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Week 1 is officially over, and honestly it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I did find myself regularly having to exit out of social media because I was being bombarded with ads of things that I don’t need.
Read about my No Spend Challenge rules here.
This week, I realized I find myself at a store often just for the need to get out of the house. Instead, we made more time to get outside and play. We’re also doing 1000 Hours Outside and tracking this year, so this helped with that goal as well. It also helped that I was out of the house this week for other errands and didn’t feel as home bound.
Savings
We have a goal to finally be rid of debt this year. We were able to allocate a significant amount of funds towards this goal with our paychecks instead of spending on unnecessary items. I also took the time this week that I would have spent online shopping or going to a store I didn’t need to enter on lowering some of our bills and cancelling subscriptions we don’t use.
My One Purchase
I did make one purchase this week that was NOT on my public list of unnecessary items, but it was on my list and something I’ve been looking for. My son loves trains and I’ve been scouring Facebook marketplace for a train table for quite some time. I wanted one that could be used as a table for other activities like cars, blocks, and legos. I also wanted to find one that someone was also selling train tracks and play pieces with it. I found one this week for $40 and jumped on it.
When I picked it up, I did have this immediate regret of making a purchase not technically on my list, but the joy on my son’s face when he saw it made that feeling dissipate rather quickly. We did a train ride over the Christmas season and it’s all he’s been talking about since, so I know this is going to be a very well loved toy.
Decluttered
When I brought this train table home, I quickly realized that I needed to make some changes to the playroom to make space. I ended up going through toys, moving some to our basement as we have an area for our son to play while we use our home gym, and putting others in a box to sort through for donation. The playroom declutter was unplanned, but I also had a plan to go through our closets this week and start thinning out my wardrobe. When half your clothes are packed away for a year, it’s a real wake up call to how many items are just taking up space!
I’m still feeling overwhelmed with the amount of things we have, but I’m breaking up the amount of work into manageable pieces. If I manage to go through one space or one box a day, I will be at a much better place at the end of the month and a world’s difference at the end of the year.
If you’re participating in a no spend challenge this month (or year) let me know how you managed your first week!
