Steel Kitten

A leaky life right now

 
The last month or so of the car rebuild we are doing has been rubbish in more ways than one. Martin was going great guns and has now ground to a halt. We seem to be hemorrhaging money and time and energy with every passing day. There are some parts we've had problems sourcing, others that we've thought were good turn out on closer inspection to be rotten and others that have been utterly destroyed and need refurbing from the ground up. All told, the problems of the last month have added another third of the total cost onto the car and put us behind by about six weeks and we are very unhappy at the moment.

I guess though that this is that part of a goal where the going gets tough. You either step up and deal with it, or you give up. With this, there is no giving up so we grind on. We have already spent enough on the rebuild to put us past the point of no return. If we were to stop, the car in its semi-finished state would start to disintergrate again so we have to push on regardless of how tired we are.

And we are tired. I had to put Martin to bed the other night at 6:30pm becuase he was pale, shaking and nauseous through exertion and worry. Some good food, 11 hours sleep, and me rejigging the finances again to show him we could cover the extra did him the power or good so now he's back on track. Two nights working until midnight + one night in bed by 10pm. Repeat until until third week of July.

I'm not on track at all. For the last five weeks I've been fatigued, really fatigued. I feel as tired getting up in the morning as I do when I go to bed. I've had a headache (and by that I mean an all over ache in my head rather than a sharp pain) for weeks now. My joints burn and my muscles are sore. My glands in my throat are so large they are pushing on my jaw muscles and nerves so my face has swollen up. And I can't walk far without being exhausted and am on the verge of sleep at work. I yawn violently from the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed, sometimes every few minutes or until I can get some kind of stimulent into my bloodstream or find somewhere to have a nap. Combined with the sore throat, eyes that feel as if they are bugging and general weakness with limbs like lead, I presume I have some kind of virus which is taking a long time to work itself out and this is the post-viral fatigue part, or I have worried and stressed myself over things into a fatigue state.

While I'm at home I stare blankly at things and do things on automatic pilot. At work I  focus hard on what I'm doing (phoning hundreds of companies as part of research project at the moment, and cold calling ranks up there as a hyper stressy situation for the majority of people) and push out the worry and tiredness. Trouble is, I've had to work full time on the project - in fact more than full time hours - to ensure it is completed on time for the client and bring in the money to ensure I stay full time permanently. Not the right time to do that when you're feeling unwell, but I'm between a rock and hard place.

I'm trying to trust that everything will work out in the end for the best, but it's so hard. Right now I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. All I can see are meal plans and shopping lists and finances cut to the bone until the end of July and no prospect of a day off from the office just to rest and sleep until my project ends in three weeks time due to its deadline for completion.

I cannot drop the ball. No-one is there for me at work to pick it up.

Maybe I'll feel better about things tomorrow.

That I'll remember we are doing something very big, building something very special, and that nothing worthwhile is ever easy.

But I need a win really soon...I can't keep dealing with one problem on top of another at home and at work for months without solutions to any of them.

Marybelle out of my bathroom would be a good start...

Spring has sprung and I'm back to school

 

All the spring magazines are out in the shops and the contents look wonderful.  Martin treated me to a magazine yesterday for the first time in months as I had a horrible meeting at work I got through intact. Country Homes and Interiors looks particularly good - love anything with farm anaimals printed on it - and I'm itching to get back to my crafts. I have a jumper for Martin to finish (still!) and a hexagon quilt I started an eon ago, although I seem to be having problems with repetitive strain in my left thumb if I do more that five or six hexagons at a time so that is slow progress when I do pick it up. I also want to add some fresh new textiles to the kitchen in various forms, such as curtains and napkins - and have the cloth to do it - but time is very scarce for me.

I've gone 'back to school' to do a course as part of my continued professional development and the first step is for me to do a 20 day e-learning programme. The 20 day course requires 3-4 hours of study a day outisde of work (I'm doing some retraining in a subject that isn't related to my current role so I have to). I'm half way through it at the moment and that has to be my priority in my free time.

I can focus for 20 days surely? With all the spring growth and lusciousness that starting to emerge it will be very tough, but it will be a poor state of affairs if I really can't...

Separating the Dream from Reality

 

Now we've decided when we want to be ready to make a move on to the next chapter of our life, the natural step is to fill in some of those gaps about what we want and what we don't.

This I think is the hardest part, because often none of us really knows exactly what we want in any great detail if we haven't been through quite a comprehensive exercise to work it out. If someone said to me right now: "You want that smallholding in the country? Cool...what are you going to do once you're there? What are your plans?"

Ummmm...don't know. Bees? Goats? Origami?

So I've done a bit of reading up on this over the last few days and have a handle on the process I need to go through to figure it out though. I thought I'd share it with you just in case you find it useful.

Not the first clue - usually the first step

If you really have no clue at all about what you really want, figure out what you don't want.  

Few people know what they want, but they will know what they don't want. Get someone to come up with something, anything, for you and then figure out what aspects of it suck! I guarantee you'll pounce on bits you don't rate. So if someone said: "Well you could keep goats and process the milk into your own cheese and butter and stuff, and you could build stables and offer them to rent to people with horses. You could make jams and sell them at farmer's markets," At which point you go "GOATS!! Bleurch...I wouldn't have a goat - I'd have to milk them everyday...and stables? We're thinking of going to Wales and the market is saturated...etc etc."

A bit of a clue - you're either lucky or have been through the first bit above!

You'll probably do this spread over a few days to let the ideas 'ferment' a bit. A nice glass of homemade sloe gin helps as well ;-)

1. What's the dream and what's the reality?

This is where your likes and dislikes come into it, as well as you fears and prejudices. How do you feel about heat, cold, snow, rain, mud, poor roads, power cuts, long journeys to see family? Be honest.

