Cheery's country living adventure

Cheery_Daff

Jab done, and at roughly the same time as my original appointment but without a ridiculous 2 hour backwards round trip 😂 Rocketing through the health appointments this afternoon. Not planning on ny more, just in case the universe decides I need a trip to a&e or anything 🙄

Karmacat

No a&e, no thank you!  But well done you on taking a chance at the walk in, and being able to cancel the booster appointment, yay!  Blimey, Cheery, you're juggling a lot - I just wanted to say, though, your description of walking home through mud and moonlight was wonderful, loved it 🌙

hb2

I'm glad that things came together for you today. Hope that your fillings last as long as needed and that you don't have any ill effects after your booster (I didn't even have a sore arm after mine1).

Cheery_Daff

Thank you ladies, and yes KC, it was a bit of an uphill slog in the mud but it was a beautiful view, and some excellent owl sounds too! 

Another lovely evening yesterday. We invited ourselves round to see some friends, took pizza, they had snacks, and we had a lovely time. We ended up staying over - an absolute rarity for us as we've only had about 3 nights away from home since we moved here nearly 4 years ago 😮 but it was SO nice to just keep going and not have to save enough energy to drive an hour home at the end of the night.

It was quite a late one though 😂 and a leisurely breakfast. Home now, via the chicken bedding shop - except they didn't have any of our usual stuff. I ordered some online from the car park, but no guarantee it will get here before Christmas, so I bought some different stuff, which didn't have a price on but which it turns out is about £10 cheaper for a bag (£7.50 rather than £17 odd). Wood shavings rather than straw, but they're both dust extracted and labelled as suitable for poultry, so it works out OK we might switch permanently, probably save us about £60 a year! 

Right, tea and loafing I think, and then I might put the decorations on the tree 😊

Arm hurts after jab yesterday, and I'm tired but that might just be the late night... a restful day I think, although I might be back in a bit with a gentle list...

Cheery_Daff

Urgh - I should have come back with a list - then I might have remembered that Covid Study guy was coming at 3pm, and stayed in the house, rather than letting Mr Cheery persuade me we needed an excursion...

Unwise all round, we both ended up grumpy, didn't get what we went out for, and missed the poor covid guy! Fortunately he's managed to put us on the request list for Tuesday, but that just means we'll now have to stay in on Tuesday 🙄 Still, £50 is £50 and will be put to good use at the minute...

Hey ho. I have finally managed to do banks & YNAB - a whole month of reconciling since last time meant it took forever, but it's done now. I'm going to need to pull some more from premium bonds to pay the final kitchen/builder invoices but then we should know exactly where we are going into the new year - not in a great place but better than many so I can't complain, and of course the house will be much improved! 

Mr Cheery has just spoken to a friend and invited her to stay over tomorrow - lovely, but everywhere is a shocking tip still, and when am I going to get any DIY or Christmas shopping done if we keep socialising?! 🙄😂

Local (pretty accurate) weather forecasting people are suggesting we may be in for another heavy and disruptive snow dump over Christmas, and that combined with another potential lockdown might mean we don't get to do any family socialising, which usually gets done between Christmas and New year. We might be having cup a soup for Christmas Dinner at this rate. At least we'll be more prepared than last time if anything happens. 

Urgh. I feel tired and washed out today (jab or late night? Probably both). Mr Cheery ran me a bath, but neglected to rinse out the mouse droppings that had fallen out of the loft hatch when he put the ladder back up. He's now asleep on the sofa, so I've emptied and cleaned it, run it again, and put some veg and stuff on low in the oven so it'll be nearly done when I get out.

Will be quite happy when today ends, although I'm not anticipating that tomorrow will be very calm at this rate! Will definitely need alist. At the rate we're going nonsense of the bloody DIY will be done before I go back to work!

Cheery_Daff

Darn it, lost a big post about uber frugal January. Will try again...

Not any more cheerful today, but the sun is shining, I've been swimming, and now thinking about uber frugal January.

I will have a look at bills, but they won't be the main focus. I'll check whether we can get LPG more cheaply, but there are limited suppliers, especially with tankers small enough to get down our drive, so that won't be a massive job. Not switching electricity supplier as ours went bust so staying put through whatever the process is until Martin says otherwise, but we'll focus more on turning things off - we're particularly bad for leaving the lights on. House insurance is due early Feb so I'll shop around.

Main focus though is discretionary spends.

Food and household
Totals for the last three years

2021 = £4063 (£338/month)
2020 = £4403 (£366/month)
2019 =£2627 (£218/month)

Clearly we got into some bad habits during lockdown... But this also reflects the fact that we took the kitchen out at in Oct 2019 and have relied more heavily on convenience foods.

So we can definitely get that back down. We've got a decent store cupboard, although a lot of that is pasta, rice etc which we just haven't cooked - the cooker and sink haven't been in the same room for 2 years (which a set of steps between them) and for the last 4 months the sink has been at the other end of the house, so draining pasta has been a pain. So we can definitely start using that up.

We've also got £100 of supermarket vouchers from the covid study.

Not sure what we'll need other than that, but definitely no more than an extra £100, and that doesn't even feel particularly frugal. We'll see.

My personal spends
Average of £100 in 2019, and £150 this year. Over the year that consisted of

£643 clothes (!! - I think I've been putting most charity shop spends through here and they've not all been mine but even so)
£524 other things (uncategorised)
£298 exercise (gym, races etc)
£200 books (really?)
£98 socialising (just me, not Mr Cheery)
£73 stationery (!!)

Goodness. Definitely no clothes and books in January. I'll keep the gym membership (£35) and aim to spend as little as possible other than that, max of £50

Treats budget
This year we've spent an average of £200 a month, and that's mostly our favourite cafe - just £82 in restaurants over the year (and £12 in a beer category which I clearly forgot I had - all other alcohol has been dumped in the food category).

New rule for January - not more than 2 cafe trips a week (very heights of deprivation here, I know...). A kind relative bought us £40 of vouchers for our favourite cafe for Christmas, so we'll use those. If we only have drinks, not breakfast or cake, it should last us 8 trips, which is plenty. We only rarely go out for tea so can manage without in January. We don't tend to do pubs or cinema or anything, but I might allow a max of £40 extra just in case we get invited to anything exciting.

Not sure what we'll need in the way of diesel. One car is full, the other half full, but there will (hopefully!!) be a bit of running round over the festive season. 

Hesitant to restrict movement too much, Mr Cheery gets to feeling very hemmed in here sometimes,  and uber frugal January is NOT designed to make us feel more stressed than we already do.

But between food, my spends and cafe trips I reckon we can shave off at least, what, £400?? if not a bit more 😮😮 and hopefully get us back into some good habits! 

Right, painting!

beanielou

Happy painting 

Cheery_Daff

Thanks Beanie 😊 although in the end I didn't actually do any painting 😂😂 we spent all afternoon moving stuff and dusting and cleaning and scrubbing and hoovering, but.... we now have a clean and tidy living room, bathroom, spare bedroom with bed for friend to stay over (this is just my study, but the sofa bed has been freed and put up)

AND A DINING ROOM!!! 😍😍😍

Can't tell you how exciting this is!! Our 8 foot long Freegle table has been reassembled and decorated with festive things (mostly candles 😂) and it is SO cheerful. 

Still lots to do, but at this point if none of it gets done before Christmas, that's fine with me. 

Fortune_Smiles

Wonderful progress Cheery - I bet it feels as though you're coming home.

Fortune x

beanielou

woo hoo