The joy of being organised

I braved the humid heat today and went to Red Dot to try and find some mini shelf things and cheap buckets. Our bathroom drawers were getting a bit grotty and were becoming a dumping ground (try to find a bobby pin? None. Looking for something else? LOADS of bobby pins EVERYWHERE! The A has stepped on a few)

Anyway, now it looks awesome and I even bought a mini swing bin for about $4!



Brushes and sponge. Mascara, eyeliners and lipsticks in the drawer thing.




Eyes and face stuff in the 1st drawer




Hair and nail stuff in the 2nd

And on the counter....

The budget and saving

This January, The A changed jobs. He had previously been paid monthly, but with this new one he is now paid weekly. This threw me through a loop as in Europe and with all my jobs I had been paid monthly. Trying to wrap my head around the whole weekly thing has been hard, and as a result we have had to change the way we budget, especially as I am still out of work!

Talking about money is hard and in the past used to stress me out. But we sat down and honestly went through what we thought we spent on different things for the year. We then tried out an accruement style of budget. For example we put $60 for buying books every month, on a 31 day month we accrued $1.93 a day to go towards books, only buying something once we had accrued the amount we wanted to spend. It seemed like a great system (originally from That Wife Blog) but it just didn't work for us.

We want to save money every month so we ended up streamlining our budget to the bare essentials.

We reduced the amount spent on groceries only by a little, with the added lifestyle change of eating out less and cooking more at home, as well as reducing our meat intake. Added to that we decided to buy our meat from a butcher (just up the road... convenient!), and not shopping at Woolworths but at the local Veg shop and IGA. Changing venue has actually made our shopping cheaper! Toiletries and house cleaning supplies are included in this.

This system has actually made me think more about what we have for dinner, making me plan and look through all the cookbooks that The A and everyone else has given me over the years. Our vow not to eat out as much as before has made it necessary to make dinners and other meals that bit more exciting. It also means we are BOTH less likely to put stuff into the trolley that we don't need or are not on the list!

Our 'other' sections have been smooshed into a 'weekend' section. We each get $50 to get whatever we want, including anything I eat or drink at knitting, books, make-up and clothing etc. We also have included a $20 that we can spend with each other, usually a bottle of wine!

So far it's worked but it took a while to find something that does. Do you have a budget, and how sis you decide upon it?

The unemployed

Not having to get up and dress in something nice and no having to do your hair/make-up can get a bit demoralising, you start to feel like an androgenous sloppy weirdo, so, inspired by some 'how to' hair videos on You Tube I went and got my bobby pins, velcro hair rollers and hairspray for some girly hair time.

Some of the great ones (even though one is in Japanese, you can get what she's doing):

and the results of my hair time (and after some make-up)

Obama on Jay Leno