Learning to Live on Less!

White_Iris

Quick catch up to say hello! DH has taken my laptop in to work to add some bits to it, writing posts on a phone is a bit of a pain so I'll do a proper update tomorrow. Have a very MSE day everyone!

debtfreewannabe321

wow do you have any clutter left to sort through? I have an image in my head of a beautiful clean and tidy house whenever i read your posts, with lots of space and everything has a home! I so wish mine was like that lol! xx

White_Iris

debtfreewannabe321 wrote: »

wow do you have any clutter left to sort through? I have an image in my head of a beautiful clean and tidy house whenever i read your posts, with lots of space and everything has a home! I so wish mine was like that lol! xx

Ha ha, clean and tidy? With two toddlers and a big hairy dog? I wish :rotfl:It is significantly better than before though and I think we're coming to the end of the de-cluttering (finally). It's quite a big house though, with plenty of storage which means things get tidied away and forgotten about - thats mainly what I've been decluttering. There are junk hotspots though, like the cupboard in the spare room, the utility room, under the stairs and DHs shed (although I'm rarely allowed to go and declutter in there!), things get put there when they don't have another place to go and every few months I need to purge the piles of stuff that appear.

Moneywise things are going well-ish this month, grocery budget is still healthy, petrol budget has £40 left until the end of the month (things could get a bit tight here - DH has about 2/3 of a tank, I have less than 1/4 but I've no plans to use the car until the weekend and DH could always cycle to work if necessary) and money is tricking in from eBay and surveys to top-up the savings. My cheque from Music Magpie should be here soon and I'm only 10p away from a OnePoll cash out, so fingers crossed for some surveys today!

Next month will be a different story though. The car had an MOT last week and we needed new brake pads so it cost £100 more than we had budgeted. The money was in the car pot but it means next month will be tight as we need to pay for our breakdown cover (haggled down to just over £100) and tax for DHs car (£250ish :eek:) and we'll only have £260 in the pot...may have to top up with my OnePoll and Music Magpie money :mad:

We also have a lot of birthdays next month including the twins. They're still a bit young to fully appreciate a birthday so we won't be spending loads on presents and certainly no party but I estimate all the May birthday presents will cost in the region of £100 :eek: ... better get some more things listed on eBay then!

White_Iris

Ok, so optimistically I've added another savings pot - conveyancing fees! Not a huge sum in the grand scheme of things but it is one more "mouth to feed", so my personal savings pot will take a back seat for the moment and once I've topped up the emergency fund back to £500 all my efforts will be focussed towards moving costs and conveyancing.

White_Iris

I've just written up 18 eBay listings using Turbo lister, which I'll upload this evening and I've still got 34 items still to list. Once they're all written up I can upload them in small blocks over the nexxt few weeks and then just keep re-listing them if they don't sell...just have to get them in the system! The slightly higher value items I listed on the last free listing weekend are doing ok - no bids but lots of watchers and they still have about 6 days to go. I'm trying 10 day listings instead of 7 and listing them so they're visible over 2 weekends and finish on a week day, to get more bids - we'll see if it works or not.

Still no joy with OnePoll...it's a conspiracy I tell you, I'll never get that last 10p!

White_Iris

Woo Hoo, finanlly got to £40 so my OnePoll earnings have been paid (well just have to wait for the PayPal transfer). I've also finally manged to get the sealant around the bath replaced (not perfect but much better) so I've finally finished sprucing up the bathroom. I've made a start on the hall stairs and landing but I need more filler for the cracks around the coving and I need to get the ladder out of DHs shed to reach the annoying high bit in the stairwell. I've also Freecycled some more surplus bits and de-cluttered a shoe box full of CD singles from the 90's. Quite a productive week so far.

lucielle

Gosh you've been busy. I *need* to decorate, but really don't want to.
L

White_Iris

lucielle wrote: »

Gosh you've been busy. I *need* to decorate, but really don't want to.
L

It never feels like I get much done until I sit down and write it out. I tend to do things in 20 minute chunks (all the time off the children will give me!) with lots of less productive things in between (like zombie internet surfing or TV watching ).

I wouldn't be quite so bothered with getting the place decorated if we weren't trying to sell it. I'm probably being over critical but everytime I spot something that needs doing I imagine a buyer being so horrified by the state of the place that they don't even conssider making an offer! When I think of the times we've viewed houses the reality is very different - you spend such a short time in each room, you really dont notice the details, you just get an overall impression as to whether you like the house or not.

White_Iris

Just got the new credit card in the post and the balance transfer has gone through. We've had to pay it bit to transfer the balance but we're at 0% for 20 months now, so we don't have to think about it for a while. By my calculations we should be able to halve the balance in that time and hopefully pay off a bit more.

LianneH

whoo hoo on the Onepoll pay out!! how did you manage that, I've all but given up as all I get is screened out!!

good news on the credit card transfer too 0% for 20 months is fab!