30 things in 30 days, update #3.

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Hello, hello, my lovelies!

How have you been? How is your Saturday? Ours was busy. We painted the baby room (almost)! It still needs some touch ups but I'm so glad to scratch it off my list. We want to deep-clean the carpets there too and then I can start decorating :) I'm pretty excited about it!! We are trying to tackle quite a few projects here in the next few weeks while I'm still capable and useful...

I mentioned in my last update that I have already reached my goal of getting rid of 30 things. I also challenged myself to make $100 before the end of the month. A week ago I did not have a set plan on what I was going to do with this money but after crunching the numbers yesterday, we decided that we will use it to buy a second car seat. It would be nice not to spend anything extra out of pocket for it. I sold a few more things this week and so far "the car seat fund" sits nicely at $94. I'm very close to my goal :) There is also a $25 rebate for Graco car seats out there, and I looked at Target, and it seems like I can easily stay within the budget if I reach my goal. The other car seat that my friend gave me is a Graco too. I used this company for both of my boys' seats and was pretty pleased with their products.

I also got another bag of donations ready to go which brings my total so far this month to 56!! Now I just have to double my original goal, no excuses. I feel very accomplished this week :)

Update #3: 56 instead of 30

And how did you do on your decluttering goals?

On decluttering and the baby stuff...

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Now that I'm slowly getting back to being a somewhat functional human being, I jumped back on the decluttering wagon again. In fact, now clutter bugs me even more. It drives me insane!! I feel like I want to get rid of everything in sight and have bare walls that are easy to clean... In the past 2-3 weeks I've been throwing away or donating bags and bags of things - kitchen supplies, clothes, shoes, and old bags. And then papers. Lots and lots of old papers (yeah, who knows why I kept those school papers from 7 years ago...)

One thing that really inspires me is my trips to Goodwill. I've found a few cute maternity pieces there for a fraction of the price. Just because I'm pregnant, doesn't mean I should wear parachute-size shirts. Not yet, at least. I want this to be my cutest pregnancy yet since I am heavier than I ever was before with either of my pregnancies (hello, hypothyroidism!) and I'm not gonna get any smaller :)

I digress... But every time I go to Goodwill or even pass by the store, I try to take a few bags in. It helps to keep our house in order and hey, they give you a 20% coupon when you donate. Win-win in my book. My husband gently laughs at me that I'm already in a nesting mood. No, honey, not yet, I'm in the "decrappifying your hole" mood instead. I also got a nice pile of things in the garage that I want to list for sale on classifieds in July. Hopefully, I can make a little money to offset some babies' expenses.

Talking about those expenses, I'm yet to start buying anything for the little ones. I'm paranoid this way... Well, I did pick up a few packs of diapers on sale with coupons but nothing else really. But the other day I stumbled upon a nice deal on the local Facebook classifieds that I just couldn't pass by. I got My Breast Friend Twins Plus Nursing Pillow with an extra cover in very decent condition:

 It was only $25. Last time I looked on Amazon, it was $79 (they lowered the price to $56 since but the covers are still $26). So I think it's a steal! Honestly, I'm not sure I'm even gong to breastfeed. I wasn't too successful with my other two kids but, as usual, I'm willing to give it a try. And if I don't end up using it, I can always turn around and sell it back for the same price. So consider it my first official  baby purchase :)

OK, did this summer inspire you to do any decluttering in your house?

Finally, a finished project here... A command center #2.

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About a year ago I shared with you our Command center. This project is still one of the most popular on my blog. Almost every day somebody stops by that post.

But, as much as I loved it, it didn't work as well for the rest of my family. Especially the kids because they didn't really like that our family calendar was in the master bedroom. So I finally agreed to move the command center to a more visible and accessible spot, aka our kitchen. Here it is in all it's beauty:

For the longest time we had this sad spot in our kitchen:

At some point I had a picture hanging there too but I took it off a long time ago. These shelves were made of leftover pieces of gutter and I loved them. So I reused them in the new command center (just spray-painted with Rustoleum metallic paint that I already had on hand and added vinyl letters).

