It was cold yesterday – 30s.  We had accumulating hail in the late afternoon.

And, we woke up to SNOW this morning.

Admittedly, it was just a dusting.  And, it had started to melt a bit even when I took this picture.  (The big pile is some of what’s still left from the winter.)  Now it’s a cold rain.  This does not bode well for sports this weekend.

I was at yet another house last week with a built in microwave.  In contrast I have never owned one.  In fact here’s the microwave we bought for our first apartment many years back.

Through multiple moves and multiple states, we’ve never had reason to get rid of it.  It’s not the most powerful (definitely do not try cooking a TV dinner), but it reheats, thaws, and boils just fine which is really all I need for a microwave to do.

I got to thinking about this because the day before the above mentioned visit my little guy did this to our kitchen counter.

Now, I’m not a fan of tile countertops; I would never install one.  But, this came with the house so now we’ll have to try to find the right glue to fix it.  I suppose if we were to ever redo a kitchen we’d probably have solid counters and a built-in microwave.

Our rather old dining room chair seats had seen better days.  With professional cleaning and reupholstering running similar in price I decided to spruce things up a bit.  They were pretty plain.  (This was one of the cleanest chairs.)

So, we invested in a much more interesting fabric with stain resist.  Hopefully this will both resist stains and not show them as clearly.  And, it makes the room seem a bit more put together.

Thankfully this is not snow.  Though, it is not as warm as they were forecasting.  Hopefully this will reduce our snowpack to something more manageable.  The areas under the trees were starting to emerge in places already and I think this should spur them along.  But, in the center of our yard (where things are pretty level with no piles), the snow is still up to the seat of the bench.

Areas that are clear – shoveled paths, trampled areas, areas near roads where rock salt was sprayed – are all very muddy.  It will be a long spring.

It was gorgeous yesterday.  I had the younger two out with two of their friends much of the afternoon.  Plus there was a lot of melting so I’ve got pictures now of things emerging from the snow.

The driveway (where it was snow blown but not shoveled) …

The kids picnic tables …

The bench …

The bushes (I’m assuming they’re fairly mangled under there.)…

It was also the first night in a long time it didn’t go below freezing overnight.  But, we’re supposed to be back in the cold again for the rest of the month.  Today is much colder and very windy.  Nights are going below freezing again.  And snow is forecast for the weekend.  Will we finally break this record so we can all stop talking about it?

Kristen (AKA The Frugal Girl) had a post this week called “How to Declutter Without Creating Trash.”  I thought I would say a few things about that since I’ve had a number of Tuesday posts recently referencing throwing things out.

Yes, I throw things out.  Yes, I do recycle too.  Any paper/cardboard goes out in the recycling and with four kids in school we get a lot of that.  I do try to fix things that can be fixed.  And somethings cannot be fixed – by me or anyone else – so they go in the trash.

My Tuesday posts have referenced a lot of clothing – socks, pants, and shirts.  On the plus side, with 5 boys pretty much everything is worn thoroughly.  I have the oldest and youngest boys in my family so I don’t do much clothing swapping beyond what we happen to end up with that doesn’t work for our kids.  Since I have twins, I do sometimes pass on my duplicates.  There are also a number of local consignment stores/sales which take gently used kids items.  I’ve participated in a few of these sales.  We also have many Goodwill and other charity drop boxes that take different sorts of gently used items.  However, Kristen references fabric drop boxes where they will take clothing that is no longer wearable and recycle it.  I’m not aware of any drop boxes around here for fabric recycling.  She also recommends posting damaged but salvageable items (think pants with holes in the knees) on Freecycle for crafty folks.  Unfortunately, when I throw pants out, apart from the giant knee holes they are usually in very good condition.  I actually tried Freecycling them thinking someone might make shorts, quilt, etc. but got no takers so I’ve stopped.

One of the comments talks about making sure you use up toiletries.  I thought that was a good one as I recently started going through the backlog of toothpaste tubes we get from the dentist.  For the longest time I just set them aside.  My kids weren’t old enough for fluoridated toothpaste and the samples weren’t my preferred type.  I donated a few when toiletries were being collected.  But, I also saved some for use when traveling or just because it seemed wrong to waste them.  Anyway, I recently realized that I should start using them.  So, I’ve been using them myself and working with the kids to use them.  So far so good and we’ll have a few months where we don’t need to purchase toothpaste.

Kristen also talks about selling unwanted items.  I’ve done this too.  I parted with a number of books using an Amazon shop.  As mentioned earlier, I’ve participated in a few kids goods consignments sales.  I’ve used Craigslist for some larger items.  That being said, I’m in need of a yard sale.  They’re not my favorite thing to do, but it’s a good way to get rid of lots of different stuff that might be around your house.  I last participated in one four years back.  My preference is for a group yard sale.

Our previous town used to have a town-wide one where everyone brought their items to the town common.  The advantage is that you had a bunch of buyers; the disadvantage is that you were basically limited to one vehicle load.  That being said, it did it for a few years and felt it really paid off.  I also picked up a few items (like that plastic lawnmower you saw a few days back) that we still get good use from.  Our current down doesn’t have such a thing and with the boys’ schedules I haven’t been able to link up with our neighborhood yard sale.  I’m going to have to figure something out in the next year though as the pile I’ve identified for this purpose isn’t going anywhere.

I’ve touched on some different things and this post is getting rather long.  I’m sure there are other ways to reduce trash while reducing the stuff in one’s home.

I was going to take a break from writing about snow, but then I looked out the window and, guess what, more flakes falling from the sky.  These are definitely just flurries, but still.

In case you have missed it, Boston has gotten a lot of snow this year – just about all in the last month.  We’ve gotten twice our average amount and its barely ever gotten out of the teens, let alone above freezing.  We’ve reached the point where this is the second snowiest winter ever and yesterday they announced we were running at the second coldest February ever.  I don’t know if that will hold, but its not warm today and tomorrow’s forecast is no better.

The top two conversations – how to clear ice dams and how to break the snowfall record.

There are plenty of ideas on what to do about ice dams (or damns as folks have switched to) online so I won’t say more on that.

How to break the record, however, is up for debate.  Having crossed 100 inches to 101.8” (most of which is still on the ground albeit compacted to about 3 feet of solidness), we need fewer than 6” to break the all time record of 107.6 set in 1995-1996.  (I haven’t lived here very long but apparently arrived just in time to witness the top two winters.  Yeah.)  I am firmly in the camp that wants one storm with all of it so we can plow/shovel and then get on with the melting.  Many others, however, would like it to fall an inch or two at a time so we’re not inundated again.  Given the long range forecast for March I feel confident we’ll get there one way or another.

Meanwhile, a new topic is starting to emerge.  With all the melting required, how long will it be muddy and what affect will that have on kids’ spring sports.  I’m thinking it will not be good, but I’ll have to get back to you in a few months.  Kids spring sports start in April.

It’s snowing again (big surprise).  Last Sunday it actually got above freezing so the little guy got outside.  I think he’s being a bit optimistic.

I also tried to take a few snow pictures over the weekend with stuff that might offer some perspective.  I don’t know when this is going to melt, but it will be a while especially since we’re not supposed to go over freezing again this week.  I heard one of the meteorologists wonder if there had ever been a month when Boston didn’t reach 40 degrees.  And, one sentence later I think he said that was the average temperature for right now.  I tried explaining to the boys that a few winters ago they’d been out in shorts and T-shirts over February vacation when the weather when extreme the other way; they didn’t believe me.