Organizing

A lot of folks over on the Pound have been talking about organizing pantries, cabinets and closets in order to fit all their goodies in. So far I have been purging as I declared I would in my resolutions, albiet slowly. I do have a before and after picture of one of my kitchen cabinets though.

Here is the before picture. As you can see, I was just stuffing things in! I could not really even find anything. Now the after:

I totally did not have as much as I thought I did! Of course this is one cabinet. I did not remember to take pics of other cabinets, but with all of my purging, I now have two - count 'em- two empty cabinets. That is a lot to get rid of.



I also cleaned my furnace last night. I vaccuumed all the dust bunnies around the outside, pulled out the filters to clean and vaccuumed the inside as well. I pulled the deep freezer out of the bathroom and put it back in the kithchen (I don't like it in the kitchen as the only place it fits is right in front of the door where I come in and out. I like it less in the bathroom though I guess!).

I moved my two sets of plastic drawers into the bathroom in the freezers place. This makes more sense to me as the drawers are where I keep my stockpile of toiletries like shampoo and conditioner, bandaids, you get the idea...

I will hopefully remember to take more pictures as I clean and organize my house and stockpile.

Update

Wow, the hounds on the Grocery Challenge were busy pups this past weekend. I myself was again without a car. I took it in for an alignment and came away with more work to be done. Fortunately my dad was able to give me $200. He took it from his "bail money", although lately he has been bailing me out more than ever. I also got $200 from my mom. That bought the parts and paid for the labor, and I only paid about one third of what I would have paid for the original shop charges. I found a friend that was willing to give up his weekend for a little cash. Now it is back at the tire shop for the alignment. I also discovered that my antifreeze is still leaking. I do not have any puddles where I park at work or at home, so I am leaking while I am driving. I can't afford to fix that right now, so I will just buy some antifreeze in the morning and keep fillin' her up!

On a side note, I called a friend of mine last night figuring I would leave a message and she was actually home and available. (She has three kids and a full time job so she is almost always busy.) I was really excited to be able to catch up with her for a bit last night. She said the same and said that the phone call was not long enough and that I needed to come over for dinner. So I am going tonight. We are having spaghetti as I still cannot really chew since my tooth fell out. She asked me what we should have as she had spaghetti left over or she could make italian beef. I am not really a fan of beef (which she knew), plus she thought it was kind of funny when I told her I probably could not chew an Italian beef sandwich! I told her I could just have some baby food with the baby!
I still cannot afford to fix my tooth right now. I did come up with the grand idea of buying some of that stuff I have seen at CVS for tooth repairs. It says it is for loose fillings and caps and crowns. I followed the directions and "re-inserted" my tooth on Saturday morning, and it stayed in all the way until Sunday evening. I tried to "re-glue" it but it just would not stay in. Then this morning as I was sitting at my desk, another portion of the tooth that was still left fell out. I think this is probably why it would not stay glued in. I am going to give it another try tomorrow to see if it works. Here is keeping my fingers crossed. And hopefully my teeth in!
The plus side to not having a vehicle is that I stayed home all weekend. No hounding, but boy did I get a lot accomplished on my to-do list. I am almost completely done organizing and purging the downstairs (which was part of my new year's resolutions). I have one corner of stuff left, and most of it goes upstairs. I just need to sort it to decide how much of it is trash, and take the rest on up. Then I will finish the upstairs, which is my son's room and playroom. Then I will be able to mark that off my resolution list as complete!
I have also lost five pounds. Since I cannot chew food right now, I am not sure how that will affect my weight loss attempts. I will just have to wait and see (hopefully less of me to see!).
I also plan on continuing my saving time and money posts this week.

It Never Ends, and I am Rambling On and On......

Well, just when I thought I was at the end of my troubles, I realize they are not ending, I just have a new set. Wednesday my crown fell off. I called the dentist and they will fix it, no problem. I just have to pay for xrays, the exam, and most likely more dental work as they did not put in a post and will have to put one in now. Sorry but that is not my problem. You should have done your job right the first time and the tooth would not need to be fixed again. I go no where with this, and they will not fix it without me paying to fix it. So I told them even if it gets fixed it sure won't be with them. I do not want tomorrow's appointment, thanks for your time. Last night I went to CVS and bought some stuff called Temparin and will repair it myself. I figure even if it only lasts for a month or so, and I have to keep gluing it back on, I am saving in the long run because the Temparin cost me $4.50. It would take a lot of $4.50's to equal the cost of the xrays and the exam. One day when I am more finacially off (or if I find a rich handsome nice guy to sweep me off my feet and take over all my bills), I will go and get my teeth repaired properly.

