Dorothy, too bad about that shop closing early, but I'm glad to see that you're feeling better. I have a love-seat sized bench that I bought a couple of years ago, and buying furniture is a rare thing for me because I inherited so much over the years. But when I saw this I immediately recognized how I would use it - this is a Mexican painted pine bench that sits beside the door to the driveway and is intended for seating when I'm coming and going - there is a low shoe rack under it with a couple of casual pairs of loafers plus several shoes and boots for the yard. I put a wooden "in" basket on one side to hold shoe socks, boot socks, bandannas for putting under my hat to keep sun off my neck, a shoe horn, and a couple of umbrellas. The location unfortunately lends itself to setting things that need to go out of the house, and they do pile up. I understand your need for a location for that kind of stuff. My bench fills quickly, but this weekend I put a couple of bags of that stuff into the car to drop off at a thrift store tomorrow.

It looks like we're going to be doing drought watering (2 days a week, restricted hours, and I never waste water on lawn, I water the house foundation to keep it from cracking and I hand water my garden, which I can do any time or any day). When this happens I revert to my bucket in the kitchen sink routine: wash dishes in a dishpan, rinse them under a gentle stream over the bucket, and when the bucket is nearly full, I take the slightly soapy water out and pour it into a needy part of the garden. Sometimes I pour the dish water onto the lawn itself, though mostly it needs to go down the drain because the food particles would attract pests. This reminds me that I need to sprinkle hair that I've brushed from the dogs around in the garden to repel mice and rats that want to burrow in my nice raised beds.

SRS