Random stuff under the stairwell.
The Saint Louis Quaker meeting house is also a warming shelter in the winter for homeless folk. There is a community organization that coordinates churches in the area that provide this service. There are a lot of moving parts to the work: providing the space, cooking, cleaning, working with the local authorities. There are hundreds of people working every year to provide this service.
Our church has space for 40 people when the weather is severely cold. We move the benches out of the way and set up cots in the sanctuary, and it becomes their sanctuary for the night. In between cold nights, the cots and blankets and pillows are folded and stored at the north end of the sanctuary in a couple of big piles.
All the stuff has been moved to other parts of the basement or has been recycled or sent to the landfill.
About a year ago, some of the Friends (members of the church are called Friends) hatched a plan to store the shelter supplies in the basement in the off season. They wired the basement with plentiful lighting and painted the dark wood white. They installed some industrial strength shelves that were donated by a member.
Last week, after worship, we moved the supplies down to the newly refurbished basement.
Feels good to get all of that out of the sanctuary.
[Beloved readers-I have finally transitioned into my retired life of writing and working on hand picked sustainability projects. In honor of this, I am starting a new blog: Quaker Stylist. I will post both here and there for the next month or so, in the hopes of convincing my beloved readers to make the transition with me. I will leave my two previous blogs up for a few months, in case any readers want to make a trip down memory lane. Eventually, I will be taking them down, decluttering them from the blog sphere.]
Small House, Big Life 
Okay, I’m now subscribed at Quaker Stylist. Your posts keep me grounded.:-)
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Thank you. And I am intrigued by your comment.
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While I can understand your wish to declutter the blog sphere, I wish that you would reconsider deleting past content. I enjoy looking back at past posts and find inspiration there quite frequently. I’m sure I am not the only one who would miss it when it is gone.
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Cindy Lou–I appreciate the encouragement, thanks! I will leave them up for awhile. Are there particular posts you find helpful?
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I’m subscribed as well. I wish you’d leave the earlier blogs up, though. I’m not so far on my minimizing journey as I’d like, and your blogs have always helped me.
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Gail, thank you for the feedback. I’ll leave them up for awhile, but not indefinitely. Are there particular posts or types of posts that you find helpful? Maybe I can give those topics a “Quaker Stylist” spin.
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I’ve always benefited from the lists of items you own, and your makeovers of furnishings and interior space…
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Ahh, those before and after photos are so satisfying! That’s progress you can really see!
Congratulations on your new blog and new adventures! 🙂
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Thanks! Of course, I will be blogging about the new adventures…..
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Oh Fawn,
I find it painful to come out of my shell to comment, but you really have a blind spot when it comes to seeing how much valuable information and wisdom your old blog posts contain.
I don’t know what is involved in keeping a blog going, but your old blogs are far from clutter. I am seriously considering printing them out, before they disappear forever. Even though binders of paper make me want to gag, the preservation of your writings are worth it to me.
A (minimal) list of examples:
Your frugal food budget showed me not only what to eat if I only want to spend $5.04 for the day, but that I have been eating too much, quantity wise. 😉
I have always struggled with how much to pay kids for chores – not so little that they don’t want the chore, and not so much that they choose to do only one chore. You explained what you paid, and it was very helpful.
A person can really make do with only 100 items, happily? Over and over, you convinced me that it can be done, by posting your annual list with pictures!
I could go on, and on.
What about a compromise? Is another book out of the question? (I purchased the Kindle version of “A Holy Errand”. It was well done.)
Wishing you nothing but the best, Fawn!
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SunnyDays- I am sorry to be the source of the pain of speaking up, but thank you so much for doing so, and so eloquently. You are correct, that I have not realized how valued my writing is amongst my readers. I will leave the previous blogs up, for now. I like the idea of a “Single Parent Enough” book, and it actually has a chance of being written, now that my children are adults. I will continue to prioritize the QuakerStylist blog, as I feel that climate change is the most urgent problem we humans face, and I desire deeply to help others see how to turn it around. But there is still time for other worthy projects and turning the previous blogs into a book, seems worthy. Thank you for commenting.
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