I don’t mind most chores too much. But I really struggle to enjoy vacuuming.

Groceries and cooking? Usually fun, or neutral if I’m tired or rushed. Loading and unloading the dishwasher? Doing the dishes by hand? Watering the house plants? No problem. Dusting, cleaning the kitchen and the bathroom? I can get myself into a mindset where I enjoy it. But vacuuming I just never manage to enjoy. The vacuum itself is bulky and in my way. The furniture is in my way. The cord is in my way. It’s noisy. I need to pause to switch the nozzle between carpet mode and floor mode.

During my “rich people years” the one service we paid for was cleaning. I really miss that. I looked into paying for it myself but even the cheapest options (sticking to the legal ones and not “under the table” deals where the employees have no rights) are more than I can justify paying in my current situation.

For this past year I’ve been keeping track of my costs again. We did the same in the 2000s but then stopped at some point. Now I’m starting it up again.

The first couple of months were very tight. Then my financial situation improved for several reasons (including moving my mortgage to a different bank) but I kept going with the records. A couple of months’ worth of data is better than nothing, but many costs are unevenly spread through the year – a full year gives a much better picture of where the money goes.

By far the largest item is the mortgage interest, at 20% of the total. Electricity, homeowner’s insurance, water and sanitation together make up another 10%, so that’s a total of 30% on housing. Almost all of that is fixed in the short term. Even with the electricity costs, over half is a fixed fee.

Food 15%, the children 7%, and those few categories together already account for half of all my costs. The average Swedish household spends 13% of their income on food; I’m comparing to total costs and not total income so it’s not quite the same, but close enough.

Fees at 6% was a one-off fee this year for repatriating my British retirement account. I could have postponed it, I guess, but it’s got to be done sooner or later. It was fine as long as the UK was in the EU but now I run increasing risks of administrative fees, double taxation, currency swings, etc etc. Got to be done: a known expense now is better than decades of mess later when I’m retired.

Car ownership is an expensive habit. Repairs, insurance, inspection, new winter tires, fuel, parking. On average it costs me 100 kr (just under 9 EUR) per day. Do I get 100 kr of value out of it on most days? No, absolutely not. But on the days when we do need it, there is often no alternative. Even just the bi-weekly rides when the kids move with all their things from here to Eric’s apartment – how would we manage those without a car?

Still I feel like I could do so much more fun things for that money. For less than the cost of car ownership, I’ve paid for four vacations, including both travel and lodging, some of them for several people. Two weeks in Estonia for the three of us, an archipelago ramble for me and Ingrid, a long weekend in London for myself and Adrian, and an upcoming two-week trip for me (that I’m doing together with Ingrid but she’s paying her own share). I will definitely revisit the question of car ownership in the future: Ingrid is about to start on 15 months of military service, and that will change our collective driving habits quite a lot.

Media is another category of costs that I am very conscious of. A newspaper, several magazines, a streaming service, Spotify, altogether over 1200 SEK every month on average. While I could do without them, I would really miss every single one. Except for the streaming service, that’s really only for Adrian’s and Ingrid’s sake, but that’s not a very large part. Really, everything below “Car” has been well worth the money.

The smaller categories that are bundled up in “Other” in the chart are many and varied. I’ve somehow managed to spend almost 6500 SEK on kitchen equipment and utensils, and roughly the same amount on knitting stuff. There shouldn’t be so much need for more kitchen equipment in the future, I would think, but the spending on knitting will continue.

I’ve bought fancy chocolate for 2000 kr and clothes for 1300 kr. How’s that for priorities? Although that’s perhaps a bit misleading because that doesn’t include shoes for 2800 kr.

Other fun things include museum tickets for 2900 kr, potted plants for 1000 kr and birdseed for 427 kr.

The least nice thing about the divorce is how much less money I have.

The largest cost is the house, since I had to buy out Eric’s half of it. Where before we had two salaries and a small mortgage, I now have one salary and a significant mortgage. Less than half the income, more than twice the mortgage. I am not quite “house-rich, cash-poor” but sort of tending in that direction.

I have considered selling the house and downsizing, but for now, as long as at least one of the kids is still living here, I’ve decided that it’s worth keeping, even with the cost. They’ve both lived here their entire lives (those first 18 months in London for Ingrid don’t really count) and I don’t want to yank that away. I am very attached to it myself as well – I’ve poured a lot myself into the design and decoration, indoors as well as outdoors – but I can imagine letting go of it at one point. Not yet.

