A new royal start

QueenJess

savingholmes said:

Well done for facing it and coming up with a plan. Could you do bank account switches for extra£?

I think I’m either already with the banks offering switches or I really don’t want to switch to them.

QueenJess

DD is teething again, so she’s very clingy with me at the moment and on edge. We’ve had to medicate her in order to get her to sleep. I’m sure I won’t get much sleep again tonight.

Been working through my list of jobs today. Washing done, clean clothes away, general tidying, more stuff listed on the buy nothing group, some excess stationery to go to the school and I’ve continued decluttering digital stuff. I did contacts and messages in the week and I’m now working my way through notes and downloads.

 From the money side:
- Finally completed the form to open an ISA for DD
- Almost finished my personal side of the budget. It’s lacking petrol as I’ve no idea until I talk to work. May need to come back and tweak it depending on the completion of the joint account budget, which is the big one!
- I ordered my laptop. Annoyingly my new phone is still on the card (DD due to be paid next week), so I rang up to increase my credit limit as I didn’t have enough. I would have just paid off the card, but for some reason if you do that, the bank decides that is extra to the full bill DD and is end up with a massive surplus. I don’t use the card very often, so that would be silly. I haven’t increased my limit for 10 years and it would be useless for holidays or emergencies, so I needed to increase it at some point anyway.

Apparently my old, out of date and useless laptop might be worth £100. I don’t think so (and I’m not counting on it), but I’ll see what they say when they see it. At least I attempted to trade it in although I assumed they would just recycle it for £0.

- DH finally told me what he wants for his anniversary present (it was last week) and luckily I got a voucher when I bought my laptop so it’s going to cost me less than £10. Bargain.

- I reviewed my SIM deal, but came to the conclusion that I might be able to save £1 a months, but the cheaper ones tend to exclude things I need in the details (like WiFi calling since reception in a thick walled ultra insulated house is pants). There was a deal on with the people I’m already with and so for exactly the same cost each month I got twice the amount of data. Not sure I need it, but I thought I may as well.

Right. Clingy DD is finally asleep so I can go downstairs. Hoping for a bit of TV and I will continue to sift through digital files whilst I watch. I think most files are all organised and it’s just photos 😬, emails and the downloads which need a good sort. Also need to check through passwords too at some point…

will also be cancelling some personal DD’s next week that I’ve decided I don’t want anymore and reviewing another service that I have and may change provider.

Oh - the other good news is that my compensation for having no phone line for 3 weeks (yes you read that right) has been confirmed. They now owe me £120! It’s obviously far exceeding the actual monthly bill so not sure if I will have a free service for months until it’s used up or if they will refund me. I’ll find out mid next month when the bill usually goes out.

QueenJess

It’s all change at the royal household. DH is actually physically going back to work 2 days a week - first time since March 2020!  Means I’ll be on my own to manage most the day (which is fine), but I can see dinner and getting DD to sleep on my own could be problematic if she decides to be difficult and DS doesn’t help. She’s teething badly so it’s a no sleep zone at the moment.

Bit of a chaotic day as it was an inset day for DS. Since when were these randomly in the middle of a term? When I was at school they were always at the start/end of term so you never noticed (and presumably was a bit easier for working parents). Anyway -  video called my parents with DD and DS most the morning so that’ll keep them happy for a while. Also managed to mount a canvas onto a frame ready to put up in the nearly complete living room.

Decluttering (seems to never end with kids!):
- I finished the downloads file last night and have started work on my passwords which includes getting rid of duplicates, upgrading passwords, transferring to my new password manager, requesting deletion of accounts I don’t need. There is 675 for some reason so this is going to take a complete age! Will do a bit a night and I’ll get there eventually.. not in a particular rush.

Money stuff:
- Reviewed all my personal DD’s and deleted a few for services I don’t want anymore. Saves me just £7.05 a month, but it all counts doesn’t it?
- Chased up a couple of orders where one hasn’t arrived and the other was damaged.

