Time Management

Well, I've been hit with having my poor 5 and 4 year old daughters sick with possibly the flu and croup, so I've been a bit sidetracked again. Plus, having the new puppy and trying to potty train him has taken up a lot of time (it's a good thing we have hardwood floors).

But regardless, I have made some decisions. I had thought about putting the REI on hold while I clean and organize the house, but I just don't want to keep putting it off anymore. So what I am going to do is to spend at least one hour each day on REI, my Ebay store, and house organizing, for a total of three hours.  I will probably bump this up to two hours for each project, but the minimum will be 1 hour per day.

I am also going to try and post my daily goals on my blog in the morning, and update them the following morning so I can keep myself accountable.

Even more motivation....

And it comes in the form of a small puppy that was dumped (along with his sister) at the dumpster at the auto store where my husband is the manager. So he has a new family now - Us! :) (His sister went with my husband's assistant manager).  He is soooo cute. My husband named him Gus II, after our original Gus, a rotweiller who we had to put to sleep last year.

So now I really have to get the house organized so he won't get into things. Here is a pic of him, about 2  hours after my husband found him. I think he appreciates his new home. :)

Yep, life is good. LOL

Can you spell "MOTIVATION"? I can and it's spelled....

CAT URINE!

That's right, folks, you read it right. CAT URINE.

Some background: An outdoor cat adopted us last summer, and has been living on our front porch.  I love this cat (we named him Russell). He is a very loving cat, but it was clear to me that he would not want to be an indoor cat. He also was not neutered, so I had thought it would be the right thing to do to get him fixed, so we would not have him contributing to the feral cat population. Turns out that the Humane Society in the county next to ours was having their annual  "Neuterthon", so for $10 ($22, if you had to include the rabies and distemper vaccines) you could have your male cat neutered. I figured, well, if Russell runs away after the trauma of having his male parts removed, I'd at least feel better knowing I only spent $22 instead of spending $70 at the vet. So I decided to take him in.

I decided to bring him in the house and keep him in the bathroom overnight, so that I wouldn't try and hunt him down in the morning to put him in his carrier. All was well and good, as he didn't howl like I thought he would. So I get up the next morning and go to the bathroom to check on him and the bathroom door is OPEN. NO RUSSELL! I then walk around the house and as I make it to the living room, a whiff of CAT URINE hits me square in the nose!!! UGH!!! Poor Russell, who is not litter trained, had managed to get out somehow and used the living room as a litter box. I really could not be mad at the poor guy. I mean, after all, he just wasn't used to all of this. I had put a temporary litter box in the bathroom, but apparently he just didn't get the idea to try and use it.

Anyway, my whole house is such a mess, that when I got back from taking him to the vet, I proceeded to tear down the living room and thouroughly clean everything so I could locate the source of the cat urine smell. Apparently he had peed on a trash bag, which I proceeded to clean up and get out the door, and also on the Christmas tree (yes, I had not taken down our run down, pathetic Christmas tree), so that went in the trash, too. I don't think I have worked so hard on cleaning something in months. So although I really wasn't wanting to deal with cat urine, at least it got me to FINALLY make some headway in getting this house organized.

And on a final note, when I picked up Russell from the vet, I fully expected him to give me the middle toe of his front paw and run away. But it didn't happen. He was a bit disoriented, but soon was back sitting on his porch railing. He let me pet him again, and came running up to the kids when I picked them up from school. He still loves us, and in a silly way, that makes me very happy. :)

Thanks for letting me share a non REI story!

P.S. Still working on the action items. The cat urine kind of got me sidetracked this week. 

Some Action Items for the Weekend

I feel like I've been wandering around with no sense of direction these past few days. Actually, I feel like that most of the time. LOL No wonder nothing gets done around here.

Anyway, I've decided to make myself more accountable for getting things done. So here are my action items for the weekend (both Real Estate Investing (REI) and non-REI, in no particular order):

Financial analysis for my Ebay business for listing goals, break even analysis so I know what I need to sell in order to cover my monthly store fee. I want to keep my Ebay business, as I can basically run it on auto-pilot, since I dropship, so it's an addtional stream of income without doing very much. For those interested, especially if you have kids, here is my link. http://stores.ebay.com/The-What-Not-Shoppe?refid=store

Business plan for the REI targeted towards private money lenders. I really, really want to make sure that I can close a deal, whether I find it on the MLS, or if I find it through direct response marketing. Because my credit is toast, and I don't have a lot of $$ in the bank, I will need to tap private money lending. I would feel more comfortable in finding sources of private money first, before I go out and find the deals - but I know I don't need to go nuts over this, so I won't dwell on it for weeks on end. 

I'm also going to develop a home organization plan. I may make a separate blog of this, in order to inspire others who are trapped in clutter and have homes that are in disarray. I love the book by Julie Morgenstern, Organizing from the Inside Out (check out my Amazon widget if you want to browse), but I have never really put her plan into action. So this weekend I am going to write up a whole house organization plan for each room. I'm going to identify my clutter hot spots, plan where things are going to go, etc. And it's going to be in WRITING, too, so I can keep on track, and create a workable schedule for cleaning and maintaing, so everything doesn't fall apart, like it keeps doing....sigh....

Anyway, I'll report back on Monday so you can see how well I did! :)