Decluttering Your Closet through Smart Clothing Purchases

Does anyone constantly struggle with the state of their closet like I do? It feels like a never-ending battle to both keep things organized and actually find stuff that I want to wear. In the past 12 months I've removed many more things from my closet - including virtually all clothing items purchased in the 1990s - than I've added. And honestly? I think the sheer number of things I used to have was keeping me from making good clothing choices. I think that closets are another one of those things where "more" doesn't necessarily equal "easier". Even though Cher had an awesome closet, she still had a hell of a time deciding what to wear every day!

Who didn't want Cher Horowitz's closet in the 1990s?

What I've learned about my closet and my clothing in the last year is this: the way to keep your closet under control is to closely monitor what goes into your closet - if you don't buy it, you don't have to worry about it! I've cut down on the things I buy by ensuring that the majority of new items adhere to one major rule: multi-seasonality!

Perfect example: I need a cardigan for summer; I also need a cardigan for winter. Why not choose a cardigan in a color close to neutral, and a style that can be worn alone (summer) or layered (winter)? The short-sleeved cardigan from Anthropologie above can be paired with shorts and a tank-top for a light summer look, or layered under a turtleneck for a warmer winter look. One piece, multiple ways. Now instead of needing 2 pieces, I've found a cute way to get by with just one.

I love love love patterned and embellished skirts, which are a little trickier to get so that they are wearable in both summer and winter. However, I've found that patterns using browns and lighter grays (as opposed to black and darker grays) as their neutral are more versatile for varying seasons. The example above is a brown and yellow skirt: for summer, play up the yellow and throw in a complementary color of accessories (I chose blue). For winter, play up the neutral tone, and work in the pattern's colors in the accessories. Again, I've found this works well with patterns that have lighter neutral tones, as opposed to the heavy black and dark gray that tends to scream "WINTER!" no matter what.

So when you're shopping, buy pieces that can be used in both summer and winter - you'll save space in your closet and keep more money in your pocket! Happy shopping!

What Irresponsible Becca Would Do With a Tax Refund

I got my tax refund at the end of last week, and the sweet, sweet government cash hit my bank account yesterday morning. Of course I'm doing the responsible thing and putting most of it towards my student loans, while the rest is going into savings/rainy day-funds. But it's just so much fun to play the "what if?" game and see what I could possibly use it for instead... so here goes:

If I were an irresponsible person, here's what I'd spend my $800 on (these are mutually exclusive):

• Entrance and travel to the Maui Marathon. I've always wanted to run a full marathon, and I've always wanted to go to Hawai'i - wouldn't it be pretty cool to do both at the same time? Someday, island running and I will meet and fall in love...

• Buy a killer outfit (or three for $800, let's be honest) for a trip to California I'll be taking in a little bit. I'm liking this look specifically (Adriana Lima - by ThinLizzy on Polyvore.com):

• Hit the spa. With $800, I'd only have to pay a little over $120 to go to the spa three times and get the 5.5 hour package each time. That's 16.5 hours of services, yo. And I really love this spa - I went there about a month ago with a gift certificate from work, and enjoyed every second of it.
  

• Register for Yoga Journal's Colorado Conference in September. I love yoga, and I've always wanted to learn more about it. Plus I've never been to Colorado, and there's a first time for everything!

• Visit the Motherland for the first time ever. By Motherland I mean Sweden, of course! My sister is in Europe until June, and it'd be the perfect time to go. I could even stay on the farm with the relatives if I played my cards right.

Alright, I have to stop. I feel like I'm talking myself into all of these options... and that's not what I want at all. I do sense a trend though... all of my "irresponsible" choices center around trips of various sorts. I think this means I need to make an effort to travel more (cheaply, of course!). Guess it's something to consider as I plan - and budget - for the future!

The Dreaded Taxes

Does anyone actually like doing taxes? I personally don't mind it, although I can think of a million other things I'd rather do. But most people I know detest it and either put it off as long as possible, or hire someone/buy a computer program to do it for them. I think maybe I'll be changing my tune at this time next year, though, when there are more elements that I'll have to consider and keep track of.


I guess I'm still lucky in that my taxes are fairly simple and straight forward - I live in a state without an income tax, and my federal taxes consist only of my W-2, savings account earnings, education credits, and my 1040 Form. I still print the 1040 off of the website, fill it in with a pen while consulting my trusty graphing calculator, and mail it in with an old-school stamp. It's not that I'm not computer savvy, I just find it easier to finish them this way without having to worry about internet connections and program time outs, etc. Until the government makes me go paperless (or they get so unmanageable that I can't do them myself), this is how I will continue to roll.

I actually sat down and banged 'em out (with the help of the not-so-easy-to-navigate IRS website) in an hour last night, and was pleased to find that my return will be approximately $750 this year! Hooray! That's by far the biggest return I've ever had, and I'm not quite sure what I want to do with it when it comes. Realistically, most of it will go into savings and paying off my remaining student loans, but it'd be nice to get myself some sort of treat, too.

What are you going to do with your tax return this year?

Grocery Blogging

What better time for a grocery post than during the new Top Chef episode! Seriously, I'm in love with Stefan and Fabio in this season. How can you NOT love watching Team Europe talk smack to each other?

Anyway, I went grocery shopping tonight (finally! It's been on my to-do list since Sunday) at the local grocery store. I started out with a decent list - some staples and some bits and pieces for recipes this week - and I have to admit that I succumbed to a few of the sales. Here's what I came away with:

• 2 1-pound packages of tofu
• 5 Lean Cuisines (5 for $10... I don't love them, but they are good for the nights that I have to eat dinner at work) - not on the list
  
• Almost 3 pounds of grapes - not on the list
  
• A 2.5 pound head of cauliflower - not on the list
  
• Can of corn, can of stewed tomatoes, and can of black beans for black bean soup
• Ricotta, parmesan, and mozzarella cheeses for lasagna
• Whole wheat english muffins
• Veggie broth
• 1/2 gallon of milk
• A dozen eggs

Total spent: $43.17. Not too bad. This means I have $106.83 left in my grocery budget for my February Food Challenge. Now you might be wondering - why didn't Becca buy many fresh fruits and veggies? Well my friends, I also got my Fresh Abundance box this week! I haven't shared a picture of an actual box yet, so here it is:

There are all kinds of awesome things in here: apples, oranges, pears, bananas, tomatoes, an avocado, an onion, a red pepper, a head of lettuce, two heads of broccoli, a bunch of collard greens, and a fresh bunch of cilantro. I am so excited about the fresh cilantro I can't even tell you. I've never cooked with it before, and I'm excited to find a recipe to try early next week (recommendations welcome)!

February Budget

One of my New Years Resolutions for 2009 is to make a budget and stick to it. Unfortunately, I fell down pretty hard on this one in January. I actually have no idea how much money I spent last month - I could figure it out if I really wanted to, but I don't. It's depressing.

Well, it's time for a change! I'm taking Krystal's February Food Challenge, which for me is going to be $250 - $150 for groceries, and $100 for food out (food at work and meals out). This is going to be a challenge, since we'll be spending a three day weekend in Portland this month, and Valentine's Day always prompts food purchases. Honestly, though, menu-planning and packing a lunch for work seem to have really taken care of a lot of my miscellaneous food expenses, so I think this is totally doable if I commit to bringing my lunch and saving the $100 for a date night or two and Portland!

I'm also going back to the Fritter Finder spreadsheet that I used for several months at the end of last year to keep track of expenses. I've set a goal for myself of keeping miscellaneous spending below $400 for the month - which will be a challenge for sure considering the Portland trip and a few other adventures I have planned for the month.

If nothing else, I figure February is a short month, so it can't be too hard to meet these goals, right? :D

It's resolutions, baby!

I'm a firm believer in New Year's resolutions, and can't remember a year in the recent past where I haven't made at least one. In my pre-internet days, I'd scrawl them out in marker on a piece of notebook paper and tuck them away in a shoebox (where I also stored all of the notes my girlfriends had given me during the school year with our highly sensitive, *cough* boy gossip *cough*, during the year), and would pull them back out around New Year's to see how badly I've failed at keeping them. Now I tend to post them in my blog-of-the-moment - whichever one I spend more time on or relates most to the goals I've set for myself this year. Therefore, I give you my 2009 resolutions that I will hopefully meet and/or exceed during the next calendar year:

1. Read more books for pleasure. 50 this year, to be exact. And school books don't count.

2. Apply to PhD programs. Preferably after the masters degree is finished, so there's that caveat of this process. So basically, at least one application has to be submitted to a school by December. Lots of work, but doable.

3. Win the biggest loser competition at work. This starts on January 5, and ends on March 13. Prize money is $450, which will put a nice dent in my vacation costs (see below). I entered with my friend Rachel, who's going to give me a pretty good run for the money I think - so basically, if either of us wins, I'll consider this resolution achieved. :D

4. Get my passport. Now that my new project at work will be sending me to Texas and not freezing cold snowy Calgary (sorry, Canadians, but after Spokane's winter I'm just not in the mood for more!), this is a pretty high priority on my to-do list.

5. Make a budget and stick to it. I've been monitoring my spending habits for the past few months so that I can make smart estimates about what I need (or don't need), so I'm hoping to sit down sometime in January and draft out a plan that will work for this year. The main purpose of this will be to establish an emergency fund that is separate from my savings fund, as well as pay off my student loans entirely.