The dream....is to spend every day immersed in smallholding, making jam, pottering around the garden, bottle feeding orphaned lambs and piglets wearing hunter wellies and a Cath Kidston tea dress...the reality could be you're probably not going to have the time to potter due to a part-time job plus the fact the lamb will stick it's poo-covered trotters on you tea dress the second it sees the bottle and the piglet will bite through your expensive wellies. Ask me how I know ;-)

The dream....is to have an old stone cottage with a aga that heats the whole house...the reality is you hate the cold and all that stone will make for a cold damp house if anything goes wrong with the aga or you have a problem getting it lit. It could be you decide to forgo the idea of a stone cottage for a more modern insulated property, or you might decide there needs to be a secondary heating system installed.

The dream....is having a placid jersey cow and making your own dairy products...the reality is there'll have to be a baby cow about the place for part of the year that you may have to sell or send to slaughter, plus if you have a job you may not be enamoured with the idea of milking that cow every single day for months on end come rain, shine, sleet or snow. Who milks her if you're ill?

Here are some other things to consider in your initial plans.

• How isolated do you want to be?
• How's your health and will it stand up to what you want to do?
• How far from a main town?
• How far from neighbours?
• How much land is enough and how much will be too big an area to maintain?
• You can cope with it now, but what about in 10 years time when your back hurts a lot more?
• Do you consider "privacy," to be the last house on the way out of a village or a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere?
• Do you want mains gas, or will you settle for an oil or a wood burning range as your only source of heat?
• Do you want to be able to drive in snow in bad weather or are you happy to be snowed in for a few days with no ill effects?
• At what point would you feel trapped and start to panic?

Now you won't get everything you want, so you will have to compromise. What will you compromise on? Write it all down. You may not want neighbours within five miles of you, but if the reality is that you have a health problem and you could need their help one day, perhaps no more than a mile away would be better.

2. Write down pieces of your dream and join them together.

Now you have a handle on what you don't want, what the realities are and what you could compromise on, you can start to actually write down what the Dream looks like. For example your Dream might look like "...20 acres with a stream running through it. A couple of good fields for horses and stabling. Preferably on flat land with a south facing kitchen garden. England only, no further North than the west midlands to ensure a decent length of growing season without needing a polytunnel. About a mile from any neighbours and within 10 miles of a main town. Would like some woodland to coppice firewood from. Ideally a three bedroom stone house with outbuildings. Concrete or stone pigsties. etc etc..."

4. Gain experience and skill

Now you have the Dream written down, what life experiences do you need to make it a success? Will you need to learn to garden, to can and preserve food, to hunt, fish or forage,to keep animals for meat and other products, to use and maintain a chainsaw, to have first aid training (should go hand in hand with learning to use a chainsaw), to build outbuildings or animal houses, to learn to drive a tractor to help maintain a crop, pasture or meadow land? Will you need a 4x4 if you live somewhere that can’t be accessed well in bad weather or you have to drive over very poor road surfaces to get to your home? If so, how much will that cost you to buy and maintain - could you maintain it yourself if money was tight?

Whatever you think you will need, spend the time until you can implement your dream getting the experience you need. Read books, go on courses, try experience days at farms and smallholdings, have working holidays on farms. Take tiny baby step steps forward, have a go then alter you plans as you get a better idea of how those pieces of your dream match up to reality.

4. What you think you will need

As you start to get some of these skills you may soon realise you're going to need a whole lot of stuff so start a 'Dream box'. You'll probably need three types of 'boxes' - a physical box or space, a digital box and a mental box to collect all the tools, equipment, supplies, safety gear, reference information and knowledge slowly and thoughtfully in advance.

5. Now imagine you're living the Dream; practice with mini challenges.

What do you need? If necessary create the same conditions as you might experience to practice. If you know the area you will be going is off-grid or experiences power cuts in bad weather, try living without your electric for a couple of days and see how you do. Can you live comfortably rather than just survive?Can you stand each other’s company without the distractions of the computer and TV?

Farming experiences are ideal to get more experience of this and many places offer weekend deals that could provide all the challenge you need if you ask the owners for it. Does your Dream start to change after two days getting up at 4am, you're dog tired and the goat bites you?

6. Finally money, moolah, reddies - a few helpful suggestions in the money department.

Whatever you decide to do, money will be vital. I've never met anyone or read anything that advocated starting this life with a large mortgage and debt. It starts you off at a disadvantage immediately and one financial problem could lead you onto a slippery downward slide from which you may never recover. Also, if you plan on setting up a business you'll need every ounce of credit you may have until you are established.

Have no payments for anything debt-related, including mortgage if possible.

Pay off your credit cards then cut most of them up bar one for dire emergencies. Put that one in a block of ice in the freezer.

Pay cash for your house, land, tools and animals.

Get all the dental work done that you need and any nagging health problems addressed. Don't put off having a knee joint replaced that's hurting all the time, otherwise it could seriously impact on the lifestyle you want to have. As mercenary as it sounds if you're employed and get sick pay, now is the time to get it done not when you're struggling to establish income sources and keep a holding going.

Try and get stash of money togther as an emergency fund for after the move. Things always need replacing after a move or an opportunity may come your way shortly after that you want to capitalise on.

Develop your talents into something you can market and set up a few income streams from before you're scratching around for cash. Do your research though.



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So there you have it. That's what I've managed to glean so far from all of my wandering across the internet.

Is there anything else you think should go in here?

How do you organise yourself?

This post is prompted by a comment I left over on the Down to Earth blog recently. Rhonda was asking how everyone kept organised, whether people had routines or kept lists etc and I replied by telling her about my diary and about the list I keep in my head.

