I use Quicken for some of those kinds of things you mention rushmom - it seems like it could work well for you. My bank does charge $3 per month but it is well worth it to me. You may be able to do these things in a spreadsheet but I think it would be much easier in Quicken since that's what the program is designed for. I have all my paychecks and regular bills set up as scheduled transactions in Quicken so they come up on schedule automatically. I enter all my other bills in Quicken when I get them with a date in line with when they will be due - and then enter them for payment through my online banking on the due date. My method of budget is just pull all my investments and savings out first, then allocate all the major bills and then whatever is left can be spent. When it's gone that's it until next payday. I manage to what I see left in Quicken - not whatever might appear to be in my bank account. This has worked really well for us. I also download transactions from the bank every day or two and then catch any unknown debit or ATM transactions DH has made and not informed me of. This alone has saved me a lot of trouble and prevented unexpected surprises. I always feel like I know exactly where I stand.

Yes! So happy that we went with this option. The ergonomics are so much better (no more hunching over washing out paint rollers and trays!), it looks so much nicer and cleaner, and it is so functional for soaking dirty clothes! I searched long and hard for something both big enough and economical enough for my smallish laundry reno. I thought at first I wanted a larger sink and thought I wanted it pretty deep, but am so happy with my 20x20x8d overmount. More than enough room to soak father-son white baseball pants in oxyclean! Just for kicks, here's my teeny tiny laundry room reno:

..of those you mention, I probably use Windows Photo Viewer the most, but I also have Play Memories Home, which I think is a Sony thing...it came with my camera and I need it for that.... I also use Picasa Web Albums but less so these days.... ...it's good now that we can upload direct from our photo gallery so it dispenses with the need for an external hosting site if you want to post more than one photo at a time..... ...I hope you are finding your way around the forum... I'm probably out on my own here, but I find I prefer it now to the old site... I think it's important to get your settings just the way you want them and to make use of those that can be very useful to you, once you realise just how they work....

People curse it, but I choose to plug stuff into the IKEA planner. The NKBA has a similar free planner that I think has a kitchen version. I've only used it for bathrooms a few times. when I was planning my own house I loved using graph paper, automatic pencil, a good eraser and a straight edge. My husband thinks sketch up is fun (I DON'T) so I'd draw things up on graph paper and he'd plug it all in to sketchup for me.