When we first bought our house over a year ago, we decided that we were not going to break the bank furnishing the house. I spent two months stalking the Craigslist ads looking for free and frugal deals! This country style table that matches our country style living, was a whopping $0!!! The chairs were purchases separately for a mere $15 for all four chairs! To incorporate our boys’ taste into the decorating, we used these four different colors that are in different parts of our house to paint the chairs. Cost of leftover paint- $0!!!

I posted on Friday how we made an extra $200 turning in scrap that we had around the house.  Today I want to talk more about “scrapping.”

 My husband and I always wondered why our friend had so much “junk” collected around his five acres.  As we came to find out, that is actually money laying around. He was hanging on to these things so he can turn them in for extra cash.  Any scrap metal, aluminum or steel that you have may be taken to a local scrap recycling center and they will give you money for it.   

 If you’ve got friends that need to get rid of old washers, dishwashers, refrigerators, car parts, etc. this is a great “extra money” business to start.  All you need is a way to haul these larger items and you are set!

 “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure!”

I mentioned last week that my husband got laid off and project pay-off is on hold.  Until he gets a new job we will be working on project surviving-without-dipping-into-our-savings….hopefully!

The biggest payment that we have coming up is our mortgage payment.  Fortunately, we have enough money in our checking account to pay that! 

How we made money this week: When we refinanced the first time, we were somehow left with about $40 dollars at the credit union.  I called right away to close the account but they told me that we would need to come in to the nearest branch.  The nearest branch is 30 minutes away so we could never go close it out after he got off work.  Each month they charged us a $5 maintenance fee.  We finally made it there and cashed out at $23 yesterday….woo-hoo! My husband also took in a trailer full of scrap metals that we had in the garage and ended up with $204!

I’ve been brainstorming ways for me to make extra money.  The thing is, I don’t want to commit to anything long term.  I want to continue to be home with my boys when my husband does go back to work.  Laying in bed last night, it came to me…..substitute teaching!  Before deciding to stay home with my oldest, I was a second grade teacher.  The idea of substitute teaching is perfect, I would love to go back into the classroom on a part-time basis!  I found three districts semi-close to us that are hiring substitute teachers.  I am going to submit an application and hope for the best!

While reading other blogs I’ve seen that people are using Money Saving Mom’s book to streamline their life, one chapter a time.  Although I consider myself pretty frugal, I am taking the challenge to become more organized to help save my family time and money.  In chapter one, she discusses setting goals for your life.  I have set my goals and have broken them down into smaller pieces as she suggests. 

My goal for this month is chapter 2′s focus; clearing clutter.  Controlling my clutter is a huge struggle for me.  The author suggests clearing your house of everything that you do not want/need at least twice a year.

My biggest problem is stacking papers and not filing them right away.  Then, when I am looking for a certain paper, I’m not quite sure where it is!  I usually waste 5-10 minutes or more each time looking for the lost paper.  If I put every paper into it’s designated spot then I could grab what I need in less than a minute.  I also hesitate to work on projects in certain areas of my house because the area is unorganized or work on a certain task because everything is unorganized. 

Since beginning to clear the clutter in my house last week, I am almost complete with the upstairs.  I’ve added several items to my donate/sell boxes.These are items that I repeatedly walk by knowing they don’t need to take up space in the house anymore.  I now deal with each piece of paper that comes in the house (bills, papers from pre-school, etc.) right away, instead of letting the papers pile up on my counter.  My next step is to tackle the basement.  I am going to put my most dreaded task of organizing the storage room, first.  The storage room is where I stash random items in a hurry and toss papers to be filed into a “waiting to be filed” basket.  Last but certainly not least, I need to organize my book business area.  Having this area organized I would know exactly where to find my resources when I need them instead of wasting time looking around for them. 

I’m learning that clearing the clutter in your house or work area can save you time and motivate you to accomplish your goals.

