I love to read.  I’ve read 15 books since Thanksgiving, which includes 4 eBooks and 11 regular books.  I’m in the middle of reading 3 more books.  My idea of the perfect vacation would include lots of time for reading in a peaceful and beautiful location.  However, reading can become a very expensive habit if you’re paying retail prices for your books.  Here are 6 ways I get my books for free, or almost free:

1. Library-Need I say more?  Last week I got a phone call from our local library that they’d found Jon Acuff’s book Quitter in San Francisco, and through inter-library loan they had it waiting for me at the front desk.

2. Borrow-Called to Serve: Creating and Nurturing the Effective Volunteer Board by Max De Pree is one I borrowed from my husband.  You can borrow from friends, relatives, and church libraries.  Just remember to return borrowed books when you’re done!

3. Gifts-Created to be His Helpmeet by Debi Pearl was a wedding gift from a good friend 7 1/2 years ago.  I often ask for books for my birthday or Christmas.

4. Bethany House-Last year I signed up to review books for Bethany House publishers, and I’ve received a number of free books in exchange for reviewing them.  Finding God in the Dark (Kluck & Martin), Pocket Your Dollars (Rocha), and Your Beautiful Purpose (Larson) are all books I received free through Bethany House.

5. Library Used Book Sale-Twice a year our library has a book sale in which they charge by the inch.  You select your stack of books, take it to the cashier, and she measures its height with a ruler.  I usually come home with a large stack of books for just a few dollars.  Your Money or Your Life (Dominguez and Robin), The Likeability Factor (Sanders), Stupid Things Parents Do to Mess Up Their Kids (Schlessinger), Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (Lamott), Seven (Hatmaker), and Debt-Free Living (Burkett) all came from our library’s used book sale.

6. Amazon-If you can’t find a book anywhere else, you can usually find it on Amazon for a fraction of the price you’d pay retail.  Educating the Whole-Hearted Child (Clarkson) is the only book I bought new in this pile.  I also make money by selling my used books on Amazon to other readers.

7. eBooks-Money Saving Mom and other websites often posts free eBooks, and I download them to read later on my laptop.  This is how I read Pajama School: Stories from the Life of a Homeschool Graduate (Wickham), To Tell Your Time (Andrews), Dave Ramsey’s Guide to Budgeting, and Frumps to Pumps (Mae).

How do you find inexpensive books?

Our Federal, California, and Maryland Tax Refunds arrived!  With the money we received, we were able to pay off a significant amount of our student loans.

Currently we owe:

• $15,492.88 to Sallie Mae (4.5 Interest Rate)
• $107,574.86 to Wells Fargo Home Mortgage (4.125 Interest Rate)
• $123,067.74 Total
  

So we have paid off $10,406.53 since May 2012!

Imperfect progress is still progress, right?

Have you compiled a list of all of your debts, their interest rates, and their due dates?  What strategies are you using to pay off your debts?

Photo Credit

So we’ve reached the end of the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge!  Yesterday was jam-packed, so I only found time to vacuum all four of the rugs in the house.  (I also had a killer headache yesterday and this morning thanks to a spontaneous decision to give up my morning cup of coffee.  Ouch!)  However, today I was able to sweep AND mop the entire house.  Since it was the last day of the challenge, this was one chore I did not want to miss.  When you have a house with mostly wood floors, a thorough mopping is occasionally necessary.

I also tidied up around the house as usual, folding clothes, putting away clothes, washing dishes, picking up toys, etc.  Above you can see our master bedroom, and below you can see our living room.  The kids were busy playing “office” with a small dresser in the doorway of their bedroom.

After 30 days of cleaning, I can confidently tell you that our house has been “spring-cleaned.”  There isn’t a room in the house that hasn’t improved from this month.  I really enjoyed taking this big task and making it many small tasks.  With three children ages three and under, I don’t think there would have been any other way to tackle such a big chore.  Thanks for joining me for the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge!

Refrigerator: Before

Anyone who has known me for very long will tell you that I am a perfectionist.  Perfectionism has its good and bad angles.  As a perfectionist, I do many things well and give 110% of my effort.  On the other hand, I also procrastinate and often zero in on unimportant details.  A couple days ago I was watching a webcast interview with Lysa Terkeurst, author of “Unglued.”  One thing that Lysa kept saying really stuck with me: “Imperfect progress is still progress.”  As I’ve worked my way through the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge this month, I’ve made a lot of imperfect progress, but at least I’m still making progress!

Refrigerator: After

Yesterday I had a really busy day, so I didn’t get around to cleaning at all.  Today I decided to go back to Project #18, and clean out the refrigerator and freezer.  As you can see, we have a crazy amount of frozen lemons and bags of breast milk.  We also have two pies that were given to Brad at a men’s luncheon yesterday.  Yummy!  I wiped down every shelf, drawer, and wall in the refrigerator and freezer.  I also managed to drop a bottle of salad dressing on Oliver’s big toe.  Ouch!

Kitchen: Before

Once I was done with the refrigerator, I went back to yesterday’s Project #25 and surface cleaned the rest of the kitchen.  I wiped down most surfaces with a wet rag, Windexed the windows, put away art materials and magnets and toys, and threw the towels in the wash.

Kitchen: After

What is a project that you’ve been working on (or could be working on) that has required some imperfect progress?

Project #24 of the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge is to clean your linen closet.  However, our linen closet is pretty organized so there wasn’t much to do there.  Instead I decided to go back to the kids’ room.  I hadn’t cleaned up much in there since Project #4.

