Madd Money: Free E-Book From Suze Orman Available for Seven Days

For those of you concerned about your financial situation, if I said there was a book that was available that could give you some ideas to implement immediately, that it was timely and overall well written, that it might well be the best small book you read this week… oh, and for a limited time, it’s actually FREE to download and keep if you get it before the cut-off date, would you read it?

If the answer is yes, then I have a suggestion for you... Oprah Winfrey had a program this week with Suze Orman, and Suze has written a book called “Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan”. This is available as a PDF format E-book, completely free, until Midnight Central time on Thursday, January 15th. Once you have downloaded it, you can save it to your computer and there it will be, ready for you whenever you want to use it.

A recommendation, though… it is an “Action Plan”, so if you are looking for some timely suggestions as to what to do for this calendar year (which may well prove to be challenging for many). this might be a book you might want to read sooner rather than later :). Suze has her fans, and her detractors, but from my reading of the material thus far, her advice is pretty good and I think just about everyone will find some items in here worthy of their consideration. Happy Reading!!!

Letting a Kid Spread His Wings

Every once in awhile, you have a chance to see that something you have wanted to impress on someone actually comes to happen. I’m not entirely sure what I have decided to do is a good idea or a bad idea, but it’s how I was convinced to allow it that I want to share.

I’ve been a bit of an ogre when it comes to my kids’ online presence. Personally, I’m a Dysanite when it comes to interacting online (at least I’ve always attributed the following to Esther Dyson… “If you wish to be truly free, one must be 100% open about everything”). Thus I’ve pretty much always operated as an open book as relates to my own online presence. However, I’ve pretty much shot down any of my kids getting online because I was not sure they were able or ready to deal with it.

I told Nick several months ago as he was getting frustrated about my not letting him do certain things and reacting angrily or going off sulking… “dude, if you want to convince me that you should do something, that’s what you need to do… convince me. Not have a tirade, not cop an attitude, and not get in a huff because I don’t see your point of view. Find a way to convince me, and you might be surprised as to what I might do.”

Well, I came home and I found the following on my desk:

Dear Dad.

I am writing this letter to ask you to consider letting me have a Facebook page:

Please consider this:

1. [Friend’s Name] has one and he always talks about it. I promise not to write stupid things or put up any truly personal information (like phone numbers or address).
2. Mom is going to talk to [Friend’s mom] about the rules they have about it.
3. I agreed that mom can see it and check it whenever she wants to.
4. A lot of my friends have one and I want to be able to talk with them.
5. Mom says facebook isn’t as bad as myspace (we already had the myspace discussion, and that was a flat out “no”).
6. I will keep my profile and pictures private.
7. I won’t write anything bad (second time he mentioned this (LOL!)).
8. This is a way to be in touch with my friends and keep in touch with them.
9. I will be responsible.
10. This doesn’t cost any money (ooh, he’s hitting the “frugalist” in me (LOL!) ).
11. I will make sure to add only people I know.
12. I am not going to use this to make friends with strangers.
13. If mom ever sees me doing something wrong, she can take me off facebook.

So, Dad, I am asking for your permission to obtain a facebook page. I know you will make a wise decision, and please contemplate it deeply (most likely – yes :) ).

I Love You,
-Nick

And thus, I decided to let my son have a Facebook page, with three additional provisos:

1. His “first friend” will be me, with a “know” link that says I’m his Dad (with a fairly obvious connection that his picture is in my own facebook avatar)
2. I have his username and password, and I reserve the right to go in and monitor any and all communication on his page (including his Inbox).
3. I have editing right to change, remove, or block anything in he site that does not meet my approval.

I agreed to this for one reason and one reason only… he convinced me. He is now realizing that sulking, tantrums, or “buttering up” doesn’t work with me, but showing he has a game plan and understands the ramifications of what he may or may not do most certainly does. My goal all of these years has been to help my son grow up to make ethical choices and to understand the responsibilities that surround them. I certainly hope that this will not be one of those times where I think to myself “oh man I shouldn’t have done that”, but for now, I’m feeling pretty good about this decision. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

I’m With The Band: The Beginnings

It may surprise people who meet me at this stage in my life, but when I was younger, I looked a lot different :). I remember distinctly the emotions and the attitude that led me into wanting to join a band when I was 18 years old. Prior to that, I was a music geek, loved music, had a level of minutiae knowledge of bands that was quite prodigious, and I enjoyed tooling around on my guitar, but honestly just figured that I wasn’t cut out to be a musician.

