Shortie's Shopping Spends Diary

smitty2702

Hi


hope you manage ok, its a very tight budget!!! I need to cut mine back even further than I have now so i will be reading this with interest.
Just a quick not re the potato sacks! my mum buys them for £6 and she says they last her ages without going manky, keep them cool, dont just take from the top. she has been known to have them a couple of months, she sometimes gives me a bowlful if im lucky . I would buy them but the only place i can store is in my outside shed which attracts rats and mice (we are in the countryside).

Soapnuts are very good, I have used them, i need to get some more really. also with the vinegar etc.. why not put a few drops of essential oil in the draw to give your washing a bit of smell back!

have you thought of doing pigsback and collecting for Boots vouchers for your toiletries? I didnt know about it and in the past 6/7 weeks claimed £10 already and im nearly ready to claim again. they do there basics range which is quie cheap too.

Claire

Shortie

smitty2702 wrote: »

Hi

<snip>
also with the vinegar etc.. why not put a few drops of essential oil in the draw to give your washing a bit of smell back!
<snip>

Ooooo... I never thought of that! I might try in on my bedding wash! I have essential oils I can already use too! :T
dfdsd

smitty2702 wrote: »

have you thought of doing pigsback and collecting for Boots vouchers for your toiletries? I didnt know about it and in the past 6/7 weeks claimed £10 already and im nearly ready to claim again. they do there basics range which is quie cheap too.

I'm a pigsback and quidco member already. Managed to saved enough piggypoints for £40 Boots vouchers and Boots points for £50 worth of bits. Saving these for when the Baby is born to pay for Nappies and milk (if needed) for as long as they last

exlibris

Re: bags of potatoes

At one point when I was brassic I bought sacks of potatoes and sorted them into large for jacket potatoes and then bagged them in 5lb bags. I then 'bought' the bags from myself at shop prices thus having the money for the next bag of tatties and a little over to cope with inflation or fund other bulk buys which were also 'sold back to myself' in smaller quantities..

At the time I was time rich and money poor, so if you are the reverse this may not totally work for you.

HTH

lil_me

Washing powder/conditioner how much do you use ? I now use a spoon full of each on most washes without any nasty results, sometimes boost whites wash with a spoon of soda crystals, washings always clean, a box now lasts me anything up to a month and I do a massive amount of washing with 2 sons who wet beds regularly. I basically cut down every wash, halved it then kept reducing it and there was no difference. Essential oils I prefer orange or apple to help fragrance laundry.

Cats - is that a dry only diet, I find with pets food dry is always cheapest and less smelly option.

Cloths and scourers last me months, I put them in an old nappy bucket with either bleach, disinfectant, borax etc in and wash them. Microfibre or other traditional cloths will last longer than Js. Also try to use more cloths than kitchen roll. I used to use a lot but now use cloths etc instead for most things saves me and the enviroment a lot.

I'm the same with potatoes I can never get a full sack to keep either. Your fruit and veg does seem quite cheap anyway. Something I've always refused to cut back on buying.

I also agree with what has been said, that is a very small budget but watch the thread with great interest as I find it inspiring. Especially as you're planning on spending in a month on 3 what I used to spend in a week or less on 4.

angelatgraceland

Is there anyone you can split bulk buys and bogofs with? A likeminded friend or relative?

Shortie

Lil_me... I currently use an Avent bottle-lid capful of powder, as I read ages ago you can get away with half the recommended amount. Thanks... I'll have a go at cutting it down further again :T

Re using essential oils in the wash with vingegar... do I put it in the drawer with the vinegar, or at a later stage? I'm a bit useless with the washine machine... I know how to choose my program, decrease the max temp, set it to a 'quick wash' and where to put the powder and conditioner/vinegar... beyond that I let the machine do it's own thing

Also, how many drops (roughly ofcourse) should I use - in case I end up with oil marks onmy washine from using too much! Oooo... Lavendar smelling washing would be a dream come true, I'm well up for this!

Angel - I do have my Mum and Dad pretty close by so they may want to share a bag... I'm not sure how much potato they use in cooking that's not Aunt Bessies :rotfl: but there's no harm in me asking...

So.... today's cooking wasn't as fruitful as I had hoped... I'm wondering the real chance of meeting the £100 pm target, but I'm not a defeatist, I'm keeping going on this....

