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DIY, how to, kitchen, making do

Home hack: Never Refill the Dish Soap Dispenser Again!

03/29/2021
In-Sink Soap Dispenser Hack - Never Refill It Again!

When we gave the kitchen a facelift and installed a new countertop and sink, I was excited to add a built-in dish soap dispenser. As a minimalist at heart, I looked forward to not having a bottle of dish soap sitting on the counter next to the sink. How easy it will be to push the integrated pump and dispense dish soap directly into the sink! And it really is convenient … until the dispenser bottle under the sink needs to be refilled. When that happens, all thoughts of minimalism and daily convenience are replaced by frustration as I climb under the sink to remove and then replace the little bottle that seems to only hold a few dozen pumps of soap. Removing that little bottle is easy, of course. Screwing the bottle back into the fitting under the sink? That’s some sort of torture!

Well my days of climbing under the sink are over! With the addition of a simple rubber hose, I can replace that tiny dispensing bottle with a giant jug of dish soap. Screw that little bottle! Or, rather, never screw that bottle back into the sink again! And all it took was a few feet of latex tubing. Specifically, latex tubing with 1/4″ inner diameter and 3/4″ exterior diameter – found at your local hardware store. I purchased a 10 foot coil of tubing because that’s what I found on the rack at the Lowes where I was shopping. I used only 3-ish feet of the tubing but am happy to have enough leftover to fix the pump back at the city apartment, too. If you can buy your latex tubing by the foot, get only as much as you need. But if you happen to buy extra, offer to use the remainder that save your friends from screwing the bottle.

But before you can go out and help your friends, you’ll need to know how to do it, right? OK, so here goes…

Standing at the sink, remove the pump. It should be as easy as pulling up on the pump – the entire thing, the pump and existing tube, should remove easily. Now, slip one end of the latex tubing over the end of the soap pump tube.

Place the pump, with tube attached, in the receptacle in the sink. Now, let this be the last time you climb under the sink. While you’re down there, snip the end of the latex tubing where it meets the bottom of the under-sink cabinet.

Remove the cap from that extra large bottle of dish soap that you’ve been using to refill the measly little bottle that came with the dispenser. Place the latex tubing into that large bottle of dish soap.

And there you have it. In just a few simple steps you’ve created a workaround that will eliminate the need to ever refill that little soap pump dispenser bottle again! It may take a number of pumps before the soap works its way through the latex tube and out the dispenser, but once it does you’re good to go.

Happy washing!

garden, kitchen, recipes, small town life

Canning Summer: Raspberry Rhubarb Jam

07/16/2020
Black Raspberry Bush at This American House

One of the absolute joys of summer – even a summer that’s been disrupted by a global pandemic and crazy politics – is the abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables. A previous owner planted black raspberry bushes on the far side of the new garage at the Meier House. For the first few years of our ownership, we let these raspberry bushes go wild. And then every summer we’d pick a few raspberries and promise ourselves that one day we’d tame the bushes and get a proper harvest. Well, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic and having a little more time on our hands, we’re finally keeping that promise.

Early this spring, when the raspberry bushes were just starting to sprout leaves, I donned my trusty garden gloves and grabbed the garden clippers, some twine and three long metal poles. I pushed the poles into the soil, one at each end of the bushes and one in the middle, and used them to string twine across the length of the bushes. I pruned the bushes and then used more twine to secure branches and try to create some order to the twisted vines. I had no idea whether this would provide a better raspberry harvest later in the summer, but it certainly made it easier to mow around the bushes.

Fresh raspberries floating in a bowl

Oh boy did it make a difference! Every day over the past two weeks we’ve been harvesting bowls full of the delicious little berries. At first we were eating them as fast as we could pick them. Raspberries in yogurt, raspberries smashed on toast, raspberries by the handful…! Raspberries!

After getting our fill of fresh berries, it was time to preserve. I considered freezing them but we wanted something that would last a little longer. You know, something that we could pop open on a winter day to get a little taste of summer. We bake a lot of breads, biscuits and muffins during the winter months so the answer seemed obvious – jam! And since we also have an abundance of rhubarb, I decided to combine two summer treats into one delicious jam.

We spent a Saturday afternoon making a raspberry rhubarb jam that will deliver a delicious taste of summer to those cold winter months. And, really, once you make homemade jam, you’ll never want to buy it again. Not only is homemade easy, it’s free of preservatives and oh so delicious. It’s really just a few simple ingredients: fruit, sugar, pectin and time.

Basically, all cooked jams are the same recipe:

Ingredients:
5 cups prepared fruit – in this case I used a mix of raspberries and rhubarb
1 box fruit pectin
1/2 tsp. butter or margarine
7 cups sugar, measured into separate bowl

Directions:
Mash the berries, chop the rhubarb and then combine. Add the fruit and pectin to a large stockpot and bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly. Once the fruit mixture comes to a rolling boil, stir in all 7 cups of sugar. Continue cooking over high heat until it returns to full rolling boil. Boil for exactly 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, skim off any foam with a metal spoon and wham bam thank you jam!

Now that you have jam, it’s time to can. Place your jam in warm sterilized canning jars, place lids and caps on top and then process in a hot water canner to enjoy that summer feeling all year long. You’ll find instructions for canning on the Ball/Kerr website.

Jam on, friends!

before & after, DIY, kitchen

Before & After: A New Vintage Farmhouse Kitchen

04/17/2018

Hallelujah and pass the peas! It’s been a year in the making and at some points I thought we might never finish it, but I’m happy to report that the kitchen at the Delbert Meier House is finally (mostly) done. There are still a few lingering little tasks – repainting the walls and replacing the faucet – but it’s finished enough to show off the before and after photos here on the blog. Continue Reading…

DIY, how to, kitchen, renovation, thrifty

How to Install a Tile Backsplash
(Good News: It’s Easier Than You Might Think!)

04/08/2018

Before installing the backsplash in our kitchen I had never in my life tiled a single thing. But how hard can it be? I reasoned. I mean, people have been tiling for thousands of years! And all of those people couldn’t have been geniuses. But then as I watched YouTube videos and read how-to posts with all their steps and warnings of pitfalls, I grew increasingly worried that tiling was a job best left to professionals. No! my inner adventurer called out. And so my can-do, DIY spirit kicked in and I decided to tackle the job on my own. And you know what? It’s not as hard as you might think! Now that I’ve mastered the art of tiling (because, you know, I’ve done it once so now I’m an expert), I’m going to share the process with you. Continue Reading…

DIY, kitchen, renovation

Farmhouse Fabulous: New Flooring for the Kitchen

04/06/2018

When I work on a DIY project – like, say, installing new Pergo laminate flooring in the kitchen – my mind wanders during the easier parts of the work. For instance, while ripping up the old vinyl tiles in the kitchen I thought up punny things I could say about the new flooring. I may have said a couple of my punny sentences out loud and chuckled to myself. That’s one of the things I love about DIY projects – that my hands are busy creating something beautiful while my mind is off on tangents all its own. Multi-tasking for the mind!

But enough about my mental quirks. You’re here for house updates, not to learn about my inner workings, right? Continue Reading…