First my diary. I have one of those page to a day diaries and it's become a Godsend to me over the last few months while juggling a job and the preparation for us restoring the racing car. 

The diary has a small list of things that have to be done (so I must post off that letter, get the washing out of the machine and hang it up etc) and these are things that would be important to do on a weekly basis to ensure the basic things of life get accomplished. It makes sure there's always clean underwear in the drawer and bills get paid on time, that sort of thing. 

However, there is a second list of 'nice to get done' items, which might be washing a settee cover if I get a few moments to pop it in the machine, or clean a couple of shelves in the fridge. If I don't get them done, it's no biggie - I just move them onto the next day's list and see if I have time or energy then. The 'nice to get done' things can float across several days, but sooner or later they will get done. Nothing has ever been on the list longer than a week.

However, in addition to these two lists, I also keep a lot of information in there, such as things that happened that day I want to remember (sometimes even things that Martin wants to remember), the dinner I'm cooking that evening and sometimes things I copy down from websites or magazines. I keep track of days when I felt off colour so I can track if it is a recurring pattern. I stick in supermarket receipts so I can keep track of our spending and food price rises and sometimes I also stick in emails or post it notes of recipes I find. It's got to the point where I'd find it very difficult to be without my diary.

The list in my head is something different. It's a revolving list of things that I need to focus on to accomplish mini goals. So if I'm about to go upstairs, I remind myself to take something with me that needs to go, which will help keep the place cleaner and tidier and stop me running around like a headless chicken doing things later. I actually have a stair basket that you can take up and bring down with you. If I'm waiting for the kettle to boil, I give a few items in the sink a wash or wipe down a surface or something so it looks tider and cleaner. 

I've found doing it this way on a consistent basis starts to open up chunks of time where I can relax of an evening and (gasp) go to bed early. In the winter this is essential for me as it's tough to battle seasonal affective disorder when you have to be up at 5:30am and don't get into bed until midnight. I might have taken that too far last Thursday though. I had a whole evening free as I'd already had dinner cooked and just needing heating up, so I was in bed by 6:20pm with my Kindle and asleep by 8pm!

How is the budget doing?

So how are we doing with the big goal, the ones that will put us in the poor house ;-)

Pretty good so far! We are 23 days into January - our fourth week - and are bang on budget. I set my groceries budget for £160 a month, and so far we have spent £114.51. This includes cat food and cleaning stuff. In fact, we have eaten better this month since being on a strict budget than we do normally because I’m trying to be very careful to ensure we get our five portions of fruit and veg a day and make the food as flavoursome as possible.

I base the food for the week around a roast dinner on Sunday evening. Whatever I cook, Martin has the meat from it on Monday and Tuesday for his sandwiches. Tuesday night I then make up something else for him to eat for the rest of the week, usually some kind of pasty or large sausage rolls with pickle or peri-peri sauce inside depending on whether he wants a traditional one or spicy little number. Then on Wednesday I cook up a Chinese. He seems to be addicted to green peppers in black bean sauce at the moment, so I thinly slice up whatever roast meat is left and do that with noodles and/or egg fried rice.

This all works of course because I don’t eat meat at the moment.

If I were eating the roast dinner along with Martin, there wouldn’t be enough meat to last for sandwiches or his Chinese on Wednesday. Instead I have the largest Yorkshire pudding known to man made in a cake tin. Then I pile a load of veggies and roast potatoes into the large yorkie with gravy. Occasionally if I’ve done some kind of pastry based pudding for Martin, I’ll do a veggie slice with cheese and have it without the yorkies and just vegetables and potatoes. This is a mushroom slice with a base of onion relish that I found ‘seasoning’ in the back of the fridge.

I do have a tendency to be a little lazy during the week with my food. If we’re having a big casserole with lots of veggies, I tend to have it too but only put in enough meat for Martin. Then I’ll mix my meat-less portion with couscous. I’ve found that rather than eat a lot of protein in the evning, I tend to eat quite high protein foods during the day, which fills me up and helps me avoid snacking.

So over the last few weeks I’ve alternated cheese and crackers, hummus and pitta bread, egg or cheese salads, lentil soup, beans on toast or in a jacket potato. I also try and have a coffee every day made with milk, as milk has valuable proteins in it too. I don’t like tofu or meat-alternatives like quorn, as I think they are very expensive for what they are and I don’t like the texture when I’m chewing it. For obvious reasons being allergic to nuts has taken out quite an important source of proteins for me. I’m a little concerned I’m not getting enough iron so I want to start taking a multi-vitamin on the days when I don’t think I’ve had enough.

Apart from that, food-wise we’re doing ok!

Goals for 2012

 

"Gather round chaps, this is the plan..."

Well, it's January and time to get down in black and white my goals for the year. I have one very large goal and a few smaller ones, the majority of which will support the larger one.

Let's get the smaller ones out of the way first.

Drop two dress sizes

I need to go from a 14-16 to a 10-12 by Christmas 2012. Unfortunately, me and dieting don't mix. I discovered last year that if I go on a diet to lose weight I don't succeed. I get bored too easily and distracted. I've even found that some days I got so busy I forgot I was on a diet until I got back in the house in the evening.So, this year I'm going to try something different.

1. I'm going to be switching to a vegetarian diet, which I know from past experience helps me lose weight automatically plus I don't feel so bloated after eating and have more energy.

Mmmmm...mushrooms and stilton

2.Exercise. I'm currently doing an exercise programme on my treadmill. Yes, I have a treadmill! I can't remember if I blogged about this at the time, but around March last year I picked one up dirt cheap on ebay. The pre-set programmes change the speed randomly and without warning, so I've found that to be quite challenging and interesting for me. Also a friend has lent me a workout DVDs to try and I think I have a couple of exercise videos in the loft I could transfer to DVD too so I have a few workouts I can rotate. Somewhere upstairs I also have a weights bench and free weights - just a question of finding somewhere for them to go.The combination of all of these things may very well keep me interested in exercising for a lot longer than I usually last.

