State of disrepair? Or rock bottom?

I have been paralyzed by my stuff. I’ve always had an issue with stuff. When I was little I would organize all my toys & clothes & make sure they were all separate from my twin brother’s. When I got my own room I liked to have everything organized. I even created an office nook in my own bedroom, where all my school supplies were in order & my books were organized alphabetically. In my closet, shirts were organized by type, & then color, in rainbow order. I struggled with where to put white black grey and brown. Finally I decided on white grey black red orange yellow green blue purple brown.

 

As I got older, I drank to cope with my problem of stuff. In college, if I had a paper to write or a job interview, I would have to clean my whole apartment first and make sure everything was in order in my life, physically.

 

I’m going to skip a lot of stuff and get to the point, my apartment (& life) are a mess right now. My car is a mess. My car needs cleaning & maintenance. All my stuff is disorganized, I have way to much, and I think I may be a hoarder.

 

There’s a lot of snow outside, I have 4 days til Christmas with no presents for anyone, there is no daycare next week, man & I are going out of town for a wedding on new years, and we have to be out of our apartment by the 1st of January. We are moving in with man’s parents where all three of us are going to be sharing A room. So somehow I need to get my whole cluster of a life into one room, plus a storage unit. In the snow, with a two year old.

 

This is not going to be easy.

 

So I thought, well I’ll make it fun by blogging about my journey through my stuff, & take pictures along the way. I started outside taking pictures of my car, then inside I started taking pictures of my mess and clutter when my camera said “memory full",” so I tried to delete pictures and realized there were only 11 on there. The memory card was taken out and never put back in. Typical. I try to take pictures of how disorganized I am and am actually too disorganized to even do that. But! I could just put 11 at a time onto my computer if I use the usb cord! Eureka! But where is the usb cord? No freaking clue. Typical.

 

Well, here we go without pictures..

Cheapo

I want to buy a house. I want my own house that I can put all my things where I want them and make everything just the way I want it. And I want this house now. I don’t want it to be a far-off dream, a long-term goal, or something I do once I “get a real job” and a 401k and yadda yadda. I want to make it happen.

 

And I realized the only way to do that on my salary is to change my life. completely. extremely.

 

I have already cut down a lot on going out to eat and getting take out food. & I have somewhat started to wear clothes I already own instead of buying new ones. And I have talked myself out of several purchases lately.

 

But I’m talking more than this. I’m talking extreme. For example, the cookie swap that I didn’t want to do- set me back at least 14 dollars- that was the price of the cookies & the wrapping. But that doesn’t count the gas to get there, the frustration, setting me behind and up for failure the next day when I am all disheveled in the morning and decide to just go to dunkin donuts instead of having breakfast at home. & it also doesn’t count that while I was out I went into job lot and spent  $18 on things I don’t need..

 

While I’m at it, why does having friends & hanging out with friends have to involve spending money? why do we all have to get each other presents and go out for dinner or coffee? What I would love to do with my friends is get together & MAKE dinner. & not fancy-shmancy-trying-to-impress-each-other-dinners. I’m talking spaghetti. Who doesn’t love spaghetti with friends? Or when a group of us want to get together, why not do a pot-luck? I can get good at making one cheap but delicious dish, like a green bean casserole or this awesome broccoli salad that my aunt makes.

 

KIDS- They are like a toilet for your money, & I, being wise WAY beyond my years, know that they only get pricier with age. I know this because my childhood wasn’t that long ago, and I needed a lot of stuff. So in an effort to balance out the millions i will be spending on H in a few short years, I am going to go extreme at this end. His friends at school don’t care what he’s wearing, and neither do I. If it’s comfy and warm, it’s his. There is a local church that does a kids clothing swap every other Saturday morning. It’s completely free, you can bring clothes your child has outgrown, & take whatever you need. With the rate little kids grow, its just plain stupid to keep buying them new clothes when there are so many used ones available.

