugs and Broccoli

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My brassica’s have taken a beating from bugs this year. I am a new Gardner, so my first mistake was mistaking cabbage moths for cute white butterflies. Then the white powdery mildew showed up on the broccoli.

But I could not figure out what was eating them. I tried some neem oil for the broccoli to help with the powdery mildew, and BT spray for the cabbage. Still, I am fighting them.

I suspect, I planted too much of each, cabbage and broccoli, too close together. Next year I will change it up and intermix things so there isn’t one giant buffet for things to get out of hand. It will also help me separate and treat individual plants without the whole crop being effected.

However, some of my broccoli was ready to harvest.

Taste-wise and it’s very different from grocery store broccoli, which is lower on flavor and more woody in texture. Not all the plants were ready, but that’s fantastic because I can spread the broccoli harvest out and get more still as time goes on. So my leftover pizza dinner plans for tonight will be put on hold, and broccoli and chicken teriyaki will happen instead.

My last issue is with earwigs. I found them in my sunflowers first, and wasn’t sure if they were a good or bad bug. They eat plants so they are definitely bad. I mean, I am okay with them existing, as they are plant eaters, not ear eaters, and actually protect their young and not really worried about the ear wig public relations disaster they have going on. I’m not sure who decided they go into people’s ears, but it’s kind of funny disinformation campaign.

I learned I could set out olive oil or fat traps. I had some extra bacon fat from breakfast yesterday’s and mixed it with enough olive oil to maintain liquidity, and set them out. they are nocturnal, so I waited until this morning to check.

Earwigs are assholes because they eat your plants. I have been seeing them everywhere, and I think it may be the uncharacteristic heat this summer. I’m not an earwig expert. Maybe they are always everywhere every year. I won’t know until I have a few more years here.

I was pleased I caught some, though.

I’ll leave the traps out until it rains. With the new irrigation system, they won’t get in the way so they can happily sit out there for a bit. Maybe thin the population down.

Hopefully, I can win the battle and hold all the pests off long enough to get my harvest in from the cabbage and broccoli.

Rice Porridge – Congee for Breakfast

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We eat a lot of rice dishes and my favorite way to use up leftover cooked rice is as a breakfast porridge or congee.

Ingredients

  • 1 TSP ginger paste from those convenient grocery store tubes, or use fresh. Whatever works for you.
  • 1 TBSP Better Than Bouillon Chicken Flavor – Don’t use a cube of bouillon. It’s not as tasty. This stuff is a different world of flavor, and I hate brand name anything.
  • 2 Cups cooked leftover rice. Bonus points if you made it with MSG the night before. Don’t fear the MSG.
  • 2 Cups water, then maybe extra at the end if needed
  • 1/4 Cup Crushed or Chopped Peanuts
  • 1/4 Cup Low Sodium Soy Sauce – Or regular if that’s what you have.
  • Enough chopped green onion to top

Directions:

  1. Add rice, water, ginger, and chicken Better than Bouillon to the sauce pot.
  2. Bring to a low boil for somewhere around 20 minutes, or until your rice reaches a rice pudding texture. You can go longer or less, depending on your time constraints. I often do chores while it’s going and forget for a while.
  3. If it looks too thick, add a bit of extra water, mix thoroughly, then give a minute or so to integrate.
  4. Stir in the crushed or chopped peanuts.
  5. Put in a soup bowl, and drizzle soy sauce on top, then add your green onions.

Notes:

I also sometimes add a fried or over easy egg, or sausage, or leftover chicken teriyaki. Basically whatever I have in the fridge at the time, or whatever I have the energy to make for it. It’s very versatile.

Garden Note:

I have these grocery store green onions I have planted in my garden when I was done with them, and I cannot emphasize enough how much better they taste planted in my garden. They have so much more flavor.

I was not holding my breath as they came from the grocery store, but apparently proper care and growing time makes them a whole different plant.

Blueberry Rolls – Breadmaker Style

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My wife got poor kid free breakfast in school, which usually consisted of cinnamon rolls. She mentioned that she loved them, so I started making them. Blueberries are also her favorite, so that’s how this was born.

