make do and mend for tougher times

lilmisskitkat

Speaking of friends, do any of you have friends who share the same mse/os ways as you? Or are you considered an oddity? Or do you not really discuss it?

I have no one in real life who shares my ways, my cooking/baking/crafting/crochet/sewing are seen as quirks rather than the norm (not sure if thats because of my age though - 27?). One thing that seems to crop up frequently is the amount of money we have coming into the house (in a roundabout way of asking!). I never discuss our finances with anyone, subsequently friends/family seem to think DH earns far more than he actually does. One friend said a while ago about us losing our child benefit when they bring in the £45k cut off. We are NOWHERE near that threshold :rotfl:

But it got me thinking about how others perceive other peoples lives. Yes we live in a nice area (house needs lots of work done, saved like mad and had an extremely lucky part-exchange), we have no other debts than the mortgage, kids wear Next/M&S/Gap (bought in charity shops/ebay/car boots), have days out (paid for with clubcard vouchers), lots of our furniture is good quality 2nd hand, i'm very make do and mend etc so i suppose it might look like we have a very good income but its all about budgeting and management. Plus with me at home we only have 1 set of travel costs to pay, no childcare and i have all day to be OS (hats off to people who do it and work too, i feel i would really struggle). My best friend has a similar life on the surface but her's is mainly funded on credit. I do worry for her if tshtf because she really has no idea about managing her money

So toughies -do you have os friends or not?

K xx

Possession

No I don't think I have any OS friends but I don't really talk about it. I'm definitely known as the bargain hunter though, and starting around this time of the year I always end up finding people the best deals on their must-have christmas pressies!

2tonsils

Most of my friends know I love a bargain and most know that I cook everything from scratch. It all goes back to my childhood in Yorkshire and the way we were raised to make the most of what little we had.

We waited years for a council house when I was a child, so we all lived with my grandparents in a little two bedroomed house, four children, our parents and grandparents. My mum and dad had a bed made up in the huge bathroom, four children shared the front bedroom and my grandparents had the luxury of their own bedroom. One thing I never figured out...if we were so cramped for space why did we keep the front room for ''best'' and never ever use it?????? We lived in the living room with a blazing coal fire every day of the year and a tiny scullery that did not have room for a table or chair LOL

Hobsons_Choice

Many of my friends are OS. One couple are retired on very good pensions, but always hunt out bargains, shop in the CS and cook from scratch.
This enables them to indulge in their love of travel - and I don't blame them.

Great British Bakeoff tonight, I can gaze at Paul Hollywood and dream...oh, I think some people do a bit of cooking as well

VJsmum

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

VJsMUM - Hope you have dried out at the airport and are actually on the plane back to Blighty by now, take care.

Off to see DD1 for a couple of days to put together yet more flat pack furniture, lucky us. Will catch up next week as I'm staying up for a couple of extra days for some girly time. Stay safe all and for gods sake don't let that Damsons Pandemic happen!!!!!! Cheers Lyn xxx.

Thanks, nearly home. It stopped raining as soon as I got back to the hotel last night. Have a nice time with DD.

maryb wrote: »

eeeew we had butter beans regularly at my primary school and the smell still makes me heave!! People who think the 50s were some sort of golden age usually weren't there - gristly meat, watery grey fish with hundreds of bones, rubbery "scrambled" reconstituted dried eggs floating in grey liquid ..... no thanks!

I like butter beans too and celeriac. Celery has to be cooked for me to enjoy it. What I have a horror of from school days is mixed veg. Can't abide the stuff.

fuddle wrote: »

Stop talking about tea I've been to the docs with my 5 day dairy of what I eat (IBS) and he has suggested that I cut right back my tea consumption as my 8-10 cups per day is seen as excessive in his eyes. He thinks it's worth seeing if it's the caffeine that is upsetting me. And as I have the constipation IBS I have to have a small bowl of fruit and fibre daily and he agreed that a small glass of prune juice daily would be a good idea.

