Weekly Mileage #93 and the New Year

getting ready to head to the OR

Bright and early Monday morning I took Ocean to the outpatient surgery center of the hospital to get tubes in his ears. It was the first time any of our kids have had surgery, so it was a bit nerve-wracking, but it all went smoothly. It's a very quick procedure and coming out of the anesthesia took longer than the actual procedure.

all ready- I went into the OR with him and held his hand while the anesthesia took effect, then I had to leave

He hated the eardrops we had to put in morning and night for three days, so I'm really glad we're done with those. Thursday morning he went to preschool for a makeup day and as he climbed out of the car, he was complaining that the car idling next to us was too loud. It wasn't very loud at all, so apparently he's starting to hear things more clearly than he ever has before. His preschool teacher also  mentioned that she didn't have to repeat herself multiple times to get his attention- he responded much more quickly than he has in the past.

they let him walk to the OR

We weren't expecting his ears to clear up and his hearing to improve this quickly, so it's nice to see noticeable progress already. We were hoping he wouldn't be quite so loud once he could hear better, but we're still waiting on that one... :)

Since we were in town, we bundled up and did my last hike of the year for the 52 hike challenge. The rainy morning meant we chose the gravel and board walk bridge trail, since at least it wasn't muddy. I ended up soaked, but Ocean stayed dry in his trail suit under the rain cover of the stroller.

rainy hike

I did a total of 2.66 miles, which brought me to an even 755.0 miles for the year (bike + foot + kayak). I went 1.33 miles up the mountain, then 1.33 back down. After turning around, I decided to run the first mile back down the trail. I was feeling good, I had my running shoes on (my hiking shoes had dried mud on them so I didn't wear them to the hospital), my foot didn't hurt, and it got me down the mountain faster (it was raining harder and harder as the hike went on).

rainy boardwalk

It felt good in the moment, but my foot wasn't super happy the rest of the day- a bit sore and achy, which is to be expected after not running in more than a month.

This year I didn't run the New Years Day 5k. I've spent all my time hiking instead of running, and I'm still trying to get my energy levels back up. I did spend some time with the chainsaw though. That big oak tree we had taken down last spring is still laying where it was dropped. I've called a mobile sawmill about getting it cut into planks (for building a clubhouse on the treehouse) and a mantle for the fireplace, but the trunk lengths need to be cut down to more manageable lengths.

Mr M's back has been giving him a lot of problems lately, so he's not up for it. As tired as I always am, I do like physical work, so I decided to do a little here, a little there. It'll take awhile since the logs are so big, but it'll get done eventually.

I also attached trim and did some sanding on the desk I've been building. It's taken a couple months, like every project, but I'm finally almost done with it.

Wednesday I cleaned and organized the basement. It's been collecting stuff and getting more and more disorganized. There are a couple stacks of bins and boxes for Mr M to sort through still (they've been waiting for him for years), but everything else looks a lot better.

The only problem was that I spent the whole day in the basement, which has a concrete floor under the Pergo flooring, wearing bedroom slippers. My foot was not at all happy. And while I was able to keep moving and get things done, I was exhausted by the time I was done.

I spent the next couple days feeling like crap and realizing I really need to get better at rationing my energy. Intellectually I know this, but I hate leaving a project half done, since there's no guarantee I'll have the time or energy to finish it the next day.

Weekly Mileage
Monday- 2.66 miles hiked and run
total- 2.66 miles (towards 2018 totals)

2019 totals:

0 hikes towards #52hikechallenge
0 kayak miles towards #365milechallenge

0 foot miles towards #365milechallenge
0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
0 miles total

Weekly Mileage

Sunshine caught a firefly!

This week has been a very productive one.

It all started with unearthing the treadmill.

The guest room in the basement has been the dumping ground for stuff I planned to get rid of as I worked on decluttering the house this past spring. More stuff got added to the piles when I had to pull all our camping and emergency preparedness gear out of the closet under the stairs back in May. We had a bad infestation of weevils in a bag of rice that I never got around to properly storing. Ick.

weevils- so gross- and this wasn't even the worst of them

Anyway, when we got home from our road trip I really needed to spend time on the treadmill again, but it had stuff piled all over it. I put everything back in the closet under the stairs (I'd left everything out so I could do a final check to make sure we'd interrupted the life cycle of the weevils and they were really gone), and then kept going. After sorting random items into “ebay”, “paperback swap”, and “yard sale” piles, I turned my attention to the boxes and bins of papers. 

