Money Matters

My husband and I are trying to save a few bucks to do some renovations on the house next year.  So we have saved all our receipts from the last two months and sat down with them to see where we are bleeding money.

Our first problem is the weekend.  We spend too much money up north because I forget things and then have to run in to town to pick them up, which inevitably end up with a run to Tim Horton's. Bad bad bad.

Our second problem is last minute trips to the grocery store.  If I call my husband on his way home from work and ask him to pick up something, he will inevitably end up with a whole bunch of stuff we don't need.  That's what I get for sending a hungry man to pick up lettuce.  I take full responsibility.  "They" always say not to shop hungry.

Lessons learned.

So what does this mean to us?  How will we avoid these pit falls?

It all comes down to my lists.  I basically stopped writing lists.  I'm not sure why I thought I could organize things with out lists.  I've never been able to do it.  Ever.  I'm not even sure why I stopped writing lists.  I think I just got lazy.

So I had to think of a way that I can get back to lists that isn't as time consuming. 

My solution?

Lamination.

What's that?  What does lamination have to do with making lists and staying organized?

Well, I'd be happy to tell you.

Every time we go up north, I bring the same stuff up.  I think that is one of the reasons why I stopped writing lists.  I mean, how hard can it be to remember the same stuff each weekend?  Hard apparently, because two weekends ago we had to drive to the next nearest town to go to Walmart and pick up a baby monitor because I forgot to pack ours.  $30 down the tubes (I know that we can technically take it back but we decided to keep it up there so I didn't have to keep on packing our home unit).

Because everything is the same each week, I made a master list, laminated it and put a piece of velcro on it and a dry erase pen.  Now I have the same list each week, can check everything off and always have a dry erase marker handy (theoretically anyway, as I've already misplaced two because I walk with the marker in my hand and the list on the table.  Maybe I need to stick a piece of velcro to myself...)

This works for me.  No time needed to write up a list each week and I end up packing everything we need.

The grocery list wasn't as easy.

I have set meals each week for six weeks, but sometimes I already have the ingredients on hand, so one master list would be way too large.

My other problem is we shop at three stores within the month.  We have our weekly trips to the grocery store and corner market, and a trip to Costco once every two weeks.  I had tried separate sheets for each list, but I always ended up misplacing them or forgetting them at home.

So what I have done is stuck a magnet pad on our fridge, split the page so that the bottom part is for the groceries and the top is the growing Costco list.  That way I have the Costco list always there and not on a separate paper to lose, and I can just tear the weekly grocery list off when I need it.

There is one other part.  I need a post-it stuck to inside of our front door so that I remember to actually take the list when I go shopping.  Sad, I know, but true.

All this organization has done nothing for my scatterbrainedness (I know, not a word...)

Cheers!
Marina