Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 1243)

Hello Everyone!

A stormy night, Lots of high winds, A slow start, Washing more containers & Mulling over some options!

Alright, I am right on time with my writing routine this evening... and successfully avoided getting sucked into watching lame videos to unwind. I have no idea why I started that habit (aside from curiosity) but at this point it is fair to say that I can already see an end coming in regards to wasting my time with it.

I am unsure when I fell asleep last night... but it was definitely much earlier than when I have been falling asleep lately so that was good. At some point during the evening a big storm blew in... and with all the rain it sure made for good sleeping weather so go figure.

Per usual, I did my Hive engagement routine first thing this morning... but at this point in the day I only have the foggiest of recollections about what all it entailed. It is not all that surprising that my memory has been really hit or miss of late given how much stuff I have rattling around in my mind... but hopefully it improves once I get moved.

Anyways, the remnants of that storm blew over early in the day... but since the wind was still gusting like crazy I was not feeling all that motivated to get outdoors... so I spent the bulk of the day cooped up in the cabin. It was not until well into the afternoon by the time that the wind died down somewhat... and I was feeling motivated enough to get outdoors and dive into the packing process.

I more or less picked up where I left off yesterday and drug the wagon back over to the tent that has my off-grid gear in it... so that I could haul more containers from there back to the shelter site to be cleaned. Mainly I just had a bunch of milk crates that I wanted to wash down... but then I loaded up a suitcase of electrical items (and an old toolbox) so that I could sort through (and wash) them as well.

The stuff in the suitcase was in much better shape than I thought that it would be in... but I did notice that there is a bunch of white mold growing on the wires that were stored in it. Although I poured all the wires (and other electrical odds and ends) out on the lumber on the sawhorses... I never quite got around to cleaning them today... and wound up tossing it all in a container and storing it in the shop tent until I can get to it all.

For the most part I focused on soaking the milk crates in the barrel of bleach water... and then after soaking them for a while... scrubbing them down with a short bristled brush. As for the suitcase and the toolbox... I wound up removing all the fabric liner from the suitcase before laying it open and filling it with bleach water to soak... and I wound up stuffing the toolbox inside the barrel to soak.

All total I spent close to five or six hours today dicking around with all that stuff... and along the way I also picked up a bunch of tree branches that the storm had knocked down. The abundance of fallen tree branches near the shelter site was right on time... because I was wanting to have a fire (once the next few days of high winds pass) and I really did not want to haul the wagon around scavenging up enough stuff to burn.

During all this packing down process, I have still had my usual workload (chores) to contend with... and whoa it is no wonder as to why I constantly feel wiped out and worn ragged. Thankfully my morale has been steadily improving... which is good because it seems like the amount of stress that I feel gets a bit heavier each day.

Most of that stress is around going into a new situation with a lot of unknown variables (as I have written about extensively before) but the rest of it is solely about finances. Not to sound like I am complaining or anything (because what is the point) but since launching my fundraiser (a week ago) I have only garnered a whopping ten dollars in contributions... which yeah is pretty demoralizing but meh.

In other words things are looking bleak on either being able to afford a shed... or getting electrical service installed... so I am considering just putting everything into storage even though that is about as appealing as simply throwing everything away. I can assuredly limp by with my little solar rig to keep my phone charged (and have some lights at night) but it assuredly would not keep my cordless tool batteries charged.

The reason the tools are important is because I want to rapidly get stuff done around the place... to improve my camping scenario as much as possible. I already know that the area will not be flat and that I will need to rig up a deck (with that lumber I painted) rather quickly... and doing that alone will most likely wipe out all my batteries.

At some point recently I looked into DC (vehicle) chargers for my twenty volt Dewalt batteries... but they were all way too expensive. I did manage to find some cheaper ones that were used (pre-owned) but all the units that I saw were in really rough looking shape... and I did not want to risk blowing money on something that turned out to be trash.

Based off previous experience when I used eighteen volt batteries and a DC (vehicle) charger with my solar rig the results were really good... which is why I was thinking of doing it again with the larger batteries. Heck, I even tested one of the eighteen volt DC (vehicle) chargers with a twenty volt battery (that had an eighteen to twenty volt adapter on it) to see if it would charge it... but due to the lower voltage (of the charger) it would not fully charge the twenty volt battery.

Well, I think that is all the words that I have in me for this entry. I hope that everyone is doing well. Ciao for now.

Just an overcast sunset.

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