A Slob Comes Clean

Savings Nation Coupon Class Ticket Giveaway!

2012-05-17T02:31:37Z

I mentioned recently that Rachel from Surviving the Stores is now teaching couponing classes with her husband Ryan in the DFW area!

Her first class is coming up on Thursday, and she’s offered to give away one ticket to one of my readers for that class (in Arlington) or for the class she’ll be teaching this Saturday (in Fort Worth).

Rachel is the real deal. I’ve met her personally and she is truly a sweet person who loves to help people get their grocery budget under control. She’s a member of Savings.com Savings Nation, which is a pretty big deal and speaks highly of her expertise.

Oh, and she has also provided a coupon code for you that will give you a total of 50% off the class of your choice. Just click on the city for the class you’re planning to attend, and use the code HALFOFF. If you win this giveaway, she’ll refund your ticket price!

The classes will cover:

Strategic Grocery Shopping

Realistic Couponing

Meal Planning Made Simple

Arlington Class - Thursday May 17th 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Bob Duncan Center

Fort Worth Class – Saturday May 19th 2:00 – 4:00 pm
Norris Conference Center in Sundance Square (cost of ticket includes
parking for the whole day and evening!)

Dallas/Garland Class – Thursday May 24th 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Hyatt Place (across from Firewheel)

Grapevine Class – Thursday May 31st 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Grapevine Concourse

All those links are my affiliate links!

To be entered to win a ticket to either the Arlington or Fort Worth class, just leave a comment below!

You can get one extra entry if you are a fan of A Slob Comes Clean on facebook,

One more if you follow A Slob Comes Clean on Twitter,

and another if you subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Just leave a separate comment for each of those additional entries!

Picnic Ideas: Taco Salad Bags!

2012-05-13T22:50:23Z

I loved your suggestions for picnic meals, and last Monday tried a version of the Tacos in a Bag or Frito Pie that were suggested.

We . . . loved these.

Here’s how I made Tacos/Taco Salads for our Baseball Night Picnic:

(If you’re a kid and think any meal with the word “salad” in it is likely to be gross, call them Tacos in a Bag. If you’re over the age of 15, add extra lettuce, call them Taco Salads, and tell yourself you’re eating a little more healthfully.)

First, I defrosted some pre-cooked ground beef and seasoned it with taco seasoning.

Then, I packed the beef into a container and filled quart sized bags with individual ingredients.

We brought salsa, shredded cheese, sour cream, shredded lettuce and tortilla chips.

I chose to put just what we needed into the bags instead of bringing entire containers of ingredients. (I generally don’t think to empty the ice-chest until the next time we need to use it . . . so I didn’t want leftovers!)

I also packed up forks, napkins, and one quart sized bag per person.

At the game, I let people choose what they wanted in their tacos/taco-salads, and for the sake of messiness and Mama Sanity, I loaded up each bag.

I instructed that they crunch up their chips and smush around their bags until they achieved the consistency they liked.

Then, I loaded my own and declared that no one could have seconds until I had a moment of peace to enjoy mine!

And I DID enjoy it. As my husband declared, “These are REALLY good.”

Taco salad is simple, but . . . having this as a real meal at the ballpark instead or nachos and popcorn just tasted so good.

Eating out of a plastic bag isn’t EASY easy . . . but I do believe it was simpler and more kid-proof than balancing plates on our knees.

Have you seen my other picnic ideas?

And here’s our menu for this week:

Monday – Sub Sandwiches (Last week’s game with this picnic was rained out.)

Tuesday – Chicken Parmesan Casserole

Wednesday- Eat at church

Thursday – Pizza Snowballs

Friday – Out to eat

Saturday – Grill out

I’ll be linking this up over at Menu Plan Monday.

Happy Mother’s Day!

2012-05-12T21:11:15Z

I wasn’t going to post today. I’ve been busy all day doing the Whole House Scrub Down to get ready to have family over on Sunday. If you’ve liked my page on Facebook, you’ve been in on all the antics of my play-by-play cleaning day.

