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