Financial Peace

I've always been a fan of Dave Ramsey, but I've never really put effort into following his ideas... or much of any ideas about finances, really. I'd dabble in fixing our finances but never really committed for more than a short while. Good intentions, bad follow-through. After reading about a friend's experience with Dave's Financial Peace University (and her recent encouragement to check out one of the local FPU classes that will be starting soon), I convinced OJ that we should take the class. It's $100, not very much to spend on one's financial future. I think taking it together, spending dedicated time for 12 weeks talking about our finances and ways to make things better, working together and finally building a solid partnered financial foundation in our marriage, is a good idea.

OJ is skeptical about the fact that it is a Christian-based program and that it is held at a church. He's become very atheist over the past year or two. I told him there was no way I was entertaining the idea of moving to the Bible Belt (North Carolina) with him if he wouldn't even take a class because it was held at a church. I'm sure we can filter out any God messages and apply them in our own spiritual / ethical / moral way. He also doesn't love the idea of paying someone (AKA making THEM rich) to give us 'financial peace', but I maintain that people's time and efforts are worth paying for if we learn something / get value from it. AND, as I said, $100 is not that much for two people to invest in a 12-week class.

I don't know which class we will be taking yet; I have sent an email to the most likely one with some questions. Hopefully we'll be able to start soon.

I wonder if there's a way to take these methods and convert them in such a way that they could be applicable to weight loss and clutter management. I could become the next guru of fixing up your life!

living in a VAN down by the RIVER

I would consider today a moderate success.

Yesterday, after meeting with my therapist, I spent most of the afternoon / evening being thoroughly unproductive, feeling anxious about everything we had talked about and trying to figure out how I was going to get everything done when I was only allowed to focus on ONE thing on my list (of probably 12 different things, easy). I let the worry gnaw at me and wash over me and tried to figure out how I might be able to 'cheat' and justify it.

In the end, the product of all that worrying (and talking to my husband and a good friend about my options) lead me to the conclusion that focusing on the house was the best thing for this week. I still feel a little bit like the world might explode if I don't focus on the other things, and I have no idea what's going to happen financially, but if I can actually make this happen and get the house in order for once and for all, I might have a chance at being more productive and getting things done and making money and saving us from financial ruin. Of course I've said this before, and of course I'll spend plenty of time second guessing myself and trying to slowly work all those other things back into my life. But for now, it's just one week. One week and I can go and talk to my therapist and if I'm ready to freak out about not doing other things yet, hopefully she'll be able to help me.

My morning routine:

I got it all done. It took a while, and I hit some stumbling blocks, things I find particularly distasteful, I delayed, I experienced anxiety, but I got through it. I wrote in my personal journal a lot today, trying to make note of all the things that were particularly rough for me, times I felt anxious about things, times I was resistant to doing things. I'm still very time-focused and it all took me longer than I think it 'should'. But it got done.

My One Task:

I don't have a good name for this task, but it involves cleaning up, decluttering, and organizing my house, and boxing up things to sell / get rid of. Making The House A Home And Maybe Making A Little Money In The Process? Yeah, it's a pretty clunky title, I know. I finished three rooms today - our bedroom (which I'd worked on some a day or two previous and was already well on its way), our upstairs hallway and the upstairs bathroom.
Once I got in the groove, I was pretty happy to be working on this stuff today. Of course, I didn't get to any of the really horrible rooms yet, and I will admit that once I finished the bedroom, the temptation to stay in my clean, peaceful bedroom and pretend the rest of my house didn't exist was pretty strong.
Halfway through the day I caught myself trying to focus on the TIME it would take to complete the whole house decluttering process and setting goals for myself again. Setting goals in and of itself isn't a bad thing, it's obviously something I believe in and do with regularity; the problem is that I tend to set pretty lofty, unattainable goals. Or rather, the goals aren't unattainable, but the time I give myself to complete them is. I'm never content to just trust the process and believe it will happen if I keep working. it always has to be done by a certain TIME, and when I catch myself falling off my self-imposed timeline I get frustrated, I feel defeated, and I often give up. So I made note of that in my personal journal and will take that to the therapist next week. It's one of those things about myself where I just can't really fathom HOW it could be any different. But maybe it should be, and maybe it could be.

Here's some pictures of the progress in my house (taken with my phone, so I apologize in advance for the quality)!

Our Bedroom ( I have no befores, only afters):

from the doorway

our view from the bed. the computer has since been moved to the center bookshelf.

my bedside table, and Feona

The upstairs hallway:

before

after

before 2

after 2 (dog butts!)