3. There'll be very little in the way of bought lunches, snacks, takeways or other naughty luxuries to throw me off course due to the large financially-based goal that I'll describe later. It's always at the forefront of my mind so I have less incentive to spend money on extras.

In the last two weeks of doing these three I've managed to lose half a stone already so I'm on the right track ;-)

Crack the non-chemical hair products dilemma

One of my minor irritations last year was never being able to crack the dilemma of my hair not liking non-chemical shampoos and conditioners. This year, I'm going back to basics and examining different natural plants and products that could clean my hair without turning it into a bird's nest. This might mean growing and finding ways to used plants with saponins, or investigating natural food stuffs that could do the trick. And of course, hopefully this will be a cheaper alternative to buying shampoos and conditioners, the more expensive the better as far as my hair seems to be concerned.

I will also spend some time dying my hair various different types of henna to see if I can get a dark brown shade rather than my current copper-toned light brown, which will also help with the condition of it.

Permaculture and growing our own

I need to grow at least 50% of the fruit and vegetables we will be eating this year to help support our large goal (later). This neccessitates a complete overhaul of the third major bed by the house to a productive bed plus the planting of several new fruit trees and bushes.

The third bed: it always looks 'interesting' at this time of year

I also need to sort out setting up some kind of greenhouse arrangment, because the tomatoes outside did not ripen until the end of September last year and there were still many green ones when the frosts hit. 

To this end, I have already managed to pick up a greenhouse on ebay.

Such a fantastic shape! I squealed when I saw it. As my birthday is near the end of the month, everyone has pitched in to help buy it. So my task for next weekend is to get it up.

Read a book a week

This will be easier to achieve than you might think due to Martin buying me one of these for Christmas.

I have found that my treadmill time is ideal for reading ebooks! It just seems to make the time fly past and I'm surprised when suddenly the treadmill goes into cool down phase. At the moment, I'm reading Living the 80/20 Way by Richard Koch. There are thousands of free ebooks and thousands more for less than £2.

Get to Expert level at Microsoft Excel

I need to start addressing my Continued Professional Development. Learning excel to expert level will benefit me at work both now and in the future, as well as help me develop better tools for financial management at home.

I bought two books about a month ago. The first is Learn Excel 2007 Essential Skills with the Smart Method, which will give me a thorough grounding in the basics. The second is Learn Excel 2007 Expert Skills with the Smart Method, which will get me to a completely new level of knowledge.

The first book has 113 lessons in it with exercises, and my aim is to complete these by the end of June. Then I will do the Expert skills, which has 136 lessons. I think I will complete the first book quite quickly as some of the detail I already know, which is just as well as the second book will take a lot of effort to complete by Christmas.

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And now for the big goal.

I alluded in my last post to having a goal this year that was going to be financially painful. It's actually a joint goal with Martin, and I think probably our first one in the almost eight years we've been together. We've had some goals before, such as pay off the mortgage, but that was a general plan to pay off as much as we could each month until one day it wouldn't be there any more, rather than set out a specific goal to pay off a certain amount across a certain number of payments.

Rebuilding a rare racing/road car

Martin will be spending the next 8 months rebuilding another Fairthorpe car, far more expensive this time as it is being built for both racing and the road. It's going to take all of his income and some of mine to do it and we estimate it will cost between £10,000-£12,000 to do up. That's up to £12,000 to find spare in eight months.

So we're going 'bare-bones' frugal. 'Rice-and-beans' frugal. 'What-shall-we-have-for-dinner-tonight-because-there's-nothing-in-the-fridge-and-just-spinach-in-the-garden' frugal. I'll have to use *everything* I know about frugal living to get us through this.

I am covering all the household expenses for the next 8 months (if not longer if we can make this work). Once a week I look at how much has been spent by Martin on household bills and expenses (have already set limits!) and I transfer the money to him from my own account. Any surplus in my account at the end of the month goes to him.

Why are we doing this?

First, it's time to do it. Martin's father would dearly love to see this car on the road, has been wanting to see it on the road since the 1980s, and at 82 with cancer that he's currently having chemo for, time is now of the essence. For anyone who has a relative with cancer, you'll know *exactly* what I mean but just can't bring myself to say. This car rebuild will give Martin's father the boost he needs to get him through the gruelling rounds of chemotherapy ahead of him, and keep him with us for another few years. He's extremely excited already and sometimes it's the only bright glimmer he has on the horizon when the side effect of the chemo are really bad.

Second, we're also doing it as an experiement. If we can live on my income for eight months, we can live on it for a year. If we can do a year, we can do it for two. How much could we accomplish with that amount of money at our disposal all the time? We could hit the mortgage hard and pay it off completely. Save some cash for investing. Pump our pension plans up. Martin could retire early and perhaps set up his own car business.

The possibilities are endless. And very powerful.

What does it involve?

The amount of management and preparation that has gone into this plus continuing daily financial vigilance is huge. I was in planning mode for three solid months up to Christmas. Everything I know about money management, finance and stretching pennies will be needed as well as much persistence and patience as I can muster when a filthy tired husband crawls into bed at midnight every night reeking of grease and petrol.

I have taken over the food and grocery shopping entirely now and menu plan down the minutest detail.

