Walking in 2022

Now that things have finally quietened down a bit it's time to get back to something we love doing, walking.  My husband also now has a full time job again, at least for now, so we have a little bit of extra money coming in to do more with - not that walking is a particularly expensive hobby.  The only issue is that my work is Monday to Friday and his is shift work, so we don't have a large number of days where we are actually off together.  To work around this we're planning on organising the walks we're wanting to do as much as possible so that when a day comes that we do have off together we can just get up and do them.

Devon's Coast to Coast /Two Moors Way

This one didn't exactly go to plan the last time we attempted it, but we do really want to give this walk another go possibly in summer.  However, we'll probably give ourselves a little bit longer to do it this time round so that we putting less strain on our bodies and are less likely to injure ourselves.  We have a bit more time this time to prepare for it as well, so that'll probably mean that we actually need to take less stuff with us.  I'm really looking forward to this as it's been a while since I've done a long walk and these legs could do with a good stretch.  At least we have all the equipment we need, all tested as well, so we don't need to buy anything extra for it.

Walks with Wild Swimming

We brought a book a while ago which had some walks in Devon with wild swimming attached to them, but are yet to do any of them.  As wild swimming is something we want to get into more that is something we really need to remedy.  There are a few that are pretty close to us, including one at Ivybridge and one at Noss Mayo, and the walks are mostly pretty short so it shouldn't be too difficult to get these done.  We also want to get more wild swimming in in general, but that we can do much closer to home and even do it on mornings when my husband starts work at lunch time.

Dartmoor

As we're so close to this moor it seems really silly that we haven't spent more time wondering around it.  This is one where I need want to do a little bit more research as the map we have of it isn't the best at showing where the actual footpaths are around Dartmoor.  I think there are a couple of wild swimming walks that are based in Dartmoor so that'll be a good start, but it's probably time to have a nosey through a good old OS map.

South West Coast Path

One of our main plans this year is to have more of an explore of the coast we're so close to in Devon.  As we have our book on the South West Coast Path this seems like the perfect way of actually do this.  We're not able to do all of this walk in one go, but will instead do the stages separately.  As each stage is obviously designed to be linear, we need to work out ways of returning to our starting point as we don't want to walk the path back again if we can help it.  This will probably mean public transport, unless we can find some circular routes in some places.  This'll also give us an excuse to venture into Cornwall, Somerset, and Dorset a little more.

I have to admit, usually when it comes to walking like this I don't really tend to (or like to) do too much planning.  I'm more of a decide on the day and go type of person.  However, we are really looking forward to getting back into walking again and this seems like the best way of doing it.  So soon, hopefully, we'll be out there breathing fresh air, stretching our legs, and getting the most out of where we live.

Visiting Guernsey

We had decided a long time ago that Guernsey was a place we really wanted to visit, so when it opened up again around the time we were booking our honeymoon it seemed like it was meant to be.  The fact that it was so close and we could take a ferry instead of flying was also bonus.  

We stayed in a shepherd hut at Camp de Reves, found by my husband, and it was perfect.  Just the right size (which also gave us an idea about the type of place we'd like to live in in the future), with a great view of the sea, perfect location for visiting all the sites we wanted to go to, and a lovely amount of privacy.

Our main aim of this trip was to relax and enjoy ourselves, but we did want to see the history of the island, get in as much walking as possible, and look at any crafting that was still happening there (this last one was mostly for me).  We went out most days, apart from the day I developed a nasty cold, but didn't cram any of them even though we probably could have seen everything in three days had we been inclined.  

Despite most of the things you hear about Guernsey being related to WWII, there's actually quite a bit of Napoleonic and prehistoric history there as well and we tried to see as much of the prehistory as we could.  They were mostly burial chambers that you could go into and I always find them fascinating.  It helped that everything was pretty easy to get to and it really didn't take long to drive anywhere - and by that I mean 30 minutes at the most, even with traffic.

In the week we were there we did manage to see a lot of monuments and historic structures.  However, my favourite part was the two walks we did along the south coast of the island.  Despite being so close to a built up areas, it was very peaceful and lacking in human noise.  The views out to sea were also very beautiful and quite a few of the plants were flowering.

There wasn't as much crafting to see as I had hoped, despite there being a 5 ply wool yarn that is a Guernsey specific wool and a specific style of jumper.  I did manage to get some of this wool though and the pattern for the jumper which I'm going to make for my husband.  I did also buy a hand woven basket that had been made locally and that I'm going to put my knitting projects into.  I could even use it to carry them around whilst knitting if I ever get the urge.  It's absolutely beautiful and I can see it lasting for years.

