Tuesday, January 15, 2013

January challenge update #2.

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Do you want to know how Sideshow Bob looks in real life??

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That's what I'm getting for taking a shower right before bed and then being too lazy to dry my frizzy hair. At least I didn't have to rush in the morning to get ready for work or something. This frizz was not easy to tame. No laughing...OK, you can laugh. Because that's what I did when I saw myself in the mirror today :)

OK, now onto January Decluttering and Low/No spend Challenge update:

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FINANCIAL. My goals this month was to spend no more than $465 ($15 a day) on food, necessities, eating out, clothes, entertainment, gifts and miscellaneous. As of today we spent $231.87 which is about $7 over my goal. Yes, I broke my $10 goal for this week today :) There were just a couple of things that we needed. But I stayed under $30. And I'm not planning to shop for the rest of the week, so I'm not too concerned about being a little over.

A mini-challenge this week: Bring in some extra income one way or another!

We did pretty good this week. First, I discovered a new place to sell stuff. Have you ever heard of local 24/7 yard sales on Facebook?? They rock! Just to check it out, go on Facebook and enter your city/town and then 24/7 yard sale, and see if it's available in your area. Within hours I sold two shelves and have another item pending. So I made $20 for the shelves (that I originally purchased two years ago for $15 and used in our closet until we re-did it). To be honest, I spent $5 of them for kids' DVDs but the savings were, probably, at least 5- times more, so I'm happy. Now I'm just looking for more stuff to sell here :)

Another way how we "made" money this week is a whole other story. This month a promotional discount for our Internet expired, and the price jumped up from $20/ a month (to $40). Ugh!! So Hubby gave them a call, and they said that there was nothing they could do for us. So we started shopping around. We found another place with a promotional price of Internet of $24.99. So my husband calls our company back. You, probably, already guessed the outcome :) Yes, we got our discount. But the funny thing was when Hubby called them back, the CS guy told him that he needed to contact their loyalty department. Well, when he tried to dial, it went straight to a recording. Once...twice...third time...But then Hubby had already had it with customer service. Between waiting and lack of help, he was on the phone for about two hours. So he decided instead of calling customer service back (and wait for 40 minutes on the line), to do an online chat instead. He explained to them that he needed to get hold of their loyalty department. And they told him a trick! Apparently, in order for him to get somebody on the phone, he needed to call their phone back and then select the "cancel account" option. No more recordings after that. That easy :)

So even though our monthly payments went up $5, we saved another $15 every month (and that equals $180 a year in savings). Not bad at all :)

DECLUTTERING.

I already posted about major paper organizing we did HERE.  But I also did a mini-challenge too which was:

Clean out your junk drawer and post before & after photos.

So here's a "before" picture:

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The crazy thing is that I clean this drawer like every year and it goes back to it. So I was wondering if I could do something different to organize the stuff in it. The simplest solution seemed to be to buy a kitchen silverware organizer (from the $ store), so everything has it's place. I hope, this time the order will last a little bit longer. Here's the after picture:

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I had no idea we had so much tape!! It does help to organize things. You might find gems there (or, maybe,just enough tape to last you for the next two years :)

So there you have it! And how was your week?

20 comments:

  1. Oh my word Lena I thought I was the only one with hair like this. I am still laughing sorry, but sometimes I scare my dog!

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    1. My husband is allergic to most kinds of dogs but I bet if I had one, it would be terrified too :)

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  2. I do the same thing all the time with my phone company. I bet we have the same one. I get every discount around and then some credit "just because." I never pay full price. They even just give me free minutes sometimes. At one point I had 9,999 rollover minutes. Yes, I meant to type 4 nines.

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    1. We've been doing it for the past three years but this year they tried really hard not to give us a discount. Ha :)

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  3. Oooh I like the use of the kitchen organizer. Good call on that!
    You are so cute. I'm the same way.. can't let it just dry on it's own or it's crazy town!

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    1. That was definitely a crazy town on my head :)

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  4. Hahahaha ... Lena you are WAY too cute! xx Good going on the challenges. On Facebook we have Swap groups which sound exactly the same as your groups. I don't think I made any "extra" money, but I am pretty sure I didn't spend any :)

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    1. We have swap groups too but they just didn't work for me. I was surprised though how easy it was for me to sell the first few items.

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  5. Wow, you are doing great on this months challenge! BTW I think your curly hair is sassy! Ha

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  6. That's interesting that you found so much tape. That's the first thing I noticed when I saw the picture. Silverware trays are great for organizing in many places.

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    1. Tape would always get lost in this drawer, so I kept buying more and more.I was shocked to see how much we have:)

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  7. Looking good all around. And yes, that includes your hair. :)

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  8. I was soo relieved to see your "junky" drawer was like ours! hahaha!! So far everyones have been untidy, but mine looked soo bad! Ours gets bad every year as well.. it's our "catchall".. lol! As for savings, well done! I hate that you always have to "threaten" to leave before they'll give you discount. I find that incredibly annoying & frustrating! Oh well... at least you got the discount in the end! Well done this week!! Enjoy taming your crazy hair... ;) Mine is stick straight ALL. THE. TIME.

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  9. I can't tell a lie Lena, I still have a bit of a smile from viewing your hair. Mine is straight and most of the time I can't tame the cow licks. :)

    Really great results on the challenges. Loads of savings this week; what a great way to deal with the messy drawer clutter. Love seeing all the results.

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  10. You are doing awesome Lena. Keep at it :)

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  11. 2013 sounds like it's getting off to a good start for you! I called our internet provider last week and, on the second try, was able to get them to drop our monthly bill from $63 to $40 .... I'll take it.

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  12. Thank you thank you thank you for the reminder to check my phone bill. I am not getting the discount that I am supposed to be. ARGHH!! BTW I think your hair looks on point. Bed head is in now. Women pay lots of money to get that look.

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  13. Lena, your hair was a hoot! Even if I dry mine before bed it has enough moisture left in it to do crazy things! WOW! on the junk drawer!!! It looks amazing! My junk drawer wasn't bad but I have a whole junk ROOM that needs to be dealt with. Maybe I should tackle it as my "closet" challenge:)

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