• My monthly food budget is £160, and that includes cat food. So far I've been under every week but that's only because I have so much meat stashed in the freezer.
• I have gone vegetarian to lose weight, learn to cook veggie food and cut down on the grocery bills. Only Martin will eat meat, which is probably the most expensive thing I buy every week. I have no issue with that as he has a manual exhausting job and I get to sit behind a desk all day.
• I have built up a food store (about a month's worth of dry and frozen food) over the last few months in case we run out of money at some point
• I will be growing at least 50% of our vegetables and around 25% of our fruit. The fruit is the hardest, as much isn't ready until late summer or autumn and it doesn't last long.
• All superfluous direct debits and standing orders have been cancelled. And by superfluous I mean anything that isn't an essential household bill or car-related.
• No buying magazines or physical books. Library only. In fact, no buying of anything unless every avenue has been exhausted first.
• I've built up a cushion of savings in case of emergencies, like the boiler breaking down (again) or the cat going to the vet.
• Our efforts at overpaying our mortgage have had to stop for now so I can cover all the normal bills.
• We can do one lunch a month and have one takeaway a month (but if someone else pays that's fine we'll eat more ;-))

Also eBay is taking a bit of a pounding at the moment. We have a lot of surplus stuff we're getting rid off to help fund the project, which is having the added effect of making the place a bit cleaner and clearer. Martin in particular has a lot of hobby bits and pieces he is selling and I'm slowly rooting through boxes of my stuff to add to it.

I must confess I'm looking forward to being lean. Over the last 12  months we've replaced a lot of broken stuff and bought some things we had been putting off which would make our lives run more efficiently and productively. But in all honesty it's made me a bit flabby round the edges (and not just physically!)and I need toning in every respect. 

I like challenges, especially really hard ones that take a lot of ingenuity and effort. My brain needs the exercise to stop it going into hyperdrive and keeping me awake all night coming up with ridiculous ideas and scenarios.This project gives me something I can really get my teeth into and brings a lot of our interests together. Now, rather than doing them in isolation, they will all be interwoven into one big goal, which will really help when the going gets tough and we feel like giving up.

We'll need each other like we've never done before.

How did I do? Goals...

Georgie frequently has goals. This one was to be the first cat on the precarious stack of photo albums and stay there as long as possible until the top album slid off...

I stopped blogging about my goals in the summer, as I had too many (as usual) and the posts were turning into epic narratives. However, that doesn't mean they were forgotten.  Oh no. I've still been trotting along doing what I can and as it is New Year and time to set more goals, I'll go through what I managed to achieve over the last year. 

...while this goal was to be the first cat to ascend the bookcase. That was until the red container slid out from under him, scratching the table underneath and breaking all the china bits and pieces within it that were destined for the charity shop.

Reduce unwelcome drains on my time

Stirling effort on my behalf, if I do say so myself. At the beginning of the year I was suffering under a busy woman complex. In an effort to make up for the fact I work I was spending all of my free time cleaning the house. I rarely relaxed for a second unless I was ill. I was also drowning underneath my husband's car hobby, and was frequently talked at about cars for long periods of time by my father-in-law as I was too polite to stop him. I was also being disturbed constantly at work by noisy personalities and spent too much time on moneysavingexpert.com and ended up feeling lousy.

Fast forward 12 months and I reclaimed my life back from my house and husband et al and am enjoying my time a lot more.  I have an internal time alarm clock that goes off whenever cars and car parts are mentioned, at which point I change the subject or excuse myself go and get on with something else. For Martin about 10 minutes is my limit - there's only so much talk about axles, bolts and welding I can take - and I encouraged Martin to have a blog about his cars so now he can ramble on there. But for my father-in-law the shutters come down the second he starts talking, as it is very difficult to get a word in edgewise once he's in flow. 

Moneysavingexpert.com has been kicked to the kerb. Over the last three months I've been on there twice. I have no desire any more to be a voyeur of all the terrible things that are going on in other people's lives.

I'm also now more likely to stop myself from being a whirlwind and sit down for a cup of tea and some knitting for half an hour, than run myself ragged and never take a break. There's been lot of knitting, a fair amount of reading, some crafting and a fair bit of cooking from scratch, the latter of which had fallen by the wayside for a while due to how busy I was at work. And there's been time just to sit and think. 

Reduce my use of chemicals 

At the beginning of the year I was out of control. There were chemcials everywhere and I was having the odd problem with skin reactions and wild untameable hair. Over the course of the last 12 months I've switched all of our cleaning products to Ecover, and reduced my reliance on nail polish. I threw out all of them, but a brief setback in July due to my bosses wedding made me rethink this on and now I wear polish only for special events. 

I haven't been able to do much permanently in the way of non-chemical hair products, despite trying a huge amount of (usually) expensive SLS-free products. My hair is fine for a few weeks and then rebels before I've even finished the latest bottle of jollop. However, for New Year I decided to henna my hair, despite previously saying I wouldn't, as I had heard this natural alternative to chemical hair colours can tame a mane.

You may not believe it, but this is tame. 

I'm pleased to report that it seems to have done the trick, although the colour isn't right so I'll be doing it again. I will keep on oiling the ends after washing. I've also now switched from olive oil to jojoba oil which is better and more akin to the natural oils in hair, and I use it on my skin as a mosituriser. This means I have been able to do away with expensive face creams. 

Permaculture

At the beginning of the year it was just an idea. In 12 months I've overhauled two of the beds by the house and turned them into productive veg beds, planted several new currant bushes, a grape vine, a mulberry tree, hazlenut bush, willow beds and a new plum tree. I also have a sweet cherry and a fig to go in the ground soon. The chickens have been penned in permanently now, although some days I still get them out if I'm doing some garden work so they can have a rake around. We have a new shed up and painted that is currently acting as a wood store. 

