Agitator Dogs

The inserts of our pocket diapers haven't been getting cleaned as well recently. We assumed it was because we were being lazy and not removing the pee and poop-ridden inserts by hand. The inserts were coming out by the end of the wash cycle, but they may have been only coming out in the last spin cycle. After I started another wash cycle this morning, I found another potential reason - the agitator wasn't agitating. After some quick Googling, I found a lot of videos which explained the probable cause: agitator dog wear. Below is the agitator.

After pulling the top off, we can see a (scummy) cap. The (scummy) cap can be pulled off.

Now we can see the mechanism of the agitator. It's similar to a bicycle hub, where a ratchet-spline system is used to propel the shaft. After removing the 7/16 bolt in the center we can get at the individual parts.

After pulling out the inner section we can easily see the splines (tooth-looking things) of the agitator shell.

The agitator dogs are the yellow plastic bits on the photo below. On a bike hub, they'd be called ratchets. A local Sears appliance store had them in stock, so we didn't have to wait for an Amazon delivery. This must be a fairly popular product, since the women at the store knew what I was talking about when I asked if they had a "reservoir dog" in stock.

The new agitator dogs have three teeth on them - the older dogs have maybe one tooth left. Once I popped in the new dogs and put it all back together, the agitator was working very vigorously again. It was an easy fix and only cost about $20 in parts ($10 for an extender rod for the ratchet and the agitator dogs were another $10). I'm sure a service call would have cost a lot more money.

Why didn't I think of that?

One of those random so-called "life-hacks" on one of those stupid meme sites that makes the rounds on Facebook actually paid off this week. It was so simple that the minute I saw it, I felt silly for not thinking of it myself.

In literally minutes, we turned this:

 Into this:

(yes, the picture was taken the following morning, but only because it took me some time to load it up with supplies, not because of installation time)

The shelves in this closet don't go all the way to the door, providing plenty of clearance for putting something on the door without stopping it from closing. Maybe the architects anticipated something like this.

Standard $10 over-the-door shoe rack, trimmed to fit (they seem to all be 19'' but our door is so narrow that we cut one column off), hung with nails using a molly bolt (there wasn't enough clearance at the top to put the brackets over it and we needed a molly because the doors are hollow inside). 20 minutes or less.

We aren't putting some things in there that are particularly heavy or anything that specifically makes sense under the sink (like dishwashing detergent, stove cleaner, etc.) but all the lighter weight cleaning supplies now live here. I didn't take a "before" picture under the sink, but trust me, this is a huge improvement:

New-found Basement Space

The new freezer and resulting basement rearrangement got us thinking about other ways we can reorganize the basement. We had to move the laundry shelf over near the furnace, to make room for the chest freezer. We wondered what other areas could use some shelving.

Answer - the empty space near the utility sink, under the wood shelf unit that was attached to the wall. It's behind our cat litter boxes, but as long as we put things there we don't need regularly, it was a lot of valuable space. So we went to (of course) Ikea and found OMAR, which was a near perfect match, size-wise, to the space we had.

The idea was that we could move the paint cans there, since we were keeping paint supplies up above it anyway, and that would clear out the space where the paint was currently residing, giving D a place to put all of his bike tools, which had taken over the whole floor. Plus the plastic shelves weren't really equipped to hold so much weight and they were starting to flex a little.

So last Sunday we got to work moving things back and forth. We had company, of course:

(Yes, we finally are posting a picture of our baby).

In the end, we got all the paint moved to the back corner of the basement, and even sorted it by type on each shelf (primer, ceiling paint, colors).

The other side isn't exactly neat, but it's a big improvement - I can see the floor again!

It definitely pays to reevaluate a space every few years. We thought we had no more free space in the basement but we have managed to put in a chest freezer and new shelves just by giving up the extra expandable drying rack (that can get set up in the middle of the floor or in the finished part of the basement, if necessary).

A Post about a (Lamp)post

Back in May, we had a electrician come give us an estimate on how much it would cost to fix the severed wire that led to our lamppost. And the answer was - not cheap. His price of $380 did not even include digging up and then re-burying the wire, just the electrical work and putting the wire into a PVC pipe to reduce the chance that we would cut it again. He sweetened the deal by agreeing to throw in an electrical socket at the post, which was pretty enticing since we don't have any outdoor outlets for holiday lights. We agreed to call him in the fall, once our lawn and garden were dead - no sense in tearing up a trench during the one time of year our yard looks nice.

