Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Monthly Goals Update and This Week's Goals

Sorry this is so late.  Sunday I ended up having my daughter help clean the house all day (read:  Fought with daughter to get her to do her fair share all day) and yesterday we had my son's second allergy shot to get through in the morning (which went great) and then when I got home I ran into a problem.  I spent a good portion of the weekend washing my son's bedding, per usual, but when I walked into his room it smelled yesterday and it smelled bad.  Which meant that it was time to rip his race car bed apart, again, and deep clean the milk out of the nooks and crannies.  Until I can convince my husband to get my son a normal twin sized bed frame and a box spring (counter argument is my son loves his race car bed, which he does, but darn it it makes a lot more work for me) I'm sort of stuck with an arrangement that  just catches every little bit of liquid and puts it into locations within the bed and leads to problems and I have to figure out where in the frame the problems are every couple of months.  Not fun.

Since I wanted to make sure I could go over the entire thing with bleach water and it had time to dry out completely, I ran downstairs and dragged the old full sized mattress out of the den (yes, after all of these months it's still there...don't ask) and moved it into my son's room to put his current mattress on top of until I'm done cleaning his bed frame.  Which had me ranting more than  a few times about the lack of handles on mattresses as I drug it up the stairs.  Seriously those things are a pain to move bulk-wise.  After I was done rearranging everything, vacuuming the carpet about five times to make sure everything was nice and clean and then making dinner my arm was shot for the night, so I decided to put off blogging until today.  And here we are!  Don't worry.  I can still move my arm, although it is telling me it's there once in a while.

I ended up having to reschedule my physical due to a sick kiddo and lack of funds (our insurance doesn't cover labs and I know I'm going to need those after all this time and I'm still going to owe them the co-pay for my doctor's visit last week).   Hopefully by the middle of October, when I rescheduled it for, things will be improving money-wise and I can afford to go and get the physical done.  Frustrating, but that's life.  Right now I'll be happy if I can make my mortgage payment on time.  Darned medical things really threw the finances into a tizzy this month.

The cider didn't get canned this week, the hallway closet got looked at a lot by me and then I'd close it and think, "Man, I'll get to that later" and that's about as far as I got.  The Halloween decorations are being held captive until my daughter starts doing what she is supposed to do instead of ignoring me and doing whatever the Heck she wants and just figuring she'll skate through the consequences (she does not realize that she will NOT win this war), so that didn't get done either.  Well, at least the oil got changed on the car.  Bright side of a very long, very exhausting...did I mention long...week.

So, what did I actually do this week?  Well, I went to the used stores a lot trying to find furniture as my loveseat and couch are now shredding anywhere there isn't a patch on them, and in the case of the loveseat it is actually shredding under the patches too, so the patches are popping seams it's getting so bad.  I could never find anything close to my budget that the furniture was worth getting (read free or as close to as possible), so this week and probably part of next month are going to see me trying to figure out what to do with my old and falling apart furniture to make them last longer without looking completely awful.  It's going to be challenging for sure, but realistically that's the only option I can really see working at this point.  We just plain don't have the money to throw at furniture right now and throwing blankets or something over the furniture lasts for four minutes until my son sees the blanket and then said blanket gets dragged off to his room and that's the end of that. 

I did get one Christmas gift done this week (seen up top.  I'll give a break down on the gift in the next post) and got my pantry reorganized and most of the food from the den put away in it so it is a lot easier to find things.  I got part of my laundry room organized and am working on finding room in it to help clean out the hallway closet upstairs (it's like organizational dominoes when you have to find room, I swear) and other side projects as I ran into them, but yeah...most of last week's list didn't get done.

So, onto this week's goals!

Cleaning Goals:

  • Clean son's race car bed from top to bottom.  Try to find a way to boost up his mattress about two inches in the frame so he doesn't have to worry about pushing himself over the top of the bed frame to get out of bed (it annoys me and him).
  • Shampoo the carpet under where the race car bed goes (it needs it again)
  • Clean out one half of daughter's closet and move dresser into closet to afford her more floor space (we're ripping the TV out of her room as she just gets too distracted by it to do things, so I don't need to have the dresser taking up a whole corner of her room).
  • Reorganize hallway closet.  Try and find some scrap wood to use as shelf bracers on one side of shelves (they collapse if not completely balanced due to a lack of bracers on one side) and get shelves organized better.
  • Set up small bookcase outside of bathroom to use for towels and washcloths (need the hallway closet cleaned out and reorganized before I can do that bit).

Canning Goals:

  • IF up to it mull and can apple cider (I'm coming down with a cold on top of everything *sigh*)

General Goals:

  • Put up fall decorations if daughter stops acting up.
  • Get through son's second allergy appointment (done!)
  • Get quotes for winter tires for car
  • Use heating pad on arm three times a day (it really helps when I do that) and continue to stretch the arm and work it.
  • Cut son's hair with husband's help (basically we hold him down and sheer him with some hair clippers.  It's not fun, but he is starting to look like a lost Cassidy brother, so it's time).

And there you are folks.  My goals this week, lofty though they are.  How about you?  Got anything planned?

11 comments:

  1. I am whimpering inside my head at your sofa peeling, because I'm losing the fight on our only 3 years old first ever new beautiful cherry red sectional. Its peeling so much and chipping and I love my couch and it makes me so sad. Its sooo comfy and I love the color. Darn furtiture people ripping us off.