My attitude to what we grow has changed and I've been thinking much more about what we eat, as oppose to what I would like to grow. All veg growers out there I'm sure will have had those moments where you admire a fantastic bit of veg you've been growing and then realise you don't like it very much. But hey, it looks fab  ;-)) I've realised I can't keep doing that! I'm also thinking a lot more about heritage breeds of veg rather than using F1 strains, whose seeds don't produce the true parent plant, but haven't yet been able to do much about it so it remains a thought.

So lots done here and still more to think about.

Reducing waste

At the beginning of the year, I was wasting a lot of food every week. I did well for the first part of the year, being careful with my food shopping and menus and making sure I used my freezer more, but I started to slip towards the end of the year. We went through a period where we were so busy we didn't get to eat the food in the fridge and my freezer was so full I couldn't fit it in, so it ended up in the bin. That happened three weeks on the trot. And right now I know there is a lot of leftover food in my fridge that will have to be binned, not meat thankfully as I made a large turkey, beef and cranberry pie with mushrooms and leeks in the week and that fed us for two days.

 

However, there are the small remains of two trifles, some sausage rolls and a hundred weight of red cabbage that has gone past it's best and I can't give to the chickens as a treat. So I wouldn't say I've been succesful here as I'm back where I was last Christmas.

Also, I still haven't got around to sorting out a dedicated area for composting the wood-based tray litter the cats use, which I should do as there is around 20kg being generated every three weeks or so. 

Fluff the nest and gratuitous spending

These two joined hands in the middle of last year. Last Christmas I realised that I was spending money like water on silly things, but putting off spending on more important things for the house. We'd put off making so many purchases the place was falling apart. Some I think was out of a sense of guilt as we try and live by the old war mantra "use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without" but we were living in shabiness among broken posessions and that's not on. 

We have spent a lot of time and money this year in updating things in the property, which at Christmas included:

• a new driveway
• new plastering and altered pipework in the back bedroom ready for decoration
• an overhauled clean and tidy laundry area
• a new TV (while sorting out the living room I damaged our ten year old one but there was money saved for it)
• a new laptop (Martin's Christmas present from me) to replace the eight year old tower system that was on its last legs
• a new duvet and pillows to replace the two year and seven year old ones respectively, both as thin as biscuits and uncomfortable 
• a classic Fiat 500 to halve our monthly petrol bill
• a new Green Frog chicken coop for the girls to combat red mites
• a halogen oven to save money on our gas bill

The only thing I didn't do was get a front opening freezer to slot in a gap underneath the kitchen cabinets, which would have helped me bag some more food bargains and reduce our shopping bill even further. 

There were many other things that had to be done along the way to fix and update bits and pieces around the house, too numerous to go into now, but I can honestly say I think Martin and I accomplished a hell of a lot in only twelve months.

So what now?

Now it starts all over again. But this year Martin and I are attempting something very ambitious which is going to hurt financially. A lot.  

 

The tipping point

Well it finally happened.

Martin and I reached the tipping point the other day, or rather I did and as is the case when one partner does, it's hell for the other and they usually swiftly follow suit unless urgent action is taken.

The sheer number of things here needing to be started, needing to be completed, needing to be fixed, needing money, needing time, needing effort and energy I just don't have anymore completely did me in and Tuesday I came in from work and went to bed.

I called time and put the covers under my head all upset and flustered. Martin arrived and dug me out from the covers using tea, soup and sympathy.

When I finally stopped feeling knackered and sorry for myself (the next day), Martin and I went to the local harvester for lunch and wrote down a huge list of everything we had started or needed to start and then divided them up into an Urgent/Important time management matrix.

If you've never done this before it's extremely effective when you're drowning in stuff and your nose has just slipped under the water. It was first devised by President Eisenhower and improved upon by Stephen Covey in "The Seven habits of Highly Effective People." Eisenhower once said: "What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important."

Then we commited to only working on the things that were Urgent and Important for the next couple of months, slowly bringing things across from other quadrants and using the same principles to sort them. Ideally, we want nothing in the Urgent/Important quadrant at all and be working on all the life-changing goals and priorities in the Not Urgent/Important quadrant.

Urgent/Important

• Get the boiler fixed - have been putting it off as we wanted to spend the money on something else. Something that was actually not important and not urgent.
• Martin to finish a big plane to sell - Martin has a huge plane worth an awful lot of money that he wants to sell, and has had an offer, but he needs to improve a few bits and pieces on the plane before he can. He's put it off for nearly 7 months because it's not a fun project for him to do.
• Do the driveway - for my sanity and to stop me hoovering, to take pity on the neighbours who have to put up with it, for security. Only one more phonecall to go and we should have a firm date from a contractor to start in around 2-3 weeks, but we need that date from him to make sure everything else is ordered in time.
• Replace garage roof - it leaks and is dropping lots of dusty asbestos-based stuff on Martin beloved Fairthorpe. We've been putting off stripping it off and replacing it with a better rubberised product.
• Finish workshop roof - still not completely finished and it leaks. It needs special metal edging to stop the water leaking in and waterproof it.
• Winterproof green shed - still have not put one of the end pieces and side pieces on it so it will almost definitely leak this winter.
• Cutting up wood for winter - all that lovely dry wood we had a few months ago is out in the rain. I need to cut it up and get it stashed away.

And here's a few things (4/15) on the Not Urgent But Important list:

Paint chicken run fencing - it needs wood preservative, but is actually pressure treated and will go another year or so before it becomes urgent. However, would like to do it before this happens so it goes in this list to be planned for.

Buy an under-counter freezer - I have to leave a lot of bargains on the shelves because I don't have the freezer space, but realistically I can live out of our current freezer for about two weeks without buying anything. However I would like to improve our stockpile in time.

Repair/replace dishwasher - it takes more time for us to do the washing up by hand each evening that it does to load the dishwasher and run it. I do miss the dishwasher but it is not an urgent thing to have so we'll manage for now.

