Simple living in the country - back to basics

rtandon27

Phew - all caught up! - I seem to have lost your new diary for a few days - Glad to hear Mr. Cheery has recovered from the dreaded C-word - So sorry to hear Mr C Sr is poorly and hope he's on the mend soon! - As to Cheery adopted dog - you have the patience of a saint! - hope you manage to catch up on your sleep soon!

Cheery_Daff

Thanks RT! 

Watty,  the cafe does allow dogs, but we took him on Tuesday and he whined the whole time so we put him in the car. I suspect he might be a bit more settled now - we'd only had him a few hours at that point.

I sneaked off to the cafe on my own this morning. Mr Cheery has been feeling proper rough with an upset stomach 🙄 It never ends, does it?? Hoping he's eaten something funny rather than having something contagious. I suppose we'll find out - hopefully in time to cancel my family visiting on Sunday if necessary.

I've been out and done the final Christmas shopping (for the people who are visiting...), and had another long walk up to the moors with the dog. I'm worn out now! Don't think we'll intentionally seeing midnight in this house... suspect I might be on the sofa again 🙄

Cheery_Daff

Evening again chums

I am back with a review of the year and some planning for next year! 

A brief run down of things achieved in 2021

Finances
* Paid £11,355.42 off the mortgage (including regular payments and OPs). Stopped OPing in the summer to save more for the kitchen (good job really...) Current finish date if I don't make any more OPs at all (unlikely) = April 2042 - my 62nd birthday. Not acceptable!

* £414.92 earned from MB - barely did any this year.

* £475 premium bonds winnings!

* £5175 extra saved towards new kitchen

* £35,000+ spent on building work and new kitchen. I stopped counting towards the end as it was just too depressing. 

* Bought new (to us) car

* Dropped to four days a week at work in September - hooray! 

State of finances - pretty dire compared to where I'd like them to be... 

Home
* Finally - a new kitchen!! And a new bedroom! Four months of building work and upheaval, many tears and tantrums, and LOTS of moaning, and here we are. Still DIY to do, but the bulk is done. Thank goodness!

* Replaced 5 windows - 3 weren't double glazing before so made a difference to heat levels

* Some maintenance stuff that had been ignored - chimney swept, gutters cleaned, septic tank emptied

* Did quite a lot of decluttering

* Quite a bit of DIY preparing for, and sorting out after, the new kitchen - kitchen ceiling panels, painting etc

Garden & Land
* New chicken run extension! More than doubled their indoor, secure space which is great, especially given avian flu seems to be becoming an annual thing now.

* Sadly lost three of our beloved chickens, but rescued three new ones a few weeks ago

* grew lots of veg, but took my eye off the ball and didn't harvest much of it. 

* cut about a third of the hay field - not as much as I wanted, but at least it's all been cut once in the last 2 years

Health
* Dire. Barely any exercise this year, and mental health just as bad. 

* put on at least a stone, meaning I'm now more than 3 stone over where I'd like to be. Feel podgy, slow, and out of breath. 

* Completely got out of the habit of cooking with no kitchen. 

* Lost a tooth, and had a root canal in another, although it's now looking like I'll lose that one too

* Finally sorted out period pain - thankfully with heavy duty painkillers rather than replacing my IUD

* had all 3 covid jabs!

Work
* Dropped to four days - yay! 

* Awarded a big (for me, and for my dept) funding grant

* Published 2 papers (just as co-author) and have another one under review

* Took on two new roles - one temporary (now finished), one permanent (just started)

Overall
Probably on a par with 2020 for us. Mr Cheery has been quite ill, hence getting people in to do the bulk of  the building work - both of those things have been extremely stressful. Work, in contrast, has been fairly relaxed, certainly in the second half of the year. I've spent a lot of the year anxious - about builders, Mr Cheery, health, chickens, everything. I feel mentally drained and physically exhausted, and my priority next year HAS to be sorting out my energy levels...

savingholmes

Hope you have a better 2022. You achieved loads in 2021 even if your finances aren't where you would like. 4 day week sounds lovely too

Moneywhizz

Wow, you have achieved so much this year. It's not surprising that you feel drained after all the upheaval and worries of the year but your diary continues to be interesting, entertaining and definitely cheery. Well done to you and I hope next year you can focus on improving your health and fitness while enjoying your home after all the hard work you have put in. Happy New year to you. 

Cheery_Daff

Plans for 2022

Overall
I need to focus on my health and energy levels as an absolute priority, even before the house (although they will benefit each other). I'd also like us to have some fun, which has been sorely lacking this year! 

Finances
* Main focus needs to be on rebuilding the savings. I'd like to save £600 a month from normal income, and make an extra £400 a month from any and all other sources (MB, premium bonds winnings (ever hopeful!), prolific, covid study, anything Mr Cheery's self-employment earns etc). Together that will mean an extra £12,000 over the year. 

* Mortgage - without any OPs we'll be at £171,690.05 by the end of the year. I'd love to be under £170k. Not sure yet how I'm going to fund this - according to my spreadsheet it means an OP of £140 a month, and I'd want that to be on top of the savings above. 

Home
* Main focus is on finishing kitchen/dining room and bedroom. 

* As part of the reorganisation I'll set up the spare bedroom as my craft room

* I'd love to re-do the bathroom! But that might be towards the end of the year, if at all... 

Garden & land
* Extra bit of extension on the chicken run

* grow and actually harvest some veg

* cut the hay field

* fix some dry stone walls (and probably watch some others fall down...)

Health
NEED to focus on this. Healthy eating, exercise, rest, recuperation, and I'd love to lose at least a couple of stone this year (if nothing else it will mean I can fit back into some of my own clothes!)

Let's see how many of those plans survive the next year, shall we?!

savingholmes

Great plans.  

Fortune_Smiles

Great progress in 2021 Cheery - wow!  A whole new kitchen and bedroom - that's huge!  And, with everything else going on in the world, it's no wonder you're exhausted.  Well done.  A couple of observations - that's a very long list of goals for 2022 and you've put health at the bottom of that list and it has the least specific actions listed against it.  I wonder if it needs a bit more focus as it's your priority goal?

This is very much a case of here, have my resolutions, I'm not using them 😆 as I've done exactly the same thing with my goals 😆  So do feel free to give this a stiff ignoring 😉

Fortune x

Cheery_Daff

You're right of course Fortune 🙄😂 

I'm thinking I need to separate goals and habits, so the DIY and garden stuff are goals (and some of the finance and health stuff too of course), but the important thing will be to build healthy habits.

I suppose if I'm honest I'm wary of being too specific. Every year I say I'm going to run 3 times a week, lose a stone, never go to a vending machine or eat a cake, always get 8 hours of sleep or whatever, but I've never yet made it stick. What's going to make the difference this year? 

Not sure how to answer that yet. In some ways I need to be a bit less ambitious and more realistic than usual I think. But what do I drop off the list?

Karmacat

Cheery_Daff said:

I'm thinking I need to separate goals and habits, so the DIY and garden stuff are goals (and some of the finance and health stuff too of course), but the important thing will be to build healthy habits.

Every year I say I'm going to run 3 times a week, lose a stone, never go to a vending machine or eat a cake, always get 8 hours of sleep or whatever, but I've never yet made it stick. What's going to make the difference this year? 

Ooh ... answer this question, and you've cracked it, Cheery.  I need to answer it for myself too, actually.  

Loved your review further up the page.  Would you tape it to the front of the fridge (changing the order as per Fortune's comment!)?

Hope tonight goes well, with your four legged sidekick.