RBOMoney (mostly staining the deck)

• For Nibling 1’s Christmas present, DH’s brother suggested sending him money instead of directly to Nibling 1 because he’s buying a Valve Steam Deck game system for Nibling 1.  Apparently it is like a really expensive switch, or a really cheap PC in the shape of a portable gaming system.  In any case, it’s expensive.  So I guess we’ll be buying ~1/9th of one.  This seems reasonable to us!
• We tried to hire a handyman to stain our deck for us.  Whenever we do it ourselves, we regret the time and effort spent and wish we’d paid someone.  But finding someone to do it is difficult.  We will find someone we like and they’ll do all sorts of stuff for us and then they will just disappear when we try to find them a year or two later.
• Professional painting companies charge a lot if you just want them to come out for the deck.  I’m not sure why, because you’d think they’d be able to do it the cheapest since they own and know how to use all of the equipment and have trained people doing it.  But even the people who charge reasonable prices for indoors seem to charge crazy prices for decks.  It may be that it’s just too small a job to be worth it to them.  Apparently when we were getting our inside house painted before we went on leave one year, they did the deck for just $600, so that would track with the having it be part of a larger job.
• Last time (two years ago) we needed a few boards replaced and we were getting our fence replaced already, so we paid the same people to fix and stain our deck.  It was not cheap, but I remember feeling like it was probably worth it.  I don’t know how much the deck part cost, but the entire bill including some crazy brickwork stuff for our fence was $5400.
• DH has replaced boards before and done a good job with it, but even just staining the deck takes a couple of days.  New boards is a two person job over several days.  First you measure and cut.  Then you take the old ones out and put the new ones in and hammer gun them.  Then you have to wait a few days or some amount of time that may even be longer.  Then you wash the deck.  Then you wait for it to dry out and for the weather to be nice.  Then you stain a coat.  Then you wait a day or two and stain another coat.  Then you go over the new boards.  If you don’t wait long enough you end up with sap or something bubbling up through the paint, and then that part of the paint scrapes off.
• It looks like back in 2020 we also had to replace boards.  That cost was $1126, which we thought was reasonable.
• In 2018, DH did it himself because we gave up finding someone.
• This time though, we just needed cleaning and two coats of stain. We tried a new handyman that one of my colleagues recommended and he said $1300.  Now, inflation has been high, but it hasn’t been that high.  Inflation, in fact, suggests the cost should be something like $750.  I was expecting something around $800, and almost certainly under $1000.
• We have to rent all sorts of stuff from Home Depot, which some handymen have to do and some don’t.  But even so… $1300 really does seem high for just cleaning and painting.  Unless there’s been huge amounts of inflation in the cost of stain, but I somewhat doubt that.  The internet suggests that the high-end of deck staining across the country should be around $1,250, and we’re generally not in the high end for house work given the lower cost of living around here.
• Presumably there’s someone who could stain our deck for a more reasonable amount, but finding that person will be non-trivial.  We had asked around but only gotten this one lead.
• So, we have given up on finding someone and DH and DC1 scrubbed the deck and bought stain yesterday (~4 person-hours, or 2 hours total with both of them working) .  He opted not to powerwash or to use fancy painting equipment this time (I guess we still have the flat push paint applier from before), so the total materials cost is under $200, though of course there will be labor costs, and we’re never quite as good at not getting a little stain on the walls no matter how carefully we tape.  Maybe two years from now we’ll be more successful finding someone to do it for us, but for now I guess we’ll be saving $1,100 in exchange for our own labor.

Do you have a handyperson?  How do you get big projects around the house done? 

Ask the grumpies: Embarrassed by nice house?

Alice asks:

I feel awkward about new people seeing our house, to the point at which I feel uncomfortable about inviting others over. I think it’s because we paid more than I wanted to for it and then the value went up. We bought this house because it fit a very narrow intersection of what my husband and I both wanted, and we love it and feel fortunate that we got it. But I feel so weird about it from a social standpoint. We were able to buy it because of my income and my insane saving habits when I was younger. It’s not some amazing mansion, but it’s on a large plot of land and I worry that my kid’s friends’ parents (who I would like to at least be friendly with) are going to look at it and think that we’re rich jerks or something. I feel like I need to find a bridge across this in my own head, both for my kid’s social life and my own. I would like to have friends and invite people over! I would like for her to have friends who come over!

What advice do people have for someone who feels awkward about this sort of thing?

