2012 Home Project Organizational Challenge

[Ssindi]

Looks like my sewing room used to look. I fixed it by not sewing anymore. Now there isn other junk in there!

[dwallyfam]

Well after many unexpected things happening in January, I didn't get my laundry room/pantry done. This will now be February's challenge.

My other challenge is not to bring home a bunch of stuff from dad's appartment and clutter up my house.

[Spirit Deer]

I can only claim doing something organizational in a very convoluted way, which I'll do since I can rationalize anything.

We went to GW to buy two DVDs about Hawaii that we (okay, he) should have bought Thursday. Good news, they were still there. Bad news, they would have been half price on Monday. We bought them anyway.

Well, one thing led to another and that little $6 (plus $3.50 in gas) excursion ended up costing us about $300. LOL.

Back a few years, we bought a very expensive DVR/VCR combo player/recorder that only worked until the warranty ran out, so like ninety days. We were ticked, but the thing was just a loss because there was nothing we could do about it. We also bought three cheaper DVD players, all of which work partially, meaning some work some of the time all the way through a movie and some work part of the way through a movie and then quit, and we never know which will do what and when. So a local store had a DVD/VCR player on their ad but they also had a DVR/VCR recorder combo that wasn't on sale, but we had a 15% coupon which is more than the sale prices usually are. The coupon can't be stacked and expires next week. So we decided to go for the player/recorder not on sale.

While my husband was debating about that, I wandered around the electronics department and what did I find? A color e book reader that's actually a mini-tablet, on clearance. The screen protector and case were also deeply discounted. Oh, boy. My husband wanted a color Nook and they're $300, which makes my hair stand on end to think of buying that. So I talked him into it for himself, even though he was lukewarm about the idea.

We didn't think the discount coupon we had would apply to clearance merchandise, especially electronics, so were prepared to pay the shelf price at the till. But the additional discount DID apply! So the new mini-tablet, which is also an e reader, ended up costing us only $64! My husband, who isn't usually much interested in electronics, has been playing with it all afternoon and keeps telling me how smart I am for talking him into it. LOL

I'll admit the e reader doesn't have anything to do with organizing. I'm just really happy he got the new toy for a lot less than a color Nook. But we really needed to buy the DVR/VCR now because we're going to have to build a box to sit on top the dresser we're going to re-purpose for a TV stand, and we need to make sure the Wii, receiver, and DVR will all fit into it, thereby organizing all those things and the TV on top of it. Ergo, this is an organizational purchase.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

[peanut]

Four bookcases and one cupboard full of exposed yarn and fabric (if I open the door). Spent this afternoon at crafting turning balls of yarn into skeins again, so they wouldn't fall off the shelves. Better to store the yarn that way anyway. Have a few more balls to do, but most are done. Taking a five minute break here before working on browns and grays...all that are left!

[forHISglory]

Spirit Deer: Your little shopping excursion just made my day. I laughed until I cried.....

[Debbie-cat]

Your sunroom looks like my storage building peanut. Big !!!!!

SD - great buy and the story that went with it......priceless.

[Spirit Deer]

Glad you enjoyed the saga, fHg and DC. I enjoyed watching my husband with the new tablet. He so seldom gets anything for himself. He works hard and he deserves a treat like that now and then. I think he's really going to like it, so I hope it's trouble-free for a long time to come. The first thing he told me about it after he started fooling with it was, "I can get ESPN!" ROFL!

To top off the day, I raked up a long-forgotten memory from back in August, during the HP tablet debacle when they were selling $600 Touchpads for $99, the news went viral, and everyone was trying to buy them. Barnes and Noble's website showed them in stock, and that went on for hours, while everyone else online was sold out. It was a feeding frenzy. A couple billion people, bought them and had their orders confirmed. But it turned out they weren't in stock after all. B&N sent out $20 gift codes as an apology to everyone who had been told they were getting a Touchpad. We had forgotten all about that, but we dug it up out of old e mails and bought ourselves season 6 of the TV show Northern Exposure. We've been looking for that for a long time and the price never seems to go down. We ended up getting that for about $15, so we're happy. We really didn't even expect the gift code to be any good anymore. So as it worked out, we ended up getting the new tablet today, plus the screen protector and case, plus the Northern Exposure DVDs for about the same as the Touchpad would have cost us last summer.

It's been a good day.

[Debbie-cat]

I LOVE that show Northern Exposure!

