It has been 14 days since my last confession….
Not really, just my last blog post! (I’m not really Catholic either, I just thought it sounded funny, haha. Hope no one takes offense to that.) Holy cow does time fly when you’re having fun, or in my case carting 4 kids around town, keeping them busy, and trying to organize my life at the same time. So here are my confessions, yes I’m airing a little bit of my dirty laundry…
Confession #1. My basement is a complete mess.I am NOT a hoarder. But my basement was beginning to look like it. I had the last six months or so of recyclable material piling up in my basement. I had newspapers, plastics, cans, bottles, cardboard, and whatever else. I can only upcycle so much material myself, this was just overwhelming. My issue?? The dump sticker! We had a sticker on my hubby’s truck but not on my car and around here they go on sale in June. I refused to pay for a half a year sticker for my car. I want my money’s worth darn it! Every week I tried to get my hubby to lend me his truck and he can go stylin’ in my minivan to work. Did that happen? Fat chance, which is why I sat in this predicament for so long. I was running out of room to shove things and trying to clear paths just to get to my craft room or the laundry. Sorry hubby but you’re admittedly a little stingy with your truck. He knows this, we’ve had this conversation.
AHHHHHHHHHH!!!
There were 3-4 more piles of newspapers 2 stacks deep just like this. UGH.
Every time I went to craft something, I had no room to work. No matter how hard I tried to organize my craft room, I couldn’t. I had no room. Recyclables exploded everywhere. So to craft I would bring a bag or box of stuff upstairs, then back down stairs in a pile. I never had the room to get in there and really put stuff away. So needless to say my life has been complete chaos.
Sheesh! Just outta control.
Finally we got our new dump stickers — one for my car too, because I do the recycling.
Only having an hour or two of time (little people naptime around here) to myself where I could get into the basement to clean, it has taken me the last two weeks and I’m still not finished. But this is what I have been up to the last 14 days…
Five or so runs to the dump in my minivan and I can finally move around in the basement. It’s far from fully clean and organized but I can at least see the floor and it’s a start.
Confession #2. I am slacking with my coupons. I get so many inserts from week to week that sometimes I fall behind and they pile up. I found 4 boxes of coupon inserts from months ago that I apparently lost behind my recycling junk. This was from when i tried to use the box method of not cutting all my inserts. That hurts. I send all my expired coupons overseas to an Army post and I have even been behind in that. To see all these expired coupons go to the recycling bin bothered me. The overseas posts can accept expired coupons for up to 6 months past the expiration, but you shouldn’t send anything more than 2 months expired. This gives them time for mail travel, then sorting time, and getting them to the families that can use them. These were beyond a usable expiration.
My problem? Well when I started couponing I used the binder method. This works for me because I am organized and I can easily find the coupons I need when I need them. However, I started getting a little overwhelmed with the amount of inserts I was recieveing. I even shared them with friends and I fell behind with my clipping. I decided to shift gears and use the box method that invloved NOT cutting up the inserts. You have to look up online in coupon databases to find the coupon and which insert it came from. Then you look up the insert by date and VOILA, you have your coupons. Yes this saves clipping time because you are only cutting the coupons you need. But as you can see, THIS METHOD DOES NOT WORK FOR ME. Works for other people, but NOT ME. I lose track of what coupons I have, I let too many expire, and some databases don’t HAVE every coupon. I can’t tell you how many times I KNEW there was a coupon for a specific item and I couldn’t find it. BAD BAD BAD. If you are a couponer, the first big trick is staying organized with a method that works for you. The more organized I am the more money I save.
Confession #3. I have been nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award by fellow blogger friend at Colouring With Yarn (an awesome little blog with tons of nifty knitting and crocheting inspirations!) and I still have not sat down to do my THANK YOU and my big blog post for this!!!!
So here I am making my “Half-New Year Resolutions.” I say half because it’s now half-way through the year and I don’t recall making any New Year’s resolutions.
Resolutions:
1) Get organized. This includes coupons, craft room, and recycling items.
2) Stay on top of the stuff I am organizing….DON’T FALL BEHIND. It is so difficult to get ahead after you have fallen behind. No one wants to look at a gigantic pile of laundry, but the longer it sits there the LESS I want to attack it.
3) Keep up with my blog posts. I admit that I like my blog and what I have started here is really something. I enjoy this and I need to keep up with it. Two weeks is WAY TOO long between posts. I was doing really great for a little while and kept my posts not more that 2 or 3 days apart. So NO MORE THAN 3 DAYS between posts. Does that sound fair?? I would like to do a post every day or every other day at best but I’m going to commit to less than 3 to keep it fair to my crazy little life here.
What have you been up to these first few weeks of summer? Did you let some of your organizing go? I really hate getting SOOOOOO behind with stuff. Ever let things pile up and you just can’t bring yourself to start attacking it? Do you keep your coupons in a binder or boxes?
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Clever Catastrophe 