Some of the papers were old bills I could discard, but there was also piles of items to sort for scrapbooking: pictures, cards, old pamphlets and papers from trips, etc. When it was all said and done, I’d consolidated paperwork to keep, papers and pics to scrapbook, and papers to get rid of. Four boxes of papers to get rid of. We had four boxes of papers already in the shed, so I think we have enough to call a document disposal company to come and get it all and shred it for us (I'd planned on burning the papers in the fire pit, but burning paper is messy and takes a long time, so shredding is the better option for us).

this is what it looked like back at the end of April- it was much, much more crowded by the time I tackled it. most of what's in the pic was all the papers that had to be sorted. so much paper!

I also filled a large box with trash, an even larger trash bag with garbage, and a huge cardboard box with other cardboard boxes.

Once the guest room and bathroom were clear, I moved on to the rest of the basement for more decluttering, sorting, and discarding.

By that time, the basement was finally feeling almost clean and tidy. Until the boys dumped out the bins of trucks and train tracks and LEGOs again J

All the sorting and decluttering took me four days, in which I didn’t get on the treadmill, though I did lots of walking that I didn’t track. Friday I walked a bit more than four miles on the treadmill while listing books on ebay and paperbackswap.com. Great use of time! Saturday I did more of the same, and now I only have a few items left to list.

I also finally finished upholstering a chair that I bought about three years ago. It sat in its ugliness for a good while before I got started on it last winter. I was making good progress and just had the back to put on and the last of the trim to attach, when Ocean fell and cut his cheek on the metal teeth used to attach the back. It threw me off my stride and I had no desire to finish it, so I threw a blanket over the back and pushed it against a wall to prevent a repeat. The scar on Ocean’s face has faded significantly, though I still feel terrible that it happened. Pics to come- I need to dig out the before pics from my external hard drive.

In the interest of getting rid of things we don’t need, I decided to finally finish the chair so I could sell it at the yard sale. I’d thought it was going to take awhile to finish, which was another reason I put it off, but in the end I was able to finish it in just a couple hours.

Saturday I also finally got around to painting one of the kid’s beds, but I’ll do a separate post about that.

Weekly mileage

Friday: 4.2 treadmill walk

Saturday: 3.2 treadmill walk

            Total mileage: 7.4 miles

360.85 miles towards #365milechallenge (so close to hitting the mark!)

Preparing For Job Loss

I mentioned yesterday that I'd be sharing a couple posts about how we survived our second major unemployment period and what we've learned from the experiences.

We knew Mr M's job was not super secure- it's a fact of life in his line of work. Every year we face the question "will the money be there, or will people get laid off?" This past summer as that time drew near, everything felt more uncertain than it had in the past, so it wasn't a surprise when he did indeed get laid off.

Backing up a bit, though, there are some things we did beforehand (even before we really started worrying about him losing his job) that really helped us reduce our expenses when Mr M got laid off. Being prepared made the whole experience a little easier.

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When Mr M returned from his last deployment, we had to choose which health insurance we wanted. Our options were a plan through his civilian company or Tricare through his guard unit. After comparing monthly premiums, deductibles, co-pays, cost shares, and so on, we decided to stick with Tricare. It's not wonderful, but it was cheaper than the other plan we were looking at, and we've been with Tricare off and on for most of our marriage and we know what to expect. Choosing Tricare meant that when Mr M was laid off by his civilian company we didn't have to scramble to find new coverage or pay out the nose for COBRA insurance. And when we unexpectedly got pregnant a couple months later, health insurance was not a concern since we still had our Tricare coverage.

----> obviously we're blessed that we had as many insurance choices as we did in the first place, but it also highlights the effect our financial decisions can have, even down the road a year or two.

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At the beginning of last summer I bought Sunshine's school books and the art supplies for a year's worth of art projects. This meant I didn't have to worry about buying them later on when our budget was a lot tighter.

