This is my first Tackle It Tuesday post so here goes:

I was searching around my house for the thing that needed tackling the most and I decided that my fridge really does need a clean out. The shelves are sticky and there is a ring of soy sauce on the shelf on the door. The freezer also needs defrosting since someone left the door partly open one night… grrrr! It’s like the Antarctic in there, ice everywhere!. So at some stage this week I am going to tackle the fridge and freezer

Thanks to 5 Minutes For Mom for hosting Tackle It Tuesday.

Here is my challenge for February, although I am starting it a little early – my 2 eldest girls are starting back at school tomorrow and Caitie will be starting Kindergarten on Wednesday. So I thought it was a good time to start this challenge.

My challenge is to prepare for tomorrow the night before.
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Each night I want to:

• have the families clothes ready for the following day
• have all the lunches made and packed
• have the girls school bags packed and ready to go

This challenge is going to be tough for me especially at the moment because all I seem to want to do after dinner is to crash on the lounge and watch tv. But the idea of a stress free morning is very appealing and will hopefully be enough motivation to help me get ready for tomorrow.

If you have any tips for getting ready for tomorrow I’d love you to leave me a comment

I’m quite happy with what I’ve been able to achieve this month during my decluttering challenge.

This past week I managed to:

Sort out the box of books under my bed. I even organised for the Salvation Army to come and collect the books that my children no longer read, as well as some clothes and toys.

Clean out the cupboard in the bathroom. There really wasn’t much in there to get rid of but I did discover some nice bath salts that I forgot I had in there, so I spoilt myself that night with a nice relaxing bath.

One thing I didn’t do was sort out my underwear drawer. I really should have done that

If you want to read any of my other posts on Januarys decluttering challenge click on the Decluttering Label on the right.

During February I am going to be working on a ‘Getting ready for tomorrow’ challenge. Basically it involves getting clothes, lunches and anything else needed ready for the following day. Because my older to girls are going back to school on Tuesday I will be starting this challenge tomorrow, so come back and see what goals I have set for myself.

Today was the last day of the weekend before the girls go to school so we celebrated it by taking the kids to the local swimming pools.

The girls had a great time, they were straight into the pool the minute we got there. Riley was a little more hesitant and preferred to play in the playground. After a little while we managed to get him to sit on the step of the toddler pool with me and then after a while he moved down to the next step and then stood up in the pool. After a while he was crawling around in the toddler pool but kept accidently putting his face in the water. We’ll have to start taking the kids more often because they had a great time and it is a pretty cheap day out, provided you take food and drink with you.

Birthday Gift Box

My kids get invited to a lot of birthday parties during the year. So when I see something on special that would make a great gift I grab a couple of them and put them in our birthday box. Whenever we have a party to go to I check the box for suitable presents first. This saves as heaps of money and our friends get great gifts

So you may be wondering:

What is Frugal Friday?

It’s a blog carnival that I have begun. I’m the “host”, and you can write your own articles in your blogs and enter a link here. Other readers can then come to my blog and see the collection of links.

What do I write about?

Each Friday you can write a Frugal tip that you have learnt.

Do I have to sign up or get your permission to join?

Not at all, Just jump right in.

Can I use your banner on my blog?

Yes you may, but you do not have to if you don’t want to.

Some other pieces of information for you:

Please only leave a link if you have written a Frugal Friday post. Please mention Frugal Friday in your post, and link back to my list here.

Link to your Frugal Friday post, not to the front page of your blog. This makes browsing so much easier for everyone. Here is how you link to an individual post if you’ve never done it before: Right click on the date at the bottom of the post you want to link to (or the post title depending on where you blog) click “Copy Shortcut” and then paste it into Mr. Linky.

Enter a 3-4 word description of your post after your name. For example, where the box says “Your Name”, you might put:

Sharon (Reduce Grocery Bill)

OR

Marie (Cheap Gift Idea)

Make sense? This will make it easier to browse through the tips.

Hopefully you haven’t been turned off by all the information. Thanks for taking the time to read through it. I’m looking forward to hearing your tips

Finally I have managed to work out how to change my header. I am so happy I’ve been wanting to change it for so long but have only been searching the net for instructions on how to do it for the last couple of days. Anyway I was starting to think that I would never find any simply instructions (yep I need simple step by step instructions) but finally I found a great tutorial (check it out here) and I quickly made up the graphic (it’s not perfect but I’ll play with it some more now that I know how to do it

Now I just need to learn how to change a few other parts of my blog……. oh well I’ll get there eventually

This week I am going to try to declutter my bedroom, the toilet and the bathroom.

If you want to read more about my decluttering month click here! or click on the Decluttering Label in the side bar to read all the decluttering month posts

Provided the heat doesn’t put a dampener on things I’d like to try to:

Sort out the box of books that are under my bed

Go through my underwear drawe and purge anything that doesn’t fit

In the bathroom I need to clean out the cupboard and get rid of anything we don’t use and any old bottles of shampoo, hairspray etc.