When I initially started reading the question I thought it was going to be about having to clean before inviting people over and that one I don’t have a good answer to, just sympathy.

But I get this– I grew up lower middle-class economically (though highly educated– genteel lower middle class), and I also felt guilty when we were able to buy a really nice house right out of graduate school with the money we’d saved by not paying rent for two years as Resident Assistants.  Like, this house is twice as nice as the houses we grew up in and is a level above “starter house.”  Our master bathroom is literally the same size as our entire first apartment in terms of square feet.  Literally.

My advice is two-fold.

First:  People are probably not judging you as much as you think they are.  Your kids’ friends will have various levels of housing and car spending and vacation spending and so on.  If you don’t brag about your trips and the cars in your garage/driveway aren’t constantly fancy and new they’ll probably just think you have a nice house and leave it at that. In addition, they may have seen nicer houses than yours, so although your house is nice and may be the nicest in your experience (as mine was in mine), it’s a little bit of a let-down realizing that many of the people that you know and socialize with either came from money and grew up someplace nicer or themselves live someplace nicer now.  Probably not the majority of people you know, but definitely some people who send their kids to public schools, particularly in neighborhood based public schools.

Basically, the realization that a lot of people don’t think we’re all that was a bit of a shock when we grew up on the other side of things.  I was amazed at the houses of people in the rich part of town, but a lot of people are used to that standard of living or better.  #2, for example, grew up in a ritzy suburb and had much higher housing standards than what I grew up with and thinks we have a nice house but not anything particularly special, particularly given that it’s in this part of the country.  (DH wasn’t amazed with the rich people houses in his town because even though his house was just a small 70s-style two bedroom ranch with a furnished basement with bedrooms for the kids, it was/is actually one of the nicest houses in his tiny town.)

This kind of guilt is one of the consequences of changing socioeconomic status— guilt about things that are middle or upper middle class, when the people who grew up that way or better are completely free from thinking it anything other than what’s normal.  Instead of feeling guilt, they feel sorry for people with less if they ever come in contact with them or think about them at all, which they probably don’t very often.  (Or if they’re evil, they assume that people with less stuff have too much as it is!)

Second:  As we’ve gotten older other people have gotten nicer houses and our stuff has gotten shabby (without being chic) so it’s much less of a concern. I’m actually embarrassed to have people over right now because we really need to replace our seriously cat-scratched and otherwise destroyed pleather furniture.  (Cat pee + plus cleaning = torn seats.)  We really should do that but I’m lazy and neither DH nor I are particularly into home decor.  But hiring someone to tell us what couches to buy also seems dumb.  We may end up getting new couch cushions made and our ottoman re-upholstered rather than starting from scratch just so we don’t have to make any decisions.  I think there’s a place the next town over that does stuff like that but it will probably cost more than just buying entirely new couches.  (DH ended up reupholstering a chair seat cushion himself a while back because it seemed cost prohibitive to get someone else to do it.)

If you just wait a bit and have normal wear and tear you can balance out the nice house with crappy furniture.  And then you’ll have the opposite problem!

Grumpy Nation– what advice do you have for Alice?

 

Our homeowners insurance just went WAY up

Up by $2,000, in fact.  That’s a LOT!  Like 50% over last year.

DH tried to call on Memorial Day, but of course after going through their lengthy menu process he got a message saying they were closed for the holiday.  (Seriously, start with that.)

I think he’s given up on calling and is just going to pay it.

Apparently houses in our town on average have gone up 20% in value in the past year.  Our property tax valuation went up 25% in the past year.  I’m not sure how that translates to an increase of 50% for the home owners insurance.  To my knowledge our neighborhood hasn’t suddenly become a flood or fire zone.  Inflation is high, but it isn’t 50%.  I have no idea what is happening.

If we were good personal finance bloggers, we’d get to the bottom of this and we’d shop around for insurance, but apparently we’re not.  :/

Replacing two kitchen drawers

The two drawers in our kitchen directly under the stove-top are a little bit different than the rest of the drawers that they’re nestled between.  They’re a little bit shorter, but, more relevant to today’s post, instead of the drawer components being made of wood like all the surrounding drawers and cupboards, they are made of paste-board (except for the wood facing).

We did not discover this difference until very recently.  DH noticed that the facing on these two drawers was becoming a little wobbly and he started looking into getting them replaced.  Initially his thought was to replace the parts that were failing with wood that he would cut down to size himself.  Then I asked if someone out there just sells drawers.  It turns out that indeed, there are places that just sell drawers.  They’re not cheap, but one of the benefits to being upper-middle class (with me on half-salary we’re back down to that comfortable category for the academic year) is that we can handle a couple hundred dollars, especially if it’s going to save hours of work.