So very little tea, in favour of herbal and fruit teas (he suggested peppermint to help soothe the IBS tummy ) for one whole month. I'm to keep a food diary too and see the dietician next to see if there is anything glaring at her. but a cuppa tea. I need my tea

I know someone else has mentioned it, but try Rooibos (red bush) tea. It is naturally caffeine free and tastes a lot like real tea. Proper tea now tastes too tea -y for me and I don't like to drink anything else now. Although I do rather like darjeeling - which is what they gave me in the hotel, tho it isn't quite the same when you add coffee mate to it. :rotfl:


Thank you for asking, D&DD. I am sat at Munich airport waiting for my connection home. I have a 4 hour layover :eek: so have been reading all your musings for the day. No problems with the Typhoon - typically it was warm, calm and sunny when I left! I even managed some sleep on the plane, having been up since 4 this morning (8 o'clock pm UK time). As I won't be back home till nearly midnight that would have been a long time with no sleep.

GQ - hope the anti-b's are starting to work now.

no-one else I know is as OS as me - and many are on much lower incomes. My inlaws are forever complaining they have no money but have recently bought a time share, 4 personalised number plates, a mahoosive flat screen telly and go on loads of hoidays. Obviously they can do what they like with their money - but it annoys me to hear them complain.

D&DD

I have one friend who has similar interests but most think I'm nuts,but then they're not far wrong most of the time
Thats why I enjoy spending time on here with like minded people at least you all know what I mean and can't give me a blank stare thru a computer screen :rotfl:

lilmisskitkat

D&#8517 wrote: »

I have one friend who has similar interests but most think I'm nuts,but then they're not far wrong most of the time
Thats why I enjoy spending time on here with like minded people at least you all know what I mean and can't give me a blank stare thru a computer screen :rotfl:

That's exactly how i feel It used to bother me, but i find as i get old it bothers me less and less - maybe i'm becoming a real grown up?? A husband, 3 kids and a mortgage later and i'm still waiting for that to happen :rotfl:

K xx

SpikyHedgehog

Mrs_Chip wrote: »

Found one!

Two out of three's not bad I suppose

Celery sticks to eat it with? I love butter beans & celery, not (knowingly) had celeriac but want to try it.

kidcat wrote: »

Fuddle we were given an electricity monitor a couple of years ago and its really good for focusing on your usage, DS14 in particular looks at it and if its running high he looks for the reason why, which I think is good for him. Ours has a temp display too, we laugh at it now as in last house the living room never rose above 16c whereas here it never drops below 21c, and some days DD17 will say ooh its cold in here and DS points out its actually 22c!!

Am really zonked with all these pills,my back has finally settled down from the flare up and I was hoping to get away from pills and get back to normal, this tooth infection has really hit me and upset me to be honest. I feel like I am always ill and never able to do anything.

Sorry am having a bad day. Especially as I am spending the day "resting" on the sofa, I have four meetings this afternoon/evening as three schools, none of which I can miss,so we agreed yesterday that I was to get kids to school and then doze. BUt every time I manage to drop off the blinking door goes and its parcels for next door.

They both work full time yet seem to order lots and take no account that they are never in for deliveries and it falls to me, one of them is huge and weighs a tonne. And to top it off the last guy was extremely rude - as I hadnt opened the door quick enough for him, was tempted to tell him where to stuff his parcel.

I've started having deliveries (eg amazon) to work rather than miss them at home, you could suggest it to them 'in case I'm out' ;-)

I've got old style friends, but I'm probably the most old style. I think we empower each other here!

GreyQueen

Softstuff wrote: »

I'm sorry Smileyt, I missed your post somehow. Your budgeting story reminds me of when a "man from the pru" came round to see my mum. He swore he wasn't trying to sell her a policy and just wanted to see if she was doing as well as she could with what she had. At the time mum was a single parent and both grandma and grandad had moved in with us, trying to keep the house. He fed all the info into a computer (very spiffy to have a laptop at the time) and was agog when he realised things simply didn't add up. Yet mum was coping, and continued to without debt. I have every confidence you will too.

This reminds me of a pal who lives a bohemian hand-to-mouth existance as an artist and performer. He's often on his uppers but quite happy to forage for salad greens etc. One time when he had a slack time in his self-employment, his bank invited him in "to discuss his finances". He didn't owe them anything, they just wanted to try to sell him financial services.