Last summer I posted about decluttering and downsizing because we'd applied for an overseas job. We'd applied for the job since we knew Mr M's current job wasn't that secure, and the process started us decluttering, downsizing, and evaluating what we really needed. At the end of the summer we held a huge yard sale and sold a bunch of furniture and stuff that we just didn't need.

As part of the process, I also sorted all our clothing at the end of summer. I figured out what each child needed for fall/winter and purchased those items (luckily we had enough hand-me-downs that it we only needed to buy a few things). I also took some extra baby clothes to the consignment store and now we have store credit there for when we need a few things. Not having to buy clothes for 6 months was a huge budget saver.

----> knowing what we had and where it was kept us from buying items we already had, and selling what we didn't need brought in a little extra cash. Planning the kiddos' wardrobe ahead of time allowed me the leeway to find what we needed at good prices ($6 each for 2 pairs of jeans at Gymboree for Sunshine!)

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We didn't cut out all of Sunshine's classes, but we did pay for the ones she took up front, since I knew we had the money at the beginning of the semester, but might not later on (we have the option of paying in installments). We continued her fiddle lessons and Irish music and dance classes, but skipped the expensive nature class (though we still hope to enroll her in it again in the near future).

We re-evaluated our budget in general as well as our food budget specifically and I made a concerted effort to change some of our shopping habits. I tend to overbuy our food so we always have a reserve, which is fine when we can afford to do so, but not good for the budget when the money is no longer available. On the other hand, that reserve sure came in handy and helped us lower our overall food expenses as we ate what was in the freezer and pantry.

I also tend to overbuy certain household items like cleaners (Amazon Subscribe and Save makes it too easy!) so we had plenty of laundry and dishwasher detergent stored as well. But I noticed there are some items we didn't have enough stored: namely ziplock baggies and trash bags.We also kept running out of toilet paper and diapers, though I did have stocks of those, just not enough. We don't use paper towels, and haven't since we switched to cloth years ago, so at least we didn't have to worry about constantly replacing those.

Our budget in general is already pretty streamlined, so there wasn't a lot of things we needed to eliminate from it. We don't have cable/satellite or a home phone, we don't drink coffee (expensive or otherwise), and we don't eat out on a regular basis, so all the "typical" cut-back areas in a budget aren't an issue for us. We could probably lower our cell phone bill a little, but I don't think it would be by much. I did cancel our monthly Amazon Subscribe and Save shipments since we were focusing on using what we had.

We also made the decision to sell some assets, namely our truck and travel trailer. This could have been a very difficult decision, but was actually an easy decision, since we'd already made the decision back at the beginning of the year with the intent of eventually buying an RV. While we still plan to buy an RV, the timeline for that has been pushed back. In the end, the trailer was sold just before Mr M was laid off, and we used the proceeds to pay off the truck loan and put the rest in savings. Eliminating the truck payment and having that savings cushion went a long way towards keeping me from stressing out when Mr M did indeed get laid off soon after that.

Eventually the money in savings went to pay bills and when we finally sold the truck in December it was a relief. We had enough money to buy a much more fuel efficient car (with cash) and still had some leftover for bills. Having a more fuel efficient car has also significantly lowered our gas budget since we're spending so much less and going so much further.

Even though we had started getting quotes to re-do our kitchen, we put that on hold since we knew it wasn't practical to spend money we didn't have, even if it would add value to our house. I also cut back on my projects and tried to focus on things that were free or inexpensive.

----> having items stored for future use eases a tight budget. Being willing to cut back and change spending habits can be hard, but it can also save money. Being willing to sell assets can be even more difficult, but can save money as well as bring in money.

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We still try to have fun, despite being on a limited budget, so we went ahead with two trips that had been planned before Mr M got laid off. I will admit that the only reason we were able to do so was that we'd already paid for the majority of the expenses for both trips, so we didn't have to spend too much more money when we actually went.

We had already paid our entrance and hotel fees for our Colonial Williamsburg trip, so we only had to pay for gas and food. Our food issues have made us good at planning ahead and eating as inexpensively as possible, even when staying in a hotel.

We had also already paid for our rental cabin and my half marathon entrance fee, so when we went to Tennessee we again only had to pay for gas and food. Since we stayed in a cabin with a full kitchen we brought most of our food and cooked it there and had only minimal food expenses for that trip.