So he ordered them.  And a good thing too, because a couple of days later, I was pulling open the silverware drawer and the entire front facing came off, leaving a gaping hole and some wicked looking nails.

Wicked looking nails

We removed the broken drawer entirely and spend the next week while we waited for the replacement drawers with the silverware box next to the stovetop.  It made putting silverware away much easier, but also meant we had a lot less counter space.

In the mean time, DH cleaned off the broken paste-board from the facing since we would need that once the boxes came.

Broken pasteboard stuck to facing.

And the boxes did come.  They weren’t very exciting, just boxes, but after examining the joints on the sides, DH said he was very glad he hadn’t tried to make them himself.

He made holes and screwed in the bottom railing things so the drawer could slide in and out, and he affixed the facings to the new drawers.

Then put back the fancy drawer handles.

And refilled with silverware.

Not the kind of thing I ever expected to just break, but it is nice to know that there are places that make kitchen drawer sized boxes and you don’t have to hire a carpenter to come out and replace a couple of drawers.

And more major appliances are breaking…

Our 12 year water heaters lasted 15 years, so I shouldn’t complain.  But they are expensive to replace!

So we bought two more 12 year water heaters from home depot ($1750) and called the plumbers in.

The plumbers opened up the boxes … and the water heaters were severely dinged and damaged, both the “jacket” and a bunch of the valve things.  Not usable.  (The boxes were super dinged up, and I watched one of the guys open the second water heater so definitely no shady business on the part of the plumber.)

So, since our garage water heater was literally dripping, we made the executive decision to let the plumbers sell us some not as good/more expensive water heaters ($3100, but also they didn’t charge for the installation itself, so that must have been built into the price) by the same company (Rheem) that they had in stock (6 year water heater plus 4 year additional warranty and replacement valves = 10 year warranty).  Not necessarily the best decision, but that’s what happens when you are in an emergency situation and DH is making the decision from an airport on his way to a conference and if you weren’t living with DH to do all this stuff you would be renting.  And at least these water heaters wouldn’t be dinged.

While they were out, we got our broken whole house filter (still under warranty) replaced and we got a pressure regulator added to the house so the whole house filter doesn’t break again AND so we stop going through toilet innards so rapidly.  (Plus, in theory, one would not be able to injure oneself with the bidet, though I do not plan to test that.)  That was ~$300 for parts and service.  They also checked to see that our shower stall was no longer leaking after DH caulked it and they determined that the bathtub leak in the children’s bathroom was just them not completely turning the middle faucet that switches between shower and tap and they didn’t charge for either of those.  So I feel less bad about the total bill since it seems like they loaded some of the labor onto the cost of the water heaters.

*Sigh*

The moral is that things shouldn’t break when DH is at a conference.  Or maybe if your major appliance comes in a super dinged box you should open the box before calling the plumbers.  I don’t know.

A few years ago this kind of kerfuffle would have made me anxious and worried, but this time it just me tired (so tired, in fact, that instead of finishing making the dinner I was halfway through making, I went online and spent another $40 on pizza delivery).  People say money can’t buy you happiness, but it sure can buy peace of mind.

We bought a dryer and a microwave

Last week our dryer started to make crunchy sounds. DH was like, it’s probably a ball-bearing.  I’ll look into it on the weekend, maybe take it apart and put it together again.

A few days later it started to make squeaky sounds.  Then it stopped making heat consistently.

DH looked on the internets and determined that it probably wasn’t a ball-bearing but was instead something dealing with sparks that he was not going to be able to fix.

I’d looked into getting a new dryer before but DH was always able to unclog it and it would start working again.  Enough time had passed that my chosen models weren’t really being offered anymore.

So on a Thursday, we looked into buying a dryer and picked one out in like 30 min.  Which is much much less time than we usually put into shopping for a major appliance.

The top models for several online sites were no longer being made OR were out of stock for long periods of time.  But Tom’s Hardware’s top model also happens to be the other half of the pair for the LG washer we currently have (or at least the other half of the pair of the newer model of our current LG washer).  It came in white/gas and Home Depot said they could have it to us by Tuesday.  So we bought it.

