Today I did in fact, as I hoped, get to take my mom out for her birthday. We had a great time getting manicures and having lunch in a favorite nearby downtown. Happy birthday again, Mom! (I told her about my blog over lunch so now I will hopefully have one dedicated reader.)

This has been an awesome weekend in terms of decluttering. My third floor is now practically empty! The back of my minivan is loaded up with clothes, kitchen items, and other stuff for Goodwill. Tomorrow is trash day and our curb is loaded with those old humidifiers, a bassinet that is beyond selling or donating, lots and lots of cardboard, an ancient ironing board, and more. I am most happy about the fact that my husband all of a sudden got involved on Saturday afternoon, and that speeded up the process. He got some of the heavier stuff out, and he also pushed me to stop hemming and hawing over every little thing and just decide. Whenever he wasn’t present I found myself wandering around picking stuff up and putting it back down. Especially if it was baby related. I managed to put my Boppys (nursing pillows) in the donate pile without crying, but I ended up shoving a box of maternity clothes back under the eaves.

So I’m reclaiming space in my house, I am not buying new crap to replace the old crap, and I may even yet make some money from selling some of this stuff. Win-win-win.

Purge, baby, purge

I just finished up putting in my ShopRite food order for tomorrow. Some good deals this week — I’m getting bags of Goldfish crackers for 88 cents each, after the store sale and a special Shop from Home promo for Campbell’s products. But to get that deal I had to order 12 bags of them. And if there’s one thing I’ve noticed as a couponer, the more food you have, the more you eat. So add that to my coupon warnings: lock that extra stuff away and pretend you don’t have it. Other good sale/coupon matchups: Spaghettios, Charmin TP and Friskies cat food. I’ll try to post my final percentage saved after I get the food tomorrow.