Repurposing An Underused Room

The onion harvest is on!  We are harvesting Yellow Granex (Vidalia), Texas White, and Creole onions everyday.  As the tops bend over at a 90 degree angle, it's time.  I pull them and lay them in the garden for a day to dry a little.  Then I bring them and drape them over a table on our patio, leaving some space around them for airflow.  More on that in a minute.

After a day or two, I snip the onion tops off and throw the "tails" in the compost pile.  Usually about the time that the onions are ripening is the worst time climate-speaking there is in South Louisiana.  It is hot and muggy and very humid.  These aren't conditions conducive to curing onions.  We check them daily and we'll find one or two getting a little soft.  Before we lose it, we'll bring it in, cut it up and freeze it for using later.  We have to solve this problem. In the past we've put fans above and below the onions to help dry them a little.  The problem with that is if the humidity is maxed out, you're simply pushing wet air around them.  That's not doing any good.  What to do?  What to do?

Russ had an idea.  Bring them inside.  Now, why didn't I think of that?  Where would we put them?  Well, we have an underused room in our house.  The living room.  We call it "the parlor."  The parlor is the room that we would assemble as a family after Sunday lunch and have meetings.  We called it our merienda, which means light meal or snack.  It was in this room that we'd have coffee and dessert and lay out the plans for the upcoming weeks activities.

When we had 3 kids at home with busy schedules, those planning meetings were crucial in communicating events, responsibilities and the timing to each family member.  Not to mention the fact that coffee and homemade pie was involved!  But now we're empty nesters.  The parlor doesn't get used as often.  In fact, I read that most people aren't building homes with living rooms/parlors.  They don't want "brown furniture."  Our parlor doesn't follow that line of thinking.  It contains mostly furniture inherited from my grandparents.

We did, however, scoot some furniture in the parlor aside.  The parlor has become our onion curing room.  We laid out the onions on a curing table and turned the fan on high.  As of yet, we haven't lost any more onions.  Aside from our home having the distinct scent of onions, this has been a beneficial arrangement.

The formal room has taken on a more utilitarian role.  That's okay.  We like flexibility.

Mirror, Mirror on the wall, Who's the fairest of them all?

My wife, of course.  :)