The One With Too Much Stuff

I have finally bought a double bed!

You may recall (or maybe not, I’m not judging) that one of my finance goals was to buy a new bed. I have been sleeping on a single bed since forever and both bed and mattress I was using were in fact those I used as a child following my move from a cot (note: my parents didn’t believe in children’s beds. I went from cot to a single bed with a sideboard to keep me from rolling out, then just the single bed.) I loved that bed, which my dad built himself, but its small, and the mattress was probably once firm but now offers little support. I am stoked to finally own a double bed, although unfortunately I won’t be getting a new mattress alongside it as my finances don’t stretch that far yet.

I am doing much better financially then I was, but I am not yet entirely reformed. I am doing my best to reign my spending in and up my savings but progress is slow. I still find myself too influenced by social media, this culture of consumerism, and in boredom or stress I do like a good shopping binge. It’s …not great. I have also come to realise though that one of the key issues, and where I am truly leaking money, is on food and I am not sure how to go about challenging my unhealthy, somewhat disordered relationship with food.

One thing that has helped to control my spending is that, as part of preparing my room for my new bed, I have been doing a lot of rearranging of stuff and decluttering and it has made me realise just how much stuff I have amassed. How on earth did I manage to live in a dorm room, when I’ve managed to pack a two bedroom flat to the brim? Where did all these things come from? Why do I have so many t-shirts? So much makeup, when I hardly wear it? So much expired skincare? So many useless papers? I feel slightly embarrassed by how I’ve expanded my stuff to fill out all my space, how I’ve let myself spend my salary on all this stuff, which just expires or sits there or gets squeezed into a drawer and forgotten about. Look, I’m not minimalist, I like a bit of clutter, but I think I’ve crossed over from organized ‘aesthetic’ chaos to just…chaos. Decluttering and organising my room has been stressful and slightly overwhelming. I find it difficult to let go of things. It pains me that a lot of it can’t be recycled and will end up in landfill which also makes me not want to get rid of it. I attach memories to useless things and pine for them, can’t bear to let go of them. Again, embarrassing. But on the flipside, when I now find myself browsing online in a fit of boredom, I do find myself thinking – do I even have space for this? I have been asking myself “do I want or need this?” which helps, but this additional question is also very useful and adds an extra layer of scrutiny. Even if I can convince myself I’ll use something, once I realise I will have to store it and add it to the pile of stuff I am currently organising I find myself put off the purchase. I don’t want to deal with anymore stuff I realise. I think about that item being thrown out, ending up in landfill probably, if I can’t make use of it after all, and that guilt also stops me.

(If only I could think about food the same way.)

But anyway, as I change my thinking and try to control my spending, I find myself with more “extra” money each month which I can squirrel away. As such, I have been putting money into my savings each month and I’ve nearly hit my first savings goal even. I’m still relying on my credit card far too much, but I’m proud that I bought my new bed with my debit card not on credit, as I am trying to keep big purchases like this to debit, to ensure I feel the weight of them and I properly evaluate if I can afford the thing right now. (None of this I’ll stick it on the credit card and pay it later, which basically gives permission to think about it later!)

Currently, I am missing not travelling a little. I so want to go somewhere. I am trying to focus instead on day trips I can make around my local area and the fact that I am going up to Scotland in September-ish- but I do feel like I’ve lost part of my identity. Who is that girl who lived abroad in Malaysia, who traveled to Japan and South Korea alone, who dreamed of solo European trips (and started out on that with a trip to Hamburg)? I used to go places and do things, all by myself, and I have become a bit of a homebody. Still, I am keeping it in mind that travel is a privilege, that I now have more leave (from work) for mental health days and long weekends, that I still have so many places in the UK I haven’t been. It’s not the same as traveling abroad, but if I keep saving then I know I will be able to afford a big trip somewhere, eventually, but without it affecting my savings. (My trip to South Africa last year was difficult for me financially, and I felt it for the rest of the year. I don’t want that when I start travelling again.)

I am focussing on my goals, focussing on the long term, and slowly but surely making small but visible changes. And having already bought my new bed on debit with no issues, I can feel content that I am finally seeing the results I want due to this. I am still very determined that this is the year I sort my finances out.

The One With The New Year

Happy new year!

The first week back at work has been difficult for me, and it was not even a full week as I started on Wednesday. It was a shock to the system to have to get up, get ready and go sit in the office for eight hours. It was a little difficult to concentrate; I felt completely out of it. The office was very quiet and it felt odd and only added to the sense of unreality of it all. A Where am I and what on earth am I doing sort of feeling. I missed lazing in bed and eating too much and doing very little else besides.

