Charles and I have been well since Thursday afternoon. (This 48-hour thing is very sensible - Charles twice went 36 hours between bouts before finally getting well.) Tony managed to avoid being ill altogether. Jonny succumbed Friday but I think is better now.

On Saturday we spent the afternoon with arnhem and L, and I was introduced to the Ukulele Orchestra DVD while Tony spent quality time with L's lego. I was meant to go out for a meal celebrating my friend's escape from ex-work but by the time I needed to leave I was far too tired so wimped out.

On Sunday we made an excellently productive shopping trip into town, for the three Finch birthdays this month and a few other errands. Sunday shopping in Cambridge is almost bearable although we did seem to keep orbiting John Lewis and the not-quite-finished Grand Arcade. Yippee on King Street is fairly child-friendly and Charles approves of noodles.

I am still falling asleep around 8-9pm most evenings (today being an obvious exception), but now mostly avoiding the midnight insomnia. I will assume I just need to sleep a lot, and try not to resent losing evenings with Tony.

Charles greeted James's return from Australia with terrified screams and a tantrum demonstration.

Our cleaner is lovely but just as we are settling into a good routine she is going to miss 4 weeks due to Easter hols and a trip home to her mother. I will try to encourage myself and the other adult residents not to let the place slip back into squalor in the meantime.

There's this idea being promoted that washing at 30°C rather than 40°C will help reduce power consumption. I am dubious about whether things will be cleaned well enough, especially given the advice "It is however recommended that towels, underwear, sportswear, baby clothes, all bedding, and heavily stained items still be washed at higher temperatures to ensure they get completely clean."

Currently I'm working my way through the draft of Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air, a book on sustainable energy by Professor David MacKay of the Department of Physics in Cambridge. It is an excellent facts-and-numbers-driven analysis. His debunking of the mobile-phone charger myth inspired me to do some calculation on "washing at 30".

The manual for our washing machine states that it uses 59 litres of water for a standard wash, and 0.5kWh of electricity. It is plumbed into both hot and cold mains, and for wash temperatures up to ~65°C it uses the house hot water rather than doing any heating itself. As a household, we do a nappy and a non-nappy wash most days of the week, nappies at 60°C and everything else at 40°C.

Non-nappy washes
For the sake of easy calculation, I'll call it 6 washes a week currently at 40°C, and 60 litres of water per wash. The specific heat capacity of water is 4.2 kJ/kg/K and water is handily 1kg/l.

60 kg x 4.2 kJ/kg/°K x 10°K = 2.52MJ per wash, so 15.12MJ per week.

Our water is heated by gas and we are billed for gas in kWh. 1kWh = 1000 J/s x 3600s = 3.6MJ.

15.12/3.6 = 4.2kWh per week. We are currently charged 2.574p/kWh inc VAT, so the saving would be a grand total of 11p per week, or £5.72 per year.

Either there is something wrong with my calculation or this is a fairly minimal effect on energy consumption.


Nappy washes
We wash the nappies at 60°C but strictly speaking, only the soiled nappies need to go at 60, the rest could go at 40 with the non-nappy washes. Without worrying too much about implementation, we could cut from 6 x 60°C washes per week to 3 x 60°C washes, and 2 x 40°C washes (we could probably eliminate one wash a week by mixing the wet-only nappies with other laundry).

Pleasingly, 3 x 60 x 4.2 x 20 is the same as 6 x 60 x 4.2 x 10, so we know that part of the answer already. What about saving 1 washload a week? If we assume the water is heated from mains cold at 10°C to 40°C then we have 1 x 60 x 4.2 x 30, which is half the previous answer. Plus we save the 0.5kWh of electricity which costs just under 11p/kWh.

So in total, we could save 22p per week by separating out the soiled nappies, and we could only do this by continuing to wash at 40 most of the time, so it's not additional to the 11p per week above.


Showers
Showers are also usually taken at about 40°C. Some quick experimentation with a measuring jug and the shower tells me that our shower flows at about 8 litres per minute. So if we shower for 7.5 minutes that's the same as one non-nappy washload. My guesstimate from our morning routine is that I spend 5-10 minutes in the shower and Tony spends 10-15 minutes. Plus Jason and Jonny take showers every day in the other bathroom, but I don't observe for how long. Our showers are both fed from the hot water tank and do no additional heating of their own.