We also decided to pay extra to have them install it and cart it away because nobody wants to mess with gas and it’s probably worth $30 not to have to move the dryer to the curb for bulk pickup.

Total cost including tax and installation and installation kit:  $1,268.64.

It seems to be working great, and DH has been having fun playing with the “steam” option.  I especially like the way it matches our washer visually, though I didn’t used to care about things like that.  If it were a low rated dryer I probably would have picked a non-matching white dryer, but with it being highly rated, I get a little extra happiness from completing a set.

A couple of days after we ordered a new dryer (but before it got here), our microwave decided to give up the ghost mid-frozen lasagna.  We looked at all the top rated microwaves on various lists and none of them were in stock in our local stores, though we could order them from amazon.  Also none of the top rated microwaves came in white, and currently all of our major appliances except the dishwasher are white, and while I don’t mind another stainless steel appliance, if we couldn’t get a microwave locally that day, I figured we might as well get one that matches the kitchen.  So then I looked for white microwaves locally.  Home Depot had a number of very cute “vintage” style microwaves that I didn’t want to deal with.  I prefer buttons to knobs, thank you.  The Lowes in the next town over had a white GE that looked decent that we could pick up that day.  Which we did.  It was $175, which is on the expensive side for what it is, but it matched the kitchen and we wouldn’t have to wait half a week or longer to get it.  It seems to be working ok so far.  It’s much more powerful than our old microwave so we’ve been adjusting timing accordingly (less of an adjustment for me–I think it’s actually the same model as what we have at work for the same reason– it was what was available to buy that day when the workroom microwave stopped working in a cloud of smoke).

I think we might have gremlins.

Have any of your appliances given up the ghost recently?  Do you like your dryer?  How about your microwave?

Ask the grumpies: Have you ever thought about getting solar panels?

OMDG asks:

I kind of love the idea of solar panels on the new house. Having a smaller carbon footprint and being less dependent on the grid seems like a worthwhile investment. N&M have you ever thought about doing this?

#1:  We haven’t changed the roof since we moved here and it’s still going strong.  But we assume that it will need to get changed out sooner rather than later.  From what we understand, right after (or during) getting a new roof is the best time to get solar panels since if you’re getting roof-based solar panels they’ll have to be removed/replaced/etc. when your roof is replaced.

There are online programs that will tell you if it’s worth getting solar panels for your particular house using google maps satellite images.  For whatever reason, these have always told us that it’s not worth it for our house, and since our roof is still going strong, we haven’t investigated further.  (The google project sunroof used to provide more information and be more customizable than it is now.)  We’ve also missed any local area rebates on solar (those expired over a decade ago and haven’t been replaced), there haven’t been state rebates, and we haven’t much been paying attention to federal rebates.

I had been thinking that when we get a new roof we’d just get fancy Tesla roof tiles because I liked the idea, but it sounds like they’re still expensive but not actually delivering on their early promise and there may be concerns with the warranty/customer service.

So… we’ve thought about it but probably won’t pull the trigger until our roof needs replacing and at that point we will re-evaluate.

#2:  Lives in an apartment building, so no.

Grumpy Nation, what has been your experience with Solar Panels?

 

Ask the grumpies: The mortgage vs. stocks question (in a low interest rate, high inflation environment)

OMDG asks:

We’ve recently purchased a house — yay! I’d always planned on paying it down quickly, but I’ve recently heard advice that given the low interest rate on our mortgage, we would be better off putting the $ in an index fund, since the gains in the market are expected to be higher than we would have to pay in extra interest if we were to pay off our mortgage early. However… as with all things, whether this is good advice depends on the trajectory of the stock market remaining as it has been for the past several years. In the absence of perfect information and me being a risk averse person, I decided instead to split the difference, i.e. half my extra $ to principal on the mortgage, and half in an index fund. I should also add that we are maxing out our 529 and our tax advantaged retirement savings already. Does this seem like a reasonable approach? What would you do differently?

Disclaimer:  We are not professionals.  Talk to a certified no-fee financial planner or do your own research before making any major money decisions.  (We could be totally wrong!)

Congratulations on your purchase!

We know a little bit more than when we last tackled this question.

If your interest rate is in the 2-4% range, it is unlikely that the stock market will be less than that over the period of the 15 or 30 years that your mortgage will last, even with risk adjustments etc.  Even if you’re planning on only being in the market for a very short term, the stock market is likely to come ahead when there are really low interest rates.

