Simple living in the country - back to basics

Cheery_Daff

Made a good start - got a giant pile of old magazines that I've not been able to bring myself to put in the recycling. My local friend is having the permaculture ones (hopefully seeing her on Saturday morning so will take them then), and I've just listed the other two lots on Freegle so hopefully someone will come and take them off my hands soon. 

Does that count as 42 separate items?? 😂😂

Annoyingly while I was shifting them to take pictures, I found a book that should have gone in the Ziffit box, so now I'm going to have to unwrap and reward that. Most vexing (but better than finding it after I'd posted it I suppose).

We've also got a pile of posters that came free in a newspaper a few years back. Goodness knows why we've kept them so long. I mean, they're great, but we are never going to put them up (although we have used a few as wrapping paper over the years!) Going to offer them to friends on f@cebook, and if nobody wants them, they can go on Freegle too. That's at least another 15 items right there 😂

I've already taken 3 bags of books and paper to work (mostly library books thankfully) this week. Brought home a whiteboard, but I think that's going straight to Mr Cheery's dad's on Friday.

Right, that's probably enough for now. Off to declutter a couple of painkillers 🙄

Karmacat

You're doing amazingly on the decluttering!  Sorry you've got to declutter painkillers too  

Cheery_Daff

Thank you 😊It'll pass soon enough I suppose 🙄 I'm grateful to know it's temporary 🙄 Also resorting to a bath though as they are not kicking in quickly enough!

£7.17 on the Happy Wheel, although I only did one thing while the bath was running, might do more later depending how I feel - it's nicely mind-numbing if I'm feeling rough. Extra income back up to £120.66.

Undecided about whether to record Happy Wheel money as I go along each month. I thought it would be motivating having it all in the signature, and it is - but by recording it daily as it goes up AND down, it's feeling a bit like it's cancelling out other things! I'll carry on doing it like this for April, but then I think I'll just record everything else in my signature and add the Happy Wheel money in at the end of the month once there's a total figure.

Or I suppose I could have two separate totals in the signature, like I have with cash and vouchers for shopping - that might be the way to do it...

Cheery_Daff

Right, one more thing decluttered - a manky old pillow that has clearly spent too much of the winter in the car and is looking far too close to mouldy for my liking 😮 straight in a bin bag for the tip. 

Mr Cheery has been pondering clothes rails in the new bedroom. We have some rails, just need to make decisions about placement. Some of the bigger stuff will need to go in my new craft room, but I'm finding it very hard to visualise what that will look like when it's currently our bedroom and overflowing with clothes etc that don't have a proper home.

Still, feels like progress is being made! 

Just had a message from the covid study people about coming over tomorrow. What are they doing texting at this time of night?! Also I thought they were sending stuff in the post from now on. Not complaining - they're reducing our voucher amount once they start posting kits out so I'm fine with them visiting!

Cheery_Daff

Morning MSE chums! 

I finally made it back into the marital bed last night, after over a week of sniffling and snuffling in the sofa bed. Woke up this morning sneezing. Am I just allergic to lying down?? Good grief I hope whatever this is passes soon, very tiresome.

Anyway, got up early so I decided to take the plunge and declutter the first of the hair dye boxes. Of course it's taken far longer than expected with all the messing about, and I have just a couple more minutes until it's time to rinse it off... wish me luck... Realised the little bottle of nice conditioner isn't in there - probably because I've pilfered it before. Hey ho.

Payday today, and the new national insurance contributions have gone out, which means my wages are £28.30 down. Absolutely do NOT begrudge this (as long as that does actually get used for social care etc, which is in a DIRE state). Wages are all over the place at the minute anyway with strike deductions etc (although none this month) so I will just keep plodding on with the budgeting and hopefully things will just settle down over the summer. There'll definitely be deductions in Ma and June, and I think they might be spreading them into July too. 

September will be our usual incremental increase (and sometimes brings an uplift of the whole pay scale too, although who knows this year) so we'll see. And if I do get this promotion, it will kick in in September as well.

Anyway, I do realise how fortunate I am to be in this position and more curious than worrying what my wages will be each month.

Eek, look at the time! Best get this dye off my hair! It's not got a use by dare but has been sat around for years so who knows what it will do! 😮

Cheery_Daff

Right - hair dye is off, along with a rather alarming amount of hair Looks ok, and has temporarily covered up my grey tufts over my ears I can't really be bothered with the faff though, so I can't imagine this is going to be a regular thing. 

Glad to be able to get rid of that box out of the bathroom cupboard though! 

Banks/YNAB done with one hand while drying my hair with the other All looking ok. I've separated out my extra income in my signature so the Happy Wheel figure can fluctuate but the rest can stay stable. I was also confusing myself, as the figure included the cashback which hasn't actually arrived in the bank yet - so I've now just included what's in the bank, in this case £25 Premium bonds winnings, and £11.89 from Prolific. I'll add anything else as it arrives (and hopefully the HW figure will go up rather than down! 

QMee is now at £4.99 - I might cash that out at £5 so I can add it to the total. Prolific at 63p + 42p pending so hopefully I can get another £10 from them in April. 

I'll get back onto the banking tonight - I reconciled the main bank account, but not credit card, and didn't allocate the money to specific pots in next month's budget. Need to get on with some work! 

badmemory

You know they said they were going to ring fence the extra NI firstly for NHS & then for social care, well the last thing I read they are not now.  I'm just hoping I misread.

Cheery_Daff

I think they're being deliberately opaque about it 🙄 Gov website says 

"revenue raised will go directly to support the NHS and equivalent bodies across the UK. From April 2023 onwards, the NI contributions rates will decrease back to 2021-2022 tax year levels and will be replaced by a new 1.25% Health and Social Care Levy where revenue will be ringfenced to support UK health and social care bodies"

So technically it's not actually the healthy and social care levy yet (although it's listed as that on my payslip). And I suppose we'll see (or not) what it going 'directly to support the NHS and equivalent bodies' means 🙄 interesting they use the word 'ringfenced' about it from April next year, not this year...

Anyway, it is what it is, and I am grateful to be earning enough to pay more tax, and am generally in favour of higher earners being taxed more anyway. Yes, I have some opinions about how these things could be used more appropriately, but then I imagine we all do!

Anyway, this is not getting my actual work done, aarrgghh!

redofromstart

Catching up!

1.  The message on your payslip was 'requested' by HMRC.  Some of us *coughs* refused to print it till they prove it and have had no response

2. Exiting 'stuff' is really resonating.  Mr Redo and I have been clearing out - with different degrees of enthusiasm - and the place looks so much better for it.  We are working on 'would I pay to move it to a new house', and 'is there room in the bin?  What can we fill it with?'

Cheery_Daff

Ha, good on you refusing to print it!

Our place is currently just in that stage where everything looks FAR worse before it gets better... 🙄😂😂