back in the world of renting

In our thirteen years of marriage we have moved 11 times (this is #11). I don't even know how many times I moved before that growing up in the Air Force and throughout college. I don't mind moving. In fact I often embrace change and moves as fresh starts. But I'm not excited to be renting again. I AM excited about building a house and if renting is part of the equation, bring it on!

But in our 11 moves, we've had some bad renting experiences and some good.

Our first apartment (basement to boot) had both good and bad. The good was that it was around the corner from one of my best friends and just a few blocks from BYU where I was a student (and we only had one car so I needed to walk most of the time). Also good was the cheap rent ($350/month and no utilities). Bad was that our sink plumbing was somehow connected to our owner's washing machine plumbing. It's not fun to come home to black sludge oozing out of your kitchen sink when something goes wrong with the washer upstairs.

The home we rented before we bought our current house had a mostly non-working oven. Not good when you live there for a year and don't know if your casserole gets to finish cooking or not before the oven shuts off. Or the birthday cake. Or the muffins. Or the cookies. Troy and I are not shy about voicing concerns but somehow the landlords kept putting off repairs and maintenance and did not want to fix things on the house so the oven remained like that pretty much until right before we moved. That was just one of MANY things wrong in that house.

And now we are back to renting and I'm a little worried. Things looked okay when we checked out the house and it has the size and rent price we were looking for. But I think we are discovering that things were not quite as they appeared. I'm hoping the things we noticed while moving our stuff in were just minor things. AND that the odd smell fades eventually. Please, oh please fade.

The good about this house is that it's next door to really nice friends. Also good is that we only have a 6 month lease. I can live anywhere 6 months, especially if it means saving a lot of money.

February yard sales, family slumber parties, and shiny paint

Life is a bit crazy right now. Moving is always crazy though, isn't it? No matter how organized you try to be, chaos always seems to take over right before the final part of the move. Okay, so we aren't living in total chaos, but I feel on the verge! Here's a little bit of what we're up to.

February yard sales

Although I didn't have much time to prepare because our garage was completely stuffed with moving boxes until Friday evening, I went ahead and had a yard sale yesterday. I had put an ad in the local paper that came out on Thursday. Troy stapled up signs on the two yard sale bulletin boards the night before. And Saturday morning I starting spreading out our piles and boxes of purged items around the garage. Troy and Christian headed off to the chess tournament. And Anna and Emily were picked up by a friend for a playdate partway through the sale so it was just me. I didn't mind at all because it's much easier to get rid of the my family's stuff when they aren't around, ha ha!

I was surprised that people started showing up 30 minutes before my sale was supposed to start and for 2 hours there was a steady flow of people. I think it helps that we don't have snow and temperatures are in the 40s. Not bad for February. I didn't care about making money - I just wanted to mostly get rid of things. Our grand total was $132. Not fabulous, but hey - it's something. At the end of the sale, I boxed the remainder up and called a local thrift store to come pick it up. And it felt so good to be rid of all that excess.

Family slumber parties

Right now we are having one big family slumber party. The beds are down and moved over to the rental house and all our mattresses are downstairs on the floor. The kids are sleeping in the living room and we are sleeping in the family room. The kids found it challenging to get to sleep with some of the lights on and Troy and I boxing up kitchen items. And we found it challenging to encourage the kids to sleep but still get a few things done. Tomorrow we are planning on taking the mattresses to the rental and spending our first night there. I'm ready for the slumber party to end.

Shiny paint

I filled the nail holes in the house and started the paint touch-ups this weekend. Fortunately, we still have paint for all the colors in our house and they match perfectly. UN-fortunately, I think time has altered the paint and now a few of the colors seem to have a slight shine to them. You can't tell unless you look at the wall in certain lights or angles, but the perfectionist in me is annoyed. I really don't want to go and get a quart or each of these colors to touch up a few inches here and there in each room (especially since the new owners might repaint anyway or hang pictures in those same spots and cover it up) but still - shiny paint is not cool. What to do?

Other stuff

I'm skipping Menu Monday this week. Hope you don't mind but I really didn't think anyone would be interested in reading about all the canned soup, leftovers, and pancakes we'll be having during our week of moving/cleaning/unpacking/making do.

I will post my Beat the Budget summary of this week sometime this week. I still managed to stay under budget (I think with 1.02 to spare) but haven't added up the categories yet. Still loving couponing and paying with cash!

I just don't get or enjoy football. Sorry, superbowl fans. I'd rather watch almost anything else and almost any other sport. That's all I have to say about that.

filling the holes in the walls

That's not the most interesting blog post title, is it? But that's what I'm doing today and nothing more enticing is coming to mind.

I'm still waiting to get the keys to the rental house. For some reason it's taking a full week to clear the back yard of some dog poop, bags of leaves, and then get the rest of the leaves raked and bagged. The owner of the house is dragging her feet to get the job done and today when I spoke with the real estate lady that will be managing the rental unit, she felt frustrated, too. But Windemere's rental policy is that we can't start moving anything in until the property is officially ready and cleaned up.

You'd think the owner would get the job done as fast as possible to get renters in there and have the money starting rolling in, right? I guess not.

