Going Big and Small: I have no problems with spending large amounts of money on large products. I’m talking in the thousands of dollars for dramatic results- like getting flood remediation work done on our basement. Sure it cost a lot, but our basement hasn’t flooded all winter. We did get a little water seeping up through the floor last night after a mini-typhoon hit our neighborhood, but it’s in a spot where there was no damage, and there was honestly so little of it, that now real clean up needed to be done. I don’t think we even grabbed the wet/dry vac. So we spent lots of money, but we got a lot for it. This was the first winter since we owned the house that the basement did not flood.

I am also good with spending small amounts here and there. $100 at Target or Fred Meyer for more bins and other organization tools? No problems. I can do that without a thought. I come home and put those tools to use, and I feel good about that. Considering our lack of closet space, bins that slip easily under beds are fabulous.

Stuck in the Middle: Where I have problems- when my stomach clenches, when I think to myself “Can we afford this? Do we really need this? Are we going to get enough use out of it? Is it really worth it?” and all those other nagging questions –is when we spend medium amounts of money. Case in point is this last weekend. We spent almost $800 over two days for a garden shed, and indoor storage cabinet, a new set of shelves, some wood, and accessories for all these things. These are needed items as we have to get our house ready to pass foster home licensing. We’re not going to get rid of all of our tools, so they need to be able to be securely closed away. Not having a propane deep fryer sitting in my dining room will be nice, too.

But while the $800 is only about 1/6 of what we spent on the basement work, it still feels big, too big for us. And maybe that’s my problem. With the basement work, sure we spent a lot of money, but we were paying professionals to come out and do this. I knew when the work was going to get done.

This is all on us. We spent $800, and if we don’t follow through, we’ve wasted $800.

Responsibility: Yes, it seems terrible that I do not trust us inherently to follow through on our intentions, but that lack of trust comes from a long history of knowing us. We have not followed through before. (And I really do mean us. This is as much a “me” issue as it is a C issue.)

And yet, there we were in Lowes this weekend, for three hours. We almost bought a new refrigerator, too. (The number of times we have almost bought a new refrigerator exceeds the number of fingers on one hand. Neither of us likes our fridge, but the placement of our over the fridge cabinets means we would have to replace it with one identical to it. We forget this about once every year to 18 months, and start looking at new refrigerators again.) The boys (C and J) had to run home and get J’s truck so that we could get everything back from the store.

We started at 1pm, without eating lunch, so by the time we left at 4pm, we went straight to Qdoba and got food. We are counting it as part of our home improvement budget.

Now, we’ve already followed through fairly well in that on Saturday evening, the storage cabinet got put together. On Sunday, the boys built the foundation for the garden shed, I packed up some bins, wrote down their inventories and labeled them. And on Sunday night, I put together the new shelves. In addition, yard work got done. Last night, the rest of the shed got built.

We’re older now. We are committed to the path we are on. I honestly do believe we will follow up on our home organization and that we will do it in a timely manner. I do not believe we wasted $800.

And yet, it was still an uncomfortable amount to spend in one weekend.