January 23, 2015
We have progress!
PiC really stepped up under (self imposed) pressure.
I’d set my expectations to “sensible and moderation” when we first started the purging and organizing because we’d started so late and my energy levels never came back.
My internal ideal was that we could eliminate 75% of the crap that was piled up to the ceiling in one closet, but I kept my yap shut because PRIORITIES.
But, perhaps feeling the heat of LB’s impending arrival even more strongly than I, he pushed himself to knock off so much on these seemingly never ending internal lists in his head that this place has been transformed. We had some ruffled feathers for a bit, with those self imposed stress levels, but we’re back on an even keel now so I can feel free to be rather impressive how much has been done around here.
- We’ve offloaded so much stuff on Craigslist and made back a good bit of money!
- We donated a ton of good items that we wouldn’t be able to sell in the increasingly short period of time left to us. We found a local homeless shelter that helps families get back on their feet so much of these goods are going there.
- We received duplicates of used baby gear so we’re just going to keep one of each and donate the rest to the homeless shelter since they’re all in really good shape after 1 child’s worth of use.
- He actually fixed our wacko fan! We thought it was needing replacement but nope.
- I’ve picked over a couple boxes of used clothing and we’ve done some baby laundry in advance.
- My mini-office is all set up with storage and stuff.
We’ve spent a shiny nickel at the Container Store on organization. This involved about a dozen trips, all told, between buying things to try and returning things that didn’t work. After PiC’s first trip, I bought a big gift card at an 8% discount, and combined that with ordering the stuff through ebates for cashback and their 10% off sale.
Total we’ve spent about $300 between outfitting: the kitchen with shelves, hanging organizers in one closet, and hooks and doodads for both the bathroom and two closets. Everything was on sale at least so that makes me feel better about not maximizing every single possible discount – time was obviously a factor in these projects.
December 17, 2014
Domesticity is cozy.
What’s not to like? Hot dinners, clean kitchen, fresh laundry. Also here’s my semi-regular to indoor plumbing: Ye gods I love indoor plumbing.
Still, I’m old, tired, and lazy and I’m not ashamed to organize my life along those lines. Saving cash is always a bonus but I mostly want to avoid expending energy.
* Funny About Money’s baking soda trick has saved my kitchen-clumsy butt countless times. Seriously, I’m a wreck in the kitchen. There’s always something going wrong: cutting myself, burning myself, scorching pots and pans. I heal but I had to get rid of the evidence and baking soda+boiling water does the trick.
* I finally bought some new sink protectors to replace the really old (ahem, gross) ones we had. Stainless steel, elevated, they look lovely! I waited 3 weeks to buy to save a whole $3 – hah. Of course that’s miniscule but that’s $3 more for that long list of other things we need. I whole-frugal-heartedly love the new things that I don’t have to clean every week.
* Crockpot+Dutch oven love: I’ve gotten incredibly lazy with the kitchen antics. I love one pot meals like chicken+potato+vegetable in the Dutch oven. More for the ease than the taste but PiC professes his love for them so I just keep making ’em!
* No shoes inside rule: This cuts down on the tracked in dirt saving us carpet wear and tear and, more importantly, cuts down the amount of sweeping or vacuuming needed.
* Wrapping stuff and recycled paper: I save all tissue paper and paper stuffed in shipped packages if it’s in decent shape and use that wrap gifts and packages. Saves having to go buy wrapping stuff, saves money (we all know that paper’ll just get torn up and tossed), gives the rescued paper new life for at least one more round. Win win win! Mostly I love the minimal effort of storing the paper we get.
* Contemplating whether I can completely eliminate shower/tub scrubbing with the Scrubbing Bubbles Shower Cleaner. The Automatic cleaner doo-dad doesn’t seem to have great reviews over time, so I’m considering the foam spray? Has anyone used this? My goal is to avoid any scrubbing at all.
*Cleaning the microwave with the power of lemons. I’m trying this tomorrow!
November 28, 2014
All our “we should, someday” projects are coming home to roost.
