Spring Cleaning Round 1

I've got the Jessica Black song stuck in my head right now (thanks Young and Thrifty) *facepalm*

I'm putting some music on to drown it out.

My boyfriend is out of town this weekend for his friend's/former roommate's bachelor party. I'm a little jealous he gets to spend today on the slopes in Banff, but at the same time it really was for the best. After working last weekend, and severely neglecting my house cleaning for... oh... the last 2 months? My place needed some attention.

I have done some cleaning in the last 2 months, just not the reorganize/good scrub down type of cleaning. Seeing as it is actually spring now, despite the rolling hills of snow outside, I figured now is as good a time as any to start my spring cleaning :) I find the longer daylight hours really help with my motivation. I do suffer from SAD during the winter months, and my motivation is all but shot during that time. Just ask my gym clothes.

3 garbage bags later my place does look cleaner, by a long shot, but I'm looking around at how much stuff I have, wondering "where did this all come from?" The occasional item isn't mine, like a chai tea pot left here by my former roommate (making arrangements to have that returned right now), but 99.99% of the stuff in here is mine. Of that 99.99%, I'd say 95% I paid for. That's a lot of money!

Wow that's a lot of money....

I wish my desire to hoard money was as strong as my desire to acquire things. I binge spending, then I purge the items when they build up too much. It's like I'm bulimic with my possessions.

I have a pile of boxes downstairs that I still need to go through from when I moved in last year. They haven't been entirely unopened, I just need to actually find proper locations for the stuff in them. Either that or purge further.

Garbage bag #4?

I've had the urge to have a garage sale for a while now, I just don't have an actual garage to host it out of. I put a status update on my facebook asking everyone I know on there if they're interested in doing a group garage sale; I figure if someone is going to come to a garage sale we may as well make it worth their while.

Has anyone else noticed that garage and garbage are only one letter away from each other? A little coincidental given what I'm talking about, all things considered.

Ah well. It was a productive afternoon of cleaning. I'm kind of using writing as a reprieve before working on another area. I think I'll finish up the kitchen then go work on a couple basement boxes. I've been enjoying spring cleaning a lot more since getting my own place. Its refreshing.

Dear god, I sound like Martha Stewart.

Oh well. Has anyone else started their spring cleaning yet? Any garage sale plans this year?

Guilty Pleasure

I have an undeniable guilty pleasure that costs me at least $30 a month.

Magazines.

Fashion magazines. Home Décor magazines. Money magazines (Oh, the irony). Real Estate magazines. Business magazines. Cooking magazines. Yoga magazines.

It’s like buying a newspaper everyday, only I read my news online.

I know. I know. If I can read my news online, why can’t I read the rest of it online? Well, it gives me something I can read on the bus. I like reading novels, but I tend to get quite absorbed in what I’m reading. It makes missing my stop a greater likelihood…

I have piles of them. Some, like the cooking magazines, get archived and saved for future use, but most of them end up collecting dust on the floor afterwards. Not good, I know. I’m half considering building a coffee table out of them. Maybe something like this one over at http://www.treehugger.com/

Anyway, more to the point. I know that I would save a considerable amount of money if I just subscribed to them rather than picking them up at the grocery or book stores. I did that last year with one of them; I used my Airmiles to subscribe to Money Sense, a finance magazine I particularly enjoy reading. I also requested a subscription to Fine Cooking magazine for Christmas when my mom inquired.

I received an e-mail last week from my phone company about magazine subscriptions. Normally when they send promotional e-mails I promptly delete them, because they’re usually offering TV bundling packages (I don’t have a TV), or promotions for signing a contract (not going that route again). This time I paused and read it. I completely forgot that my phone company is also a publishing company, and they were offering magazine subscriptions tacked onto existing accounts for about $1/month per magazine. It didn’t make you lock in for a specific amount of time, you can opt out any time, and the shipping was included. I’m still hesitant that I might get slapped with an extra fee somewhere, but I added a couple magazines to my cell phone bill. If spending $4/month on my cell saves me from spending $20 a month in the grocery store (they don’t print all of my favourites), I figure that’s a decent deal.

What's your guilty pleasure?