If we assume an average of 10 minutes per adult per shower per day, that's 280 minutes of showers a week, equivalent to 37 washes at 40. The energy used by heating water for a wash at 60 is 5/3 that for a wash at 40 (heating from 10 to 60 rather than 10 to 40), so our current laundry is equivalent to 6 x 8/3 = 16 washes at 40 (16x5.5p=88p/week), less than half of the cost of showering. Without the nappy washes, it would be less than one-sixth (6x5.5p=33p/week).

Baby costs
Jonny asked just now "so how much does Charles cost then?" to which the answer is 6 nappy washes and 1 non-nappy wash per week.
Water heating is (6x5/3 + 1) x 5.5p = 60.5p/week.
Running the washing machine is 7 x 0.5kWh x 11p/kWh = 38.5p/week.
A total of 99p/week on baby laundry energy costs. Detergent costs are left as an exercise for the reader.

I have finally employed a cleaner. After doing a bit of budgeting and failing to do anything serious about finding someone, an acquaintance serendipitously emailed about her cleaner wanting more hours. We met up and had a satisfactory interview, and she is now coming once a week for 3 hours. The first week she needed all of that just to tackle our rather grim bathroom and ensuite; the second week she re-did those rooms and managed to get on to the downstairs loo, kitchen, and some dusting/vacuuming. I am pleased with the results and the house is rather more pleasant to be in. The cleaner is Chinese with halting but reasonable English. The only practical difference this has made so far has been occasional vocabulary gaps about cleaning equipment, solved with much gesticulation.

(Why oh why though, does part of my brain feel that paying someone to keep the house clean is some kind of failure on my part? I'm mostly not listening to it, and remind myself there are actually 4 adults in the house to do the housework. And since when did my self-esteem get based on my housework anyway?)

About three weeks back, Tony spent a few hours properly fitting child locks to all the kitchen cupboards, and securing certain doors now that Charles has figured out door handles. The utility room was the real challenge - we wanted to be able to leave a gap big enough for the cats to get through but small enough to keep Charles out, and eventually we hit upon using a large hook to keep it hooked ajar. We've done something similar with the kitchen, though the gap there is smaller, just enough for an adult inside the room to let themselves out. Together with a little hook on the airing cupboard door, we have removed swathes of potential adult-child conflict and reduced stress levels considerably.

Also the changes I made about a month ago (toyboxes for Charles, upgraded airer capacity) have likewise had a good effect on the household. Laundry logjams seem to be far less frequent, and I can clear up the living room to "company ready" in only a few minutes.

Going back even further, we have had the breadmaker for a little over 6 weeks now and that has turned into a real source of comfort and happiness. My accounting so far suggests we are spending only slightly less on bread-ingredients than we were on getting bread delivered, but we're eating a much wider variety of loaves of better quality and freshness. (Occasionally I have to remember to eat something other than bread.) I've noticed some indirect savings too, as I spend much less on food at work when I have nice bread from home to keep me going.

This weekend I have been trying to tackle two household issues: somewhere to store Charles's toys and books to make tidying easier; the constant pressure on drying space on the landing.

We line-dry outside where possible, though in winter that's hard. I've had a washload hung out on each of Saturday and Sunday for the majority of the daylight hours, and they came in much less wet, but not actually dry. It did at least reduce pressure on the drying space indoors and allow us to catch up a bit. In the long term, when we have the garden a bit more sorted, I am going to get a rotary dryer and put it in the odd little corner behind the house where people don't tend to go - so we can continue to dry outside easily in the summer even when wanting to use the garden for parties or just eating outside.

Inside, we have a miscellaneous collection of folding airers, some much more efficient than others. Everything takes noticeably longer to dry in winter. There are four airers apparently permanently in use on the landing and I have ordered replacements for all four, all of them taller and with more drying space than anything we already have, without taking up any more floor area. I also chose some bog-standard radiator racks for the bathrooms, and some rather fancy radiator racks that unfold to hold quite a lot of laundry - these are intended for the two lodger rooms, and I hope will give Jason and Jonny a bit more flexibility.

