Friday five

My friday five for this week ( I know I missed it last week).  I like to think of 5 things that were enjoyable and simple.

1. Having *really* fresh eggs for lunch from a friends new hens (plus lovely company too).
2. creating Christmas gifts that will hopefully not add to piles of tat people normally get.
3. keeping tabs on spending.
4. Fiddling around with numbers and spreadsheets and making a plan for the future.
5. Winning some 2nd hand cotton on ebay to make dishcloths *and* it being organic too (very pleased at this one esp as got v. good price)

I’ve been fairly busy lately mostly trying to do Xmas shopping and get it done early.  I’ll do a post soon on my hopes for this years Christmas as we’re trying to have a green/eco rule.  The shops are filling up so fast here, no signs of recession that people keep talking about.  Mind you I was there this morning and didn’t spend loads so I guess others could be the same.  I do get a bit stressed at busy places so wondering if I can plan my shopping for the next month and limit my time in the shopping centres.  Not only that but I won’t be tempted by useless presents!

Hope everyone has a good weekend.  I’ll try and read round blogs soon and comment

Spending diary

One place where I fall down is keeping track of our spending.  I saw this site posted somewhere and am going to give it a whirl – www.spendingdiary.com

Having a productive day finishing up a few Christmas presents.  Getting there slowly but surely!

I know what I meant to blog about yesterday

I must have been having an off day, completely lost my train of thought.  I meant to blog a bit more about our energy use.  It’s becoming a little bit of an obsession to be honest!  If I tend to go on about it, just ignore!  Anyway, way back in July when I started monitoring it all I set up a spreadsheet so I could enter meter readings and work out what my average use was per day.  I knew what it was the previous year too so could see if I was doing better or not.  I also tried to work out how the bills were calculated so I could input the figures and get an estimate of what my bill was looking to be.  It’s been quite interesting.

We’ve been struggling lately to keep the gas usage down which is annoying since we’ve been doing so well.  It has been really cold here this week although we didn’t get any snow here  (not surprising, we never seem to here even though we’re up north) so usage has been up a little because of that.  What has stressed me is that we have gone into winter with a £70 credit and we still pay just short of £50 per month and by my calculations in order for us to get through the next 2 quarters and not go into debt we need to be averaging about 4.6 units daily.  we can do this when it’s mild but when it’s been freezing we’re using about 6-7!  With the increasing prices this is quite scary!  I don’t know how we managed such low usage last year (average 5.1 per day) without trying but am wondering if it’s partly because the boiler is losing efficiency.  It is quite an old boiler (20 years I guess, same age as property) although has been checked and serviced.  We could certainly do with a nice new energy efficient model.  I really don’t want our payments to go up though.  I suppose all we can do is keep an eye on the weather and if it’s supposed to be freezing keep the heating on low so the pipes don’t freeze.

Thanks for the comments everyone, really nice to have some friendly faces popping in!  And wow – just looked at my blog stats – 650!  Yay for the little blogs

Good news

and an apology.  Sorry for the absense, been feeling a little despondent and just keeping it to myself rather than blogging.  I am trying to keep up with other blogs but am really struggling to comment as well as read!  Maybe I should cut down on my list!

The good news is the bill I was talking about in my last post is no more!  I contested it and it’s worked.  The good thing is that I am trying to make sure I’m not so lax with keeping records now.  Just need the tax credit fiasco (well it’s not that bad but I’m trying to not forget about it) to go the same way.

In one hand…

and out of the other.  This seems to be the way money goes for us.  Well that’s always been our belief before.  My husband has been incredibly lucky in lots of things, he was run over as a child and should probably been dead, he’s been stabbed, had numerous close shaves but is still in one piece.  We always feel lucky in that way but have consigned ourselves to the fact that our luck there means ‘we’ll never have money’.  I don’t like feeling like that though, it feels resigned and to be honest it’s not really a character trait of mine!  But for an example, and life has thrown many of these, a couple of years ago we claimed back about £1000 of unfair bank charges and as soon as the cheque came in so did a *huge* gas bill that was very unexpected.

