Why is the text in my menu shifted to the right? - php

Question

I'm currently setting up a sidebar menu for my Wordpress website. I'm running into 2 issues. The 1st one is that the text in the menu isn't lining up to the left side properly. I have tried to use the text-align attribute but it doesn't work.
The 2nd problem is that there is a bit of random space at the bottom of the menu that I don't know why is there.
Problem is happening here: http://dreamedbig.com/our-services/
My HTML/PHP:
<div class="page-content">
<div id="services-menu" class="services-sidebar">
<?php dynamic_sidebar('services'); ?>
</div>
</div>
The CSS:
#services-menu {
border: 1px solid black;
align-items: left;
float:left;
height: auto;
display: inline-block;
top:0;
left:0;
background-color: #BCE6FB;
}
#services-menu li{
list-style-type:none;
border-bottom: 1px solid black;
}
#services-menu a {
text-decoration: none;
color: #08203D;
}
#services-menu ul {
}
#services-menu ul li a {
position: relative;
display: block;
box-sizing: border-box;
z-index: 1;
margin: 5px;
padding-left: 5px;
padding-right: 5px;
}
#services-menu ul li a::after
{
content: "";
position: absolute;
top:0;
left: 0;
background-color: #00A2DA;
width: 0%;
height: 100%;
transition: all 1s;
z-index: -1;
}
#services-menu ul li a:hover::after
{
width: 100%;
}
#services-menu ul li:nth-child(odd) a::after
{
background-color: #00A2DA;
}
#services-menu ul li:nth-child(even) a::after
{
background-color: #FFFFFF;
}

Answer 1

It looks like you have some inherited styles from classes called .widget and there is margin and padding added to ul. This is common is your using something like WordPress or underscores that come with some stylesheets.
I think these styles will correct it
.widget, #services-menu ul{
margin:0;
padding:0;
}
I found the unwanted margin and padding by using inspect in my chrome browser. I highly recommend it for frontend styling because it makes troubleshooting these kinds of issue easier to resolve.
Here is an article to better explain how it works