It Is Actually Happening!

We get paid on the last business day of each month. Getting a paycheck only once a month was tough, at first, because if money runs low, there is no more coming in a couple of weeks later. On the other hand, it makes budgeting a lot easier, and we don’t have to juggle which paycheck will cover which bills. During the first week of each month, I update Quicken for all of our various accounts. This month I was updating balances in our debt reduction plan and I looked back to this time last year.

We spent a lot of time in the last year feeling frustrated because it seemed like the balances never went down. Well, I am happy to report that despite that frustration, we have eliminated $12,000 in debt in the last year! I believe the true total of what we paid off is actually $19,600 because we had financed a few things that were not included in last year’s totals. Some of what we financed was what we consider necessary, like vet bills, some was justifiable, like my stand mixer that allows me to make all of our bread, and some of it was just frivolous, like tickets to a show.

So, despite a significant amount of slip ups in our plan, we have lowered our total debt by a very large chunk in just one year! It can actually be done, even on one income, even with four kids. If you are trying to pay off debt, don’t get discouraged if your balances don’t seem to be going down. If you make a mistake and purchase something you shouldn’t, don’t give up. It really can be done, and you don’t have to be perfect, or live Little House on the Prairie style to do it.

Happy Mother's Day!

While I fully acknowledge that Mother’s Day is essentially a contrived Hallmark holiday, and that good mothers should receive thanks and appreciation every day, I still love Mother’s Day morning.

This morning I awoke to the kids doing their Sunday chores early so that the rest of the day would be free to do whatever I wanted. Seriously, the chore charts are really helping, I highly recommend them! Mike went and got donuts (at my request, he wasn’t being lazy) and helped keep the kids focused on their jobs. At breakfast, I was showered with the wonderful things the kids made for me at school. Actually, M gave me her gift the second she got off of the bus on Friday, but she re-presented them this morning. 

 

Mom's Day loot!

Pot decoration from my oldest

Mike went out to trim the hedges and mow the lawn and O brought me some of the clippings as a flower bouquet, which you can see in the vase with M’s hand print flowers.

As an added bonus, I looked at the garden to find that our artichokes are coming in! 

Check out the free and all natural pest control!

Later, I will be going to my mom’s for a bit. Her gift this year is that I am finally transferring all of the kids’ and grand kids’ height marks from the hallway at my house (my childhood home) to her new house.

I hope all of the great moms are having a good day, and that your kids give you one day of NOT reminding you why some animals eat their young.

Shocking May Challenge Update!

Yesterday was the first day of the kids' new responsibilities. We kept our expectations pretty low because the kids had a sitter and we weren't home most of the day to supervise. Last week I talked to the kids about needing their help around the house, and let them know about the new chore charts. Before we left on Sunday morning, we reminded them that they had chores to do and we expected them to by the time we got home. If the chores didn't get done, they would have to finish them in the evening, and there would be no TV for that child the next day. When we got home, all of the chores were done! Since we weren't there to show M how to empty all the trash cans, N did it for her (it used to be his job) and then had M and O help him clean the living room. That's right, my seven year old son did an extra chore to make sure it got done.

I have been a mom long enough to know that this success is in no way a guarantee that next week will go so smoothly, but it is nice to know that they can actually do it. Now, if they struggle one week I don't have to question whether they are capable of doing the chores I assigned. It gives me hope!

May Challenge-Getting the kids to help!

So, April’s challenges didn’t go so well. I pretty much failed at all of them. I did mostly keep up with my original March goals, but even that doesn’t feel like an accomplishment. It just seems like no matter what I do, it doesn’t last long. I don’t want to get too far into pity party mode here, but there are literally times when I clean a room and then leave it for a minute, and when I come back, there is a whole new mess. It just feels so futile, like no matter what I do, it won’t make a difference. It makes me want to just give up, I mean, what’s the point of just treading water all of the time?

Then I realize that giving up certainly isn’t going to solve anything, but if my family isn’t helping, there is NO way I am ever going to be able to get the house in order. Getting the kids on board is not going to be easy. They have bad habits too, and changing their habits is going to take a lot of effort, both from the kids and from my husband and I. This is my May challenge, to get the kids to pull their weight.

A friend of mine made a chore chart for her three kids, and has had a lot of success with that. She has broken the house into three areas, and her kids rotate through the jobs, so that they aren’t doing the same job every day. If one of the kids doesn’t do their chore one day, the next day they have to do the previous day’s chore and the current day’s chore, which means one of their siblings doesn’t have to do a chore that day.

Initially, I thought I could use her system with a few minor adjustments. It became obvious pretty quickly that her chart, while great for her kids ages 12, 11, and 9, would not work for my kids ages 10, 7, 6, and 3. I need to assign specific chores to each child based on age and ability.  What I could borrow from her, however, was the idea that failure to complete chores would result in clear, consistent consequences. 

I have made 3 checklists for the kids:

The Morning/Bedtime list for the tasks they have to do to get ready for school and get ready for bed.

 The After School list has their daily chores and tasks.

 The Sunday list has their bigger once a week chores, including step by step lists for each of those chores.

The lists are color coded so the kids can identify their own list easily, also because I am really anal retentive about things that don’t matter.I printed them out and put each one in a sheet protector so that they can use a china marker to check off the list each day, and then it can be wiped off and used again. There is an extra copy of each kids' Sunday chores in their room, so that they can see what they need to do without fighting over the list.

The kids’ role in this challenge is, of course to do the items on their lists. My (and my husband’s) role is to remind them to do their chores, as many times as necessary, without yelling, and to establish a set routine to keep things consistent. I, of course, have to remember that even though it might be quicker, easier, and done better if I do it myself, they have to learn how to help out around the house. This will be a particularly tricky challenge, because I have  enough trouble motivating myself, and now I have to motivate 4 other people, BUT, if I can succeed the reward will be great.

Long Term Goals

The whole reason we started working on getting out of debt was because we really want to be able to own a home. When we first got married, house prices were pretty low, but my husband’s job was not very secure. He was teaching, but he was on an emergency credential which meant that he was almost guaranteed to be laid off at the end of every school year. We didn’t want to commit to a mortgage when we didn’t know what our income would be like in a year or so. Once he was finally fully credentialed, we didn’t even consider trying to buy, because the house prices in our area were so ridiculously over inflated. We were starting to feel like we would never be home owners. Fortunately for us (but unfortunately for many recent home buyers,) the housing bubble burst and prices started coming down. Unfortunately, home ownership had seemed so out of reach for so long, we had not been preparing for it. We had too much debt and no savings. The down side for us of the bubble bursting is that home loans are much harder to come by now. Your credit has to be good, not just OK, and there is practically no such thing as 100% financing anymore. I knew what we had to do, we just hadn’t actually been doing it. When we got serious about getting out of debt, I started this blog.

It was really frustrating at first. We were paying well over the minimum payment on our highest rate debt, and paying the minimum or just a little over the minimum on everything else. The balances never seemed to go down. When we would make some headway, the car would break down or some other expense would set us back. We were still relying on our credit cards too often. On top of that, our debt reduction plan included a program to pay off student loans for teachers who work in low income schools. If we got the loan paid down to $17,500, the program would pay off the rest, once my husband finished his 5^th year teaching at a qualifying school. This year is my husband’s 7^th at his current school, and his 5^th as a fully credentialed teacher at that school, so come June, the rest of his student loan would be paid off. Or so we thought. When Mike applied for forbearance on his remaining loan so that we could apply that payment elsewhere while we waited for his anniversary date to roll around, we were told that he did not qualify for the program because his first student loan was issued 6 days before the window for this program began. Six stupid days. In the three years that we had been communicating with them while we paid his debt down to below the $17,500 cut off, no one at this program had ever bothered to mention that we didn’t qualify. We had been counting on that debt to essentially eliminate itself, and now we would be paying it off ourselves. It was a big blow to our morale.

Things got a bit better when I checked in on a Gifttrust I had. We decided to cash it out, and it gave us almost $3000 extra. Instead of using the money to buy things we wanted, we set some aside to get our van fixed because it was having some issues, put $1000 into our savings account so that future unexpected expenses wouldn’t have to be charged, and sent $1200 to our highest rate card.  Having that emergency fund really, really helps. Now I know that we can get the car fixed or whatever without making our debt situation worse.

We just got done filing our taxes and we are expecting a nice refund.  Even before the return was filed, we had already virtually spent pretty much all of it. We will replenish our emergency fund, and but an extra $500 in it, to make it a total of $1500. Some of it will be used for Mike to be able to attend his sister’s wedding in Texas. A large chunk of it will be used to pay off a credit card. A couple of hundred dollars will be set aside for me to attend a Women’s retreat in October. If there is anything left after that, it will be applied to the debt as well. After we figured all of that out, I took a fresh look at our debt reduction plan. If we are able to stay on track, we will be completely free of credit card debt by October. That still leaves us with Mike’s student loan, and another loan that is the result of a previous attempt at debt consolidation, but all of the really bad, higher interest, and rechargeable stuff will be gone.

Originally, our plan was to completely pay off all of the debt, and then start saving for a down payment, and THEN buy a house. After our car got broken into twice in 2 months, we realized we have to get out of this neighborhood as soon as we can. It was once a great neighborhood, but has been steadily declining for years. Now, sirens and the sounds of the police helicopter are normal, and we need to get out before it gets much worse.  Using a bit of online research, I found that even with those last two debts, we will be in a pretty good position to get a home loan once the credit cards are paid. That is, if we can come up with a down payment. In order to speed up our timeline, we have decided that in October, when the credit cards are paid off, instead of applying that payment to the next debt, we are going to put it into savings for a down payment. We will continue to pay the minimum payments (or slightly more) on the remaining two debts, but we won’t be paying extra until we have accumulated a good down payment. Our tax refund for next year (if we receive one) will also go towards a down payment. If we are able to stay on track, we should hopefully be ready to start buying a house in a year. Our goal is to be moving by early summer 2012.

Challenge 2-Week 1

This week I did fine on my new challenge areas, but my challenge items from last month were a big FAIL. It was Spring Break, which meant that all 4 kids and the husband were home with me all week. The usual schedule was out the window. I slept in, I went several days without doing any laundry, and I barely set foot in the kitchen. Fortunately, I was able to get caught up by the end of the week, so I was able to start today on track.

Since the week was pretty much a wash, I have decided to extend this challenge through the end of April. This way, my challenges will begin on the 1st of the month and finish on the last day of the month. In addition to extending my challenge, I have decided to add another item to my April challenge list. I decided that I needed more focus on the organizing/cleaning for this month. Each day I will clear the clutter off of one area of my front rooms. Like with the laundry, I have designated a specific day to each area. After this first week, it should be a really quick job to get it back to tidy.

Monday-Homework Center
Tuesday-Small side counter and coupon/ad and menu pockets
Wednesday- Hutch
Thursday-Bookcase
Friday-Long kitchen counter

These are the primary clutter catchers in the front part of the house. Mail, purse, keys, backpacks etc all get piled on one of these surfaces, so they are a great place to start.

Laundry Tips and Tricks

Laundry is one of my most hated household chores. There are 6 of us in the house, and the two youngest still have occasional potty accidents, so sometimes they can go through more than one outfit a day. The laundry can pile up very, very quickly. When it would get really out of control, we would spend a whole day doing load after load of laundry. We would get so fixated on washing the clothes, we wouldn’t be folding or putting the clothes away. Now instead of a huge mountain of dirty clothes, we would have a huge mountain of clean but wrinkled, and un-sorted clothes, which is better, I guess…sort of.

 

Staying on top of it all

When I started my One Month Challenge last month, I put doing a load of laundry on my daily task list. In order to make sure everybody has the right clothes when they need them, I went a step further and made a schedule based on what days the kids have or don’t have after school activities, so that their laundry gets done on a day that they are home after school to put it away.

For our house, this means:

Monday:  N

Tuesday: M and O-they share a room, a hamper, and often their clothes, so they share a laundry day too.

Wed: Linens

Thursday: L

Friday: Mom and Dad

Saturday: no laundry

Sunday: Catch up-for when there is an extra load or two that didn’t get done.

For the past month, this has worked really well. The older kids never run out of uniforms, we don’t run out of towels and Mike always has appropriate work clothes available. This system also makes the folding and putting away easier, since everything in the basket goes to the same place. My kids don’t have many white clothes, but what they do have, I tend to set aside to add to the larger whites load on Friday.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

To save money, I make my own laundry soap. It only takes me about 20 minutes to make a batch that lasts us about two months. That two month supply costs maybe $2.00. All of the ingredients are found in the laundry detergent aisle. Sometimes the washing soda and soap can be hard to find. I only know of one store in our area that carries washing soda, but they are also available online. I started with the recipe from LivingOnADime.com, but I have since altered it a little to work better for my kids’ stains.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

6 C      Water

½ bar   Fels Naptha soap, grated

½ C     Arm & Hammer Washing Soda (not baking soda)

¾ C     Borax 

Heat water and grated soap in a large pan until the soap is fully dissolved. Stir in the remaining ingredients. Heat until powders are fully dissolved, stirring frequently. Keep a close eye on it because it tends to boil over (although, the spilled solution does a pretty good job of cleaning the stove top.) Once completely dissolved, boil for 15 minutes. Remove from heat. The mixture should have a honey like consistency. Place one quart of hot water into a 3-5 gallon bucket. Add soap mixture, and then enough cold water to make 2 gallons. . (Before my first batch, I measured 2 gallons of water into my bucket, and marked the level with a permanent marker.)  Mix well. Let stand for 24 hours.* Solution will gel up.

To use, stir well and use ½ cup per load.

If it doesn’t reach honey consistency, or gel up, it will still work. It will not suds up.

*This detergent will separate, so it must be stirred before each use. Pour it into liquid detergent bottles before letting it stand, and then just shake it up before each use (Be sure to leave some space at the top for shaking.)

We saved ½ gallon plastic Pace picante sauce bottles to store ours in, any fairly thick plastic bottle with a handle will work fine.

Stain Removal

Speaking of stains, I don’t buy commercial stain treater anymore, so here are some things I use to deal with various stains on clothes:

SAFETY DISCLAIMER: Most people know not to mix bleach with ammonia, but it is also dangerous to mix bleach with vinegar and lemon juice, so do not add bleach to a load using any of those items. As a rule, do not mix bleach with anything but water.

I have not tried some of these tips, they are compiled from around the internet.

Ammonia is not recommended for very delicate fabrics or fabrics with latex in them, because it will dissolve the latex.

ALL PURPOSE wet a bar of Fels Naptha soap and rub the bar directly on the stain. This works particularly well on grease stains, and is very economical. One bar of soap has lasted me over a year.

BLOOD Hydrogen Peroxide or baking soda paste+

CAR GREASE dishwashing soap

CRAYON WD40 let sit for 3-5 min, Rinse, treat with dishwashing liquid, Rinse,  use stain pre-treater

GRASS Hydrogen Peroxide

GUM hot vinegar, set 1-2 min then scrape or freeze then chip off

INK Rubbing Alcohol or hairspray

RING AROUND THE COLLAR Rub shampoo into stain, launder as usual

SKUNK pre wash in skunk smell solution*, then launder as usual

SWEAT pre treat with white vinegar, or baking soda paste

            OLD-  1:1:1 solution of baking soda peroxide and water let sit for 30 min

                        1 Cup white vinegar in machine, soak 30 min

WAX scrape off excess wax  then pour boiling water over spot

+BAKING SODA PASTE 6Tbsp baking soda with ½ cup water

*SKUNK SMELL SOLUTION 2 cups hydrogen peroxide, 8 oz baking soda, a   couple of squirts dishwashing liquid and a gallon of water

To make clothes wash more easily, soak overnight in a 1 Tbsp Ammonia  to 1 Gal water or use ¼ cup Ammonia for a full washer.