Pay for the future and not the past

KajiKita

Sounds like setting a timer and each doing a 20 minute blitz of one area or room a day in the week would really make a difference.

I’m glad he’s noticed what needs doing …. 😉 

KK

MissRikkiC

Thanks both. This is a difficult stage, the children are little and want everything out all of the time and in various rooms of the house which inevitably means there is also stuff where it doesnt belong. We are both often tired because youngest doesnt sleep so good whilst trying to work full time (almost). On top of everything else, it does feel like a lot.

I dont think it helps that we have very little storage at the moment, which is part of a bigger plan for the house. For example there isnt anywhere we can put the hoover, mop bucket, flash mop, brooms, ironing board, towels etc because we havent got the storage. Not any thats useful if that makes sense. So stuff just ends up living in places that it shouldnt which doesnt promote a tidy living space (think mop bucket in the corner of the lounge, hoover behind the kitchen door.... none are ideal which means they always need to be moved because theyre in the way etc)

There is a old airing cupboard at the top of the stairs but it is full of bedding as there isnt an units in there since we removed the old emersion heater thing. Id ne keen to hear what kind of units would be handy to have in there to store bedding, non season appropriate clothes, towels etc thats actually accessible when theyre all needed (unlike the loft). it would be welcomed suggestions.

Im sure these are just little problems, but so many of them and they add up. Were moving slowly with the utility space, which will help with having somewhere to tidy and arrange washing, rather than it being strewn all over my boys bedroom. It will also provide a place for the mop, broom etc but its not in yet so isnt much help. It will also mean there is a sink for the gardening type stuff, the mucky, leaves soil everywhere type of stuff.

I agree @Bluegreen143 with having minimal toys etc and we do rotate toys but we havent anywhere to store the toys which are out of action for example. They just get hidden in a box somewhere which doesnt have a home as it is if that makes sense. I want to be ruthless with the toys, my daughter for example has so many little plastic food items which i am SICK of seeing but she literally plays with them every day, along with the 11 dolls that she puts on tea partys and picnics for. So i dont feel yet like i am able to cull that much yet. Equally, maybe if we had a different way of presenting them, in a tidy space, it wouldn't matter so much. 

Maybe i am expecting too much of us all. The list of things off the top of my head, generalised hugely is still massive but as ive just typed some of it, i feel like these are just normal things that everyone as to deal/wants to do. So to double right back, maybe now is just a difficult stage of life. Ho Hum.

MissRikkiC

As a brighter less moany update, we have end panels and work top for the utility space we are building. Its slow, but frankly we havent got the time at the moment to sort that anyway! I didnt have to pay for the end panels as my best friend acquired them from a job he was on but does mean ill have to buy the units from that supplier who made the panels. Im a little concerned that they will be more expensive than we would have paid for them from somewhere else, given the 2 end panels were £800 !!! but if we had of needed to pay for them from wherever else, we'd have probably paid the same in total for everything as we will do just for the cupboards. So whilst no real money saved, we will have stunning units in the utility!

I have just crossed off almost a whole page of things which we no longer have in the freezer from the inventory on account of using them up last week. There is still some fridge stuff left but throughout this week that will all be gone too. 

Meals for this week include:

Veggie Bolognese with all the odds and ends of veg (courgette, pepper, tomato, carrots)
Likely a red lentil tofu style stir fry with rice (use up carrots, lettuce, pepper, courgette) whilst hub has a freezer meal as hes out
Chicken and bacon casserole with mash and sautéed cabbage
Thursday is pay day so havent actually planned from this point on- but i should....
Bean chili with added veg (frozen) 
Friday Freezer Thia fish curry and rice and naan

Veggie meals are still making up the majority of our meals which is nice, im enjoyed the variety. 