And we did. We tentatively scheduled him to come in early December. And so, in what I hoped would be labor-inducing work, I used a little trowel to try to find the wire. I started in the garden area, since I was almost certain that was where the cut was (the light used to work - it stopped working sometime around when we dug up all the invasive grass, though we'd seen the wire at that time and tried to be careful).

And I was right! On both accounts. I found the cut in the wire in the flower bed AND I went into labor that night. So the project was on hold for a little while (during which we hoped no one would break their ankle in the trench on the way to our door).

Then our fabulous electrician friend, P, told us we'd be crazy to pay the electrician so much for the work and offered to do it himself. We originally planned just to fix up the wire right where it was severed, but P suggested that we should still go through with the original plan to re-run wire all the way to the post and put in a socket. In fact, why not install TWO sockets - one at each end.

Friends are awesome.

And so I cancelled the electrician and one sunny day in December, P and D got to work.

Step one - buy supplies, including PVC pipe that doesn't quiet fit in the vehicle:

Step two - finish digging the trench (we'd stopped once we found the cut wire, since we thought we might just be able to fix the isolated spot). This goes a lot faster with giant shovels and lots of help - and not being over 9 months pregnant (actually, I didn't participate at all, just watched while everyone else did the hard work).

 Step three - run the new wire through the pipes:

Step four - install electrical boxes. This turned out to be more difficult than everyone expected, because our lamppost is cast iron and broke several drill bits. There was a lot of magical electrical work going on too, but that part is beyond me, so I'll skip over it. This is definitely not a true step-by-step guide here.

With fancy new electrical boxes installed onto the lamppost and the house, the wire laid enclosed within PVC pipes even at the corners thanks to the PVC elbows, and a quick test to make sure everything worked, our team even buried everything back up -

And the grass is looking so sparse this time of year that the covered trench is barely noticeable. We just have to remember to throw some seed on there before spring.

In total, $100 in parts, some beer, some hard work, and it's even better than if the electrician had done it. And a lot cheaper. And more fun, since I got to hang out with good friends.

Happy Holidays!

Abbreviated decorating this year since we're a little busy with baby. But we couldn't let her first Christmas go by without a tree! Rather than move all the furniture away from the living room corner next to the sofa (see our previous decorating pictures), we decided this year to see if the tree would fit next to the door that we never use that leads out to the breezeway. And it did! This is an amazing discovery - much less effort and just as out of the way. Now we don't have to move a lamp, a table, the sofa, and the coffee table just to put up the tree.

 But the real decor theme for our living room this holiday season is this:

Baby things everywhere! The TV area is loaded up with diapers, wipes, toys, etc. and the Pack 'n Play has set up permanent residence in from of the TV.

Unlike other years, we didn't do the outside or all the other little nooks and crannies in our house, but we did still manage to put together a pretty centerpiece, thanks in part to a beautiful flower arrangement that a friend brought by:

And of course this year we were thrilled to get to hang a new stocking on the mantle for our new little addition to the family!

New Arrival

No no, no baby pictures yet. And while our sweet little girl is indeed a new arrival, she's not the one I'm talking about here today.

Because we've (including both sets of grandparents) been stockpiling food for the first few sleep-deprived weeks, our freezer in the kitchen had become overstuffed. In fact, at one point, the door was just slightly ajar - not even noticeable from looking at it - for the whole work day. Thankfully it was not enough to defrost the contents, but it did make the motor work in overdrive - which is how I realized it was slightly open, from hearing the motor running nonstop when I got home that evening.

And so after much convincing from my mom, we let her get us a deep freezer as a holiday gift. Our concerns up until now had been both the cost of running it and the space needed to put it. First step - find a place for it.

The basement has never been very efficiently arranged, but it worked for our purposes. But with a little redecorating, this:

 Became this (and notice the conveniently located outlet right there beside the door...):

Exactly enough space for a small chest freezer. 7 cubic feet, to be specific. This freezer from Home Depot, to be even more specific.

It's not energy star, but it's not too expensive at least. And we're keeping it in the unheated part of our home where it never gets too warm, even in the summer. So that should help too.

The rest of the basement is still a work in progress. We moved the shelving unit to the other wall and are currently hunting out a few more shelves units to further add some storage space. Stay tuned for another post on that soon. AND we're trying to figure out how best to organize the interior of the freezer. We want to be able to find things quickly and a negative to a chest freezer is having all that space limited to things that can stack (but they are so much more energy efficient than a regular standing freezer). We're thinking probably some boxes from - where else but Ikea. Time to take the baby on a field trip!