But then, I had to show this precious paper my daughter brought home for Mother’s Day:

Love it! By the way, she is six!

Oh, and it hit me that someone asked recently about the Decluttering Update! And it’s May 11th and I still haven’t put one up! Here’s hoping I’ll get that done next week!

Two Days vs. Two Weeks

2012-05-10T19:48:27Z

Things are crazy right now with the end-of-school activities.

Add to that the wonderful and exciting event of both my boys getting baptized on Mother’s Day and the realization that if people are driving an hour to share in the celebration . . . I really want to have them over for lunch afterward . . . and this mama-whose-house-is-a-direct-reflection-of-the-busy-ness-of-her-life might just go careening off the edge.

But I decided to set aside two days this week to work on the house, and felt like that would be enough to be ready.

This . . . is big.

Especially since those two days also include prep time for speaking at a Mother’s Day brunch on Saturday morning, an end-of-the-year conference and baseball games and school programs.

As I was practicing my talk while working in my daughter’s room (yes, I’m even tackling that!), I realized that I have come a long way. Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way, but I have. When I speak, I share how it used to take me two weeks to be ready for company to come over. One week to declutter (which really means I shoved everything in the master bedroom and locked the door), and another week to clean. (They’re supposed to laugh at the master bedroom thing.)

Now, I can be ready in two days. An emergency party (is there such a thing?) could happen in a few hours, but two days should get me to let-the-MIL-through-the-front-door status. Even after a busy week/month/year.

It’s a good feeling.

As part of today’s Decluttering Festivities I tackled a spot that has bugged the blankety-blank out of me lately. I’ve been pretending that the people who come for homegroups don’t see it, even though I know they do. It’s a huge eyesore.

Ready?

I know. It took some serious Intentional Slob Vision to pretend that didn’t exist!

I sort-of kind-of went through the papers. Meaning, I trashed the things that obviously needed to be trashed like receipts for lettuce purchased in 2011 and school calendars from months gone by.

But I didn’t go through each and every envelope and piece of paper making decisions. Instead, I rearranged the things in the cabinet (that I never use anyway since I can’t get INto the cabinet), forced the lid of the file-box shut, and used a cabinet shelf to store the remaining papers.

I conveniently forgot to take a picture of how not-great that looked, but did take a picture of the newly cleared, ready-for-a-mother-in-law counter.

My short-term goal: Open the door and shove paper on that shelf instead of absent-mindedly placing it on that way-too-convenient counter space.

My long term goal: Come up with a filing system that can be stored on that shelf. Oh, and part two of that goal is to actually use whatever system I find.

How is this better than my pre-blog methods? Well, pre-blog there were about twenty other piles like this one around the house. Feeling completely overwhelmed with piles, I generally dumped them in laundry baskets or random boxes and moved them to the master bedroom.

Shoving one pile into a place that can truly serve as its home? I call that progress.

How to Recycle Old T-Shirts

2012-05-09T20:49:22Z

How is it possible that a ratty old t-shirt can hold so many memories?

I can’t count the number of times I have almost placed a favorite t-shirt in the trash or the donate pile . . . only to put it back in a drawer.

Sooooo many memories.

But I recently had a moment of clarity as I was folding the above favorite-but-too-ratty-to-even-think-of-putting-in-my-garage-sale t-shirt. If you live in Texas, you recognize the symbol and the irony. (Do you have Dairy Queens where you live?)

While folding, I was listening to Money Saving Mom’s book. In one of the lists of ways to save money, she mentioned cutting out paper products as much as possible. One idea was to create rags out of old t-shirts. It was a quick tip, but significantly mind-changing for me.

Not so much as a way to save money, but as a way to break through my sentimentality. For some reason, placing this beloved t-shirt in the trash was saying it no longer meant anything to me.

That it was completely and totally useless.

And that felt disloyal. Irrational, but true.