    So your sons bed. To lift it, have you tried old books? And plastic sheeting is super cheap, would it work to line the frame with it? Milk spills would be caught, then you can just toss it....

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    1. Yeah, we're in much the same boat but our furniture is about five years old now. Since we moved here, though, we haven't used the couch downstairs much at all, so I was really upset when I saw it was shredding as badly as the loveseat upstairs. It really does show that things are built to fall apart anymore. At least I can comfort myself that we got the couch and loveseat super cheap (it was a super sale event at Fred Meyer one week), but it's still irritating :(.

      I don't want to use old books to boost the mattress up for fear the milk would pool and wreck the books. I did ask my husband about scabbing some scrap would around here and there and maybe I can build a small frame to put under the mattress to keep it up and out of any milk pooling, for one, and also to get that little bit of extra height so his mattress sits flush. I'll have to see what I can find.

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  2. Wow, sounds like you've got a lot on your plate! Glad to hear your arm is getting better and hope it heals even more!

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  3. You've had a lot on your plate this week, Erika! Take some time and rest too - and, yes, I know that's super hard with all you have to do. We'll pray for time to rest and heal - both physically and mentally.

    Have you tried Craigslist for furniture? We usually have few things that are free (you haul) or very low cost from estate sales, downsizings, etc. I'm not sure how prevalent that is in your area but it might be worth checking out. Look under "free" rather than the "furniture" section. We had several tables, night stands, bookcases, as well as a few chairs and couches today. Some were pretty obviously nasty but there were two really nice arm chairs and a lay-z-boy recliner that looked really good. I've seen several bed rails and box springs on there too that might be helpful for your son's room.

    Can't wait to read more about your Christmas gifts!
    Lea

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    1. Wow! I wish our free listings were that good. The biggest problem with our local lists (Craigslist and Alaskalist)is that anything worthwhile that is labeled "free" is very very quickly gone. Like I've had it where within 10 minutes of the listing going up someone has already laid claim to it. It's actually astounding the rate things disappear on that listing. My husband got a free power tool, but only because the guy listed it under tools instead of free. We are keeping our eye out on there, though. So far, per usual, the furniture is overpriced for what is offered, but we'll continue to keep an eye on the listings as finances (hopefully) improve.

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    2. I know Craigslist can be sketchy. We live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area which I think gives us a better selection sometimes (not always!). Good luck with the furniture hunt! Hopefully something good will turn up soon.

      Lea

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  4. Apparently it was "Daughters with bad attitudes" week. I'm dealing with one, too...only her resistance is over homework. Honestly, our battle is nearly identical and my daughter won't win either! As for a suggestion for you son's bed, I was thinking layers of cardboard to help level it out. It wouldn't necessarily help lift it out of the milk, but it is disposable if it gets dirty.

    I don't know about your area, but in our area we have auctions. I've seen some very nice furniture go for extremely cheap prices at some auctions. Also, it might help to put out another call to family and friends if they know of someone who has a really nice set of furniture they are trying to get rid of or selling cheap. They may know someone who is moving or someone who has passed away and is trying to get rid of furniture, despite being in very good shape. Worth a try anyways. It worked last time for some of the things you needed!

    I've already accomplished some of my plans for this week. I pulled some of the berries from the freezer and have made a bunch of jam. My mom and I are going to volunteer at the museum I work at tomorrow. They are making apple crisp for our Applefest this Sunday (which I will be working at). On Friday or Saturday, we are hoping to do our bi-annual trip to my grandparents grave site and remove the flowers for the season. We will also stop at the chocolate factory along the way to pick up some chocolate stash and apples from the orchard road stand. That means more canning and apple pie/apple crisp making in the near future.

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    1. That sounds like a really fun trip you take. Chocolate and apples all on the same day? I'd so be there *laugh*.

      Auctions up here are insane and really, in my experience not worth going to. Things go for crazy amounts at auctions up here. IF you have time to go to tons of them you can get like entire storage units full of things for decently cheap (which helps a lot of the "for profit" used stores up here make good money), but other than that it's not really worth it in my experience.

      I did put a call out to family about furniture and they are looking to see if anyone is parting with any. So far not much luck, but it's worth putting the feelers out there :).

      I'm on one hand, glad I'm not alone in the battle of the daughter attitude, but on the other hand I'm sorry you're having to put up with that headache too. Hopefully it'll improve for both of us soon.

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  5. You are doing so well. i was thinking of the plastic lining for your son's bed too, but wondered if a tarp may work better. I am concerned about suffocation risks if the plastic is too soft. Do you have removable cushions on your love seat? Amy Dayczyn "Tightwad Gazette" had a system of wrapping your fabric around the entire cushion and securing with a safety pin. I did it on a sectional sofa and it worked well.

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  6. Must be daughter week!!! Someone here called BERMUDA on the phone!!!! We are not amused (well, kind of we are--it was the most creative naughty thing anyone has done lately) but we are not looking forward to paying for it. That child will be working a lot!!!

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    1. Have you tried calling your phone company? Sometimes they'll reverse the charges when they find out it wasn't an intentional call. Especially if it was made by a kid.

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