09 Jul

Decor envy

Oh! I am so envious of what Yve’s been doing in her new home. Look at that study! Isn’t it wonderful? The high ceilings! That beautiful pink! The Billy bookcases of different widths (what a wonderful clever idea) and the way everything matches and looks like it was deliberately chosen, not just a jammed-in mishmash of whatever she had leftover. Sigh. Drool.

I really like our house but it feels all mismatched and unfinished. When we bought it we decided it was our 10-year house, it’s big enough to fit us for that long (except for not having any land) and that sort of time frame suits us because we’re so lazy filled with inertia it’ll take us that long to get around to doing everything. Plus, this way my cheap ass frugal self can imagine affording it all without having a heart attack. But, sometimes I look around and I think wouldn’t it be nice to get stuck in and decorate? Our furniture is nice–well, some of it is, some of it’s been hanging around for 15 years and is the sort of stuff you can afford when you’re just out of uni–but it doesn’t really hang together in this house. We need to hang pictures and think about paint colours and new cushions, and give ourselves permission to get rid of things that don’t fit.

A girlfriend warned me this would happen. She said, “You will go stir crazy being cooped up in the house all the time and you’ll suddenly decide you need to throw out the curtains or buy a dozen wicker baskets.” And I thought Aha, this may well be the case but you do not understand, I am on a budget, I am frugal, I do not do these things! Well, it’s happening. I even bought a wicker basket, for heaven’s sake, without any real idea what I’d do with it (I keep paperwork in it for now). And a laundry basket, to contain the ironing, and a foam underlay for my ironing board, and some over-the-door coat hooks so we can hang up our winter coats. And that’s not the end of it, I want another wicker basket, and a new front door mat, and a lazy susan for the condiments in the fridge and about a billion other things, and we haven’t even got to the decorating bit yet. And I am finding it hard, because the frugal part of me says, are you kidding? Those vertical blinds work perfectly well. So what if they’re pink and ugly and don’t actually block out much light, you are taking a pay cut and have to think of the future! And what if you move and the furniture doesn’t fit in the new place? Even though we have no intention of moving, we might. I can’t get rid of the rental mentality.

Dave says I should go for it. He says I should pick one room at a time and work all out. And that sounds fine if you ignore the fact that I don’t really know where I want to start or what I want in each room, and if I do know what I want (eg a leather couch like the one in Dave’s apartment in London for the TV room) then I can’t find it anywhere. Also he’s not the one who runs the budget and so he doesn’t realise how the idea of frittering away money on things makes my heart palpitate. And finally, does he realise what he’s suggesting? Does he not remember the months of searching for the baby’s room paint colour, which I wanted to be soft and neutral but not beige or white, maybe a yellow, but not a bright yellow and how I kept finding yellows that were perfect, absolutely it, only not quite so green/orange/bright/yellow. Does he remember how I bought that really expensive shampoo just because the bottle looked to be the right colour? Our bedroom badly needs painting, there are gouges on the walls, but I want to paint it a sort of mushroomy/beige/latte colour, only not too pink and not too brown or mushroom or beige. DOES HE REALLY WANT TO GO THROUGH THAT AGAIN?

Look, I know this is silly. I should just give myself a small allowance and permission to enjoy the process, and do each little bit as I think of it. So, go get that pretty lampshade for the bedroom and then keep an eye out for the right paint and bedhead while getting on with something else. It’s just, that seems so higgledy-piggledy, you know? How will I keep track of everything? How will I know what I’ve achieved? You know what I need, I need a list, and a scrapbook of ideas, and probably a spreadsheet so I can prioritise all the different things I want to do. Ooh, I can see a lot of browsing on Etsy and Apartment Therapy in my future.

How did you decorate? Did you have trouble letting yourself do it? Do you have any tips for me?

01 Jul

spending slip-up

I’ve started helping Dave’s mum and sister with their budgets so they can learn to be better with their money. I love budgets, working out the spending plan and keeping to it, and especially paying down debt, but I hate bossing people and telling them what to do, so it’s slow going. Which is annoying because our budget isn’t that interesting at the moment. Anyway, as part of that, we all started keeping a spending diary. I bought them little notebooks where they can jot down everything they spend. It’ll help work out exactly how much they spend on each sort of budget area, but mostly it’s to try to keep them mindful of the “little” cash purchases, the ones you don’t really think about. I want them to realise that yes, that hot chocolate, or that crappy toy or that cute little outfit for their darling niece (ahem) is only $3 or $5 or $15, but the money has to come from somewhere in your budget. And also $3 or $5 or $15 might not be much in isolation but um, have you noticed how often you’re buying one of those and look what heppens if you add it all up?

So it’s all about mindfulness and just starting to work out where that $50 you took out 3 days ago has gone. I started keeping a spending diary too for moral support and to be a good example, so it’s a bit ironic that suddenly I’ve gone on a bit of a spending bender. It’s not a lot, just things like $40 at Kmart on some organisational things (a coat rack, a new foam underlay for my ironing board, a laundry basket) that I’ve been wanting for ages and make me feel happy and organised, and they all come out of my budget, but if you look through my notebook it looks like I’m spending on fripperies. Plus I keep forgetting to write stuff down. I suppose it goes to show it’s a habit that takes time for anyone to get into but I don’t like spending money willy nilly!

Anyway, my worst spending was when I was up in Ballarat. I took my laptop along with the idea that I’d get to do some writing up there (hah!) and I also took my little USB keyfob thingy that gives me 3G internet connectivity. Except once I connected up and started surfing it told me I didn’t have enough data to continue, because Ballarat is not in a 3G area, it’s only 2G, and to connect to that I needed to buy a separate block of “roaming” data, which cost $7.50. Not much, right? So I did, and wasted a happy half hour or so checking people’s Facebook statuses and stuff.

But here’s the thing. It was *only* $7.50, but it expires in a month. I’m not likely to be back in Ballarat in that time, and I don’t go anywhere anymore that I need the connectivity. (It’s true that our house is annoyingly in some sort of 3G dead area so I could use it here, but our home network works fine.) I was only in Ballarat for two days, I could have gone without internet for that time. Wasn’t getting away from everything one of the reasons I went up? Plus my phone has (annoying, clunky) internet connectivity so if I really wanted to check my email I could have done it on that.

So I’m a bit annoyed at myself. Yes, it’s only $7.50 and I used to spend more than that on lunch every day, so in the scheme of things it’s not much. It’s just annoying that I made this sort of beginner’s slip-up and it’s going to expire without being used. Plus, right now I only give myself $25 a week spending money, so there’s a huge chunk taken out of what I was saving up for more organisation stuff, or maybe even some jeans that fit.

On the other hand, I was at my Aunt’s house and when I was sitting on the floor playing with Bianca I noticed that on her shelf she has 20 DVDs (I counted) and every single one of them is of Andre Rieu. Every single one! Now, maybe she keeps her other DVDs somewhere else, but how is there even that many ways to look at that man?