One Tangent After Another

I'm not kidding, folks. Read on and you shall see what I mean.

The compact was conceived a couple of weeks ago and in that time span I've done exceptionally well limiting my purchases solely to consumable items.

What's the compact, you ask?

Well, if you haven't heard mention of the compact, you must be new to Becoming Mary Poppins. Welcome and might I add, congratulations! You will thoroughly enjoy your time here. I may not actually be able to fly with the aid of an umbrella, but I can entertain you for a few moments each day. That's almost as good of a skill to possess. You, new reader/friend can catch up with the rest of us by perusing this and this.

I digress...

Back to the issue at hand. After two weeks of working on vice 4, I'm ready to step it up and tackle other parts of the compact. Here's what I outlined earlier:

1. In reassessing my needs and wants I will ask serious questions before making purchases and when deciding what to keep/toss: Do I need it? Do I have another item that fulfills the same function? Do I have room for it? After yesterday's post, I'm adding the following question in an attempt to avoid buying 6 boxes of dishwasher detergent (or another insane amount of any consumable item): "Do I already have enough of this or a similar item?"
2. In getting rid of things we do not need I will spend at least 10 minutes each day systematically going through the items in my house asking the aforementioned questions and removing the unnecessary items (i.e. clutter) from my home.
3. In limiting my purchases to consumable items only for the rest of 2008 (read: no more clearance items from Target just because they're a good deal), I will simply not buy anything that we won't be using up. I've also recently started using cash for all purchases and have put my credit cards aside for the time being. I've read that people spend less money by using cash instead of credit cards.

The last two weeks I've focused on the third section and have enjoyed a modicum of success conquering this vice. True, I have bought some items in larger quantities than I need, but I have managed to keep my purchases limited to consumable items. In all honesty, I've found it quite freeing to use my time doing things other than shopping and bargain hunting. When it comes down to it, I don't need to be in the stores much and when I do, I'm much happier when I get what I need and then exit. Pushing, pulling, towing, carrying 2 kids around a store searching for bargains you may or may not use is just ridiculous. I'm happy to spend my time doing other things. Like playing with my favorite birthday present this year: Candy Land. I'm good at Candy Land. You may think it's all based on luck, but you'd be surprised at how much strategy you can actually employ. I totally beat Una yesterday (and that's even after she drew Princess Frostine--who I swear used to be called "Queen Frostine" when I was a kid. Or am I wrong about that?).

The other day I needed to go to the mall to pay a bill and drop off my wedding ring to be resized. After 6 years of marriage and 2 kids I've actually lost 10 lbs since my wedding day. Don't hate me. That lost weight was totally earned and well-deserved. After losing all of my baby weight with each pregnancy I mysteriously end up 5 lbs lighter than my pre-pregnancy weight for some reason. I think it's a reward for having extremely miserable, horrible, _______(fill in the blank with any negative adjective of your choice--I promise, they all work) pregnancies. At this rate, I should have two more kids and then maybe I can be the super flyweght boxer I've always dreamed of becoming. As I was saying, I went into the mall to run those 2 quick errands and I'll have you know that I exited within 15 minutes. It was a personal record for the fastest mall quickie. And I have to be honest with you. I haven't really missed the shopping. I hope to have many more mall quickies in the future.

Now I'm moving on to section 2. Without further ado, I introduce you to vice 5: clinging to copious amounts of clutter. I will overcome this vice by spending 10 minutes each day systematically going through the items in my house and removing any clutter from my home. There you have it. As usual, I will be reporting on this so that you can track my progress and celebrate my successes. Notice I didn't say "mourn my failures." I'm thinking positive here.

On a final note: Somebody (I have my suspicions) nominated me for an award for best new blog. Please, if you like my blog (or even if you don't, but feel generous and would like to make someone, i.e. me, happy) follow this link and vote for me by scrolling down...way down...and clicking on the plus sign under "becomingmarypoppins." On second thought, don't scroll. Use that sweet tech tip I wrote about in October, and use the space bar to jump down to the bottom of the page where you can find my name. I just tested it out and you only need to hit the space bar 21 times. Who doesn't have time for that?

And to the nominator (I like that word because it reminds me of denominator and I just mentioned a plus sign and the title of this post contains the word tangent, so now I'm thinking about math): whoever you are, thank you.