 

Kid activities & toys- free.free.free. All I’m spending money on is gas. H has like a million strollers, and we have a bike seat for him, so when it’s nice out, we’re walking to the park, or going for a ride. & when it’s not nice out, we’re playing with his bazillion toys that he already owns (thank you to all you kind people who got him bday presents- of my blog readers- Jen for the legos, & amy for the mr.potato head), going to the library for kid activities or just playing in their play area, and using free passes to local museums and stuff that I can get from the library. And I’m going to pack a lunch. Every time. Because those dollars will add up.

 

I feel like I have gotten off topic. Basically the moral of the story here is that I’m getting back to basics, I’m slowing life down, taking some time to enjoy the flowers, while putting as much money as possible in the bank. To buy my house that I want sooo sooo badly I will say no to new clothes, restaurants, dunkin donuts, and a social life for as long as it takes.

 

This is going to be really really hard, and those of you that know me well, know I am not an extreme person.

 

Which is why I am implementing my extreme money-saving cheapo-ness at the new year! Giving myself 15 more days to be ridiculously irresponsible! I am trying to think of everything I want & need so I can buy it now, before house saving starts. This includes a new wax pot from sally & the sticks & strips & stuff, which will probably run me about $50, getting some dry cleaning & clothing altering done & fixing up my sneakers, Christmas presents, & most likely new tires for my car, because I am going to need them soon. And I am going to get a haircut so I can prolong the next one as long as possible

 

Anything else I can hurry up and buy before my transformation?

Cookie Swap

Cookie swap- a fun holiday tradition.. wait, scratch that, a not fun, not tradition, stressful event that is totally sketchy. Why did I agree to this?

 

I agreed last week to do a cookie swap with a bunch of other moms at daycare, which involves making 8 batches of 6 cookies each. That equals like 70 cookies when I account for all the ones I will eat before I make it to the swap meet. & then I have to wrap them in cute little bags. Sounded fun. I imagined myself & my two year old happily decorating little Santa Claus and Christmas tree shaped sugar cookies with all different colors..

And then, the day came that I actually had to do it. Which is today.

 

H woke up at 4 am. Soaking wet. I had to change his diaper, jammies & his sheets. Then he told me he wanted to go poo on the potty. I was like “ok honey you can poo in the morning…nanights.” then didn't fall back asleep until right before I had to get up again. Scrambled around all morning, brought him to daycare, raced to work where my brain basically did this for 4 hours: “?!&#**$^&??/@!!&*” Then I went to Sam Diego’s for lunch where I pretended I was competing in an eating competition and 7 hours later, I am still full. Raced back home to pick up H, went grocery shopping, forgot cookie ingredients & toilet paper, forgot that I forgot those things, played for a while, fed him dinner, got him ready for bed, read 1000 books & kissed him goodnight. Then I sat down at my computer to “study” and remembered the cookie swap. And then I started writing this blog.

 

It is no 8:30 pm, I’m exhausted and full, and need to now stay up until all hours of the night baking cookies and preparing them in cute little torturous arrangements..

 

And once again I am asking myself, why do I agree to these things? Just. Say. No.

 

 

But I have a solution: going to Stop & Shop right now, buying 50 cookies, putting them in cute little baggies, & getting a whole bunch of awesome cookies from other people tomorrow, and hopefully I will have digested my Mexican food by then.

Food I want right now

I'm having serious blog writer's block. Probably the reason no one reads it. Because there ain't nothin hea

All I can think about when I try to think of somethingto write is this:

1. Nachos. Big pile of them. Like from Bobby Byrne's with cheese salsa lettuce tomatoes olives chives sour cream & BEEF mmmmm

2. Chocolate chip cookies. I made them fresh a few weeks ago (break n bake of course) and now I want more. A la mode! Vanilla bean!

3. Clam Chowder with a ridiculous amount of hot sauce in it. And a warm roll to dip dip

4. Italian Sub. With everything on it. Drowned in oil & vinegar. As salty & greasy as they come. With extra cheeeeeese.

5. Jalapeno poppers- haven't had those in forever and they're soooooooo good.



Good thing I'm broke or I'd be obese!!!

Grumpy Tiger

How can something so cute be so mad??!