Ugly & disgusting, right?

This past week I couldn’t stand it anymore. So I did some research online to see if there was an easier way to clean the grout without having to have it professionally cleaned or get on my knees and scrub like Cinderella for hours.

I saw a YouTube tutorial on how to clean the grout with a regular grout cleaner attached to a long extension so you don’t have to get on your knees. This was what I needed! Or if I wanted to wait a few days and waste some more money – I’d buy this grout brush.

Tyler and I went to Home Depot and bought a broom with a good brush and…

Miracle Sealants Fast-Acting Phosphoric Acid Cleaner

We started at the front of the house by the front door. I got frustrated easily because I wanted to see it go from dirty to sparkling clean in seconds! Tyler couldn’t help too much with this project since he pulled a muscle in his arm last week at the gym.

I decided to switch out using the broom and use the Sonic Scrubber that my mom got me for Christmas.

Sonic Scrubber

It’s an amazing tool because it really does work! But it requires using my knees, scrubbing and all with patience. We decided to stop and give it a few days. We realize we can’t do the whole house in 1 day with the Sonic Scrubber.

Can you see the difference!? I can’t wait to finish so our floors are all pretty again!

The other day I went over to my parents’ house and straight up asked my mom if she had stuff that she didn’t want anymore. I followed her to the closet in the hall way and she gave me a few things including this colander that I swear she had since I was 4 years old.

I washed it then Tyler insisted on spray painting it for me since he loves spray painting. I’m afraid that if I don’t give him enough spray painting projects, he’ll end up spray painting everything in the house!

It feels great to reuse things instead of throwing them away or just store them in the closet for years. I also added some fall decoration around the house including leaves by the fireplace. Don’t judge me but I already bought some mini pumpkins and spiced pumpkin scent for my car. I’m that desperate to make it feel like fall since it’s still 100 degrees here in Arizona.

Our to-do list for the house is getting so long every time I think about it. I easily get overwhelmed sometimes because I’m not sure which things are more important and should come first. Yard work, garage, guest bedrooms, adding a dual light switch, and the list goes on and on!

And at the end of the day, I remind myself that we own our house and will be here for many more years to come. Oh, yes I even still dream of having a pool in our backyard. We will make it happen…maybe in 2 years or 10 years!

I decided to stop really relying on Mint.com to see what my budgets are like at the end of the month. It wasn’t accurate at all since sometimes I’d buy groceries & household items in one trip.

So I decided to create an Excel sheet under Google Docs so I can access it anywhere I go. I have successfully saved all the receipts (so far) and have recorded them. Now this way I will know exactly where our money is going!

However….this recent weekend was Labor Day weekend. I took a mini-break from saving money to splurge a little bit. I mean…. c’mon there were great deals!

I went to Pier 1 Imports and found a really cute lantern on sale for $2 and a cute little white bowl for $2. Two things all under $5! I decided to use the white bowl for my rings. I’m not sure what I’m doing with the lantern yet as I have many different projects going on in my head right now and need to figure out what to do first, second, and so on.

We also went to IKEA over the weekend too. I think I might still be shopping at IKEA when I’m 40 years old. I seriously never get sick of that place & the fact that IKEA is amazingly cheap!

We decided to buy 2 Ribba picture ledges for the bathroom in our master bedroom. We have limited space in our bathroom and that’s not a good thing especially when I have a lot of products everywhere on the counter & trying to make them fit in the medicine cabinet.

You can obviously see that Tyler’s products are on the top shelf and mine are on the bottom shelf. We still clearly have a lot to do with our bathroom which is at the end of our list of projects.

As soon as the weekend was over, we went back to the plan of saving money. It’ll be good for us in the long run to save a lot of money and be able to put more into our savings especially now after I recently got a raise at work!

I also have been working on ways to become debt-free. I happened to find a credit card that has no interest for 18 months. We signed up and did a balance transfer so now we’ll actually get to pay off our credit cards soon! Last night Tyler was THIS close to winning $30,000 (Streak for Cash) but he didn’t. Bummer!

Here’s to being frugal and making it worth it in the long run!