Confessions and Update of a Sweater Hoarder : I did it!

The snowy view from our living room window - good weather for sweaters!  

Well, just a quick entry today.  For those of who following my previous posts know that I publicly shamed myself and posted that I owned 63 sweaters!! My goal was to get rid of enough to take that number down to 50.  I am happy to report, that I now only own 49 sweaters. (yes, I know, this is still shocking, but I'm aiming for improvement here)  

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been able to part with 14 sweaters and donated them all to a local community center for those who actually NEED a sweater.  I'm also excited that all my sweaters comfortably fit in either my closet or the trunk at the foot of the bed and that I have kept only sweaters that I actually wear - what a novel concept!    

So I will see how life with 49 sweaters is for a while and then maybe I will try to part with a few more and see how life is with 45 sweaters!    

Sharing Beans

The Bean Trio, complete with stuffed squirrel to guard them :-)

So I don't know why the obsession with beans, it just seems to work well - after our church service this morning I was inspired to add another bean jar to my collection called "Sharing Beans".  The lesson was based on Luke 3:11 which states

"The person who has two coats must share with the one who doesn't have any, and the person who has food must do the same."


So off I went to root through my mother-in-law's cupboard of spare glass jars and my new "Sharing Beans" jar was born.  It holds beans that are spent on gifts to friends and family for birthdays, Christmas or simply random acts of kindness, but most importantly, this jar also holds beans spent on gifts/donations for those in need.

So I am challenging myself and also any of you reading this - I have decided each time a make trip to buy groceries, I will purchase at least one item for our local food pantry.  No matter how strict our budget is at the moment, I know we can afford one additional canned good each week, at the very least.  Just think of the impact this could make if we all did this every time we went grocery shopping - after all, if we are grocery shopping, then we have at least some food on our tables, while others may have none.  So if you like this idea, I challenge all of you to do the same - then at the end of the month, donate the collected goods to your local food pantry.

Budget Beans Update

Our cats Emma and Scooter curled up under our tree

How nice that December 1st came on morning I didn't have anything scheduled - so I took some time to add up our expenditures for the month of November using my new budget file and bean method (see previous posts for explanations if you are just following now).

We almost ended the month with 66 beans left, but then discovered we needed to buy dog and cat food, since we love our pets, we decided feeding them was important enough to spend all but two of our remaining beans.  :-)

So on November 28, we were left with only 2 beans, but we managed not to spend beyond those two remaining beans on the two remaining days of November - it was tough, as we started to run out of some food essentials, but we managed, just for the exercise of it all!  We did not go hungry, we just had to eat what was already in the cupboards - I'm sure there are some in other parts of the world that would appreciate such a luxury, the thought of this kept me focused.

One of the big rewards received for following through with this entire process?  We spent $304 LESS than we did in October - YAY!!!  So my ideas of intentional spending, but writing everything down and a handy visual with the beans, seemed to have worked - we came in $2 under budget and I'm pretty pleased, because it was quite the shoe-string budget.  Now to duplicate this again for December.

There were actually more rewards and lessons learned during the process, but I will save that for my upcoming post - I will leave you all in suspense!