Financial Woes: IOUs

I have a lot of financial woes. None of the IOUs belong to me, but that of my husband which was acquired before we married. I knew about it and it wasn't an issue when he was making excellent money. Due to an entire year of incurring a substantial home business loss, it took a hit on our personal finances since we had to pay people out of pocket that the business did not have. The money dwindled fast. We had no savings either. It was pretty brutal. They always said 2012 was going to be a bad year and for many, I believe it was. It certainly was for us. However, my husband (fortunately) had a 9 to 5 secondary job which paid well but it's still not what we are used to.

Here are the items below that we have to pay off sooner than later because $732.57 is going out the door every month to them. Last month it was $882 so we thankfully reduced it since with our state tax refund, I spend half of it on paying off the doctor's bill. The other half was spent so my husband could see his mother on her last few days here on Earth. It was tough, but the refund covered it. Now that it's been reduced to $732, I am hoping to reduce it even more to $220 and raise by $180 in order to pay off that last debt faster. On the student loans, we owe more than what he borrowed since he did too many deferments. That's where you say you cannot pay right now but interest still accrues. That interest was $9,000 or so and now it's down to $1,000. 

These are the monthly outgoing numbers:

1. Nissan Titan - $310.79
2. IRS - $200
3. Student Loans: $154.17
4. More Student Loans: $67.61

On top of this, we have RENT at $1,288 (which I got the landlord to agree to have us pay her mortgage instead of a rent of $1,425... that was an awesome moment); and Child Support at $1,721. While I truly believe we are being ripped off on Child Support, the husband wouldn't dare negotiate. He is a lawyer but when it comes to his ex, he turns into a turtle. Sorry, but he does. I have calculated his Florida Child Support  number should be $1,556 which may not sound like much of a difference but that extra $165 would take care of at least one loan. Oh and he gave her $20,000 before the official Child Support Order was given so it's not like he never took care of things. Also he paid off every credit card he had and took a hit on his foreclosure. She took none of that hit since she doesn't have to file taxes. Her income is supposedly $0 and Child Support is not considered income since it's for the child. However, I suspect she's paying her bills with it than her kids. She is married to a man who probably makes $30K-$35K annually. He can't afford the kids either so they have piles of credit cards blatantly on their tables... I've noticed. Tough situations but no reason to rip my husband off. 

Fortunately, his Ex is nice enough to let the Child Support payments be late. We are usually 10-15 days late since Rent falls on the same day Child Support is due and never ever ever do we have $3,009 in our accounts at any given time. But I think we could if we reduced other outgoings to $0. I'm attempting to do the Dave Ramsey debt snowball but it's very difficult considering he's always got something to pay for that's new, like Bar Exam fees of $580 and trips to FL and etc. We have had to ask family members for a loan and add that on top of our repayment loan spreadsheet. Yes, we do pay our family members back. It was their money to begin with, not ours. It is only righteous to return it so that they would be willing to lend again on any other situation. We would do the same.

So after all our expenses... we only have $1,100 to spend on essentials: food, clothing, home supplies, etc. And it may seem like a lot... but come 1st of every month, we just barely have enough to cover Rent. Then the second paycheck comes in and it goes to Child Support. The business money is the only money we get to keep. Poo. 

Showing Off Collection of Model Airplanes

I've been pretty busy and a bit too tired to blog lately. However, today I'm ending the day early and wanting to share what I've been up to. I am remodeling my home office. It's really a guest bedroom converted into office. It's the room next to the master bedroom which I find kind of weird. I don't know if I'd want guests right next to me... but any how. I had to move a seriously huge office desk in front of the doors that would lead to the master bedroom. Yes it cuts off all access from the guest bedroom to my bedroom but that was pretty much the point. The hutch-like office desk blocks the doors nicely. They are almost the same length. After moving that, I'm pretty sure I did some bone damage to my wrists and right hand after moving it. It felt kind of sprained but more sore than anything else. I didn't do any lifting for the remainder of the night.

