Super Slacker...at posting that is.

I'm a posting slacker.  I visited a friend and her new baby. The boyfriend's brother came home to visit, BBQ on Saturday afternoon, movie Saturday night, family party Sunday evening for our state holiday- Pioneer Day!

I have kept up on getting an item out of the house each day.

$9.99 Bowl Set

Day 3:

[purchase info] Costco- 2009

[time in my possession] 2 years

[last used] June 2011- Popcorn party at the end of the school year. (First and only time used)

[difficulty level in getting rid of it] Easy.  I loved the color of the bowls, but didn't need them.

[destination] Good friend who recently got married.  They needed a set of matching bowls.

$1 can of paint was a bonus- they needed to paint their deck chairs. I'm a sucker for mistinted paint. This particular color didn't quite match.

 

  

 

 

Day #4

[purchase info] random buckets of mistinted paint and laminate/vinyl floor glue

 

[time in my possession] 6 months- 2 years

 

[last used] Never

 

[difficulty level in getting rid of it] Easy-Middle of the road:  Floor glue- super easy.  I didn't end up needing it with the type of flooring I used in the craft room.

Since the paint hadn't been used yet, I figured it wouldn't be used in the near future. The problem I had

was the "wasting money" part.  All were mistinted paint- so when I have to buy paint again, I'll get the actual paint color I really love.

 

[destination] Habitat for Humanity-ReStore. 1276 South 500 West, Salt Lake City, Utah  84101

 

Nuns, Shoes, and Savers...

Challenge Day #2

Today I did my first drop off at the new Millcreek Savers.  Big Brothers and Big Sisters benefit from the goods that you donate (they sell the items to Savers Thrift Store) and I get a tax donation form + a coupon.
This morning I gathered up some shoes that were piled up by my bedroom door, which meant the give away item of the day was a Pile O' Shoes!

Abbycat was very fond of these shoes- she enjoyed rubbing her chin on them. Coco buried her bones in them. I was tripping over them. They needed to go.

Minimizing Debt

Challenge Day #1

Today was my first official day to minimize and document.  From the moment I woke up I spotted items that will soon be heading out of my lovely abode. I also saw the piles of items that have been sitting for a month or more that have been ready to go to a new home (I know you’re thinking, “Why are they still sitting there?” I thought the same thing. I get distracted easily if I don’t take my Ritalin and then I forget or choose to step over it). I decided a pile counts as 1 item and anything that I've already grouped to send away.  Here are some other rules that are going around in my head: Do I have to go somewhere each day to get rid of something? What if I commit to one day/ week to drop everything off.  It will save time and gas- I'm trying to simply, right? Does listing items on amazon.com, etsy.com, or ebay.com count as getting rid of an item or is this in addition to? I'm thinking it should be in addition to since it hasn't left the house. I'm not giving this up. My shops are a secret to most of my friends, very few people know what my shops are called. I've had the ebay and amazon shops for 7 years, but just sold on ebay this past year.  Why have I kept this quiet- I don't have an good answer to this. I don't like copy cats? I was embarrassed that I had so much stuff (I was a closet hoarder)? It was a way to earn secret money that I could spend?

While I was thinking about the “rules” of the challenge I decided to take on the Credit Union.  They’ve been advertising a credit card for 7.99% all summer.  A few months back I had visited a financial planner to review my life and have had a goal to get a credit card that has a reasonable interest rate.  I had to rebuild my credit after a bankruptcy 10 years ago (yes, it was one of the hardest things I’ve been through) and I haven’t had the best relationship with credit card companies.  I didn’t have a choice in the early years in which cards I could get to establish new credit, and in the past 3 years, we’ve all had a hard time with credit cards limiting our credit because we were responsible users and paid off our debt.  There was nothing more exciting to me to get my limit slashed from $8000 to $1200 and an interest rate of 29.9% when I had a $0.00 balance.

I figured if I could qualify for this card, I could transfer the little debt that I do have, pay one bill a month at a lower interest.  It was a pipedream, but I bit the bullet, took a deep breath and went to the bank. To my surprise, I qualified and was thrilled to find out my credit rating had gone up 40 points over the past 2 months! This was one of those moments that I wanted to call my parents to tell them that I passed- but I am 32.  I called the boyfriend instead.

trashogram

While searching for a fantastic picture of Box Tops to use on my school weebly.com site, I stumbled across a very vivid and bright photo, which also included scissors (be still my teacher heart). The photo came from a site that included a little blurb, but what really caught my attention was the title:
box tops for education [trashogram]! I thought the word trashogram was fabulous and there was a word cloud/ side bar full of de-hoarding words.  I was sucked into reading more about this author's blog and her "no-retail shopping" challenge.  

She had a tidbit about Hoarders  and why she was doing the challenge, what was even more interesting to me and practical (at this point in my life) was her new challenge: