Quest for (mortgage) freedom

rugbymadfamily

Oh I hear you on the work clothes! Its the inactive days that have killed me. Even just little things like my office has 3 flight of stairs and I used to climb them multiple times a day!

eat_that_frog

@caeler I've signed up for a 7 day free trial of the Nutracheck app, so that I could have a brief but better understanding of what I'm eating and what it equates to. I've only used it for 2 days and I've deliberately not changed my eating habits but am instead just tracking what I'm normally eating, and I am honestly shocked at how many calories I am taking in each day. My work is computer based so I'm quite inactive 4 days a week as well, which is definitely compounding the issue. I'm viewing this as a chance to give my health a bit of a spring clean.

As it's May, my husband and I usually use Spring as an opportunity to have a little declutter of the house, attic and garage. We're not hoarders by any stretch but we always find we've accumulated 'stuff' over the past year. It's a good opportunity to bin the broken stuff and give away the good unwanted stuff or sell online. So we've been casting our eye around the sitting room today whilst working from home and we realised that our shelf of DVDs has not been touched, other than for dusting, for nearly 2 years. And then we had another realisation that we haven't owned a DVD player for nearly 18 months! 

South_coast

Sounds like the DVD's will be an easy target then 🤦‍♀️🤣!

rugbymadfamily

Love a good clear out! Even just doing a bit every few months helps, I like the easy wins so dvds is a good start! My husband is a bit of a hoarder (well not hoarder level but I'm more minimalist lol!) and its a battle, but he is getting better especially since he started making money selling some of his old stuff (about £350 to date!).

caeler

Love a declutter! Although I couldn’t be parted with my film collection. I have over 1000 titles! The dvds do take up a lot of room though! 

eat_that_frog

@South_coast yeah it was a bit of a wake up call for my other half when I pointed out we couldn't watch them even if he wanted to    !!

@caeler see I'm a book collector, that's what I would really struggle to part with, although I think I have identified 2 or 3 (out of 500 or so!) that I can donate to the charity shop. Every little helps I guess! DVDs I don't feel the same way about so it's a quick win.

@rugbymadfamily luckily me and husband feel the same way but I think getting him to go through the wardrobe is going to be a pain this time round. We haven't been in our respective offices in over a year and both our employers are talking about working from home with only occasional office working. So I reckon we could shrink our work wardrobe by a third and use it as an opportunity to get rid of the older stuff that doesn't look as fresh as it once did, and we'd still have plenty of options for work in the future. My husband must have about 10 shirts for work alone! I don't think he's as keen on decluttering clothes though.

powerspowers

Oooh we are the same with dvds. I’ve pared down to one box but find them hard to let go of. But if we didn’t get round to them after 14 months of lockdown when will we! 

eat_that_frog

Well we've put the DVDs up for sale online. We're going to give it a few weeks, if no-one bites they'll be got rid of.
I was feeling on a bit of a roll and I had a decent look through our book collection. We realised we've got many many more books than we thought, nearly 1000  We've earmarked about 50 to take to charity shop, ones that we read but didnt enjoy as much as others, so why are we holding onto them?! It's much harder to get rid of books for us because if we enjoy it, we like to keep hold of it to dip into again in the future.
We also went through our board games and puzzles too, and have downsized those by about 25% too. There was one game we think we've only played once when given to us as a gift and never used again, no idea why we held onto it for 5 years.

As a result of all the above decluttering, we've decluttered 130 items so far and counting. That's just from 1 room in the house, the sitting room, and we've not even finished in there yet. So I'm now committing to the 2021 decluttering challenge: 2021 items from the house and garage by end of December. I'm really excited by the challenge too.

And my sitting room now looks amazing Still cosy and lived-in but more peaceful definitely. I'm excited to try and replicate this in the rest of the house now!

eat_that_frog

Still making my way through decluttering the downstairs. So far I've tacked the hotspots in the sitting room and dining room, I'm now up to 157 items decluttered. I still haven't finished in those 2 rooms, I am dreading tackling all the little drawers in my coffee table. But it needs doing!

I'm hoping to make a mortgage OP next week but I can't decide whether to hold a bit back for some garden stuff we've got planned. We're currently landscaping it, we're doing it all ourselves, and although it looks awful at the moment as we're currently in the destructive phase, I'm hoping it'll look better in a couple of months!

eat_that_frog

Did a bit more decluttering today in downstairs cupboards, I'm now up to 230 items either scrapped or sold or taken to charity shop. I'm feeling really motivated to continue! I really want to get to 2021 items.
We managed to pick up some second hand bits online for our garden that we're landscaping at the moment. We're preparing the patio area later this week. I just wish the weather would sort itself out, on and off showers haven't stopped all week.