Personally, and this approach with my clothes is all too often to my detriment, I usually wait til things are worn to a literal thread before replacing them. The Curse of the Broken Pants still holds because of this: every time I start a new job, I break another pair of pants. (Pretty sure it’s hilarious when it’s not happening to you.)
We’d put off most of it, inertia is a budget’s friend sometimes and overstuffed rooms give me claustrophobia, anyway. LB’s impending arrival has upended this complacency. All too soon, we’ll need every bit of organization and babyproofable furniture we can get to offset the chaos.
The “we should”s are turning into “holy crap, we should really do this now!”
PiC and I react to this totally in line with our usual styles of course: I mentally rank each new idea as a now or hold for later; for PiC, it all goes on the same list. Obviously, we’re now having a LOT of discussion about which are truly priorities and which are Nice to Have.
On hold:
That rattling vent that just sounds awful but works fine.
Our dream trough sink (guesstimate: $3000 for the sink and installation. And the inconvenience – I assume installation would be a huge pain).
The shower head (guesstimate: $200-300 for the replacement but installation also looks like a bear).
Do It Now:
Furniture is the biggest thing right now, literally, and of course the most expensive even with thrifty Craigslisting.
Minimalist or no, we will be adding a fair amount of stuff. Purging the place has been productive but getting things out the door can only make space for the somewhat inevitable pile of stuff, it doesn’t get us organized with the incoming baby stuff.
1. I need an actual workstation. My current workspace is open to the public and the mess is counterproductive.
2. LB has a bed now but we need decent storage for LB’s stuff: feeding, diapering and bathing supplies, clothes, books, a few toys. A car seat and stroller that I can manage. (It’s odd that such a small creature needs about six times more stuff than the enormous Seamus.)
3. The inefficiency of our closet. Meditating on the problem hasn’t brought on any genius so we’re resorting to The Container Store, that scary heaven, to provide some answers. PiC has gone there six times, I’m staying the heck out in case I buy everything. And some IKEA, that den of somewhat affordable home stuffs.
4. The tiny closet. PiC has organized the HECK out of it, managing to find a whole pile of things to sell. Defraying costs? YES PLEASE.
The funniest thing? PiC genuinely thought that he had 3 to 4 years before he had to worry about childproof furniture. I don’t think he’s been paying attention to how much a crawling or newly walking infant gets into, we’ll be lucky to be havoc-free for more than 10 months!
So, no more open-face furniture, doors on everything!
Related: Jana tackled organizing in November
October 22, 2014
Please welcome your hosts, PiC as the (silent) Count of Craigslist, Department of Sales and Purchasing; me as the hybrid Judy Jetson, Department of Taking the Cash and Banking the proceeds and Rosie, Department of ruthlessly clearing out storage!
The last time I did this, it was a massive deep clean of my living space that I’d occupied like a fortified trench for over ten years.
I unearthed years of detritus, the inevitable anthropological build-up that accumulates in so many layers, marking milestones and marking time. One graduation, then another; the salient details rubbed away in the shifting sands of days, weeks and months.
Immersed in toxicity at the workplace and at home, facing an inevitable layoff, the survivalist bit of my brain drove forth insisting that if I physically removed the anchors that held me home, as if it were the overstuffed closet or bookshelf that kept me chained to my family and the job that paid their bills, if I did this thing, I could one day become free. True, in some small sense.
It was also true that I was attempting to play out my final days, to make them my final days, by making it easier to clean up after me.
Ironically, the anchors that kept me home, and in that job, were the anchors that kept me from prematurely picking an end date. I couldn’t cause yet more stress, grief and pain. My sibling was already doing enough for both of us. And so responsibility both drove me forth and kept me here at the same time.
Mentally, that purge began as a good bye. It was an effort to take some control over a life that came with broken handles, a life I’d once grasped with both hands anyway, determined to ride it out despite the wounds and the scars that didn’t have time to heal.
Ages later, we’re wading back into the same battle but with completely different mindsets. This is a beginning, not a prospective ending. I have no thoughtful reflections on the differences between now and then, except that this time is about as far away a reason as I had to do it before could be.