The blueberry rolls are kind of like if a Danish at a coffee shop wasn’t a flat dry mess, and got its shit together to be actually tasty. Sorry not sorry. I am not a Danish fan. I basically make cinnamon rolls with a different filling.

I like to make a recipe, and then redo it, until I have it perfect. Then I write it up in my notes so I always know how to do it that way. I started making cinnamon rolls (and all sorts of other rolls) a few months back and I have been working on my recipe. This means we have been having them on the weekends more often than not.

I don’t normally do anything with yeast or kneading unless it has a bread maker involved. I have a collarbone that is not fixed in place and kneading dough hurts. However, if I leave the heavy kneading of the dough to a bread maker, then I can do it.

My current recipe for cinnamon rolls came from my Breadman Ultimate Breadmaker manual, with a few adaptations. That manual actually has a lot of great recipes in it. I found it online years back, and have used it for all my subsequent bread makers.

As an aside, that Breadman Ultra machine, which was my first bread maker machine, was one I found at a St. Vincents second hand shop for $4. I had to buy a new paddle for $7 or so online, and get the manual PDF, but that was the best money I could have spent. I make pretzels, bagels, and now cinnamon rolls in additional to bread on occasion. If I didn’t do it this way, I could not knead the dough.

Ingredients – Rolls

  • 1 large egg at room temp (Important!) plus enough warm(!) water to equal 1 cup.
  • 3 TBSP Oil
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1.5 TSP salt
  • 3.5 Cups Breadflour (See AP flour to bread flour conversion below)
  • 2 TSP Active Dry Yeast (See Yeast discussion below)

Converting All Purpose Flour into Bread Flour
For every 1 cup of AP flour, remove 1.5 TSP of flour and replace with 1.5 TSP of Vital Wheat Gluten. For this recipe you will need to replace a total of 5.25 TSP of flour with Vital Wheat Gluten. I tried it without doing this, and they just didn’t have the right texture. The Vital Wheat Gluten lasts forever and makes a huge difference, so it’s worth buying a small bag to keep around.

Yeast
Active dry yeast is not the same as instant yeast. If you have instant yeast, you need to use 1.25 times the amount listed. I also found this out the hard way. Now days I buy a giant Costco sized package of active dry yeast and keep most of it frozen until I need it, but sometimes we buy the wrong thing, and I had to figure out how to convert it.

Blueberry Filling

Frosting

  • Leftover cinnamon cream cheese filling from above
  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • Enough milk to get to a smooth consistency. Go slow. Try 1 TBSP at a time.

Directions

  1. Add all the ingredients in the order listed into the bread maker, and add the yeast on the very top. You can mix the salt into the flour so it doesn’t mess with the yeast. The water egg mix needs to be room-ish temp. It can’t be ice cold. Yeast don’t like to be cold.
  2. Put your machine on a dough cycle, and go for it. It takes about 1.5 hours in my machine.
  3. While that is working, let the cream cheese sit out and soften until the dough is done, then right before the dough is done, mix in the sugar. You can microwave it for a few seconds if you forget. LEAVE BLUEBERRIES SEPARATE! 
  4. Once dough is done, place on lightly floured surface and roll into a 12 X 6 inch rectangle. You don’t want to make it much bigger than that, because thin dough makes kind of thin lackluster rolls.
  5. Spread about half the cream cheese/sugar mix filling on the dough then add blueberries on top. 
  6. Roll longways into a log. 
  7. Put your roll on a cutting board, and cut into 12 1-inch slices. This is going to get messy. I use a paper towel and wipe my knife between cuts. This cream cheese filling is way messier than the cinnamon roll filling. However, it won’t matter. It all cooks up just fine, even if you make a mess of them.
  8. Place on their sides in a buttered glass casserole dish, or whatever you have around. If you put them on a silpat on a cookie sheet they spread out, and not up. Still good, but kind of weeny in size. I like the glass casserole dish because they seem to rise really well in it.
  9. Preheat oven to 350F.
  10. Cover and let rise in their cooking vessel for 30 minutes until double the size. It helps if your kitchen isn’t freezing for this part because again, yeast hate cold.
  11. Bake for 25-30 minutes. 
  12. While that is baking, mix the frosting ingredients together.  
  13. When rolls are done, let them cool for like a half hour or so, then coat them with frosting. 