I have also ordered a number of Really Useful Boxes in which to store Charles's toys and books, picking out sizes that should fit well on the existing corner unit shelves we are using. They worked well at first but now there is so much stuff that it all just forms an amorphous heap in which it is hard to find anything, and which Charles will pull all over the floor given half a chance. I'm planning to use the boxes to store similar stuff together, so hopefully we'll have less "pull everything on the floor" and in any case it'll be easier to quickly tidy up and actually have it look tidy rather than a heap on a shelf. fanf is quite excited because one of the sizes I've ordered may work well on the ordinary IVAR shelves as well; I ordered two extra just to see.

Finally I spent far too long wrangling train times and ticket prices, but have now got reserved seats and tickets to visit Tony's sister in March. The Family Railcard is very useful here. Charles is getting big and boisterous enough that it is an advantage to have a seat reserved for him by buying him a ticket, as well as saving the money by using the railcard.

I used to be a long-standing customer of TheTrainLine.com but they have really started gouging for credit card charges and postage charges. East Midlands Trains sell tickets "powered by TheTrainLine" but without the gouging. A useful discovery, although I had to register before I could confirm it for sure.

Small single room, fully furnished, in large friendly shared house. Other occupants are 3 young professionals, 2 cats and a baby. Freeview and broadband internet. Suit writing-up student or weekly commuter. £300 per month, inclusive of all bills.

We spent most of the weekend working on the Great Furniture Shuffle that will result in: a new joint study for me and Tony, a bedroom for Charles, and a lettable small bedroom. The new study is really taking shape, though the last pieces (2 small desks) will not arrive from IKEA until 21st November. We were both getting quite pleased and excited about it by the end of Sunday. It will be really good to be able to do our respective at-computer stuff in the same room rather than opposite sides of the house, and to have baby-safe space near our computers so there's a chance of getting a bit more done without neglecting Charles, or having to constantly redirect him from the stuff he shouldn't get into.

My current study is a junk room at the moment, and for the medium term that's what it's going to stay - somewhere I can put things that need sorting out where they aren't in the way. I'm going to move the stuff I need to use regularly into the new study and deal with the rest a bit at a time when I have spare oomph. To stop it being a junk room FOREVER, I have a long-term plan to make it a music room and install an upright piano. Maybe in a couple of years.

Keith's coming round tomorrow with his drill to help me fix shelves to walls, another line to cross off the to-do list. We're about 1/3 through the list I wrote on Sunday.

Conrad (Tony's father) arrived on Thursday evening and we had a pub meal but flaked out early. Douglas moved out on Friday, just in time for us to turn the room around for Lucy to stay in over the weekend. Today has been very lazy, with a venture out to the local recreation ground for Charles to play on everything. His favourite thing by far is the zip slide: we very carefully let him ride on it with both me and Lucy there to catch him, and he was very reluctantly detached, and then spent the next 5 minutes walking back and forth following the zip slide as other children played on it.

Tomorrow Sarah & Paul are visiting for the day. The plan is to have a family barbecue (try not to roast the baby).

Found in the spare room and disavowed by Keith, Cat & Andrew:

* 1 pair yellow cotton women's trousers, size 12, Cinzano label
* 1 pair black cotton women's trousers, size 18 (but a very small 18 in my opinion). DenimCo label.
* 1 "Salvador Dalek" tshirt, size L

If I can't find their owners, they'll probably end up with a charity shop (except the tshirt, we'll probably keep that as it's very cool).

This week my spare energy has been mostly devoted to the house. On Monday and Tuesday Keith emptied his room downstairs. On Wednesday afternoon, while Charles napped, I managed to move the futon which has been a sofa in Tony's room for the last 3 years downstairs and turn it into a double bed. On my own. Go me, ug me strong woman, etc. Keith restored the light fitting which has been gone for over 5 years so it actually looks like a normal room, and also brought in the bedframes for the spare room and stashed them temporarily in the downstairs room.

Later that evening, Tony helped me take down the high metal bed in our spare room, and together we sorted through the large piles of bedding, towels etc that had lurked a) on the futon b) in the airing cupboard.

