May Challenge

Money Saving Mom's May challenge is freezer cooking. And while I find the idea fantastic, I'm not quite ready to jump in to all that just yet.


I do have some goals for May though.
1. Streamline my couponing.
2. Stick to a budget.
3. Spend my time more wisely.


With that said, I will be talking about various topics that are on my mind, while focusing on one of the three goals for May.


By the end of the month, I want to have a couponing "schedule" that works for me, a clear idea of where our money is going and where we need to cut back, and a regular schedule that reflects my priorities accurately, because my time now does not.


I'll update a few times a week hopefully, so please keep checking back :) Oh, and I'll share my couponing tips too, because I know so many of you are intrigued ;)

The Final Days (of the challenge)

I combined the last three days of the challenge...at least for the most part.
I've been lazy, or busy, every day this week. Lots of time has been spent at mom's just watching TV. 


I did have Thursday afternoon off, and did a ton of cleaning. I basically cleaned the whole house and finished the majority of my laundry ( finished it today). 


Between the 3 days, I did clean out and mop my closet floor, wipe down all windows (that hadn't been wiped the other week when Billy was cleaning), finished wiping down all mirrors and glass doors, and cleaned my bedroom blinds. Just have to do the downstairs blinds now.


I got a majority of my 5-7 things done each day. 
-Started going through my e-mails...little by little
-Made dinner plans with some people and returned messages
-organized my coupon binder -what a relief
-finally blogged-sorry for the slacking
AND I got to go see Kasie tonight! Yay!


One project I did during the week was cleaning the grates on my stove. I saw on Pinterest that you can put the grates in a gallon zip-loc, pour a few tablespoons of ammonia in it, and let them sit for 12+ hours. 

Here is what they looked like originally-who knows what all is burnt onto these.

After 12+hours ....EW.

They did NOT come completely clean...but a definite improvement. I will probably try this again and again until they are completely clean.

You can kind of see the yucky burnt stuff on the left and the clean and shiny part on the right.

Today's "challenge", the final challenge, was to clean the medicine cabinet. I keep all of our medicine in a bin that I've had for years.

The stuff next to the bin should be in the bin, but I didn't have room.

Few empty boxes, and some empty bottles- all in one bin, yay.

So all in all, this challenge was good. I attempted a lot of new things I had been wanting to try, and cleaned some things I probably wouldn't have bothered with if not for this challenge. I got into some routines I will keep, and have also found what doesn't work for me, and hopefully I will keep up with the cleaning on my own terms, or maybe even make my own challenge.

Moneysavingmom.com IS having another challenge for the month of May. I don't know what it is yet, so I don't know if I will be following along, but I will still be posting about cleaning/couponing/christian living as often as possible, so please keep checking in and reading. Let me know what your interested in reading about or what I might be able to post about to help in any way.

Thank you all so much for following along as I get my house all clean and organized, it's been fun :)

Have a wonderful weekend <3

Today's challenge was to clean out and organize all the kitchen cupboards and pantry. Lucky for me, since this challenge began, I already cleaned out under the sink, all my drawers, and the pantry. I had two cabinets that still needed some work though....

I'm not a big fan of this cupboard. Which is why it's all pretty much thrown in. I saw a pegboard on Pinterest that was framed and painted and used as a pot hanger....

But here it is, much more organized.

At one point, this held some food, and store bags, and appliances, and random other stuff.

Now it looks SO MUCH better:) all our kitchen gadgets.

The 15 minute challenge was to clean up the bathroom, which I got Billy to do. He also took care of sweeping and mopping the downstairs, which I didn't even ask-SCORE!

My to-do list included:::

1. Make dinner-it's cooking now

2. finish laundry- done and put away

3. swiffer upstairs-done.

4. make a chore list-done and agreed upon :)

5. go through my emails-that's for after dinner.

And finally get rid of 7 things

-a couple cds

-an old utensil holder

- a few foods that expired

- a bowl that belongs to a friend

- Ketchup that I bought for work

What a successful night :) I hope you are all enjoying following along this cleaning journey with me! I'm planning what I will be doing for the month of May...Any ideas?

Challenge-Day 16-FINAL WEEK!

Today's challenges included making a list of weekly goals, cleaning the vents in your house, picking up the clutter, and getting rid of 7 items.