I bought my wife this silpat roller thing on Amazon because we have a textured IKEA countertop that is really not optimal for this kind of thing, and it works really well. Rinsing the blueberries and drying them with paper towels really kept the blueberries to themselves. You can see the non rinsed handful at the top, and the rest I rinsed and dried below. I got the cleanest dough to blueberry situation ever doing that.

These are my best rolls to date. They just feel like cinnamon rolls should. Honestly, I would make half of these because there is only two of us, but I can’t split down to less than 1 egg on a recipe, so I guess we will just have to eat them all. Oh, the tragedy!

I was just going to add the extra cream cheese as frosting, but I didn’t have enough. I was out of cream cheese for more, and too damn lazy to go out for it. My wife, who is a good baker, suggested I add powdered sugar and milk. It’s kind of a royal icing and cream cheese icing combo.

This was a happy discovery as cream cheese frosting is not my fave, and the royal icing glaze I was using was too thin. Together it’s perfect. It has body, and a bit of cream cheese tang, but it’s not overwhelming to me.

I think next time I will add some cinnamon to the filling because that works well with blueberries. I am also measuring how much flour I am using by weight so I can come up with a consistent amount by weight. Scooping flour has an annoying variability that I don’t like, and the recipe does not have a by weight option.

I have to say, again, having my own home, and not a tiny rental kitchen, really lets me make bigger things like this. It’s just so much easier when you have the room to do it. I am so grateful I get the chance to own a home and do this.

New Crochet Project – Skull Granny Squares

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I finished my scarf for winter, and switched gears. I have been loving doing granny squares. Once you get them memorized you can sit and watch TV and make little squares.

I actually bought this pattern on Etsy from a seller named SleepyFrogCrochet. The directions are clear with lots of pictures.

Skull granny square.

I am using Carron Blossom Cakes in 37012 Yacht Club and 37017 Blossoms for colors.

It’s coming together pretty well. There is a couple trickier spots for me, but overall it’s been fine. I have about ten of them, and I am just going to keep making them until I have a blanket.

The cat is significantly less interested since it’s not wool, not that it stops her from attacking my yarn.

Irrigation Systems and the Physical Limitations of my Body

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I bought some Rain Bird drip irrigation kits on Amazon. I was super excited, and ready to make watering my garden easier. I have bad days where I limp and it’s hard to just stand there and water things physically. I was hoping by setting up an irrigation system that it would be easier on me.

My first set back was when my neighbor knocked on my door to let me know that a silver van was following the Amazon truck and stole my boxes. I was in the garden at the time, and only 20 minutes past the delivery point. Reporting this to Amazon was near impossible and the cops in my jurisdiction won’t even take a report for petty theft. I went to get what I could locally, and reordered what I could not.

Not counting the stolen items, I am in for roughly $200.

Everything started off well, and it turns out splicing a hose is pretty damn easy. I also have quick connectors I attached, and then started laying out the actual irrigation tubing and dripper ends.

Dripper end on my tomatoes.
Dripper end on my broccoli, and an extra bit that I forgot to pick up.
Drip hose in my onions.
Drip hose in my herb garden.

This is where I hit my second set back. While it is relatively easy to set up, if you have a physical limitation of any sort, this may be difficult. I had a garden seat to sit on, but being hunched over each plant in each bed? Ouch!

Then my final set back? I ran out of supplies. It took significantly more than the kits. I added a dripper to each of my larger plants, such as tomatoes, broccoli, and cabbage, and dripper tubes to the rest. It took significantly more time than I was expecting.

It was probably for the best I ran out of supplies because I was really hurting by this point. I’d been out there for a couple hours, and my wife was worried.

I also realized my original plan would need redone. My original plan was to use quick connects to attach hose sprayers for general yard work, but under pressure these do connect and unconnected with they will soak you. Not the best idea when I am usually in my PJs before bed when I am watering the garden.

Original quick connection set up.

I have ordered some more stuff to revise this to be easier, and here’s hoping it doesn’t get stolen off the porch again!

New plan:

  1. Get more supplies and a four hose manifold? I think they are called manifolds or splitters when you have a one in, and four out situation?
  2. Redo the hose connections with dedicated hose sprayer areas so I don’t get sprayed with the quick connects.
  3. Add dripper lines to the last 2.5 beds in the big garden area that still need it.
  4. Add dripper lines and tubing to the two beds on the other side for my mint and rhubarb.
  5. Plan enough time, and down time afterwards to I don’t have to rush, and I can recover more easily.

Bonus picture of my first tomato this season!

First tomato!

Changing Refrigerator Door Opening Direction

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The thing about moving into our own home is that we get to fix things that bother us. The downside is my list of fixit’s is so long that some items, like this morning’s fridge door fix we talked about, but just never made it to the physical list. My list is like a 5 year plan with marvel-esque phase roll outs.

This morning’s issue was the refrigerator door. For some reason, the way the fridge door opened was away from the cooking area in the kitchen. You’d have to walk around it, open it, then bring everything back to the counter.

It kind of breaks my heart that the little old lady that lived here before us had to shuffle around the fridge door every time she cooked. Someone should have fixed this for her.

My wife and I hated it from the day we moved in, but I while I had a hazy idea it was possible to flip them, I didn’t really know how, and honestly there were just so many more pressing things that needed done.

Last night, I had insomnia and was up at 3am, and for some reason when I got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the door irritated me again, and with nothing else to do, I started watching videos on it.

I found this video with my make and model fridge, mostly:

Video on how to reverse a refrigerator door.

It took me about a half hour to 45 minutes from gathering tools to putting them back in the shed and then it was fixed!

I had two white plastic door hole caps that were so old they broke, but they were decorative, and you can’t even see them on top the door. I could care less. I am so happy to have the fridge door facing the right direction now. My wife and I are both ecstatic.

Funnier to me, was when I popped out the bottom grill to move the bottom door post over a bunch of rice came out. That is my rice, from the day I moved in.

I dropped somewhere around 5 pounds of short grain rice in its plastic tub, which spilled literally all over the kitchen. You cannot appreciate how far 5lbs of rice will scatter until you drop it. I was so exhausted and sore from moving that I almost had a five star meltdown. I was in a hurry, and had to get so much else done as I was bringing it over before work that day, then I ended up sitting on the kitchen floor laughing at the absurdity of it all.

I told my wife, even after sweeping it all up, that rice was going to keep showing up for the rest of our lives. This bunch of it came out from inside the refrigerator grill. I guess I was right.

This is one less thing on my giant list, even thought it never made it to the list proper. I can stop thinking about it every time I open the door.

Garden Update – Late June

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My garden is really starting to take off. I am so inexperienced, but I feel I am still doing pretty well.

My cucumbers, above, are doing well. If they all take off I might be buried in pickles, though. I planted a lot of them because of my inexperience and I wasn’t not sure if I’d kill them or not. I will hang some twine on the front brace and train them upwards. The sunflowers are also great. Those are taking off. I don’t know if they will survive the birds, and if I will get any, though.

My sunflowers are doing well, but my herb garden seems slow. I have no point of reference, and I did start direct from seed because my house was so buried in new home projects and boxes and work that I didn’t have the space or mental head room for starting seeds early. So I am hoping the basil, parsley, and dill take off.

The green onions are taking off. The top two big squares are grocery store green onions. the rest are ones I planted. The seed planted ones are starting to work, but they are taking some time.

My broccoli is taking off. I had to add more support ties to my stakes, and take a few leaves off that were overshadowing my green onions.

I also got some unwelcome visitors:

These are cabbage moths. At first I was thrilled with the white “butterflies” in my garden, until I started finding my leaves eaten. Then I looked it up, and realized I have cabbage moths. The bird feeders mean they are eaten pretty quick, but those caterpillars are like crazy greedy. I keep finding them and flinging them away from the garden. I mostly feel tricked and betrayed because I like butterflies. Stupid cabbage moths!

My tomatoes are starting to take off. I did prune off some of the lower branches for easier watering, and I have been training them up the support. My biggest plant already has flowers. I am very excited. I have some good Ball canning recipes for tomato sauces, juices, and whatnot. I hope I get enough to do that.

My red cabbage is also huge. I had to trim a couple leaves that were overshadowing my strawberries.

My strawberries continue to do well. I am even getting a couple of berries. I have been trimming off 2/3 of the flowers like the directions say, in order to force better growth. I won’t probably get enough to do another batch of jam but it’s nice to see them going.

I also bought this garden stool on Amazon. My joints are bad, and I am only 51, so I felt like an old man, but this really helps. I can flip it over to kneel, and I can sit on it and work on my beds. It was very much more comfortable. Worth every penny.

Lastly, to get my plants enough water, I am spending a lot of time every day watering. I think it’s time to invest in a watering system. I was going to do it next year, but this is a lot. I have some bits and bobs coming from Amazon this weekend for the 4th, and I will see if I can get it put together. Even if it’s not a permanent structure, but just something I click the hose into for an hour, that would help. If it does work out, the system has a timer so I will try that too.

House Improvement Baby Steps & the Physical Impact of Projects

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I am in my 50s, and I have a degenerative joint condition. As a consequence I work 4 days a week at a sit down office job, not five, because sitting in an office chair is painful. This is in stark contrast to my younger years, when I would not only work 5 days a week as a floor nurse, but also do 12-16 hour project days on the weekends. This means that small projects can wreck me for a few days.

With this in mind, yesterday was a nice day, so I pulled out my saw horses and tools, and built a cabinet box for next to the dishwasher.

I haven’t put the trim molding back because we are contemplating putting some sort of panel on the wall there. Something more water resistant due to the dishwasher. We are waffling between a traditional bead board look, or just abandoning all sense and doing art under acrylic sheeting.

This was just a gaping hole under the unsupported butcher block counter tops that the shit contractor left. He was paid to make a slide out cabinet but didn’t do the work. This is an ugly cabinet box made of 3/4″ plywood. I plan to paint all the cabinets and I will edge band and paint it when I do the rest. I was mostly concerned about the unsupported heavy butcher block drooping onto my $600+ dishwasher. Now I feel my dishwasher investment is protected, and we will be fine.

While I did this, I also cut up two closet sliding doors that we had to get rid of, so I can slowly feed them into the garbage can.

It also was good practice for using a circular saw guide that you clamp onto the wood. I’d never used any kind of guide before and this is my first circular saw.

This is a Bora WTX clamp. I really like how it works, but the reviews are right. The sled was just a pain in the butt for my Dewalt saw, so it’s got no use for me. I got straight cuts without the sled just fine.

I don’t have the most experience with circular saws, because when I was a kid I looked like a girl and my father refused to let me use any tool you had to plug in. I’m mostly self taught with the help of online videos. The guide came with a saw sled, which pretty much all the reviews said was garbage, and they were right. I tossed the cheap plastic thing, and just did my thing without it.

Turns out circular saws are not as scary as I had originally thought. I feel pretty comfortable now. It’s definitely weird going from being treated like a girl, and disallowed all access to the tools to make my life easier, to now not only being given access, to being supported and having other men in stores get excited to walk me through it. If transitioning from female to male ever taught me anything, it’s that sexism around home improvement and gender rolls are pretty damn real.

Speaking of ignoring gender rolls, I also finished sewing the curtain for my work room.

The house came with these thick white blinds. They aren’t terrible, but the cat and I hate the blinds. We lost about 6-7 inches of window at the top of these like you see in my half thought out before picture below.