On Thursday afternoon I had a serious go at the spare room, taking everything off one set of shelves, moving the shelves to their new location in the room, and putting everything back on them. All the while Charles was bimbling around the floor fairly happily and occasionally finding unsuitable things to eat, and submitting unhappily to their removal. Then I took down the next set of shelves, and with Douglas's help got them across into Tony's room without completely destroying them. Then I did more things-shuffling, and vacuumed both rooms, this time with Charles in the Mei Tai on my back.

On Friday I did the bedframes in the spare room. These are 2 single beds, one at roughly normal height, with the other rolled underneath, so that you can roll it out as an extra bed. There isn't room for this in the spare room, but it's a handy way of storing a spare single bed for when we want it later. So I brought up the lower frame, plonked the mattress down, and then assembled the higher bed above it. And then had to take the higher bed apart again because I'd forgotten about the wooden slats that hold the mattress and put the frame in upside down. So then I did it all over again. Charles kept getting annoyed because he wanted to play in the area at the end of the bed and I was repeatedly in his way screwing the bed together.

Anyway, our regular guests, including louise_e_finch and ruthcoleman, will no doubt be very glad to know that we have a normal single guest bed for them from now on!

Hopefully someone from freecycle will come and take away the disassembled high metal bed later today. I need to confirm with Keith what's happening with the remaining mattress and bed frame for which we have no room, but with any luck will also go to freecycle. On Wednesday we have stuff coming from IKEA's online service which should mean we start on the planned reorganisation of the living room and finish reorganising the spare room. Also on the to-do list is:

* tidy up the bookcases in our room, and re-space the shelves so we can get 10 shelves floor-to-ceiling rather than the current 9
* declutter the study
* turn Tony's room into Charles's room

Those last 2 tasks unpack into huge to-do lists of their own but I'm not going there just yet. Originally I planned for Charles to have his own room by the time he was 1. That's not going to happen, but we might manage it by the time he's 2.

Today I finally put up curtains that actually cover the entire window in the downstairs bedroom, so that Douglas could move his stuff into it, so that Jason (our new long-term lodger) can move into the upstairs room. The curtains, like all the ones in the house, are rather blah, but "new curtains" is rather a long way down the priority list. I think that all that remains for the downstairs bedroom is net curtains and a desk, before I can tick that room off as completely done.

Last Wednesday I made a little list:

Still need to: work out what IVAR we need, browse IKEA catalogue for other items, order mattress, order dishwasher, import accounts into Accountz and work out how much money we have, agree the remaining DIY with Keith.

That evening I ordered the mattress. On Thursday morning I was telephoned by the company to take payment and arrange delivery, on Friday afternoon it arrived, and on Friday night we slept on it. I keep being surprised and delighted with how comfortable it is.

I worked out which dishwasher I wanted, but it was incredibly hard to order online, so I didn't. On Friday, I rang a local company, Andrew McCulloch, on the recommendation of a colleague. They were very apologetic that it might take as much as 2 weeks to get it in stock and deliver it. They're also sending someone round today to check that the necessary bits for connection are present in the kitchen, so that delivery and installation will be straightforward. Also on Friday, the dining table and chairs arrived on Friday from Emmaus.

On Saturday I picked up a van from Enterprise (Practical being all out of vans for the whole weekend) and had an adventure of a day with the help of jdc39. We picked up the 2 second-hand sofas from Nadia & Adam, spent a brief time cooing over their tiny baby, then survived not one but two IKEAs (Wembley and Edmonton - a vaguely sane route home from Beaconsfield) and returned home with a good haul of useful stuff. The van was just too short to fit in enough IVAR as well as the sofas, but I've now discovered I can order the rest online, and delivery will cost less than another van hire.

We got home and I went to a party at crazyscot's and stayed up too late.

On Sunday Keith came over, loaded his stuff onto the Giant Trolley, and helped me unload the rest of the van. Then I did a tip run with the old dodgy mattress and some things belonging to lnr, who was then very helpful as I got a set of matching crockery from Tesco, and swapped an oldish freecycled Dyson for my own Dyson that's lived with my exhousemates for 4 years.

Then a break for late Sunday lunch at the Carlton with james_r and Hanna (and Tony and Charles!) James talked me into doing another tip run to remove some of the junk from his yard (3 rusty bikes, a broken tv and a broken cooker were among the haul). The staff at the tip were very helpful (on both occasions, actually). Soon after I got back, I showed around a potential long-term lodger, and then after a rest I went to help our new short-term lodger move in.

