Thanks for visiting Ultimate Money Blog! If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. A few months ago we purchased a Groupon for a service that works similar to a community supported agriculture program (CSA).  I was excited because for $15 we would receive a box worth $35 that contained mostly local and organic produce.  The first time it arrived, we were excited to get into it and see what we got.  Right off the bat we noticed that the organic strawberries were all moldy and inedible.  I told Mr. Money to email them a picture explaining what we got and see what they would do about it.  They said they would credit our account $5 toward our next purchase.  As you probably guessed, I hadn’t planned on purchasing another box due to the cost and the fact that they sent us rotten strawberries. We decided we would give it another try, and in two weeks we were charged $30 for the box (they took the $5 credit off).  The box was much better this [...]

The other day I ran into Michael’s to look for some wool yarn to knit these baby longies that I’ve been making. Longies made of wool are popular throughout the cloth diapering community because they absorb moisture without feeling wet. They are great to use as a cover over cloth diapers and are so cute! I’ve ordered some wool online, but I wanted to check and see if Michael’s had a specific brand before I ordered more. They didn’t end up having the specific brand I needed, but they had skeins of wool in the color that I wanted and just a different brand. They were on sale, so I decided that two would work and that the color was more important than the brand. I had some time to kill, so I decided to wander around the store and see if there was anything I needed or could use to help decorate my house. I couldn’t find anything that I needed, so I went up to the checkout. When I got there, the cashier asked if I was signed [...]

Every Wednesday I’ll post about how many items I’ve decluttered for the 365 Declutter Challenge. I’m going to keep a running tally of how many items I’ve decluttered. If it seems that 365 items is an easy goal and I meet it quickly, I’ll probably strive for the 2011 items goal. It’s a little scary, but hopefully it will challenge me in a good way! This week I focused on cleaning out my bathrooms.  As you can see in the before picture below, we had a plethora of towels. I counted the number of bath towels that we had. 28. 28 towels for two people! I realized that was crazy, so I weeded out the towels that weren’t the greatest quality or were showing signs of wear. I also went through our wash cloths and hand towels and separated the good ones from the bad. In addition to towels, I also went through beauty products and makeup and ditched things that I didn’t use. Before: After: And here’s the pile of junk that I donated this week to Goodwill: This [...]