Suzy Q Homemaker

Oh, to be a coupon queen.  Over the past ten years, I have fallen on and off the coupon bandwagon.  I never detested the clipping and the organizing.  Nope!  In fact, that was my favorite part.  I love carefully cutting out those little rectangles of frugal joy and happily handing them over to the cashier at the end of a successful shopping journey.

My main problem, and the reason why I was so anxious to do this review, was that I did not have a great way to organize my coupons.  The first thing I tried was an index card box.  One of those big plastic doo-dads that never stayed shut and would have to be reorganized if a child got his hands on it (COREY).  Really!  I have a video from when Corey was a year old and he trashed the living room.  There’s a spot on the tape where I’m panning over the place on the living room floor where he dumped out the entire box of coupons and my voice is wavering with either laughter or tears.  I honestly don’t remember whether I was laughing or crying.

I digress.

So the index card box didn’t work.  And neither did the expandable plastic file.  Or shoving them randomly into my pockets or tossing them haphazardly into my purse only to forget about them until they were already expired..  Ultimately, I gave up my fight with coupons and decided that I would probably never be able to effectively use them because organizing the darn things was just not worth my frustration!

Check it out.  Deb from Glowgirl Fibers sent me one of these:

I’ve honestly never seen one of these fabric organizers before.  I’ve seen fabric-covered organizers that are really just those plastic expandable things, but they’ve never interested me.  The fabric coupon organizers at Glowgirl are completely handmade in stylish fabrics and come with twenty divider tabs that you can organize however you want to.  That you can rearrange and organize the coupons according to how you shop is one of my favorite features of these organizers.

So not only is the coupon organizer pretty, it is functional!  Oh, and you can strap it to your grocery cart, too.  This makes it easier to shop so that you don’t have to juggle the coupons in addition to the purse, diaper bag, cell phone, calculator, pen, and shopping list.

You can one of these nifty things at Glowgirl’s etsy shop for only $12!  I definitely thing that’s reasonable, even for you frugal girls. Here’s a shot of my organizer a couple weeks ago, hard at work:

Deb has generously offered one of my readers a coupon organizer of his/her coice.  For a chance to win, simply visit her shop and tell me what fabric you would choose for yours.

For additional entries, leave me a comment for each of the following:

• Become a fan of Glowgirl Fibers on facebook (make sure you post to her wall so she can feel the love!)
• Add Glowgirl Fibers to your favorite etsy sellers list
• Subscribe to any of my Suzy Q Homemaker feeds in a reader or by email (current subscribers count)
• Blog about this giveaway & leave me the link
• Tweet about this giveaway
• Use the share button at the bottom of this post & let me know how you shared this giveaway

This giveaway is now closed.  Thanks to all who entered!  A winner has been announced here. Please enjoy free shipping from Glowgirl Fibers for the next month by entering “Suzy Q Homemaker” in the message to seller at checkout. Your shipping charge will then be refunded. 

For the past two days, our family has been tearing the house apart looking for three things:

1. My sewing machine manual
2. The manual for the serger I’m trading for some other stuff
3. The threading diagram for said serger

The last time I saw them, they were on my sewing table, most likely near the serger.  I remember seeing them when I took a picture of the machine in order to post it for sale on Diaper Swappers.  That was quite a while ago, and the sewing room/play room has seen several shades of clean since then.  In the process of organizing the boys’ toys, my table became a catch-all for whatever the boys didn’t know what to do with.  I cleaned off the table yesterday and still didn’t find it.  I went through the bags of “trash” that they had lying around after their major cleanup on Sunday.  I looked in every conceivable and inconceivable place where these objects of interest may have ended up.

No dice.

This isn’t the first time things have mysteriously disappeared in the house, and it won’t be the last.  We often joke about having an imp in the house.  The boys are in on the joke, too, and have taken to blaming this imp for misplaced shoes and other toys that get “lost” in their room.  This imp was also blamed for the temporary disappearance of my basal thermometer, an event that lead to the birth of Simon.  The only thing that has gone permanently missing from our house was a journal that I had about six years ago.  We looked everywhere for that thing and the only trace of it was the bookmark I kept in it; the bookmark was found in a kitchen drawer where I would never have put the journal.

If I could, I would download a diagram from the great and mighty Interwebs, but after searching far and wide, no diagram was found.  The overlock machine in question is a Zoje  FN2-4D-B, which was probably used in a sweatshop somewhere.  Jamie bought it for me off of ebay a couple years ago for Christmas but I’ve never been able to use it because it’s too fast.  Not ever having a serger before, I should have specified that I wanted a more familiar brand that isn’t quite as speedy.  If you do a google search for this particular machine, my listing on diaperswappers is in the first page of the results and most other pages for it are in other languages.  It’s frustrating.

I don’t know who to blame.  My housekeeping skill need work, yes, but it’s not like we’ll end up on “Hoarders” any time soon.  My fear is that these things got accidentally thrown away in one of my husband’s neurotic cleaning fits and they’ll never be seen again.  Until then, I’m just going to have to put on my big girl panties and keep trucking.  If it’s any consolation to me, all the things that I’ve been meaning to organize will now have a proper home.

Land of Nod is having a sale on their Nod Chairs!

And I fell in love with this Penguin Backpack (that happens to be Phthalate-, PVC- and BPA-free).

This would be perfect for hanging up next to Corey’s bed.  I just had to tell him the other day that he can’t sleep with a pile of books next to his pillow.

And if I had an unlimited amount of disposal income, this would be mine:

I promised myself that I would be more organized in my Creative Memories business this year, especially since I just got my first downline.  You know what’s going to help?  The Peter Walsh “Work Life Organized” webcast and the InPlace System.  Read more…

Image by sheandaru via Flickr

Here are all the baskets I’ve acquired in the past couple days. The wicker ones were half-off at Goodwill yesterday. Can you say, “A nesting pregnant woman’s heaven?” Jamie laughed a lot when I told him about the sale. But you know what? I bet he’s not laughing about the fact that the pantry and other kitchen drawers are nice and organized.

Haha. I love this old picture of Simon.

I swear I don’t organize my children into their own baskets. That would be going just a little TOO far. Or would it?