Anyway, I was thinking of whether I should do a 2018 year in review or make some goals for 2019. In regard to the review, there is probably little point; I think 2018 passed somewhat in a depressed haze, with moments of joy such as my big trip back home (to South Africa) in February, my staycation in summer and a trip to Scotland with my dad too. (This I sadly forgot to blog about. We had limited connectivity there and I somewhat enjoyed switching off, enjoying nature and spending time with my father.) There were a few smaller things too, off the top of my head I think about a weekend spent looking after my sister’s cat, fun weekends with my sister, and a lovely relaxed Christmas. But the whole being depressed and anxious thing followed me around and filled up the majority of the year, the empty spaces around holidays and fun weekends, the bit with real life and the daily grind, I struggled. I felt very stuck in my sad, anxious and self-critical mindset and am still working my way through that.

Looking forward to 2019 I know that everything will not be magically ok, but I was thinking about what I could do to improve things. I was thinking about the things I would like to achieve this year. I think these goals would look something like this:

Continue to tackle my Anxiety and Depression – keep seeing my therapist, engage with my treatment, take my medication regularly, and do things that will make me calmer and feel more in control (read: less procrastination and panicky self sabotage).

Build my savings and pay off my credit card – continue to work on managing impulsive and emotional spending, basically. Also- continue to work on identifying the difference between need and want, and then really think through my purchases why do I want this and how will I use it. I want to have a proper emergency fund!

Buy a new bed – buy a double bed in particular. I have been sleeping on the same single bed since I was a child and I am also ready to move to a double bed, however I am having some trouble commiting to spending this much money on something I technically don’t need (I have a functioning bed already!) and am also stuck on the logistics of it (Can I manage to make a bed up myself?) If I managed to succeed at the above savings goal though, I’d love to go ahead and get my new bed.

Carry on ‘locally’ travelling – this year I did go abroad once, to South Africa at the beginning of the year. However my other trips were a ‘staycation’ to Northumberland and I also spent a few days in Scotland with my dad. I would like to not go anywhere abroad this year, in line with above savings goal, but definitely still travel a bit. I am contemplating another staycation, am definitly going to Scotland with my dad again, and would like to explore my local area more – I started doing this but as depression took over I…stopped. I have a mental list of gardens, abbeys and areas of countryside I want to go to and I’d like to really commit to going out and seeing them this year. I can’t keep hibernating indoors, wallowing in my depression, after all. And if I explore like this, it should hopefully help me not feel like I’m missing out by not going abroad.

Become better at organising and managing my digital backups (and well, making them in the first place) – I have developed a fairly ok system for my paperwork over the past couple of years, next I want to develop a system for my photos and other important bits. I have sort of started but very half heartedly and my harddrives are still too messy for my liking. I also need sort out all the photos on my phone and get them backed up. (Does anyone else find themselves with a huge “Camera” folder of unsorted pictures just floating around your internal storage/SD card and clogging up space? Just me?)

Of course, nothing is set in stone. Who knows what 2019 will bring and if events will allow for the above to happen. But these are the things on my mind, and these are the intentions I’ll start my year off with. If I start well, hopefully I can end well no matter what happens.

The One Without Any Spending

So I had this brilliant idea that October would be a “no spend” month, or at least a “spend less/stop impulse spending month”. So in September I sat down and wrote this:

Saturday 29th September

I mentioned before, that financially things aren’t going well right now. I am stuck in a horrible rut with my depression and anxiety right now (yep, my depression is back. Yay- lucky me!) I have been emotionally spending.

Although….