We over spent on my boys birthday this weekend. We didnt want to do anything at home this time (as we did for my daughter) as we felt it would induce more stress and i would forever compare the turnout, so we all went out for lunch instead. However we ended up paying for a round of drinks for the first lot of family who arrived £45, meals at £40 for us and the children, plus some nice wooden toys which caught my eye at the weekend. We did budget for (some of) the gifts and the lunch cost but essentially we went over by alot more than i planned. Ive thought about it and how to cover it, but decided i will wait for the car service bill to come out this week and then reapportion all of our pots afterwards (unlikely to be much left). We have already started saving for things like Christmas so we will empty this pot as its the furthest point away and bring all pots back to zero first. If we then need the extra coaching money, current little pot of over payment money destined for the credit card, plus the emergency fund to cover the car bill then so be it. If there is anything left, i will reallocate some to Christmas and some to the OP pot. 
We have a grand total of £571 available for the car service so since i am hoping to restore £125+£21 for the OP pot, some to Christmas and pay for the car (knowing the bare minimum cost for the service is £250) so it will be tight!

Watch this space

Bluegreen143

IMO the best, most visually attractive way of storing toys is either an ikea kallax unit with the fabric bins in or an ikea trofast. 

I do think trofast works better, because you get different size tubs then which work for different toys, but I personally have kallax as I already owned a couple when I set up the kids’ playspaces. My kallax units are all at a lower height so the kids can reach anything but when they were smaller I had them the other way so I could put some things out of reach. 

Example pics nicked from the internet, my own playroom is not this attractive 😂 but the good thing is, everything is tidied away in bins when not being played with and not visually taking over the space. When the kids were smaller I used clear plastic storage but that looked rubbish/not tidy as meant you could always see the toys. 

It is tricky if you’re lacking in storage. Could you use under bed storage or top shelves on wardrobes to store out of rotation stuff? 

KajiKita

Would having a play mat (or blanket) on the floor and that’s the space that toys can extend to and no more, work, or are the littlies too little for that still? 

I think you are doing really well in working pretty much full time, having big focus on finances (it’s always easy to just throw money at fixes for things), looking after two children and living! I feel you on the lack of storage. There’s just the two of us here and we are drowning in stuff (used to live in a bigger house and hubby is still collecting … 🙄😂❤️). I can let things go but hubby can’t. My primary focus this year is to get storage in the spare room and turn that into a crafting space for me for the winter. Not made much progress on it so far. Might price up those IKEA units! 😉

KK

MissRikkiC

Thanks @Bluegreen143 I know Kallax and Trofast are generally used for families with children and toys, we bought an argoose version about 18 months ago and theyre okay but not really big enough, the boxes are material as well and are all bent out of shape now.

I discussed with OH last night and mentioned the 2 types of units. He prefers the Trofast ones as do i and the idea would be that they toys would all be kept in the 1 room. We have a conservatory which isnt your typical size, instead its the full width of the house and as deep as any other room; this is where the utility space will go. The rest of that space is currently under utilised and so its always been my plan to have the other half of that room as a play space for the children. In the warmer months its perfect as it opens into the garden and the children will be back and forth but in the winter its an issue. It will also become more of an issue when the utility goes in there as its FREEZING. The radiator provides very little warmth and once the utility goes in, its coming out anyway. With that in mind, in the winter its not suitable to have the childrens toys etc in there as it will be too cold for them to play in there. This almost ended the conversation and the idea, however i tried to not let it stop us.

We are due (within the next 12 months) to renovate the lounge space as its still 1970s brick built fire place etc and we dont like it. When we do that, amongst other things, we will move from 2 sofas, 1 either side of the room, to 1 large corner sofa opening up a whole wall area. We agreed that this would be where the childrens play space would be in the winter months, moving the units into the lounge as they are quite stylish. If we havent done the lounge by then.... (very likely due to new sofa probably being about £3k) then we will forgo some middle of the room space and pull the sofa forward so the children can still have their play space behind it. This should limit the amount of stuff everywhere!

I am likely going to a meeting in the midlands next week and so will pick up 2 sets of the units on my way home from the nearest Ikea there to save on the delivery costs. I think at about £75 each including a set of 'buckets' its not a bad price to essentially bring me and the house some inner peace. 

MissRikkiC

Money stuff - of my £19 odd left in the groceries pot, i spent £12 on toilet rolls and some bits for lunches, cucumber, bread etc. I missed eggs but tbh i can leave them and find other subs anyway. Hub is owed £7/8 from this pot for some snacks and a reed diffuser he felt compelled to buy however hes not had it yet and we reset tomorrow so wondering if instead he will forget and manage without. 

