January Challenge - Week 4 wrap up

I made it through Week 4, and guess what? I stuck to the budget! That was even the revised down from $360 to $300 budget. Here's my original post with my goals.

Financial:

• Stick to $360 $300 for all of our variable expenses. I've cut this down, as per the final challenge of the month. The $60 in savings will go towards our tax/emergency fund savings account.

We spent $240.11 this week, & that included quite a bit of postage for my Ebay sales (and, many lessons learned on what to & not to sell on Ebay, as well as how much to charge for postage!). Here's how the spending breaks out:

• Groceries - $82.33. M was out of town for most of the week, so we didn't need as much as usual.
• Dining out - $0!
• Postage (and mailing supplies) - $70.46.
• Kids - $27.38. M promised S ski poles, if he was regularly skiing black runs. The time has come, so we purchased him second hand ski poles. We should be able to pass them down to N, and then also resell them.
• Gas - $59.94

The $120ish that we save will go towards our repair bill at the vacation house &/or the tax bill. There are plenty of places for it to go this week. ;-)

Decluttering:

• Get rid of 30 items this week. Increasing from my original goal of 20, because I think there's still more there. :-)
• Organize the food stash!

I definitely got rid of more than 30 items. I went through both kids closets & got rid of everything that didn't fit, brought up clothes in a larger size from my spare dresser, I also got rid of a full punch set (including 16 mugs). I'm giving them to my mother, who has lots of parties. I've never used them in the ten years I've owned them, so clearly, I don't need them. :-)

I also went through my food stash again (just cleaned & organized it at the end of December), but still managed to find an old container of cereal that was six years old. Yes, six years old. We don't even eat cereal, so who knows why I bought it to start with. It was tucked way in the back, so looks like I need a better food rotation system.

I also have a few random pantry items that I'd like to use up in the next few weeks. Some of them are "one hit wonders" (i.e. I bought them for a specific recipe & never used the remaining).

• Sweet mochi flour (?!). Had to look this one up online.
• Oatmeal. I love oatmeal & we use it regularly, but we have a *ton*.
• Manicotti noodles. I only have 2 or 3, & don't want to buy another box, so need to get creative with these.
• Orzo (love this, but it's been in the pantry for a while)
• Chia seeds (one time wonder, need to use these up, as they were crazy expensive)
• Dry roasted almonds. Stale, so no good for snacking. Would like to use them in something. I've tried this recipe with great success, but not sure how it would work with the dry roasted version.

Any recommendations for the sweet mochi flour, your favorite oatmeal recipe, lonely manicotti noodles, or the others? Help me! :-)

Many, many thanks to Carla for keeping me on track this month with the January challenge!!

And, here's a picture of our January donations - more than 100 items to give to Goodwill!