So we’ve just managed to get a bit in our calamity account when something comes up.  I’m hoping actually we won’t have to pay this bill as by rights it shouldn’t have happened the way it has.  I think something or someone has go mixed up somewhere.  But anyway what’s really annoyed me today is that I can’t find the letter I need to prove we’ve been in touch before.  My filing of important stuff is atrocious

I suppose this is what the calamity account is for though so I shouldn’t be too downhearted.  Just need to get it back to where it was.  However it;s given me a good idea for a goal or 2 this week:

week 46/52 goals

• Get organised!  I need to work out a system that will work well for us and not have me scrabbling for bits of paper all the time.
• Keep to a cash only week.
• Make a start on homemade Xmas presents – I have the lists of what to do , just need to do them.
• Have 2 NSD’s.
• Keep positive.

This that will do   Feel better already!

fruit

I’ve grown strawberries and blueberries in containers in my garden so far with mixed results.  I also have  a few other fruit bushes bought fairly cheaply from pound shops and the like.  I’ve not been too good at looking after them so I’ll be looking up on what to do for the best with these.  I may end up planting them in my parents garden if they don’t mind, we’ll see.

But the exciting news is I’ve chosen (and ordered) my present for Christmas from my husband.  We don’t tend to do surprise gifts round here lol!  Anyway, I’ve got 3 mini fruit trees coming hopefully.  2 apple and a pear tree.  They should be ok in pots on the patio and I’ve wanted some for ages!  I’ve found this blog which I’ve just started reading and might throw up some tips for it all.

I didn’t quite meet my NSD’s for this week but have been quite happy with ourselves this week anyway.  We’ve had a cash only week too which I’m enjoying doing.  It’s making a big difference.

keeping myself happy here

One of my goals for this week was to work out ways of having a more simple life in this house so I can be happy here for a little longer until we can afford to buy a house.  I still would love to find a new rental house and am looking still, but it’s proving hard at the moment.

I think it’s maybe to do with the fact that it’s autumn and turning into winter that I’m feeling the need to have a place to call my own.  In the spring I’ll be turning my focus on to travelling and stuff like that.  It’s the way I am!

I really don’t like where we live at the moment.  But my kids like being on a safe road and being able to play outside with friends and it’s a relatively safe area with good transport links into the city.  My husband likes it as it’s close to his family.  I can’t quite put my finger on why it’s not right for me.  I’ve often thought it lacks some soul as an area.  There are no local shops, the nearest shops is a large indoor shopping mall.  I mean it’s nice to have it in walking distance, but it would be nice to have some proper local shops and not big chains.  There are other things, but I guess it just doesn’t feel very ‘me’, whatever that is.

I really would like my own garden.  I love being outdoors and pottering around.  We do have a garden here but I’ve been mostly into vegetable gardening so far and so I need to use pots as you can bet as soon as I plant in the ground we’ll find another place to live!  There’s not much I can do to the garden anyway really.  I’ve enquired about an allotment nearby but again there’s a possibility we might move away so even if I could get one it might not be ideal.  I’ve been on the waiting list for the allotments nearest to us for 18 months now and no joy, although I need to check I’m still on the list I guess!

If I want to grow vegetables, which I do, then I really need to concentrate on container gardening.  The problem there is that we have such a slug problem that whenever I have grown things in the past they just get eaten.  I wasn’t going to try and grow anything this year since it can be quite expensive getting compost and pots only to be dissapointed with the results or lack thereof.  My mum gave me some in the end that she didn’t want so I gave some things a go and nothing at all lasted long enough with the slugs.  Sigh!

So here’s my thinking for the coming year:

• I’d like to plant some wildlife friendly flowers in the garden.  Will give me something to potter around doing and I won’t be so dissapointed to leave it if need be.
• I’m going to ask my mum if I can plant some vegetables in her garden.  Things which require the least attention will be best.  Potatoes certainly and I’ll have to think of a few others.
• I’ll continue to have a few pots in our garden too.  I’ll just have to be careful and send the OH out with a torch slug collecting!!