After a cuddle with Charles and dinner with Tony, I did some more fiddling with the accounting software until I was too tired to read the screen. The van went back this morning and I cycled from Histon to work - about 3-4 times as far as I normally cycle to work, so I was a bit hotter!

What's next? Finish getting Accountz set up and work out how much money we have; make the internet order with IKEA; sort out my new credit card; cull the rest of the crockery and agree with Keith what he's having and what's being freecycled; fit the cupboard locks to stop Charles opening them.

I'm on Ubuntu at home now and it's been surprisingly painless. It's not perfect of course, but it mostly Just Works well enough for me and I can open all my old letters and spreadsheets, including the vital tax one. I've bought a copy of Personal Accountz as suggested by james_r and it installed very easily. I have QIF exports of my old Microsoft Money courtesy of hilarityallen but I haven't yet tried to import them because reading user manuals while fending off marauding baby is not recommended.

I was ill last Friday and Saturday with whatever had laid low Tony and Charles the previous days. By Saturday night I was well enough for an evening at the Gallery with lovely stew and spong and people being amazingly patient with Charles's newfound mobility and unstoppable determination to divide the world into things edible and bashable.

Keith and Cat have been moving out. Keith has decided to avoid using a van and instead bought a giant trolley thing - it's 1m x 2m, takes 1 metric tonne and he moved the pinball table, the sofa, at least one bed, and many many boxes on it. Not all at once, that would be silly. Cat has ferried some items by car. We went to Sunday lunch at the pub and returned a few hours later to find the sofa and the dining table had gone. The armchairs have been left until I retrieve the sofas we're getting from Nadia and Adam. The living room feels really roomy at the moment, even with the regular baby-related mess, and I'd like to try to keep some of that roomy feel when we refill it with furniture.

Today I've been quite productive. james_r took me to Emmaus and I found a reasonable replacement dining table and chairs, to be delivered on Friday. I got in touch with Adam to arrange collecting the sofas this weekend and I've requested a van booking from Practical. And I finally advertised the rooms in the house on ucam.adverts.accommodation.

Still need to: work out what IVAR we need, browse IKEA catalogue for other items, order mattress, order dishwasher, import accounts into Accountz and work out how much money we have, agree the remaining DIY with Keith. And a lot more besides, but that will do for now.

I've agreed with myself that I will not feel guilty about not volunteering for anything or taking on anything new: job, home and baby is only just manageable right now. Not until Charles has a bedroom of his own and the study is emptied of junk. If I'm together enough to get those things done, I've enough capacity to take on something else, but not until.

Keith & Cat have given their notice to move out, so we're looking for lodgers to replace them. If you know someone who might be interested in one (or both!) rooms, please point them at my contact details. Room details are:

2 furnished double rooms in large shared house with garden. Very pleasant location in north Cambridge, between Huntingdon Road and Histon Road. Shops and bus routes 5,6,7 all a few minutes walk away. Broadband internet. Permanent occupants are a couple with young baby and 2 cats. Each room is 400 pounds per month including all bills except telephone. Available from mid-July.

The house is now entirely Finch-owned (modulo huge sum of money owed to bank). The process started with a letter sent on the 4th January this year, and is now finally over. We're hugely pleased with and grateful to our Independent Financial Advisor, Nick Torrens, and our conveyancer, Mark Massucco. We're rather less pleased with our bank, Intelligent Finance, and their ability to come up with new and interesting ways to hold up a perfectly straightforward process.

Completion was today. Slightly worryingly, my online banking at IF shows me having 2 mortgages at the moment, but I assume it will sort itself out overnight.

Also on Wednesday Keith dropped a minor bombshell: over Christmas he and Cat decided they want to buy somewhere together during 2007. So he wants his equity and either Tony & I buy him out or we sell the house. Other options probably exist but they get very Complicated. So I started working out what needs to be done.
( Read more... )
Apart from signing and posting the letter to our bankers I can't do anything else until Monday. I wasn't really wanting to do this, but given it's going to happen, it's in my interest to do it as fast as possible, as the house is likely to increase in value faster than we can reduce the mortgage or build up savings. If it's just affordable now, it'll be less so by the end of the year. I'm somewhat stressed about the prospect of being suddenly even less well-off than expected, as well as managing life with a new baby, but currently I'm channelling most of that into making the process go as smoothly and cost-effectively as possible.