The upstairs bathroom:

before

after (reorganized baskets)

before 2 (yes the dogs follow me everywhere)

after 2

I do not know how to fix ANY of this picture formatting. This was a very frustrating post, in terms of pictures. A blogging design genius I am NOT.




Unemployment:

I don't know what's happening. I got my full unemployment check this week. By my calculations, I either have one week left, or two weeks left. I'm not sure. I understand that a new extended benefits bill was just signed in but I do not understand how that affects me. Illinois Unemployment hasn't updated their website with new information pertaining to it, and often they seem to leave these things vague anyway. So I don't know if we're running out of money soon or getting a temporary reprieve. I intend to act as if we are running out of money soon and that I need to find a way to come up with that $1650 difference each month as long as I am out of work (and that if I find a job, the take-home has to cover at LEAST that much PLUS full time childcare). However, I am trying not to think about any of this until my next therapy session because it just leads to panic and will render ineffective anything my therapist is trying to accomplish with me. I know my family and friends will never let us starve or go homeless, and I guess that's what I should focus on, that even if we are destitute and lose everything, we will still have a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. That is a far cry from what I WANT, and I will certainly do everything in my power to keep it from happening, but it's better than living in a van down by the river.

OCD, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying... That's A Lie. I'm Worried As SHIT.

I saw my therapist this morning. This was my second appointment with her, and I can't tell you how glad I am to be seeing someone again, AND to have it be someone that I feel actually, oh, maybe knows how to do something besides just let me talk at her? Someone who might actually have some ideas and guidance and maybe, oh, KNOW a little bit something about mental health?

*cough* Sorry. I might be just a little bit bitter about my last experience with a therapist. The last lady was... well, she was very nice. But I probably would have done better paying one of my close friends $100 to sit with me for an hour and listen, for all the good she did me. My friends would have slapped me around a little bit more. (with LOVE, of course.)

So. When I met this therapist last week, the session was me just trying to remember everything I wanted to tell her about in my life that I feel gives me trouble or that I'd like to work on. HUGE list, but a lot of it is interrelated, so I am hoping that as we get some of it sorted out, all of it will start just falling into place.

This week, given the magnitude of the financial crisis we just 'discovered', it was pretty much all about that and how I processed the stress over the weekend (by obsessing and thinking in circles and living on the sheer edge of panic, why, how do YOU deal with your personal crises?) and where I'm at now and what I'd like to accomplish.

At some point I brought out my list. You all just KNEW I made a list, right? Maybe I told you I made a list in my last post, I can't recall. But even if I didn't, I know you know how much I love lists. This particular list has a morning routine consisting of everything I think I SHOULD do in the mornings, an after dinner routine of everything I think I SHOULD do in the evenings, and a giant list of all the things I think I should do in between during the day to make the money I need ($55 a day! my brain keeps screaming at me. FIFTY FIVE DOLLARS A DAAAAAY!). Not on the list are the parts where I have to break for meals, spend time with the kids and the husband, and maybe occasionally stop and enjoy life. Because when you're in panic mode, YOU DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THOSE THINGS.

Panic also makes your hair change color. It's true.

I started explaining the list to her, starting with the morning routine. It's a lot of stuff. She stopped me early on and asked if I thought I was setting myself up to do too much. "Not really," I replied uncertainly. "I mean, look at the stuff that's on there. Each item really shouldn't take all that long, you know? I get frazzled because the past few days I've done it, it's taken me much longer than I thought it should, but these are all things I HAVE to do, and so I do them, but then I don't have time for anything else, but look... this one should only take five minutes, this one's only about ten, I cut this other thing out because I felt like it was taking too long..." She asked if I had trouble with any of the tasks, or if I thought it would be beneficial if I stuck to my routine for a week and identified what parts work for me, what doesn't, what I dislike. "I can do some of that already!" I said. "For instance, feeding the pets and cleaning the litterbox. It NEEDS to be done. I love my pets. But I really dislike those tasks. Probably more than normal. I don't know if anyone LIKES doing them, but take the feeding for instance - ever since I was pregnant with my second daughter, I never really lost my Dog Nose (you know, that mega enhanced sense of smell you get while pregnant), and the smell of even the dry food makes me gag now. It's awful. But it has to be done." She asked if I could give some of these tasks away, for instance to my kids. "Sure! I mean, they're capable. But here's the thing. I have... um... some anxieties about that. Pet food is kind of gross, right? And I have to, HAVE TO, wash my hands after I touch it. My husband, he could feed them and then go make us dinner and never see a sink in between, but it makes my skin crawl. And the thought of my kids touching the pet food really squicks me out. I know it shouldn't be a big deal, they can just wash their hands, and I don't want them to be freaked out by it, but it BOTHERS ME."

She asked if I thought we should test me for OCD. Heh. MAYBE! Maybe just a LITTLE!

So, next week that's ON like donkey kong. My husband told me I was gonna ace that test. I'm not sure what he means by that, exactly.

It runs in the family too, apparently. I picked my kids up from my mom's afterwards and was talking to her and learned about some funny OCD-style quirks she has that I wasn't entirely aware of. And my brother came home from work in the middle of our conversation and he's got some too. It's a family affair, oooo, a family affair...

It would be really nice to get some of my anxieties under control. I'm looking forward to this, believe it or not.

In the meantime, she tasked me this week with just doing my morning routine every day. Good or bad, stick with it. We're going for CONSISTENCY. I am to make note of anxieties I feel, perceived roadblocks, dislikes, issues, whatever. She asked me to ignore the rest of my list for the week. IGNORE MY LIST?? 'Can you do that?' she asked me. "Umm... I don't know?" I said sheepishly. "Can I focus on just ONE thing?" "OK." She said. "But just ONE. Nothing else. I don't want to give you too much this week. I think that's plenty."

But I WANT to do the whole list!!

So that's my assignment.

On the drive home, I was thinking about all the other things on the list and trying to figure out what I can 'outsource' to my husband so more things get done.

I suspect that's probably something like cheating.

So I've done nothing this afternoon so far but think about it and feel anxious because the world is going to BLOW UP  if I can't do EVERYTHING on my list RIGHT NOW.

This is what happened to me last time I ignored my list. True story.

Surprise! This is turning into the CRAZY BLOG! Bet you didn't see that coming!

Step One of my financial repair journey: stop worrying and being so anxious about so many things. It seems this might be a much bigger process than I had suspected. Until I started examining it recently, I hadn't quite realized how badly anxiety has permeated my life over the past few years. I walk around in a near-constant state of anxiety these days, even when I don't have something specific to be anxious about. Even though I am just starting to work on it, I can't tell you how relieved I feel to be addressing it. I am looking forward to feeling better.

Also, I should really see someone about that eye wound.

you might also enjoy reading:
Penniless
So Basically I Live In A Constant State Of Anxiety No Matter What
Lead Me Not Into Temptation... I Can Find It Just Fine By Myself

penniless

Hi. We're broke.

Yeah, hell of a way to start a blog post. I had no other idea what direction to go with this introduction.

As some of you may already know, I am unemployed. I lost my job the beginning of last September. I've been on unemployment, which has been keeping us afloat; my original unemployment claim ended last spring and I was granted an extension. Now, as far as I understand it, there are currently no other extensions to be granted (unless Congress votes otherwise soon... I believe they're voting on Tuesday? I'm not sure), and I am expecting to run out of my extended benefits... very soon. I'm not sure exactly when, because I get a little confused when I try to navigate the world of unemployment benefits. I suspect they make it deliberately confusing so no one questions them. Not that it matters, because they don't answer their phone anyway; if you REALLY wanted to go and question them, you'd have to go sit in their hellhole of an office all day and wait to talk to someone who doesn't actually have answers for you anyway. Not my idea of a good time.

But if I read the website right, I will be running out either after this week's check or after the following check, and the following check (if I get one) may only be for one week's benefits, not two, because my starting check was only for one week. This is all conjecture, I really don't know. That's what I'm guessing at though.

Back when I lost my job, we looked at our budget to determine if we would be able to live on OJ's salary alone, if ever it came down to that. At that time, it was tight but manageable. We would have had to give up pretty much every expenditure that even resembled excess, and I might have had to scramble to bring in a couple hundred bucks a month from home somehow, but that seemed like something we could deal with if that ever came to pass.

Well, since it appeared that WOULD be coming to pass soon, we sat down last week to take another look at our budget. Everything and nothing has changed since last September, when I lost my job. We got a 'new' (to us) car. We went on a large vacation that we absolutely could not afford, and borrowed / charged most of it. I'm sure we charged other things. We intended to pay off most of our debt with my unemployment money, since we were no longer paying for daily childcare, and instead somehow we managed to not only NOT get out of debt, we incurred more. We went through a very traumatic time where it looked like our marriage was going to dissolve. We're still dealing with the emotional consequences of that and every other stressor in our lives as well. The short of it is, LIFE happened. We didn't manage a lot of things well at all. And somehow, when we sat down and looked at our budget last week, that couple hundred dollars I would have needed to bring in each month had blossomed. Grown into a massive BEASTLY intimidating number.

