Episode 269 - Tool of the Week: Collapsible Wagon

I literally use this ALL the time!

Here's a double-decker one!

Foldable Wagon

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Good morning. Is this am I And it's September second on
my way to word. Yesterday it was Labor day so
it was off and today is Tuesday, so we're gonna
have two all of the week. Twoll of the week
this week is something that I use a lot, and

(00:22):
I definitely used it a lot yesterday. Uh this nice
weekend that we had that had really nice weather. Uh,
temperature wasn't awful. It was well actually for us, it
was spectacular, So I uh, I can't even say it

(00:43):
wasn't awful. I'm just say it was fantastic. It was
kind of humid, but the temperature was like eighty a
eighty nine, So first day of September and Texas and
it's below ninety is is a win that we're gonna
sell a rate. So what I did yesterday was trying

(01:03):
to get some stuff done. I finally got my back
porch dealt with and a clean house. So, but the
back porch was That's one reason why I hadn't done
quite a I done a little bit here and there,
but I really hadn't done a whole lot because it
is so hot back there in the summertime. Since that

(01:26):
room faces the west So my tool of the week
is my fold up wagon. Uh. These became a thing, Oh,
I don't know, it's been a while. We started using
them for work a long time ago because they're like,
you know, the little red wagon that kids used to

(01:46):
drag around and play with, that kind of thing, except
its fabric and it and it, you know, folds up.
So we do use them a lot for work when
you need to haul things, because it's a big help.
And so it's one of those things. I think one
of the tools of the week I have done before
has been the I think I did the stair climbing dolly,

(02:12):
and this is kind of like that in that it
gives you the ability to haul a lot more than
you could haul by yourself without help. So, especially if
you are a single person on a homestead or a
property and you need to move stuff from one place
to another, one of these wagons is huge. Now mine's old.

(02:38):
I think the newer ones have better features. I'll look
for one on Amazon and put a link in the description.
As I said, mine's old, and you just you pull
the thing up from the middle and that folds it up.
It's pretty worn. I think, actually it's not mine It
was Nieces when she used to she used to do

(03:03):
craft shows and stuff, and so she used it to
haul things in and out of the venue. I used
it last fall when I did the Heritage Festival and
the quilting demo because that gave me. I hauled, literally
got all of my stuff from my quilting demo in
this including a wooden chair. Believe it or not, I

(03:25):
look like the Clampets with a wagon. Now. You only
know what that reference is if you know the TV
show was the Beverly Hillbillies and when they loaded all
their stuff up and went to California from Tennessee, that's
they had it all hanging off the side. That's kind
of what my little wagon looked like. Uh. But it

(03:47):
was handy because I you know, where we had to
park and where my setup was was not close at hand. Uh.
It wasn't bad. It was you know, not a bad
walking distance, but it was still a little bit a
little ways over there. So this allowed me to haul

(04:07):
all of it one time in a wagon. Something with
wheels makes it a whole lot easier to drag around.
So yesterday when I was using my wagon, uh to
get all this stuff off the back. First of all,
it was amazing. I had all this stuff in a wardrobe,

(04:27):
you know, an antique wardrobe, and the antiqu wardrobe had
been kind of gutted for and used for like an
entertainment system or whatever. It did have a like a
middle wall. Betwe it had two sides, you know, one
door open to the right, door open to the left,

(04:49):
and there was a divider in the middle. It was
pretty rickety, and that was one reason I wanted to
get rid of it, so that, you know, I replaced
it with a smaller cabinet that it was a metal cabinet,
and so you know, I had to go through and
I did several posts where I referenced the fact that
I was in you know, it took me a while
to build my or assemble my metal cabinet again back

(05:12):
to not having as my uh little house for the
cab instructions red Nat strong Man. So if you don't
have one of those, you have to, you know, use
alternative means. And so that's what I did with the cabinet.
So I finally got the cabinet built, and it's really
nice because I literally it's home purpose was just to

(05:36):
store cleaning supply so I have the mops in the brooms,
and the vacuum cleaner and all that kind of stuff
for breeze, and little mopping pads for the swiffer, and
all the different things that I need for cleaning are
in that one space. So that's nice, and that helped
me organized. Now in addition to this wardrobe, First of all,

(05:59):
I had the stuff of the wardrobe was full. In fact,
the left hand side had those I think their rubber
maid their plastic drawers and they're stackable and they hold
a lot of stuff. And so I had a lot
of stuff in those drawers. And then I had stuff
on top of the wardrobe. And then I had things

(06:21):
that I had stuffed in beside the wardrobe, between the
wardrobe and the walls. So I had a lot of
I mean when I moved all that stuff out of
the way to put my metal cabinet there, it was
I had. I mean, it literally threw up all of
the back porch. Okay, I have a pew, an old