To be honest, I’ve never been the best with money. I went from living at home with no income to living by myself at university where money appeared in my account three times a year. (That’s how student loans work in the UK.) Those times would be like “Yay money again! Spend!” There wasn’t enough money to even consider saving – it was a struggle to get the money to stretch across the months. You’d stock up on everything you needed when there was money and scrimp and dig into your overdraft when there was none. I learned to be very scared of checking my bank account, of ignoring overdraft fees, and generally, nothing particularly healthy. At the same time I was anxious and binge eating and wasting money in small but frequent amounts on food to meet my endless appetite. And I compared myself to others, began to want things I couldn’t afford. Without money there wasn’t much I could do. Then came work, and an income. My bad habits had the source they needed. More food, now takeaways of junk food and more expensive binging foods, and I compared and I wanted and I bought. The other week after a particularly rough week and a rough doctors appointment I went to town and spent and I went online and I spent and I went and bought a takeaway and I spent. I wanted to make myself feel better, but in the end I returned half the stuff (that I could) and feel vaguely guilty about the rest. It’s too easy to convince yourself that you need something, rather than just wanting it. To compare yourself to the images you see on social media of women your age with their West Elm furniture and designer clothes/makeup and to want, to compare yourself to your family, your sister and cousin who have bought houses and filled them with nice things and want. (So many people my age seem so settled and so together and it leaves me feeling anxious and like I need to prove myself like them somehow.) Look, I’m not so bad. I resist massive purchases, but the relatively small bits again and again all add up. I realise belatedly that I could have some of the more expensive things I want if I could stop wasting so much money on smaller and more frequent purchases. I hate how meagre my savings are. I know that saving interest rates are a joke in this country and that’s demotivating, but it’s no excuse. I feel scared that I have no fuck off fund – if things go wrong I have nothing to fall back on. Every unexpected expense – like an upcoming car service – is enough to make me feel scared. How am I going to afford it? I have some debt. Nothing awful, but small and persistent. I just can’t seem to pay my credit card off, despite capping it at a low and reasonable value (I am at least not so stupid as to arm myself with some massive credit card when I have not yet learned how to manage the little one.) So this month I want to do two weeks without spending. During this time I will be allowed-

– £40 food allowance.
– to pay for my doctor’s appointment next Tuesday and buy my meds
– to buy petrol
– bills obviously won’t count
– if the fish need anything, that won’t count*

* As in food runs out, filter breaks and needs replacing, that kind of thing.

I am going to try and leave the credit card at home and rely on my debit card.

I want, actually want –

– A fuck off fund
– To buy new drawers for my room, a new bed and new mattress
– To be able to pay for my car repairs without any problems

I can do this – maybe?

So two weeks morphed into the whole month in my head; I started with the best intentions to ace the two weeks and then onwards! To the whole month, easy as. But then…

Monday 8th October

I was involved in a minor car crash.

And everything went to hell.

Now to-

Thursday 1st November

I have reviewed my bank account and October’s spendings are looking something like this:

– My car: aforementioned service, plus bonus! accident repairs (Also bought steering wheel lock to secure car when it was sitting on road side parking without a window….) Also petrol.

– Food: supermarket, takeaways, fast, food stalls, Starbucks, food delivery service, the works…

– Started Christmas shopping!

– Bought some makeup and cute accessories

– Bought a book. Ok, two books…Fine, three books.

– Also my Audible membership

– Bought a DVD.

– Typically, my moisturiser and cleanser chose this month to run out. So I replenished those.

– Bought a pajama tshirt with little fishes on it (it was on sale so I convinced myself it was meant to be. And I resisted buying the matching pants! )

– Therapy and doctors appointments and medication (I’m using private healthcare.)

– Rent and bills

– A couple of bus tickets.

After the accident my anxiety spiralled and I got into a weird headspace. I just kinda lost track of this thing, and there was also an element of it just seeming so pointless to scrimp and save over minor things like food when I was facing paying my insurance excess to repair my car, on top of its service, plus all my bills, my rent and medical costs. I felt and still feel rather overwhelmed by it all. Life is expensive and it’s very hard to begin forming good habits and saving when you are scrambling to cover necessary payments and unexpected little surprises like car crashes…

On the plus side, I have been restraining myself in some ways this month. I have done much less online shopping than normal – I only spent a little on clothes and makeup, compared to previous months, so I feel pleased with that. I forced myself to think through my purchases more, and I said no to myself more. The food situation is pretty bad – I need to stop being lazy and start cooking more and relying less on takeaways and fast food. (I refuse to give up my weekly Starbucks though; we all need something to look forward to.) (Let’s not discuss the binge eating.) I am also pleased that my Amazon usage was quite low this month, apart from the books. I failed to set aside my credit card which is annoying.

So some wins, some losses. I’d like to try again this month. I want to be less ambitious this month though. I think I should focus on continuing to say no to my impulsive online shopping, attempt to limit the amount I spend on food (perhaps this should be a no takeaway month?) and also be careful when Christmas shopping that I don’t start slipping too many things for myself into my basket! I want to keep my clothes/makeup and Amazon purchases low again. I am still reasonably determined to figure this out.

