January 5, 2009
A friend just dropped off about 8 pounds of baby bok choy. He volunteers at a charity and occasionally, food donations from farms, grocery stores or whatnot overwhelm their storage, cooking and distribution capacity. This weekend, for example, a farm dropped off two pallets of vegetables. Pallets, not crates, or boxes, pallets stacked with boxes crammed full of leafy green vegetables.
It’s wonderful that those they’re helping will be treated to fresh vegetables, but that’s way too much for them in one go, so they sent the volunteers home with a case, each. I’m going to be eating baby bok choy, fresh, delicious, crunchy, baby bok choy for a WEEK. This is awesome for I love love love bok choy. In fact, my aunt’s family will be, too – there’s no way we can eat up that entire sack of veggies by ourselves.
And while I’m eating that lovely veggie, in soups and various other forms, I’ll be:
Doing laundry.
Emptying out and consolidating the contents of my under-the-desk plastic containers.
Reorganizing the contents of my under-the-bed clothing container and the lift-top bench I have.
Taking an even more critical look at my bookshelf.
Making a decision about my hair. (to cut, or not to cut? How short? What’s perfect interview length?)
Submitting any cover letters and applications necessary.
Tackling the why didn’t I get a bonus when everyone else did? question.
Taking my business clothes to the tailor for some tweaks and nips, in search of a more perfect fit!
November 13, 2008
Because BF is sweet and loves a useful bargain, he gifted me with a lovely vanilla white fleecey jacket for no reason whatsoever. Because I’m me, I wore it to work today, and promptly got a smidgen of purple ink on it. I don’t normally even keep uncappable pens at my desk for fear of this of stupid problem, why would I do that on the first day I wear a brand new white jacket?? Honestly. At least it matches my shirt and socks?
Never mind. I should have these sorts of things memorized by now, (and should carry my Tide to go pen!) but since I don’t and didn’t bring the pen, this is courtesy of HowStuffWorks.com:
Remove Ink Stains From:
Acrylic Fabric, Cotton, Linen, Modacrylic,
Nylon, Olefin, Polyester, Spandex
Try a light spray of hair spray to loosen the laundry stains. Soak in a solution of 1 quart warm water, 1/2 teaspoon dishwashing detergent, and 1 tablespoon white vinegar for 30 minutes; use care when using vinegar on cotton and linen. Rinse with water and allow to dry. If Stain persists, apply rubbing alcohol to the stain and cover with an absorbent pad moistened with alcohol (use alcohol sparingly on acrylic and modacrylic). Let stand as long as any stain is being removed. Change pad as it picks up the stain. Keep both the stain and pad moist with alcohol. Flush with alcohol and allow to dry. If any trace of stain remains, soak in a solution of 1 quart warm water, 1/2 teaspoon dishwashing detergent, and 1 tablespoon ammonia for 30 minutes. Rinse thoroughly with water and allow to dry.
And I’m banishing the pen to the bottom of my desk drawer. Again. Let’s hope it stays there this time.
October 20, 2008
A chunk at a time, (sometimes literally), the material possessions in my life are being reduced, digitized and eliminated, or picked over. I found myself choosing NOT to sign up for free samples just because they were free, a holdover habit from my uber-Fatwalleting days, knowing that I have a packet of said samples that have yet to be used. I’m passing up Walgreens FAR items that I won’t immediately use, or won’t be able to find a home for. CVS ExtraBucks items are carefully considered and not purchased solely for the sake of generating EBucks. Not that I ever really got into that last, but was gearing up to. There’s very judicious stockpiling of essentials only.
I like this trend, and that the only remaining accumulation is in my savings accounts. My fellow LA-area bloggers, Well-Heeled and Stacking Pennies, are doing remarkably well with their emergency/Freedom Funds and asked how much would make you feel safe or comfortable?
I feel a bit like Chicken Little when I think “just add a few more months’ worth to the e-fund,” but then I read comments like this one on Boston Gal’s post, Keep debt low and cash high:
Puddle Jump Photo said:
My husband has been laid off twice in the past 18 months and all of emergency money is gone…so right now…it’s just trying to stay afloat!
and I remember that my own family’s troubles over the last seven or eight years, for numerous reasons, and it suddenly doesn’t seem unreasonable to want just a few thousand more banked away.
