January Challenge Wrap Up

We're in the home stretch, so I'd like to recap my progress on the January Challenge that I took part in!

These were my original goals for the month:

 

For the financial challenge, my goal was to keep our weekly spending to $360/week. This includes the following categories (and, does not include standard bills like the mortgage, child care, etc):

1. Groceries
2. Dining out
3. Gifts
4. Clothes (mine & kids)
5. Kids lessons
6. Gas
7. Personal (this is hair cuts, etc)
8. Car

For the decluttering challenge, my goal was to get rid of (either sell, toss, or donate) 20 items per week in January. Bonus goal was to clean my closet & dresser.

 

So, how did I do?

 

Week One

For week one, the additional goals were to make do, rather than purchasing something. I did well with this, challenging myself to make do with our existing menu, rather than going all out when we had a house guest, avoided buying lunch even one time this month (!!!), and stopped buying protein smoothies at the gym, subbing them for free chocolate milk at work.

I also managed to spend $360.29, so just $.29 over my weekly financial goal. I'll call this a win!

I crushed my decluttering goal, & got rid of nearly 50 items. Yeah!

Week Two

Well, this week was harder financially with our car tabs coming due, so we spent $610 for the week, well over our goal of $360.

In terms of decluttering, I cleaned our junk drawer, & stayed on track with my "elimination" of more than 20 items per week.

Week Three

Again, financially it was much more difficult on week three. We spent $460.57. $80 of that was an unplanned expense for two kids karate uniforms. The other was for my pedicure. *blush* After we went over our initial amount, I kind of lost my mojo & just spent.

On the decluttering side, I went through both boys dressers & found well over 20 additional items to donate!

Week Four

For an additional challenge during week four, I cut our goal of $360/week to $300. And, we made it! We spent $240.11. I'm so, so impressed with our progress!

For decluttering, I got rid of more than 30 items, & combed through our food stash/pantry & found some old things to toss & other items that need to be used up.

Final Results:

How do I feel about the month overall? I feel great, actually. Staying on track with our financial goals was very challenging, but I know the goals gave me that extra incentive to keep the spending on track. All told, I was only about $50 over my monthly challenge of $360/week, which is fantastic!

On the decluttering side, I feel really great about the amount we donated, but I know there's still much work to do. We donated several bins of clothes & household items, & I'll continue to keep working on this in the month ahead.

Special thanks to Carla for giving me the much needed kick in the pants this month, with her great January challenge!

Did you participate in the January challenge? How did you do?