So last night we called our friends (the awesome men from church that are always kind enough to offer service) to cancel moving our things in. One poor guy that we didn't know was coming didn't get a call and showed up anyway. It was so nice of him and Troy and I enjoyed chatting with him for a bit before we sent him on his way.

We are hoping today is the day to get a ton moved so that we can really start finalizing this move. Not to mention that I advertised a garage sale for tomorrow. And I can't get anything organized for that until my garage is cleared out of the tons of boxes and furniture waiting in there ready to be moved.

So today, I think I'll just fill the holes in the walls.

Frugal Friday - using cash for your budget problem areas

Most of you have probably heard it before. Using cash to pay for purchases will help you stay under budget.

I used to think that seemed like a hassle. I thought I'd lose money, be carrying around too much cash, I wouldn't be able to track my spending as easily as I do using debit cards and with Quicken, blah, blah, blah. It just seemed so old fashioned to me.

My tip (and what's working like a dream for me so far this year), is to use cash for the problem areas in the budget. I'm never going to use cash to pay my mortgage, or to pay our medical bills, or the car insurance, or stuff like that. And I don't want to take a ton of cash out of my account and that is okay. We use online bill pay for things like that and do just fine. But who says you can't use cash for just one, or two, or a few categories you are working to improve?

If you've been reading my blog faithfully - and really, why shouldn't you be *wink* - you know that I've owned up to the fact that we (meaning 80% ME) really have struggled to stay under budget for household and groceries for our entire marriage (13 years in case you are curious). That's a long time to feel lame at something. I fully acknowledge that I'm a grazer at the grocery store (that's my name for the mindless wandering at stores and purchasing of odds and ends that seem necessary or interesting but are not on the list).

Spending wisely on groceries and household items really matter to me and I knew THIS WOULD BE THE YEAR I would finally master it. Why? Because it's ones of the main areas that you can control and that can have a big impact on how much you spend or save ever year. Think about it - you can't do a ton to lower certain things (yes, there are things you can do, but once you are committed to certain payments, you don't change them) such as your insurance rates, your mortgage, your taxes, etc. But every week you can decide how much or little you'll spend on food and personal needs.

So the biggest thing that's been helping me lately (besides learning the couponing thing), is using cash. Once a week I withdraw cash for the areas of the budget I'm working to improve, which for me is just 3 areas at the moment (1. groceries/household, 2. personal spending for Troy and I, 3. allowance for children that they have to earn).

I have a very cool large wallet that I got at Staples which has a few zippered compartments. So sorry I don't have photos. I did take photos but can't find them at the moment - they might be on my external hard drive.

I've assigned each zippered compartment in the wallet a category and put the cash I withdraw into it's section. I do track my spending in detail (I'll talk more about that in a future post), but just seeing right in front of me how much I have left has made a huge impact on my spending. I'm much more mindful of what I'll purchase at the grocery store when I know that I might run out of money. With a debit card, I always knew there was more and if I went over - oh well. Now, I just DO NOT go over. It's helped me tremendously.

So tell me - do you use cash? I'm curious as to how many of the frugal crowd use the cash system.

Now go check out all the other Frugal Friday ideas at Life As Mom.

2010 pinewood derby cars

For the first time (I think first time anyway),  neither Troy nor Christian placed at all as winners at the Pinewood Derby which was held last Saturday. A fun time was still had by them and our girls accompanied the guys while I packed. The designing and making of the cars is always fun for them though. Christian's car is the yellow one (lately his favorite color is yellow). And Troy designed his with a typhoon theme (hence, the wild blue waves and mini palm tree off the back). Typhoon Yuri happened in 1991 while he was serving a church mission in tropical Micronesia.

Since Christian did turn 11 a couple of weeks ago, he's no longer a Cub Scout so both he and Troy raced in the open class section.

I felt a little sad at the thought that this is probably our last Pinewood Derby. Ever. With no more babies in sight and Christian moving up to Boy Scouts, the Pinewood Derby years have come to an end. Silly to be nostalgic over it. But there's just something so endearing each year about watching my husband and son get excited about working together on designing and making something creative and fun. I sure love my two Scouters.

works for me Wednesday - grocery store price matching

I know this probably isn't the most original idea - especially to you couponing pros - but it has really been working for me lately! And I'm in the midst of moving madness, so here this is the best I could pull out of my head right now.

I've known for a while that Walmart and a few other stores price match. Although I don't take advantage of it that often, the day after Thanksgiving I price matched and got Target's awesome doorbuster price on their Barbie scooters later in the day at Walmart. It saved me from having to drive an hour to the nearest Target and from having to be there at 5:00 a.m. just for the scooter. Yes, I did go to my local Walmart at 5:00 a.m. for their doorbusters, but forgot about price matching the scooters at that point and went back for them later when the crowds had died.

So I knew you could price match toys and electronics and cool stuff like that. But until recently I did not think about price matching GROCERIES! Learning that from a friend has been such a help. Because we only have two grocery stores in our town - Walmart and Safeway - I used to just miss out on all those amazing sales at Albertsons or Fred Meyer or wherever because I didn't want to drive an hour to get to them.

