EH - Essex > Hebrides...the next step of the adventure?

savingholmes

Hi EH - I'm trying to declutter too. Have you done much yet? I put a few more things in a charity bag today and took out half the contents of my wardrobe as part of starting my review. I realised I really should stop buying navy/shades of blue and put more other colours back in LOL.

EssexHebridean

Ooh SH come and join in on the decluttering thread - we need more DFW's over there!

I've had my first real push on decluttering today - and have made good progress with clearing LOTS of space in the bathroom drawers, moving some bits from my toiletries stash into the bathroom so I remember to use them, then moving on to my dressing table drawers and getting rid of a crazy amount of ancient makeup stuff. I wear almost no makeup these days and a lot of the 41 separate items I binned this morning should have gone a long while ago... Also got rid of some unworn for an age earrings and no less than FOUR old wristwatches to the charity bag, as well as some books.

It would appear that we have both been paid. :T That means time to review last month's surplus - and I'm delighted with £235 in the joint account (that is about as good as it gets) and even more so with £105 in my own account (which is rather a lot better than it usually gets!) - those have been shifted into various savings accounts including a lump of the joint account one into the rebuilding of the EF. I've done the main money shuffling from my account to the joint account already and will probably do the smaller shuffles from my account to my savings pots on Monday.

The big celebration here today is that we have internet again! Lovely Ian from Openreach turned up bang on 8am this morning, fitted a new socket ("Goodness me - you've still got an old socket!") then tested everything and said that the problem was outside - so went along to the green box and then on to the exchange where he finally found the wiring issue that had caused the problem. Internet restored late morning and all working well now. To celebrate I went to Aldi. :rotfl: Just under £10 spent. Also booked some train tickets this afternoon for a cheeky trip to the Great British Beer Festival Winter in Birmingham next Friday. £16.50 return which is a bit bargainous for a day out. I'll pre book my entry at the festival as well as that means I make a small saving on the on-the-door price. I'll get £3 of the cost of that back on the day when I refund my glass on leaving as well.

Feels like a successful sort of day! :T

EssexHebridean

Well MrEH's aged beast of a car has had her pre-MoT Test check and apparently the play in the steering is precisely no worse than it was either last year or the year before and so she will go through the test tomorrow morning and fingers crossed that will all be fine. We will have the cost of a service although MrEH had forgotten to ask Neil to do that so we're hoping he'll have the time now! Probably makes sense to get her serviced if we're hanging on to her for a bit though.

So that puts the forecast on the finances into a rather lovelier place for the next 12 months. Plan will now be to continue to save in the car expenses account as normal - that should accumulate a decent surplus in there then and mean that the remaining £600 or so on the 0% card can be cleared off from there when the 0% ends in October. Then at the beginning of the year next year we'll start looking for the replacement car as there will be little point in MoT'ing her next year just to have to get rid a few months later when the ULEZ extends out to the outskirts of London. It also means that the ISA won't have to take any more hits any time soon, which means I can focus on rebuilding that back to full EF level - it's still going to take a while but it's getting there.

Other than that - the sum of money taken from my CC in error by the people I have accommodation booked with for next August has been refunded, which is good. I remembered to collect my train tickets for Friday, and also visited the cashpoint while I was at that end of the High Road. There will be minimal travel costs other than the train tickets for Friday - just the oyster fare into and out of London on the tube as I'll travel in part way with MrEH and he'll pick me up from the tube at Epping when I get back there. My entry ticket is bought and that also includes £10 worth of beer tokens which is likely about as much as I will use - it represented a decent saving on the on the door price though.

Shopping was reasonable - I made use of a Sainsbugs voucher that gave a good saving, plus used some offers for extra nectar points on things I would have bought anyway. £17 spent there. Also spent £10 in Aldi and about the same in the Farm shop but some of that was on oranges for marmalade making - first batch is already done and second batch will be sorted tonight I think. Should end up with around 12 jars all told.

More decluttering has also taken place - I'm trying to do a few items per day as I see things. Also progressing well with the using things up i terms of food items - the fridge has been rearranged to bring things that need using to the front, and there is very distinctly room in the freezer now. Even the storecupboard is looking a bit emptier although that will change when the marmalade lands in there!

Lemon_Tree

Hi, glad to see freeing up space in the freezer is working well. I'm envious of the control you have on your spending and plans but I'll get there. Glad you're planning some hood holidays 

rtandon27

EssexHebridean said:

...the fridge has been rearranged to bring things that need using to the front, and there is very distinctly room in the freezer now. Even the storecupboard is looking a bit emptier although that will change when the marmalade lands in there!

Very envious of your progress on the stores!!!

EssexHebridean

Well this new forum thingummy is - ummm - "entertaining" isn't it now!  First drama this morning was the discovery that email notifications for subscribed threads have been default set to "on" - if I disappear for a few days it will be because I'm trying to clear the HUNDREDS of unrequired notifications from my inbox... 