The Nursery - In Use

You might have guessed from the long silence on this blog that we've been a little busy with baby! And indeed, our bundle of joy made an appearance just under two weeks ago. We're not quite ready to share pictures here, but we wanted to show you the finishing touches of the room that we made for her. She's not sleeping in there yet, but we are using the changing area to clean her up at night and are happy that it's such a cheerful place (which she probably doesn't care about yet, but it is nice for us at 2am...). Without further ado - the last decorating touches -

First the reading corner - grandma finished sewing the curtains and sent them to us just in time to hang them before baby. Those of you that participated in our poll will recognize them as the winning fabric - white and yellow stripes. They are nice and heavy with a lining that blocks some, but not all, the light and are much better quality than anything we could find pre-made at a store. The rocking chair also looks cute in homemade flannel cushions covered with little zoo animals, also courtesy of grandma.

Because I can't have a whole post about a baby and not provide any baby pictures, here's one of me when I was a baby. Note the elephant - same one as in our nursery on the blue shelf. Washed and restuffed with fresh polyfill, but otherwise same guy that welcomed me home from the hospital.

On this wall, a lovely quilt from friends in Hawaii hangs on the wall on some quilt hangers from Etsy:

And on this wall - another curtained window plus some framed library posters from a school book campaign, courtesy of another friend. Here's the view we get to enjoy during late-night diaper changes, since she's sleeping in our room but getting changed here in the nursery.

We couldn't have done it without everyone's help. The room looks so much more finished and full - and the walls are much less intensely green thanks to the wall art.

Obviously we are going to be a little busy for a while, but don't give up on us. We'll continue updating this blog when we find a free moment. We still have a few projects to tell you about from before baby and a few more in the works.

Mum's the word

We planted mums a few years ago to give our garden some fall color and all but 1 of the 4 have come back, to some extent at least.

What I find strange is that these autumn plants themselves came up very early in the year - probably in April or May looking very healthy and happy. But when they finally bloomed last month, they developed some kind of split personality complex - only flowering on half of the shrub. Here is the same mum, taken from two angles:

 Here is mum number two, again from two sides:

They seem to prefer blooming on the shady side of the plant. Could it be wind or other weather related? Is there some kind of fertilizer I should be using or something else I can do to make them more consistent?

This other plant is "technically" alive, though it is so puny that its future doesn't look good. See it there? Those two tiny white flowers? Yeah, that's a mum too.

We have another mum ready to join its brethren outside after our fall centerpiece gets dismantled (which is really soon because we already had to get rid of one moldy pumpkin since this picture was taken and I'm sure more are on the way). I'm so bad at seasonal decorating - except for Christmas - so this was at least a small attempt to make the table a little more festive.

Finally, while we're on the topic of autumn plants, can anyone identify this tree? It's in our neighbor's yard and I love it! Such vibrant reds! Not that we have any place to plant it, but it would at least be nice to know what it is.

All filled up

Now that the nursery is done, we have no more extra rooms in the house to store furniture. And with all of our other rooms pretty much completely decorated and filled, we truly have no more flexible space - with the possible exception of the crowded but very sparsely decorated basement.

What this means is that if it doesn't fit, it needs to go. Which is rather traumatic since I seem to have inherited my mother's love of collecting solidly-built furniture in need of some TLC. But without a place to keep it, I'm going to have to learn to control myself. It's heartbreaking, really.

Case in point - when we redid our entryway with a new, expanded Expedit and a little white bench, we ran out of room for the beautiful chevron patterned cedar chest that we kept there. After trying to find it a new home in various places in our house, we knew it had to go.

Fortunately, after a few annoying weeks of tripping over it in the dining room, where we'd temporarily crammed it, we found it a home with a family that seemed to like it as much as we did.

Next example - this piece took a lot of elbow grease to refinish but had been living in the extra room (i.e. current nursery) without a real home for over a year. Despite all our work on it, I feared it might have to go as well. Happily, we realized it could live in our hallway without significantly blocking our path:

Maybe it's not what I would have chosen to put there, but it works and meant we didn't need to get rid of it.

Even something as minor as our cheap Ikea Poang chair, which we've had for years (through 3 different addresses!) seemed like it would have to go. Right now, it's living outside in our breezeway, even though it's definitely not made outdoor furniture. It's currently in furniture-limbo and we might have to get rid of it eventually. But it can live out the winter there with the rest of our lawn furniture, which we finally brought in before it got too cold out.

It's been hard saying goodbye to old friends and it is just as hard to force myself into being disciplined enough not to buy more furniture unless I know for sure it can replace something we already have.

This won't be a problem soon. Once baby arrives I'm sure I'll have more important things on my mind than furniture. But walking around a flea market on Saturday admiring all the lovely things sure was a challenge.