Somehow, we ended up over $1600 short each month. Or rather, we will be as soon as my unemployment officially ends.

Quite frankly, I've been sick since we discovered that number. Reeling. In shock. Completely and utterly stressed out. Pretty much panicking.

There is no telling if I will even be able to find a job in this market, at this point, where it's been almost a year. And if I DO, am I likely to make what I was making before? I'm guessing not. When I was working before, after we paid our childcare, we had only about $1600 a month left over. Some of it, obviously, was used to pay the rest of our expenses beyond OJ's check. Some went to debt repayment (and a fat lot of good that did). Most of it got blown on living beyond our means. A LOT got blown on food; groceries and eating out are two of our biggest expenses. Or WERE. We obviously can't do that anymore. (By the by, that "$1600 over" does NOT include going out to eat at ALL, and only allows us a $400 grocery budget each month. I was trying to live on a $300 budget the past few months and failing miserably, so we upped it a little. We may not have ANY money for groceries though, if I can't come up with that money, so it might be irrelevant! I just wanted to point out that we didn't BUDGET for extraneous living.) Assuming I even find a job, I'll be paying for childcare and working and STILL might not clear what we need each month just to pay the bills. That thought is incredibly depressing.

What happened in the past, the details of it, don't so much matter now. What matters is that we made irresponsible decisions, we counted on our future selves to clean up the mess we were steadily making, and our once-future, present selves are paying a heavy price right now. Oh, how we are paying. Or will be.

I'm not sure how to make up a $1600+ difference from home each month. I'm really, quite frankly, completely overwhelmed at the thought. I have a lot of ideas. I've gleaned some pearls of wisdom from friends, and of course OJ and I have been putting our heads together over it too. Despite how it may sound, that budget really doesn't have much by way of entertainment expenses in it. There's not much else we can cut. We downsized our cell phone plan as much as possible. We don't have a land line. We don't have cable TV. (We have an $8 a month Netflix account and we do streaming video and Hulu and ripped movies pretty much exclusively.) Internet is non-negotiable, until I'm living in a box, heh. (Not just for fun, but because most of the ways I CAN earn money from home are internet-related, as is any job hunting; it's kind of a necessity.) After that, it's mortgage, utilities, groceries, household and child items, pet expenses, vehicle expenses. We did throw in $100 a month each for OJ and I for 'mad money' - that covers ANYTHING extra we'd like to do. For ourselves, for the kids, as a family, with friends. And if I can't somehow make up the $1600 a month, it's the first thing that gets cut. We just threw it in as a wish list budget item, because it's awfully hard to live without SOME outlet, occasionally. The last big chunk of our monthly expenses, obviously, is debt repayment. We spend $850 a month on debt repayment. The only item I kept separate from that is our mortgage because even though it's debt, it's in the 'way long term debt pay off' category for me. So that's just credit cards and vehicle payments. We both have student loans that aren't even INCLUDED in that monthly payment number because we keep deferring them.

In other words, we're just a big financial mess here.

We've been talking about getting out of debt for a LONG while, and we even made headway a time or two in the past, but we've really dug ourselves into a fine old hole here now. We're screwed. I don't know what to do.

As I mentioned, I have ideas, and I have made a pledge to myself to not only work on putting these ideas into play every day (some of them, at least), but also to write about how the day went each night. To talk about what worked for me, what didn't, and share any gems I may uncover on the way.

My husband makes a decent amount of money. We're well above the poverty line. He has a full time job, we have insurance (thank goodness, especially with my diabetes). Thanks to our insurance, we can afford my monthly medications, doctor visits, and even therapist visits to help me manage my stress (MEGA overload here! heh). And yet we might not be able to afford things like groceries. We can't refinance our mortgage because it's upside-down since the market turned bad. With our debt load (total owed is around $28,000) we are extra screwed, but even if we didn't have that debt we'd still be about $800 a month short. Without many extraneous expenses. If we spent NOTHING on fun ever and just did our best to keep our house, pay the bills, and put food on the table, we'd be about $600 a month short (without debt).

So is this the plight of the... what do they call us? Am I middle class? I've always just assumed I was, but I really don't know what the parameters of middle class are. Let's assume I am. The middle-class poor? Is that what we are? Too poor too afford to live, too 'privileged' to get any aid from the government, forgotten and left to flounder? Maybe that sounds dramatic. I'm certainly not one to run to welfare the second the chips are down. But it's not even an option for me anyway. We're too 'rich' for welfare.