The whole process was a "use what you have on hand" thing. Hey, I'm doing a No Spend challenge this month after all, right? :) And I didn't spend anything. It was a zero dollar project :)

First, I stenciled the wall with the same stencil I used for our ceiling fan update:

The paint was a "custom mix" (I basically mixed together some leftover paints I had on hand to get this mossy-green). Hubby then framed it for me with some thin molding that we had in the garage. I wanted to add some fabric baskets too. At first, I fell in love with these ones from IKEA. The small baskets seemed perfect! But there were only two in each set, and I needed three. I wasn't about to spend $12 and end up with three more baskets I didn't need (no, I'm not that cheap. It's all about the challenge:). The solution? Make it myself, of course! Ha, I have actually sewn something again. Can you believe that???

After looking through a ton of pictures on Google, I found this tutorial. Her instructions are so easy to follow, even for a novice like me. I really like how they turned out:

Again, I just used scraps of fabric I had on hand but they match other house decor perfectly. The last thing I added was the two clocks on the top. Why two, you might ask? Well, one shows the local time, another one - time back home in Russia. I happened to have these two clocks from IKEA that I bought a while ago:

They were only $1.99 each but kind of ugly and cheap-looking. So I just taped the ... and sprayed them black. So much better:

A little paint makes such a difference!

I love how it all turned out. And more importantly, the rest of the family likes it too :) And this spot doesn't look very sad any more:

And now I just need to go and re-fill this empty calendar :)

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Organizing our freezer (with a free printable).

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For the past few months I've been organizing and reorganizing our freezers. Again and again. We have two freezers: one is the basic side-by-side fridge. The other one is this beat-up monster:

If you are wondering what happened to it, I do too. We got this chest freezer about 4 years ago for (drum rolls, please...) $10!!! It might just be the best find of my life! Seriously! Yes, it looks like someone was hitting it but inside it's not damaged at all. And it works great, duck tape and all ! I was skeptical at first but for 10 bucks it was worth a try...

As I said, I've been organizing it again and again but now that I'm trying to keep up with the September challenge, I really needed to know what I have! It was time to have a checklist. But after looking through what felt like a hundred of different ideas, I realized that I wanted something different.

So I asked my sweet and super-talented Hubby to make it for me:

It's really very simple. I write down everything we have in stock, and when we use something up, I just cross it off the list:

As you can see, our stock is pretty modest (if my SIL hadn't brought us about 4 lbs. of ground beef, I wouldn't have anything in the "beef" graph :).But I was happy to find a pack of pork chops and a pack of chicken breasts that I didn't know we had!!

My life is so much easier now that I know what I have on hand in our freezers. This inventory list has all the categories of our usual stock:

1. Beef
2. Pork
3. Poultry
4. Seafood
5. Fruit/Vegetables
6. Freezer meals
7. Miscellaneous

 Now there is no more guessing. I know exactly what we have. I know this might not work for everyone, but if you are interested, you can print your own copy of the list here. Totally free! :) And if your stock is much bigger than mine, you can write a date instead.

Do you have a freezer organizing system?

Food waste and a menu, week 4/29-5/5.

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First, I want to thank you all who stopped by here and left your sweet comments. You, guys, are amazing, and I appreciate your friendship.

And now I have to be honest. After bragging telling you last week about my record of no food waste for six weeks, I think I jinxed myself :) We didn't really waste any everyday food from our fridge, but I did clean the freezer (my feeble attempt for spring cleaning this month, I guess :). And here's what I discarded:

I threw away two bags of corn tortillas, two small bags of mixed greens (spinach and kale) and some crushed potato chip crumbs. All of it was badly freezer burned. I have a confession to make- I DO NOT like the taste of corn tortillas. There, I said it. I just don't (please, don't throw rocks at me right now...). I tried to make chips out of them, use them in Hispanic version of lasagna, burritos, and no...still don't like it. I got these tortillas for almost free last year with some sort of a coupon but that was one of those examples of when you buy something cheap or with coupon but you are not going to eat it, it's still a waste of money :(  I kept moving them around until they eventually went to the garbage can :( Potato chip crumbs I kept for some recipe and forgot all about it. And greens just got lost in the very back of the freezer (insert a sad sniff here...).