Feeling mischievous, he duly trotted in with his books, the Suit plugged in his figures, boggled and demanded to know how he lived on so little.:rotfl:

:DI am feeling much better today, thank you for the well-wished. The anti-biotics may be the size of horse tablets but they seem to do the trick. Just a dull ache now. I'm bobbling on and even felt well enough to bike up to the lottie. I had rotables to dump into my compost Dalek, needed to grab a chard for tea and have promised to look after a lottie-pal's greenhouse tomatoes for a week whilst she is on holiday, so am giving them a good drink every 2nd day.

I have to say, chard is the most amazing vegetable. A few years ago, I was once stopped in my tracks by the sheer beauty of the westering sun shining thru the stems of a row of rainbow chard, and finally got around to sowing a packet in 2011.

Remember the terrible drought? My chards hardly got going when the boogers all bolted and went all coarse and had these great flowering spires about 4 foot tall. I noticed that the insects were loving them, so left them to it, not really thinking about how they'd drop into the soil.

This year's tattie patch was half colonised by self sown chardlings and as fast as I ate them, they got oversized and coarse and eventually I pulled them all up. After I lifted the tatties in july, every weed known to womankind germinated and I got a second chard crop! Masses of them. I have issued help yourself invites to several people.

It's interesting that considering they were a rainbow mix, 90% of the self-sowns are ordinary white-ribbed beet, plus about 5% each of golden and ruby chard. And the fancies are much smaller than the default silver-beet.

Re OS pals in real life, I have pals who do some OS-ing such as making pickles and sloe gin and handcrafting but not many. So it's particularly nice to find kindred spirits online.

I had to smile wryly at the story of the lady with the new bathroom because she was bored and the 3 week Turkish holiday to pre-recover from the upheaval. It's a whole 'nother world, innit? When I was bored with my bathroom, I bought a 50p china fish from the c.s. and ran up a cloth bag from my scrap box in about 15 mins. Just hope she and her OH never have to rely on the State for help as they'll be in for a heckuva shock if they do.

VJsMum, glad to see you making your way safely back to Blighty. Last time I got soaked to undie-level was in a wood in Tuscany. A group of us had gone out for a walk and got caught in a downpour. Being British, and therefore quite bonkers, we stood on the edge of a hilly path transformed into a raging torrent, waiting for the water to subside a bit.

We sang. All the rain-themed songs we could find. Well, if you're that wet, you might as well just go for it, no point in being miserable. We had a ball. And then came back to the accomodation and I went for a swim in the outdoor pool in the rain. It was an interesting experience until the thunder started then I thought I better get under cover!

stiltwalker

One of my 2 closest friends is very OS - but apart from that no not really. It doesn't bother me that half of them think I'm a bit nuts but I do get slightly annoyed when the same folk are complaining of being skint and I just want to yell "don't spend so much on 'stuff' then!" I know what you mean about people thinking we're on more than we are lilmisskitkat, I'm sure lots of people think that about us and I know we have 1 close friend who near enough fell off the sofa when we said what OH was actually on once!

This is not getting my revision done but I think my brain may actually have gone to sleep so I my just cut out another bag this evening and leave revising til the kids are at nursery tomorrow.

Need to do tea for me and OH in a bit too - it's going to be something exciting with defrosted YS procuitto ham, probably a tagliatelle with peas and cream. I'm running down the freezer at the moment so I can have an empty draw to do the shoe stretching thing with OH's dress shoes - he's only worn them about twice and they are too tight but really nice so if I can stretch them they'll do nicely for him for the wedding. Can't fit them in ATM though.

Would be good to have some more room so I can have a big cook up on a Wednesday when the kids are at nursery as I have been cheating a bit to much recently with easy food. I will 'fess that I have actually been making a real effort to do less from scratch as I'm so overwhelmed with the kids and OU and wedding stuff - something had to give! And I'd rather buy pizza and bread and yoghurt than be carted off by the men in white coats. Once my exam is done I shall be able to go back to doing more from scratch, I'm actually missing kneading the daily bread but I'm not missing the washing up!

Had a visit from DD's new physio today and it was great - loads of good info and first time we felt one had been really on the ball - just need DS's referrals to come through and get on the treadmill with him. The dreaded time is fast approaching when I feel a DLA application will be appropriate as it is starting to become obvious how much extra he needs than other kids his age. Will have to steal myself to fill the form in - anyone who's done one will know how soul destroying it is to fill in - DD's took me about 4 months and lots of tears to get through.

Sorry for waffling folks - must just be in one of those moods. Hugs where needed.