Disclaimer: some links below are affiliate links, feel free to use these links to support my blog!
Wow January and February have flown by so quickly! These two months are always the easiest when it comes to limiting spending because December is usually a heavy-spend month. Therefore using January and February as a financial detox is a great way to just restart your fiscal year. In Toronto, we had a a lock down for the better part of these two months so that really helped with my spending.
At the same time, I have also made some big life changes recently. Notably I have purchased my first car! Although I had to pre order it and wait a couple of months this is certainly something to include in my January and February spend report.
In terms of other purchases that I have made (and actually received and got to use so far) here are the things I have loved:
One thing we did in January was redo our den. Being at home all the time really amplifies any desire to re-vamp or repurpose your living space. Our den is a small windowless room that we had been using as a catch-all room ever since I had moved my desk out of there. I really could not stand the open shelving we had going on and it just seemed to always look disorganized. We decided to paint the room and purchased a bunch of cabinets with doors from Ikea for storage. The room is now sleek and neat and everything we were previously storing is now neatly packed away and out of sight. This room is one we use to work out and as storage. The small footprint of the cabinets leave more than enough room for our large exercise mats and weights.
I purchased a couple of hair products in January to replenish my supply. If you read my post about things I am leaving behind in 2021, you’ll know that I am no longer purchasing experimental products and instead I am going to be purchasing things I know work well with my hair and skin. This minimizes waste and the possibility of being stuck with a product that is harmful to my hair or skin or just does not agree with my hair or skin. I have purchased and repurchased this Kerastase hair serum for years which has been great for my dry scalp. I have also purchased this Briogeo charcoal shampoo over and over throughout the years and these two items have been a true favourite of mine.
In terms of clothing, I have thankfully been able to keep within my budget for January and February. I purchased a couple of tights from the WMTM section at Lululemon both of which I have gotten great use of (thankfully). I am always pretty careful with making purchases from WMTM on Lululemon only because you cannot return the items if you they don’t fit. I usually will only buy items that I have tried on before of that I already own and love (in another colour or pattern of course). I also purchased a define jacket from poshmark (loving it so far and have gotten a lot of use out of it). Lastly in this category I also purchased this Society Shirt Jacket from Aritzia. I have also been loving this item so far. I have already used it a number of times and I think this shirt/cardigan hybrid will be well used during the spring season.
Another category that I spent on these past couple of months are home items. January always motivates me to look into our organization systems and figure out what can be done to improve them. This was part of the reason we re-vamped our den.
If you’ve been following my instagram stories, you may have seen some of these home purchases already. First, I purchased a set of velvet stackable jewelry trays. I don’t have a large collection so this is more than enough for my collection. I love that I can sort my earrings separately to make them easily accessible especially when I am in a hurry (which is pretty often).
I also purchased a set of spice containers and labels so that I could organize our spices.
Lastly, I got a stovetop kettle. Ever since we got our induction stovetop I have found that boiling water is even FASTER than a regular plug in kettle. Not to mention, it is also a lot more quiet which is nice.
That sums up my January and February expenditures were were pretty lean to start off the year.
EDIT: I ended up taking delivery of my car at the end of February which meant putting down a deposit and getting insurance which I ended up paying for the year up front to minimize my monthly expenses (let me know in the comments if you do this as well).