So I kept it. Long past the point where I could even answer the front door wearing it. Long past the point where I could sleep in it without feeling a twinge of guilt that I wasn’t trying a little harder to look decent for my husband.

Somehow, giving this t-shirt purpose . . . helped me break through that strange guilt that I tend to feel over inanimate objects.

And . . . cutting up t-shirts into 8-inch-or-so squares is a great job for an 8 year old boy!

Realistic Couponing

2012-05-10T13:29:10Z

You all know I was once an avid couponer, right? I spent hours clipping coupons and organizing my grocery lists. My sink was full of dirty dishes . . . but my coupon box was a Thing of Organizational Beauty.

I’ve chilled a little on all of that, but I am so thankful for the skills I learned and for the general knowledge I gained about minimizing my grocery budget.

My friend Rachel from Surviving the Stores is part of Savings Nation and will be hosting a series of Couponing Classes in the Dallas Fort Worth area starting this month. I’m excited to be able to sponsor her classes and let you know about them!

Rachel and her husband Ryan will talk about:

Strategic Grocery Shopping

Realistic Couponing

Meal Planning Made Simple

If you’re not in the DFW area, look on the right of the eventbrite page to see what classes are in your area.

Arlington Class - Thursday May 17th 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Bob Duncan Center

Fort Worth Class – Saturday May 19th 2:00 – 4:00 pm
Norris Conference Center in Sundance Square (cost of ticket includes
parking for the whole day and evening!)

Dallas/Garland Class – Thursday May 24th 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Hyatt Place (across from Firewheel)

Grapevine Class – Thursday May 31st 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Grapevine Concourse

If you register through my (affiliate) link, you get a 5$ discount on your registration fee. I’ll remind you again as classes get closer!

It’s Not Easy Being a Scatter-Brained Germaphobe

2012-05-07T15:58:56Z

I do believe this is what is referred to as a First World Problem.

Meaning, there are people in the world with real problems. This is just a minor life-inconvenience caused by my own neurosis.

But seriously, when you are running 90-to-nothing (not that I have any idea what that cliche actually means . . . ), and you find yourself writing a fifth note on the palm of your hand (because that’s the only thing you’re guaranteed not to lose, and to actually see), it’s not terribly helpful to also have an obsession for hand-washing.

That’s all I have to say.

I know. It’s not a real problem.

Picnic Ideas

2012-05-13T22:32:12Z

It’s picnic season!

For us, picnic season is baseball season. With two boys each playing two evening games every week for almost two months, we could drop a lot of cash on fast food. (And gain a lot of weight!)

Picnics require more planning than burgers-in-a-bag, but the family loves them and the effort is totally worth it to us!

Here are some of our favorite portable meals:

Sub sandwiches on loaves of French bread.

Pizza Snowballs – Pizza Pockets Kids Can Make

Chicken Parmesan Sandwiches (My personal Fave!!!)

Chicken and Black Bean Burritos

Pizza Pockets (You can make all sorts of variations of these!)

I’m excited to add more to this page over the next month!

Here’s our menu for this week:

Monday – Sub Sandwich

Tuesday – Frito pie (suggested by Sussette in the comments last week)

Wednesday – Eat at church

Thursday – BBQ chicken sandwiches

Friday – (We will grab something before the game on this night!)

Saturday – Grilled Chicken and veggies

Sunday – ??? It’s Mother’s Day, both boys are getting baptized, and I’m having family over for lunch. I need something good for a crowd that can be prepared ahead or in the crockpot since I’ll be leaving the house at 7:15 a.m.! Any suggestions?

I’ll be linking this up to Menu Plan Monday over at Orgjunkie.com.

I Just Wasted 38 Minutes

2012-05-03T21:46:08Z

My Wednesday began as it usually does. With me getting up and THEN remembering that I should have gotten up earlier because Wednesday is always my craziest day of the week.

I lovingly(ish) awakened my hard-sleeping children, urged them to the breakfast table, and jumped into the shower.