After those trips were finished we didn't go anywhere expensive, but we still tried to do fun things as a family focusing on things that involved little to no money.

----> even when life is difficult it's important to stop and smell the roses. If we're just enduring, we're not enjoying. Which brings up tomorrow's topic: finding the silver lining in unemployment. Yes, there really can be one!

Third Grade Curriculum

River loves doing what Sunshine does

This year we're continuing with the curriculum suggestions from The Well Trained Mind that we've been using, with just a few changes. Follow the links to see what we did in second grade (and end of second grade) and first grade.

The subjects we're covering this year:

Reading, writing, spelling, grammar, math, science, history/geography, music, art, Japanese, Latin, phys. ed, and religion.

We're continuing with the books we've used in the past for most of the subjects since they're working- we won't rock the boat. We're also doing pretty much the same extra-curriculars as last year.

The changes:
Last spring we started using a math workbook from Target while continuing with Life of Fred. We'll start Singapore math when she finishes the Target workbook. It's ironic that the cheap workbook is working a lot better than the expensive Math-U-See and RightStart Math books. Too bad we didn't discover that before I bought all those expensive materials.

On the up-side, as I've decluttered I've unearthed all our unused/discarded curriculum and plan on selling them and getting at least some of our money back. The books that we liked I'll save for River. I'll only need to buy the workbooks and consumable pages for most of the subjects so it will save us money.

Last spring we finally bit the bullet and purchased Rosetta Stone Japanese. I never got around to setting it up before the end of second grade, but I got it up and running for third grade. So far it is working so much better than everything I tried to do with Sunshine. Well worth the money. I purchased the homeschool version and you can make different accounts for different family members. Four total, I think? I haven't spent a lot of time on it yet, but I've been able to zip through what I have done. I'm remembering more than I thought I did (though I have a long way to go before I get to my previous fluency level), and I've been able to start using more Japanese when I talk to the kiddos.

We started Latin this year. We're using Prima Latina, and so far I like it. It seems to have enough repetition for Sunshine to remember things, but not so much that she gets bored. I will say that we skip over the prayers in Latin since they don't have any application for us. There's also a cd that we listen to for help with pronunciation. Sunshine commented on the lady's southern accent :) 

I'm looking forward to learning enough Latin and Japanese that we can read Harry Potter in those languages. We don't have them in Latin yet, but we own all the books in Japanese and we even have the audio version of the first book in Japanese. It was ridiculously expensive a few years ago because we had to purchase it from Amazon Japan, though the price for the second book isn't quite so bad, so maybe we'll add that to our collection. They're great listening practice though the narrator talks super fast so you really have to concentrate.

So that's what we have planned for the year, along with our extra stuff that I wrote about here. This year I'm going to try really hard to keep to our schedule so we're not playing catch-up at the end :)

too cute!

New Entry Shelf

I was decluttering the house, but I put that on hiatus for two weeks while I built several pieces of furniture to help with organizing things. This is one of the pieces I built.

The old console table in the front entry:

it doesn't look terrible from this angle

this was the angle that was bugging me

even paint wouldn't have been able to fix it

I built a console table for the entry awhile ago, then altered it a bit, but I haven't been super happy with how it was looking. I knew I wanted to sell it at our yard sale, so I first had to build a replacement. I've actually had my eye out for a replacement for some time, but haven't been able to find anything that would fit in the odd dimensions available. Hence the need to build a shelf that would fit.

I modified this plan to fit the space: I made it shorter and narrower, and added turned legs. I wanted it to look a little fancier than the 1x3 legs would allow for, and it needed to be up off the floor so the heat vent below it can function properly.

The two pieces have the same purpose, the new shelf just has a nicer look.

Below are a few pictures taken while I was building it. In the first picture you can see the longer, skinnier leg I was originally going to use (I had them already and wanted to use them rather than buy something else), but they just didn't look that good with the squatness of the shelf. On a trip to Lowe's I found the slightly shorter but significantly more robust legs that I ended up using. They really look so much better than the skinny ones.

