Sealed pot opening 2013 and challenge aims for 2014

So, the Sealed Pot Challenge has come to an end. I actually only found this challenge and the wonderful SFT's blog at the start of February (thanks to coming across Sue's blog at Our New Life in the Country and what an exciting year it was to come across that blog, too, what with house-hunting and all). 

My original aim was to save the change from my purse at the end of every month and to also try the 52-week challenge by adding the same number of euro as the week it was (1 euro for 1st week of the year, 2 for 2nd and so on) from my housekeeping money. Yeah, that didn't really work out as planned. I did do it for a few weeks though, so there were a few notes in my pot. Although you can't really see them here. It was nearly half-full when I opened it, which I was quite surprised at.

Still, even if it has been mostly just the spare change from my purse and even if I have sometimes regretted putting that change into the pot when I realised I actually did need it for something, not to mention even though I did on occasion leave the pot sitting for weeks and weeks without any attention, I'm pretty pleased that I have stuck to this challenge and at least not opened it during the year. Look at that pile of money!

And here it is, all neatly counted out. Brought back memories of working in the souvenir shop on Mummelsee, when we had to count the takings in our tills at the end of the day and list exactly what was in there. So I did that, too.

		No. of coins/notes	Total
€10.00	x	2	€20.00
€5.00	x	4	€20.00
€2.00	x	16	€32.00
€1.00	x	27	€27.00
€0.50	x	23	€11.50
€0.20	x	34	€6.80
€0.10	x	47	€4.70
€0.05	x	134	€6.70
€0.02	x	180	€3.60
€0.01	x	199	€1.99

Giving me a grand total of

 €134.29

How cool is that! You might not be able to tell, but I literally squee'd with excitement (I'm not sure that's actually a word but it should be!). I'll be off to the bank later to feed it into the machine that will add it to my bank account so it should be available to withdraw by Wednesday. I'm off to Dublin on Thursday and on Friday will be heading to the National Crafts and Design Fair in the RDS to see if I can find myself something gorgeous. I am otherwise broke but I am sticking to my plan of using this money for that purpose. If nothing else, it'll be good for my mental health (no, not saying shopping is the solution to problems, just that I badly need a treat and I'm the only one who's going to do that for me).

So, the pot is dead. But long live the pot. Or, in my case, the pots. Here they are, all ready and waiting to be sealed up. Well, two of them will be sealed anyway. 

Pots and aims for the Sealed Pot Challenge 2014

My flowery pot will again be used for spare change throughout the year - and again, I will be using the contents to buy myself a nice birthday present next December

My London phonebox tin will be used to collect all 50c pieces that I receive during the year - this will be the start of a moving fund as I want to be making definite plans to move to the south of the country by this time next year and even having ten euro already put aside will be a big psychological boost, I think

And finally, the silver cylindrical pot will be used to not only store five euro notes (the first 200 euro worth of fives I get this coming year) but also to impart to those notes a lovely hint of the rooiboos tea that used to be in it LOL (that's the pot I won't be sealing actually, as it's too small to allow for a hole to be added.

And now I'm going to spend an hour or so checking out how other participants of the Sealed Pot Challenge got on. And it's December, too, so the christmas CDs can come out now!