Monthly Goals Update and This Week's Goals

You know the "Season of Being Broke" might as well be "The Season of Things Breaking" because my goodness it seems that the more broke we get the more things break on us and we don't have the money to do much about it, so we just have to figure out a way to make it work. 

For instance, above.  That is a shot of my laundry room ceiling right now.  I didn't include the other 1/3 of the big hole off to the rear right of the photo, or the hole down in my wall at the bottom of my laundry room.  Those were from heaters upstairs not working (thus the hole in the ceiling when my husband had to run all new wire for the heaters) and the hole in the wall from our master bathroom tub drain getting clogged terrible (some might remember that).

My laundry room soon won't have much sheet rock on it and the way things keep breaking and/or going wrong, I'm starting to think that might not be a bad thing *scowl*.

This weekend's adventure was when we found out that the tub in our upstairs bathroom shared a sewer pipe with my kitchen sink and that there was a clog that did not want to be dislodged in that pipe.  The tub drain had never worked right, but my husband had figured it might be the worn out drain mechanism that was causing it to always drain so slow.

Nope. 

I swear the previous owners of this house never ONCE thought to do any type of sewer maintenance on their pipes.  The sheer amount of disgusting things we've pulled out of these sewer pipes is astounding to me.  I think at this point, though, at least I PRAY I'm right here, that we've hit pretty much every drain in this house by them going bad on us, so hopefully they'll work right from now on *fingers crossed*.

In this case, we found out about the clog by the kitchen sink, as I was trying to do dishes, backed up and wasn't unclogging and then I went into the bathroom and there was really DISGUSTING water in the tub that had backed up.  Honestly, I thought our sewer was backed up with how disgusting it smelled, so I ran and got my husband who then lectured me about panicking him because the sewer was okay, it was just the two things backed up.

We thought it might be an easy fix.  We put Liquid Plumber down the kitchen sink, which then backed up into the tub and my husband snaked the drains for hours.  Nothing worked.

My husband finally cut another portion out of the laundry room ceiling to try and find the problem pipe, determined that it had to be where a pipe formed a T because nothing else was backed up and sure enough he was right.  But, even with snaking it close to the source, and my husband getting coated with really ucky things, nothing would dislodge the clog.

Finally I got the idea to back up all the drains upstairs so that there wouldn't be anywhere for air to escape and have my husband suck on the end of the pipe with a shop vac.  Which did dislodge the clog, or so it seemed, a tiny bit as the tub would finally drain after it backed up.  So, I put stoppers in all the drains save one kitchen sink drain and took the plumber's helper and and just plunged it good.  And it actually seemed to work, making the drains work better than they ever have since we moved here, really.  So far.  We're hopeful, but we'll see how it goes.  At least about 98% of my dishes are finally done (I'm doing them slow...just in case), so I feel a bit better about life in general there.

When it came to my Monthly Goals...well some of them went South fast.  Nothing stops detail cleaning of your kitchen than having sewer water all over the place from pulling drains apart and everything (thank goodness I got that recovered last night).  As soon as the drains backed up I started to seriously panic about money, which didn't need much help.  I ended up having to do a lot of towels and clothes and everything else today from the mess yesterday, so my hopes to get completely caught up on laundry didn't happen.  And we went from freezing cold temperatures to getting 8" or more of snow yesterday, so going out into storage for Christmas decorations...yeah that's going to wait until a bit later in the week I hate to say.  Same with putting the Halloween decorations away.

I did get some things done this week, however. 

Christmas gifts are getting done and on time which is a wonderful change of pace for me.

I got a few spice mixes made.  I still have a few more to go, but some did get done.

I got a few pieces of wood furniture polished, but still have more to do there as well.

And I did manage to find my gravy mix and my jarred gravy to donate to the school and donated my son's old boots and some other outgrown winter items for the school's program where a needy family can go in and take what they need discreetly when it comes to winter gear.

So, let's get onto the goals for this week:

1.  Take turkey out of freezer and place in fridge to defrost (already done :).
2.  Mend 2 holes in comforters.
3.  Work on Christmas gifts.
4.  Make holiday table runner for kitchen table and side board.
5.  Dig out Christmas decorations and tree.
6.  Put away Halloween decorations.
7.  Make more spice mixes.
8.  Wrap all of the home made gifts I've made so far to deliver after Thanksgiving.
9.  Embroider a few dish towels (this is more of a "for fun" type of goal)
10.  Finish cleaning the house and mop all floors with bleach (because yuck.  I've already gone over everything with Comet, but when it comes to disgusting germs...I'm going for the bleach).  Shampoo carpets that might have gotten stepped on with icky shoes on.
11.  Find brining bucket and clean it.

And there you are folks.  My goals for this week.  How about you?