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Coupons Schmoupons

March 23, 2009 in Family, Home, Organization with 14 Comments

I am NOT a coupon clipper.

It’s not that I don’t want to be… it’s just that I LITERALLY don’t know how. Other than Costco coupons, I’m pretty much clueless.

You see… Costco SENDS me their coupons nicely organized in a booklet. I then go through and cut out what our family uses MOST. I always save money doing that. However… groceries are TOTALLY different. We don’t get the paper (who does anymore) so I can’t get coupons that way. I can’t honestly say I look very hard either. Apparently, I’m LAZY when it comes to bargain hunting.

This is what I usually do: I get all my canned & generic stuff at Winco. Winco is awesome because they sell Red Mill and other organic brands of baking needs and cereal in bulk. I then get all my fresh fruits, veggies & meat at New Seasons or Whole Foods. When it’s NOT Winter, I get all my veggies at the Farmer’s Market which is SO much cheaper!!!

I saw that Heather Whittaker saved over $110 the other day using Southern Savers. Do we have something like that in the Northwest?

I have a friend who drives to 6 stores in one day to get the best price. Um… I don’t have time to drive from store to store. In my rig… by the time I DRIVE to 6 stores, I’ve spent the money in gas that I would have saved on groceries. Also, my boys just about lose it when I drag them to any more than TWO stores… but I’m ready to save $100 every time I get groceries.

I need help friends!!! What do you do?

My scissors are ready to clip… lead the way!

Where Are You Shaving?

March 16, 2009 in Current Affairs, Family, Home, Motherhood, Organization with 13 Comments

Seems we’re ALL dealing with the economic crisis together.

So many of my friends have found ways to save money. Clipping coupons, downsizing, box color instead of salon love, cutting out Starbucks…

For those who don’t know, I actually consider it my JOB as the CEO of my household to help every dollar my sweet husband & I bring in stretch to it’s fullest potential. We’ve had a bit of an adventure this past month shaving more wasteful dollars off the frivolous list and getting them into savings.

I figured this would be a GREAT time to share what we all do to save money. Many of you are WAY more brilliant than me so I would love to glean new ideas off of you. First, let me share what the Clayville’s have done:

10 AVENUES OF “SHAVING”:

Envelope System. We basically only take out cash for our weekly/monthly budget and steer clear from using debit cards (we got rid of credit cards a LONG time ago).
Unbundled our home internet/cable/phone. We now only have internet and a cheap homeline ($9.95 per month). We got rid of cable. No TV at all.
Cut out our daily coffee runs. But let’s be serious… we still grab a drink maybe a couple of times a week.
Buy store brand. We still shop at New Seasons & Whole Foods because we are committed to eating mostly organic (we, as a family, have decided we will cut other things before this), but sticking to store brands brings the cost WAY down while still getting great quality, which leads me to…
Eat at home 95% of the time. Again, if you know me, you know I LOVE to eat. I really appreciate different tastes. We used to eat out maybe 75% of the time. It’s has definitely scaled back to 5% now though. That has now manifested itself into my kitchen skills. Hubs says he likes my cooking better anyway
Box Color is my friend. No more salon visits every 3-4 months.
Craigslist. We’re selling EVERYTHING we don’t use. Makes room in my garage too. This is probably easier for me to do since I’m an organizational nazi who is DEFINITELY NOT a hoarder.
Walking. The weather has been a lot nicer, so we walk with the kids a lot more. Saves a lot of gas money driving to…
The Library. We get almost all our DVD movies from there right now. We actually don’t borrow books because we LOVE books and mark and write all over them. Pretty sure the library wouldn’t be so happy about that.
No mani/pedi’s. No spa treatments at all. This is awfully painful for me. I keep my nails and toes clean and polished myself.

So… I wanna know…

… where are YOU shaving?

Paxton’s Nursery

March 15, 2009 in Chance, Family, Home, Motherhood, Organization, Paxton with 3 Comments

Oh Saturday… how you’ve kept me busy all day long.

Our main goal yesterday and today was to get Paxton all settled in his new nursery. He was camping out in our room in a cradle, but the cradle was getting way too small… or he’s way too big. He’d roll over and get his legs caught in between the rails, therefore waking himself up.

We have two guest rooms so we decided to turn one of them into HIS room. Here’s the before:

And here’s how it looks now (click on the picture to enlarge):

So… I figured while I was moving Pax into his new room, I’d “upsize” and re-organize both boys’ dressers and closets. That was a pretty big project. It involved lots of plastic bins, folding of laundry, separating for Goodwill and packing Chance’s “outgrown” clothes away.

In the process, Chance decided to pack himself away:

I’m TOTALLY done now… and spent. But at least now, I can fall asleep in my own room ALONE with Brian.

YAY sleep!.. Maybe.

The Garage Project

February 16, 2009 in Family, Home, Organization, Personal Entries, Travel with 13 Comments

So by now, most of you know we were up in Seattle on Friday and Saturday to help my Mom clean out her garage.

Brian & I build her shelves (mostly Brian) and I went through as much of her stuff as possible within our allotted 24 hours to help her decide what to keep and what to throw out. Poor Mom… Renee & Helen had really helped clutter up.

Let me show you pictures:

Let me tell you what this is compiled of:

1/2 is my Mom’s stuff. Half of HER boxes in here have moved with her from house to house the last 25 years (6 large boxes of unused yarn, 4 boxes of unused fabric, an unopened, unused record player… seriously!). The other half were EMPTY boxes she was keeping for who knows what. She said she thought she would NEED them for something.
3/8 is Renee’s stuff. Renee pretty much moved her WHOLE apartment into my Mom’s house about 8 years ago and hasn’t come back to sort since. It’s difficult though… she lives in L.A., so how is she supposed to do clean? However… in the times she DOES visit, she doesn’t sort either. She’s a bit of a hoarder, like my Mom. Fortunately, Nae gave me permission to go through her stuff and dump/donate/recycle according to my discretion.
1/8 is Helen’s stuff. Helen has actually MOSTLY cleaned out her room and sorts through her stuff every time she come home

Brian hung shelves with chain, plywood and screws. We hung off the ends of them to make sure they were strong enough. It held 200 lbs. PER chain, so I think we’re good.

While Brian was building… and taking 14 million trips to Home Depot (seriously… WHY CAN’T YOU PLAN ACCORDINGLY SO YOU ONLY MAKE ONE TRIP???)… I went through my mom’s stuff. Here are SOME of the goodies I found:

400 pairs of shoes (this was only ONE shoe rack). There were MANY more shoe racks around the garage. A Coleman camp stove. Mom doesn’t camp.

WHAT THE??? This one made me scream out loud. I looked in the bag and saw this decapitated doll with blinky eyes, and another baby doll wrapped up in plastic to the right. Admit it… you screamed when you saw this pic too!

These pictures are of ALL the boxes and bags we found in the garage. We broke them down so we could FINALLY dispose of it all. My mom has multiple weeks of loading up her recycling bin. Oh… and there’s a barbeque grill to the left of all this. Mom doesn’t barbeque.

We arrived Friday afternoon and left on Saturday night. Here’s how we left in on Saturday night:

Look!!! You can see the garage floor

This is the RIGHT side of the garage. Shelves are up. Everything you see in the RIGHT half of the picture are things that need to be donated or given to family members. Hopefully, that will all be cleared out the next time I’m up there.

This whole side of the garage could LITERALLY be filed in 4 catagories: (1) Recycling. (2) Renee’s stuff (3) Helen’s Stuff (4) Things that still need sorting. I couldn’t get through all of it in time.

Here’s another picture:

Far LEFT is recycling. Shelf #1 on the left is ALL Renee’s stuff. The dresser is Nae’s too… and it’s placed in front of MORE of Renee’s boxes. Shelf #2 – top half is Helen’s stuff. Bottom half is Mom’s gardening stuff. Mom doesn’t have a garden. Shelf #3 is stuff that still needs to be sorted. Shelf #4 – Household items (lightbulbs, paintcans, etc.) and a couple of boxes full of my Dad’s old stuff. Yes… that’s a rocking chair and TWIN fertilizing thing-a-ma-jiggies. Mom has no lawn.

I wasn’t totally faultless either. Here’s a picture of the stuff I left at my Mom’s house:

Yeah… ONE POINT FIVE boxes were mine. I shared one with Renee.

I write all of this with a light heart. It was actually sort of fun to do… though tiring. I LOVE my Mom and want to help her with things like this. Things that help her live easier. She deserves to sit back and enjoy life a bit now.

After I was done though, I DID write my sisters an email titled, “You Guys Owe Me!” and ended the email with, “You Guys SUCK!” Both returned emails to me with LAUGHTER in the body of the text.

Nice.

I’ll head back up in a few weeks to help sort the remaining boxes. I’m pretty sure that even though my Mom said she would sort through stuff, she probably won’t. I DID donate a few things my Mom had a difficult time parting with. One whole car trip was full of bags and boxes I didn’t ask permission to donate. Sorry, Mom… I’m sure you won’t miss it. And if you do… I’ll buy you a new one.