For a good two decades we used to never have to worry about money. We didn’t have any particularly expensive habits or tastes – no fancy car, no exotic vacations, no interest in luxury brands. Whatever we wanted or needed in our daily lives, we could buy, without thinking about the cost. (Obviously excepting major purchases like a car.) Now I think twice about every expense, and keep postponing various major purchases because I can’t afford them. This is, of course, how the majority of people live. Really these twenty-plus years were the abnormality and I’m now going back to a normal state.

I have always been frugal by nature, and it could take an effort for me to splurge on something that I only wanted but didn’t quite need. Thus it hasn’t been difficult at all to switch to savings mode. Or rather, back to savings mode, I guess. We really didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up. I was working and contributing to rent at home when I was fifteen. As a student obviously money was always tight. It was only when I started working that I suddenly had more.

What’s different now is the time horizon and the scope of responsibility. As a child, I may have helped with money, but the responsibility for making it last was not mine. As a student, I lived in the here and now. I have money for this month? Great, that’s enough. Now I have children whom I am responsible for; a house that will surely need repairs at some point; a retirement to plan for. The challenge lies in finding a balance between today and the future – between saving, and allowing myself to enjoy things now. I think I need to build up more of a savings buffer so that I can be less anxious about it.

It’s been a year now of me living a single/divorced life. It has been a good year.

I don’t miss Eric, and I don’t miss our relationship. I can miss what we had some twenty years ago, but the thing we had towards the end was not worth keeping on life support. It was broken, which is so obvious now when I see it from some distance, even though it took me years to realize when I was right in the middle of it. The decision to divorce was absolutely the right one for me. I feel so much better now.

The bi-weekly lifestyle suits me excellently. Every other week I have Adrian and Ingrid for company – someone to cook for, to watch movies with, to talk about our days. Every other week I am on my own – nobody to cook for, peace and quiet, and plenty of time to get things done.

I hadn’t realized how much I missed having significant stretches of time for myself. When I have the house to myself, I can breathe out and relax in a way that just doesn’t happen otherwise.

Cooking and buying groceries for three persons every other week, instead of four persons every week, is a lot less work. And it usually leaves me with leftovers and enough groceries for the other weeks, so those weeks I barely need to do anything. I feel like I have so much more spare time than I used to. And that’s even though I’m working 100% instead of the 80% I used to.

On the negative side: being solely responsible for everything, big and small. No chore just disappears because someone else noticed it and stepped in before I got around to doing it. There is no one to share the big, scary decisions with – I have no sounding board.

Also, of course, I have less money. We used to be two breadwinners, me with a really good salary and Eric with an excellent one. Now I still have many of the same fixed costs but only one salary. There is much less left for discretionary spending.

I worry quite a bit about money these days. Less income, larger loan, narrower margins, smaller reserves, no backup. Should I lose my job and end up long-term unemployed, things could get very bad. Not, like, starving in the streets bad, but definitely lose the house bad. The labour market in Sweden is shaky, especially for those who are older; there are scary articles in the newspapers about highly educated specialists losing their jobs and not being able to find a new one despite hundreds of applications. I am still working on finding a balance between worrying and saving for an uncertain future, and allowing myself to spend now.

My first year after the divorce. That deserves a post of its own, so I’ll leave it at that for now.

Adrian and Ingrid are here every other week. The move on Sunday evenings is a bit of a hassle for everyone, but in general I think we’ve all settled in well into the new routines.

The divorce was a trigger to cleaning out stuff in all kinds of corners of the house, from old CDs to decades-old phone bills. Cleaning out the basement came with bonus infestation of mice.

2025 was also my first year at Active Solution, after seven years at tretton37, which imploded spectacularly, ending in a bankruptcy last January. Active Solution as employer is as similar to tretton37 as I could find, and I brought Sortera with me as a client, so the change was much smaller than it could have been. Since I don’t actually work with any of my colleagues, it’s taking time for me to get to know them and feel like I’m part of the gang.

The two company conferences have been most beneficial in that aspect: actually spending time together, talking about coding, getting to know each other. First an amazing trip to Monte Isola in April (day 1, day 2, day 3), and in the autumn a weekend sailing to an island in the archipelago.