So what do you do, in a situation like this? What is the answer? Maybe I'll find it. Maybe some of you have it. The answer, my friends, is - no I'm not going to say 'blowin' in the wind'. The answer is DIFFERENT for all of us, because different people are willing to do different things, and even when the similarities are eerie, your situation is still going to be unique. Each of our financial crises are personal to us and our set of circumstances. But I'd love to hear what you have done to save yourself from financial ruin, if you've ever faced anything like this. I'd love to know what sorts of things you've done to make money from home. I will be sharing what *I* do to both shave money off our expenses AND make money from home. Maybe it will be enough. Maybe my experiences will help someone else out there, someone who is stressed and crying themselves to sleep just like me. Maybe I'll  make changes and clean everything up and serve as a good example to others who find themselves in the same boat.

And you know what they say... if I find that I'm not able to be a good example, perhaps my purpose was merely to serve as a horrible warning. DON'T LIVE BEYOND YOUR MEANS, KIDS. Eventually you really DO have to pay the piper. Save those pennies for a rainy day. All that stuff they told us back when we were kids that we ignored.

Being an adult sucks pretty bad sometimes.

image repost from Stardust and Peanut Butter

you might also enjoy reading:

Living Simply

I Don't Even Know Where To Start...

A Weight On My Mind

a weight on my mind

It's a well-known fact amongst my family, friends and readers that I am a 'stuff' person. Since my youth, it's been safe to say I'm a packrat. In my adult life, I would even dare to admit that I have something of a hoarding problem. If you've read even a little bit of my blog, you know that I consider this to be one of the three main roadblocks that hold me back from achieving many of my dreams. Over the years, there have been times I've felt like I've made considerable progress with this problem... and times when I've felt like I've landed back at square one, doomed to forever be buried under mountains of clutter. Sometimes I lament the fact that I have too much stuff, and entertain fantasies of burning it all... or, in my less desperate hours, fantasize about opening my house in some manic "sell off my life" sort of estate sale. Getting rid of it all, and starting over at square one. Other times, I lament the fact that our house is too small and become intensely desperate to move to a much larger home. (Always after these thoughts do I kick myself in the butt; I do believe we need a larger space for our family, but it should NOT be because of STUFF!)

Recently I've felt, once more, that I've been making progress on this problem. I am at a place in my life where I can look back and realize that I HAVE made a lot of progress over the years. I still get frustrated, and I still backslide; if I were being honest I would admit to you that more than half of our home is currently practically unlivable due to the mountains of stuff in the rooms. I would also have to admit to you that, as recently as last week, our entire house was like that; it has only been in the past few days that I've managed to get most of the upstairs back into clean, uncluttered space. Despite the backsliding, and despite the fact that I sometimes feel like I'm living the definition of insanity (doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result each time), I really DO believe I've made progress over the years. Here's why:

Certainly I'm no psychologist, but for me, keeping / hoarding all of these items is largely a mental issue. I have huge emotional ties to my stuff. I have spent probably the last ten years coming to terms with that fact, trying to understand it, admiring my friends and family who are minimalists, reading and studying the tenets of living a simple life, and working hard to embrace that philosophy myself. A lot of internal meditation and rumination has gone on for the past decade. I am at a place where I have accepted that I will probably never be a MINIMALIST, and indeed I don't think I WANT to be... but I don't feel a need to suffocate myself with THINGS anymore. I am comfortable letting things go, even things I once loved and treasured dearly. I have come up with ways to memorialize the important things and people in my life without needing physical mementos. I no longer feel panicky when I think of letting the majority of my things go. This isn't perfect, of course; there are still things I have attachments to, and sometimes when I'm purging I have to sit and really think about each item before I can part with it. And, of course, some things will be staying. But I feel now like I am choosing to surround myself with quality items; items that REALLY mean something to me, rather than boxes upon boxes of 'treasures' I have collected, 'treasures' which I never even saw because they were in piles or stacks or boxed in the garage or laundry room. I can't really tell you exactly how I got here, other than to say that I spent a LOT of time (ten years, at least!) thinking about it and trying really hard to get here. Pushing myself out of my comfort zone, time and time again. I also have to give a lot of props to Flylady and her system. I have been on and off the Flylady system numerous times in my life, and while I must say that to date, following her system exactly has NEVER worked for me... there are a great deal of small tips and tricks and philosophies of hers that I have picked up and follow religiously. I maintain a sort of control journal that helps me keep the house clean (when it's decluttered, which admittedly has been rare so far, but getting better!). I use my timer constantly, and often tell myself 'you can do anything in 15 minutes!'. (I work in a lot of 15-minute bursts, and when I get on a roll, those are some of my most productive days.) And her philosophies about decluttering... I've railed against them for years, but I've slowly come to realize she's right.