Well, that changed soon enough when I turned 18, and those changes had a profound effect on my life, in good ways and not so good ways. I’ve talked about these in many places over the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever really told my story of my life as a musician and what it actually meant to me to be in that whirlwind for the near decade I was actively pursuing music as a career. Thus, it’s time to add another schizophrenic element to this blog. This is my first entry in what I guess will become a fairly significant series of posts called “I’m With The Band”. Today I’m going to start at what’s effectively “The Beginning”

Sometime towards the tail end of 1985, I broke up with a girlfriend, and that was a rather intense experience (it wasn’t one of those nice “can we still be friends’ type of breakups, either). I found myself dealing with a lot of emotions and frustrations that I wasn’t sure how to handle, but more to the point, I could make some clean choices if I wanted to. I could pour my attentions into my schooling (I’d just started my first year of college a couple of months before), I could pour my attentions into working and making some money, there was lots of things I could somehow do. I could start mending my relationship with people in my church, of which I was actively in the process of ticking off at least half of the people there at the time. What I didn’t expect was to be sitting in the college cafeteria one day, talking to another guy who I’d just met, sharing some quick conversations about music and what we liked and didn’t like, and how it seemed aggravating that all of the stuff we liked was spread around a bunch of different genres, and you were somehow weird if you liked more than one of them. Being a fan of New Wave and Heavy Metal? Sure, but pick one or the other, you can’t bge both or do both in the same band… or can you? With that casual conversation came the beginnings of a decade long pursuit.

On the plus side, I tried to play bass and be a meaningful “musician” in a band as it was forming, but ultimately I discovered what my true musical talent was, and that was as a singer. I would start to come out of my shell, inch by inch, and the introverted and shy, though hyperactive, kid would soon enough develop into a much more gregarious and forward (though still hyperactive) man. I made some great friends during these very formative first three years, where myself and my friend Mike Welsh (the aforementioned first conversation) would meet Eric Johnson, Jeff Winkler and Mike Kaluski (as well as a number of other people who would come and go) along the way as we developed our first true band.

Negatives that came from this time are entirely subjective, but there’s no question that my ultimate choice of going to BYU at some point was completely halted at this stage (I grew my hair out, you can’t have long hair at BYU, hence no attending BYU for me). In addition, I developed some *very* bad habits and attitudes about money at this time in my life, not at all helped by the fact that we wanted to get things rolling and *FAST*. To do that, you need gear, you need transportation, and you need to be able to promote your band in a broad manner. My answer to all of this was to get credit and run it up like a maniac, which I did in spades. It goes without saying that the rock and roll lifestyle is somewhat diametrically opposite of a lifestyle of an active Latter-day Saint. Is it possible to be a rock and roll musician and an active, observing member of the church? I’ll say yes, it is possible, but it’s definitely a challenging undertaking. Were I to recommend to anyone a course of action and a career path that included living the gospel standards to their highest level, I don’t think I would include striving to be a rock and roll star as being a good way to go about it. Of course, this is coming from someone who did not live up to those standards at that time in his life. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have shared that reality with my children (not in any vivid detail sense, mind you) but its common knowledge that Dad became inactive while he was a musician.

I’ll share more about the development of this first band (that went by three names; Crysis, Monikker and Ricochet) in our next installment :).

Ego Over Matter: Week 1: Powerlifting Periodization Routine

It’s the first full week of 2009, and thus it’s the first week of my Periodization routine. This has been a shake-up to the system; only two days into it and my body is totally sore and I’m aching in places I haven’t ached in years (LOL!). This is a good thing; it means I’m getting away from being complacent and I’m taking a targeted approach to training.

This first week I’m working through the exercises and determining what my abilities actually are, with an emphasis on around 85% of maximum weight and doing 3-4 sets of 10 reps each. My routine is as follows:

Monday/Thursday:

Bent Legged Deadlifts
Powerlifting Style Squats
Leg Press
Leg Extension
Seated Leg Curls
Crunches

Tuesday/Friday:

Bench Press
Incline Bench Press
Close Grip Bench Press
Lat Pulldowns or Chins (though the latter will take awhile to get to, to be honest)
One Arm Dumbbell Rows
Biceps Curls
Crunches
Reverse Crunches

Weeks 1 through 4 will be marching up with lower weight and more reps until I determine what my peak level with 10 rep sets is. Wednesday is my day of rest… which doesn’t mean I don’t work out, I just don’t train with weights. Elliptical trainer or other cardio exercise will fill the time.

Madd Money: "Dollar Cost Averaging" Or "All In"?

It's a new year, so I've been thinking of the markets and such lately with the new year and a new time horizon.

I’m paraphrasing a quote that I saw on AllFinancialMatters regarding the approach of “Dollar Cost Averaging”. The idea is that, as investors, those of us who invest a set amount each month in a retirement fund (401k, IRA, etc.) often refer to ourselves as “dollar cost averaging” in the market. The point that I found interesting was as follows:

“Not only do people think that they are dollar cost averaging when they actually invest 100% of their savings each month via 401(k) plans or similar (…) but also that they ARE dollar cost averaging.”

Hmmm... I had never really considered this in this light, to be honest. I know that, when I sold all of my single stock shares last year, I decided to not just go out and buy a bunch of shares of a mutual fund or Index fund. Instead, I opted to take the better part of a year and exhaust the funds slowly and invest them in the market at a set rate over the course of a year. Generally speaking, this turned out to be a smart move, because the value of the shares declined over the course of the year, and many of the shares that I purchased, especially after October, were at a serious discount from what I was paying in April. So in this sense, this meets the criteria of Dollar Cost Averaging, and Dollar Cost Averaging is what I was doing.

Now let’s turn to the more common scenario that most of us are familiar with, and that is our regular contributions to a 401K plan, ROTH IRA, or some other option such as straight mutual funds or stock shares. If I were to, say, take $2,000 every month, and that $2,000 was invested in the stock market through an enforced savings and investment plan (self directed or otherwise), I’m not really dollar cost averaging. In fact, I’m making a lump sum investment. I’m just doing it regularly enough that it follows many of the same rules as Dollar Cost averaging (meaning I buy more shares when the price is lower than I do when the price is higher. Were we to, instead, place all of our money first into a money market fund, from the start or finish of a year, and then take that lump sum and each month put a little bit of it into stock shares… yes, that would be true dollar cost averaging. It might also be seen by many as a bad deal, too, because those shares while locked up in cash could have the potential to earn gains and dividends higher than the cash interest (of course, with greater payout potential comes greater risk).

I found this whole discussion interesting because of the original blog post topic, which was “how long would it take to get even” when it comes to recouping the losses of 2008. The original blog’s point is that it might take 4 to 5 years, if the individual in question were to have invested on December 31st, 2007 and then done nothing at all until December 31st, 2008. Fact is, most of us don’t invest that way, nor do we have the benefit of huge windfalls of money at any given time. Most of us need to stay the course, invest in up times and down times, and as time marches on, those boom and bust cycles, when mixed in with higher purchases of lower priced shares and the potential for dividend yields for those less costly shares netting us more of them, it’s entirely possible that we will do alright over the years it takes to come back to the original value. However, it won’t really be “returning to an original value". Instead it will be varying investments at varying rates, where one month may have gains, another month may have losses, and when all is said and done, and all dividends are reinvested, and more shares are picked up over time, the net rate of return at any given time may well be a good, if not spectacular rate. Given enough time, these factors work even more in the individual investors favor (generally speaking).

Thus, my plan is to stay the course and keep putting in the rate that I am, which it turns out is an all or nothing bet made twice a month for perpetuity. Should be interesting no matter what happens :).

My First Step into Learning Japanese

Ohayo gozaimasu! Jikoshokaisimasu!

Yeah, that's not much, but hey, I'm just starting out :).

I made a goal this year that I wanted to learn conversational and written Japanese, for what is probably a fairly silly reason. My love of Japanese Manga and Anime is the driving force behind this, and the biggest reasons are that I want to actually read, hear and understand the stories the way that they were meant to be seen by their target audience. I want to be able to do this without using subtitles or having to wait several years for dub versions of shows or stories to appear in the U.S. (And quite often, many cool stories never get the dub treatment here in the U.S.).

Thus it it for this reason that I have picked up the book "Japanese Step by Step: An Innovative Approach to Speaking and Reading Japanese" by Gene Nishi. Having read a few reviews on it, I decided it was a good first place to start so that I can get my feet wet and see how this all works. This is also going to be the first major goal of mine that I attempt to accomplish using my public library or the Internet as sole resources for materials. I want to see if it can be done without having to actually purchase anything, or own the materials outright. While I've heard a lot of people give high marks to Rosetta Stone software, I'm not there yet, and I'm not entirely sure I want to go there for this.

Like so many goals in my life, I don't want to invest a lot up front for something I may ultimately grow frustrated with and stop doing. Also, much as I hate to say it, I have a lot of past experience with this mindset. I usually start by spending a lot of money, and realizing later that there are many resources that are as good or better than what I paid for freely available through the library or on the Internet. For once, I want to take on a goal from the opposite end, start low or no cost, determine if I actually will do this for the long term and gain some proficiency, and from there, then I'll decide if I want to invest in it further.

Nihongowa wakarimasen, but I'm certainly going to try to change that. Here's to new beginnings :).

Madd Money: Old School Shave the Best Value In Town :)

What you see above is my morning rig, and with one exception, it's as old school as you can get without owning a straight razor (and someday, I may actually get brave enough to try one again :) ). Last year at this time, I decided that I was going broke keeping myself in Edge Gel and Mach 3 blades, and after having read a few other bloggers comments about ditching the new and disposable stuff for the "classic" approach, I likewise decided to ditch my canned foam and Mach 3 razor, and went on a quest to find what all the fuss was regarding the "classic shave".

With a little encouragement and some research, I decided to go the DE (Dual Edge) route and invested in a Merkur Combed 1904 Safety Razor from Germany. I liked this one because it has heft to it and a nice, long horn handle. Just placing it on the skin and letting gravity do the work is all that is needed. I will have to confess that this was a splurge purchase, but it's made a lot more comforting in the fact that these types of razors will literally last generations. I've tried numerous different blades, and have had success with German Merkur Solingen blades (nice and clean feeling) and Feather blades from Japan (ridiculously sharp and require a delicate touch) but my favorite are Personna blades from Israel. What's more, it's possible to get packs of 100 of these blades for less than $25.00. That's a two years supply of blades, and literally pennies a day for a shave :).

I use a preshave oil from the Art of Shaving, and I find this to be a very helpful component to a morning shave. It's not essential, and it does add a bit to the cost of a shave, but it does make for a nice touch and a smooth glide. About $15-$20 per container, depending on which one you choose to use.

The big pot in the back is a neat device called a "Moss Scuttle". They are made in Canada by a potter that makes each one by hand (I heard a few rave reviews about these and decided to try one out. The classic scuttle is made for hard soaps, where the soap sits on a platform and water drains down into an inner chamber that holds hot water. What's cool about this is that this is designed to work with tube and tub creams, which are my preferred types (instead of holes, it's a solid cup, and the fill point for the inner chamber is small enough to fill with water, allowing the inner water to stay hotter longer). Fill the inner chamber with hot water as well as the upper cup, soak your brush in the upper cup, drain off the top level of water while keeping the inner water inside, Spoon off a half teaspoon of soap into the top cup, swirl up the cream, and you have a warm lather that stays warm for the duartion of your shave and just plain feels fabulous going on :). Cost of the item, $65.00 American.

My brush is Badger Hair, made by Vulfix, and it is large enough to be comfortable and efficient, but not so big as to be a mess to clean up. Plus, it fits the scuttle perfectly. The brush I have cost about $45.00, and like the Merkur razor, with proper care can also last generations.

This past year has been a quest to find a hard cream that works well with the Moss Scuttle, and I have found two that I love. The first is from Italy and it's called Proraso. It has a lanolin base and eucalyptus oil, and the second is made in San Francisco from a company called Nancy Boy. Their cream has a great consistency and feels terrific in the skin, but its real staying power comes from its fragrance, a mix of Lavender, Peppermint and Rosemary essential oils. It may sound like it would be overpowering, but it's not. A tub of each costs about $15.00, and for face shavers, a tub will literally last you a year of daily use.

The little stick is barber's alum, and is used for the ever essential "nick" treatment that you have to deal with every once in awhile (no matter how good you are at shaving, nicks are inevitable, but alum block takes care of it quickly). I got this stick as a Christmas present, but an average 100 gram block costs about $6.00.

The area that you can go absolutely nuts on is after-shave; there are so many choices out there and different varieties. I tried several and found one in an unlikely place. A friend recommended that I try Thayer's Witch Hazel and Rose Water tonic as an after shave, and I gotta say, I think it works great. What I really like about it is that there is no alcohol, so it cools down the skin, and emolliates without burning, while using the witch hazel to act as a final antiseptic to protect the skin. A 12 oz. bottle goes for about $9.00.

Finally, the last little touch that I have used for years and years (and is my favorite "fragrance" of all time) is called "No. 4711" from Germany. as you might guess, this is made in Cologne, Germany, and it's where the phrase "cologne" comes from :). Nice citrus based scent, never overpowering, and the bottle I have has lasted close to a decade and will probably last me into next decade. I have no idea how much I paid for the bottle I have now, but I consider it a bargain for how often I use it and how long I've used it.

So I'm sure that some are scratching their heads wondering why this is a Madd Money entry. Doesn't seem to be very "frugal" on the surface, until you take a closer look. The costs of setting up this rig will take me a year to recoup the setup costs (mostly in the cost of the razor, scuttle and brush) but those items will last indefinitely. With the cost of the Personna blades, and the price for the cream and other items, it actually costs *less* that buying the current blades and foams that are disposable. Even with the lower cost, the real reason I love this rig is the fact that shaving, which used to be a total chore, is now something I truly look forward to doing. That change alone made the investment worth it :).

Madd Money: Using NetworthIQ to Track Your “Game Score”

There are a lot of tools out on the net that allow people to track how they are doing and do something to see where they stand. While many of these tools vary based on their complexity and what they track, personally, I like something that gives someone a high level view to see if they are gaining or losing ground. I liken it to a quote an old colleague of mine said some years back… “my favorite game is Quicken, and I try to beat my high score each month” (LOL!)). To that end, I have found the NetworthIQ tool to be rather cool (I was introduced to this tool via Meg over at “The World of Weath”). If you like something that lets you look at your finances with a feeling of “getting the high score in a game”, then this might be right up your alley :).

NetworthIQ is designed to keep track of your assets and your liabilities in a way that’s fairly straightforward. There are a lot of different ideas as to what constitutes an asset and what constitutes a liability (some people include their house as an asset, others do not consider their primary residence an asset, since it requires money to maintain and does not create actual revenue beyond potential appreciation value or when it gets sold). Regardless of philosophy, NetworthIQ lets you keep track of key areas and determine what your bottom line financial health may be.

NetworthIQ lists the following areas as assets:

Cash
Stocks (those not held in retirement accounts)
Bonds (also those not held in retirement accounts)
Annuities
Retirement (all 401(K), ROTH IRA and whatever other retirement options you have are listed here)
Home (I use the general consensus price from Zillow.com ).
Other Real Estate
Cars (values derived from “Fair Market Value” at KBB.com)
Personal Property
Other (I put my kids 529 plans in this category)

On the liability side, NetworthIQ lists the following:

Home Mortgage
Other Mortgages
Student Loans
Credit Cards
Car Loans
Other

The NetworthIQ page then calculates your total net worth appreciation (or depreciation) and compares it with your monthly liabilities (increaded or decreased) over the previous month, and provides a handy little graph to show how you are doing. What’s more, for those who are a little more willing to “let it all hang out”, you can get a “badge” to display on your site or your blog that gets continuously updated and shows your ups and downs.

My own net worth statement looks *really* skewed by comparison to many others, but that’s because I have no liabilities and own my home free and clear. If I were to exclude my house as an asset in the net worth calculation, we would be about at the median of people in our age group, with perhaps a little less in retirement (unfortunately, that also includes the recent market downturn). The good news is that, since the market has been so battered, this could be a *great* time to bag some investments at a fire sale price (provided of course that my logic of investing in the entire US and International market via index funds is a long term good plan. I’m long term optimistic, but we shall see :) ).

I think this is one of the neater tools out there in that it tracks at a very macro level and just says where you have gone up and where you have gone down. For some, that can be extremely motivating. What’s also interesting is that you can see how you rate compared to other NetworthIQ accounts (though, to be frank, some of these numbers look screwy and I have a strong feeling that some of the entries are totally bogus on the top end). Still when using the median values, you can see some interesting trends as relates to others on the site and their tracking.

I like that NetworthIQ is easy to update, the criteria is easy to understand, and the program is objective. What’s also cool is that you can share this information with others if they want to know where you stand, or if you feel so compelled to share it with others.

Shedding of Innocent Stuff: The Garage Deep Clean

New Year's Day was spent in a flurry of activity, and it was perhaps a little more intense than I truly intended it to be. I woke up at 6:00 AM and went into the garage. With the exception of having dinner at my wife's parents place, the garage is where I pretty much stayed, all day. That, and going in and out of the living room and kitchen area to pack up all of the Christmas items we had out.

My goal was simple. There had been a creeping and growing amount of boxes and items making a second perimeter around the garage. I wanted to see how much of this stuff I could get rid of. Here's what I determined:

* We purchased a bunch of really fragile glass ornaments about ten years ago. We've been way too paranoid to put them up on the tree in the past, but this year we decided to give it a try. Since they are just plain gold, silver and burgundy balls, and since we liked the more eclectic mix of ornaments we've gathered over the years better, we decided it was time to let these ones go. In the process, we reclaimed a whole storage box worth of space.

* We have various totes and boxes that have made their way into the garage, most without lids, and most just end up on the floor as "dumping areas" to be dealt with later. This is an example where too much organizational media can actually lead to disorganization. I realize it sounds weird to say "we're getting rid of a bunch of organization stuff to get better organized", but in this case, it's true. Plus, with the added factor of not always having the fall back of putting things in a random container, one must go through the effort of actually putting things where they genuinely belong (shocking, I know (LOL!) ).

* I have an external frame backpack that I haven't used in close to four years. The internal frame pack is what I now use for outings, and my son has one that's best sized for him. This isn't needed by me anymore, so I'm giving it to the troop.

* I have a bunch of vinyl albums that I have not played in close to 10 years. It's a pretty good bet they will never get played. Gone.

* Somehow, a lot of scouting paraphernalia has made its way to my garage. It needs to go back to the troop closet at church and not be in my house.

* I have a table router that I bought when we first bought the house for all of the projects I would do. I've used it three times in ten years. time for it to find a new home.

* I have a number of items that I purchased from back in the days when my garage was Pinewood Derby central. Some of the tools are useful and definitely needed. Others I will likely never use again.

* I have a lot of stuff that is used by the Native American Dance tram that I help advise and support. Much of this stuff is in great shape, but having it packed all the time makes it bulky and hard to maneuver. By taking the items out, hanging them in see through bags from the hanging rack in the garage, I can stow the big trunk they usually go in up on the high shelf over the workbench, and use it when it is appropriate. Large scale floor reclaim :).

* There's paint that is the old color of rooms that are no longer that color. Why am I keeping this?

* I have three folding tables that were a big part of my Cub Scout teaching curriculum when the house was Cub Scout central. Now that my son has moved on and we use the church for most of our activities, I'm a little torn on what to do with these. Do I need all three? Not likely, but I can definitely see keeping two of them. The question is, which one to get rid of?

* There's a lot of sporting goods gear that has been worn by my kids through their growing years, and the smallest of the gear now needs to be given a new home. I have some serious emotions about the "Lion" snowboard that is now too small to be ridden by anyone... that board has now been part of the family for almost ten years, and every one of my kids learned to ride on it. Still, its time to let another family take advantage of it now.

Fourteen hours, four trash bags, three donation bags, and a lot of equipment that needs a loving home. My goal for this new year (remember, no resolutions :) ) is to commit to taking a really hard look at the items that come into the garage. It took a really long time to clean up this dumping ground, and I really don't want to do it again (LOL!).

New Year’s Winter Cleaning

First, to anyone who reads this, I want to wish you all a Happy New Year and a happy and productive 2009.

As many of you know, I do not believe in New Year’s Resolution. Instead, I believe in making concrete goals and a way to have an action plan to achieve them. Resolutions are just wishes unless they have a concrete game plan, and that game plan is actually followed. At that point, it’s not a resolution, it’s a goal. It’s with this mind set that I offer the following.

Every New Year’s Day, literally starting with the official start of the New Year, I make it a point to stay home and do a deep cleaning of our house. This is also in conjunction with our putting away all of the Christmas decorations (always done on January 1st in our house) and in that process, we always go through and move everything, vacuum every thing, scrub everything, dust everything, you name it. In the process, we also take out a notebook and we make notes on all areas that need work, or are of concern, or otherwise just become pet peeves. From these notes, we set action plans for the areas we can do something about, make projections for the areas we can’t immediately, but would like to, and then set a long term plan for items that will be further down the road.

For 2009, we have determined that the following areas are critical and need to be addressed somewhat immediately:

The garage is overloaded. We have cabinets, shelves, and shelving units that surround the garage. In addition, we have a number of trunks and other items of a random nature that perimeter the cabinets, making it virtually impossible to get into the cabinets without moving the items. When we first moved into this house, we had, arguably, the best organized and cleanest garage in the neighborhood. We most certainly cannot say that now. This is a key area where a concerted dejunking, reallocating of needed items, and deciding exactly why we are holding onto certain things must be done. It always amazes me that every time I do this, no matter how many times I do it, I always seem to determine that there’s still something else that can be downsized. Perhaps it comes from the fact that each time I go through the process, I learn a little bit more about what I actually use and what I don’t. Plus, when you start to let go of things, it becomes easier to let go of other things, too.

My office is the catch-all room. It’s the dirty secret in our house that the house is immaculate except for two places, the garage and my office. Both suffer from the same issue, and that’s overload. We did a massive downsizing of old books and other items, but somehow keeping this room uncluttered is just a royal pain. I also have a longer term goal going forward… I’m looking at the possibility of either converting this room to a genuine guest room, or potentially a bedroom for one of the girls (they currently share a room). To make that conversion, I have to reach the point where the contents of that room are either considerably downsized, or otherwise reallocated. Three key areas make up the bulk of the clutter in this room, and that is media (meaning CD's, DVD, VCR tapes and computer media), craft supplies (mostly associated with my work regarding the White Otter Dancers) and Scouting. My plan is to utilize used media places and sites like mediabuyback.com. In addition, papers that are not essential to be kept in their paper form will either be scanned and stored electronically, or gotten rid of entirely.

We have three fruit trees that produce a good quantity of Peaches, Nectarines and Apples. During 2009, I plan to use some techniques I’ve picked up on the web to set up a square foot garden in our back yard to expand the capacity of that garden space. I’m not gutsy enough to tear up the lawn and make that a garden patch (at least not yet), but the terrace boxes are totally fair game. This will require some observation and determining which areas get the best sunlight, as well as revamping the sprinkler system and adding some heads.

That should keep us busy for the next few months. Expect to see updates on all of these projects right here :).