Buy laptop - we want to replace the eight year old tower that Martin has to save space and improve the speed that it takes him to do anything, but this again is something to plan for and is not urgent.

Would you like to see some of the best bits that made it onto the list of non-essentials (7/16)-  the Not Urgent and Not Important list?

• Put remaining CDs onto ipod - that would be the CDs I forgot were up in the loft for the last five years until I found them the other weekend
• Print and create album of our wedding photos - outstanding for five years now. Another few months won't make any difference. Let's face it, what's more important - the marriage or the pictures of the wedding day? Precisely.
• Clear ironing pile - yay go me! Get thee behind me non-essential ironing
• Finish needlepoint - well it's not that important is it?
• Put up shelves in green shed - and what will I put on them? I actually have nothing to go on any shelves, I just thought they would look nice.
• Decorate bedroom - yes, this was a surprise one! Despite having had that outstanding for some time, I was prioritising it above the winter-proofing the sheds and workshop to stop things being damage by leaks, and getting rid of dangerous asbestos-based products in the garage. I even had it prioritised above fixing the boiler. How wrong can I be? we have no-one staying at Christmas or the New Year so what's the hurry?
• Moneysavingexpert forum - massive waste of my time. Like rubbernecking a car accident looking for cheap excitement most days.

So we now feel on top of things and have an action plan.

March's goal digging

Photocredit: iStock

It's that time again. I fess up all my transgressions that have thrown me off my goals and ask for forgiveness. 

Goal 1: being employed again.

I have officially now dropped this goal. I cannot force myself to settle down. What will be will be. 

Goal 2: reduce unwelcome drains on my time.

Photocredit: iStock

I've ticked along this month, no great shakes here. I have been on moneysavingexpert.com's forums, which I vowed to stay off, but on both occasions it was to research something specific - insuring a trailer and some financial product information. I stayed away from the Train Wreck section (also known as Moneysaving in Marriages and Families).

The number of car trips and events has drastically reduced too and I feel at lot happier being hands off with Martin's hobby. Not sure if he does. While I can appreciate what he does and lend an ear, he has to understand it is HIS hobby and it is not going to take over my life. I've also unfortunately had to be very firm with his father about this, who is also a car enthusiast like him, and several times in the last month have stopped him in full flow when he's tried to talk car repairs to me. Previously I would have been polite and sat there not speaking for half and hour at a time while he went into great detail about axles and engines, but no more! I stopped him and passed him straight over to Martin. Being married does not mean being taken over by an alien species. The foot has gone down!

I still spend a bit too long on the computer in the evening, so I have introduced a mini goal to encourage me off it. I have decided to get back into reading again. To start me off I'm reading The Morville Hours: The Story of a Garden by Katherine Swift. It's not strictly fiction, as she traces the history of her garden back through hundreds of years, but the way she writes it is like prose so you almost think you're reading a fiction story. Lovely book so far. After that I have Affluenza by Oliver James to contend with, quite appropriate in relation to goal 8 below!

And when I've finished that, I'll be making a start on some of these: 1000 novels that everyone must read published by the Guardian a couple of years ago. 

Goal 3: Reduce chemicals

No real shakes here either. I've been experimenting with different shampoos and bought the most hideously expensive vegan shampoo WHICH MY HAIR LOVES. Oh dear. But it has no sulphates or parabens in it, it seems to have extended the time between washes (yay!) and I smell of lemongrass all day, which I love. I also managed to find a hair de-frizzer which is almost chemical free (97%) and is a vast improvement on my previous de-frizzer, which was about 100% chemically-laden. 

Goal 4: Permaculture

Not done a great deal in the garden in March apart from decide not to cut the grass bar the paths. Also for once I waited until April to plant stuff so I didn't have as much faffing and worrying over frosts. So my declaration last month that I would be very busy in March on this came to nothing. Which is a good thing I think? I still have onions and potatoes to put in but will be trying a couple of very lazy growing methods to test their effectiveness. The whole point of permaculture is the system looks after itself with some intervention from me so I'm taking a step back and detaching myself from the garden this year, but will intervene here and there if help is needed. 

Goal 5: Waste

I've done very badly on this in March. I have wasted a lot of food. I went on my diet very suddenly and with a full fridge of food, which meant a lot went to waste. No meat went to waste as I freeze all meat straight away, but quite a few veggies fell by the wayside for some reason, half loaves of bread didn't get eaten,half jars of sauce didn't get used and leftovers sat in bowls until they sprouted fur.

Yesterday I made a Spotted Dick incorrectly with plain flour instead of self-raising and it was ruined due to the suet making it soggy and unpleasant, so that went in the compost bin. I've dropped so many eggs on the floor it's ridiculous, including one episode where a load on the kitchen counter made a wobbly bid for freedom and went over the edge of the counter like lemmings off a cliff. I also found a whole head of broccoli under a kitchen counter where it had rolled out of a shopping bag. I knew I'd put one in the shopping trolley but thought I must have left it behind and I didn't remember taking it out of the shopping bag. That was until *that smell* hit me one evening and I went on the hunt like a bloodhound. I've no idea how it got that far as generally they don't bounce along the floor like rubber balls. Mystery.

This month I am doing a meal plan every week and making sure leftovers are used up or, if in doubt, frozen straightaway. This will tie in with Goal 8 in April. 

Goal 6: Simpler dining

Photocredit: iStock

I'm on a drastic diet to shed poundage before a holiday in June, and have been eating copious amounts of salad every day with a few different toppings plus fruit until it comes out of my ears. Doesn't get much simpler than that. Still sticking with the whole less meat thing and have been having fish or shellfish at least twice a week plus vegetarian meals once or twice. I'm having a big salad before most evening meals to fill me up a bit before I eat and have dropped all bread, sweets and pastry products. They were not doing me any good anyway and I feel a great deal better for it.

