I've been sick with a sinus infection since Christmas and a miserable bunny except for my sympathetic pack of vestal virgins (4 fixed female dogs).

I'm trying to input expenses either as a note on my iphone (company provided) or directly into my excel spreadsheet every day and always weekly.

Also, when I get a pay check I immediately distribute funding for monthly utilities, mortgage payments, gasoline, etc. This lets me know what I have left for groceries and possible additional savings.

My natural gas bill last month was 78 dollars, so I turned off the heat. I live in the desert and have an electric blanket (blanket #2, Blanket #1 eaten by puppy) and 4 dogs who sleep with me and hog the bed, so with turning off the heat, my natural gas bill went down to $17. I am very pleased.

So far it appears I am not going to have a comfortable retirement - my 401K is still greatly depleted because ex-spousal unit got half of it. However, its building up. I'm thinking $2K a month to live on. So prepaying the mortgage as much as possible is a good idea.

I realized I don't have enough funding for the extra $280 a month for mortgage prepays, but I'm continuing to still work on paying it down some, and may devote more funding when I get a few more home repairs/improvements done - I really want to get my garage insulated because it will cut down cooling, and I also want insulated double pane windows in front of the house for the same reason. So I think when those get done, I may just work on house pre-pays.

I'm doing a new thing in housekeeping/minimizing, which is to clean a section at a time. The house turned into a pit while I was sick (and it wasn't wildly organized or clean before them - see mention of 4 dogs above). Monday night i cleaned the entire sink counter area and threw out items that were just sitting there that I don't use - Minimizing! and thoroughtly cleaned everything else. Wow, it made me feel better.

Last night I cleaned the entire counter area by the stove (unbelievable amount of junk). I pulled out the shredder I purchased last year and have never used and shredded credit cards I don't want, and bank type papers, and then threw out the puppies' body weight in sales fliers and expired coupons. I put away the vitamins and meds, put away the kitchen implements I didn't need and cleaned everything off or washed it.

I had been overwhelmed by all the housework I need to do but combining cleaning and minimizing on a specific area worked very well and got me wildly enthused about minimizing and organizing again. And it felt so nice to wake up and come into the kitchen in the morning and have that little oasis of neatness greet me.

Tonight I'm going to clean the top of the freezer and sweep the whole house and then work on my credit card reconciliation.

Does anyone know how to make Puppy proof quilts?