The Last Leg; 6 years later, debt free in 2021

BlytheDoll

Great work! Just catching up on reading your diary, wishing you well for next year. I always think a new year gives you an extra push.
Blythe x

Kakiste

Well done on the penultimate payment. What a great start to 2021!

greensalad

Cancelled my birthday trip away. £72.50 refunded and the other £72.50 I'd set aside back to be used for something else. Really sad, especially as it's my 30th and the last "big-ish" birthday for a while. I'm even more jealous now that I put on a huge surprise birthday for my boyfriend's 30th in 2019. Just making me feel quite down, but I know it's silly too with so much going on in the world.

Anyway, just before Christmas I was sewing a dressing gown (my Mum's present) and was having an absolute nightmare with my fabric scissors. They are very old scissors, early 80s must be because they have a tag my Mum had embroidered attached to them with her maiden name initials! I think they've finally given up. 

So I've decided for my 30th present to myself I'm going to buy myself the much-coveted Ernest Wright tailor's shears I've wanted for years. £90 a pair, proper British heritage company and I followed their story for such a long time. If anyone is interested in heritage businesses theirs is a fantastic and quite sad story (they tried to bring their company back from the brink of administration three times, the final time it ended with the owned Nick Wright committing suicide, it was so sad to read when you were already following the story of them trying to come back into business). They got bought out by two Swedish guys who wanted to see the brand continue and they are now back up and running. So it's finally time to treat myself!

The extra leftovers from cancelling the cottage will go into NS&I Premium Bond savings and we'll get a takeaway on the night of my birthday instead.

Kakiste

That sucks about your birthday.
My little sister had her 30th just before christmas. For my 30th in 2018 she and my dad booked a holiday cottage and we all went away for 3 nights which was lovely. Have agreed with her and dad that we'll do the same for her next summer but it's sad we couldn't do it over her actual birthday. 

greensalad

OH sold old shares he forgot he had, finally got the cheques today. £262 in the tax bill pot, signature updated.

greensalad

Been doing some decluttering, just went through and threw away lots of old expired make-up, lipstick, and skin care bits. When I was really bad with my debt I'd buy so much stuff to the point I'd never have enough to get through it all. I ended up throwing away so much that cost a lot but is just useless now. Definitely learnt my lesson and I'm now very strict with myself.

Basically I "kicked the habit" by forcing myself to keep every empty I used for one year (in 2019). The thing was, at the end of the year I looked at the pile of empties and realised how little it actually was. I know that's sort of the opposite way round to what some might have expected. Instead of a pile of bottles and stuff I had a really small amount of stuff. It put my current "collection" into perspective as I realised it'd be years until I got through all the stuff.

Now I only aim to have 1 of each type of thing and replace only when they have well and truly run out. I've currently got down to that stage on moisturiser and face sun cream. I'm soon to be finishing up a bottle of hair serum I've owned for... I'm going to guess maybe 5 years. Ridiculous! I've got two more sample size hair serums I'll use and then I'll actually be able to go out and buy something I really like guilt-free and most importantly not have piles of the stuff hanging about.

I went through my makeup and decided to buy a cheapy eBay magnetic palette so I can "pop" out the shadows from some of my older palettes and put them altogether. For example I have this palette I bought in a sample sale at work (we get loads of beauty stuff that has only been photographed and then can't be sold) for £1 and I love several of the shades in it but some I'll never use. The palette is also a demo one so it has a thing plastic topper and basically half falls apart seeing as it's more like the insert that would sit inside something substantial than an actual palette itself if that makes sense. I can bin the shadows I'll never use and keep the ones I like in one place where I can also see them a bit easier.

Anyway, enough of the rambling. Once Christmas is all packed up my next target will be going through my fabric stash and seeing if there is anything I can sell. Though to be honest I did that not long ago and there isn't that much I wanted to part with.

Also decided January will be no-buy no-exceptions. Normally I allow myself to buy things like ribbons/buttons/thread etc to finish off sewing projects I already have fabric for but it ends up being a slippery slope. So my magnetic palette is it. No books, no fabric, no fashion, no sewing stuff. Just groceries & paying the bills. I don't even have any birthdays to buy for or anything like that. Purely the basics for January to have a bit of a 2021 "reset"!

greensalad

Thinking about New Year and pepping myself up to make some plans. Though at the moment I kinda just want to enjoy my last few days off work and veg out on the sofa with my book.