Caffeine is still a problem - I don't just love tea, I believe I am truly addicted to it. 

Goal 7: Fluff the nest

Fluffing nest this month took the form of new cleaning and laundry products, which have now all arrived and made my life a little bit better. However, fluffing has also taken the form of decorating so while it looks like the house has taken a step backwards, in fact we're moving forwards. 

Goal 8: Gratuitous spending

Hmmm...define gratuitous. Ok, ok... I've been to my bank statement and added up everything in March that I believe wasn't needed. I've screamed and made a cup of tea. I've been back to justify the shocking amount and realised I included February's as well. Phew. Close shave. The gratuitous spending total for March is £202.36, or roughly £50 a week.

Top of the list to be knocked off is a daily cup of tea at a local hotel, which adds up to £12.25 a week. I should add that I feel obliged as there is a lovely French gent behind the counter who makes a great ceremony about preparing my tea for me accompanied by big smiles and flirty chat, and he starts it the second I walk through the foyer. So each morning I am there the tea is already brewing by the time I reach the counter.Dammit. Most mornings the office is open from about 6:30am so I could go in there and have tea for free, although I must confess to feeling awkward about surfing the net and catching up on blogs on work equipment, which is why I have always avoided it. However, I will now start going in and take my laptop with me. On the mornings when the office isn't open I will go to the hotel, but crucially the French gent knocks off at 7:05 so I will wait 15 minutes for him to leave before going in. I'm such a wimp. 

There's a couple of take-aways in the naughty spends, which is not too bad when you consider how often some people eat takeaways, but my National Lottery habit seems to have escalated. I've always played Saturday, but now I'm doing Wednesday as well plus I've got into Euromillions for which sometimes I've bought several tickets on rollover weeks. I'm part of a syndicate at work for Euromillions as well, which is £2 a week, plus I spend £2 a week on the Lotto, so add in my personal Euromillions play this has gone a bit far at £50 National Lottery total for the month and I'll be cutting back. For now I'll stick with the syndicate and the normal lotto, but I'll be dropping the personal Euromillions. 

Those domestic cleaning and laundry items I have not included in this total, as I believe these were needed to replace worn or broken items in the house. I have also not included anything I bought from B&Q, as that was all fundamentals for the house like plasterboard, paint and sandpaper which I consider an investment. If I went mad and bought houseplants and cushions and gadgets that were unnecessary then fair enough. 

April and May are both going to be hard unpleasant financial months for both Martin and I, so we've decided to pull our belts in and go bare bones frugal for a minimum of four weeks. We have savings but we're determined not to dip into them. We have a plumber and telecomms engineer to pay, gas and electric bills due in, a room to buy wallpaper and flooring for, a spray job and full trimming plus spare parts for Martin's classic car, annual car insurance plus MOT for our runaround, several birthdays (including Martin's big 5-0) and a driving holiday, the latter of which will involve the aforementioned classic car, two ferry tickets and a lot of petrol.

Martin has admitted he has a ton of planes he's not particularly attached to that he could part with, which would cover a substantial portion of the car bills. I know that I can be the world's tightest frugalista when a goal is at stake and can squeeze blood out of his and my salary, so I'll do the cut backs and maximise our joint income.

He brings in the additional money, I stop it going back out the door.

He plays offence, I play defence.

Forging my own road

***Don't forget to enter my giveaway! You have until midnight tonight to take part.*** 

Photo credit

Things have been changing here career-wise. I mentioned previously about being unsure of copywriting anymore, of being concerned about my part in psychologically forcing people to buy things they don't need. Yet again, once I wrote down my intentions things start to happen.

First a few weeks ago, I accepted an offer of some article-writing work for a business site. Once the articles were published, I was able to post them on my business website. It wasn't a great deal - $100 per 750 word article - but I figured I was writing the articles for my website anyway so I might as well get paid for doing them. A nice added bonus. Plus of course I got my name on the article and various links back to my website. 

The articles were about the psychology of the selling process - both from the point of view of the salesperson and the customer. Copywriting employs psychological tactics to get a response from an audience, so I decided to use these articles as a platform for change. No matter what I'm writing about, I make the underlying message that comes from each about selling authentically, respectfully and mindfully to only those who need the service or product. To keep the customer in mind and not their commission.

Shortly after writing three articles, I was offered the opportunity to write at a higher level for the website to help new owners of home-based businesses adapt to the big change that has happened in their life. This time at $1 a word (so around $750 for a 750 word article). As I can write an article in a couple of hours, I'm looking at a pretty good hourly rate plus helping people avoid the pitfalls I've experienced in my 5+ years as a freelancer!

At the same time, a recruitment agency called to tell me about a London ad agency that needed a full time medical writer to cover a maternity leave. Now, I'm not a medical writer, but my PhD is in a medical subject so it doesn't hold any fear for me. The topics I would be writing about would be focused on patient education, taking reports of new discoveries in the pharmaceutical world and turning them into understandable information for patients.

Cool!

I went down to the agency in the week to have a chat with the Head of Copy and was impressed with the work they do, although I'm not sure the opportunity is right for me. I had a few reservations about the sheer number of people crammed into one small room and don't think I'd get on working so close to the people next to me. However it has given me a new direction to look at that I previously hadn't considered.

Using my scientific and medical knowledge to help others understand complicated issues fits in with my desire to use my writing talents for a higher purpose so for the next few months I'll be looking at doing just that.

If this means giving up the freelancing I will. If there's an opportunity to do something amazing for others and I have to be employed to do it, I will. 

Universe are you listening?

;-)