meadows, last year I tied my jugs together with twine, and then tied the twine to some metal garden furniture which we keep outside all winter. This year I'm just sticking some chopped-down sapling trunks through the milk jug handles (a good use for the endless invasive Tree-of-Heaven saplings that pop up all over the land we live on). Ladyrose, last year Louisianagal had a great tip for the duct tape: folding back a tab of the duct tape onto itself so that the tape is easier to grab when you're ready to take it off in the spring (thank you, louisianagal!) See photo below. Last year I just did once around the jug with the tape and it worked fine. I also put small holes in the jugs with a small sharply pointed steak knife (see photo below) to make a place to insert a pipe cleaner twist tie for the spring. I just rotate the steak knife back and forth a few times while pressing it against the milk jug plastic and this makes the hole. I guess you could use an ice pick, an awl or the pointed end of a pair of scissors or something for this too. If you make pipe cleaner holes, it's easier if you make the holes BEFORE you make the big cut through the center of the milk jug. The first time I tried making pipe-cleaner holes last year, I tried to make them after I made the center cut and it was really difficult, lol. I took the duct tape off in the spring and then just used the pipe cleaner closure after that. As you can see, I'm nutty and I actually draw a little line on my milk jugs with a magic marker before I make the center cut (it helps me to make the center cut straight)!!! Happy sowing!

Hi, Wow. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening and advising and thank you for the details. ajsmama, I don't think I found any Contact paper without adhesive. I need to look at WalMart again. Here's what I did today, though: I went to Home Depot, again, and bought....... do not laugh . . . . vinyl floor remnants - pre cut remnants (yes, that is linoleum), with a backing, not very thick, 6' x 8' (I think) for $22. I remembered that I had used left-over vinyl 20 years ago for under the sink and for the major pots and pans cabinets. And it was still whole and not too yukky when we changed out the cabinets 6 weeks ago. So, I'm going to use that for the underneath spots and some pull outs. Then I went to Joann's and they have a HUGE assortment of stuff- all kinds of vinyl- didn't see cork-- cork was expensive at Home Depot, though, and with a backing. Anyway, I was all set to buy my vinyl stuff for the normal, not heavy duty places -- and the lady asked me if I had THE COUPON..... of course I didn't. She said it was 40% off of a fabric cut. So I went home to look for it and only found a 20 % coupon.....etc etc etc The quest continues. Vasue, thank you so much. I have to look into the cork more in detail tomorrow. I'll tell you one thing, KCboom, my cabinet shop (local one in Tucker GA) had never been asked about the lacquer issue....I think nobody lines cabinets around here. The Home Depot guys are not aware of it either and neither was I until I bought a bunch of awesome spongy white liner stuff at Lowe's and I was about to use it 2 days ago when I actually read the package label and saw the warning.....If so many people have varnish and lacquer (?) then why aren't there more liners for it? Ok. Tomorrow is the backsplash and the heavy sanding of the family room wood which had to be pulled out and re-installed because of so many worm holes. The backsplash and floor were not supposed to coincide, but hey, things happen. At least they do with us. good night and thank you.

I have not seen a lot of dogs chewing on cords either, (and we have bought some nice chew toys for the puppy too), but I had a friend who had a cat that she could not break of the habit. It ended up electrocuting itself. It was very weird. I know that was an unusual situation but I can't help but think of it sometimes. I am not too concerned about it, but just trying to do an "ounce of prevention" for the simple, low lying fruit. The cord mess looks carpy anyway . . . We have a large walk in shower which we are turning into a puppy playpen for when we have to be gone. We don't plan on leaving the puppy alone for any length of time, (hubs is retired and I'm on sabbatical) but we have it set up just in case. We never use the shower, it's huge but in the back of the house so the water pressure is low and it take forever for the water to get hot. The previous owner of our house was wheelchair bound, so that's why it's there. We have another regular shower tub that we use in the other bathroom. In the winter we turn it into a mini greenhouse and start all our tomatoes in there. We don't have to worry about water spilling on the floor . . . .

I thought I'd reply to my own thread here for anybody who wants to read it in the future. First, the movers were awful and had had five hours of sleep. Although they were mostly very nice, they got more and more sloppy as the ten-hour day wore on, and so only half of this is their fault personally. The moving company should not have sent two guys to empty 30k lbs of stuff from a moving truck when they had done the same thing for some other family 600 miles away the night before. We bought ramboard as well as ramboard tape. Per some YouTube video I watched, we put painters tape down on the floor and then taped the ramboard tape onto that instead of onto the floor directly. This was kind of a hassle, and I don't know if it was actually necessary, but it worked fine. The ramboard mostly stayed put. We created paths to the major areas of the house with that and I was glad we did. There was no floor damage. We also layered 2-3 folded moving blankets on the front step so protect the exterior tile. This was incredibly important, because they carelessly rammed the hand truck wheels into it every single time to get it up the front step. I couldn't believe how hard they hit it every time – it was loud even through the blankets! – and I was very glad we had the folded moving blankets there. I did have to reposition them several times throughout the day. I couldn't come up with a good solution in time for protecting the interior corners that didn't require installation and/or drilling something into the wall, so we just crossed our fingers. They rammed a hand truck into one corner and it took a 1x2" chunk out of the drywall, but everything else was good. We have an interior full-lite glass door in one room, and they almost shattered it by backing some furniture into it. It was only through luck that my husband was there to say "wait! stop!" and prevent a disaster. We also arranged the small amount of furniture already present to block access to areas that we cared about a lot. We moved living room furniture and boxes to prevent them getting anywhere near the TV, and we also blocked off the kitchen so they didn't have to navigate boxes and furniture around the island and the rest of the kitchen's many right angles. Looking back, my advice to myself would be to find 2-3 people who can just sit in the high-risk areas all day and keep an eye on things. The movers were definitely more careful when someone was sitting in an area, so if we'd had someone stationed by the tight areas, that probably would have helped. All in all we didn't have too much damage, though what we had was indeed annoying, and the ramboard was definitely 100% worth the cost and trouble to set up.