Instagram

Friday, July 25, 2014

Where do you put it all



The last of my necessary soap supplies arrives today. Since lye is used by some people with some not very good or legal intentions, the government keeps track of lye sales and I have to sign for delivery.

I was lucky to find the right non virgin olive oil at a Cash and Carry store in town. I was told that it's hard to find except on line, and shipping would be horrendous. So I went to Google(the font of al wisdom) and searched wholesale foods and restaurant supplies in our area, and found this store. I was even able to do a search for their products which saved a driving trip if they didn't carry that particular oil.

It's a great store for restaurant cooking tools, food storage items,  and large,regular and gigantic sizes for food, etc.  and discounts for case purchases, and even fresh veggies. We were on our way to Ashland for some grocery shopping yesterday, so I didn't spend a lot of time checking out the whole store. They have stores  Washington state, Oregon, California, Nevada and Idaho. I was like a kid in a candy store just roaming down the kitchen equipment aisle; but Ashland was calling, so I'll have to go back another day and see what other goodies they have.

My other goal was to stop by a few charity shops in search of a crock pot for soap making and I got lucky at the Salvation Army store, where I got a Rival crock pot for five dollars.

Right now, the short end of my slab roller has all these soap making fats, oils, scents, molds, bowls, mixer, etc. taking up that space and I'm scratching my head wondering where I'm going to store these things. I've gone up as much as I can in my garage/studio with shelving and two metal racks suspended from the ceiling, so I may just have to look under my big slab roller and see if I can consolidate some of those buckets and made room for these all these supplies. Or, my only other possibility is a tall wire shelving unit which now houses lots of glaze test containers, bowls of fired glaze test and other studio related things.  That just may be the better choice, since it would put everything closer to my scale.

I'll just have to get in there at some point today or tomorrow. If my delivery comes early enough, we want to drive up to the mountains this afternoon for lunch and maybe check if the wild blueberries are ready for picking at Blueberry flats. If not, then I'll get in the studio and figure out this storage dilemma.

2 comments:

  1. WOW! You put me to shame, I have a 2 glass beakers, a stick blender, two buckets, a scale and a spatula :)
    I just buy the cheapest olive oil in the largest size at Walmart, seems to work fine.
    I had to shuffle a few things around to find a place to make, my husband said all I do is move things from one place to another, sadly, he is right!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tracey, now I know you must have a mold or two. :-) When we moved here, I had to deal with 1/3rd the studio space than I had at my old studio, and the shuffling everything around constantly became the norm. Since I didn't have room for my lapidary tools and jewelers bench and small soldering table, they had to take up some of my studio as well as garage storage space. Tight is the operative word. My only studio work table is my big slab roller and of course it becomes a catch all place most of the time, and the only other surface that doesn't have permanent things occupying it is my wedging table, so thing gets shuffled on and off there as well.
    Some of the things in the photo, like the big bin most things are sitting in is pottery studio bin; and a couple of things on and near there (silicone tubes, silicone gun, corn starch and foam core board), are for making some of my own small molds.
    Thanks for the olive oil tip. Everyone else says you have to use that Pomace olive oil. Good to know that is not the case. I looked for non virgin olive oil at a couple of our grocery stores, but none was to be found. Is the oil you're using an extra virgin olive oil?
    My lye still hasn't arrived, so we had to cancel our trip up the mountain. Oh well, since I didn't take anything out for dinner, guess we'll have to suffer and go the local Mexican restaurant after UPS finally arrives.

    ReplyDelete

COMMENTS WELCOME: