On today's Make Do Mansion, we're talking about Sweepstakes. Yes, Sweepstakes. I know, I know - nobody ever wins those things, right? Wrong. People do win - quite a bit! Depending on the type of sweepstakes entered, prize, and the duration - sometimes folks can win quite a bit. Just yesterday I won a $15 digital debit card - which paid our electric bill balance for this month! Just in time too, as my facebook sales haven't been that great the past week due to the holidays & the bill was due on the 2nd. Last month I won a $25 digital debit card, which went towards gifts. The biggest gift I've ever won was a $500 gift card to Petsupplies.com, which was wonderful as we had just adopted a kitten.
Personally myself, I like instant win sweepstakes. It's great to be able to find out you won right away - and normally the prize comes pretty quickly too. The amount of prizes you win has a lot to do with how many sweeps you enter - the more time you spend, the more chances you have to win. I spend anywhere from two to four hours a day entering sweeps - mostly either early in the morning or late at night while watching TV. I can multi-task thanks to my laptop & wireless internet, entering while my daughter does her schoolwork or while I am watching a movie.
Most of my sweepstakes I find via Slickdeals.net in their forums - they have a whole section devoted just to sweepstakes, and I just sort by date posted to find the new ones each day. On things that are a daily entry, I bookmark them when I enter the first time into two folders on my laptop - Instant Win {IWG} and Daily Entry. Then I can just quickly enter those daily while working on other tasks.
In other news here at the Make Do Mansion, we are working on a total house cleaning in prep for starting to renovate in 2015. I've finally shifted my office out of my bedroom & into what was our library room - now it is my office & ebay room, complete with an actual closet to hang ebay items in. Still need to finish cleaning in there before New Years though, and rig up a photo spot. January's room of the month for renovation I think will be my bedroom - now that the office isn't in it taking up a ton of space, I have room to actually make it into a true bedroom. And I have time to spackle all the tiny holes the previous owners left in the wall {and a few not so tiny ones}, and maybe even paint, if I can find a color I like. I will be sure to post pictures of before & after for all my readers, along with a budget report of how much the room ended up costing.
Monday, December 29, 2014
Monday, February 3, 2014
As Usual, My New Year's Resolutions Went Kerflop....
As y'all can see, this is my first post since December. I had full intentions of starting to post daily {or almost daily} on New Years & doing a year in the life of a Frugal Single Mom. But Life happened. Enough said.
Since it's now February, I'll update you a bit. It's been COLD here, interspersed with days in the 60's & 70's. It's Texas - that's just how the weather is. But those below freezing nights are bad - I end up either staying up all night, or waking up every couple of hours to run water to keep the pipes from freezing. Our House is 40+ years old & has issues....a LOT of issues. One of which is a severe lack of insulation. Another of which is old drafty single pane windows. And yet another of which is no central air / heat {although it IS setup for one - we just don't have a working system}. So we use space heaters sparingly, and dress warmly in winter. And on nights like this past week when it gets down to 25, I work all night to keep the house warm & the pipes thawed.
Ebay has gone very good for January. Made around $175, and after fees / costs / shipping, took home about $130 or so of that. Sold some things on FB, not a ton but some at least. Need to work more on that next month. My sales goals for February are: $250 ebay {I did $175 this month there}, $200 Sweaters & $100 FB sales. So a total of $550. That should leave me with around $250 left after paying all the basic bills. More if I can get back into the program that was helping us with our electric / gas bill.
Still worried about the house taxes - they are almost $800 and due NOW. From here out they start adding penalty $$$ on. I am hoping to be able to pay at least part of it in late February if I meet my sales goals.
Christmas was good. We were adopted by a message board we are a part of, through their holiday adoption program. DD got exactly what she wanted thankfully! And a bit more besides. I actually got a few things too that I requested - a good space heater, new sheets, and GC's to Walmart & Home Depot for things we need for the house. I dug some bision steaks out of the freezer that had been in there who knows how long for dinner.
We have been getting by on Groceries. With the recent SNAP cuts, I am really feeling the loss of that $20 a month. It doesn't seem like much, but that cut, coupled with the prices going up, means that most of the time we are out of SNAP by the 3rd week of the month now. It used to last all month & I'd have some left over, but with prices going up it's creeping smaller & smaller. I have started using the local grocery {HEB} freshness policy to get free groceries - never know what you'll get, but mostly I can figure out some way to use it if I google, unless we are allergic. If I can't then it goes to a local group that feeds the homeless - they can use anything. Mostly we get bread, produce, and dairy items. On rare occasion meat too.
And I'm dealing with Mt. Washmore. The sewer line on our house needs snaked for tree roots {or it's partially caved in - we're not sure}, but my handyman won't do it. So I need a plumber - which is costly $$$ that I just don't have right now. So until then, we deal with the water issues. If I run too much water at once, or do too many loads of laundry too close to one another or too many days in a row, it backs up & floods a good chunk of the house. Right now I can do maybe a load a day every other day without it flooding the house. And that's IF I don't do dishes! Clearly not enough to even make headway on Mt. Washmore. After thinking on the problem, I came up with a temporary solution. I pulled the washer over to in front of the back door, took off the knob, put the drain hose through the door knob hole, and added an extension hose to get it away from the house. So now I'm in business again doing laundry, and no worries about the house flooding! I'll have to move the hose occasionally to prevent a major muddy spot, but hey it works.
I've been working on small projects around the house to make it work better for me. We were gifted a Home Depot Gift Card to put towards home repairs, and I'm working down my list. Mostly small things, like extending the shelves in the pots & pans closet, so they actually fit in there properly. And adding a shelf in the hall linen closet, so there is enough storage to put all the blankets in there. And adding shelves in a old bookcase we picked up years ago in the bulk pickup, so I can use it for storage in the storage room. And caulking all the cracks in & around the windows - that will help the heating bill hopefully. Like I said - small projects, but they will make life much easier around here.
Since it's now February, I'll update you a bit. It's been COLD here, interspersed with days in the 60's & 70's. It's Texas - that's just how the weather is. But those below freezing nights are bad - I end up either staying up all night, or waking up every couple of hours to run water to keep the pipes from freezing. Our House is 40+ years old & has issues....a LOT of issues. One of which is a severe lack of insulation. Another of which is old drafty single pane windows. And yet another of which is no central air / heat {although it IS setup for one - we just don't have a working system}. So we use space heaters sparingly, and dress warmly in winter. And on nights like this past week when it gets down to 25, I work all night to keep the house warm & the pipes thawed.
Ebay has gone very good for January. Made around $175, and after fees / costs / shipping, took home about $130 or so of that. Sold some things on FB, not a ton but some at least. Need to work more on that next month. My sales goals for February are: $250 ebay {I did $175 this month there}, $200 Sweaters & $100 FB sales. So a total of $550. That should leave me with around $250 left after paying all the basic bills. More if I can get back into the program that was helping us with our electric / gas bill.
Still worried about the house taxes - they are almost $800 and due NOW. From here out they start adding penalty $$$ on. I am hoping to be able to pay at least part of it in late February if I meet my sales goals.
Christmas was good. We were adopted by a message board we are a part of, through their holiday adoption program. DD got exactly what she wanted thankfully! And a bit more besides. I actually got a few things too that I requested - a good space heater, new sheets, and GC's to Walmart & Home Depot for things we need for the house. I dug some bision steaks out of the freezer that had been in there who knows how long for dinner.
We have been getting by on Groceries. With the recent SNAP cuts, I am really feeling the loss of that $20 a month. It doesn't seem like much, but that cut, coupled with the prices going up, means that most of the time we are out of SNAP by the 3rd week of the month now. It used to last all month & I'd have some left over, but with prices going up it's creeping smaller & smaller. I have started using the local grocery {HEB} freshness policy to get free groceries - never know what you'll get, but mostly I can figure out some way to use it if I google, unless we are allergic. If I can't then it goes to a local group that feeds the homeless - they can use anything. Mostly we get bread, produce, and dairy items. On rare occasion meat too.
And I'm dealing with Mt. Washmore. The sewer line on our house needs snaked for tree roots {or it's partially caved in - we're not sure}, but my handyman won't do it. So I need a plumber - which is costly $$$ that I just don't have right now. So until then, we deal with the water issues. If I run too much water at once, or do too many loads of laundry too close to one another or too many days in a row, it backs up & floods a good chunk of the house. Right now I can do maybe a load a day every other day without it flooding the house. And that's IF I don't do dishes! Clearly not enough to even make headway on Mt. Washmore. After thinking on the problem, I came up with a temporary solution. I pulled the washer over to in front of the back door, took off the knob, put the drain hose through the door knob hole, and added an extension hose to get it away from the house. So now I'm in business again doing laundry, and no worries about the house flooding! I'll have to move the hose occasionally to prevent a major muddy spot, but hey it works.
I've been working on small projects around the house to make it work better for me. We were gifted a Home Depot Gift Card to put towards home repairs, and I'm working down my list. Mostly small things, like extending the shelves in the pots & pans closet, so they actually fit in there properly. And adding a shelf in the hall linen closet, so there is enough storage to put all the blankets in there. And adding shelves in a old bookcase we picked up years ago in the bulk pickup, so I can use it for storage in the storage room. And caulking all the cracks in & around the windows - that will help the heating bill hopefully. Like I said - small projects, but they will make life much easier around here.
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