So now I created an inventory of everything that we have in our freezer. That's how it looks right now:

It's not pretty but it's functional, and I know where what goes. The first shelf has a box full of purees and sauces (pumpkin, squash, cauliflower, pizza and pasta sauces, grated zucchini, etc.). In my search of adding more veggies into my younger boy's diet, I started adding pumpkin and squash to pasta sauce, and it's awesome! I literally do half and half, and I can barely taste the difference, and we all get even more benefits from the sauce.

The second shelf has frozen fruit and veggies most of which we use for smoothies. The third has meats and fish, and on the forth and fifth we just keep random frozen things that need to be used up soon.

With all of this in mind, I created our menu mostly around what we have at home. I will do a few grocery trips this week because we are low on many things (because it's the beginning of the new month!) but here's how our menu looks so far:

Mon.- Russian crepes with sour cream and homemade jam

Tues.- potatoes with chicken and corn on the cob

Wed.- breakfast for dinner (eggs, sausage links- bumped from last week), carrots, watermelon

Thurs.- some sort of a soup

Fr.- grilled chicken, salad

Sat.- salmon, brown rice, green beans

Sun.- pork roast, mashed potatoes, broccoli

We will also make smoothies a few times this week because the Little Guy will not eat any veggies on my list (well, maybe, salad. Of all things, he likes just green salad with Ranch)

So what's on your menu this week?

My March to-do list, and what I would love to achieve in the month of April.

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I just realized that no matter how crazy and tiresome March was, we did pretty good on our goals. Granted, our to-do list wasn't very long. Here is what it looked like and how it happened:

• Finally, finish the baby blanket. Yes, I did! If you missed it, read more about it  HERE. We have the cutest new little nephew, and I hope he'll enjoy this little gift very soon. 


• Finish two projects around the house and post about them. Well, I kind of achieved this one. We did finish two projects but I only posted about one of them. But I promise, I'll post about the other one very soon (hopefully, tomorrow if I can find time to take pictures).


• Prepare our garden for the season and start planting if weather permits. Again, I can't say we completely achieved it but close enough. I dug it up, and we purchased some compost. I haven't started planting anything yet but peas are on my to-do list in the next couple of days.


• Start on spring cleaning. That's exactly what I did- I started...I barely touched the surface. I washed windows in the kitchen and the living room, and also cleaned the kitchen blinds. But not much else, unfortunately. We were all just too sick to do it. But I'm definitely going to achieve much more in April :)


• Start organizing the garage. Oh yeah, baby! Last Saturday we spent the WHOLE day in the garage (so much fun...). Let me tell you, it was a HOT MESS! As usual, I forgot to take the before pictures. But we cleaned it all. We literally got everything off the floors and outside to the back yard and I cleaned the floors 4 times until I was satisfied:

And all the junk was sitting on our patio. Yeah, I know, we are a bunch of red necks :)

I promise it didn't stay like this long. We worked all day and cleaned our back yard before the sun went down. I'm not going to show any after pictures because it's not all done yet. We organized it but there is an area of the garage that we want to turn into a work area for all the gazillion projects I have in mind, and it's still far from being done. Hopefully, we'll finish it all in April. Oh, we'll see...

And that's how we did on March goals. It wasn't a perfect month by any means but we've done quite a bit. I realized that when I don't overload my list, it becomes much more doable even when life happens.

But I'm ready for April! I've been thinking about joining Carla's savings challenge and finally I decided what I want to do. We will have some expenses this month (like creating a work area in the garage) but I still want to stay within a budget.

So this is my first financial goal - Stay within a budget. It's time, girl! The last couple of months were just too expensive. I hope to finally be able to get back on track. And first and foremost, with our grocery budget. I've been consistently over the first quarter of the year. Granted, our food budget is pretty small. We plan $280/month for our family of 4. This month we will add another $50 for stocking up because we are very low on lots of things. I hope we'll be able to stay within this amount and stock up on everything we need. Plus, I hope to stay on top in the other aspects of our monthly budget and, maybe, even save some money.

Now to the second goal. Last month I made $302 in extra income (mostly from my part-time gig). After some discussion, we decided to use this money for all the projects we are planning for this month (like again, the famous garage). But it's a lot of money for us. So what I'm hoping to do is make $300 again this month to equalize our expenses. It will not be easy but, I think, it's doable.

