I was checking my statistics for Blog Fabulous when I noticed my story Anal Retentive Compulsions in 2008 was still being read. How’s that for accountability?

That was my story where I declared my New Year’s Resolution to get be so organized I could be classified as anal retentive compulsive, you know like Kate Gosselin and my mother.

It’s July. I looked around my office and the exact same pile of clutter was shoved in my drawer. The same exact pile of “get to this later” was in the same basket it’s been in for literally YEARS. Still no filing system.

In fact, the top of my desk had become - things I haven’t yet hung up in here and things I wanted to write about but hadn’t had time.

Is it any wonder my daughter’s room periodically needs to be excavated? <

Here’s one thing I know for sure - if you continually feel bad about something one thing you can do to stop feeling bad is to “just do it.”

Examples: Feel bad every time you smoke - Quit. Feel guilty when you don’t work out - Work Out.

Feel like working somewhere else when all I wanted was an office space of your own? Organize It.

I did. It took me 8 hours. No joke. It’s got files. It’s not cluttered. The stuff is hung on the walls. There’s a system. The “stuff to do later” got done - even if it cost money.

Here’s what I noticed about my messes:

The reason I didn’t do it before amounts to $8. I had attempted to buy an $8 file hanger thing for my desk drawer numerous times, but it always put me over my budget. It’s been in the cart 5 times, I put it back. Stupid isn’t it? For 7 months I couldn’t make spending that $8 important enough.

Then when I discovered the file hanger wouldn’t fit that drawer anyway and had to use the other filing cabinet.

How minor are the things I allow to distract me.

The other thing I’ve noticed is a genetic/generational tendency to believe I have to keep things or I’m wasting them and I might never get anything to replace it. I think this is about my grandparent’s depression-era anxiety and my “always be prepared” Mormon upbringing. I come by it honestly. During my grandfather’s eulogy they said, Viola you’ve inherited the biggest scrap yard in all of East Texas. And their children, my parents and aunts and uncles, are overflowing with stored crap from the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Remember Suze Orman says you can not have room for new things in your life if there is so much cluttering it up.

I have everything I need. I have enough. I can get more things, even if I no longer have a use for this. I told myself as I threw stuff, basically garbage, away I’d been keeping “just in case.”

(Okay, don’t tell anyone - this is my dirty little secret - I didn’t actually throw most of it away - I stuck it in bags where it will stay for several months, just in case my need for it returns, or until I find it a good home with a needy family - baby steps. That’s in line with reduce, reuse, recycle though - right?)

It’s July. It was a New YEARs Resolution. That means I accomplished my goal a full 5 months ahead of my deadline. (Still to go a more efficient electronic organization system for emails, passwords, receipts, etc. I don’t delete most of my email either, “just in case”. )

Do you remember what YOUR New Year’s Resolution was?

Don’t feel bad - there’s still plenty of time.

Source of Images: Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me

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Evidently, there were 461,000 foreclosures in the month of May.

CNN is complaining that Congress went on vacation for July 4th weekend (when they need to look patriotic wearing their lapel pin at the fireworks show at home to be reelected).

The thing is - those people couldn’t afford those homes. They couldn’t afford them when they got them and they can’t afford them now.

Essentially here’s what happened:

On the bank’s side they changed one crucial rule. They USED to care whether the borrower could pay loans back. This gave the borrower a level of security, “If the bank feels secure about my ability to pay them back then I’ll probably be able to do it.”

Lenders stopped caring. In fact, they KNEW the borrower couldn’t pay it back. And they intentionally approved millions of loans knowing the borrower didn’t make enough money to pay them back.

They unloaded those bad loans, which the knew were bad, to other lenders and investors as soon as they got their commission checks and their quota bonuses.

On the borrower side, people didn’t get the memo that the rules had changed, seemingly overnight. They didn’t understand their loans.

They believed key people - the realtor and the mortgage lender - when their loans were explained to them. They were naive and trusting and financially uneducated.

They bought houses they didn’t think they could afford. But, houses they wanted to be able to afford. So, when the realtor and mortgage broker and banker, who were motivated by their own commission checks, said, “Sure you can afford a $500,000 loan on a graphic designer and nurse salary, you can just refinance the loan in two years,” the borrowers allowed themselves to be seduced.

The American Dream! They thought. Just what we’ve always wanted. Just what we’ve worked for.

This foreclosure crisis isn’t shocking. It’s not mysterious. I’m no economist, and I knew this was coming. If you really think about it - so did you.

Think back, how many times did you see someone you know buy a home you knew they shouldn’t be able to afford.

You did the mental math and said to your spouse on the way home after a social occasion … Let’s see, they have two new car payments and a $250,000 house and all their furniture is new. How is that possible? Doesn’t he work in your department?

The truth is they couldn’t.