The one with all the plants

I have a lot of plants. Arguably, too much. They are in every room in my house, apart from my landing which has no window. It started when I was 18 when my best friend gave me a hen and chick for my dorm room at university, and my dad followed suit by giving me a small schefflera cutting and a miniature cactus. I was not particularly good with plants when I received them, but I was determined to keep them alive…how embarrassing to tell someone that you killed their present right? So I learned how to look after them, watered them religiously, and re-potted as necessary. 8 years later, the schefflera cutting has turned into a tree which is taking over my living room, the hen and chick is going strong and has given many babies which I have in my flat, at my parents’ house, and I even gave one to my sister. The cactus I nearly killed when repotting it – half of it rotted away because I damaged the root and didn’t give it enough time to heal before watering – but I managed to salvage a scrap of it and plant it and it grew. Phew. And these three have been joined by many, many others. I like the color they infuse into the place, and I like having something alive in my space. (And I admit, I do have an emotional attachment to my eldest, my original trio, whom I kept alive even when I was struggling to keep myself alive. They make me feel weirdly proud, like look what I raised through my sadness and anxiety) (that’s probably weird…)

At the moment they may be a little *too* alive. I’ve been plagued by pests since moving into my new flat and particularly this summer. I never struggled at my previous residences and I don’t know what’s changed. Something came through the window, a dodgy batch of compost, simply the fact that my flat is so warm and sunny? My plants grow fantastically in these conditions, but I guess it follows that so will pests. I’ve struggled with tiny flies on my schefflera for a while now – they have never caused damage though, nor grown to ridiculous numbers, I rinse off my schefflera regularly with neem which seems to help keep it under control. And I could catch the flies and throw them into my Betta tanks and so convince myself I dunno, was growing my own fish food or something. A positive spin. I took some schefflera cuttings though and their soil is much more infested with the flies and I think it’s preventing them growing :( and this summer I have two more unwanted guests… two of my other plants have tiny little mites on them. And the other day I was putting on my facial moisturiser when I looked over to a nearby plant – this is in my bedroom – and saw worms crawling in the soil. D: After ten minutes of panicking I simply picked up the plant, took it outside and deposited it on the porch outside my door, where it will stay until it dies, because worms. Worms. 3cm long each. And who knows how long they’ve been there in my bedroom? It’s all very gross. I typically dislike fake plants but I can kinda understand it now. I was reading about the worms and there were instructions on how to get rid of them by picking them up and…no. I bought some houseplant insecticide and I’ve sprayed the mites. I don’t like using insecticide indoors, especially with fish tanks, but I feel I’ve reached that point. I’ve been spraying them with a soapy solution for weeks now and it’s not working and I just cannot anymore.

I need to stop buying plants and focus on the welfare of the ones I’ve got. It should not have taken me so long as it did to pick up on the mites and the worms – I should have caught on to it before it got that bad.

I feel like lately I’m doing a lot of random and useless shopping. Nonsensical things – makeup, clothes, PLANTS. I keep finding things to buy and bring into my house even though I don’t need them. It makes sense ultimately – I’m stressed, and unhappy, and shopping and new things makes me happy. I like having new and interesting plants, I like having the latest pretty highlighter or foundation that YouTube has raved about, a new cute outfit. Lately, it’s like I’ve lost the ability to say no to myself or to respect my bank account which ouch. And maybe I shouldn’t admit that here, I know. I’m sorry, I’m bad with money and I don’t have a budget. I fail as a blogger. But nonetheless I’ve never been terrible with money – I keep my bills paid and debt low. But yeah. I don’t have the capacity to really deal with it now- see being stressed and unhappy -but it’s on my mind.

At the very least, I need to stop buying more plants.

I should give some more love to the ones I already have I think. :)

My sister’s cat

It’s coming up to the one year anniversary since my cat died. It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. It’s embarrassing to admit that I’m still really sad about it. I went home this weekend and I brought some roses with me to place on her grave. I thought maybe it would provide some comfort. But it didn’t. I still ache. I still can’t accept it. I look at her grave and it just doesn’t make sense.

My parents are looking after my sister’s cat right now. So she was there when I was. My father kept calling my sister’s cat by our old cats name and it’s hard to say anything when he does it, because it’s awkward, and it’s sad.

My sister’s cat is a delight. She was a little wary of me on Saturday, but then on Sunday she crawled into my lap and passed out there. Several hours passed and my legs went numb but it was perfect, to feel her warmth and her weight. I kept following her around all weekend, pestering her to allow me to cuddle her and pet her, because I miss it. I miss my cat. I miss having a cat.

For a time the neighbours cat was here, but he did move away. And I know it’s for the best, he was getting too clingy, but I do miss his presence. He was a good substitute. It was good to have his company, his warmth.

I tell myself she was just a cat, but it doesn’t quite work.

I’ve felt lonely since she died.