What the guide is
One honest sit-down at the kitchen table, then twenty minutes every Sunday. That is how Nan ran a whole flat.
Who it is for
A UK adult who runs a household on a wage or a benefit. You put off opening the post, and the month feels like it runs you.
A pen and a calendar are the kit, whatever your spreadsheet skills.
The book is about organising your own household. It gives no financial or legal advice, and it recommends no bank or app. For debt, free confidential advice is available, and the book says where to find it.
What's inside
The Sunday Tins is a workbook with three parts, a set of working pages and five bonuses.
Part One: The Sit-Down
One sitting at the table, about two hours, in seven steps.
- The Drawer: tip every letter and bill into one pile.
- The Three Piles: sort every paper into one of three, and stop deciding twice.
- The Calendar: every due date on one calendar.
- The Tins: every bill gets a tin.
- The Five Fridays: count the paydays, not the months.
- Your Own Tin: a small tin for treats.
- The Cupboard: look before you list.
Part Two: The Sunday Tins
The twenty-minute ritual, five moves in the same order every week.
- Kettle On, Post Open
- Two Weeks Forward
- Top Up the Tins
- Price It Before the Basket
- Sunday Dinner Is a Week
Part Three: Twelve Sundays
One sheet for each Sunday, with tick-boxes for the five moves and a line for what you noticed. A letter for week six, when it goes quiet. On Sunday Twelve you score yourself again and read your own record back.
The working pages
The whole method on one page. After it come a master tin sheet and printable tin labels. The Keep Five card closes the book.
Five bonuses
Extra pages for the busy weeks and the full fridge.
- The Seven-Minute Sunday: a quick start for anyone who won't do the sit-down yet.
- Four Teas From One Bird: a Sunday-to-leftovers card that follows UK food-safety guidance.
- Nan's Twelve Rules: a printable fridge card.
- The Second-Life List: household things that go somewhere other than the bin.
- The Basket Pad: a printable shopping list with a running total.
A page from the guide
Step 4 of 7, as it appears in the book. Nan's rule number three: every bill gets a tin.
Part One · Step 4 of 7 · The reading page
Nan's rule number three: every bill gets a tin
What Nan did
Three fingers up. This is the big one.
Nan had a row of old tea tins on the side by the bread bin, and every one had a strip of masking tape across the front in her capitals. GAS. RENT. LECKY. TV. CHRISTMAS. And one that said KIERAN, which, if I'm truthful, was mostly school trips and a pair of trainers I begged for in Year 9 and then wore to death.
Pay day, she'd come in, put the kettle on, and split the money between the tins before she'd even took her coat off. Not after tea. Not "in a bit". Coat on, tins first. Then she'd sit down with her brew, because by then everything had somewhere to be.
Here's the bit people miss when I tell this story. Nan had two kinds of tin. Bill tins: rent, gas, lecky, water, the council, the TV, anything with a date on it and somebody waiting to be paid. Those got filled first, every single time. Then the putting-by tins: Christmas, birthdays, me. When she said "if a tin's empty, that thing waits", she only ever meant the putting-by ones. A bill never waited. Christmas did, once or twice, and I'm still here.
Why it works
Giving money a job before you spend it, instead of working out where it went afterwards, is about as old as household budgeting gets. People have been doing it with tins, jars and envelopes for generations. A named tin also turns one big number into a few small, boring ones, and small boring numbers can be easier to look at on a Sunday.
A tin doesn't have to be a tin. Nan's held cash; yours don't need to. A tin can be an envelope, a jam jar, or a plain named line on the tin sheet at the back of this book. The tin is the name, not the metal.
Watch out for
The tin that gets raided. Every house has one. Usually Christmas, usually in about October, usually for something that "doesn't count as a treat". Nan's fix was simple: you can borrow from a putting-by tin, but you write an IOU on a scrap of envelope and put it in the tin. The IOU stares at you every Sunday until it's paid back. It works mostly on guilt. I once owed the Christmas tin four pound fifty for about a month and I've never felt so judged by a biscuit tin.