The room has a weird shape to it. This is the "before" picture of what my office looked like. Not the best, I know but we are probably on the tightest budget ever since 33% of our income goes to rent and another 39% goes to Child Support. Yeah, it sucks but the hubby won't even try to mediate with the Ex. I think it's because he's scared of her and doesn't like confrontation... just with her though. We have $2,797 left to spend. Food is an automatic $300, and his monthly outgoing on loan re-payments is $772 and people he HAS to pay for side business is $495. You can see how that number dwindles down extremely fast. We always feel like we have no money. We're already at $1,230 (for our MONTHLY living costs) and the crappiest part is that the day/week he makes the money ... it is also the time rent or child support is due so his one paycheck pretty much goes out the door. Any how, I'm living on a budget and I know it's not the best and not the worst, but based on our numbers, I can't really afford to spend on furniture, artwork or home decor. I make my own. And do with paint we have. Okay, sorry I got carried away with finances for a bit. My apologies.

So I took down everything in the room and pretty much trashed other rooms, but temporarily!! I painted the walls gray as you'd see on the runway (thinking planes here). The closet wall went from a coppery brown to a lighter blue-gray which actually looks very "sky" like. It works well! PS. Sorry about my female model showing in the closet, she's for eBay.

Here's the after picture of just the little area where the planes and degrees used to be. Actually the planes stayed there, just got put on the wall with some super duty Scotch 3M Mounting Tape that you can buy online here at Amazon. I am going to recycle the bottom 2 shelves and use them in the garage. That can store paint and etc as long as it's sturdy... gotta make sure I can do that.

I painted the top wood shelf with just white primer. It's an all-weather kind of primer we had laying around. The planes atop have actual damage to them so they are angled in a way that someone viewing them wouldn't know until they pick them up and see the engine missing... ha.

The golf-course photo on the floor is going to be on the walls soon. I'm looking for a dark blue paint but not about to dish out $30 for two walls (opposites). Hopefully I'll figure something out soon. Want to get this room done! Oh husband just came home, gots to go and make dinner!

DIY Downstairs Hallway Closet - Remodeled and Organized

For some reason, closets seem to be a dumping ground for many people. It's like "oh well the door is closed so no one knows it's bad in there" and you're wrong because you and your family (esp your kids) know what it looks like in there. If you can't find what you are looking for in a closet, chances are you don't have the system down yet. If you can't close the door because something is on the ground, then you really need to reconsider your closet space and its poor situation.

Here's my sneak peak at my closet now. I forgot to take a before picture but overall it was white and overcrowded with winter jackets, a 3-tier shoe rack and a lot of hats.

 I painted the inside closet Hunter Green. Why? Well, a closet is technically a room as it is a space for storing items within the home. The key though is necessary items. I had a lot of jackets in here and took them all out and dumped them, yes, dumped them on the couch. All dumping was temporary. I cleaned out the entire closet. Everything was removed from it, including the wooden clothing rack.

It's very difficult to get a picture of the room in whole since it is in the hallway and space is limited. It is also a triangular space which makes for an odd-shaped closet. The table that used to be in the family room was moved into here to create a division line for storing things underneath and overhead. It keeps things tidy too. The basket underneath stores the kids shoes only. Everyone else has their space elsewhere. The mirror is temporarily being stored there as I am unable to figure a good location for it. Sometimes mirrors creep people out when they are placed in an odd location but I will find a spot for it.

The Salvador Dali painting that was just sitting around in the garage finally found a home up on the shelf. Shelves that are too high for daily retrievals need decor instead of everyday items. I cannot reach up there and while my husband can, I don't think he would like to. The boxes up there are items I am asked to sell online by a local friend. They will be gone (hopefully) soon!

To your right in the pit of the closet are the dog leashes, harnesses and water pack. All of these essential dog items used to be tossed in the basked along with kids shoes, shoelaces, toys, etc. What a cluster-F. I didn't even know extra shoe laces existed in this house! Now that these items have a home, I think I can bring down at least two more jackets since I don't think the winter season is officially over yet.

My Garage Organization

A lot of the Pinterest pictures that show garage organizations look pretty, but at a closer look I ask myself, how would I be able to get to that at a moments notice? Sure it looks pretty way up high ... and 3 ft over my head. Yet it's not convenient nor reliable. Another cute but totally inconvenient idea (or look) is buckets hanging from the wall to allow for what you believe to be easy access to gloves, tools, etc. Except if you are in a rush or completely exhausted at the end of the day and that glove falls down twice after attempting to place it into the sideways bucket, you're gonna start cursing yourself (or your wife) for putting it there. While the images are yes adorable, they are not man-friendly.