Our kids’ room is my favorite room in the house.  If you’d like to see more photos of how I painted the walls, you can read about “The Birch Tree Project” here and here.

As you can see, there was plenty to do in my kids’ room.  We put art materials in the art box, picked up toys, made beds, Windexed, swept, and vacuumed.  While I was cleaning, Oliver decided to use his new potty.  I promised him a few chocolate chips if he was successful.  Naomi wanted chocolate chips too, so I promised her a few chocolate chips if she would help me clean the room.  Both were successful!

I was incredulous recently when I saw photos of Crystal’s 3-year-old son vacuuming.  I didn’t think Naomi (also 3 years old) could even push our vacuum.  Today she begged me to let her vacuum, so I agreed to let her try.  I was impressed with her efforts!  I tried to upload the video here, but the file was too big.  You’ll have to go to my Facebook Page to see Naomi vacuuming her room.

What chores do your toddlers do around the house?

]]> http://theabundantwife.com/30-day-house-cleaning-challenge-project-24/feed/ 2 http://theabundantwife.com/30-day-house-cleaning-challenge-project-23/ http://theabundantwife.com/30-day-house-cleaning-challenge-project-23/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2013 03:44:18 +0000 Jessica http://theabundantwife.com/?p=3658 Well, today the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge didn’t  happen.  However, I did sweep (every room but the bedrooms) and vacuum the entire house yesterday because we were hosting Young Life club.

Today I recovered from getting too little sleep last night, and did the regular chores.  I washed dishes, folded laundry, picked up toys, made meals, and cleared the table.  I wrote e-mails, made phone calls, and waited around for a guy who was supposed to fix our garage door.  (Did I mention that our garage door collapsed yesterday?)  I built a lego castle, read a lot of Dr. Seuss, and watched the trash man and mail man come and go.

In one week we’ll be done the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge!  Are you excited to be done with all this cleaning, or wondering how you’ll keep your house clean for the rest of the year?

Happy Monday!  Welcome back to the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge.  Today I got to choose between surface cleaning the living room, kitchen, bathroom, or bedroom.  Tonight we are hosting another Young Life club (this time in our backyard) so I decided to work on the living room.

One of my recently goals was to box up the desktop computer in our living room and move it to the garage.  Two weeks ago I moved it out of our office and listed it on Craigslist, but its been in the living room ever since.  So today I found a box in the garage, and packed up the computer and owners manuals.  Putting the computer in the garage also led to organizing another box of odds and ends in the garage.  Then I folded the laundry, and put it away, which led to sorting Evelyn’s clothes for items to give away.  Finally I straightened up the books on the bookshelf again.

And, yes there is a rocking horse in the fireplace.  We don’t use the fireplace, so it’s a great place to store it. 

Do you find that doing one chore often leads to another, and then another?

Last night when I looked ahead in the 30-Day Cleaning Challenge to see what I was doing today, I had to laugh.  My husband Brad was up on our roof yesterday sweeping off all the debris and cleaning out the gutters.  He had cleaned up some yesterday, but the ground around the house still looked significantly worse than usual.

I used a push-broom and a regular straw broom to sweep the porch, path, and driveway.

The backyard was also significantly worse than usual.  We had bigger-and-better Young Life club two weeks ago, so some of the treasures (like the knee board and razor scooter you see here) are still around.  Brad is almost finished building and painting our grape arbor, so that’s why the ladders were still out.

Ah, much better!  Now we just need to get around to burning those old boards in the fire pit.  I’ll save you from seeing the inside of our garage.  We’d be candidates for “The Hoarders” if you saw what lurks on the other side of that wall!

Brad swept the driveway before I was able to snap a “Before” picture.  He’s almost done with the grape arbor though!  What do you think?

The weather has been gorgeous here.  Has the weather allowed you to clean outside of your house?

This morning we went to Bible Study for the first time in 6 months.  I packed lunches last night and we ate at the park afterward.  So we were out of the house for more than three hours.  That meant I didn’t get to the cleaning challenge until this afternoon.  Oh, did I mention that the baby gave me a hickie on my chin last night?

Today’s challenge was to clean out the refrigerator and/or organize the pantry.  I was hitting my afternoon slump by the time I started cleaning, so I chose to organize the the pantry since it looked like less work.  I moved all our plastic bags to the same shelf, and put our free samples in a smaller bag.  I reorganized and “faced” other items like I used to do when I worked at Food Lion as a teenager.

Do you have any tips or tricks for organizing your pantry?  How do you organize your plastic bags and/or free samples?

Good afternoon!  This morning I was up bright and early to go grocery shopping with my girls.  We went to WinCo and back, and then I put away the groceries, prepped barbecue chicken for dinner, and made lunches.  In the midst of the melee, we got a phone call about the filing cabinet we had listed on Craigslist.  The buyer came right over, and we helped her to load it in her car.

Suffice to say, I didn’t get around to wiping down the door knobs and light switch plates until everyone was down for their naps.  I was surprised to see how dirty they were, although it’s difficult to keep any white surface looking clean around here.  Our house (which we rent) is very old, so even when things are clean, they don’t always look clean.

Have you noticed that houses with toddlers have a “ring around the bathtub” look to them?  If you haven’t, get down on your toddlers’ level, and walk around your house.  Every wall, door frame, door, cabinet, shelf, or closet will have a trail of dirty finger prints about 2-3 feet from the floor.

If you don’t have any dinner plans tonight, you should go to Panda Express for a free Samurai Surf and Turf!  Otherwise, what are your dinner plans for tonight?