Our collection of used wine bottles continues to grow as more and more neighbors and friends give us their “empties” (THANK YOU! to everyone). The stacks of cardboard boxes started to wobble precariously, so we started using large, sturdy storage containers (some of which we had gotten at Lowes for our move two years ago) for wine bottles. Throughout the summer, we have taken a few hours each week to process wine bottles:
- soaking the bottles and scraping off labels
- thoroughly washing each bottle with very hot water and soap (and help of a sturdy bottle brush)
- rinsing each bottle with hot water, using our handy bottle rinser
- drying bottles on the bottle drying rack for a day or so (it holds about 4 dozen at a time)
- sorting bottles by color (and shape if possible) into the storage containers
- closing the lids and holding them down with “zip-ties”
- clearly labeling each container (may as well use “LEAN” principles)
We decided to move all the tools which are currently stored in the garage to the top floor of the barn (where all the big power tools are anyhow). Since we are continuing to work on renovating the barn, we may as well have all the tools in one place. Jeff started building shelves in the barn for tool storage, and also in the garage for storing the cleaned bottles. Looks like we may use the garage strictly for food and bottle storage … it already houses two freezers and a refrigerator, and we are looking to find a walk-in cooler at some point (we’ll need it for berry storage, and it is great for storing potatoes, apples and of course during hunting season for all that meat). Our list of things we’d like to do gets longer and longer ….
