FRUGAL LIVING CHALLENGE 2010, part 1. (Living on £4,000 a year)

NualaBuala

Big hugs SlowlyFading, bummer about the car and not getting home. Hope you can find some (frugal) way of treating yourself this weekend.

Fingers crossed for your OH, JayJay

I'm so sad but I've just been checking out the upcoming specials in Aldi & Lidl and got so excited I had to come on here and share!:o All sorts of great stuff coming up next Thursday in both. Aldi has fruit shrubs and tomato/strawberry hanging baskets, also lots of nice bird feeding stuff. Lidl has flower and veg seeds. My intentions are good but I'm feeling very unfrugal and want it ALL! :rotfl:

JayneC

xnatalie81x wrote: »

my OH just gave me £10 to have the heating on all day lol. He is learning

Giggles:rotfl:

Babyboysmummy - I got some silicon cake cases from ASda recently £2.65 for 12 which is cheapest I've found them.

BB - well done getting your lodger on board with recycling.

Am doing reasonably well with everything apart from grocery shopping BUT have really stocked up cupboards so hoping that will even out.
Managed to do a bit of batch cooking. Got 2lb mince and cooked half with gravy and half in tomato based sauce. There was enough for pasta bolognaise for 5, cottage pie for 1. Tortilla wraps for 6, 2 lots of meat and potato pie filling (family sized) and enough mince in gravy left for another meal(but not sure what I'm doing yet).

have to go now - DD3 chucking me off to do course work, how rude, lol

Erme

nykmedia wrote: »

I've been trying to get my costs down for broadband, such as it is, but to no avail. I'm paying £31.53 per month for a pathetic connection speed, line rental and evening/weekend calls. Best offer I can find, so far, is £27.53 per month for line, calls and broadband, but would need to take minimum 12 month contract and switch my provider. One of the pitfuls of country living, but I guess I should be grateful we get broadband at all. Anyone got any other suggestions? This is what BT has provided on the line check:

Maximum connection speed 0.512Mb download, BT Total Broadband.

The quest for frugaldom continues.

I'm paying about £40 pcm for free 01 and 02 no's (all the time) including line and broadband. It's alot but I left it too late to switch from BT to talk talk but maybe will do next year ...but currently it's within budget. Just think ...sky was cheaper than that (but then I 0 count tv license when I had sky which was more)...

Praying you can get it sorted....

hugs

E

ceridwen

nykmedia wrote: »

Pagangirl, you've a lot of reading to do, as this challenge started on MSE at the end of 2007. Prior to that it was run elsewhere, so it's been around since 1999, when I first started documenting it. I'd love to say I'm now self sufficient, own my own smallholding and have my retirement all sorted out but life just keeps on happening, so none of these things are true. Maybe one day. I'll keep on frugaling in the meantime. :rotfl:

So - where was the start of this back when...ie in 1999 purlease?:)

Errr....well there will be some further suggestions we could follow there methinks (bar the pheasant "beating" obviously for most of us.....yikes...NO THANKS!)

LilacPixie

NualaBuala wrote: »

specials in Aldi & Lidl and got so excited I had to come on here and share!:o All sorts of great stuff coming up next Thursday in both. Aldi has fruit shrubs and tomato/strawberry hanging baskets, also lots of nice bird feeding stuff. Lidl has flower and veg seeds. My intentions are good but I'm feeling very unfrugal and want it ALL! :rotfl:

OOO strawberry hanging baskets I like. Off to investigate prices.

JayJay14

Just checked out the soft fruit at Aldi - I think I'll have OH go in on Thursday morning and get a few - I've been waiting for their offers to fill the garden with fruit.

Erme

Don't know if this has been posted before so apologies if it has...but just was chilling and thought 'I spend a fortune on sanitary wear - got to find something on the homemade variety. Know it's possible to make your own nappies so this must be pretty similar' - googled it and found the following two links...

Scroll down for the first no sew variety (baring in mind my sewing machine is currently bust waiting a £70 fix this mite be me in a few months)

http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/sanitarypads.htm


and the second one the pics look AMAZING and like so cool...

http://www.tinybirdsorganics.com/organiccotton/clothpads.html


I thought in sos I could keep micropore tape on me @ all times and make a temp one out of any loo roll to hand (and micropore tape )... which would be pennies...

Anyone any other knowledge on this...

E
PS. What's the best thing for cleaning these things? Ecover or vanish or what?

Aril

Hello fellow frugallers:j:j
All my frugal jobs and otherwise have been done for today so have sneaked on here to get away from the mad yellings going on downstairs as the big chap and small person play on the wii:D:D
Frugal blind is coming on well- have completed some more stitching on it and am now ready to measure the next bit. Am also hoping to persuade OH to help me put up the beautiful beaded quilt my Mum passed across to me in the hall at the weekend. Don't know what the small person has been doing to his school uniform but have needed to carry out emergency repairs on that aswell this evening:eek::eek:
Have finally identified a use for the silly sized guest towels I refound when decluttering- they are going to be cut up into flannels as a frugal doable project for February. We're also starting to think about what veg we might grow this year- we've decided against peppers as they weren't a roaring success but will grow beans and cucumbers again. We're also going to have a crack at garlic and OH has just announced that he'd like to grow our own sprouts for a certain festive occasion whose name I shall not mention in January:rotfl::rotfl:
After 3 years of procrastination and hiding offending papers I have finally made a start on sorting out the bag of bits of frugal scribblings I have made over the last 5 years. It's amazing what you rediscover and what you've forgotten when you look back through! I've also bought the 13p 3 pack bar of soap from Sainsburys to have a crack at making some of this laundry gloop. Cleaners need to be my next frugal project as the eco toilet cleaner is now costing me 1.63 a bottle and we go through a bottle every 10 days or so and I'd prefer to be greenish where possible.
Made a brief foray in the zerowaste challenge blog- at last I know what to do with my empty crisp packets [I know I shouldn't buy them but realistically me not buying them is not going to happen:D]
Righto have a good weekend frugallers- I'm off to learn more invaluable information from the glorious Mr Stephen Fry on QI!!
Arilx

JayJay14

Just to say - OH has just come home and said I am sad:D

This is because my avatar is a picture of the ciy's new recycling scheme ( we now have kitchen and garden collections as welll as dry recyclables)

Also the picture was taken in front of our house (well fuzzed but on the original you can see my tomato hanging baskets on either side of the garage door):rotfl:

We've worked hard in our office to get this scheme off the ground so I'm rather proud of the picture.

mooomin

I hope this works....



As long as I spend less than £5 this weekend, I'm on budget for the first month of being a frunchkin :j I might leave my weekly shop until Monday I will need to get milk and bread over the weekend, but hopefully that will be it!

*prays image posting worked*