More Decluttering

This weekend, Hubby went camping for 3 days, so I decided to do some more decluttering. Yesterday, I went to work our master bath sink. I was pretty ruthless and filled up a plastic grocery bag with stuff to donate and another one with stuff to trash. (No one wants my grubby old makeup bags.) Would you believe we had SIX bags of cotton balls??? For some reason, Hubby would forget to take cotton balls when he went camping and then would stop somewhere and buy them. I condenced them and now have 3 bags. I told Hubby not to buy ANY MORE cotton balls. It is nice and roomy now. I found that we had a plastic shoe box FULL of travel size and hotel soaps, shampoos, conditioners, lotions, etc. I am going to figure out a place to put those so that we remember to use them when we go on trips.

Then, I tackled the drawers of my nightstand. I just throw stuff in them and have not gone through them since we moved. LOL! I don't know how the stuff in there seemed to accumulate like it does. Most of the stuff in there that needed to come out was just stuff to go to the dumpster. I did have fun reading through cards and letters that Hubby has sent/given me over the years. Yes, I keep them. I also had some cards and special notes from the kids. They are all still in there, but both drawers are much neater and less cluttered.

I told Hubby we need to tackle our book collection next. Though they are out of the way and neatly organized on multiple bookshelves, it is time to go through them. We plan to move to a downstairs apartment next year and I don't want to pay someone to move 30 boxes of books. I know I can find a home for some of our beloved books. I rarely read books more than once, so I will keep a few. Hubby reads some over and over again, so of course we will keep them. But the "meh" books can go to new homes.

So, that was my productive Sunday. Oh, and I also did some laundry. (Saturday was running errand day.)

Inspired by Sluggy

Inspired by so many of Slugmama's posts about cleaning, decluttering and donating, Hubby and I started off the year by cleaning!

Well, first the big New Year's celebration. I was off on New Year's Eve, so Hubby and I went out for lunch at the Pizza Hut buffet. He loves to go when I have a weekday off and surprisingly, even with all the days off I took last month, we did not go until New Year's Eve. After eating, we went to the grocery store. Yes, I allowed Hubby in the grocery store. LOL! We did our weekly shopping to get it out of the way and Hubby did NOT make us go over my comfortable amount. (I won't call it a budget, since it is rather flexible, but I prefer to keep it around $50 -$60 a week. Note to self: Never go to the grocery store on New Year's Eve. I don't know why so many people were there. They were neither buying party stuff or using up about to expire coupons. They were just shopping.

We relaxed the afternoon away, then went out to eat Mexican Food....our traditional New Year's Eve "out." But afterward, instead of going home, we went to the movies and saw The King's Speech. Excellent movie! We got home around 10:30, but I was wired from drinking "leaded" iced tea at dinner, so I stayed up until about 2am. I got to welcome in the new year at midnight. WooHoo! Sometimes Hubby and I are asleep before then. LOL!

New Year's Day, we planned to just hang out all day. But I decided to start taking down the Christmas tree. I told Hubby that while I was at it, I would go through the 6 boxes of Christmas stuff we had and see if there was anything I could weed out. I ended up with 2 boxes to donate and our decorations are down to 4 boxes. Yeah! (This was what was inspired by Sluggy.)

Sunday, Hubby decided he was inspired to clean out the second bedroom closet. It is just used for storage and it is where the ebay stuff lives. We ended up being pretty ruthless with stuff and bagged up 4 bags of donations. 4 tall white kitchen trash bags, not some little bags. I was impressed with our donate pile!

Usually, we do this kind of thing when we are getting ready to move, but we haven't moved in a while, so I guess it was time. And lest anyone think our timing was bad and we should have donated a couple days earlier for the tax deduction...we don't do that. When we want to get rid of stuff, we don't mess with receipts and lists and stuff. We are just keeping it from the landfills.

Thanks for the year long inspiration, Sluggy1

FREE ebook 1/5/11 only! Debt Free for Life

I just got an email about being able to get a free download of David Bach's Debt Free for Life . I haven't read it yet but it got some good reviews on Amazon.com. 

I figure we might learn something and it's free! Go get it!

Happy New Year to all my bloggy friends!

I have today off! Yeah! Hubby and I went and had pizza for lunch and then went to the grocery store. Note to self: never grocery shop on New Year's Eve. It was a madhouse. But we needed to get some blackeyed peas for tomorrow. And we needed a few other things.

We may go out for Mexican food tonight. We usually do that on New Year's Eve, so I guess it is a tradition. As well as ringing out the old year, we are celebrating an anniversary. Hubby and I met 15 years ago a little after midnight on New Years. It was one of the luckiest nights of my life!

Everyone have a wonderful New Year and be safe!

I need a new name!

I recently realized that I need to change my blog name. It was originally "Looking forward to a more frugal 2009." Then last year I changed it to the current.

Well, in 2 days it will no longer be 2010. I don't kow if I want to keep looking forward or if I need to call it something else.

I am giving myself a headache. LOL!

Back at work and I am swamped!!

I am back at work today and despite the fact that our office is pretty empty this week, I am SWAMPED! But I decided to take a short break to let you now about our Christmas.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were so unbelievable stress-free and quiet. Hubby and I truly loved it. On Christmas Eve, we just finished some last minute stuff, I baked 4 loaves of Cranberry Almond Bread and went to eat Mexican food for dinner. Yummy! Christmas morning, we leisurely opened our gifts from/to each other. I am not going to list what I got, because I was incredibly spoiled and feel a little guilty. We were not supposed to go crazy buying for each other since our television died and we had to buy a new one a couple of weeks ago. THAT was supposed to be our Christmas gift.

But Hubby can't help himself. LOL! Fortunately, he did not buy extravagant gifts, just a lot of them. But I loved everything. He also loved all that he received. That afternoon, I cooked a turkey for the get together on Sunday and then baked 4 more loaves of Cranberry Almond Bread, just because I was in the mood.

Christmas morning, we went and picked up Jacob, our almost 4 year old grandson, and got to MIL's around 11:30. Samantha and her boyfriend, John, got there a little later. Then Mere and her brood showed up around noon. We ate first, since everyone was hungry. Of course, Theo wanted to open presents, but we made him wait until everyone ate. We had a ridiculous amount of delicious food!

The boys had a ball opening gifts and we had a ball watching them. MIL gave everyone (adults) $100. Hubby and I had told her over the last couple of months that we did not want her to give us money. Especially when she has some unexpected expenses. We had both told her that if she gave it to us, we would just hide it somewhere in her house for her to find. LOL! She DID give it to us and we DID hide it. She found it yesterday. She called and I again explained to her how much we appreciated it, but we wanted to help her out with Christmas. She thanked me and will keep it. Hubby and I are really glad.

We had a wonderful, wonderful stress free celebration and even MIL admitted that it was really nice splitting it up the way we did, as her house is getting too small for the entire family to be together at the same time. Well, the family is getting bigger. Her house is not shrinking.

Here is a pic of me and my babies:

From left to right, Jacob (will be 4 in February) Theo (4) and Wyatt (20 months) (I told Hubby not to try to get a perfect pic....just to get one. LOL!)

Merry Christmas to all my bloggy friends!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful day, filled with family, friends and much joy!