Here's the before pictures of my garage. Oh and before you say or think anything, the pictures below were all taken by my cell phone, so the quality is not amazing but the image is at least transparent.

The photo below may look sort of organized ... but honestly, I couldn't access anything or get to it all. I'm only 5 feet tall so many of the items were and (still are) out of my reach. I would need to have a ladder on hand to reach the high-end things, or just ask the hubby to get it.

Here are a few pictures of my work during the process. The pegboard had been there prior but not a lot of pegboard hooks were there. I bought two extra packages at $6 or $7 each and filled up the whole space available to me on the peg board. 

I made the cheap (and ugly) white cabinets into a dark gray finish. I think it made the cabinets appear more expensive and "custom-made". The handles stayed white but I did clean them with goo-gone and regular house cleaner. They had black finger prints on them which wasn't appealing. 

In between the two cabinets, there was an empty hole there. My hubby had an office chair there which has now been removed. Like what man sits down at his workstation, seriously? No man I know or have seen when working in the garage. They all stand up while they work. 

The empty hole was replaced with an old bookshelf that used to be indoors and upstairs. It held a variety of language books my hubby collected (I guess?) and some CDs. The CDs were donated to the library as they are now my new media storage units. If I want my CDs, I'll just loan them out from the library but I don't think that will happen anymore due to Spotify having all my music selection for me. Back to the bookshelf. It was one from Target. As you can see in the image the last shelf of the bookshelf closest to the concrete floor has no bottom end. All it has are legs. That used to be the top shelf, which was attached to an ugly arch design that had a rose design carved or plastered onto it. Once I figured out how to dismantle that from the bookshelf, I flipped it and painted the shelves the same exact color as the cabinets. I like how it appears that it came with the unit. It holds his larger electric tools nicely. I also like how that space between the cabinets is  no longer a waste of space. 

This is the end result and while I know there are still things atop hanging by the garage springs (top left), I didn't want to do that without my hubby's presence around so that needed to wait. I added shelf racks (see center top of image) but the shelves I had currently on hand were too short. I figured I'd measure up and find ones that fit... eventually, but not today. I think I'd put items that aren't used often up there. 

Odd angular section but it works for hanging miscellaneous things. I couldn't take the nails out at all so had to do with how they were put in... which by the way was awful. None of the nails lined up or evenly spaced out. I tried to take them out with the hammer but to no avail. I dealt with the the setup for now and hung miscellaneous items up. As you may have noticed now, the garage wall was painted! It definitely makes for a cooler-looking garage! My only issue is when I had to get another can of paint... the girl did not match the color correctly and it dried a different shade of gray. The paint can was not returnable either since I had opened it and used it without realizing until it dried that it was a different gray. It looked terrible and I wasn't about to spend another $10 on a can of paint on her mistake. I decided to create a middle line to make teh switch look "intentional" ...

See the switch? I do.

I painted our white dirty door also made it a glossy brown so it looks super expensive now. And while it seems like everyone on Pinterest has stairs that lead to the door, I do not. Poo.

Here's the rest of the garage. Huge space but just doesn't seem to be 100% working for me yet. I still have lawn materials that need to be found a home out by the A/C units by the side of the house. I have no idea where to even begin thinking of putting those! My man has a lot of things. In FL that was required (where we used to live) yet here in AZ... lawn items aren't a priority considering it doesn't rain or snow that often, but it does! 

The one bin in the middle is the only one i cannot find room for... he'll have to help me out with that one.

DIY Acrylic 3x3 Retro Canvas Art

I didn't realize my acrylic colors were going to be so bold. On the bottle... seeing it under Walmart lighting, they looked like they were going to be pastel colors with the exception of my blue and black. I thought I chose colors that were in my step-daughters duvet cover so that the canvas over her wall would slightly match but as the acrylic paints dried, they looked like they were better suited for boys room as the design looks soccerball-ish, as you can clearly see below.