Currently inflation is high, but not for reasons that make sense in terms of interest rates.  Inflation is high now because of supply shortages.  Still, the federal reserve board sounds like it will be increasing interest rates in the spring, which should cool down the stock market some, but also make your bank money worth more.  It is quite possible that interest rates could continue going up sometime in the next 15-30 years to the point where putting your money in a CD could net more than pre-paying your mortgage if you have a low interest rate loan.

If your interest rate is above 5%, then it makes more sense to pre-pay the mortgage because when you risk adjust things, the stock market isn’t likely to do as well as paying down the mortgage.

Mortgage companies can also provide some protection against insane HOA if you ever get into a bad situation where the HOA wants to take your house.

It is also really important to note that OMDG is maxing out their 529 and our tax advantaged retirement savings– you can always pre-pay a mortgage, but you get a limited amount of space for tax-advantaged retirement savings each year.  If I could go back, I would max out both our 457s back when we had them and not put any of that money in mortgage pre-payments or 529s.  (Being honest, I would probably still round up the mortgage payment to a round number for irrational psychological reasons, but that was never a huge sum.)

That said, there are some other things that could make it more attractive to pre-pay the mortgage.

1.  Early pre-payments are worth more than later pre-payments because of how mortgages are structured.  They are not revolving debt.  You’re basically paying mostly interest with your regular payments at the beginning of the loan and mostly principal at the end of the loan.  Any pre-payments go directly to principal which can cut quite a bit out at the beginning.  I really like this GRS amortization spreadsheet for calculating what effect pre-payments will have on the lifetime of your loan.
2. If you are expecting to get any sort of financial aid from colleges, it can make sense to turn taxable assets (like taxable stocks, but NOT retirement stocks) into home equity because they assume you will sell stocks to pay for college but not that you will sell your house.  That is, home equity is not generally included in college financial aid decisions.
3. If you are EXTREMELY risk averse, or if having the money in stocks makes you more likely to spend it rather than save it and you want to save it, or if you have other emotional kinds of things dealing with not wanting debt.
4. If you just want to not deal with the hassle of paying a bill every month (and if it’s less effort to pay property taxes once or twice a year instead of having the mortgage company handle that).

After we asked, you noted that your mortgage is 2.75% for 30 years.  With a mortgage rate that low, if your incomes are high enough to not qualify for financial aid, I’d probably just pay the minimum to the mortgage and not split the difference.  YMMV.  There’s not really a wrong answer, so long as you’re saving/investing the money in lower risk assets (stock market indexes aren’t low risk in the short term but they’re pretty good in the long term).

Grumpy Nation, how do you handle mortgage pre-payment vs investing?

It is appliance breaking time!

In the past month:

Our brave little toaster that could (purchased probably for $10 fifteen or more years ago) no longer reliably keeps the lever down.  Sometimes it does if you hold it down long enough, but sometimes I just cannot get it to engage.  So we went on wirecutter and ordered their best rated toaster from Target ($30).

Our refrigerator fan started making chunking sounds again, which usually means it is going to need to be replaced soon.  I swore the last time this happened we would replace it and then *buy a new refrigerator*.  But it’s stopped chunking so we didn’t replace the fan.  But who knows how long that’s going to last.  (Estimated cost:  Who knows!  But probably closer to $2000… which is crazy since our first refrigerator was the cheapest full-size refrigerator at either Lowes or Home Depot almost *20* years ago… currently that’s still under $500.)

Our dishwasher has a new and different problem.  It’s definitely hitting the “planned obsolescence” stage.  This time there’s some kind of spring on the door that has failed and the door can either be all the way open or all the way shut and doesn’t gracefully move between the two states or have the ability to stay slightly open like it used to.  We have no idea how to fix this and even looking into it was pretty gross because the area where the door hinges is corroded and just plain icky.  DH is making noises like it might be time to get a Bosch, though we are definitely willing to wait until they are easily available and we don’t have to worry about people in our house.  It’s on the horizon.  (DH is also willing to put up with this for two years and just sell the house without a dishwasher.)  Somehow it is easier to replace an engine than it is a spring.  (Estimated cost for a new dishwasher ~$1000.)  Update:  After some research, it wasn’t the spring, it was the thing the spring attaches to.  Cost to replace:  $40.

Our microwave has started shutting itself off for safety reasons if we microwave too many things in a row.

It’s hard to know what annoyances we should put up with and what we should just spend the money to replace.  Replacing things also often comes with its own frustrations and annoyances since new things don’t always work and lemons are a pain in the rear to deal with.

