Spending October organising our spends - friendly frugaleers this way!

[ememem84]

New thread because old one is almost full. All welcome. fluffy can you be a doll and please post the helpful threads? X x

Lonely I think navy blue walls all over are 💙 and actually a really good neutral base for the girls to then pick their own accessories. Also iirc you said they have the big room between them? A dark wall colour will help to make the large room cosy and warm.

Scene there is actual CBeebies radio online. It's very good. We often listen when I've had enough of screens and the bedtime stuff is particularly calming.

Em you've got the tunes 🎤 🎶!

Mammy Really hope you get to go out tonight but only if ds feels settled enough to go.

@thistimenextsummer I hope he goes as I don't want to start a trend of him choosing when he goes & when he doesn't

Checking in.

Love the idea of navy walls and sparkly furnishings. We also need to sort our kids' rooms. Lots of ideas on Pinterest.

Should be low spend today. Just an Aldi top up shop.

I am leaning towards navy! Dd1 has a navy blue ceiling, her room is like stepping into something moroccan, she covered her walls (dark purple and magenta) with her drawings (very colourful style, very ghibli-esk), and for a monumentally tiny room it's ace. can't see the floor for clothes and stuff

I was looking at 'tween shared room' ideas on pintest, great ideas, but mostly pink and aqua. I'm going to look at wallpaper for one wall, and perhaps pick a darker colour from it for dd2's side, and a lighter colour for dd3's. Probably both blues. I want a cohesive room, not a line down the middle one, we've done that before and it looks crap.

So, some plastering today, moving the crap to the bin out of the room, and pick up dd2 later on is my day.

We need to do the Caglets’ rooms too. Otherwise I can totally see us never getting round to it! And I really don’t want to do that, as they’ve never had a decorated room ever. It’d be great to get them painted before Christmas (ha!) and then I planned to get them “nice room stuff” eg periodic table rug for DS, ammonite print for DD for Christmas presents. DD chose two colours and they are hideously clashtastic but I’ve said it is totally her choice, especially as she will have to share again I want it to really be hers for now.

Love the sound of DD1’s room lonely love a bit of ghibli :o TBH that’s why we started learning Japanese. Has she seen the first film from Studio Ponoc? (Mary and the Witch’s Flower)

Pintetest is a complete rabbit hole.
Aaaah some of the kitchens are beautiful-then I remember they probably never use them.
Love the colour scheme em very restful .
So exciting to finally be making your home how you want it
mammy really hope you get to go out .

Lonely its called a "Floordrobe"in this house
Its nice and sunny here but cold .
Plan to get my hair done -just a cut so about £32 and possibly take DD to pick up her glasses later.
Im cracking on with my sock at every opportunity so hoping to turn the heel at the hairdressers.
Have a nice Saturday Frugaleers !

I need to go back to Aldi today because the chicken I got yesterday says use by today and I don't have time to cook it today 🙄

And I'm seriously impressed that you do plastering lonely - I'd love to learn as it looks like something accessible (ie no scary electrics or plumbing) and would hurry up a lot of jobs in this house (good plasterers are rare as hens teeth round here and have v long lead times)

I say ‘ha’ because we haven’t even finished the garden fence yet. 😳

We have “the chair” here. Things that are too clean to be washed but are too dirty to be put away properly go on “the chair”

Dh has gone to start the painting. I’m here with catface and ds. Ds is napping. I’ve popped a load of washing on, have another ready and am going to tidy up downstairs in a bit.

Plans today are to make sure ds is awake for 11. Take him to dh. Go riding. Pick him up. Get changed and take him to friends dd’s Birthday party. Stay for an hour or so and then go supermarket shopping. We need a few bits here.

Dparents come back tomorrow so must make sure fridge is stocked and must make dinner. Maybe a bacon Mac n cheese pasta bake or something.

I also call it a floordrobe although it doesn’t happen much since moving as the Caglets have their own baskets. The laundry mountain that results though is called Mount Washmore (nicked from another thread)

Tomorrow we will have lived here three months! I don’t suppose we have done too badly really. My dream of being all organised by Christmas seems a bit... unreachable. 🙄 Although I did make good headway on organising that weirdly long and narrow cupboard off the hallway, it is becoming the hub for all coats shoes and club stuff (doboks dance shoes leotards etc) and they can get into the habit of unpacking their bags when they get in of an evening and packing for the day after.

I think cag that you need to start one thing get that down and then add something else in.

That’s how I plan it anyway.

I’ve started (while dparents are away anyway) to make sure I do one load of washing a day. When I get home from work I empty lunch bags and ds’ nursery bag (on nursery days. I restock his bag with nappies etc.
Then make site my bag is ready for work the next day.

If I’ve had a gym session as soon as I come home I restock the bag. And pop it in the wardrobe so it’s ready.

Once we move out of here I’ll add 30 minutes of cleaning to the mix (I’m plannjng on trying the organised mum method so will have a set area to do each day). I can do this while dh gets on with dinner. Or after bathtime.