You see, Flylady strongly encourages decluttering... purging your things, giving them away to bless others (AND bless yourself by having a clean, decluttered life and home!). You can't organize clutter, she says. Well, that one was an eye-opener for me right away. If you're an organized person by nature, I'm sure you're thinking 'well, DUH' right now. Those of us that are NOT 'Born Organized' need these eye-openers sometimes! From the moment I read that one, it rang true. However, there was another part of her decluttering philosophy that took me years to accept. Flylady is vehemently anti-garage sale. Just give it away, she encourages her followers; you'll bless others and bring prosperity into your own life through your generosity. Garage sales are too much work and hassle and you don't get nearly enough return on the amount of work you put in. I agree with her "bless others and bring prosperity into your own life" philosophy, but I've stubbornly refused to hear her message about the garage sales. For at least FIVE YEARS now. Really; I even had a garage sale this year. I think I've had one every year since my son was born. Some years I may even have had two. The reason being that I feel like we need money to move ahead in life. Money to get out of debt, move to a bigger home to accommodate our growing family, achieve so many of my dreams. There is so much MONEY tied up in all this stuff I own that it has made me sick to just give it away. (Yes, I know about tax write-offs when you donate to charities; but somehow the idea of not getting an immediate return on my money just stuck in my craw.) It's been really immensely difficult for me to accept the fact that I wasted so many of my (and later, my family's) resources on so much useless stuff that I'm just going to TOSS now. So I've garage saled many hours of my life away; each time vowing never to do it again because it really and truly IS a pain in the ass. Then I've vowed to myself that I'm going to sell these things on ebay and craigslist! Maybe they didn't go in the garage sale but that's just because they didn't have the right BUYER! The internet reaches the whole WORLD; surely someone will see it and pay me what it's worth!

IF THIS SOUNDS FAMILIAR TO YOU TOO, LET ME STOP YOU RIGHT NOW AND TELL YOU: THIS IS A DELUSION. Unless you have some really awesome stuff. And by awesome I mean ACTUALLY antique or collectible (not just in your own mind). If you're like me and you have a lot of awesome-to-you stuff, but it doesn't hold a lot of monetary value, you're not going to get much for it. And you know what else? It's a huge hassle to post all that stuff! Let alone manage the inventory and then box it and ship it if it sells. Especially when you're trying to declutter and you're already surrounded by mounds of stuff. If I had a warehouse to store the sale items in, and I managed it like a job, it might work. But I don't; I'm working against myself, because I keep making piles of stuff to sell in different areas of my house, and then we trip over them and other stuff lands on them and before you know it I'm back under mountains of clutter.

So. It's taken me a good five years to admit it, but Flylady, YOU ARE RIGHT. The stuff has to just GO. I know I will be blessing others with these things, because a lot of the items are in good shape and are still useful. But it's not blessing me or my family right now. I DO believe that in helping others we open the door for more blessings in our own life. I have already packed my car with the first load of stuff to go out the door, and I really feel like I'm lightening the load in my home by purging things.

I believe this logically, and I am now at a point where I believe this 95% emotionally as well. But there is a part of me that is not at ease with it. Mostly because, as I mentioned earlier, so much of our money has been spent on this stuff that I am now tossing. It is truly a bitter pill to swallow, to know that I could have so much more in other areas, areas I YEARN to be further along in, if I hadn't wasted so much on 'in the moment' impulses in the past. This is a lesson I am still learning, and part of me still wants to try to make a 'recovery' from it by recouping some of that money. It really cuts me to have to admit that sometimes you CAN'T recoup losses like that. I can learn from my mistakes, and I can move forward. I'm trying really hard to move forward right now. I still have a huge problem with impulse control (that's what therapy is for!). I have a lot of regrets about this 'stuff', and tonight it is sitting like a lead weight in my stomach. I know I'm going to have more issues with this as I purge more stuff. I am, in particular, dreading my basement and garage because there is a LOT of stuff that I won't do well purging. A big part of me just wants this process to be OVER already. Most of me is ready. Part of me is still hanging on.

Through it all, I'm proud of the progress I've made. I'm hopeful that this time is FINALLY the time for me, the time that I will be on my way to a less cluttered, cleaner, less stressful life. I hope that I am able to come to terms soon with the regrets I have over wasting so much money in the past. I hope that releasing my things to bless others who need them really will bring unforeseeable benefits into our lives. I hope that I continue to get a better handle on my impulses so that I can live a more fruitful life and make smarter decisions every day, especially in the realm of finance. I'm having trouble seeing the long road ahead. I'm trying really hard to make everyday decisions that will help me achieve our long term goals.