The good things about visiting Guernsey were how easy is was to get around and how quickly you could get to places even with a speed limit of 35 mph everywhere.  It also has a much slower pace so it was a lot easier to relax into our holiday, and everyone was very helpful when we had questions about things.  The food was also pretty good, even on the plant based front and that's usually where things can be a bit hit or miss.

There are always a couple of bad things no matter where you go and at Guernsey it was the cost of everything, which was a little bit more than on the mainland.  However, we were expecting that so it wasn't too much of a problem as we'd gone prepared.  There also wasn't as much wildlife as I had hoped, even a long the coastline.  To be fair, it was only April and the size of the island means that every available space is pretty much used up by humans so there aren't too many places wildlife can go.  However, I had hoped for a little bit more marine wildlife, but oh well.

Even with these couple of bad things we still really enjoyed our time in Guernsey, helped by the amazing weather we had, and we'd like to go back again at some point.  In fact, we enjoyed it so much we started talking about the possibility of actually moving there to live.  Right now we definitely don't have enough money to do that, but you never know there could be a moving to Guernsey blog in the future.

Doing a Whole Lot of Cleaning

As I put in my last post, the flat has become a bit of a disaster and definitely needs a reset /spring clean.  It also doesn't help that it's quite small, so any amount of mess looks bad.  I decided to bring back a cleaning method I use to use to help slowly bring the flat back into order, and that is the Fly Lady.

In its most basic set up, that I've taken anyway, you have a morning and evening routine that allows you to stay organised and keep clean the most used areas of your home.  Then there's the 'Weekly Home Blessing Hour' that is a cleaning routine you do to keep your home in a general state of cleanliness, as well as a rota of tasks you do on specific days during the week such as paying bills and organising a menu plan.  The last thing is the zone cleaning, which sees you tackling each room in the house for a week at a time and is where all the deep cleaning happens.  It's also when you do any decluttering that is needed.  

I'm not following this cleaning method exactly to the letter but have adapted it to fit what suits us right now.  Such as I don't really do the morning or evening routines and that means we need to add cleaning the bathroom to the weekly home blessing.  We also don't need to do a laundry load every day, which is just as well as the electricity bill would be massive if we did.  I have to admit that the weekly home blessing is something that my husband does rather than me.  I've been working more on the zones and we share tasks like the laundry.  

Before

Our flat isn't really separated into lots of rooms, so to do the zone cleaning I've separated the main living space into a hallway, bedroom, living room, and craft /office room and I'll just work through each area separately.  The idea here is to set your timer to 15 minutes a day and work your way through what the Fly Lady recommends you do in each zone to give it a deep clean, at least until you've worked out your own routine.  Once the 15 minutes are up you stop in that zone until the next day and if you don't complete every task by the end of the week you just leave them until the zone comes around again.

After

The first thing you actually do in each zone before the cleaning can begin is decluttering as there's no point in cleaning things that don't need to be there.  Even though we do declutter on a regular basis I have been surprised at just how much extra stuff I've been able to get rid of.  Obviously I'm only doing my things and our general items, I'm not touching any of my husband's things.  That's for him to go through.

Before

So far I've gone through the hallway, kitchen, bathroom, and office /craft room.  Even though the last two zones I'm yet to do are the ones that take up the main living area of the flat the space already feels to much better and more inviting.  The last two zones are actually the ones I'm most dreading and will probably be the most work, but they're probably also going to be the most satisfying to complete.

After

As with almost everything in life, the Fly Lady won't work for everyone and I've already started adapting it to fit our needs.  However, I do think the small amounts done on a regular basis works better for me than just going at everything in one go.  The whole idea here is if you do small amounts of work on a regular basis than your home will always look good and be clean.  Even though I've separated out the main living space into four separate zones right now, once we've got to the stage where we're now just maintaining it I will probably just treat them as one area to be cleaned all at the same time and give myself two weeks instead of one.  In the not so distant future the flat will be clean and tidy again and I'm looking forward to that moment very much.

Getting Back on Track

It would be true to say that I have let things slide a little bit over the last few months as we've been preparing for the wedding and dealing with a few other stressful things that come with the package called life.  This is pretty much true of everything in my life in general, but there are a few areas where it has become particularly obvious and where I need to do some work pretty much straight away.