[Spirit Deer]

We do too! I bought the set of the first five seasons several years ago to take with us on vacation, as a surprise for my husband. Man, was that a splurge! They were outrageously expensive. Season six wasn't out yet, so I couldn't get it. The price just will not drop on that, so it seemed like a good thing to spend the gift code on. We were both really glad I thought of it AND remembered the gift code!

And the Hawaii DVDs that started the whole thing today were great, too. Especially since they did not skip, squeal, stop dead, change programming, fade in and out, lose the soundtrack, or do anything they shouldn't do. Amazing.

[peanut]

SD: I'm glad I'm not the only person on these boards prone to spontaneous spending. I got a huge chuckle out of your story. It sounds so like me... But my, you got some really good deals! WTG!

My sunroom is looking much better now. Just a little ways to go now. DC, it's only 8 x 14', but it also is short wall space for shelving. So I am having to make do. I have some wool stored in a cradle in front of the window. Well, what do you do with those things after your baby grows up anyway?

Have scads of balls of yarn to re-skein. But there you go. It'll give me something to do to keep me from getting bored.

[madhen]

Northern Exposure WAS a great show.

First full day in February I have to work on my bedroom, so I am going to try to take full advantage of it. The only thing I want to do that will pull me away is to try to go for a run/walk.

[Spirit Deer]

Peanut, could you sell the cradle and put a dresser in that spot instead? It would protect the yarn from fading and hide the clutter.

The e reader was pretty spontaneous, I'll admit. But we had researched it a few months back during the aforementioned HP tablet episode, and my husband decided at the time to hold out for the HP just in case, since they had sent an e mail stating they were making more so everyone who wanted one could get one. (We don't believe in Santa Claus, either, so didn't really think it would happen and of course it didn't.) But the whole tablet thing dropped off the radar for the time being. So yesterday, we did have some background info about that particular e reader, and it had most of the features he wanted so since the price was so low, it became almost a no-brainer. We'd have bought something eventually so figured we might as well take advantage of a great price.

We were better prepared about the DVR/VCR. My husband had hooked up all four of the old ones to re-diagnose their problems since it had been a while and we had forgotten some of their issues. You know how it is sometimes when something sorta works. You keep hoping it'll magically fix itself. Well, he determined none of them were worth keeping. We're just fed up with dealing with all of them. It's been years and it's so frustrating we don't even try to watch DVDs much anymore. I sure hope we have better luck this time around. He had also done some online research about various models in that line. We probably could have gotten that item cheaper elsewhere, but we've had such rotten luck we decided we wanted to buy locally, where they have a vested interest in making us happy if something goes wrong and we don't have to pay to ship things back and all that nonsense. Customer service these days is worth A LOT and of course we don't get that buying online.

We're going to be keeping an eye out at GW now for a carry case for the new e reader. The store wanted $20 on clearance! I think we can do better eventually. I was glad they had such a nice slip case for it though, where we got the e reader.

[Ssindi]

Spirit D,that's how I like to shop! I'm hoping to manage a laptop like that one day in the not to distant future. Walmart had a good deal last week but I think they only had one per store. Of course I was told that Walmart doesn't do rainchecks.

[peanut]

Finished rearranging the wool fabric. Now to turn more balls of yarn into skeins for storage. Then I'll be finished...

[Spirit Deer]

Ssindi, I got my desktop by accident that way a few years ago. Quite a few now, I guess. We almost never go into Office Max but had gone in for some dang thing, a printer I think. I'd been having minor issues with my desktop at the time, having to do with the internet and the speed of the old one. Nothing major, but I knew I'd need an upgrade of some kind before long. Office Max had three brand new desktops they were closing out for $350 because they were clearing the decks for whatever new OS was coming out right then. My husband had just gotten a really good price on his desktop, a refurbished one for over $700. The one at OM had more features, more RAM, and all kinds of goodies his didn't. I decided I wasn't going home without it. My husband wasn't too excited about the idea. I remembered what he had paid for his, but he conveniently didn't and didn't think the one I wanted was a good deal. He thought we should go home and research and then come back. Well, we were 110 miles from home and I wasn't about to wait a week while he dithered. Naturally, I won. He about choked when he got home and looked up what he had paid for his computer, and realized what it would have cost us if he'd gotten his way! Mine was less than half with more features and not refurbished. We were both glad I won that argument.

Just sayin', in a roundabout way, there are good deals like that from time to time. Good luck finding a laptop. We usually get ours on eBay.