I haven’t had much time to post lately, we’re headed into our busy season at work and it seems like the holidays and the many many snow days that the kids have had just threw everything off.
I’ve embarked on what I hope will be a major clean out of our entire house. I stayed up until 5am one morning completely reorganizing the kids toy room, In the 6 years since my son was born, I don’t think we’ve gotten rid of a single toy so it was time. I was able to fill up 2 big trash bags of clothes and 5 smaller bags of toys to donate to a friend who has 3 children that are younger than ours. It felt SO good! The book shelf in the toy room was falling apart so we brought that to the dump and I repurposed a bookshelf from another room that is very sturdy and didn’t really fit where it was. Now the kids can see more of what they have and you can actually walk in there! I’ve already decided that we need to change up our Christmas game next year.
Next was the smaller of our 2 vehicles, my husband uses it for commuting and I also use it for the same and for when I run errands sans kiddos because it has better gas mileage. With all of the use that it gets it was pretty full of junk and we also had 2 booster seats waiting to be installed which will make pick up and drop off no matter which vehicle we’re driving in easier. I drove down to work in it yesterday and it was a dream!
So this got my clean out mojo going and my next major area to focus on is our basement. It is AWFUL. We did a major clean out about 4 years ago in between babies, but since then we’ve had 2 babies and have done some major home renovation so it has fallen into a giant pile of despair. I’ve been actively avoiding it, but today I promised myself that I would go down there for at least an hour and within that hour I was able to sweep and make a pretty big pile of stuff that needs to go to the donation pile. I’m being pretty ruthless because anything that’s down there has been down there for at least a year without anyone missing it ( for the most part), so if it hasn’t been used it’s going!
Phew, so I would say those 3 items get added to my frugal happenings because knowing what you have and being able to find it prevent repurchasing items that don’t need to be repurchased. It also reminds me of how much STUFF we have and how I should be actively avoiding buying more.
Fourth on my list was a frugal kid find, frugal kid #1 is going to lego club on Friday afternoons at his school for an hour and he love it! It’s a free activity and I like that it gets him involved, but doesn’t require extra driving or schlepping the kids out late at night. It also makes pick up of Frugal Kid #2 much easier because I have an extra hour between pick ups.
Finally, I went to Aldi and our local Market Basket last weekend and stocked up. Aldi is about 35 minutes from our house, but I’m always glad I went, we got lots of fresh produce and snacks and didn’t break the bank.
Anyhoo! That’s all for me, how did y’all do last week?
I so beat you on the basement. I moved into my house 11 years ago, put stuff in the back storage room, and have just kept adding to it. Some of it is organized, but some is jyst piled up. I started cleaning it last night and will be working on it all this week.
I also cleaned out all the Christmas lights, throwing up all those strings that were only half working and then I was allegedly saving to see if I could get them to work or uses replacement bulbs in other strings. I managed to super secret method cut down on the amount of storage tubs that I needed for Christmas and I’m really happy with my progress so far.
Boy, that comment did not come out well and I cannot edit it. Suffice to say I got rid of lots of light strings that were only half working and I know I’ll never fix them.
Glad to hear Im not alone! I’m trying to be really realistic about keeping things that I know I’ll never have the time to fix or use. Now I just have to convince my husband (he’s a pack rat!!)