ahhhh.....the laundry

One of the cutbacks I made this year was to stop using the dryer. It is hard to tell in this photo but that is THREE laundry lines hanging in a spare bedroom that mostly holds junk. These three lines and the folding rack pictured below allow me to hang one super sized load of laundry. It takes about a day for each load to dry (I have to cut the ceiling fan on high to get rugs to dry) and so far has not been that much of a pain. One problem I am having is that when I hung the line I forgot that I am short and hung it to high. I have to get the step stool out to hang a load. I also was having problems finding the studs (even with stud finder was extremely frustrating) so I have a couple of nice extra holes in the wall. I used one retractable laundry line and just did two switchbacks stud length apart. This setup cost me about $25 for the line, 2 extra hooks, and clothes pins. The folding rack was given to me free from a work buddy and with a couple of twisty ties was good as new. Unfortunately the neighbor comes over and uses my washer and dryer for 3 loads of clothes a week but in return he fixes stuff around the house and pet sits for me so I think I am getting the better end of the deal even though it cost me money in electricity :-).

Five Year Goals

So here is my daily reminder about my goals. Yep, that is a sticky note taped to my computer at work. I set these goals back in September of 2010 and as you can see I have 4 years and 3 months left. I read an article that stated having goals written down in front of you as a daily reminder helps you to keep those goals and to remember the big picture. Has this helped me? Sometimes it does but a lot of the times I forget it is there. I think if I move the note around or post even more of them up like on the fridge or steering wheel of the car it would help me more. Currently I have saved $4023.95. This number just went up by $1500 when I received my federal taxes back after giving the feds an interest free loan of my money all year long. As soon as I get my paycheck I "pay myself first" by putting $246 a month into my savings account and then don't touch it, which has accounted for the rest of the amount. I am aiming to have a new roof installed by no later than October. The estimate I have puts the new roof cost around $3800. I would like to have an extra $1000 on top of this so I will not be completely broke. If I stick to my budgeted savings then I will have all this by the time I want the roof installed.

Jumping on the Band Wagon

I have read blogs, websites, and articles for years about frugality and have slowly implimented living more simply into my lifestyle. This is an ongoing battle and I am hoping that keeping a blog will keep me in check and I want to share what has/hasn't helped me. I have created a budget (sticking to it is another matter that will be discussed), gotten creative on saving electricity, curtailed some spending (getting a wee bit better at it), and most importantly of all created goals for myself.



Setting goals should have been a no brainer since all we did in elementary school was set goals for classes and what we want to be when we grew up and what we wanted to do over summer holiday and blah blah blah. It took me almost 30 YEARS to utilize these mad skillz ingrained in me from early childhood. I sat around for years looking a frugal websites and thinking about awesome it is that people live like this and realized I was not living like this because I had no direction. So I set myself a list of simple goals. I asked myself, "What do I want to have at the end of five years". I came up with three goals I want to attain in five years: a new roof, $7,200 in savings, and a screened in porch (currently no porch much less bug free). I'm figuring this will total around $16,000. No easy feat for a single gal working at a low level government job. I would also not like to accrue any debt (even pay off all of my debt *gasp*) during this period of time. So maybe that is four goals??? Whatever, math was never my forte.