I really, really hope that this time, finally, is the time for me to get over that first road block, for once and for all.

lead me not into temptation...I can find it just fine by myself.

I'm really ill at ease today. For no good reason (other than that it's sort of a constant feeling that seems to ebb and flow within me), I'm immensely dissatisfied with our finances and our house right now. Both the size of the house AND the clutterfied contents. I'm feeling really jealous of other people today. No one specific, just anyone that has (and can afford) a bigger, cleaner house than I. I'm not even dreaming about McMansions here, right now...what I'd really love is a three bedroom house with just a little more space, a few more rooms. I'd like the bedrooms to be on a separate floor from the living space. I'd like the kids to have their own bedrooms. I'd like to have a dining room that could accommodate a decent sized table so I could tackle a family holiday gathering. I'd like a kitchen with an island, so I had more cooking space. And I'd like a mudroom, or some sort of landing at the door, so we could clean off the dogs when they come in and so we would have some place to store shoes, coats, outdoor gear, etc.

That's my dream right now. And if you've got something like that, I'm feeling a little jealous today. Sorry.

Mostly, right now, I think that I'm really angry at myself for choices I've made in the past.

I have a really hard time with anything I perceive as DEPRIVING myself. A really hard time. And maybe this is what I need therapy for, more than anything, because it is the crux of so many issues in my life. I want ice cream? If I don't get it I'm DEPRIVING myself. I'm going out? If I get water for free instead of that glass of sangria for $8, I'm DEPRIVING myself. One ice cream cone won't hurt. One drink won't hurt. But it's not just one, occasionally. It's one, all the time. One, one, one. All those one's add up. And over time, they've added up to overweight, overcluttered, and over-debted. I do feel like I've made huge strides in fighting this, but I still slip up way too often, and in the meantime it's really frustrating to look at my life and the things I really want and to know that, if I had only learned to control this tendency of mine better, I could HAVE those things now.

Life is all about choices. And I'm not very happy with most of my past ones right now. Past minor / daily choices, that is. Most of my big life choices, like kids and getting married, I'm just fine with. But my daily choices are generally a huge struggle for me, and I keep making ones that are just not helping me get to where I need to be. I break vows I make to myself all the time. I recently vowed that I wouldn't buy any more books for the time being...for an undetermined amount of time, until we're on better financial footing. I have plenty of books. I have plenty of UNREAD books to plow through still. And if I get a hankering for a new book by one of my favorite authors, I should go to the library. I haven't been to the library in ages, and one of the things I wanted to do when I stopped working was to start taking my kids to the library on a regular basis. I haven't done it yet.

Last week my mom asked me to go to the mall with her, just for the hell of it. And of course she wants to go to the bookstore. And I know there are some books I want to read but I tell myself I don't need to buy them, I have plenty I'm reading now, and anyway I can just go to the library when I'm ready to read them. I don't need to buy a book. I'm happy with this decision.
Yet somehow I come out of the bookstore with a book. I see a book by an author I like, and it reminds me he has a book out that I've wanted for a while. So I talk myself into buying it. I do it in stages. I tell myself that if it's a paperback, it'll be OK, because they're cheaper than hardcovers. But then it's only in hardcover and I STILL allow myself to buy it anyway. It's "just ONE book", after all.

I don't know what the hell is wrong with me. Why I work against myself so frequently. How I can set such defined goals, goals I can envision so strongly I can practically taste them, and still go off the path towards achieving them so many times.

I'm not looking for tears or sympathy. I realize that I have quite a fortunate life and that while I may not have many of the things I want, we do live quite comfortably and do have many things we want, we often have more than we need, and I certainly am NOT deprived. Even if I feel like it sometimes. I KNOW, consciously, that I'm not. I only have to look at the massive amount of things that surround me to understand that I've been quite fortunate over the course of my life. But as I have gotten older, I have come to deeply believe that this STUFF isn't what is important, and that indeed so much of it and the behaviors that have led me to acquire it have been unhealthy and have held me back from the things I REALLY want.

Sometimes it's hard to see when I'm standing in the middle of it, but I look back on a lot of the decluttering I've done and the pictures and videos I've taken and I believe that I do have a problem with hoarding. I may not be as bad as some people (as in the past, when I've congratulated myself on not having boxes and stacks piled to the ceiling like SOME PEOPLE do)...but that doesn't mean I don't have a problem.