Finances

The first thing I need to get back on track is one of my main goals this year and that's to do with our finances.  We should really have been being quite strict with this so that we could reach our savings goals as quickly as possible, but instead, we've been quite relaxed about it all.  This was probably the worse time to do this as one of us was made redundant and then was only able to get part-time work for a bit.  I've also been ill quite a few times this year (and when you're self-employed that means no pay), and there was the time we had already booked for our honeymoon.  Now that the wedding and honeymoon are unfortunately over it's time to start concentrating on the finances again.  This means spending less on takeaways, sweet treats and buying things we don't need, and doing more on putting money into our pensions and savings before we start working towards our long-term goals.  These changes should all begin to show themselves in my monthly budget posts.

Health

Takeaways and sweet treats take us nicely onto the topic of health.  Exercise isn't really the issue for me as I'm getting enough at work at the moment (though some additional stretching might be a good idea), but my diet has become particularly bad recently with quite a lot of sugar in it.  The spots, low moods, lack of energy, weight gain, and a cycle that become out of whack are all telling me that things are not where they should be and it's time to get it sorted.  I've downloaded the Flo app (specifically recommended if you don't have a particularly regular period) so I can keep an eye on my cycle and changes in my mood and energy level.  I've also reluctantly brought some bathroom scales so I can use my weight as a rough guide as to whether or not things are changing in the right direction.  Now I need to reduce the amount of sugar I'm eating on a daily basis, which basically means cutting out the chocolate and fizzy juice I've been having every day and moving my diet a lot further along the whole foods line than it is right now.  All of this should help me get back to being the healthy relatively energetic person I was before.

The Flat

If there's one area that has shown visually just how chaotic things have become it's definitely the state of the flat.  Admittedly it's quite a small space so it's easy for things to look bad even with just a small amount of clutter, but the flat has now become particularly bad and very far from the clean I would like.  This means that it's not actually a particularly nice place to be spending our time and I want that to change.  I remember sort of following a programme called the FlyLady in the past and I've decided to bring that back.  The FlyLady isn't really a speedy process, more like a slow and steady one that allows you to get on top of things in bite-size chunks and then stay on top of them.  So far I've done what I suppose you could classify as the hallway and the kitchen, and it already feels much, much, much better.  I am dreading doing the living room area and my craft area, but I know it'll be worth it in the long run.  One of the biggest issues for me here is not rushing ahead of myself and then getting burnt out.  I'll get there and the flat will look great, and that's all I need to focus on.

So that is my plan to reset things that have gotten a little out of hand over the last few months.  It never occurred to me that such a small wedding could have such an impact, though problems with my health etc were probably a contributing factor as well.  My aim is to give myself until the end of June to get things running smoothly again, and then we can hopefully bumble along nicely from there, back to where we had originally planned on being.

April 2022 Budget

Our April finances have gone just as I was excepting based on my partner only having a part-time job at the moment and us both having some days off for the wedding and honeymoon (and by some I mean over a week).  This has meant that April is a month where there's been not a lot of money coming in and quite a bit of money going out.  

One win is that we've still managed to keep our credit cards at zero and keep our personal emergency funds fully funded.  As before, the car and Christmas sinking funds are still completely paid up, though we might need to eat more into our savings at the start of May.  Unfortunately we did have to take even more money out of our four months emergency fund in April to pay for bills and we haven't been able to pay it back yet.  Hopefully that'll be something we can achieve in the next few months.

It does look like nothing has come out of our account for rent, electricity, etc, but because of how the months fall this money actually came out at the end of March and this still had an impact on April.

Our spending on takeaways and additional spending is quite high this month, but I guess that's to be expected as we were away on our honeymoon.  We probably should have been a little more careful whilst we were away, but we wanted to enjoy ourselves and the time we had together.  We also knew we were going to have to be stritch once we got home.  I also didn't put any money into my pension as we didn't have the funds available, so I'll need to spend the rest of the year catching up on that -gulp.

I will be doing my tax returns at the start of next month so hopefully that'll give us a little extra money to put back into our savings or at least help out with all the bills for May and get things back on track.

So, not a particularly successful month, but not a surprising one either as we weren't really expecting to do well.  It would have been nice to put some money into savings and my pension, but I accept that wasn't possible this month what with us enjoying ourselves perhaps a little too much.  All I can say is bring on next month and being able to concentrate on our goals now that the wedding is over.