I still will be shopping at Albertsons once a month but the other weeks, I'll be taking my ad to Walmart to take advantage of those great deals. To my understanding, to price match you need to have the current ad with you, the price needs to be a specific dollar amount (for example 1.00, 2 for 5.00, 3.25, etc.). It CANNOT be 20% off, or Buy One Get One Free sales, or anything like that.

And although not all checkers are consistent, usually they only let you price match what the ad requirements are (such as limit 4, buy in increments of 5 to get sale price, etc.). BUT - if you break up your transactions (like you do at Albertsons), you can still get more than those 5 or however many the ad says.

One tip I have is to keep it SIMPLE. Don't try to price match 10 different things because the checkers get overwhelmed and annoyed. I have been keeping it to 2 or 3 different items (and usually I buy multiples of those items).

This last week I took advantage of Albertsons AMAZING Quaker sale and I did it 100% at Walmart. I usually would buy 15-20 boxes at a time and would have 5-10 boxes of each type. Make sense? For example, today I bought 10 boxes of Quaker chocolate chip granola bars, 5 boxes of peanut butter granola bars, and 5 caramel nut granola bars. The checkers seem to be much happier when the numbers are simple.

Another tip - always check your receipts (and try and keep on eye on the tally as the checker is ringing in your items). Out of the 6 times I price matched this last week, 5 transactions were messed up. They either left the original box price on, or didn't scan enough boxes, or missed a couple of my coupons. And standing in line at the customer service desk to fix it is not fun.

And yes, you can still use coupons on price matched items. Nice, eh?

There it is - my WFMW tip! Check others out at WE ARE THAT FAMILY - and have fun!

lane cedar chest

Another piece that we have decided to sell is a beautiful cedar chest - for $200. I don't think there is a single scratch on this. It has a velvet box inside that sits on a tray just below the lid. Remember, for anything we've posted we are willing to hear offers.

entertainment center, televsion and accessories for sale

This is the entertainment center that we kept in the family room downstairs. For relativity sake, the TV in the cabinet is a Sony Trinitron 27" CRT. It just barely fits front to back with the front cover closed. We used the shelves and cabinet area for games, toys, and miscellaneous storage.

The entertainment center itself we are asking $700 for. We would throw in the TV, receiver, and speakers including bass (hidden on the top of the middle section), and wireless headphones for an additional $300. Seperate, we would sell the TV, receiver, etc for $350. The bass came with the receiver, but the speakers are higher power towers purchased separately.

furniture for sale

For you local friends, we have a few pieces of furniture we are selling and posting on Craigslist this week. If you are interested and don't have my phone number - email me at leslieandtroyATgmail.com. We do have quite a bit of additional smaller things for sale so later this week, we might have an indoor garage sale.

First up is a wonderful sewing/quilting table unit. I absolutely love it but won't need it in the house we are building so it's time to say goodbye to it. *The sewing machine and serger (and iron) shown in the photos are NOT included - those I'm keepin' for the next 50 years.

This is a Roberts model 5200 sewing cabinet - purchased from Sew Creative in Wenatchee. When you want to put the sewing machine away, if folds into a nice looking cabinet (we even had it in our dining area for a while) which I'll try and snap a photo of later. It has plenty of work area, two drawers and a slide out bottom piece good for storing a serger when not in use, and can be used with virtually any sewing machine. It even has the extension on the right for a serger. We are asking $800.

One of the best part of this table is the motorized sewing machine lifter shown in this photo. When you want to put the sewing machine away and fold up the cabinet, you just push a button to lower the sewing machine below.

This photo shows the extension table raised. So nice for laying out projects, sewing instructions, or for having a quilt glide across as you sew it.

Menu Plan Monday - February 1

This week we are moving almost everything out of our home. A large amount has already been moved to a storage unit and we'll be adding some furniture and additional boxes. All of our food storage (anything beyond what I'd stock in a basic pantry) was moved to Troy's mom's home. And the very basic stuff we need for the next 6-12 months will be going to a small rental home while we build.

My kitchen has almost entirely been packed up. I kept out the basic cooking necessities and basic food needed for the next week with the intent to NOT eat out during our move (other than a night of pizza to thank our wonderful church members that will be coming to help) and still stick to our budget. We're talking simple and fast this week. And fortunately, several of these things are freezer meals already prepared and ready to go. Sorry, there aren't any recipe links this week. Too much packing and moving stuff going on.

MONDAY - MEXICAN: tortilla casserole (like enchiladas but with flat layers), pears, coleslaw

TUESDAY - ITALIAN: lasagna, green beans

WEDNESDAY - LEFTOVERS OR QUICK: barbeque pork ribs, scalloped potatoes, corn

THURSDAY - FAMILY FAVORITES: pizza (gotta feed our mover friends and kids!)

FRIDAY -  BREAKFAST DINNERS: french toast, yogurt smoothies

SATURDAY - FREEZER OR EASY BABYSITTER: soup and bread

SUNDAY - CROCKPOT OR NICE: cream cheese chicken, fresh fruit, spinach

Don't forget to check out tons of great menu plans at OrgJunkie.com