6. Meal Plan every week. It's so much better than constantly running to the store because I don't know what I have, and haven't planned what I'm making until that night.

7. Go on 2 mini-vacations (as in 3- or 4-day weekends. Both must be to places I've never been before - right now, Las Vegas, Colorado, and Southern California are pretty high on that list. Both must not include visiting relatives for a holiday. One must be without Matt.

8. Go on an extended vacation (as in a week) with Matt. We've been discussing Hawai'i next fall, or something else hot/tropical.

9. Set up a weekly volunteering activity again. I used to volunteer at the Women's and Children's Free Restaurant once a week, and I really enjoyed that - it's a great organization with a mission that I really believe in. Unfortunately, it now conflicts with all of my classes. So this year, my goal is to reorient my schedule enough to make a similar situation feasible for me.

10. And last but not least, make a better effort to keep in touch with all the people that I love that are far away from me now. I've always sucked at keeping in touch with people, and I need to get better at that. Also, I want to write people letters. They're so old-school that they're fun, and everyone loves getting mail, right?

What are your resolutions for the new year?

The never ending quest to get rid of books...

As a recent college graduate and a current grad student, I have a ridiculous number of books that I do not want. Okay, maybe it's not truly ridiculous, but they don't fit on the shelf, and I've already read them and determined that I don't need them. Previously I've listed lots on half.com and sold them back to the locally-owned bookstore. But what do you do when books don't sell on ebay and the bookstore won't buy them either?

A blog I read frequently, The Simple Dollar, wrote (relatively) recently about a great website that allows users to essentially swap books with each other - much like a library, except you don't have to return the books. And that's great, because I'm always horrible at remembering due dates and getting them back in time. It's called Paperback Swap, and is incredibly user friendly. Basically, you post the books you don't want on the site, someone finds a book of yours that they want, and you ship it to them (at your cost). When they get it, they register the book as received on the site, and you get a credit that you can use to get another book - which you pay nothing for. I'm still a little skeptical about the ordering part, mostly because I just did that yesterday and haven't received the books yet (I know, I know, I get antsy!). But as far as getting rid of unwanted books, I've already shipped off three that I couldn't sell, and it's nice to know that they're going to people who genuinely want them!

Anyway, I highly recommend this service if you've been unsuccessful using other book-selling methods. Plus it's nice and light on the budget. :D

Project 10: The Budget (Part 2)

Well, it's officially November, which means it's time to post my follow-up to the first half my first financial tracking experiment. And I have to say, I did a lot better in this half!

Total spending between October 16 and October 31 was $377. I have to say, though, that this should be a lot higher - Matt basically paid for all expenses surrounding Phantom of the Opera and the weekend of debauchery that it was a part of. But, since that number is almost $125 less than last time, I'm going to go with it. :)

So what's my total for the month? A whopping $796. I know, right? So where did that $796 go, exactly? Well according to my calculations, the breakdown's like this:

• $284 for Groceries (and other household purchases)


• $12 for Personal Items


• $90 for Alcohol & Tobacco (or just alcohol in my case)


• $17 for Clothing


• $85 for Food at Work - I bought something at work 13 times this month! Ugh.


• $192 for Meals Eaten Out - 10 times this month - good lord.


• $40 for Recreation (a.k.a. gym membership)


• $154 for Gifts and Cards - Matt's birthday and my brother's birthday


• -$78 (my credit that I'm giving myself for returned school books)

I feel like this is a good starting point for my budgeting efforts. Obviously there are some areas that I can cut back on - I mean, there's no reason to spend $192 for eating out when I've also spent $284 primarily on groceries. Sheesh. Well, I guess you can't fix something until you've identified the problem - it can only get better, and I've already got my spreadsheet printed out and ready to go for this month. :)

Project 8: Decluttering Financial Paperwork - An Update

It's been a while since I originally wrote about my shred-happy day of organizing my financial paperwork. So far my significantly down-sized accordian folder has been serving me well - not that I've totally stayed on top of the filing, but the piles of important papers have been significantly reduced in size and number.

I wanted to share a step in the paperwork decluttering process that I completed this past weekend that I feel will be of immense benefit to my personal finances and sanity. This past Saturday, I cancelled all of my store-specific credit cards. There are 4 reasons that I did this: 1. Once I'd bought the things I needed from each one using the enrollment bonuses, the rewards really weren't that great for each card; 2. They encouraged even more spending at stores I frequented too often anyway; 3. getting 4 statements a month (plus updates to card plans and all that) is a LOT of paper; 4. God help me if I ever lost my purse (or worse yet, it got stolen) and I had to call all 4 and go through the cancellation process AGAIN (seriously folks, this took me well over an hour's worth of phone calls, and I wasn't even trying to request new cards).

