Half a house

Silence101

Tt £2.04 this morning. I've got £100 left in my current account for the next two weeks, and I've just remembered I need to buy school shoes and tights for my eldest. We've decided not to buy any other uniform bits until we know we're moving, as if we are, it's very likely to not be the same colours at the new school. So for the first half term she'll have to make do with last year's jumpers and skirts. If it all falls through we'll buy her new ones in October, so either way we'll have to spend the money, but not for just a month's worth.

Poorlittletightgirl

Hi Silence,

Congratulations on the mortgage! It's so exciting getting your first house and making plans. When we moved in people were so helpful giving us things like curtains and bits of furniture, so far we've not had to buy very much at all. I'm also thinking I'd prefer second hand stuff because I'd be devastated when the babies ruin everything, our carpet is already a bit of a mess - so I recommend dark colours and the stain resistant options they offer!

Also sometimes waiting a bit to decorate is a good idea, as when you've lived there a few months you realise what will actually work better than you first thought!

Enjoy the move and I'll enjoy following your thread!

PLTG x

Silence101

Poorlittletightgirl wrote: »

Hi Silence,

Congratulations on the mortgage! It's so exciting getting your first house and making plans. When we moved in people were so helpful giving us things like curtains and bits of furniture, so far we've not had to buy very much at all. I'm also thinking I'd prefer second hand stuff because I'd be devastated when the babies ruin everything, our carpet is already a bit of a mess - so I recommend dark colours and the stain resistant options they offer!

Also sometimes waiting a bit to decorate is a good idea, as when you've lived there a few months you realise what will actually work better than you first thought!

Enjoy the move and I'll enjoy following your thread!

PLTG x

Thanks!
We're lucky we've been renting so long we've hardly anything to buy, apart from 2 appliances, and a few lampshades. The flooring really will be our biggest cost, but we'll try to get it as cheap as possible, with the idea to replace some when the kids are older (or moved out :rotfl:) I know that I don't want to spend all my time fretting because they could be staining things, so wipe able flooring is a must downstairs!

Silence101

Just got home from holidays to find our mortgage offer letter! Rather exciting stuff!
I need to make a spreadsheet for overpayments, I keep looking at the online calculators but a spreadsheet feels more permanent. We're planning on overpaying the difference between our current rent and the new rent/mortgage to start with. At least DH and I are on the same page as I've shown him how much interest we'd be able to save. We can overpay by 10% the first 2 years, then any amount we like/can afford.

On a spending note, I've been buying photobooks these last few months, which might not be very MSE but at least we now can look through our photos in print instead of forgetting them on the computer.

Silence101

Tt £0.01 today
I've got a £40 budget for food this week (and laundry powder) but I'm hoping we can do it for less, by raiding the freezer, and making meals with what we do have, although it won't be a spend free week as I have already been trying to use up the cupboard stuff before our holidays. And the kids aren't too keen on random food mixtures :rotfl:

Silence101

NSD yesterday, but today is food shop day. I need to write a list!

Trying to keep busy as all I want to do is phone the solicitors to see how the searches are going. We paid for them last week, so I doubt they are all back yet. Our council website says it takes them 10 working days, although I'm hoping it'll be quicker!
The original completion date is in 4 weeks time, still don't know how likely it'll happen by then!

We moved to this house is January and got rid of quite a lot in the process, but the new house is even smaller, so we need to be more ruthless, but I don't really know where to start! There's a lot more storage here too (apart from the kitchen which will be an improvement to what we have now.)

Kittenkirst

We did loads of decluttering ready for our house, and am still doing it now.
A good way I've found is to look at what you use regularly and move them out of he way, then look at what you have left. Anything not used in 6 months/ a year is it needed? If not, list it on eBay/gumtree/fb/ charity shop it.
Anything you have duplicates of get rid of extras and keep the one (we had three can openers all working fine!).

Tackling decluttering/sorting in sections always helps....I had five open moisturizers in different cupboards/make up bags etc. I'm still working on using up loads of toiletries but it's meant I haven't bought a lot of toiletries in 10 months :-o

Good luck with the decluttering and hope you hear back soon on the searches

shangaijimmy

Exciting times. I actually enjoy the process of de cluttering as it feels very cathartic! Also fully with you on the spreadsheet, but a word of warning...spreadsheet fiddling becomes very addictive!! Mine is permanently open on my work work laptop and my chromebook at home!

Silence101

We haven't touched our books since we moved so I've donated a few, waiting for DH to come home this weekend to hopefully get rid of some of his too.
I was surprised to see we used at least 85% of our kitchen stuff, but there's a couple of random drawers that we can probably empty. And we really need to be strict about space, if it doesn't fit we can't keep it all (our current house is a smidgen neater than the old flat, because we tried to make sure things fitted in the storage we have, but it's starting to overflow again.)
The new house has a shed, I can already see how we could easily keep unnecessary things just because we have the storage...

Silence101

shangaijimmy wrote: »

Exciting times. I actually enjoy the process of de cluttering as it feels very cathartic! Also fully with you on the spreadsheet, but a word of warning...spreadsheet fiddling becomes very addictive!! Mine is permanently open on my work work laptop and my chromebook at home!

I'm forever looking at different scenarios on the online calculators, even though we can't do anything about yet :rotfl:
The mortgage is for 35 years, and we're hoping to bring it down to 15 (10 is my optimistic goal) so we're still young enough to get a mortgage for the second half.