(06:43):
pew that came from our old church. Uh they decided
to change and get chairs and so uh you know
these are this was a pew from the pews I
sat on from the time I was born, so you
know it, it's a kind of a sentimental piece. So

(07:03):
when they gave away all their pews, then we took one.
So I have it on back porch, but I had
it covered up. I had you know, stuff stacked on it.
Then I had some of these drawers under it. Then
I had to sum in some other play, so I
had stuff everywhere just pile up, and so it was
a mess. And the weather was decent and it made

(07:25):
it a whole lot easier. But if I made one
trip with that wagon, I can't even I lost count
after a while. Just moving the drawers themselves was four trips,
and that wasn't all that had to be moved. So
I moved all this stuff out to the storage building.
And yes, I still need to go through it, but
at least I have it out of the way now

(07:47):
and I can go through it like one drawer at
a time. And if I'll do that, that's a big if.
If I do that, then I can do it during
the fall. Because what happened is it's hard to do
this kind of stuff like organization in the storage building
in either the summertime or the winter time because of

(08:10):
the you know, it's not climate controlled, and depending on
what time of the year it is, it's it can
be either really hot out there or really cold. Now
you know, I could do something about the heat. I
could have a fan, and I have upon occasion. It's
still hard to work out there even without. I mean
because I've I've got windows, but it's just hot out

(08:32):
there if it's if it's summertime, so during the fall,
I need to take this opportunity to go through some
stuff and organize. Probably who's that woman that has you
declutter your house down to the bone Marie Condo I
think is their name. But one of the things which

(08:53):
I'm probably not I'm I'm not a Marie Condo kind
of person to pare down to the bare siage. Although
I will say this prepping has helped me get rid
of a lot of stuff that I didn't need because
I didn't have the space to put it. And I
don't like a house that looks like a hoarder. But

(09:15):
one of the most important things is having like things
all in one place, and that's the thing I'm bad
about not doing now. I also, I do like to
have multiple versions of something where it needs to be
used so for example, I have gone to Walmart and
bought they have it used to be ten dollars nos twelve.

(09:38):
It's a package of ten pairs of scissors, and they're
cheapest dirt excuse me, And they are it's ten to
a package. They're all different sizes, in all different kinds,
and so they're I mean, you just use them till

(09:59):
they don't work any more and you throw them away.
So what I will do is I almost have pair
of scissors in every room because invariably you need to
cut something with something like for example, if I'm putting
dog food in the dog food container, I need to
cut the top off the back. If I have some

(10:23):
in the well, I used to have it in the
I'm trying to think what I use them for in
the bathroom, because I do have a bear and every
time I turn around, I'm needing to use them for something.
Usually it's tearing the packaging off of something. It's like
I have a box cutter in a little drawer in

(10:46):
my hall tree because the hall tree is right by
the front door. And when I get my shipping and
receiving in mostly from Amazon, then that gives me something
there handy. I don't have to go find it somewhere
else to open the boxes. So I'm a firm believer
in keeping tools where you need them, even if that

(11:09):
means you have to have multiple tools. But let's see
what all these are dogs? I thought, what are these
running across the road, because there's a whole herd of them.
But like in the storage building, I need to collect
all my electrical stuff in one toat like all the

(11:31):
extension cords and all of the you know, different things
that I would need for electrical stuff, so I know
where to go find it. All the tools in one place.
Now that's something I may keep a In fact, what
I do keep a screwdriver, various screwdrivers in a drawer

(11:53):
in the kitchen because we need it like a lot
of times. And this is an old house thing. The
doorknob comes off the door in the laundry room. It's
an antique door I find. If you know anything about Texas,
there's a place in Texas kind of east of Dallas

(12:15):
called Canton, and Canton has one of the largest flea
markets in the country. It's called Canton First Monday and
it has it covers probably pretty much of the town
in addition to the fact that there's there's a big
area for Canton and people cut it's I haven't been

(12:37):
in years. It happens every month. It's literally the weekend
of the first Monday. Now don't go on first Monday
because there won't be bay there on Monday. But the
weekend of the first Monday. The vendors starts setting up
that week. So they're generally set up by Thursday. So Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday,
Sunday they start tearing down and packing up. But uh,

(13:02):
my favorite part of Canton has all kinds of stuff,
and a lot of things are new stuff that people
sell home deck and all that kind of furniture and
you name it and they sell it. But my favorite
part of Canton is the unreserved part and that's where
the junk is. And so I went looking one time

(13:24):
for a door for uh my my side door. When
the church owned my house, they put a cheap holocorpt
door on the side and so I measured the door.
I was gonna need excuse me, and I went to
Canton looking for my door, and I found this gorgeous

(13:47):
beveled glass you know, half glass door, very ornate Victorian,
which is a little older than my house. My house
is is is not really Victorian, and that it worked
for the side door, and it was perfect size and
bebel glass. It was filthy. You only because I was
you know, I got up close to it and rubbed