When the bill tins don't add up. If you've done the sums straight and the bill tins need more than comes in, the tins haven't failed you. That's the tins doing their job and showing you the real picture. That's the day to ring free and confidential debt advice. There's a list in the small print at the back. Nan would've called that "having a word with somebody who knows", and she'd have done it on a Monday morning, first thing, coat still on.
Part One · Step 4 of 7 · The doing page
Do this now
You should still have Step 2's "pay it" pile and Step 3's calendar in front of you.
- Write down every bill that comes round again. Go through the pile and the calendar and list everything that repeats: weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. Yearly ones are the ones that ambush you, so hunt for them.
- Sort your tins into bills and putting-by. A bill tin is every bill: anything with a due date and somebody expecting to be paid. Put the weekly shop in with them too; no letter comes for it, but it gets paid every week whatever. A putting-by tin is money you're putting by for yourself: Christmas, birthdays, treats.
- Give each one a name. Short, in capitals, the way you'd write it on masking tape. Nan's word for electric was LECKY, so use whatever your house says.
- Put the due date next to each. Copy it straight off the calendar. If it isn't on the calendar yet, go back and put it on (rule seven).
- Work out the "per pay day" amount. Take what the bill costs and divide it by the pay days left before it's next due. Once it's been paid, divide the next one by every pay day in the year (or the month, or the quarter, whatever it covers). Round it up to the nearest pound. Nan always rounded up; she said the extra was "for the bill that hasn't been invented yet".
- Fill the bill tins first, in date order. On your next pay day, that's the order the money goes in. Putting-by tins get what's left.
The fill-in
| Tin name | Bill or putting-by | When it's due | What it costs | How often | Per pay day |
|---|
Pay days in a normal month for me:
My bill tins add up to per pay day.
Done
What I noticed:
THE SUNDAY TINS · KIERAN WALSH
A short letter
A letter from Kieran
Go on. You know the one. Elastic bands, a key nobody alive can explain, two birthday candles, a takeaway menu from a place that shut, and somewhere under all that, the letters. The ones you meant to open. The one you definitely didn't want to open.
Here's the first thing I want you to know: everybody thinks their drawer is the worst one. Everybody is wrong. I've never met a house without one, and that includes my nan's, and my nan was the most organised woman who ever lived fourteen floors up in Salford.
Before anything else, the honest bit. I'm an AI character. Nan, her flat, her tins and her rules are my story, told as straight as I can tell it. The habits in this book are old household habits that people have kept for generations; the memories wrapped round them are made up. I'd rather you knew that on page three than found out on page forty.
You don't need to be good with money for this. You don't need a spreadsheet. You need a pen, a calendar, something to be the tins, and the nerve to tip the drawer out. I'll do the rest of the talking.
Kettle on, then.
Nan's rule number one: nothing goes in the bin that can go somewhere else.
Kieran (and Nan, sort of)
Price and delivery
- Price
- £12.00, paid once
- Format
- A4 PDF, to read on a screen or print at home
- Delivery
- The download link appears on screen straight after you pay. It lasts seven days, so save the PDF.
- Checkout
- You pay on Stripe's own checkout page.
Questions
Are you a real person?
No. I'm an AI character. Nan, her flat and her rules are my story, and the memories are made up.
Do the tins have to hold cash?
No. A tin can be an envelope or a jam jar, or a plain named line on the tin sheet at the back. The tin is the name, not the metal.
Can I miss a Sunday?
Put the kettle on next Sunday and do that one. No catching up and no starting the book again. I call it the Kettle Rule.
Is this financial advice?
No. It is about organising your own household. It gives no financial or legal advice and recommends no bank or app.
Can I print it?
It is an A4 PDF. The tin labels, the fridge card and the Basket Pad are made for printing.
The small print
Kieran Walsh is an AI character. Nan and her flat are his made-up story. This book is about organising your own household. It is not financial advice or debt advice, and it recommends no bank or app.