Five Ways to Get Your Shopping Under Control

This January I made a goal to do a massive declutter around the house and to not buy anything above what we needed for groceries and personal care.

How did I do?  Well….

The decluttering hasn’t gone as expected.  I have added some things to our yard sale pile, but I was really hoping to get The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up before starting the process.  Unfortunately, I’ve been on the wait list at the library since December. (sigh)

As far as not buying anything, I did do better.  I did buy a few Stella & Dot items, but I’m a stylist and we only have a certain period to get our samples 50% off, so I’m totally counting this toward a business expense.  I also bought a binder and notebook for blog-related tasks and we started buying the pipe items needed to get my curtains hung back up.  I took them down when we painted back in October, and we’ve just had them lying around until we could come up with a stronger solution for curtain rods than what we had.  Other than that, I’ve done REALLY well!  But it has been REALLY hard too.

Five Tips to Meal Plan More Effectively

Sitting down with a cup of coffee to make out the grocery list.

As Dave Ramsey fans (I’m secretly hoping if I mention his name enough, he’ll see my blog and ask me to write for him. LOL!)  we follow a budget every month and we use the envelope system.  Last week we were working on our budget, since this coming Friday will be my last paycheck and then we become a single income household, and this got me thinking about all the things I’ve started doing since we embarked on our debt free journey.  The one thing that helps the most in our daily lives is meal planning.

Meal planning allows me to make the most of my grocery budget and still make sure we eat.  It also makes me less likely to say, “Let’s just order pizza.”  So today, I want to talk to you about what meal planning isn’t and how to meal plan effectively.  I even have a printable for you too!