Clutter Busting Challenge October 2017

My purge was 22 items this month. I've been taking picture of my purges and posting them since May 2013. That's a long time. In January 2018 it'll be 7 yrs. on my journey to minimalism. I'm going to make a big push to see how many items I can get out of the house before the end of the year.

My purge pile:

October 2017 Reading List

Virginia Brides Collection

Spoke of Love by Cathy Marie Hake

Spinning Out of Control by Vickie McDonough

Weaving a Future by Susan Page Davis

White Mountain Brides Collection by Susan Page Davis
Return to Love
A New Joy
Abiding Peace

Two-in-One (Bestselling Author Collection) 
Thanksgiving Prayer by Debbie Macomber
A Handful of Heaven by Jillian Hart

Perfect Pound Cake

3 sticks Butter
3 cups Sugar
5 whole Eggs
1 teaspoon Butter Flavoring
2 teaspoons Lemon Flavoring
3 cups All-purpose Flour
1 cup Sprite, 7-UP, Or Sierra Mist

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Cream butter. Add sugar, 1 cup at a time, mixing after each addition. Add eggs, 1 at a time, mixing after each addition. Add butter and lemon extracts and mix well. Add flour, 1 cup at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add soft drink, then mix together until combined. Scrape sides of bowl, then mix briefly.

Pour into a greased Bundt pan and bake for 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes, until the cake is no longer jiggly. Remove cake from oven and invert pan until cake drops out. Slice and chow down!

 

Redoing Shawn Jr's Old Bedroom: Part 2

We got the room painted and set up temporarily for guests. The walls are ColorPlace Special White Chocolate and Adirondack Green. We used paint we already had leftover from other rooms. I set up the bed with bedding that we already owned.This bedroom will be my husband's hobby room. We'll set it up for that later, along with moving out the bed. This is Part 1 of Redoing Shawn Jr's Old Bedroom

 

My Frugal Five- The Project Edition

We've done a few bigger projects together over a couple weekends the last month. It's fun to spend time together without spending any money and our home benefits by looking better.  

We used to think that we didn't have money to do things to the house that we wanted. We have found over the last couple years that we have more money to do stuff like paint and do repairs since we aren't buying as much stuff. In some situations we're using stuff we've collected but didn't get around to using. And some repairs take a bit of time but not much money. Some things like the camper renovation or if we're completely doing a room in the house does cost some money but not as much as we had expected while we were procrastinating.  We bought a fixer upper home and it looks better every year.


1. We spent an evening washing/scrubbing the camper. We used supplies that we’ve had a long time to detail it. My husband bought and installed a new toilet in the camper.

  

2. Our DS25 moved out in March. We painted his old bedroom with paint we already had from previous projects. It took us a weekend to do. Thankfully I had started this project in June by filling holes in the walls and sanding, putting wood putty on the window trim holes and sanding, washing the walls, and priming. I hadn’t gotten to the painting until now because of doing the camper renovations before our trip in June.

 

3. We painted the inside of our camper back in June. We have leftover paint so I painted the camper bathroom this week. Not sure why I didn’t think about doing it then, but instead 4 months later. 

4. We purged and organized the shed.  This was a big project to do. We sorted out all the camper renovation leftovers that we didn’t need and put them away. We put the extra cabinet door, cushions, and stuff in the trash. We put things that were out of place back onto shelves. I sorted the big red tool box. My husband sorted his electronics. My husband purged a few of his things. We swept the floor.

5. I purged and organized the garage. This wasn’t that hard to do but took a bit of time. I put the weights that our son left behind when he moved out in March in the basement with the other weight bench and supplies. I swept the floor. I stacked wood and picked up stray debris. I hung up the yard games. I basically straighten up.

The Camper Bathroom

We decide to paint the woodwork in the camper bathroom. We used the leftover paint from doing the rest of the camper. We think it looks much better.


Before:






















After:

Basic White Cake

1 cup white sugar
¹⁄₂ cup butter
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 ¹⁄₂ cups all-purpose flour
1 ³⁄₄ teaspoons baking powder
¹⁄₂ cup milk

1.      Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x9 inch pan or line a muffin pan with paper liners.

2.      In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine flour and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Finally stir in the milk until batter is smooth. Pour or spoon batter into the prepared pan.

3.      Bake for 30 to 40 minutes in the preheated oven. For cupcakes, bake 20 to 25 minutes. Cake is done when it springs back to the touch.

My Frugal Five- The Organized Edition

I did a bit of organizing over the last month. The best part is that I didn't spend any money.

1. I organized and purged unneeded or expired items in our basement food stock. I brought a few things upstairs that were needed.

 

2. I organized my grandkids toy closet.  My husband hung a shelf and I put books into it. I brought the last of the toys from the shed to the upstairs closet. I washed the totes too. 

 

3. I organized my sewing supplies in the basement. This involved carrying items that had been in the toy closet to the basement along with putting everything onto a shelf.

4. My husband sorted, purged and organized his closet. I sorted, purged, and organized my closet.

My husband's closet. 

My closet.

 

5. I sorted and organized my papercrafting supplies. I sorting a big stack of scrapbook paper that I bought over a year ago at a thrift store into piles based on color and put each color into my crate with the other sorted colors. I organized 2 of my totes on my shelves that have embellishments. 

Coloring Book: Color Your Happy Home

I bought this adult coloring book in August at Walmart. I really like how it has common household topic along with bucket style lists on each page. I plan to add the finished pages to my Notebooks under the relevant areas. The adult coloring books are very fun and relaxing. I'm happy that I found one that I really like that will be useful to me once completed. My plan is to do them based on the season that I color them. I decide to do the pages, "Welcome" because it's the first page in the book, "Celebrate" for my birth month of October, and "Pet Friends" since it seemed warm and cozy for Autumn.