Other travels included the usual trip to Estonia, which was as it always is: meeting friends and family, having fun. New for this year was my first ever time on a SUP board.

In August Ingrid and I had a long weekend in the Stockholm archipelago (day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4). The archipelago is almost too close to home – I’ve never spent any significant time there. This was a great introduction and I plan to do more of it in the future.

During autumn break, Adrian and I went to London. It’s important to me, one of my favourite places in the world, and I have so many memories from there, that I wanted to share it with Adrian. (day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4).

I also did two four-day hikes on the Sörmlandsleden trail, one from Hälleforsnäs to Katrineholm (stages 23 to 27) and the other from Kolmården to Katrineholm (32 to 27). I think I’ve done about half of the entire trail now. Might be done before retirement if I continue at this pace, haha.

Other hobbies were mostly craftsy. Mostly I knitted a lot, unsurprisingly. The larger projects this year were one orange sweater, one red cardigan, and one white dress (of which I haven’t been able to post a final photo because of my broken laptop). In between there were socks and hats and such, as well as a pair of slippers (notable because they were my first intentionally felted item).

At my embroidery club, the highlights include me finishing the Stockholm scene as well as our textile printing workshop.

I baked more than I’ve ever done before. Bread, karask, cakes, buns, Christmas goodies. Eric was always the baker in our house – he was both more interested and (as a result) more experienced. I am not willing to go without all the good stuff so I’ve learned. Cakes are not a challenge – just follow a recipe and you’ll be good. But breads and buns require technique and timing and experience. Mine have all come out OK, most even really good, with one or two notable exceptions. I don’t feel confident about my bread-baking skills at all, so every success feels like a major win.

In the garden, I finished planting the area in the front corner.

In other news, I switched to stronger glasses – and should probably upgrade again, I suspect.

Of the wider world, the one thing worth mentioning is the proliferation of AI everywhere.

Ingrid got her driver’s license and finished gymnasium and celebrated it with garden party. She’ll be doing military service starting in March and filled in most of the gap with a 4-month paid internship at Transdev.

Adrian did a week-long work experience “thing” at a pizzeria and started his last year of primary school.

This December has been unusually dark and dreary. News outlets reported a week ago that Stockholm had seen less than an hour of sunlight during the first half of the month. Reportedly 1934 holds the record with zero sunlight hours during the entire month.

The whole thing was universally depressing. It got to the point where people at work interrupted meetings to point out reflected sunshine on a tall building two blocks away. Look, a glimpse of the sun!

We’ve finally had some longer stretches of sunlight the past couple of days, and today was the first full day of clear skies, sandwiched between two clear nights as well. It felt like an oppressive weight was lifted off of the world.

Even at night, a clear sky makes a difference. Compared to heavy cloud cover, a proper dark night sky feels… well, not brighter, exactly, but lighter, somehow. It has a luster of its own, and there is a feeling of openness and space.

Nysse has the right idea, sleeping away a good majority of the day. I wish I could be like a bear and go into hibernation and just skip the next month or two. Wake me up when it’s light again. It doesn’t even need to be spring – just some daylight. Or some snow at least to brighten the world.

Everything is grey. It’s going to be +7°C and cloudy, with occasional rain, for the foreseeable future.

I struggle to find energy for anything. A midday walk makes no difference when all I get is dull greyness. I keep going out of discipline and habit. I get up because I always get up. I go to work because I need to go to work. I cook because I know that if I don’t serve myself a proper home-cooked dinner, I will have no appetite. I knit because at least it makes time pass.

For Adrian, I continue our tradition of daily chocolate toffees from Åre Chokladfabrik – a mixture of their Christmas toffees, saffron toffees, and salted caramel toffees. Except this year I only fill the pockets for every other week.

Ingrid asked for something weekly instead – daily sweets would be too much sugar, and daily anything would be too much to keep up with. So she gets a classical Christmas-themed short story and a Christmas-themed loose-leaf tea every Sunday in advent.

I occasionally vaguely consider giving myself an advent calendar of my own – there are even yarn advent calendars – but always decide against it. I generally don’t want more stuff in my life, and the stuff do I buy, I’m picky about. I buy with purpose. Random yarn, no matter how pretty, would be wasted on me. Chocolates, cheeses, liqueur… yarn, seeds, whatever – same. Something like the short stories that I got for Ingrid would possibly be the only exception.