Breakfast was 2x TV Weetabix with TV sultanas and milk, fresh orange, banana and a hotcross bun with peanut butter (a lot of a 4 year old I know but I lt him munch away as his blood sugar was very low and I didn't want him having a hypo around lunctime....), and hotcross buns with butter for DH an me.

Lunch was the roast dinner.... I have a few left over veggies for the stir fry (now changed to bacon not egg stir fry) and will top them up when I add it all to the wok tomorrow. The chicken (£2.50 - one of a 2 or £5 jobbie from tescos) only had spare to make chicken burgers (chicken meat, 2 eggs, breadcrumbs) and a bag of 'cat chicken' for the freezer.. Hmm... thought I might have managed one more meal outof that. I may need to shop around for other chickens - we have a FarmFoods near u, I may pop in tomorrow to suss their chicken out...

I also popped to the £1 per bowl stall and bought carrots (soooo many it was untrue in this bowl), bananas (in the fridge as they had not underripe bowls going today) and satsumas, for £3

I keep staring at my home grown butternut squashes not knowing what to do with them... we're not a soup family, so that's a fab suggestion out of the window... We use them in roasts but seem to have gone of it for a while and they don't seem to freeze very well(they end up really soggy). Any ideas anyone?

lil_me

I put 3 drops in with the washing powder, a site I looked at said to put 10 drops in the soap drawer but I found the oils I used I only needed 3 ish. I've never had any marks yet caused by the oils as there is plenty of water mixed in on the wash cycle I doubt I will.

lynzpower

how easy are b squash to grow?I love them!!! and they re so expensive to buy cos of shipping.

A few things you can do with them 1)) A CURRY http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/butternutsquashcurry_71938.shtml A 2) A CHICKEN STEW WITH IT http://food.cookinglight.com/cooking/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1142005

OR THIS SOUNDS DEEEELISH HFWs stuffed squash http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/foodanddrink/hughfearnleywhittingstall/story/0,,1939009,00.html

Shortie

lynzpower wrote: »

how easy are b squash to grow?I love them!!! and they re so expensive to buy cos of shipping.

Hi Lynzpower

Thanks for the links, I'll take a peek in a mo.
I've always found butternut squash really easy to grow, others seem to find them really difficult.

The only things I can really say about them (no expert gardener here!) is they will take as much space as they can get... The first year I didn't realise this, and they took over about 1/4 of my fairly large garden!

They've got tiny hairs that are a pain as they hurt - gardening gloves will eayily stop them stabbing you though)

I find they never 'set' (i.e. pollenate) so like a totally obsessed woman, Im out there every other day to chck for new female flowers to polenate manually.

Lots of people say to restrict the plants to 5 fruits max, but I've never managed to get that many off one plant bfore anyway! :rotfl:

Oh, and depending on the varierty they can get quite large (2 or 3 times the size of the shops) and you won't look back, I promise

About now if the time to get the seeds planted indoors...

Shortie

Evening all

Athough not necessary this week, I went to FarmFoods today to see how cheap I could buy chicken for. I came back with some bits that I can use next month in the hope they're good alternative to what I usually buy... (19th-18th is my shopping month). Here's hoping.

I picked up:

1 Family Toad in the hole (I always fail miserably with toad in the hole. I'm hoping this will end up a nice tasty treat, but lets see how it is next week!) - £1
1kg frozen chicken breasts - 6 in the bag. I use 2 per meal for 3 so it works out ~ £1.30 per meal. Bag cost £3.95
2kg chicken portions - touse instead of a whole chicken for roasts. I shoul get 2 roasts out of this and maaaaybe a couple of pieces left over. £2.95 the bag.

Bacon rice cooked and yummm. I recon it cost: 40p rice (TV basmati, half a bag), a few left over veg, some pepper and sweetcorn - max 50p. Bit of oil - 10p and one pack of bacon - £1.77. Made plenty enough for 2 dult dinners and a child dinner, twice. Total cost I recon was £2.77... £1.38 for one sitting for three of us. BUT... a lesson learned was that it would have been just as lovely with 4 rashers of bacon, not 8. Sounds *nal maybe but I'm really trying to cut down here, and there was heaps of veg bulking it out already. Would have made the meal £1.89 the whole lot, or £0.95 for the three of us instead...