That’s not to say that I’m entirely fatalistic, I certainly can’t be with the progress made over the last few years. I’m just feeling more and more cautious and less willing to take risks with my money or my career. That’s probably not the worst thing right now.
September 29, 2008
I wouldn’t be opposed, myself.
Saturday was packed, and yet felt like I didn’t get much done. Friend and I finally tackled the nagging car problems and mid-way through diagnosing the window issue, the car battery died. Excellent timing. $80 later for a new battery, and $8 for Mcdonald’s as payment for the labor, my car was ready to run again, and we’re ready to research and order new parts. Our best guess, since we’re clearly not mechanics, is that since it’s not an electrical problem, and the fuses are ok, it might be the window regulator.
We’ll use his mechanic as a resource to price the part and the estimated (recommended) labor. That’ll be compared to the warrantied used-car-parts place that Friend uses as well. We’ll decide what to do (go with a new part, and personal labor, a used part and personal labor, or either part and mechanic labor) when we’ve got all the angles covered. Bonus: It’s amazingly refreshing to know that the cost is covered by my auto maintenance fund.
Working on the car took four hours. I was pretty beat, so instead of getting right to work when I got home, I talked in the phone for an hour. Lunch with the friends at a new sushi restaurant ate up another 2 hours, and food coma quickly took care of the next hour and half. I’ve been making my way through Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things (a birthday gift) and fell asleep somewhere between a short story or poem.
The pressing need to do laundry, work, cleaning, organizing, more online research and submissions of things, blog posts, etc. fueled a bit of guilt, but honestly, I needed the time to become human again after a long week of work.
Becoming more human included having a spot of dinner with friends, and watching Run, FatBoy Run that night. I like Simon Pegg, and the movie was amusing, but it didn’t have the unpredictable plot or twisted humor I’ve come to expect from him. It was a bit disappointingly predictable, really. And I know, it wasn’t his movie, so I can’t really blame him. Happily, I continued to honor my strike against Blockbuster and their ridiculous prices by renting from the local independent video store. They charge $1.79 per movie, per day. Since I rarely watch movies, and don’t have any need to keep the DVD for more than the day it takes to watch, I love this kind of rental. Actually, it’s an ingrained preference since I grew up renting from an independent store for a dollar a day, per video. None of this chain, $5/five days for a single movie nonsense for me! $4, two movies, one go. Good stuff!
Sunday was even more jam-packed: started working as soon as I got up, did laundry, met up with a friend to lend a sympathetic ear, took loads of recycling to the center, and tried to compose some general letters. Also, watched the second movie, dodged a possible birthday party out in the city because I couldn’t stomach the idea of another sushi meal so soon after the last, and and and …!
I think, perhaps, the better idea than to try to squeeze more hours or days out of the weekend, better time and task management is in order. It’s not that I find any of the above tasks distasteful, so it’s more a matter of proper distribution throughout the week so that I’m not cramming a thousand and one tasks into each day, and wonder why I’m so tired on Monday. Something like SavingDiva’s cleaning schedule. While saving up all the tasks makes it seem like everything gets done in a single go, the truth is, they’re all just waiting until the end of the week, and if we’re lucky, most of it’s completed.
Taking into consideration I don’t get home before 8 pm most nights, there are still ways to incorporate micro-versions of some of these chores into each night.
1. Laundry always takes about an hour and a half per load, so that’ll remain a weekend chore.
2. Letting mail pile up, though, has recently become a bad habit. I’ll open and read the mail, but won’t file it for a couple of days. That needs to stop. I’ll discard (appropriately) as I go, daily.
3. Cleaning: I will pick up after myself as I go, each day. Jackets get hung up, laundry goes into the basket or hung up again (jeans) each night. No more letting it pile up so I can “decide” later.
4. Letters/correspondence/career related writing: Pick one item, just one, and focus on it every other day.
September 5, 2008
It’s not anything so nuts as actually running the numbers, precisely. Sort of. I just decided that in the spirit of getting ready to pick up and fly where the winds may take me (am I mixing my metaphors?), it’s more than time for me to get more of my financial paperwork online.
