Online budget accountability is great… until you meet a stressor that is likely to be both hard on the budget and hard on blogging.

Like, for instance, getting a new foster child and then immediately getting a stomach bug. And then traveling to pick up a newly butchered beef.

I’m speaking purely in hypotheticals, of course. :-)

So the rest of August was…

August 11 – Gas Station (snacks while traveling)	$6.79
August 14 – Walmart Grocery Pickup	$35.49
August 14 – Sam’s Club Pickup	$21.50
August 15 – Walmart for Formula	$27.89
August 16 – ALDI	$59.94
August 21 – Walmart Grocery Pickup	$21.79
August 23 – ALDI	$39.01
August 26 – Sam’s Club Pickup	$21.78
August 28 – Walmart	$28.48
August 31 – Walmart	$37.14
Total	$299.81

My budget of $123 per week times 3 weeks means I had $369 to spend – so I came out ahead by $69.19 for those three weeks and $186.36 for the month.

BUT…

Lest I get too confident…

I started off September by spending $500 to buy a quarter of beef (197 lbs) from my uncle.

Since I’ll be eating that all year long, I’m going to do a bit of alchemy to spread the load and reset my weekly budget a little lower at $115/week.

Wanna see my work?
$500 minus $186.36 for August = $313.64
$313.64 divided by 43 weeks from September 2018 to June 2019 = $7.29/week
$123 minus $7.29 = $115 (always round to allow yourself the most wiggle room – in this case, down)

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And now onto this week…

Wednesday September 6
Shopping was weird this week because we traveled up to Lincoln on Sunday to get our beef and came back down to Wichita on Labor Day – which meant I was in no state to do a grocery pickup order for Tuesday morning. So Wednesday it was.

I spend $34.13 for grocery pickup at Walmart on Wednesday afternoon. All of it was groceries.

Thursday September 7

Then it was right out to ALDI the next morning for more groceries – $62.39 worth.

I didn’t add things up and just happened to end up $18.48 below my budget – but it’s not going to last because I have a GINORMOUS Sam’s Club order coming up next week.

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Complicating matters, we do receive a stipend to reimburse expenses for fostering – and some portion of that will be added to my grocery budget to cover the expense of formula. I expect to look over our foster care related expenses and determine how we allocate that stipend at the end of each month – and I won’t necessarily include that in my expense reports. So things might look wonky here and there :-)

Tuesday August 7

Tuesday is grocery pickup day and I got pickup from both Sam’s Club and Walmart.

I ordered a 2 lb block of sharp cheddar cheese from Sam’s Club for $6.30 – but I only ended up with razor blades. I need to start actually reading the confirmation emails – sometimes they also let you know that something’s out of stock! So no grocery from Sam’s Club this week.

Then there’s $66.39 from Walmart – but the diapers ($47.77) make up the bulk of it. Once I subtract the diapers and my multivitamin ($4.26), which belong in “Household – Consumables” and “Pharmacy” respectively, I’m down to $14.36 for groceries.

But don’t be thinking I’m coming out ahead this week – a beef went to the butcher this week and a quarter of it is mine. I don’t know the bill yet, but I can guarantee you it’ll be more than the $108.64 I have left for the week.

We’ve also been out of town part of this week, so I mostly cooked to clear the fridge. Next week, we’ll be at home and will be filling the fridge back up.

I’ve been doing a rather terrible job of keeping my grocery budget under control of late (only in part because we’ve added children to the family since the last time we increased the grocery budget). So, inspired by Kristen’s “What I Spent, What We Ate” feature, I’m going to try a little bit of this online accountability thing.

We’ve upped my grocery budget significantly this year (for our new fiscal year of July to June!), and I’m now at $123 per week

Tuesday July 31
I got grocery pickup from Sam’s Club and Walmart.

$22.58 from Sam’s Club – all grocery.

$35.71 from Walmart – including Vitamin D for the little ones ($9.33) and a couple of spray bottles ($2.10), bringing the grocery total down to $24.28.

That leaves me $64.71 for ALDI on Thursday…

Can I do it?

Thursday August 2

I kept $64 in mind as I shopped, adding the cost of items (always rounded up) as I added them to my cart.

My mental math told me I was buying $57 worth of groceries. The check out total said $56.18

Not shabby (as far as keeping to the budget AND as far as mental math goes.)

I hadn’t made and packed a lunch for us for after our ALDI and library trip – so I picked up lunch stuff for us at ALDI. This is what was left after we were done :-)

Homemaking does not at all come naturally to me.

I am a messy, if ever a messy was. I’m a piler, a clutterbug, a have-everything-spread-out-in-front-of-you person. I lose myself in projects and forget to budget energy to finish all the way to clean-up.

Which means that my house has perpetually been a mess.

I hate it.

**The living room before naptime**

I hate walking in to a messy room. Hate looking at piles of stuff. Hate not being able to find what I’m looking for. Hate tripping over junk or having grit all over my feet from unswept floors.

But for years and years I’ve felt powerless against it.

Before I had kids, I figured that the messiness was a matter of discipline and once I applied myself to fix the problem I’d manage to get and keep things clean.

Then I had kids and I tried. I really tried. But I never managed to get things even picked up.

I was picking things up all. day. long. and never making headway.

I was tripping over things, banging into things. I had bruises all over from falls caused by the clutter.

And I was anxious about anyone coming over because the floor was perpetually covered with junk.

It was terrible.

**The dining room before naptime**

Worst of all, I felt so defeated.

I had always assumed that if I tried, if I just applied myself, I could keep a clean house (or at least a non-messy one). But I was trying and I couldn’t do it.

Then I was either reading Mystie Winkler’s blog or listening to her podcast and she said something that I decided to implement. She encouraged mothers to not clean up amidst their children’s play. Don’t try to clean up the Legos while the children are playing with them. Choose a time, before lunch or whatever, that you clean up and do the clean up then – not all through the day.

I figured I had nothing to lose. It was worth a try. What I was doing was clearly not working.

**The living room after naptime cleaning (20 minutes for the whole house)**

I chose naptime. Getting a handle on things for my own sanity was more important for right now than teaching the kids how to pick up after themselves.

So I stopped picking up while the kids were awake. Once they were asleep, I picked up the living areas.

I quickly realized that picking up wasn’t all I needed. I made a point to sweep the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen each day. That way, all the little scraps of paper and crumbs of food and broken pieces of crayon would be dealt with daily.

And, wonder of wonders, my house started being picked up.

Even at its messiest, it could still be picked up and presentable within a half an hour’s time.

No more four hour cleaning sessions just so I could feel comfortable letting someone sit in my living room (yes, that’s how bad it was!)

**The dining room after naptime cleaning (20 minutes for the whole house)**

Picking up more thoroughly, less frequently is definitely working for me!