The canvas was already a used canvas. It had house paint on it. I took some primer and made it mostly white. That primer took two days of layering alone. Jeez. The rest are $0.57 Acrylic bottles of paint from Walmart and $3 pack of brushes from Big Lots. The bristle brushes get super annoying as they fall out very easily. I had tweezers nearby to take out the loose ones so they did not affect the painting too much.

Yes, my kitchen counters are the only space big enough to paint. I had to do it there. So, while my canvas looks like a cow at the moment, I had created a football like design (even though my real intention was a leaf). I started out with black since black brings forth all colors nicely. This is a 3 foot by 3 foot canvas by the way, it takes a lot of footballs. I used a dishware lid to create the circle on some thick drawing paper (possibly watercolor) and cut it out. I traced the design onto the canvas until it was filled.

It helps to work with one color at a time and to write in pencil (very softly) what color goes where so you don't mess up while you're jamming to an awesome song on Pandora... or iHeartRadio. And if you listen to the actual radio, lame. 

As you can see, the circles are designated for green paint at this time. I had already done teal (which was a bit darker than I expected it to be) and blue. My blue paint needs another layer of paint when it dries. 

This is my end result. While it looks to be completed, it isn't. The green and blue is very much crappy still. It is not solid. I can still see through. Needs its third layer tomorrow. The yellow paint still shows the pencil line in which I'm afraid if I try to erase, the paint will get messed up. So, as a result, I may take a sharpie to it if I cannot cover the line with its natural acrylic paint by tomorrow. 

A picture of it hanging will be posted tomorrow. Hope you enjoy. Do you see the soccer all in there now? It's so there! And now it looks like it belongs in a boys bedroom rather than a girls. If you are wondering what my inspiration was, it was a Pottery Barn pastel leaf canvas art image I found on Google and their website. However that totally did not happen. 

Edit: This is the same canvas art hanging in sons room

Now I just need to find a long entertainment system and turn it into a very cool kids storage unit. Time to craigslist it up!

Three Lyrics T-Shirts I Want

Okay so I don't see too many of the songs that I listen to but without naming the artist or song title itself, these are a few of the T-Shirts I'd love to make/buy/steal. Just kidding on the third one.

See if you can guess the songs.

Mackelmore & Ryan: And We Danced

The Offspring: Cruisin' California (Bumpin in My Trunk)

Cazette: Beam Me Up

How To Clean Your Fridge Fast and Easy

Just regular cleaner usually takes a lot of scrubbing. You got a little bit of everything on the glass surface of each shelf.. butter, jelly, sauces, parmesan, tomatoes, juice, etc. I'll show you what my second row looked like, since the first was too high to take a picture of (for me).

You can see a lot of grease and crap all over the shelf. It may be what yours looks like too and while the thought of cleaning it may seem tedious, it took me about 20 minutes to get the whole thing clean. I didn't use glass cleaner because it takes too long to scrub. I used oven cleaner. Yes you heard me right, oven cleaner. If it's tough enough to get the black crud off of an oven, it should be tough enough to get the grease and whatnot in the fridge without much help from my scrubbing hands, right? Right! And before you decide to use some, make sure you have a mask over you. I about died of tears and choking on the lemon scent of the oven cleaner. It is such a strong chemical though that when the shelves were sprayed with it and remained there for a good minute or two, it took one wipe down to get all of that junk up. Although, for chemical safety, I did do a second round of cleanup with just water. I wouldn't want oven cleaner in my foods or even the scent of it. 

Here's what my shelves looked like after I had put the little food that I had left and the shelves had been cleaned. 

Pretty clean, right? I'd say bacteria is no where to be found. I also used the oven cleaner on the handles of the fridge since there were some icky smudges from everyones fingers on there. That was kind of gross to know but now it's been decontaminated. Hurrah!  Oh, oops. The peanut butter jar is sitting on the pieces of cheese. My bad. Well that cheese is crap and its for the dogs anyway. So is the peanut butter. They love that in their kongs. Good natural easy treat. 

Okay, on to the next thing. Whatever that may be. 

WARNING: Oven cleaner will etch the surface of your fridge if you have a stainless steel fridge. Use baby oil to clean stainless steel. Read more about it at The Kitchn.