I enjoyed a chucked together dinner last night of chicken, freezer dive roasted veg (which i chucked in the Ninja whilst packing bags up for a weekend away, about 8 weeks ago) and a dollop of bbq sauce. I stuffed as much as i could into pittas meaning thats 2 other things to scratch off the freezer inventory list. I saw on another diary that despite a new month starting for their budget, say tomorrow, they were waiting for the weekend for a delivery which i am going to adopt. Usually the day we reset, i plan for an order to arrive but since its likely going to be store cupboard items anyway, i think i can wait. 

I made lentil tofu which i assume will be lunch today as part of a salad bowl type meal. Dinner will be the chicken and (not sure if its) bacon casserole if i get chance to cook it today, but otherwise maybe a pasta dish using similar ingredients. The 'tofu' was setting in the fridge overnight and i maybe over did it with garlic powder yesterday.... goodness me the smell at 6am when i opened the fridge was enough to knock me over!

Due to the referral scheme with the 'milk' we order, i know my husband has a £10 voucher on his account so i have paused this months subs and instead when we get to the last box i will order on his account instead and likely pay £5,39 again. 

I checked our budget for June yesterday and saw that id planned to put aside £250 for OH car so maybe the damage wont be as bad on our savings pot as i thought, however ive obviously now mentally allocated another £140 for the Trofast units so i still wont order them until the car bill comes in today just incase its crazy money. Oh i hope its not. 

Bluegreen143

I think that sounds like a brilliant playroom plan - the conservatory sounds ideal in the summer and you’ve got a back up for winter too. I do wish I’d gone for trofast now but it seems wasteful to switch especially given the ages of my kids, they won’t want a playroom forever. 

Mine share the tiny box room in bunk beds so we could make the second bedroom (a double) into a shared playroom. It wouldn’t have worked when they were tiny as they wouldn’t play upstairs alone but it’s fine at their ages. 

They are allowed to take tubs of toys downstairs to play and make a mess but at the end of the evening all toys need to be returned the playroom… I also added a discrete fabric tub in the conservatory under a side table which I can chuck toys in as I go if I’m tidying up during the day and don’t want to run upstairs. 

We do keep board games and art/craft supplies and books all downstairs separately but these are easier to keep neat on shelves. 

MissRikkiC

So a bit of an update, car service used almost all of the EF/savings pot we’d built up at £338 but I’d also set money aside from this months pay to cover some which I’d forgot which has meant I could replace what was spent over and above for my sons birthday and still have most of what we started with. The element of my extra job money I was giving to the credit card OP pot has been replaced but it essentially will be used to cover the costs of the units we want for the children’s toys. The £100 from nationwide in June will get added to the pot instead. 

I also managed to pickup 1 of the trofast units on fbmp for £40 on Friday which I was so chuffed about as they get snapped up. I should only need to buy one unit now unless I spot another before Thursday so saved £35 vs buying a new one and the effort of having to build it 🤣 I can honestly say the house already looks better. We’ve also moved a few bits around which has helped. 

My daughter had a sofa bed in her room which we gratefully accepted but then never used so it was just taking up a huge amount of space as well as a make do book shelf so I listed them free on fbmp and they were both requested. The person for the sofa bed then let me down so within minutes it was unscrewed and sawn in half. It’s gone to the tip this afternoon. It means a little desk which was taking up space can now go in her room and she can have her wigwam tent up permanently as there is enough space. It’s made a big difference to my mood. I’ve also realised, when getting stuff done, my husband is a bit of a c0kc block but that’s another story for another time 🫣🤣

KajiKita

I’m really pleased to hear that the unit you snagged in FBMP worked as well as you hoped and well done for the assertive decision to just ‘get rid’ of the sofa-bed - sometimes that is just the only option. 

Sorry to hear hubby is not being as supportive as he could be. Does he not ‘get it’ i.e. lacks vision, too tired, lazy, distracted by other things he wants to do with his free time, other? (I’m not necessarily expecting an answer here, but if you can unpick what his issue is, you might be able to work towards a compromise?)

KK