As for non-money-related goals, we want to achieve this month:

• Finish 4 projects around the house and post about them (haha...I couldn't even do 2 in March!)
• Garden, garden, garden!! I can't wait for some fresh produce (including kale that decided to grow back :)
• Spring clean like a mad woman...It's happening in April, I promise!

Wish me luck! And what's on your to-do list this month? Any great plans?

January Challenge update #3

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Wow, 3 weeks into the month! January really flies by! It's time to update you again on No/low Spend-Decluttering challenge:

FINACIAL. 

My goal 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 $331.21 which is $1.21 over our goal. But hey, we bought this amazing table, so I think we are still doing awesome with our goal!! It looks like I'm getting my kids' cold too, so I asked Hubby to do a grocery shopping trip, so we should be fine on food at least until Saturday (by then we'll, probably, need milk and cereal). So I'm planning to stay at home for the next two days until we are all a little bit better.

On the other hand, we finally received Hubby's first adjusted salary, and between his raised SS taxes and raise in medical insurance, his check is $70 less than it used to be. Which means, it will be $140 less a month :( So there are lots of adjustments coming up for us in the next few weeks...

A mini-challenge this week: Give. Find a way in your budget to "give" financially somehow...

Because I wasn't out much this week, I didn't give any physical money but I still found a few ways to help others financially:

1. I offered some valuable coupons (one of them was $10 off $50 for Winco) for free on a local 24/7 online yard sale. I received them in the mail and I knew I wasn't going to use them before they expire, so I was happy to give them away. I also had a few rebates that I passed along to my friend. That's considered giving "money", right? :)

2. A few days ago somebody rang our door bell. When I opened, there was a man standing. He explained to me that they were working on the gutters of our neighbor's house but she wasn't there. And they needed to plug in some machines into an outlet. Her outdoor outlet wasn't working, so he asked if he could use ours. I was a little hesitant at first (I really don't like strangers at my door!). But then, with the tears in his eyes, he told me that if he couldn't work that day, he wouldn't be able to make money his family needed. After that I knew what to do! I plugged his machine in our garage, and they worked there most of the day. I didn't give him physical money but electricity costs too! I'm glad I could help. And he was very grateful.

DECLUTTERING.  

We are officially done with all the papers in the house. I still want to make copies of all of the most important documents and keep them in a separate place in case of an emergency. We are yet to receive any tax documents this year but I'm ready for it. Otherwise, we officially achieved our declutering goal this month.

A mini-challenge this week: Choose a closet, any closet, and clean it out!!

I've been cleaning and cleaning and cleaning our closets for the last few months, so this challenge was...well, a challenge :) But I found a spot that needed organizing. It's not exactly a closet. Instead, it is a bathroom cleaning supply cabinet. That's what it looked like before:

We have a ton of stuff. I got most of it for free or really cheap with coupons. But my new goal is to switch to mostly homemade solutions by the end of the year. Until then I need to finish what I already have.

First, I cleaned out this cabinet. I noticed that some cleaners left damaging stains on the surface, so I decided to put some peel-and-stick tile on the bottom (we already had these tiles, so no money spent there):

  
Then I wanted to add some extra storage (without spending any money). So I found this cardboard box:

and I covered it with some leftover fabric and put very simple divider in between:

And another picture:

The only money I spent on this cabinet "makeover" was to add a small (less than $5) tension rod for all the cleaning spray bottles. Here's what this cabinet looks like now:

It's so much more practical now! It's still a little bit cluttered (maybe, because, I have 8 bottles of air freshener in the back there... Don't ask! :) but I hope to downsize significantly in the next few months.

And that's how we did this week. How was your week?

I will link this post at Carla's blog HERE

 

January Challenge update #1.

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Yesterday as I was working on some translating, my precious little netbook decided to crash on me, and I lost all of the stuff I was working on :( Wah wah wah...So I had to work till 11pm yesterday because I report on Fridays. Hence, no blogging last night :( Double wah...

But I thought it was time to report on January Decluttering and No/Low Spend challenge

FINANCIAL.