Weekly goals include:
1. Solve my downstairs clutter issue. Everytime I clean it, it is all cluttered up within minutes.
2. Make dinner each night (already failed that one...)
3. write out my youth group ideas and plan a "planning day" with Pastor and Billy
and a few others that are unknown for now...


Today's to-do's were:
1. fold all the laundry- done.
2. make dinner-meatballs-not done.
3. clean up the clutter-done.
4. dishes-done.
5. vacuum downstairs-done.

Ugh, what a mess... I HATE folding laundry, can you tell? oh, along with making the bed, why make the bed when you are going to mess it up in a few hours?

Less than an hour later, bed made, laundry folded and away, AND I pledged all the wood ledges and dressers. Success!

And then the clutter...aka DISHES!

I really avoid emptying a clean dishwasher. I wait until I can talk Billy into doing it for me. That happened tonight, cause this sink was just getting gross.

I promise you, I will sleep better tonight because this is taken care of :)

Seven items to get rid of?

I put at least 3 more items in the yardsale bin, and threw some jackets and clothes in the "donate" basket, although they will probably also get to the yardsale bin eventually :) 

Cleaning vents? I wiped down the majority of our "vents" (aka baseboards) back when we were supposed to clean all that yucky stuff. I don't know, maybe I'll tackle some vent-type things this weekend.

More tomorrow :)

Where have I been?

Friday MoneySavingMom did not post a challenge, which was perfectly alright, cause I'm usually busy either way. Although, to be honest, I don't remember Friday.

Saturday however Billy and I went to Harrisburg with our Pastor for some youth training, which was wonderful.  We were also able to meet some other leaders and workers in our UMC conference :)

Sunday night we had a youth rally at our church, and with over 80 people in attendance, I would deff. say it was a huge success and I hope we get to do a lot more things like that in the future.

After this weekend I'm really looking forward to all the possibilities Billy and I have with this new journey we are one. We have a lot of people to help us out, that are full of helpful advice and tips, and willing to help out in any way that they can. Very reassuring! I believe God has some great plans in store for us :)

It's been an interesting week

Ah, what a week of being busy and having some fun. Oh, and enjoying having NO ambition whatsoever.

But I did get some things done. 

Starting with the Monday's challenge, which was to make weekly goals, clean up the clutter, and organize the silverware drawer. Made my goals, which have not been followed at all, and the rest wasn't hard at all.

Tuesday's challenge was to vacuum and clean the stove....this is what my oven looked like... EW.

I'll be honest, I hadn't actually looked in the oven since I moved in October. I think 90% of this is not from us...

A little baking soda and wet paper towels overnight and this was the result!!! So happy. The glass on the door is still real gross, but I think it's from the inside, so Billy and I will be taking it apart soon.

Wednesday's challenge was to clean off the refrigerator and wipe down the cupboards-done! Feels wonderful!

And today's challenge was to clean out the junk drawer, utensil drawer and wipe down mirrors and glass doors.

I asked Billy to windex today while he was home. He didn't touch the mirrors or glass doors BUT he cleaned the inside and outside of most of the windows-score!

My utensil drawer was cleaned out a few weeks ago, and while we do have a 'junk' drawer, we don't really use it, so it still looked the way it did when I put stuff in there nice and neat back in October.

So, I cleaned out under the sink, which has all our cleaning supplies, and I went through some stuff while I cooked dinner and got over 35 items to get rid of :)

I'm caught up now for the week!

cleaning products were either empty, given to mom, or being saved for a housewarming gift :)

Food for food pantry, odds and ends for yard sale, and garbage.

So enough on that...

I had no ambition this week. I didn't even get through my 5-7 things to do each day until yesterday. But everything still managed to get done that needed to :)

Sometimes I think I might be focusing too much on this than other, more important things. This challenge needs to be a guide, not a requirement.

I'm going to make more of a point to take care of my priorities, and re-focus on all the right things :) 

I hope you all will continue reading! Share me with your friends!

Question::

You saw my gross stove window....any tips to get it clean? I do believe spills may have gotten inside, but once I get it apart...any easy fix? Thanks!

It is way too nice out! :)

No pictures today, because I barely TOUCHED my to-do/challenge list.

It was way to nice out. :)

I had dinner at grotto with the grandparents, mom, and John, then did a bit of cleaning up downstairs, a load of laundry, then spent the night out on the porch at mom's house with Billy, Stef, mom and John.

Sounds good to me. Maybe tomorrow I'll at least get the dishes done.

Spring time <3