60/300 Day 1!

Today began my kickoff of my personal Spring Challenge - my 60/300 challenge. As much as I try to keep my home as clean and neat as possible it is quite challenging with 4 young ones running around and a very sweet, caring - but messy - husband to clean up after. One day of taking it easy can put me behind by a week. I need to get my home more organized so hopefully I won't need to spend as long on cleaning every day. I'm not doing any ordinary cleaning. Every corner of my home will be transformed. I figure it will take me roughly 2 months to completely go through every single item in my home, catalog what we keep and sell, donate, or throw away the rest. At first I was planning on only spending $200 but after my first trip to Target I knew that wasn't going to be enough. $300 is still pretty conservative, but I don't mind a challenge.

Day 1 began with a trip to Target. I bought 2 binders, one for my household binder and one for

the household recipe binder. I also bought colored computer paper, colored cardstock, scrapbook paper, and a new label maker (!!!). My total was $53. I printed out some of the household binder sheets and completed my cover page (almost). All I need it a picture of the family to put on it!

I also printed up The Mizzell Family Rules, The Mizzell Morning Schedule, and The Mizzell Playroom Rules. I got this idea from my friend Miranda's Blog.

I placed them in frames and they are now hanging in our dining room, and playroom. Anthony is already repeating the rules to us verbatim!

Today I decided to shoot for purging the garage. It will probably take me a week or so to finish it. The garage is in major need of TLC. With Nebraska weather there isn't many days where we can actually spend much time in it, and it's become a catch all for every. single. thing. we. own. I'm hoping to actually get rid of quite a bit in there, and have the rest neatly placed in bins/boxes/containers. And with my new, lovely, label maker everything will be labeled!

My garage started out looking something like this: (these were taken on the phone, I'm sorry for the poor quality)

These are my shelves for food. At first one of them was being used for craft items, and my some of my sewing supplies. The other was semi organized but not the way I like it.

This is the back "catch all" storage area. Literally, this is where we dump everything. It drives me absolutely crazy. The other picture is the side of the garage where the rest of my sewing stuff is, the tools, the gift wrap/bags area, and our old couch that we are desperately trying to give away.

This is a way back view of the "food" side of the garage with our deep freezer in the middle. The other picture is another view of the back of the garage. I got all those 2 liters on sale for around .60 a bottle. Stocking up for the summer BBQ's!

And this is after my progress from today. Still a ways to go, but getting better. I cleared off most of the black and white shelves, and the bottom of my sewing shelf to make room for the craft items.

I also took inventory of the food shelves in the garage!

I organized the food shelves and labeled them.

I began the pile of things to throw away, donate, or sell.

The back of the garage is looking a lot better, but still not there.

A better shot of the white and black shelves.

Tomorrow I'll continue on with the garage and begin the Master closet - another awful area of the house as I left it to my husband to keep clean....

59 Days left

$247 left.

Starting the 60/300 challenge!

I've decided to challenge myself this spring. Today I begin my 60/300 challenge. In the next 60 days I will completely spring clean, purge, organize, and decorate my home. I will post 60 blog posts and each blog post will have at least one picture of my progress. I will complete all of this spending no more than $300! The first blog post will be posted shortly about my first day!

I've got the organization bug!

Having diagnosed OCD means that I get very anxious when my house is not the way I like it. Building a stockpile means that there is a lot of new items in my home and I'm itching to find a way to organize them! My good friend Kristina directed me towards this blog I Heart Organizing
which sounded totally up my alley. After finding that blog I also discovered Organized Home. I've been pouring over both blogs and have a lot of ideas swimming in my head. First thing I needed to do was take an inventory of all my items. I printed the template from Organized Home, a dozen labeled "Pantry Inventory" and two labeled "Freezer Inventory" (for my main freezer and my deep freezer. I laminated each of them (may I just say how much I LOVE my laminator!) so that I could just wipe them off instead of crossing out. I hate messy looking things and a bunch of crossed off items would drive me crazy. I then super glued magnetic strips on the upper corner for the Pantry lists, and on the back of the Freezer lists. The Pantry lists hold a Dry Erase Marker so that I can quickly jot down, or erase an item. The Freezer magnets hold it to the freezer and a marker hangs next to it. For my indoor lists I used Velcro to adhere them to my cabinets, and made it easy to remove them for easy writing. My garage lists hang by a nail, much like a calendar, and can be easily taken off. This is just one of my cabinets, my spice cabinet. I have my inventory on there and each dot is how many items of that spice I have. As you can see we have a lot of duplicates. I hope this cuts down on that. I've had similar lists in the past but they weren't erasable like this one and quickly became to difficult to keep up with.

My next project is the Family Binder! I'll be sure to update with pictures of my progress. I'm a little upset that we no longer have a colored printer - I'm not a fan of just black and white and my printed sheets won't be as pretty :(

Ultimate Blog Party 2011

I stumbled across this from a friends blog and figured I'd join in!

I'm Beth, I'm 25 and I'm married to my husband Chris who is 27. We just celebrated 7 years of marriage yesterday! He is active duty Air Force which has landed us here in Nebraska (where we should be leaving next year). We have 4 beautiful children so far - Anthony (6), Anastasia (4), David (2), and Charlie (11 months). We are trying to conceive baby number 5!

My blog is about everything. My family, my hobbies (couponing, hanging out with my friends, whatever strikes my fancy!), my love of all things organized, my battle with a genetic defect I have called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and just about anything you can think of. I can't wait to start reading new blogs!

Crazy Coupon Lady!

A few years ago I got quite heavily into the whole coupon/sale craze. I loved the thrill of getting items for free or nearly free, of saving my family money, and of seeing my pantry and bathroom cabinets stocked. When my body began revolting on me I quit couponing. I didn't have the strength to do it anymore. I hated watching our dollars disappear, I hated telling our children they couldn't have this or that treat because we couldn't justify the expense. My kids never hurt for anything, we were never without food, but they didn't always get a lot of choices in food either. I couldn't justify buying oatmeal when this type of cereal was so much cheaper. It meant the difference between eating Macaroni towards the end of the pay period and eating meatloaf. As food prices rose the choices went down. Buying stuff to make cookies became a rare treat rather than a family event on the weekend. Sandwiches for dinner became more frequent than a night where we didn't have time to cook a full meal. Our grocery budget rose $80 every two weeks from $120 (where we had money to spare and treats and fun food in the house) to $200 (where every penny had to be accounted for). I thought about couponing again but I didn't even have the ability to clip coupons.

After I healed from my wrist fusion surgeries I thought about it more and more. The clincher came when we ran out of shampoo. We literally had not bought shampoo in 4 years because my stockpile was so large. We ran out of shampoo and I refused to buy more shampoo because I knew I could get it free or nearly free. I used the kids babywash, and those little samples you get and Chris called me ridiculous and bought shampoo. I loathed that bottle of shampoo, lol. It represented all the wasted dollars we've spent over the past two years. All the money we could have been using to take the kids bowling, or to the movies. Even taking the kids to McDonalds has gone way up in price. When your family is as large as ours nothing is cheap. McDonalds easily costs us about $30.

I started researching deals again and buying the newspaper for the coupons. Even the newspaper went up in price since I last did this. When I was couponing years ago the paper was $1.50, it is now $2.50. To justify the $5 (I buy two papers a week) I spent on papers my savings had to be greater than that in coupons. I was doing okay, but my stockpile was weak and I wasn't really saving much. I didn't have the hours in the week to research deals as well as go shopping at multiple stores, cut coupons, and do all the other mommy and wife stuff (and hopefully get an hour or two for myself!) that is needed to keep this household running.

I had heard of "The Grocery Game" years ago and I SCOFFED at the idea of PAYING someone to do what I could do myself. I mean, wasn't the whole point to save money? I decided to look at the website again just to see if it was really going to save me more money, and decrease the time spent needing to clip, buy, and research. They used to have a 4 week trial for the price of $1. Now their 4 week trial is completely free. Well, free is good, right? I don't like entering my credit card info for "free trials" because inevitably I will forget I did it and be charged. But I was desperate so I did. I didn't have months of coupons saved up so I wasn't expecting major savings just yet. I was wrong. The first few weeks I used "The Grocery Game" I saved, on average, 50%. Before them I saved about 25% to 30%. In one trip to the store I more than paid for their fee and all the newspapers for that month.

I've been using them for 2 months or so now. My savings is generally 80% or better at CVS and Walgreens, and about 50% to 75% at Bakers and HyVee. My pantry is bursting, as are my non-food item shelves. I literally have 2 open containers of laundry detergent and 17 unopened bottles plus 4 bags of Tide Stain Release. I have 22 boxes of spaghetti noodles, 14 tubes of toothpaste, 23 deodorants (plus 2 open), 12 cans of kidney beans, 17 boxes of cereal, and the list goes on and on. Just in 2 months.

Some people say, "there is a lot of processed foods in coupons and I won't use those!" Well, neither do I! I buy a lot of healthy foods (and now can buy treats for my kids. I have 4 bags of morsel chips of some variety waiting to be made into cookies), and I still save. My List shows what produce is at it's cheapest and where. I bought 4 lbs of strawberries this weekend for $4. Also, just in non-food items you can save a major amount. Who doesn't need laundry detergent? My husband insists on using Charmin Toilet Paper which is ridiculously expensive. I use cloth most of the time and the kids couldn't care less. I have 50+ rolls stocked away of his favorite bath tissue. There were some months where I had to buy the cheap stuff and Chris waited until he was at work to use the bathroom. I haven't yet had to pay for a tube of toothpaste.

I firmly believe in giving back whenever, and however you can. I donate a lot every year to the local food pantries. If an item goes on a very good sale, that I know we would never eat or use, I'll buy it and donate it. We went from having to be very very careful with our grocery budget to being able to donate to others.

If you'd like to check out the website its thegrocerygame.com. If you decide to sign up I'd love to have your referral!

Dusting this thing off!

It's been a while. I must get back into the habit of blogging. I enjoy doing it, but find myself getting into the habit of questioning who I am doing this for. Its not for anyone else, this is for me. To document MY life, to write down my reflections, gather my thoughts, and I share with other people in case they are curious. But at the end of the day this is for me. I need to stop worrying about offending someone with my posts, or not posting things because of how I may be perceived. This is MY blog, and you are welcome to read it or not :)

Day 1 with no pop

Today was my first day starting my new pop challenge. I attempting to change my pop habit and only consume it on the weekend. This morning I woke up super early to get my workout in. Charlie woke up twice so my workout wasn't as strong as I would have liked, but I still got one in. Waking up early makes me quite tired but at the same time I feel very accomplished. I can workout, and clean the house before the kids wake up.

Lunchtime kind of sucked. I really wanted a pop, but had water instead. I haven't had dinner yet, but that will be tough as well. I'll probably make up my daily glass of lemon water (used to cleanse my body and hopefully increase my fertility/chance of conceiving a girl). I had a minor caffeine headache earlier but I had 4 chocolate covered coffee beans and felt better. I also noticed that I was a lot hungrier mid afternoon and had to have a snack. I'm normally nursing my lunch pop all afternoon which curbs hunger.

I must also shamelessly plug my husbands blog. He is still doing the Primal Diet (I had to quit as it caused me massive depression) and blogs about his diet and workout routine. You can find his blog here http://occasionaljark.blogspot.com/. He blogs with his best buddy, David, who is also a good friend of mine and the namesake of our son David.