I completed most of my goals from last week, I’m still working on one and that’s painting my daughter’s bathroom ceiling. So far I have one coat on but hope to put another two on today. That bathroom is already looking so much better.

My husband left yesterday on a business trip and won’t be home until Thursday night. With him being gone, I should have plenty of time to get a lot of stuff done around the house.

My goals this week:

1. Finish painting my daughter’s bathroom.

2. Clean out my daughter #2 bedroom. It’s pretty bad. She has clothes everywhere. My goal here is to pick up her clothes and go through them and make sure they still fit her. I’d also like to declutter her bedroom.

3. Clean out my son’s bedroom. Again, it’s pretty bad. My goal here is to get rid of old toys that he’s no longer playing with and organize the toys he still does play with.

4. Get listings ready for ebay. I have a huge clothes basket full of stuff I want to sell on ebay. I just need to take the time to get sorted them into lots, take pics and get them listed.

My HALF.COM sales update. I’ve made 5 sales! Woo hoo! After fees and shipping that’s another $35.60 to throw at my debt. I know it doesn’t seem like much but it’s better than nothing!

We’re gearing up for our county fair the last weekend of August. My three girls are all planning to raise a hog to show and auction off at the fair. They’ve been trying to contact the breeder and place their order for the pigs. I’m thinking we’ll probably get the pigs next month some time.

Last year my daughter #2 ended up getting the highest price at the fair. Her hog, Wilbur, was 297 pounds, he was hot and miserable and ended up fighting with all the other pigs and attacking the judges. Because of his horrible behavior my daughter ended up being placed last for the auction. Thanks to my husband’s buddies and everyone feeling sorry for my daughter, her pig ended up going for $11.50 a pound! They cap off the hogs weight at 260, so the buyer only pays up to 260 pounds. Well my daughter ended up getting just under $3,000. I make my girls pay me back for the hog purchase and the feeding of the hog. What’s nice about this is my girls are not only funding their own college accounts but they are also learning responsibility.

Yesterday I called the woman I get my steers from and told her I wanted just one this year. I’ve decided to cut back so I can pay off my debt faster. Last year we had two steer and my feed bill was outrageous. I did end up selling one steer and got my money back plus a little profit but I didn’t like having to put out all that money in feed every month.

I’ve also decided instead of raising two hogs for our freezer with the three fair hogs, I’m going to wait and get my freezer hogs after the fair is over. That way I won’t have huge feed bills every month and I won’t have to pay the cut and wrap fee on the steer and the hogs at the same time. Last year I raised hogs for some friends of ours while we were also raising the fair hogs. I was feeding out 8 pigs! It was just crazy so I’m not going to do that again.

I need to set some goals this week for de-cluttering my house. All this stuff is suffocating and I can’t take it any more. I have so much “stuff” put away that I don’t have anywhere to put the stuff that I actually use everyday.

For some reason I feel guilty getting rid of perfectly good stuff. I know it’s not exactly rational but I think subconsciously I’m hurting the people that gave the stuff to me. Here’s the thing, thinking this way is driving me insane. I’ve been like this my whole life and I just can’t do it any more. I don’t have any more room in my house to continue like this.

So here are my goals this week:

Master Bedroom:

1. Clean out walk-in closet. I need to be ruthless and let a lot of clothing, stuff and junk go. I plan on getting rid of clothes that haven’t been worn in a year. I will donate the good stuff, make more shop rags out of old clothes that aren’t in good shape and throw the rest away. We have so many old clothes that I can’t put the clothes that we wear on a day to day basis in the closet. There isn’t any room so I have them hanging on hangers on my four poster bed. Hanging the clothes on my bed makes my bedroom look like a mess and blocks the light making it really hard to see. Completed

2. Get rid of all those weird Christmas presents that people have giving me over the years and I’ve stashed on the closet shelf. Doing this will free up some much needed storage space. Completed

3. Purge my house all old paperback books that have already been read. I have so many and I’ve already let people borrow them, got them back and they tend to come back with friends. I literally have bags and bags of these books. I’m thinking about donating them to my local Senior Center. Completed

4. Get rid of old computers. I’m going to have to do a little research on this, I’m not sure what the proper way is to dispose of old computers. Completed

5. Paint the ceiling of my daughter’s bathroom. It’s flaking, peeling and looks awful. The second coat is on the ceiling but it’s looking like it will need at least one more coat.