Hoping that if I do a bit a day I’ll be super organised in no time!

themadvix

My niece had an inset day yesterday too - I believe it’s so the teachers can go Christmas shopping 🙄

Decluttering and organising sounds good!

rugbymadfamily

Hello! Sounds like it's a busy busy time, but you're smashing it as ever. In awe of your organisation and decluttering...I need to do some, really must make time. Husband keeps trying to persuade me we need to board the lift to store stuff up there...but I saw his parents left when they moved house after 20 years and I am NOT letting that happen 😂

I can only imagine how tricky it is trying to figure out the work situation, hope they let you WFH most of time given that you used to when you reported in to US.

Hope teething and sleep improve for DD!

QueenJess

Every time I think I might start to get on top of things, something else happens. At 11am I get a call from the school to pick up DS as he has a fever (he was fine earlier). I pick him up and they tell me they just checked his temperature again and it was normal. Right, so basically I now have a child at home with no fever, no signs of illness (he is eating me out of house and home) and the school won’t let him back without a PCR test for the symptoms he doesn’t have and there are no available to be found anywhere (unless I want to bundle an 8 month old and a 4 year old in a car to drive more than 20 miles each way). Of course today and tomorrow are the days DH is at work..

Ahhhh😱… will be checking to see if any slots magically appear later today.

I was going to try and spring clean a bit of a kitchen today as I started ages ago, but haven’t had time to continue. That’s out the window. I did manage to peek into the cupboard of doom upstairs and briefly pull out some stuff I don’t want anymore and listed it on the buy nothing group. *sigh* one day I’ll finish a whole room!

themadvix

You're doing the best you can. Be kind to yourself.

And I don't blame you at all for being cross with the school! I thought they had to check at intervals and if the temp stayed high for a certain amount of time they had to send home, not just a one-off! 

QueenJess

themadvix said:

You're doing the best you can. Be kind to yourself.

And I don't blame you at all for being cross with the school! I thought they had to check at intervals and if the temp stayed high for a certain amount of time they had to send home, not just a one-off! 

It is so frustrating! I think they are just jumpy as the rates are rising and there was a couple of cases in his class (but not anyone he’s played with).

DH said he’ll take him to the one 20 miles away and has managed to get one first thing so he can get to work straight after. Hopefully he can get back to school on Thursday. My brain is fried already!

themadvix

That's good news - well done Mr QJ!

QueenJess

Finally got the negative result this morning (not a surprise to anyone) and then I had to rush around at 9:30 when it came through to get everyone ready and out the door.  Will be picking him up again in 3 hours..

Resurrected my kitchen spring clean yesterday and cleaned out quite a few drawers and moved a few things around.  Got a few more things to add to the buy nothing group later.  Still got more to do.. it's never ending.  I would like to try and rearrange the freezer later as I had it all organised, but DH thinks you are meant to literally throw things in wherever you fancy.  Means I can't find anything and not really sure what's in there anymore.  Need to get it organised as I am picking up an A*di click and collect order tomorrow (can't face a big shop with DD).

DH point blank refuses to let me do any of the food shopping (which is stupid) and so I am stuck apparently eating exactly the same things every week and him buying really expensive food from the most expensive shop.  So I am ignoring him as usual and put in an A*di order to get most of the stuff for the month excluding fruit/veg which I get delivered weekly and meat.  I put loads in there to stock up earlier, but I've thought of a few more things, so will need to amend the order later.  Hopefully means things will be a bit cheaper this month and I can eat more of what I want.  Hoping it'll be a success and I will happily pay £4.99 to pick up most of the food for a month!

Yesterday for lunch I had leek, pea and kale pesto pasta followed by kiwi and yogurt (using up the veg/fruit box stuff).  Need to try and tidy up the horrible mess everywhere in the house.  Trouble is, all the spring cleaning I am attempting to do, I can only do in tiny bits because of DD and so it is currently making more of a mess than making it better.  Apart from putting the pictures up, ordering a side table (can't find one I like and happy with borrowing the one from another room for now) and a couple of cushions arriving, the living room is done now. So the plan is to finish the living room and keep it clean/tidy so at least I can see one room done!  Then will continue the kitchen, which may take quite a while.  Will just see where I get to.  The big plan is to get all the spring cleaning done before I go back to work in March.  We shall see where I get to.