Along with the post I had planned for today outlining our plan for paying off the mortage on our 3-acre lot, our goal of paying off the lot is going to be put on hold!  My husband got laid off yesterday.  Fortunately we have several months of expenses saved up!  He’s going to take it easy and enjoy the kids this weekend while I take advantage of him being home and get caught up on a million things!! 

Knowing that the lay-off was possible we’ve been discussing jobs that will make him happy.  He works so hard for our family, it would be nice to see him at a job that he’s excited to go to every day or at the least doesn’t make him miserable.

I believe everything happens for a reason.  Without having set up a savings cushion, he would not be able to explore other options.

The last few times I ran my washer it kept stopping mid-cycle displaying error messages.  Instead of picking up the phone to have a repair man come, I did a google search with the name of my washer and the error messages to see if there was a simple way to fix it.  When my handy husband came home I showed him the repair advice I found.  He set to work and 20 minutes later it is fixed!!!

I’m thinking we saved at least $100 on a service call by fixing it ourselves!

Using credit cards are a trap.  Credit cards allow you to pay for things whether the money is really there or not!  Then you are stuck paying monthly for a purchase that is several weeks old already if you can’t pay the balance right away.  This is why many experts recommend tackling credit card debt first and then vowing to never use them.

 Vowing to never use your credit cards gives you time to really think about your purchase as you save your money ( do you actually need this particular item, do you actually really want the item or is it an impulse buy).

I will admit that we do use a few credit cards but we have become VERY disciplined.  If we don’t already have the amount of the purchase in our checking account than we do not buy!!!  After we bought our house we signed up for a LOWES credit card.  Initially we signed up because we needed a bigger lawn mower to cut our three acres.  As most of you probably know, LOWES offers a 5% discount when you use the card.  For that purchase I looked at the credit card as a coupon.  Five percent off a big ticket item is a significant amount of money.  This item was paid off before any interest was charged therefore we still only paid the price of the lawn mower.

 If your credit card balances are not already at $0, I challenge you to pay off this debt ASAP!

Only recently after reading several posts at www.moneysavingmom.com about goal setting / planning, I jumped on board.  She recommends taking your goals and breaking them into smaller, more achievable goals.  Since using this system, I have been getting so much accomplished!!

I found one of my old fancy planners that can double as a wallet.  It was given to me as a graduation gift over five years ago.  I love this planner because it is durable.  I can throw it in my purse and the pages don’t get crumpled. 

Everything goes in my planner; my daily tasks, projects lists, bills due and my goals for the week, month and year.  When I think of anything that needs to be done, it immediately goes into my planner.  I find that when I have my to-do list in front of me, I am far less likely to engage in activities that waste my time causing me to be unproductive.  I am motivated to get these items marked off as done!

What do you use to keep your life organized?

Thanks to www.moneysavingmom.com, I have realized the importance of menu-planning.  I only started really menu-planning the past two months.  Even with two major holidays in there that we hosted, I was able to bring our grocery budget from $400 to $300/month for a family of four. 

When you plan your menu you need to make a list to make sure you have all the ingredients.  When you go to the store with a list it keeps you from throwing things into the cart that you think that you need, which saves you money! 

Besides the relief in our checking account, I am no longer standing in front of the refrigerator wondering what I am going to make for dinner.

I’ll admit that my husband and I both hung on to things “just because.”  A few years back we decided to live a simple life.  Part of living that simple life is to not have things around that we do not want/need and that take up space.  Thanks to Craigslist, we are able to sell most of these items we don’t need.  We have sold several items on Craigslist from baby items to jeep parts to our old boat.  Most of the time we sell items to make room/money for “new” items we want/need from Craigslist.

When making a Craigslist ad for an item, I always include a picture.  When I am Craigslist shopping, I almost never look at a listing that does not have a picture.  When pricing the item, I try to price our items based on what I would pay for them and we usually sell quickly!  And last, but certainly not least, use your best judgment when meeting to exchange money and goods!