Instead, I've opened up a new credit card that I can use anywhere with a pretty nice credit limit that far eclipses the 4 former cards' limits combined (hooray credit scores). This card will give me perks outside of coupons at stores that I've already bought the things I need from - namely, free airline tickets. YES. It's one card with one statement, which means one bill to pay instead of 4. Basically, I'm much more likely to pay the bill on time, much less likely to keep contributing to my habit of frivolous spending spawned by $10 off coupons that I got for rewards from the individual store cards, and I'm much more likely to get something beneficial out of it (if I can get even one free flight anywhere, that's worth it to me).

I know this won't work for everyone, but I've already seen a noticable improvement in the amount of paper I have to hold on to. My purse is lighter, my spending habits aren't killing as many trees, and Linens-N-Things is going out of business and won't honor their credit card coupons anyway. Plus, all that shredding is kind of theraputic. :D

Project 10: The Budget (Part 1)

Earlier this month I posted about keeping track of my spending this month with the help of this spreadsheet. I know this sounds terrible, but this is my first real tracking experience - other than making sure I have more money in my account than I'm spending at the moment, which isn't a great kind of budget scheme to have (obviously).

Let me preface that before starting this, I went through my receipt accordion folder that I have to kind of gage my monthly spending habits, figuring out how much my receipts totaled and then averaging them. This is problematic for 2 reasons: 1. I only had 10 receipts total for the months of January and February, which clearly is NOT all of the money that I spent those two months, and 2. somehow I determined that I should only keep receipts showing sales tax (???? - like I'm spending enough to be able to claim that tax on my returns in January!) so I have a few months where that was the standard of receipt saving. The highest month I had was May, with $988.47 - this makes sense because I'd just moved and bought a ton of stuff for the new apartment. The average of my monthly receipts was $527.11, which isn't too bad (in my opinion) since it includes groceries and travel costs.

So today, after filling out half of my budgeting spreadsheet, I totaled everything up to see where I am for the month so far. It looks like my expenditures are currently at a whopping $419. I KNOW, right? What the heck? There are 2 reasons I think this number is higher than normal (yes, these are excuses) - 1. my little brother turned 18 last week and Matt's birthday was yesterday, so OBVIOUSLY celebratory costs were high for both of those occasions, and 2. all of the numbers are rounded up. BUT, in reality my spending was higher than this because I counted the $85 refund I got on 2 textbooks I returned as a credit, and subtracted it from the overall spending (which means I actually spent $504, good lord).

Obviously this is my first crack at the whole budgeting thing, and this will improve as I set firm dollar-amount guidelines for myself. It is very interesting to see where all the money goes, though.

Budget Grocery Shopping

So, I finally did it. I menu-planned based mostly on what I had on hand, I made a conservative list of items to buy for the rest of the week, and I checked out the grocery ads online before hitting the store. What I came away with is probably the most productive grocery trip ever, which also happens to have been the cheapest (for what I got, that is).



The spoils of my trip, minus the wine.

I got 4 cans of beans (3 for chili, one for salads), two cans of diced tomatoes, green salsa (thanks for the recommendation Rachel!), peanut butter, 6 eggs, a 1/2 gallon of milk, two kinds of cheese, frozen green beans and frozen peas, whole wheat bread, and english muffins - for eating. I also bought 6 bottles of wine that were super on sale, and then cheaper with my reusable wine bag.

Grand total? $42.13. Mommy blogs, you've got me convinced. Coupons/ad-checking/menu-planning is the way to go.

Tracking Things

I've been tracking what I eat for the last 2 weeks - not for any dietary purpose, more just to see how many meals I eat out and what kinds of stuff I eat on a regular basis. And it's actually been really helpful! I'm spending less on food at work because of it, and I'm spending less on groceries because I'm buying things that I eat often instead of things I want at the time.

So, for this month, I'm going to try tracking all of the money I spend in a kind of similar way. I have a print out of this spreadsheet (thanks Rachel!) that I'll be carrying around to track things on. I think it'll serve two purposes - reduce spending on random crap, and also make me more aware of exactly where my money is going. I think it's already working, too, because I didn't spend anything at all yesterday! Hooray!

Project 8: Decluttering Financial Paperwork

Well, I've officially started the process that I talked about awhile ago. I'm so lucky that Org Junkie just happened to post about office organization today! Basically, what I did was go through my current accordian folder to find things that could be shredded. Then I went through my stacks of paperwork to figure out what could be thrown away immediately, what needed to be acted upon, and what needed to be shredded. I came up with this pile of stuff for shredding:



After the shredding takes place, then it's time for filing! Unfortunately, my accordian file is already exploding even though I haven't filed any of the new stuff. I'll need to find something that better accomodates what I've got. Then it's on to consolidating credit cards and finally making a budget. Hooray!