This week, I made some significant progress on one goal in particular: Organize and consolidate my craft rooms.
I wish I had taken some before pictures of my old craft room…but if you’re a creative person, I’m guessing that you’ve probably gone through the craft-room-looks-like-a-bomb-exploded phase too. That’s pretty much explains what I was dealing with. So, I took a vacation day from work, sent Little Man to daycare, and spent 8 full hours on a very focused cleaning and consolidating of my craft rooms. Believe it or not, I’ve still got some work ahead of me…but I think I can probably knock the rest of it out in a few hours on the weekend/nights.
One of the big problems in my previous craft room was that I couldn’t see very many of my crafting options (colors, textures, etc.) making it a less-than creative environment. I’ve really made an effort to fix that in my new craft room.
A bulletin board was hung to organize my beads in a location that I can see them. I still have to get a bunch of poly bags to hang the rest of them, but this is a great start! The bulletin board was an awesome $1 yard sale find.
The spice rack that will eventually become home to my glitter collection was hung. Both the spice rack ($2) and the wire organizer thingamajig below it ($4) were awesome yard sale finds.
A scrapbook paper organizer was constructed from a wire rack organizer and zip ties – $12.99 on sale at Target.
This awesome paint rack holds more paint than I own for now (guess I should have photographed the backside–it’s pretty full), but it’s much better for keeping my paint VISIBLE ($7.99 with a 40% off coupon at A.C. Moore).
I moved my book shelf (craft books, ideas, etc.) into my new craft room.
I also did a MASSIVE cleaning of the other craft room and put items into individual storage bins to give everything a home. This was definitely a GREAT use of a vacation day AND, I still was able to pick Little Man up early for some quality time.
Cut costs and stockpile money: I made a little bit of progress here as well.
1. I set my first grocery budget: $160 per month. This was the first week on the budget and I stayed well within at $17.72. Using coupons matched to the sale I am able to pay anywhere for 1/3-1/2 off the retail price of my groceries…so that explains why I’m getting by so cheaply with groceries!
2. I made my own dishwasher detergent
3. I figured what my expenses are. It’s incredibly hard to budget without knowing where your money HAS to go. Here’s the monthly breakdown:
- Mortgage: $1429.60
- Phone/Internet: $83.75
- Security System: $22.99
- Car Insurance: $65.61
- Car Payment: 269.91
- Sewer: $37.90
- Cell Phone: $72.98
- Electric: ~$150
- Water: ~$19
- Trash: $48.43
- Groceries: $160
- Gas: $80
Total monthly (necessary) expenses: $2440.17
My 401K loan (that I took out to cover my custody battle) is taken directly from my paycheck before I ever get it, so it did not make the list above.
So there’s the weekly goal check-in. See ya soon!