As we start our family, the thought of adding another body to this home causes my old claustrophobia to rise and my “one in, two out” rule is revived and the clearing out has begun in earnest.
We still haven’t finished anything to do with getting the wedding stuff sorted, putting together the photos as a start, but with Little Bean there’s a pretty clear deadline so the lead foot is on the gas.
* We’ve sold some furniture and more should be on its way out in short order either via Craigslist or as a gift to some younguns just starting out.
* I’ve tackled sections of the smaller storage where old electronics, endless cables and unidentifiable bits and bobs go to die except they don’t do you the favor of disintegrating. So that stuff is out to recycling.
* Fully 3/4 of the filing cabinet contents have been reviewed and are headed to shredding, the other 1/4 sits awaiting judgement once my brain checks back in.
* And the CLOSET. Ohh the closet. Having pulled out 30 pieces of clothing to donate, and having thrown out at least ten things that were only fit for rags, I’m about to aim for the stars and insist on purging 100 things. 200 if PiC lets me tackle his half of the clothing morass. It’s not that I buy a lot of clothing but rather, I keep things long past time they should be cycled out. I’ve found clothes in that closet featured in photos from ten to fifteen years ago. At some point, you just have to let go. Mutant Supermodel knows my pain.
* SUCCESS: I’d been on the hunt for a tie rack to repurpose as a belt and scarf hanger. By pulling out about 7 cheapie purses and free conference bags that haven’t been in use for at least two years, I freed up enough room on the over the door purse hanger to cascade my scarves. Woot!
August 7, 2014
I crack myself up.
Mostly I’m doing the jig of success: I adore PiC and his dedication to fitness but I can’t stand the reek of his abused gym clothes. Of course we wash them regularly but the smell just doesn’t come out with any amount of detergent OR my magic elixer (….vinegar…just vinegar) after he’s logged hundreds of miles in them.
It looked hopeless, and I was plotting to burn and bury all his clothes just so I wouldn’t have to smell the “freshly washed” gear air-drying and still smelling. GR.
I’d caught a note somewhere hereabouts on the internets about tea tree oil and in desperation I grabbed a $10 1-oz spray bottle with my $2 off coupon at Walgreens for an experiment.
Experiment 1, Round 1
- 15 sprays and 2 gallons of hot water. The scent just billowed out of the bucket as I was filling it, almost like eucalyptus.
The worst offenders went in for a soak first. Some sources said to soak for an hour, I left it in for three. I started to wring it out, but the second I caught a whiff of some stench under the tea tree scent, dumped everything right back in. Go back in and stay there until you stop stinking, shirts!
The next day (nearly 24 hours later), I wrung everything out and tossed it in the wash. It didn’t make a full load, so I moved on to the next batch.
Experiment 1, Round 2
- 10 sprays and 2 gallons of warm water.
This batch wasn’t nearly so bad, so the full bucket soaked for about 3 hours.
That joined Batch 1 in the washing machine. In a fit of desperation, I combined the detergent with the usual dose of vinegar and added a few more sprays just to be sure. Those clothes were going out the window if this didn’t work.
A single wash on delicate and 44 minutes later, we hung everything up to air dry, smelling very strongly of tea tree oil.
An experimental sniff was promising but the real test would be how they smelled once they dried. Odors always seem to reveal themselves more once the garments have dried, so I was reserving judgement.
24 hours later, I am singing hosannas. The clothes are clean, dry, and actually smell FRESH.
Experiment 2:
- 4 sprays and 1 gallon of warm water
This time, we were keeping a bucket of oil/water to drop the clothes into as soon as they’re shed. Tea tree oil isn’t cheap! I wanted to reduce the amount of oil needed at each wash and figured if I kept the sweat from permastenching the garb that should do the trick.
It worked! I just kept adding the gear to the oil/water bucket throughout the week, and then did a new load with only one or two sprays of the oil and everything came out smelling clean as clean can be.