I see there are the predictable whinges about people not liking it going on - I'm biting my tongue to avoid replying with "well you *could* just try giving it a chance?"  Hey ho! 

So - MrEH's car is serviced and MoT Tested and all is good - cost of £176 which I'll more than happily take for another year without needing to replace. Advisories for a tyre nearing life-end and the same play in the steering rack as the last few years as we expected.  Other weekend spendiness - my planned Birmingham trip on Friday - although actually that wasn't *too* spendy and I even found a cheesey bargain - 2 pieces of Comte and a chunk of Yarg on the market - under £4 for the lot.    The beer festival went as planned - although I used the £10 of tokens I had with my advance package for entry someone else got given some extras as she was on the staff team there so she passed me one of her cards which I subsequently passed on to another pal when I left still with about £7 of credit on it so that worked well! Treated myself to a porridge and a tea (reusable cup!) on the way up for the train, and was glad to have grabbed another tea for the way back as my train was delayed by 50 minutes leaving Birmingham.     Saturday I spent the morning decluttering and the afternoon and a chunk of the evening at the rugby club (but as team photographer mostly got my beers bought for me - win!) and then yesterday we shopped first thing then hid indoors for the rest of the day avoiding the shocking weather! (And doing more decluttering!)

All in all it felt like a decent mix of restful and constructive this weekend.  Managed to get some more stuff out of the freezer (sorry RT & LT!) as well - also made a batch of bolognese sauce though so two portions of that will be heading for the freezer tonight once I've divided it up.  Seriously pleased with the progress on the decluttering. Two sacks of rubbish ready to go out tonight, and there will be two more charity shop bags to go next weekend as well (plus anything more I sort this week) but the main thing is that we are actually now starting to see the space that we've created and be able to put that into use. 

savingholmes

Hi EH - I did post once on the decluttering thread at the start of the year - but chickened out of regular posting on there and am just tracking is my signature instead. I'm aiming for an average of a bag a week and am just about on track at the moment. Glad the car got through the mot okay. You sound like you are doing well on the decluttering. For me it is about finding homes for things that I no longer want. I have to admit I have improved at not bringing so much into the house since DD made me majorly declutter last year. Seeing all my bargains cluttering up the surfaces - made me realise how much money I wasted on fritter spending. 

EssexHebridean

Ooh yes SH just noticed that in your signature - good work so far this year then! The two big issues I face with decluttering are that we probably should have done more of it sooner - the last time I had a really thorough declutter was 2013 I think - when I seem to recall I recorded the process on my blog, and really I think it needs to be ongoing, or at least one good purge each year maybe. Also MrEH is a devil for hanging onto stuff either through sentiment or because "it might come in useful" - I now make him put stuff that fits that description into the garage - at least then it's not bothering me so much!  Books are both of our downfall though - we do try to have a one in/one out policy, but it doesn't always work too well!  

Tonight's plan is to establish how much space we have on the shelves in the spare room and to see if I can re-house some photo albums/photobooks and some old CAMRA Good Beer Guides (prime example - they're out of date and so no real use any more - I'd happily CS/bin them, but MrEH is determined we have to hang on to them. *sigh*.)  However they are also currently stacked to double-depth on one of the front room bookshelves - and there are other - more useful - books that could go there, so if we HAVE to keep them, they can go elsewhere! 

redofromstart

Ha, the garage here is full of useful stuff from the last house.  I try harder n the house, and have had some success with kindle fiction, soft copy in, hard copy out.  I'm hoping to decluttering this year ahead of a potential move so will follow your efforts with interest.

EssexHebridean

If only I was willing/comfortable/actually wanted to switch paper books for electronic formats I could make SO much space I'd have one of those minimalist homes you see looking so amazing in pictures Redo - sadly I am not that person! I'm just trying to do "something" each day at the moment - even if just like today a bag of shredding into the office (where it can be done in under 5 minutes - it would take probably five times that long using our little shredder at home!) Also I'm finding that focusing on particular areas where creating more free space will be of the most value is helpful - it's taking a form of quite logical joined up thinking though. I wanted to clear some of the front room bookshelves, but to do that I needed to decide what stuff i wanted to move from them and where I wanted those things to go. That in turn meant freeing up space on the shelves in the spare room, and that meant that the big clearance of the spare room cupboard last weekend was needed.  So it's a giant jigsaw puzzle of reverse-engineering through the problems, if that makes sense! 

I did indeed achieve my stated aim for re-oranisation last night and so now have an entire spare shelf on the front room bookshelf - just need to decide what to do with it now!  

Tonight's target is (I think) a review of the spare bedding situation (probably more than we need, and some of it rather elderly) and maybe casting an eye over my wardrobe for anything that is languishing in there because I think I *should* wear it, rather than because I want to...