£50k to zero - made it across the finish line

One-step-at-a-time

Thanks @Drawingaline. With all of them it's the utter senselessness of it all that makes it so sad.
On with the mundane updates!
I'm sitting tight on overpayments this month, which I find really difficult to do, but I need to wait and see where we end up with sales, invoice payments and survey money. The overpayment target for the month is still £180, of which I currently have about £30.
We did our big grocery shop yesterday. More than usual spent on cleaning products as there were a few discounts on regular buys, plus a couple of bonus nectar points offers I wanted to use. As well as the remainder of the grocery budget I'm now up to £7.50 in vouchers, which no doubt will help towards the end of the month.
Today with the lousy weather we are once again looking at little improvements we can do around the house.  My focus is going to be on cleaning, painting and sewing. DH is a whirlwind of activity today. Me? Less so.

One-step-at-a-time

Well this is unusual! DH has gone in to the attic of his own volition and weeded out some more boxes for things we are ditching/have ditched, and some old stuff of his that I have studiously avoided going near for <insert ridiculous number of years here>. To say I am happy about this is an understatement. OK it means I'm not getting that much work done today because he's not exactly quiet about it and keeps coming in to the office to tell me about random things he's found up there, but you have NO IDEA what a massive step voluntary decluttering of even two square feet of the attic is for him.

remote_control

Haha, excellent news!

Drawingaline

Wow! Wish my husband would take note. 

One-step-at-a-time

Baby steps
We had a conversation a while ago when we talked about a time in the future when we might want to move house (certainly not any time in the next few years) and how stressful it would be to have to deal with all the unfinished business and sorting out, and there was some talk about how nice it would be to just enjoy the house for a few years without walking into a room and wasting mental energy on stuff that really didn't need to be there. That's when I really saw the first signs of a lightbulb over his head - he's been on board with the debt busting side from the start, just not all the associated issues. Now that we're making real tangible progress both on the debt side and the clutter side, the momentum seems to be picking up

One-step-at-a-time

As an aside, something I did a while ago was a mental walk-through of every room in the house, describing everything in each room as if all the work had already been done, and saving it as a text file. A lot of it is major enough that it has to wait until the DFD has been met so that we can save for it (e.g. recarpeting the whole place), but for each little job that gets done, I change the text in the document to green. The last few months have seen more and more green bits appear. Probably one of the most satisfying ideas I've had in a while.

mark55man

good plan - will do that when I can get into all the rooms to do it

One-step-at-a-time

Today's to-do list:

• Put a few cheap-but-bulky odds and sods up for sale
• Daily declutter/recycle - done
• Sweep garden/refill garden waste bin
• Go to the post office (last few things until I make some more craft sales) - done

There's still a part of me that wants to say "F it", round up all the stuff from around the house that we don't need to keep, make a bonfire and just obliterate it. Instant decluttering gratification with a little bit of pyrotechnics thrown in  
Not going to happen, though, because I can't stand the idea of things that could still have a use somewhere else going to waste/being destroyed for no reason/adding to landfill.

One-step-at-a-time

Dull end of week update!
£10 from surveys paid off the card
£12.37 pending from selling books online (also going straight to cards).
More baby steps but we've sneaked under £12,700 now.
Weekend planned couple activity: scanning a large pile of CDs through a few sales apps to figure out the best one to sell to in bulk (Zif currently looking a better bet than MM). This is much more of a decluttering activity than a fundraising one, but I'm confident that we should be able to clear a good chunk from the still-commonly-available stuff - once that's gone we can deal individually with the ones that might appeal to a more niche collector-y audience. It's taken a long time for us to be ready to do this, and there's a subset that we'll definitely be keeping. Proceeds will be split equally - DH is torn between putting his half towards an extra external hard drive or using some to treat us to a Chinese takeaway (I think the last one we had was March or May? Can't remember!). My half will probably all go to the cards. That's if we don't get too sidetracked by listening to stuff instead of flogging it  (we met through music and our tastes overlap at least 95% so this is a very real possibility).

remote_control

Did you use a music magpie type site for the books? I have a bag of unwanted books in the boot of my car.
I love your diary as you seem so focused but I suppose that is because you only talk about MSE business and not normal ups and downs of life. Can you do anymore of your side hustle? Do you also sell photos online (or did I imagine that?) if so can you do anymore there?