Ironically, on Thursday Tony & I finally signed our wills, which contain some carefully worked out provisions for my half of the house. If this all goes to plan we'll need to change those clauses completely to something rather more standard.

On Thursday night Sue and I decided to do a Christmas dinner yesterday, as she'll be spending Christmas Day in Heathrow airport.  We cheated hugely - she bought a pre-stuffed turkey joint from Iceland and I got ready-to-roast potatoes and precooked Yorkshire puddings from the Co-op.  I did at least chop and cook all the vegetables myself.  Nick C came up from London to catch up with her a bit, and crashed with us overnight.  I originally aimed for dinner on the table at 2pm but didn't get the turkey in early enough; I then rescheduled for 2:30 and had fun working out what needed to be cooked when, and it all went swimmingly apart from the potatoes failing to cook properly.  So we ended up eating it sometime after 3pm.  We were saved from hungry grumpiness by smoked salmon and bread nibbles served while dinner was cooking (a cunning trick I have learned from Tony's family), and in general the atmosphere was so relaxed that I refused to get bothered by producing dinner late.

After stuffing ourselves royally we sat and chattered until our bellies could cope with dessert and then returned to the table for mince pies with custard and/or cream, and the cheese and pate platter.  After that we watched Bill Bailey: Part Troll (after which Sue went to bed) and The Transporter (after which the rest of us talked for a while and then went to bed).  We had Christmas lights on the tree and on the bookcases, and lit candles.  In total 3 bottles of red wine were consumed by the four of us during the afternoon and evening, and a small amount of port.  It was a lovely day.

This morning Sue finished packing and was collected by a taxi at 1pm.  Tony went with her to the bus to help her load her baggage on board.  I'm going to miss her hugely, and it's unlikely she'll live with us again even if she returns to the UK.   She's been great company and so often helpful with Charles.  The house will not be the same without her.

This afternoon I have listened to 9 Lessons and Carols from King's and hung up all the Christmas cards.  There are presents under the tree (most of them for Charles) and we have everything we need for tomorrow.  Keith is filling the roof with new insulation before departing for his parents' house and Cat has already gone.  Just the three of us having our first Christmas together.

We're going to have a room available from the start of January, and I thought I'd try the informal friends-of-friends network before advertising more widely (though I'm aware that the pool of people willing to share with cats or babies is limited, and both at once even more so). Details are:

1 double room, shared house in nice location in north Cambridge. Shared bathroom, kitchen, living room, garden. Shops and bus routes 5,6,7 all within easy reach. Other occupants are 2 cats, 2 couples and a baby. 400 ukp pcm including all bills except telephone.

If you know anyone who might be interested, please point them at my contact details.

Felt less ill this morning, but tired enough to take another day's sick leave and get properly better this time. Alternately reading, listening to the radio, and faffing online passed the day quite pleasantly. By mid-afternoon I was feeling well enough to tackle some of the paperwork pile lurking around my desk. God knows what crack the gas suppliers use to come up with their formula for 'estimated use', but they'd overestimated us by 300 units - and that's after it's taken me over a month to get round to checking the reading. Still, their automated meter-reading line works well. I also had a pleasant customer service experience with Nationwide, requesting a replacement credit card as my signature has nearly rubbed off the existing one.

Given I was feeling better, fanf booked us tickets to see The Bourne Supremacy at Coneworld[1] for an early evening showing. My first visit there and the seats are agreeably comfy with sufficient leg room. The film itself was really very good, nicely following up the first one, with extra car-chase goodness. The visual style was even more edgy: short, fast, close-up, often moving too fast to see clearly but conveying a feeling very well, and the plot nicely executed. I would happily watch The Bourne Identity again, despite seeing it very recently, and I think Supremacy will make it onto my (very limited) DVD buy list when it's released.

The fly in the ointment for me was the botoxed forehead of Joan Allen (Pamela Landy), which kept distracting me every time she was on screen - a great expressionless expanse of forehead that made me want to scream in annoyance at the stupid things women do for 'beauty'.

[1] Not a typo, or rather based on a friend's typo the other week that we decided to keep.