The fact that those banks gave them loans knowing they couldn’t pay them back is fraud. The government should never have bailed those banks out. That’s the Free Market isn’t it? Those banks took a crap in their own food bowl and that’s stupid. It’s suicidal, unless of course, you know the government will bail you out.

They should have let them sink. Look around, does it look like bailing banks out “saved the economy.” No. It’s too late. Too many people owe too much money they can’t afford to pay back. The economy is going to do what it’s going to do at this point and the government shouldn’t be bailing out the big businesses who caused this problem without foresight.

Some people think the government should back the little guy about to be foreclosed on with new loans.

We have that. It’s called an FHA loan and I got one. If you’re about to be foreclosed on, you should apply for an FHA loan ASAP.

If you don’t qualify for an FHA loan, it’s probably because you bought more house than you can afford.

There is no way the government should take on the bad debt that banks are currently holding, to keep people in homes they can’t afford in the first place.

Here’s the thing- this is an opportunity to become a more sophisticated consumer.

We’ve been bankrupt, my husband and I. Mostly we were just plain uneducated about how money works - didn’t really understand interest rates, didn’t really understand budgeting and minimum payments and saving. We made a lot of stupid mistakes. A lot. And it cost us. Everything.

It REALLY REALLY Sucked.

But, here’s the good news. We figured it out and in December we bought a great house. We took our knocks, we paid off our debt, we changed our money habits. Most important of anything we did - we changed our THINKING about money. We EDUCATED ourselves about it.

We have climbed out of our bankruptcy in 4 long/short years. They felt like a long living hell. But, the fact is that in the United States of America no failure is permanent. You can climb out of a bankruptcy in 4 short years. If you live 80 years and you spend 4 of them climbing out of financial hell, it’s not the end of the world. Really.

Next time those foreclosed families hopefully, will be very, very careful to take a loan they can afford and understand the terms of their loans.

If we bail out all those people, it’s like feeding the nasty habit of people living beyond their means. The same people holding the bad mortgage, in many cases, also took a loan on two new SUVs they drove off the lot and financed the furniture and have $10,000 credit card debt. Taxpayers defeat ourselves if we bail them out. Tax payers will be holding bad mortgages, a debt to pay off.

Leave the banks who created the problem holding the bad mortgages.

Consumers need better, more sophisticated defenses now.

Here’s what people should learn from this, and I believe this is new and different and very, very important for consumers to get - big business will crap it its own food bowl for short-term profit . The rest of us will pay the long-term price.

Take a Dave Ramsey class to learn how money works and how to climb out of your foreclosure.

Personally, I’m relieved home prices are coming back down. On what planet is an ordinary two bedroom home worth half a million dollars? What family CAN afford that? I don’t care what neighborhood it’s in. That’s crazy! Good riddance to that market, maybe I’ll be able to upgrade eventually.

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I’ve been dragging out Fun Mommy, my alter ego who comes out to instigate fun and bonding with the kids. We’ve been trying to take family bike rides, but one of the bikes always seems to have a flat.

I bought this WeeRide bike seat for the baby. It’s groovy because Zack gets to see the world - instead of just my back - as we ride.

It was uncharacteristically expensive at $60. I know, can you believe someone as cheap as I spent that much on a baby bike seat? Well, to be fair I scavenged at thrift stores and garage sales for over a year and could not find a baby bike seat. Evidently, this is one of those things people save in the garage for visitors and grandkids.

The bike itself was only $7.

I had no memory of Bike Ass from childhood.

Bike Ass is the terribly painful bruise you get from the rigid bike seat right on your butt bones. I can only bike through 15 minutes of this excruciating pain before Fun Mommy has to call it a day.

Bike Ass is the reason you won’t catch me in spin class in a million years. I gave birth twice. My crotch has been through enough torture thanks very much.

Did you hear about the time the neighbor tattled on Ainsley for riding her bike?

Did I tell you how I taught Ainsley to ride her bike by riding through her fear?

Image Source: Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me.

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Schick sent me this pretty little pink Quattro Razor.

I told them, look I’ve never found a women’s razor that worked as good as my husbands. I use the Schick Quatro for men. (Total coincidence that it’s the same company.)

The thing is I’ve no problem using men’s products if they work better. I wear men’s underwear (Her Way Sucks, I Prefer His), so it’s a no-brainer to use the men’s razor if it works better.

I used the Schick Quattro for Women several times and frankly, it made my armpits a little rashy and I kept having to scratch my itchy legs. I gave up on my “clean” bikini line last year.

I set his and hers razors side by side in the shower and thought I would automatically reach for the one that I wanted to use.

It was the men’s razor every time. No rash. No irritation. That’s the secret.

Here’s my advice to Schick, and all razor companies, for that matter.

You’ve already invented the perfect razor for women. It’s our husband’s. We all already use his because it works better.