Rollercoaster weeks seems to be the thing right now. We accomplished a lot but we also faced some difficult challenges.
Pain
My goals for this blog are to discuss traveling, parenting, and finances all how they relate to me. I realize I haven’t really been touching on parenting too much and that’s because that is my biggest challenge.
This week, actually probably more like over a month, parenting has proved quite challenging. We have good days and then we have terrible days.
But this week was really exposing as some of my poor parenting decision came full circle to bite me in the butt.
I keep thinking I should probably take a break from reading all these finance articles and instead focus on parenting ones. Or at the very least ones that speak about developing more patience.
They say it takes 5 good experience to “erase” one bad one and that is a steep ratio to meet. Unless anything not consider bad is considered good. Either way I think I should probably shift my focus in my reading.
Gain
This week proved to be quite productive. There was also plenty of good stuff going on.
This week we saved plenty of money by Doing it ourselves. Our DIY was machine maintenance in this case our refrigerator. Over the week I noticed our fridge leaking but this isn’t the first time this has happened. So I knew exactly what it was and just put a bowl to catch the water until we could fix it over the weekend.
So this weekend we got to it. Last time we fixed it I was more hands on but this time Mr. Roamer did most of the work I just took some pictures and handed him hot bowls of water.
The amazing part and why this is a gain is because the last time we fixed it I will venture was about a year ago. A year ago we had the same problem and we were thinking it’s time to buy a new fridge. But instead we found some youtube videos that showed us how to tear open the fridge, diagnose the problem, and then fix it. A whole year later we can still pull up that knowledge and do the repair without actually pulling up the video. That is a great gain in knowledge and confidence. And I just kept thinking cool we now know how to fix a fridge.
So we went about our business addressing the drainage issue of the freezer. I didn’t time the process but I think it took less then 2 hours. That’s it and we have a nice functional fridge again.
We also exercised some more do it yourself spirit by managing our own finances specifically our investments. I longed into our IRAs and updated our automatic withdrawals. Increasing them from $250 to $500. Still won’t be maxing it out this year as it is. Since we didn’t think about it or didn’t even make it a goal to do so I’m not to concerned. Mostly I just want to make sure we get as much in there as we can with out detracting from our actual goal of saving 30k for house down payment.
Efficient Living
Capsule update
Before I started the capsule wardrobe I had the problem in my closet of not having enough hangers. I also didn’t really have any more space to put extra hangers but that didn’t stop me from automatically assuming that more hangers would fix my closet organization problems. I need to buy more. But as I have already said I am a terrible shopper so I never went ahead and got more.
Now that I have gone through some minimalist challenges and started the capsule I am so pleased with the extra space in my closet. It’s eye opening to me how marketing has really made us believe that what we need is more organizational type products to manage our ever growing amounts of stuff.
Instead I have found just getting rid of stuff is much more efficient and effective.
This can and should be applied to multiple areas of our lives. Instead of assuming we need more shelves, racks, dividers, binders to keep our homes and stuff in check we should first ask what doesn’t belong? What haven’t I used in a while? What’s no longer functional? Practice using that 5S knowledge to purge the unnecessary and organize what does belong.
How did last week turn out for you? Have you tried any DIY projects around the house?