I updated my signature to remove the debts I paid off in 2020, several of them! Though I've included the amount paid off in 2020 as a reminder. Onwards and upwards and time to forget about the debts that are now gone. 

greensalad

Garden planning, doing it here because I need to dump all the things out of my brain!

So this year I'm going to do my veggie garden again but try and be a bit more sensible about things like timings to get consistent crops throughout the year.

I've currently got garlic and onion in the veg bed. I picked early varieties and I'm planning to pull them up from April to early June, which will put me a little behind getting things in the ground, but if I do seedlings I can keep them in the mini greenhouse until early June anyway and then they can go in the ground.

I'm also going to build the section half of the veg bed that I never got around to, seeing as I have all the wood I might as well. That'll give me a second large space to grow stuff. 

Tomatoes
Going to plan better varieties this year, rather than just a mix of what looked cool. I don't even like uncooked tomatoes anyway so no point doing salad toms. I've got the bed at the front where I did them all last year and it was great, but I'm also going to purchase 3 or maybe 4 self-watering tomato towers. I'll have ten plants vs the 6 I had last year. I'm thinking 4 San Marzanos, 2 Costoluto Fiorentinos for fun, and maybe 2 other varieties to hedge my bets.

Salad planter
I'm considering getting the charity woodworkers near me to build me a vertical planter I can put against our back fence. I've seen one on Etsy that has 4 long troughs. Very expensive but the woodworkers should be able to do it much cheaper. So if I've got 4 troughs I'm thinking coriander & mint in the top, thai basil and sweet basil in the middle, rocket & spinach in the third, and then some other leaf (maybe cavolo nero?) in the bottom. So we have lots of cut-and-come-again herbs and leaves right by the back door.

Triple planter
My main planter has three long sections and I found it's better suited to things that are quite compact rather than sprawling. Beans and mange tout did not do great for me last year and they're not particularly fun imo. I'm thinking of doing butterhead lettuce in the bottom row, quite densely packed, and plant them over several weeks so I get a run of maturing crops. Then bok choi and something else in the middle... again needs to be something squat and dense. I have no idea what to put in the top of that one. I'll have to research. Unless I do just do cabbages again (they were delicious and we ate them weekly) and squeeze an extra 2 in, as I reckon I could've, and learn to blanche them properly so we can get 12 portions rather than throwing away half a cabbage.

Side planter
The side that is more open attached to my triple planter will be better for sprawling things so I'm thinking two kabocha pumpkin plants and one courgette.

Pots
Definitely doing cucumbers again, they were amazing. I might do a second pot with cornichon variety cucumbers because I don't like full pickled gherkins myself but I love a tasty little cornichon with some baked brie, mmm.

Square planters
I have three which are already planted up with blackberries, raspberries & blackcurrants. Need to researching pruning properly in the spring.

Strawberry planter
I never have any success with strawberries. I think I might grow mint in this one actually because it'll spring up in all the holes and make delicious Pimms.

So I need to find 2 or 3 delicious squat veggies to go in the planter. Or one could be a climber as it's right near the fence and I can lean a trellis up there.

greensalad

Researching seeds.

Suttons sells most of what I want so I'll probably do an order from there in February (no spend January after all!).

For tomatoes I definitely want to try 4 San Marzano plants seeing as we use them a lot for making sauces. I'm thinking a further 2 Marmande plants. OH pointed out we do actually eat salad tomatoes when we have Mexican food so I think 1 Ailsa Craig as they were my most successful this year. I want to try the Costoluto Fiorentinos because they look fun and then 1 more fun variety. I can get all of these from Suttons.

Kabocha I can buy as plug plants from Suttons which is more expensive but more guaranteed success which I think is worth it.

Bok choi I have seeds for already as my Mum gave me some for Christmas. My beloved Courgette de Nice A Fruit Rond (favourite plant name ever) is only available from a specialist French seed company but not expensive to order. 

Kakiste

I'm doubling down on tomatoes in 2021 given mine refused to ripen the year just gone. 
My mint went mental last year and tried to take over my herb border! It was safely contained in a pot but managed to grow out sideways and root in the border without me noticing. 

Your garden plans sound great. I like the sound of the charity woodworkers, what is that?