The weather is a bit cooler again, which is nice. I'm really dreading this summer. You'd think that would motivate me to put aside every penny possible for purchasing a new central heating and cooling system for our house, but for some reason I find tacking on extra to our mortgage payment more ... useful somehow. :-P I actually think we could trim back some of our spending elsewhere and still do some substantial saving for various things, but sometimes I just get overwhelmed with trying to figure out how to do that. My strategies have to take into account that I'm not the only person spending money, after all. ;-) What is a huge relief to me is that the small "emergency fund" we had spent away on our hot water heater is now replaced and then some. And Josh just figured out a way he's content to squirrel money away in particular, so if it actually works...we could have a reasonable system in place. He just decided on it a few weeks ago, though, so I'm not sure yet how well it will work.
Regardless, I'm just happy we finally have a halfway decent budget that actually works on paper and has some margin for error. I laugh a little at myself because I guess we were actually doing really well at saving money when we were first married, but I didn't realize it at all. LOL! I cannot even express how much of a tightwad I was or how little concept I had of how amazing it was that we saved as much as we did. I think I viewed our savings balance as a balance of zero, no matter how much was in it, because I didn't want to think of the money as available for spending. And I kept our checking account pretty close to a balance of zero to avoid unnecessary spending (I should actually open up another savings account so I can start doing that again - I think it might help me get more motivated to save money).
We spend quite a bit more money than we used to, I think. Housing alone is double what we paid when we first got married - by choice (since I'm including the additional payment we're making). Our utilities here are also higher than they were in Springdale, partly because we're in a house and partly because water, at least, just seems to cost more here (the sewer service charge is higher, I think), plus we now pay for trash service that we didn't need when we lived in an apartment (they paid for daily emptying of the dumpsters we used). To be honest, I'm honestly not sure how we're here...or how we managed back then. Josh doesn't think it's terribly mysterious, but I'm honestly a bit baffled. I keep feeling like we have tons and tons of bills that come in each month or tons of variable expenses that I keep neglecting to account for, but those somehow manage to get paid and then some. Oh well...
Someday I need to figure it out a little better and start exerting a little more control to get more stuff done. But at this point, four and a half years into marriage, I'm just starting to realize that it really is okay to buy things. :-P It just dawned on me today, after years of frustration with our ice trays, that I could probably do a bit of research online and find some decent ice trays and simply purchase them, rather than dealing with the frustration of the cheap plastic ones we use constantly breaking and being almost impossible to get ice out of - lame, right? :-P Maybe they have something flexible like silicon that would allow for much greater ease of ice cube removal. Hahaha. Josh has also talked about me getting popsicle containers to freeze stuff for the girls...and for some reason I keep procrastinating. I won't even tell you some of the other stuff I'm still waiting to purchase simply because it hasn't reached the stage of being critical. :sigh:
I used to sleep under heavy piles of blankets in winters before I got married. Recently I realized that I had money and could have easily purchased a warm, light comforter and avoided the body aching that resulted from the heavy blankets. I guess I just think like a poor person. I'd make closet shelves out of cardboard boxes. And, honestly, at this point our not-currently-in-use baby clothes hang out in cardboard diaper boxes because I just can't bring myself to spend several dollars each on plastic bins. Keep in mind, I do have some ideals for these bins...certain characteristics I want, but since they aren't on sale I just don't go there. I dunno. The boxes work. :-P It's not like they're organized at present anyway.
I really need to organize...I don't know that bins would actually help me, though. There's a brain change that needs to happen first. I have the worst brain ever for trying to categorize things. I always think of all the possible categories an item could fit in and then can't decide which is most appropriate. And then when I come across a similar item, after doing all that thinking, I can't remember what I concluded, so the second item goes somewhere different, and then when it's all sorted...it's like nothing has changed, other than I can't remember where anything is. This doesn't seem terribly productive and it does help if I try to throw as much away as possible. But I still end up with a dilemma...and even just trying to decide what to toss is difficult. I know I can replace it (most of the time), but sometimes I can't decide whether it's worth the money to replace it based on how soon I might need it again. Odds are I won't need it again soon, but I am the kind of person that tends to toss stuff I really will need when I get too enthusiastic. Bah. I think I need help, something besides helpful toddlers re-sorting everything for me. ;-)
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