Cleaning and summer fun

We bought a carpet scrubber earlier this month and boy do I love that thing. We spent a day of Marty's vacation scrub, scrub, scrubbing every room in the house. I never realized how dirty our carpets were until I started pouring out black sandy water. Yuck!

In other cleaning/decluttering news, I have a computer monitor, Lu's old crate and the giant computer cabinet waiting to go to a new home. We have a new home lined up and are just waiting to be able to deliver the goods. (The receiver's son just had surgery so we are waiting until he feels better.) I also plan to go through our old school books and sell whatever we don't need. I still have books from when we first started homeschooling, so there is a good bit we can get rid of...)

So our summer of home grown fun is going pretty well. Lots of swimming, lots of hanging out with friends and lots of having fun as a family.


We have a goal of saving $1000 by the end of the summer. We aren't going to  go overboard with the belt tightening (it is already pretty tight!) but instead I want to show my boys that even the smallest change can make a big difference. Things like knocking the A/C up a few degrees, being super vigilant about wasting food, taking the dogs to the groomer every 6 weeks instead of 4 and combining errands, etc. We are pretty good about keeping an eye on things but I have found that every so often we need to check up on how we are doing. It is really easy to slip and not realize it. It helps that The Tightwad Gazette is on my summer reading list. (I try to reread it at least once a year.)

So... how is your summer going?