I think this will keep my need for gardening going and keep me happy enough here in that respect.

Other things that I need to do are some serious decluttering and just having a nice space to live in.  I’d like to do up some of our existing furniture to make it seem new again.

There we go, one of this weeks goals done.  I’ve had 2 NSD’s so far this week and I’m not sure what our plans are for tomorrow so we may or may not meet the goal.  will see.

Simplifying and a Friday Five

one of the reasons I started this blog is to try and help me get a more simple life.  Not by blogging of course, that’s another thing on the list of things to do sometimes, but just by writing about things it helps focus the mind a bit more.  I have a long way to go to get to my ideal simple life.  I don’t think I could just walk into a life like that, it’s going to take lots of small steps.  I guess that’s what makes it interesting though!

One thing I’ve done this week is get rid of a gadget in the kitchen.  Some people can’t live without this but I’m afraid it was just driving me up the wall.  My dishwasher.  We’ve had it for a while now, probably about 4 years at least, and I was never really happy about having it.  I like washing up, but my management of getting it done wasn’t always the best!  Having a dishwasher never helped that though, I was still not the best at filling it and emptying it so it didn’t help the chore really, just put a different slant on it.  The thing that stressed me most about it was that it hardly ever cleaned things well.  I tried cleaning it inside, buying special chemicals to clean it, vinegar and bicarb, loads of stuff and it worked for a couple of days maybe before going back to normal.  It was definitely not helping my stress levels to have to rewash things.

I’d been thinking of getting rid of it for a while and this week we finally did it.  It’s gone to my father in laws house and hopefully he’ll have more luck with it than me.  I don’t think I’ve been doing too badly at keeping up with the washing up either since having to do it.  I think we can have way too many gadgets around!

I might try and make this into a regular Friday thing but here’s a Friday Five of simple things I’ve enjoyed this week:

1. Setting up the bird feeder in our garden.  Hoping to be able to watch lots of them soon.
2. Baking cupcakes with my little girl when we all wanted a treat but it was a NSD.
3. A weekend just enjoying the company of friends.
4. Planting some garlic and being so happy I haven’t forgotten for another year!  I normally remember in spring that I didn’t plant some!
5. Seeing my friends chickens and my husband getting excited about one day having our own.

I’ll see if I can remember to do it again next week!  Have a good weekend everyone.  I’m working tomorrow but hoping to have a nice family day on Sunday

last weeks goals

I think I did ok last week.  A couple of things didn’t get done but I did have my NSD’s I wanted, kept to homecooked meals and used cash only.  I’d like to continue using cash as it prevents nasty surprises.

This week I only have a couple of goals:

have 3 NSD’s

sort out some ideas to keep me happy living a simple life in this house until I can buy my own.

To spend or not to spend?

Well I’ve met my 3 NSD’s already.  It was nearly not going to work today though as my DH reminded me I needed to take my kids into the city hospital for their eye appointments which meant I had to spend getting the tram to the city.  One of my first posts I made on this blog was about this and I mentioned that we should be entitled to a refund on the public transport ticket.  I duly gathered up our proof of entitlement and decided to enquire about it all today.  It was fairly easy to be honest and so although I technically spent money today, since I got it back I’m declaring it a NSD.  Was made better by taking sandwiches and not being tempted by the sweety stall in the hospital.  Mind you knowing that I could make the day a NSD made that easier.  Is that cheating do you think?  Technically spending but getting it back?  Hmmm.  I suppose next time it might be different, but since I’d forgotton about the appointment and had already hoped to have today off from spending I’ve let myself off from it.

More financial news going on today with a huge drop in interest rates over here.  It doesn’t affect us on the surface as we don’t have much savings and no mortgage.  I do slightly worry about the whole impending recession to be honest.  I’m too young to remember the last one.  I’m not sure what else I can do to make life easier for us.  One thing I want to do is get a stockpile of food together.  Will have to see what I can do about that.