Make do, Mend and Minimise in 2017

Pipneyjane lots of places sell them - give it a Google. I know Ikea have them & Laura Ashley - I got mine from Dunelm but it's only a single bed not like Thriftwizards.

PipneyJane wrote: »

Hello, may I join in? I try to I've a frugal life, although I have a big weakness for books.

I've just started reading the thread from the beginning.



Please tell me from where you purchased the daybed. We may be in the market for one. Many thanks.

PipneyJane, it came from a local furniture store, in their sale. I'll see if I can find the paperwork & let you know what make it is, then you can see whether anyone near you carries them. I'm impressed with it so far; it seems really sturdy & it's comfortable to both sit & sleep on. Various guests will be sleeping on it this week coming...

Celebrating here; I've "minimised" the contents of my porch somewhat by selling a loom that was lurking out there. I've also put a spare door on Gumtree, and taken an entire basket of needlework kits that was hiding under the loom up to my stall. There's still an awful lot of clearing to do out there but at least I've made a start, and it's much easier to manoeuvre out there now.

Not quite mending, but I've done up a little brass-bound wooden box, too. The outside was streaked with - ??? - something yucky - and it was dusty & full of crumbled oil pastels inside, but now it's cleaned up, spent the night with a lavender-soaked rag inside it & the wood "fed" it looks & smells lovely! As for making do, I transformed an excess of blueberries, a rather ancient lemon & some left-over buttermilk into a pile of blueberry & lemon muffins this afternoon, instead of going up to the supermarket & buying some chocolate. Busy weekend ahead...

Make Do
I have now emptied four drawers in the freezer and I felt so bereft I placed an order with Muscle Foods for later in the month.

Does anyone else get a bit twitchy when they can see the bottom of the freezer drawers or back of the cupboards?

Minimise
A few more weeds tidied away.

Unfortunately I have had to bin a large bird feeder because my friendly squirrels have now bitten through the feeder container and is now unmendable. It was about a metre tall with twelve feeding places and somehow all have been bitten/broken/nibbled in less than four weeks. So we are back to two small feeders. I watched the squirrel push up the lid of said new feeder and happily munch away for over five minutes.

Mend
Pushing my luck a bit but ... I have mended my accounting system so I can add items in quickly rather than panicking to meet deadlines.

Hello everyone, I am loving hearing about your make-do, mending and minimising tips. You are all very inspiring.

Make Do- My husband has been researching online for the purchase of a document safe. I pointed out to him that a) We already own a small safe and b) We are hardly the Onassis family so why do we need two safes?
He was thrilled to bits that he had 'got the price down' to £40 and argued that our current safe was too full and there wasn't room in there.
Of course he was absolutely wrong! a simple tidying, decluttering and packing of stuff into bags rather than boxes and we have a roomy safe. He has just been into the garage and made a shelf to put a small tray to hold my few bits of jewellery and we will hopefully have less chaos in there in the future. So we managed to make do and minimise and hopefully he'll stop rabbiting on about getting a document safe!
On the subject of minimising what do people do with out of date passbooks from building societies and also old passports? We seem to have a lot of them in our safe taking up valuable room. Would you just shred them?
I am also wondering whether to hold on to the chequebooks in there. I had a look and we haven't written a cheque since 2012. Everything is online these days. Have I written my last ever cheque? It makes me feel a little nostalgic if I have!
As for the little bits of jewellery. all those things with little monetary worth but lot's of sentimental value, my nan's engagement ring, my MIL's rings, FIL's medals, my mum's Marcasite necklace how silly that it sits unloved in our safe only looked at once in a blue moon. Unless my son makes a late dash to the finishing line and provides us with grandchildren what will happen to that jewellery? Will it one day just be gathering dust in my son's safe? Our relationship with material things is I think rather complicated! I'm beginning to wish I'd never looked into that safe it always makes me a little sad and wistful!