How do you all manage with moving the furniture when you redecorate? I'd like to redecorate some rooms that are really scruffy and/or actually mouldy but the furniture is too heavy to move.

I also need to strip wallpaper or ceiling paper, and I know how to do that, but then there is plastering and skirting board that I need to replace, and the skirting board need to be screwed into 1920s brick. I have figured out how to paint skirting boards at least.

Dh uses dust sheets.

Thanks em 💐 totally agree. That’s the approach we’ve taken with home ed this term. DD wanted more structure but I knew taking on too much in one go would backfire, so we did a few weeks with some work each day then gradually built up how much we did and the expectations on them, and we are knocking it up a notch again after half term. Working well so far!

But yep definitely need to apply that to housework and general routines and stuff. Le sigh. This is the stuff I find mindblowingly difficult. It’s also what I’m trying to find time to discuss with DH. He does a lot of the practical housework stuff when he’s here but I am really struggling with the old “mental load” thing especially since baby arrived, my head feels too full and foggy! 🤯 I’m going to dig out the Moving Notebook again and make some lists today I think. Just so I can really think about what needs doing and when and start prioritising.

Did you get pink tickets Mammy?

Ah the “mental load” yes. That’s a nightmare for me at present. So. Much. To. Do. And dh insists on me writing down things for him to do. I haven’t been. So it’s my fault he hasn’t done them. I’ve pointed out that no, it’s his fault. He needs to be more organised.

He said yesterday that him having ds for the s day was very stressful and it’d have been more convenient for him if I’d not gone back to work after maternity leave. I didn’t answer that. Just walked away. He knows what he said.

He won’t fall in with the being organised. He just can’t do it. Every day we wait for him to faff and forget something. He just can’t see that if he got his bag ready the night before it’d be easier in the mornings. Absolutely cannot see it.

I mentioned the 30 minutes cleaning a day. (If we do 30 minutes each we’ll be onto a winner...) he said that it’s unnecessary. Why don’t we just relax after work and do it on a weekend. I’ve said I don’t want to spend my weekends cleaning. I’d rather do stuff together.

Em I think you need staff. I'm sure they had staff in Pride and Prejudice.

Em I am impressed at your restraint. I would have had loud and strong words to say to that

£77 Sainsbury’s but £7 of points back. Present and card for friend plus ingredients for cake for ds (spendy mountain of chocolate) and a bit of a top up
Best part of £500 for pink tickets on my card but only £112 of that is mine.

OMFG he actually said that?! You know, setting up a new house could involve building a new patio 😉

He’d be complaining if you were trying to move and pay for everything without your income, I suppose 🙄

It’s interesting, the doing it as you go or saving for the weekend thing. I am trying to do more as I go. Thinking of it as a present to my future self to do it NOW rather than saving it all up. I am determined to.

And on that note I am going to try and move the baby, she’s asleep on me. Generally I can put her down but she is so easily roused since getting the (what I think is) HFM. I ended up sleeping on the floor last night as she was finally asleep on the sofa at midnight 😳😳😳

Wolf a friend can get 25% off so she's sorting it -Did you?- just saw your update

H cancelled, so instead of going out for dinner with friend, I might get takeaway with dc or slimwell meal from Aldi as they're tasty & fit my macros too.

€1.30 on parking, medium rate car park
€15.35 on brekkie out at place with play area so I'm on mumsnet
€1.60 on newspaper
€208 on property tax

I'm going to try the organised mum method too em 30 mins is very doable

Em my friend had that with her h too when she returned to work after a year off with ds, must check in with her to find out how it's going now. Bet ye wouldn't be mortgage free in those few years you've mentioned if you did & all the financial pressure would be on him.

I reduced one day a week by 2.5 hours & it's made a huge difference to me, I've set the day now to thurs & it means I'm refreshed for fri which is my busiest day. Also thurs is hectic for dc & being home early means it's so much easier. Not frugal but amazing for stress levels.

lonely I decorated dds room this year and went for a duck egg blue, we both really like it. I think I would find navy blue too dark....

mammy you need to get contact set in stone so he can't mess you about constantly, I imagine he will do everything he can to sabotage any chance of you having an social life.

em I just read your posts about your 'd'h and wonder why you married him. Am sure he does have some good points but he just seems to behave like a petulant child most of the time.

I'm working today, just stopping for lunch £3 meal deal.

Mammy no discount sadly. It’ll be my big birthday night out.

I am absolutely ready to skin h this morning. I might well be being unreasonable but really what a . We agreed spending for ds’s birthday including big joint present which he has paid me for and a limit for extras from each of us. All fine and he hasn’t overspent (unless there is money in the card) but rather than choose and wrap something (not like he has anything else to do of an evening) he’s just taken him to the shop (again I may be being unreasonable) so ds can choose something he wants. But he’s then told ds he can’t actually use what he’s got until his birthday and poor ds asked me if I’d wrap them for him. How fkin hard is it really.