Also, my receipts were all hanging out in a single envelope, and that’s unsightly. While I’m not ready to go all out like FB’s scan-a-thon, oh but I would LOVE to, I did want to get started.
So, I grabbed all my receipts, and sat up organizing them into several categories for the Schedule C portion of my income: Gasoline, Business Clothing, Business Gifts, Cell Phone, Dry Cleaning, Travel and Office Supplies. Then, I opened up a new spreadsheet and a kajillion new sheets on Google Docs. The dates, amounts and any applicable notes for each receipt were recorded in chronological order. It only took about two hours to sort, create, and enter the data.
Now that all of the amounts are in a single place, I can easily PDF the whole thing, and take them to my friend’s house to hang out with his dad and learn how to really do taxes next year.
My next step? Getting a good deal on a scanner and scanning all of the tons of files that I’ve got in my room. Offhand, I have files for:
~ auto insurance, maintenance and registration records for three cars
~ Rollover IRA statements
~ FSA records
~ old BT credit card records
~ airline and hotel rewards membership numbers and information
~ tons of credit card statements from the past few years
~ household bills/statements
~ cell phone records
~ payroll records
~ past three or four years’ worth of tax returns
I could recycle some serious paper!
*Now I’m oogling multipage scanners. I don’t need that…. I need to save money more than I do time. Then again, hmmm……*
September 4, 2008
One of my best buddies in the world invited me to his new house that he bought with his brother for a BBQ on Monday. I know he’s splitting the cost, and the house is in the boonies, but I’m so proud of him for having achieved my goal of buying a house first in the group. (Why would I have that goal? I don’t know. For having worked so hard for so long, I wanted something to show for it.)
Unfortunately, not 20 minutes after the grand tour, another guest was fixing a burger when the mustard bottle exploded all over the guest, the island, the new tile …. and the brand new cream-colored carpet.
*Oh. My. Lord.*
And can I tell you? Boys have the worst cleaning reaction time, ever. I was on my knees, dabbing up the mustard without rubbing it in within thirty seconds. Two of the boys were oblivious, and the other three were wringing their hands, in shock. And of course, of all the cleaning tips I could think of (listed below, I think courtesy of DebtHater), dealing with mustard stains in the carpet was not one.
I used plenty of water once I got the mass of mustard dabbed up and all that was left were the stained fibers, then used dish soap and more water. One of the three splotches disappeared completely, and the other stains became light enough to be mistaken for pee stains instead of mustard. Small favors, yes?
What should I really have done?
_______________________________
Other useful cleaning tips, not applicable to the above situation:
Problem: Ink on clothes
Solution: Spray the ink stain with copious amounts of hairspray (the cheaper the better). Then take an ordinary bar of soap (no dye, no perfume) and rub it into the stain. Then hand rinse it in cold water.
Problem: Melted candle wax out on carpets.
Solution: Put a folded paper towel over the wax and then press down on it with a warm iron (no steam). After about 10 seconds, lift it up, turn the paper towel to a clean spot and repeat, over and over until the wax was absorbed. If the wax was colored and left a stain, pour rubbing alcohol on it (make sure the carpet is colorfast) and scrub it out with a toothbrush.
Problem: Ugly yellow water stains in the bathtub.
Solution: Hydrogen peroxide and cream of tartar. Mix them together into a thin paste, then pour it onto the stain and rub it in with a sponge or cloth.
[Click on image to enlarge]
May 23, 2008
Inconveniently, I’m struck with the urge to start combing through my bookshelf and weeding out books and DVDs that I no longer read or never watch. My prior experience with listing on Half.com was disappointing, so I haven’t been at all inclined to use them again, but Saving Diva and Sense have got me enthused again. Unfortunately for my newfound spark, I may have plans tomorrow night to see a friend, and then I’ll be out of town for the weekend.
I tend to clean and declutter in spurts when I feel like it, so I hope this doesn’t wear off before I get a chance to really get a lot done!