Despite having to buy the legs, this still qualifies as a stash-buster project: if you look closely at the insides of the side panels and the backing you'll see the remains of glue (backing) and paint (side panels) leftover from other projects that I started but didn't finish because I changed my mind. Good thing paint covers up things! Since our shed is overflowing with wood of various types and sizes, using what we have is important and factored into my calculations when I figured out what I needed for this and the other pieces I built (those will be posted in future weeks).

Here the shelf is all built and ready to be caulked and painted. I'm not sure why it looks like the top is bowed, but it really isn't.

Undecorated, but sitting in it's new home. If you compare it to the console table, it's several inches wider, but about the same depth and height. I'm pleased with how it turned out!

There's now plenty of space for library books on the bottom shelf and our cd/tape player/radio and audio books on the middle shelf. I haven't quite decided what I want on top, but the current setup looks ok for now.

much better side view

Lots of Building Going On

I was decluttering the house, but I put that on hiatus for a couple weeks while I build several pieces of furniture to help with organizing things.

I spent the last week and a half building several things.
* a queen bed frame
* a hanging bookshelf
* a new entry shelf/table
* a play frig
* new toy bins and shelves

I had hoped to have at least one of them done to post today, but that didn't quite happen. They're all built, but I haven't had a chance to finish sanding and paint them. Once I finish painting them, it's back to decluttering the house.

How to Downsize Your Household in 5 Easy Steps

our basement bathroom is the dumping ground for items we're getting rid of

1. Apply for an overseas job that would require shipping our household goods overseas (with a weight limit) and living in a much smaller house than we currently do.
2. Second-guess ourselves and ask "Are we crazy? Could we really do this?"
3. Make a list for each room/space inside and out and sort everything into categories: "take with", "store", "sell/donate/toss", and realize that it would actually be doable.
4. Don't get the job.
5. Decide to go through with the downsizing anyway.

When we moved into this house I went through and found a spot for everything and got rid of a lot of junk that we'd been hanging onto. Finally unpacking every single bin and box made it possible to see just what we had (like the duplicates of some books because I forgot we already had them since our books were in boxes for so many years). As the years go by, the amount of stuff we have has gradually increased, and inevitably it does not all get used. Having a large house has allowed the amount of stuff to creep up on us because there's random spots throughout the house that we can squirrel things away in. Especially in the basement.

So, after living in this house for more than 3 years, we're sorting and getting rid of a lot of stuff. Some of it survived the last purge, but some of it has only been around since we moved into this house. We're really trying to only keep things that have a purpose and will actually be used. If it hasn't been used since we moved here, there has to be a really good reason for keeping it. Since Mr M and I both come from pack rats who like to keep things "just in case", this is actually a challenge for us. Realizing that we can replace something if we really need it (even though we haven't used it in the entire 13 years we've been married, so the likelihood of that happening isn't very high) makes it a little easier to be brutal when sorting.

Just one example: this means that the majority of my fabric stash got put in the "sell/donate/toss" pile. I find myself buying fabric for specific projects and rarely use what's in my stash. So why have a stash if I don't use it? There's no reason to keep things if they never get used. I did keep the cutest fabrics that might actually get used (I'm teaching Sunshine how to sew this year, so I need to have some fabric on hand), but they're a small fraction of what I had. I also kept a few pieces of clothing to be repurposed, but got rid of the rest I'd been saving, since I still haven't done anything with them.

In addition to all the smaller stuff, we'll also be selling some pieces of furniture. I've been trying to get the furniture situated in each room, but some of the things we have just aren't working as well as we'd hoped. So I'm currently building some more pieces, mostly for better storage options. Between the decluttering and the building, I've been pretty busy, but I'll try to get pictures posted as I finish each project.

What are we planning for all that stuff in the basement bathroom? We'll be having a yard sale in a few more weeks, I'm listing some things on ebay, and whatever doesn't sell will be donated to the thrift store or tossed. That's in addition to what has already been thrown away as we've sorted through everything. We also have a mountain of old papers to shred. We're hanging onto all our old tax info, but there's no reason to horde old electric statements from 2004. Yes, we were, but not any more.

The challenge going forward will be to be more intentional with our purchases and not allow the clutter to accumulate again.

How do you keep the "stuff" from taking over your house?