Somewhere between me getting dressed and the kids brushing their teeth (only after being reminded, even though you would think this should be an unforgettable daily habit), the discovery came to light that my 10yo son did not, in fact, need black pants to wear with his choir shirt to the World’s Coolest Field Trip Ever That He’d Been Looking Forward to All Year Long. (Like I thought he did.)

He needed jeans. Needed/wouldn’t-be-allowed-to-go-if-he-didn’t-have-on-what-he-was-supposed-to-have-on.

And even though he also had needed jeans for a choir performance last Friday (and had to instead wear slightly highwater navy pants because WE COULDN’T FIND HIS ONE PAIR OF JEANS THAT ISN’T SIX-INCHES-TOO-SHORT), it had not occurred to him to tell me this before 7 a.m. Wed. morning.

I won’t describe my reaction.

After a pointless search through the same places I searched last Friday, and internal dialogue with myself over whether this should be a teachable moment (about the need to prepare the night before), or whether it was worth it to make him miss the one thing he has been excited about all year with choir (which I forced him to join) . . . I decided to make an early morning trip to Walmart and buy him some jeans.

Very early. Since I need to leave by 7:45 to get to Bible Study on time.

So . . . the clean dishes in the dishwasher that needed to be put away . . . never entered my mind.

I went through my normal crazy-Wednesday, with the addition of spending the afternoon driving 45 minutes (each way) to get Hubby’s Elvis costume for his appearance at prom this weekend. Y’know how that is, right?

We arrived back in town just in time to be last in line for Wednesday night supper at church. I then spent two-and-a-half hours in music practice. This was followed by Hubby’s and my weekly Survivor-watching-ritual.

So, at 10:30, when I got online to check email for the last time, I posted on my facebook page that I was going to bed without doing the dishes.

Even though (as you know if you’ve read my e-book) that’s a huge no-no for someone who wants their house to stay under control.

So, this morning, I had to “waste” 38 minutes doing the dishes/cleaning the kitchen.

As I cleaned, I thought about my day yesterday. I was home for about an hour-and-a-half total other than the Survivor Hour. I could have emptied and re-loaded the dishwasher.

IF that had ever occurred to me.

Yes, it’s proof that the routine of this non-negotiable task is key with my Slob Brain.

I also thought about my Crazy Day in terms of excuses. But since I’ve worked hard to stop making excuses during this (ongoing/never-ending) deslobification process, I realized that I don’t really see these things as excuses anymore.

They’re just things that occasionally happen in my over-loaded and generally-fun life.

And somehow, when I don’t see them as excuses, I have more energy to just keep going. Less self-loathing from knowing I’m being whiny and lame.

More understanding that one day lost isn’t a reason to give up on every other day.

Accepting life as life helps me tackle the dishes the next morning because I know they have to be done and again that same night to get right back on track.

I know they didn’t secretly multiply in the middle of the night while giggling about what my face would look like when I walked into the kitchen this morning.

They’re just dishes. Not my nemesis.

Why Did We Still Have That?

2012-05-03T03:19:54Z

As you know, I’m having a garage sale soon. Hopefully this Saturday.

One good reason to have a garage sale is that it helps me look at my house in a different way. I suddenly see things that have long been invisible.

Like this LeapFrog fridge set. My fridge has been covered in those letters for YEARS.

Not just 26 letters, either. I actually had the letters from two sets.

Huge amounts of letters stuck on my fridge . . . . that no one ever played with. As evidenced by the fact that the main part of the toy was stuck way up high where no one who would play with it could.

And really, it’s been months since even our youngest would have any use for the three-letter-word-creator.

Hopefully, the toy will go to a family who will use it.

Regardless of that nice-and-noble thought, my fridge is much less cluttered without the huge mass of letter-magnets-that-aren’t-strong-enough-to-be-useful-as-magnets-and-constantly-fall-on-the-floor-and-are-really-rather-slippery-when-you-step-on-them.