You might remember that my original goal was to spend no more than $465 ($15 a day) on food, necessities, eating out, clothes, entertainment, gifts and miscellaneous. It's the 4th of the month, and I'm well within the budget still.

I did a little bit of shopping because we needed milk, yogurt, and some fruits and veggies. I also went to Rite Aid to take advantage of a nice deal on Pantene shampoo and conditioner ($1 a bottle) because I was almost out of shampoo. I used $2 in UPs rewards for it. But that's all the spending I've had so far.

Goal: > $465
Spent: $ 16.46

I will do some secret shopping tonight and have to make a purchase. But I will get paid for it (still will be part of expenses because I will only be paid in February). Then we decided to go to Applebbees tonight but we have a gift card and a coupon for a free kids meal (that Kid can't wait to use). So this will be free. We are running really low on cereal, so I see a shopping trip coming very soon. When you have kids, it's a lot harder to save...sigh..


DECLUTTERING.

A mini-goal that Carla gave us this week was to find what "thing" clutters up our home the most. And it's definitely papers. One of the things we noticed (that has everything to do with finances too) is that its sometimes hard to keep track of all the receipts- or to see what we spent money on- because we tend to lose them, forget them in pockets (and then wash them), throw them away and so on and so forth. So I decided that I needed an assigned space just for receipts that will be easily visible (especially for my husband). So a week or so ago I bought this ugly green (but cheap) container from the $ store:

As much as I love green, it absolutely didn't match anything in our house. So I spray-painted it with leftover chalkboard paint, and now it has a special place in our kitchen. I love it:

Now it's all visible and easily accessible, and all the receipts go in there. Then once a week we sit down together with Hubby and do our budgeting.

Another thing that I really needed to organize was my coupons. I haven't done much couponing in a while but I thought it was time to come back this year (at least somewhat). I keep all coupons and other discounts in an ottoman in the master bedroom. And that's what it looked like before:

What a sad picture...Most of this stuff expired months ago too. So I cleared it all out and organized it. That's what our bedroom looked like for a couple of days while I was organizing:

But now it looks so much better! I have a nice binder for coupons and some old photo albums to keep rebates and some need-to-be-used-soon coupons:

Aww, much better. Now I just wish I could keep it this way...That's going to be a challenge in and of it's own :)

The Reverse 100 Thing Challenge.

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I really skipped the deadline of the 15th of December to post an update on The Reverse 100 Thing Challenge. But it wasn't that I didn't reach the goal, I just forgot to post it about it :). So when I updated last, we were at 41 things de-cluttered. But since that we did quite a bit.

First, toys.

 One of the things we wanted to do for 25 days of Christmas was to find at least one toy to donate in our house. But the kids did a lot better than that! We went through their rooms and found 21 things to donate!!I'm so proud of my boys. It was toys and books too, so now they have some room to store new things they will get for Christmas :)

Second, we cleaned closets.

The last big project we finished this year was re-doing our master closet. I'll post more about it in the next few days but we found quite a few things that could be donated. And you cannot even imagine how many flimsy metal hangers we had in the house!!! I was SHOCKED! When we got married, my MIL gave us a ton of things she didn't need any more including these hangers. I just didn't realize we had that many. Especially that we had other, sturdier  hangers too, more than we have clothes ! So we decided to donate the metal hangers to DI (local thrift store) - all 57 of them:

We also donated bags of clothes, shoes, purses and other miscellaneous items:

The bigger bag in the last picture is actually going to the Road Home ( a homeless shelter) on Saturday. It's full of warm sweaters that are in pretty good condition but are either too big or too small for us.

Phew... Feel so accomplished :) We donated (or will donate) 108 items in the last few weeks (including all the hangers that the thrift stores are always in need of). I know we could sell some of it but, honestly, we just wanted to do something good for others. And get these things out of our house :) We still have a few bigger items that we will try to sell next year.

So for this challenge, we are at 149 items which brings a total for my bigger de-cluttering goal for a year to 412 items (to remind you, my goal was 366). Our house feels a lot cleaner now!! Now I just need to try to keep it this way :)

Did you participate in a de-cluttering challenge? Or are you planning any for next year?

A very budget-friendly coat closet update.