Not an appliance:  Our fences are falling apart and last year the HOA made it clear that they’re in charge of the stone (which isn’t falling apart) and we’re in charge of the wood.  DH called 4 places and nobody returned his calls.  Then we got an email from the HOA (to everyone, not just us) saying that fence repairs needed to be made so DH was like, Help we need a fence repair place, do you have any suggestions.  So he got 3 suggestions and called the first two and they came out right away to look at the fence.  And… then they disappeared and we never got estimates.  So now we’re not sure what to do.  I mean, call that third company, but after that.  DH has already walked all over the neighborhood and gotten the names and numbers off actual fences.  He thinks they’re just busy what with Weather and almost our entire HOA fencing needing to be replaced and so on.

My spice rack

Many areas of my life are not at all organized. But I do have a bit of (undiagnosed, probably colloquial in nature rather than clinical) ocd. When the world is falling apart, I get some relief from having certain things organized. Alphabetical books in the bookcases. Pens organized by color. Clips in their appropriate bins by size. Silverware, stationary etc. separated by type and organized in appropriate places in their appropriate drawers.  When I went into work and the supply cabinet was kept stocked, I would make sure the teas were organized by type (caffeinated one shelf, greens together, etc… after one botched restocking, I explained to the student workers the system I had put in place. Luckily they like me!). Many of these things are things you can’t see and maybe it doesn’t matter that I have piles of work papers all around me optimistically organized by vintage (newest stuff on top).

One of the things that must be organized alphabetically (and that makes me yell “Who has been messing with my system?!?” when it gets out of order) is my spice rack. Back when we were living in an apartment, spices lived alphabetically on set of cheap shelves in the living room because our kitchens were tiny (or, for two years, shared). When we moved here, I decided I wanted a rack like I’d seen on the backs of doors. Our pantry has enough room that we didn’t need to put it on the back of a door– this is screwed into the wall. I picked out wire rack modules at Home Depot and DH installed them.

Here are the top few shelves (currently I don’t have any little spices sticking out on top– we used up a few of the containers we had duplicates of [like Northwoods seasoning which is my favorite replacement for spice mixes like Emeril’s, blackening, cajun, etc.] so I was able to spread things out.)  The holes in the wall above the spice rack pre-date us.  I’m not sure what the previous owners had here because whatever it was they took it with them.  (They used the walk-in pantry mostly as alcohol storage!)

Here are the bottom three shelves where we keep bagged spices, also in alphabetical order.  It’s mostly Penzey’s but they were out of ground cardamom when we needed it (cardamom is one of my favorite spices) so I got some from nuts.com.  (In the jarred spices we’re mostly Penzey’s but I don’t mind having different jars so long as they’re about the same shape/size and, importantly, everything is in alphabetical order.  We have mostly Penzey’s not because I need all the yellow labels matching but because they have excellent quality spices at reasonable prices.  We are not getting paid to say that and they don’t know we exist.  It’s just a wonderful company in so many ways.  Pick up some of their Northwoods seasoning, and if you like things hot, their Berebere mix. Try their mixed seasonings to make flavored roasted nuts or put them in sour cream for a fun veggie dip.  *love emoji*)

You can see each shelf is connected to the wall by brackets that came with the shelf.

Here you can see that the shelf is modular– it’s composed of multiple sets.  You can also see the envelope we use to list the spices we’re going to need to get on our next Penzey’s run in The City.  Or, since the pandemic started, our next Penzey’s order.

I know these are not very pinteresty pictures– I think I had the light off and the pantry is a bit dark and I was too lazy to play with the lighting, but you get the idea.

To forestall people who question whether we can use all these spices before they go stale:  not always, but I would rather have a spice available and stale (meaning we have to use more of it) than to not have it at all.  We do go through our regular spices pretty quickly.

And… this is not all our spices.  We have a box on the floor to the side that is just different kinds of dried chiles (also alphabetical). On the shelves to the left in between the cereal bars and the crackers I keep different kinds of seeds and fancy salts.  On the shelves to the right between the chocolate bars and candied fruit we keep extracts and waters (and would keep food coloring and cake decorations if DC2 weren’t allergic to red dye).  Cocoa powder we keep in the back shelves with the flours.  Peppercorns are shelved, oddly, in front of the chocolate bars, but I think that’s just because it’s really easy access.  But still, a place for everything and everything has its place.

How do you keep your spices?  How do you self-sooth when the world is going crazy?