That cat tree is going to be replaced with a built in wall unit for our fat princess. It will take less space and be in less dire threat of being toppled by her antics.

Below here is an unfairly better taken after picture in which I opened both curtains, and also washed the windows because I noticed how filthy it was.

Ignore the potting bench that I am using for delivery drivers to hide packages behind, when they can be bothered. I am buying a bench to put there instead. Also, ignore the portable air conditioner. Getting mini splits for air conditioning is a few years off.

We will probably always keep the sheers closed because there is a lot of . . . activity across the street and we don’t necessarily need to live in a fishbowl.

I mean, The windows look so much bigger with that 6-7″ of space back. Also, look at that nice new window sill! I did that a few weeks ago, mostly because our cat is fat and can’t get up on there without it.

These projects are all a part of Phase 1 of the house plan. When I get all these little things done, I will deep dive into each room. That means better curtain rods, painted walls and cabinets, and finishing touches. Right now? I am just trying to get things functional and ready for a full launch into next year.

After all this, which I don’t think is much, I spent the rest of the day laying in bed sore as hell. I will probably not do much today either. I have to accept I am not 25 anymore, and pushing my body this hard has consequences. I’d be very kind to anyone else fighting with this, but I always feel like I could have done more.

After I finish writing this, I will probably make some breakfast for the wife and I, and go lay in bed again. Not a bad days plan, overall.

Most Underrated Kitchen Appliance – Instant Hot Water

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This picture is my homemade instant hot cocoa mix in front of my wife and my coffee and tea set up. The white jar is for loose sugar for my wife, the dark blue one is for instant coffee, and the teal one is for sugar cubes for me.

This is not a sponsored post. I don’t have affiliate links. This is just me, in my first home, marveling at the small upgrades I can make in order for my life to be a billion times better. I just like to document and link things.

My incinerator. Ignore the gap between the backsplash and the counter. I have to fix that. It’s relatively mild here, but is like a 1/4 inch as it creeps larger at the end of the counter. I haven’t sealed it yet because I am waiting to fix it.

This is an Insinkerator. That’s the brand name of my infant hot water system. What it does, is deliver water hot enough to make tea out of. You can increase of lower the temperature to fit your needs.

In my home, my wife prefers instant coffee. That is probably horrifying to folks, but she grew up on it, and prefers it. Over our 30+ years of marriage we have had normal coffee makers, high end espresso machines, you name it. She always goes back to instant. This actually frees up a lot of counter space, and reduces waste from Keurig and espresso machines, presses and coffee makers.

I am a hot cocoa and tea drinker because I am a very high energy person, and caffeine takes me into the arena of damn annoying real quick, so I stick to my caffeine-free tea, and my hot cocoa. What little caffeine I get from the cocoa is about all I should ever have.

In the apartments we have been in, we were in a constant hot water kettle search. We would burn through one every year or so, because between the two of us, we would have tea, cocoa, and coffee all day long. We just killed them from over use. I was even considering one of those massive zojirushi how water dispensers.

Add to this, my wife has ADHD, and she would always come start the kettle, then leave, and an hour later come back to start the process all over. Just waiting for the water to heat was enough time in ADHD for her to end up distracted and not get her coffee. Some mornings she would realize she’d have related the task endlessly and never gotten her morning coffee.

With this in mind, one of the first items I bought for the house was a hot water on demand system. It’s like a mini on demand system that holds a gallon or so of water for your use. The Amazon listing says 3 gallons, but that’s wrong. I think it’s closer to 2/3 of a gallon.

This is like a $250 luxury. I can get my cocoa in the morning instantly. My wife no longer circles the kitchen in a remember & forget coffee dance.

I think this is the single most amazing item we have in our home. I had no idea when we put it in that it would help my wife so much. This was worth every penny. When or if it dies, I am replacing it immediately.

Being able to modify my home in such a tiny way, to help make our lives easier? I really want this for everyone. We were so lucky to get out of the rental racket, and into a home, and I just really want this for everyone.

It’s just so shocking to me that with such a relatively small purchase I can make such a huge impact on my enjoyment of my home.