I think, even without ever getting any kind of therapy for this, that I have come a long way on my own with this problem. I have gotten rid of so much stuff. And if you could see the sheer amount of stuff I'm planning on unloading at the garage sale, you'd have to agree that I've made huge strides. Sometimes I even have daydreams about opening up my entire house to a garage sale of sorts and just letting people wander through and make offers on whatever they are interested in. LET IT ALL GO. I now believe that I CAN let it all go.

But the practicality of doing that is still a struggle. I have a hard time letting it go for free, because so much of my money is tied into this STUFF. I am so disgusted at where I let myself get financially that I can't seem to just purge and donate. I have to at least TRY to sell it first. Then there's the sheer overwhelming factor of trying to deal with so much STUFF (and in a small space to boot). And there are objects I'm still tied to emotionally. Though honestly, I've found it much easier to pack away objects for selling. I have a MUCH harder time with paper clutter. Getting rid of paper is a giant struggle for me. So many tasks and so many dreams are, in my mind, tied to all those pieces of paper in my house. I should go home, dump them all, and just start the fuck over. But I can't. Not yet. I've dumped a lot, to my credit. But then I'll find another box of papers from four years ago (or more), and it just keeps growing and growing.

Another factor I struggle with is that the behaviors I've had for so long are so difficult to change. Even if I believe that I don't need to hoard anymore, even if I truly feel that hoarding is bad, I still find myself acquiring things from time to time. Like the book in the aforementioned incident. I did not NEED that book. But at the time I was standing in the bookstore, I 'needed' it.

It's tied to food too. I don't NEED to sit and eat a bunch of popsicles, or a bag of chips, or whatever, while I'm reading. But when I get the urge, sometimes, I 'need' it.

I don't NEED to have a drink when I go out. I don't need anything but water, which is free (most places, anyway). But once I'm out, I feel like I'm depriving myself if I don't just have one, so I do it. And then I kick myself later over the calories AND the money spent.

It seems like the only way to fight this, sometimes, is to not go out at all. If I don't go to the mall, or go on vacation, or go out with my husband, or go out with friends, we'll spend so much less money. I can't order it or buy it if I'm not in the store or restaurant, right?
But then I really AM depriving myself. Depriving myself of the experiences and the company of people I love.

So why can't I manage to have the experience without feeling the need to spend money too?

I'm really having a hard time fighting those impulses. I've managed to tone them down; I don't buy or spend nearly as excessively as I used to. And I suppose I should congratulate myself on baby steps. But I still buy and spend (and eat) more than I WANT to. (In the long term, anyway. Obviously in the short term I have the desire to be doing those things.) How do I reconcile my short-term desires and my long-term desires? How do I fight this battle without feeling so downtrodden and experiencing a form of buyer's / eater's remorse every time I do ANYTHING?

Sometimes those long term desires seem so far away that it's easy to give in to the short term. And then the next day it's like a cloud lifts from my mind, and I see so clearly that what I did the night before just put more distance between me and the long term goal. And it just depresses me.

I'm just trying to work it all out right now. I'm really frustrated by the amount of money we blew in June. I get a little panicky when I look at all the other things we've planned for the summer, and when we talk with friends about making more plans, and all I see are dollar signs. Dollar signs flying out of my pocket, faster than the speed of light.

Clutter, fat, and money. My three biggest roadblocks. All problems caused by the way I've behaved in the past, and ways I continue to behave now. All tied into the same, or a very similar, source somewhere inside me. I keep trying to understand why I behave this. Is understanding why necessary to make a permanent, lasting change? I don't know.

But I think, if I DO decide to pursue therapy for my problem(s), this entry is probably a great thing to print out and just hand to my therapist and session one. Maybe I do need a guide. It's really, really hard trying to change this all by myself.

the weight is over

I still have a long, hard road ahead of me in the decluttering department (Roadblock 1). The more I get done around here, the more I realize how very serious my hoarding issue was, and how much more work I still have ahead of me. I've been shoving boxes of STUFF in the laundry room and the garage for YEARS, people. I can't estimate on the laundry room side exactly how much is there, but it's more than was in the downstairs closet. And the garage? One half (of a TWO CAR garage) is PACKED to the gills.

Yeah, it's quite a project.

I'm not giving up, but I have decided I'm ready to try easing a second project in while I work on this one. Of course, easing a second project in is also like opening floodgates; all the other projects want to come rushing in and demand my attention. Fighting the urge to address them all is a legendary battle. But I think, I THINK, I have beaten them all back for now, and let through only one more. Roadblock 2: The Battle of the Bulge.

That's right, I'm ready to attack my weight issue.

Please wish me luck as I try to figure out how to focus on two, and only two, projects for a little while. And expect lots of updates.