Laundry is way more fun than it sounds and even more fun when you win.
August 22, 2010
There will be no more waste.
Life’s been rather chaotic with the odd unexpected meal out, travel that comes up faster than expected, and a few weeks of poor meal timing led to a day when fridge clear-up was more than throwing out scraps gone off before we could eat them. We’re blessed with good food and the good fortune of never wondering where our next meal is coming from, I can’t stomach the thought of taking that for granted and wasting any more food through carelessness.
We’re now being much more careful about eating up leftovers within a day or two and stretching the ends of each batch of food creatively, not just by starting up a whole new meal.
There’s a chicken roasting in the oven now only because it was defrosted before weekend and before we brought home unexpected bounty from a BBQ on Saturday. The rest of this week, we’ll polish off the fresh roast bird and broccoli slaw mix, a variant on Smitten Kitchen’s recipe.
I’m planning more creative meals as well, to stoke appetites and make eating as fun as it used to be when we experimented more.
On the grocery front, I spent $50 today, stocking up on sale fish, which PiC is this very moment dealing out into smaller portions and freezing for later. I’m dating everything that goes into the freezer so we can easily rotate protein into the meal plans regularly. We also now have what would be a year’s supply of cereal, if he weren’t such a cereal glutton, for PiC, plenty of frozen veggies for the end of the week when we tend to run out of fresh, and a back-up chicken for roasting. We’re set for the next few weeks in a way that won’t have us throwing out heaps of wilted or food gone off.
Well-Heeled asked me a while back how I managed home-cooking so often but it was down to better planning and dedicating most of at least one weekend day to cooking more than any special Suzy Homemaker ability.
I’m also very lucky to have PiC who is generally fully capable and willing to do the Costco and other grocery runs with or without me, sous chefs happily, and puts up with any number of odd kitchen stocking requests. A full partner is invaluable in managing a kitchen and household!
August 1, 2010
Katamari Accounting: I think it’s time to roll as many accounts into one as possible.
- 1. The Retirement Funds are now spawning a 4th account due to the rollover I initiated a couple days ago. Let’s make that one Roth and one “massive” IRA.
- 2. The e-fund is spread across CDs, and savings accounts in two different banks. I’d like to have two big honkin’ CDs: One is already a $15K 5-year term CD, the other might well encompass the rest of the cash as well as the soon-to-mature Prosperish Loan.
- 3. Pin Money, Moving and School just can’t make up their minds what they really want to be so they should just become Parental Medical Funds.
Financial Planning: Once I reorganize my finances, I need to help a friend structure some investments from an inheritance. We’re talking multiples of what I have personally, but not so much more I couldn’t create a cohesive plan.
Progress: It’s been a niggling thing in the back of my head that I haven’t been paying my fair share OR saving. This month’s increase, even after I paid a great deal of credit card bills off, is both surprising and puzzling. I’ve now redirected a small chunk of the direct deposit, previously all toward the expense account, to actual savings starting this month. Which brings me to ….
Urges and Splurges: In the spirit of absolute honesty, seeing my number go up when I don’t have a specific account that looks like it’s going begging makes me want want want. But ……..
Spending: As usual, binging and purging. By which I mean, I don’t get nice new clothes, underthings, hair ties, new phone, new anything that’s not strictly necessary so that I can spend several thousand dollars on my parents. They have both woefully neglected their dental care and I had no idea how bad it was until recently. I knew my dad needed dentures soon but just found out that many of his teeth are bad and so are Mom’s. I estimate that the costs will start around $10,000 for basic care.
Freelancing: If I want any extras in my life, I’m gonna have to work for it! Time to go hunting for more work.
Reality Check: Beyond that, in less than five years, I’m sure that Mom will need more assistance than Dad can provide. Heck, in two years, she could require a full scale assisted living situation and I don’t have anything near enough saved for that. Looking above, a whole $107K looks like a really tidy start until you realize that I may soon have to spend $60K/year on assisted living for my parent(s). Then I’m nowhere near ready for the future.