(14:09):
my hand on the glass, was I able to tell
that it was bebel glass. I don't think the guy
who was selling it it was bebel glass, because he
sold it to me for eighty dollars and antique doors
are extremely expensive. So I took it home and stripped
itn't repainted, didn't put it on the side door. But

(14:29):
when you have an old door, h then you have
old door problems, especially if it you know, nowadays, when
remodelers or whoever get a door, they get a door
and a door frame. And so the fellow who was
working for me at the time that I got he
did the the laundry room for me. He wasn't real

(14:54):
sure what you did with a door if you didn't
have a doorframe that it fit, well, you have to
make it fit so and it does and it's fine
because I mean it literally was the perfect size for
this for this door. But it you don't have to
have its own hardware. Well, you know, I want the

(15:16):
hardware to look appropriate, so I have a brass doorknob
and all that kind of stuff, But invariably I have
a hard time keeping the doorknob on it. A lot
of times the little screw and the doorknob will come loose.
That was the whole point of the story. And I'm
forever needing to tighten that screw on the doorknob. And

(15:40):
that's why i have tools there in the drawer right
next to the launder room in the kitchen, because we're
always needing to do something with a screwdriver right there. Anyway,
the whole tool, the whole purpose of the tool of
the week was talking about my wagon. I'm sure there
are much better features to wag now I think of you,

(16:01):
the ones that you get. I'll look and see if
there's ones with bigger wheels, because the bigger the wheels,
the easier it's gonna be to roll around. At this
point in time, mine has to roll down the ramp
in the bag. It has to go up, you know,
down the sidewalk, but it has to get off the
sidewalk onto the driveway and then up the really tall

(16:22):
step to get into the uh, get onto the patio
with the storage building. So that's the problem I tend
to I intend to solve when I do my driveway. UH.
But that's the way it is now. So, but it's
handy because I use it to haul the groceries in

(16:43):
a lot of times when I order something from Amazon,
UH that weighs a lot. For example, the other day
I ordered a camp stove and I'm just gonna leave
it in the box. I know you're supposed to get
your gear out of tested, but this is only for

(17:04):
the purpose of being able to can outside if we
had to. That was the issue we had with five
day power outage. Nice was in the middle of canning
green beans and she had to just bite the bullet
and do that. And the problem was it was a
very hot in the kitchen and all that heat did

(17:26):
was make the whole house hotter than it was. That's
the reason why the people in the old days without
air conditioning had separate kitchens for the and they cooked outside.
They did not cook in their house anyway. So if
we could can outside if we had a power outage,
that would be extremely helpful. And I do have several

(17:47):
bottles of the twenty pound twenty gallon whenever they are
propane bottles that I could use with this camp stuff.
So I want the camp stove to stay in its
boss until I need it, and then I would get
it out and set it up and use it, and
then I would take it apart and put it back
in its box. So I needed a way to carry

(18:10):
that from the front door basically out to the storage building.
Well it's you know, first of all, it's funny because
it had heavy all over it. It's not near as heavy
as the box that the Bubba and Cissy Dogs dog
food comes in. That weighs away more and it's about

(18:34):
thirty five pounds, so it's much heavier than this box
with the camp stove was. So I was able to
carry it out to the back out to the storage
building so that I could find it a home. So
a wagon is a handy tool and literally because I

(18:55):
have to move things from one place to another in
and out of these it is very helpful to yous.
Yesterday I did get as I said, I got the
back porch done, So that's good. Nie and Sister are
having a social event in a couple of weeks so

(19:16):
I'm gonna need to speafey up the house somewhat. That's
the problem with living someplace thirty years and you know
when we restored it it all looked great. Well, thirty
years later it kind of all needs it again, or
at least it needs to be updated. And that has
not happened here lately because I've been trying to do

(19:38):
other infrastructure stuff. And as I said, the big infrastructure
task of this year is a driveway. So after I
get that done, then the next thing, well Nie says
needs some stuff done to her house, that'll probably be next,
and then after that is going to be a pretty

(19:59):
serious ref fresh to the house. And that all at
c C nine. That all lasts me to the till
somebody else has to do it later. Uh, we don't
redo things really often like some people do. You know,
some people change their house every two three years. I'm
not one of those people. And probably I want there's

(20:21):
a few cosmetic things that I will do to the
inside my house to kind of maybe brighten stuff up.
And but you know the things that I want to
do the house that are like I need to I
want to change the bathrooms. We're gonna do some aging
in place, stuff in the in the house, and so

(20:42):
that's basically more more of what will be done than anything.
So anyway, uh, two of the week is a wagon
that you can move things from one place to another
and help yourself with heavy stuff. I'm gonna be at
work here in a minute, so and remember this is

(21:04):
preparedness month, so we'll talk more about that again. But
this is Tuesday. So the tool of the week is
a wagon. I hope you have a good day and
I'll talk to you tomorrow.