Preparing for winter II

seafarers_wife

woohoo finally finished reading the thread :j

ive got my notebook ready for tomorrow so i can jot things down as i need to measure for the curtains and find a dunelm mills/cheapy place to get curtains.

im fully stocked up on the baby nappies and wipes front, i went a bit ott in costco a few weeks ago, so even going with 10 nappies a day on size one, ive enough to last me about 2 weeks, then ive got a box of size 2 and a box of size 3 and around 26 packs of baby wipes :rotfl:

tomorrow im going to phone the gas company and make a card payment over the phone as they havent taken the dd for 3 months so i want to increase the dd for £30 to £50 for the gas just to give us that bit of wriggle room so we dont get hit with a huge bill.

ive also got yacktrax things to add to my list to buy after reading through the thread.

jamanda

Just ordered yacktrax jobs for my dad. Had a chat with him and gave him severe warnings about walking on polished floors with them.

Other ongoing winter stuff is collecting as much wood as possible, and buying coal now and again when funds permit. Kitchen curtains still waiting for fleeces to be attached - can't make my mind up which way to go on these. Was going to put lining tape on the top and the shop didn't have any at the time. May try again or go to plan b.

I'm really struggling for time to do anything extra to usual cleaning/cooking/work etc. as the garden has reached hectic time too.

Oh, and just bought two pairs of "winter" trousers for DH for work to keep his little legs warmer and drier. Good trousers bought cheap, with cashback, discount etc. at about £11/pair. Bought him some good but half price waterproof overtrousers for when I kick him out with the dog. That's him done, as I stocked up on fleeces last year when they were discounted.

Checked my gas and electric useage, and we are nearly 30% down on the previous year's usage. Don't think this has resulted in actual money savings because of the previous price increases, and certainly we won't be able to keep it level money wise this year.

Keep soldiering on everyone - winter will sneak up on us before we realise.

Alisonpennypincher

play2day wrote: »

How about adding a contrasting band in them and making a couple of scatter cushions to match? You could manage this from one curtain from a CS to save on pennies and give your room a whole new look.

It is a real possibility but my curtains have a "embossed" type pattern in them so not sure if it would look a bit daft. No worse than curains short by 4 inches though :rotfl:

Thanks for your help

helen_jelly

madtrekker wrote: »

For those looking for flanelette sheets, VERY have now got them on buy one get one free and they're reduced so it works out at £5.10 for 2 x double sheets (delivery is free if you use collect+):

http://www.very.co.uk/lace-flannelette-fitted-sheet-buy-one-get-one-free/745154973.prd?browseToken=%2fq%2fflanelette+sheets

Thanks for the heads up on the sheets - just ordered mine

Helen

Dee5565

Been reading through this thread to get some more ideas.
Started late last year but did okay.
Couldnt get out for two weeks with the snow as we live on a hill and it was too dangerous. Had enough food thanks to this thread.
We also lost our water for ten days as the pipes froze then burst. So parts of Northern Ireland had no water, also no warning.
I did have water stored in the house, as someone suggested here last year but not enough for ten days for the two os us.
Shops sold out in hours, so they had to deliver bottles of water to everyone.
So now I always keep some water during the year, but closer to winter I will be buying alot more of the 5liter bottle.
Might not happen again, but I want to be prepared
Thank you for all of your ideas.

Triggles

We're looking to stock up on food/nonperishables soon, just need to find the room to store it creatively! Small amount of money coming in, so want to use some of it towards this and possibly put some down on electricity/gas ahead of time, to keep the winter bills down. Our house gets miserably cold downstairs in the winter, most likely due to some windows that don't have the best seal. It's a council house, and they won't replace them unless they're damaged in some way, and according to them, poorly put in windows are not reason enough to replace them. sigh... Former tenant did double glazing and decided to replace most of the windows in the house with these stupid dodgy ones. Not much we can do about it, except try to reduce the amount of cold air coming in around them.

Stocking up on water is a good idea as well, thanks.

We're also trying to use the car as little as possible now, saving the money we'd be using for petrol and putting it aside for in the winter, when we're more likely to use the car during wet or inclement weather when needed.

Definitely need to clean out the freezer, although we did it about two months ago, I'd like to go through it once more before stocking it back up again.

We've started getting Christmas presents, but again, storage is an issue, so we do have to be careful about that.

We're all set for ice and snow - snow shovel in shed, and 2 huge bags of salt. I'd like to think that will last us. If not, we'll have to hope we can get more in. I'm really paranoid about slipping on the ice - DH broke his leg requiring surgery years ago from a slip on the ice, and my father slipped on the ice, sustaining a skull fracture and brain damage and never really recovered, passing away in March of this year. Both of these injuries occurred on the footpath directly in front of their homes. Ice is so treacherous.

I need to quickly put together some mitten strings for the boys. We used the clip mitten holders last year, and DS2 kept unfastening them and lost the mittens anyway. Strings are not that easy to lose. LOL

sb88_2

Hi!

This thread is fantastic, setting up our first home soon, and I didn't even consider winter preperations!! EEK. I Saw this special offer, and thought someone might be interested!

Mens "Field boots" £12.99, on Aldis website, can't post the link myself though, sorry!

Shame I can't see any for women

Morganarla

*subscribes*

I'm worried about winter in our home this year Last year the heating broke down and wasn't fixed until the snow and ice had melted If that happens again.. Well it really won't be pleasant!

I've started winterising the bungalow already in advance, plus we simply cannot afford a huge bill...

This is my list of done stuff:

~ Bought 10 of the £1.01 fleeces from Ikea to line the ridiculously thin curtains with, and to make new bedding for Amy and Jack. Have done the bedroom curtains already and made the dogbeds - success all round.

~ Put a bid on ebay on a waterproof mac and trousers set for Dan when he's cycling to work.

~Washed Dan's big coat.

Things I've got to do:

~ Dig out my thermals.

~ Get Dan some thermals.

~ Finish lining the curtains.

~ Get Dan to put the rail up for the back door curtain.

~ Hang the curtains on the patio doors.

~ Get another hot water bottle.

Think that's all I can think of for now...

Thank for all the ideas!

rosieben

maybe move the snow shovel to the house when its nearer snow time Triggles; someone posted on here that they were snowed in last year and couldn't get to their shed for the snow shovel

Thanks for the reminder about water Dee5565. I always have some here but need to get a bit extra in, parts of the county lost their supply in the floods a couple of years ago so need to keep an eye on that all year really.

Triggles

Oh, yep, it gets moved to the house when the weather is colder. It's just out there now as we're not expecting snow in the next week or so!:rotfl:

We grew up in two areas of the states that get huge amounts of snow, but some of the winter prep here is different for us. Back there the big one was "get the snowplow attachment on the truck before October!" We'd regularly get massive snowfalls there. But not so much an issue here - especially as we don't have a truck here.

Thankfully, we don't have the number of power outages (which resulted in no heat or water, as the well had an electric pump) here. But stocked up on plenty of candles as well. We do have an electric cooker, however, so if any problem, we always have some foods stocked up that don't require cooking, like tuna and crackers, rice pudding, and so on. I wish we had a gas cooker - I much prefer them - but it would not be horribly cheap I imagine to get the gas hookup set up.