Then, I went in this morning to have my tires aligned. Supposedly around $60, could be as much as $90. I dropped off my car. I waited a bit for my mom. I called her to remind her (figuring acurately) to see if she forgot me. She did and was now on her way. I go to work. A short while later, the shop calls me-I need a whole new front end. If I want they can do it, to the tune of $1200. I say no thanks, I have a friend that can do this for a whole lot cheaper. I call to get the price of the parts and the parts alone will cost almost $200. I will still have to pay labor charges as well. But that is way way way cheaper than $1200. And what is worse is that the guy at the shop recommends I get this done before I make another trip. So I have one week to figure out where the heck to get this money. I plan to ask my dad tonight when he comes to pick me up from work and take me to my car after work if he can help some. I also need a new engine, new front tires and two new heater cores (as my van has an auxillary heating system that has a heater core). I just wish these troubles did not come all at once. One each pay period would have been better. Just one problem every two weeks, please. Sadly, I just got paid (today), and I already have no money left. I have $400 going to one of my loans, although this is the last payment for it. I will have no more loans after this payment(I had two). I will then have only the credit cards. I guess that means that I am meeting the resolution of getting bills paid off. I need $300 for my trip next weekend for my son, and the remaining $35 will go to the gas tank for next week. There is a super deal at Target this week that I will be missing out on as I will not have the extra gas (or money) to drive over there. Oh well there will be others. I would really like to be able to get all of my credit cards in one loan to have one payment, but unfortunately I have been late too many times on the cards to get a loan. I am really glad that my power bill is going down though. It dropped $100 after the $300+ ones I was getting over the winter. Hopefully it will just keep going down. That will help my monthly expenses some, especially as it keeps going down as the weather warms up. I just hope that the gas stays down and it gets warm soon for my trips so that we can start camping out. It really saves money doing that. I pay around $75-$80 for a hotel alone. Actually I just wish I could get my son home. That totally would save me some money. Even calculating extra food, utilities and daycare, I would still be ahead over what I spend on these trips. That of course is secondary compared to just having my son back.

Speaking of my son, he has book orders that he wants to order from, a book fair coming up, and school pictures. I want the school pictures because I missed out on the last ones and would really like some school pictures for him. The other ones, I think he is SOL!!! I used this phrase on him a while back and when I explained what it meant, he cracked up and thought it was really funny. He even asked to say it once! I let him, and got to see him just totally crack himself up and laugh his head off. Totally worth it. I can't wait til he is home so we can have these moments daily instead of every other weekend for a few hours.

Hopefully next week I will be back on track for my lists of time and money saving. I was a bit side tracked this week.....

Resolutions-Weight Loss

I have been making good on my resolution to re-organize my home. Now it is time to make good on my weight loss resolution. I begin my journey today. I weighed myself this morning at my mom's ( I do not have a scale). I weighed 185 pounds dressed for work. I will make sure I wear comparable clothes each week to make certain I am not claiming a greater loss than actual because my clothes were lighter. I had my boots on which I probably should have taken off for the weight check as I know they are heavy. I will follow the same diet that I followed a couple of years ago when I lost 30 pounds. I have since gained about 20-25 pounds back. So off it will go again. For some of my other resolutions, I am still trying to work on them as well. Time to get off the couch and start getting things accomplished!

New Year

It is time for resolutions. New Year Resolutions, that is. I have several that I would like to make.

1. The first and probably most common for women is I want to lose weight. I know that I can succeed with this one. I discovered a diet online last year and it was easy to follow and I lost 30 pounds in no time flat. I even kept the weight off for about a year without dieting. Or even watching what I ate. Then I started gaining weight again this past spring. I just did not care enough to go back on the diet. It was not overly important to me to worry about it with everything else that was going on. So, I resolve to start my diet with the new year and lose the extra baggage. (you know, the saddle bags, spare tires, thunder thighs and all that!)
2. I want to finally get my house unpacked and organized. I have been in my house since March of 2007. I never did get around to unpacking everything, much less organizing. I hereby resolve to finish unpacking and getting organized, along with purging what I no longer need or use. I will create to do lists for each room of my house and check off things as I complete them to help give myself a sense of accomplishment. That way I can also create a list specific to each room so I can feel like I am in control and aware of what needs done and what I simply want done. But I will feel accomplished each time I can check something off, and that in itself creates motivation.
3. I will continue to hound. I will use hounding to save money. I do not think that I will find it hard to keep this resolution at all!! Hounding is fun and addictive!
4. I will save money this year for retirement. I started an IRA a year or so ago and since the initial deposit, I have not added anything. I do have a retirement plan at work through my paycheck, so I have not been neglecting my future, just not saving as much as I would like.
5. I will save money this year for an emergency fund. I have never had one of these. This is a good year to start. I may not be able to save the recommended 3-6 months any time soon, but it will be a start.
6. I will pay off at least one credit card. I have a loan and 6 credit cards with maxed balances. I used them a lot for atty and court related costs, and for my travels thinking they would get paid off as soon as I got my son back. Of course he is not home yet, so now I still have the expense of travelling, the expense of the new legal battle that we are going to have in my efforts to bring my son home, and all the credit cards and loan pmts. I think I will have to find another job....Actually I know I will, I just have not had any luck finding someone to hire me with the understanding that my visits with my son will come before any job. There just is not a plethura of flexible jobs out there. Not to mention I live in an economically depressed area.
7. I will join my library. I will read all different kinds of books (no hardship, I already do), and I will also check out books to read to and with my son. Also no hardship as he likes to read and be read to as well.
8. I will add one more resolution. I unfortunately have absolutely no control over this one. I am not in charge of it, nor do I decide it. I will bring my son home. I have hired a new attorney and we have a new strategy. This resolution will however be up to the skill of my attorney and the scruples of the judge to actually follow the law this time.

I am interested to see if I keep my resolutions. I know that most resolutions are dropped almost before the ink on the page dries. I resolve to be different this year.