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OK, winter is officially here now! Even though the past two days weren't very cold but we still have snow on the ground and our gas bill was $20 higher this month.

   So a few days ago I realized that I don't even know where our winter hats are. Or, should I say, I do know where they are hiding but finding one is what the problem is. And all because until today our shelf in our coat closet looked like this:

To my defense...nah, there is no defense! It was just a mess. We haven't really needed anything on this shelf since last March, I think. But now that I actually tried to find something...well, I was DONE. I needed to organize this place. ASAP! The only thing is that I didn't want to spend money on it. And I didn't! I used what we already had in the house.

A few months ago I stumbled upon a sale at a local Lowes for these fabric storage bins:

Honestly, when I bought them, I didn't know how I was going to use them. Do you ever buy things when you don't know what you will do with them? I rarely (and I mean, rarely) do this but it was one of those times. I guess, I just couldn't pass a price tag of $1.50/a piece. I got three of them.

And when I started to think of a possible storage, I knew they would be perfect in this space. I added tags to each box (made from scraps of my favorite linen fabric and Sharpie):

And that's how it looks right now- TADA:

I love it, love it, love it! Now I know where everything goes. Winter, I'm not afraid of you any more...Umm, maybe, I shouldn't have said that... I still can't stand cold... But here's my little project of the day. I actually added just a little more storage by re-purposing a shower caddy, that was sitting in our garage, to store kid's things that we use all the time and for storing baseball hats:

So here is one more picture of a finished project using what I already had on hand:

Doesn't it look so much better? I'm really happy with a difference just a few simple changes made. And I'm one step closer to having our life more organized. Now I can't wait to finish our master closet. Stay tuned...

Pantry makeover reveal!!

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   I'm so excited to finally show you what we did with our mess of a pantry that I posted about HERE. I know it was BAD...But not any more. I sure am proud of what we did with this place.
I promise you, I wasn't crazy doing it while sick. I started it last week when I was still OK and I had to finish because my kitchen looked like it was hit by a storm...

   First, I got everything out and cleaned it using my two favorite cleaners- soda and vinegar. I cleaned it three times until I was satisfied:

I was debating if I should paint it but then decided against it. I kind of like it clean and white.

So are you ready for a sneak peak??

How about a before picture:

And after:

Aww...much better! Now a little break-down at what I did. First, I put all of the jars I canned this year on the top shelf:



Yum!! :) Then I added these awesome P.E.T. approved storage canisters:





I got an absolutely amazing deal on these canisters! They are usually $2-3+ in Walmart but I found mine in the classifieds for a lot cheaper. This guy used to have a business but closed up and was selling out his stock. I got all of these containers (20 total: 8 gallon size, 12 half-gallon) for $7!! Oh, I couldn't believe my luck when I saw the price. They were all brand-new still in sealed boxes from the manufacturer. I made some simple tags to go on them.

Then I added a Lazy Susan for oils, vinegars and some sauces:



It's silly but I ALWAYS wanted one. I bought it from Walmart for about $13. I actually should've waited to get it from IKEA for $8. But I didn't know back then and I already removed all the tags. Oh well...I still love it!

On the bottom I added two wooden crates for snacks and baking supplies:



I bought one of these crates in Michaels for $8 after a 40% coupon, and then my parents got another one for me when they were shopping (free!) We keep baking mixes, honey and nuts in one, and crackers, tortilla chips, cookies. etc. in another. We usually don't have that many tortilla chips but I stumbled upon a clearance with bags for 30c each. So I stocked up. I really like them with some homemade salsa.

Another thing we added was this cool wooden bucket that I got for only $2 from DI (local thrift store):




I love it's rustic old look. We keep random things there like fruit snacks, granola bars, nut snacks etc. etc.

And last but not least is my very simple solution for storing grocery bags ( we use them for recycling garbage):



I made it a couple of years ago. It's pretty simple - I just cut a rectangular piece of fabric, sewn it on the side and put elastic on the top and the bottom leaving holes for putting bags in and getting them out. A very simple solution but we like it a lot.

So here it is - my finished pantry. I'm so happy with how it turned out. And by shopping around, checking thrift stores, classifieds, using coupons and thanks to my parents' generosity it only cost us $30!! That's my kind of project :)

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