Finance Gets Personal

I’m currently working on Apartment Therapy’s Eight-Step Spring Cure, which is an eight week process for making your home more organized, beautiful and healthy. I’ve been apprehensive about how much “curing” is going to cost, so I’m sharing my progress on trying to cure on a budget.

I am sweating my butt off thanks to extensive vacuuming combined with our refusal to turn on the A/C until it reaches 80 degrees outside. But, the living room is clean!

These are the assignments for Week 4:

• Clean up living room and related closets
• Repairs are being taken care of this week
• Declutter all books and media
• Cancel 75 percent of catalogs you receive
• Empty Outbox this week
• Confirm what you need to increase or decrease color in each room
• Identify what you need to increase or decrease softness in each room
• Cook three meals at home this week
• Send out your invitations

Somehow, our living room is the dirtiest room in the house. I suppose it’s because we spend the most time there, my husband eats his lunch on the couch when he works from home and because the doggie door leads into that room. It took a long time, but I washed the walls, cleaned the baseboards, vacuumed the couches, cleaned the fan blades and even fixed the massive tangle of cords behind the TV. I bought the following: Cord organizer ties (3 packages at $3.19 each at Target), a bamboo box to store PS3 games ($12.99 at Target) and a fabric-covered box to store PS3 cords and controllers (on clearance for $11.94 at Target).

I honestly haven’t made much progress on the repairs this week. Theoretically, I would be having someone “take care” of them this week and next week, but I can’t afford it without using some of my extra debt payment. I did replace another light bulb though

Decluttering books and media is a daunting task. I like the idea of getting rid of my CD collection and keeping them all on my hard drive/iPod, but my electronic organization system is chaos right now (for example, I’ve never even backed up this blog, nor do I really know how). My iPod is set up for a Mac, but I use a PC now (the Mac with all the music saved on it is in my stepson’s room). Once my husband gets his new computer, I plan on consolidating all my files there. As far as DVDs go, I am not allowed to get rid of any. My books are already heavily pared down from last year’s garage sale, and I don’t tend to be much of a book collector anyway. I do plan on going through these three categories for obvious “duds” sometime before our garage sale on the 16th.

Canceling 75% of catalogs you receive is something I may do in the future, but don’t have time for right now. In fact, I’ve done little besides clean the living room this week since I’ve been helping my husband plan the details of the basement layout (he took off work this week to do the framing). Trust me though, I’d rather be cleaning and organizing than drawing a bathroom and its fixtures to scale.

I’ll be emptying the outbox next weekend at my garage sale. I’m going to start pricing and organizing my items for the garage sale this week, and list some of the more expensive items on craigslist and eBay.

I’ve thought a little about color, but I haven’t spent any money in this category. Most of my rooms need a little more color.

“Softness” is added to rooms through things like curtains, rugs and pillows. My rooms are currently too “hard” since I don’t have any area rugs or drapes (most of our windows just have cheap white vinyl blinds - yuck!).

Of course, cooking at home was the easiest part of the week. I even did one myself! If sloppy joes count as a meal, that is…

I have no invitations to mail since I haven’t really planned a party. I think when I get finished I’ll start planning the cheesy board game night. I’ve just got way too much on my plate right now.

While some of my enthusiasm has waned, I’m halfway done, and things are looking great! This week I spent a total of $40.

On to Week 5, which focuses on the office. My main goal is to organize all the paperwork I have flying about the room, without much concern for aesthetics since we’ll be moving the office to the basement this fall (and getting real furniture instead of card tables and folding chairs - yay!).

Photo Credit: Kelley+Interior+Design,+rose+living+room by sarahleeab, used under Creative Commons Licensing.

Here we go again.

It started with a few innocent purchases at Ann Taylor for 50-90% off.

Then, I started buying anything I wanted that was on sale since I had a $50 off $100 promotion code.

After the promotion code expired, I spent $6 at T.J. Maxx on “The Everything Home Storage Solutions Book,” and started organizing our bathroom and walk-in closet. Of course, this required a new ironing board ($20), bins for the closet ($30), a row of hooks ($16), a recycling container for under the sink ($7) and a wall cabinet ($50). So that’s $123 so far, and I haven’t even bought wooden hangers for the fourth of the closet that still needs them, or bins/boxes/shelfs for the toiletry stockpile under the sink.

I’m out of control.

My husband called me on it last night, as I was sitting on the floor of the bathroom with a million pieces of the wall cabinet I was trying to assemble (with no success, I might add).

“How much did you spend tonight?”

“Um, $70.”

“I thought you weren’t going to spend very much money on this!”

“Yeah, well we need a cabinet to keep all the medicine in instead of having it in a big heap under the sink!”

“Look, that’s great that you want to organize the house, but don’t you remember the talk we had last time this happened? We can do this kind of stuff when we’re debt free.”

“What, in three years? I can’t take it anymore! Our house is always a mess and I’m embarrased to have people over!”

“We just need to clean the house. There’s no need to buy all this stuff!”

(Crying now) “But the reason our house is never clean is because we’re unorganized! I can’t organize stuff when we have nothing to put things in!”

“Have you been taking your medicine?

“Yes!!!!”

“Are you almost out or something?”

“No!!!!”

“Are you bailing on me?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s not fair. You know, I’d like to buy a new computer or go on vacation, but you don’t see that happening! I know it’s for the good of the house, but you need to find something else to do.”

“But I’m bored!

“So get a hobby. I’m going to get a hobby.”

“Everything I like to do costs money - photography, fashion, decorating…”

“So let’s find a free hobby”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, let’s look online. But, I think I need to take your debit card.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. It’s in my purse.”

(Holds up credit card) “You’re not using this are you?”

“No.”

“OK, well I’ll leave that in here for emergencies. Where’s all your cash? You only have like $25 in here? Did you already spend all your money?”

“No, I just haven’t gone to the ATM yet.”

“OK, well go to the ATM tomorrow, then give me your card. If you put all the cabinet pieces in a pile and put all the little pieces in a bag, I’ll put it together Wednesday night after work.”

“Really? OK.”

So, it’s back to cash only for me…

Photo Credit: Reorganizing my closet by Melilotus, used under Creative Commons licensing.

I was so proud of myself last year.

In 2007, my big, fat federal refund was in my checking account by February 15. It was the first time I hadn’t waited until April to do my taxes. Believe me, I know where the city’s post office that’s open ’til midnight on April 15 is.

This year…not so much. Once I figured out how much I owed/was getting back, I put my taxes in a pile on the floor until April 13. And you know how that went…

So, boys and girls, it’s time to get organized for next year’s taxes. It’s actually really easy (or, at least according to my definition of “organized.”)

Step One: Find a manila folder, basket, cookie tin, etc., and label it “2007 Taxes.”

Step Two: Put all your tax-related receipts in it as you acquire them. Look at your 2006 tax return to see what you had - receipts for charitable donations, medical expenses, mileage…you get the point. Then put your highly efficient organization system somewhere that’s easily accessible so you will actually use it.

Step Three: Set a date to do your taxes. Yes, right now. Employers are required to send out W2s by January 31, and my Outlook calendar says I’m free on February 9, 2009, so I’m going to make an appointment to start my taxes that day. I’ll set a reminder for the following week to finish up. Voila! Right?

(This post was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted at The Happy Rock.)