NOT BUYING IT! 2015 - A consumer holiday

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A couple of good days but I've realised I really need to buy a masher! I ditched my last one in favour of a ricer a la Mr Ramsey, which is fine until to night when I tried out a Mr Oliver 15 minute meal( yeah right!!!) and realised that trying to rice sliced sweet potato was a bit messy! Hubby reckons we will be finding blobs of it in the kitchen for weeks!!! Still it tasted fab, Cajun chicken with sweet potato mash and Salsa.

Onwards and upwards!!

edwink

emiai wrote: »

I scoured the city charity shops looking for some dresses and leggings for my little one, as she is going through a fashion phase and loves getting changed.. a lot.. I was really disappointed that in most of the charity shops everything was really bad tat, stuff I wouldn't dream of donating. Even stuff for myself was stretched, stained, frayed and over priced.

Are over priced charity shops standard now, or did I just go into some bad ones? There are lots in our city centre so I will have to have a better look I guess.

Hi Emiai

My husband and I went in to some of our local charity shops yesterday. I have to agree with you!! Some of the things I would never donate or even wear myself. Many of the items were quite old fashioned or just tatty. How some of those shops survive is beyond me!! Maybe all the best things sell as soon as they a put out.

Talking of charity shops. A friend of mine works in her local one. This charity shop is for hospice care. They sell clothes and furniture.. I have looked in this shop a few times now and found them so expensive. Apparently they have 5 rented garages out the back jammed packed full of stuff they have accepted as donations. But, as there is not enough room in the shop for all the donations they get, the stuff is put in these garages. These garages cost them £40 pcm for each one at a total cost to the charity of £200.

I think if a lot of people knew that some of their money was paying towards these garages, I think they would be horrified. When most staff in charity shops give up their time to support this charity and are volunteers I find the renting of these
garages is wrong!! If they reduced their prices a little surely their turnover would be higher then there would be no need to rent these garages in the first place!!

Rant over!!! It just annoys me that's all!!

Edwink x

GreyQueen

I suppose the difficulty with any shop, charity or otherwise, is that you cannot predict exactly what Joe Public is going to want to buy on any given week. Unless a shop is part of a complicated just-in-time delivery chain, they will have to have a stockroom/ warehouse backing up the shop.

So, I don't personally find it shocking that a charity shop selling very large items like furniture, would need to rent storage and the price is comparable to what my local authority rents its garages out for, although we only allow ours to be used for vehicles (and I have had to explain to charity shop callers that they can't rent ours for their storage needs).

But I agree with the furniture in some charity shops being severely overpriced. When a not-special sofa is being offered at £299 secondhand in a chazzer, you do have to wonder who they think their clientele is, and what kind of funds they think they have. I paid £110 to a charity shop just over 2 years ago for a leather sofa in as-new condition, which I considered reasonable.

We have a BHF here and a BHF in the hometown which are dedicated furniture/ appliance stores, and I have to say that they are very good value for money, and the stuff is excellent quality, have shopped there and would do so again if necessary.

115K

I was thinking about getting the M&S credit card as I saw you can get £30 vouchers, we do *need* a few things like some white curtains for our bedroom so I may get them, get the vouchers and then pay it off straight away.

We should be able to put £1,100 into our ISA this month due to the less spending which is brilliant. :T

We have our insurance renewal in March and the dog's annual injections next month so I know February will be a smaller month for savings. We should still get to £15,000 next month. I'm still not sure whether to move or not but I just keep saving up money.:rotfl:

I just had houmous on toast and am about to have a nice cup of tea. It feels bitterly cold out there. Hope everything is okay.:)

vulpix

Charity shops have been very good to me in the past.My children always looked clean and smart and had many good toys too.Nowadays I am quite shocked at the prices particularly for well used clothing.

When I charity shopped from necessity it was deeply unfashionable to do so, nowadays I find the opposite is true,thanks Kirsty Allsop etal.

I agree if prices were lower turn over would be brisker.

My advice would be to avoid city centre charity shops and try the outskirts and independent shops for local charities.There is a church shop and a hospice shop near to me which are much cheaper and if things don't sell in a couple of weeks they are reduced to £1 and £1 for 5 baby items.

And of course I love a car boot sale but some people ask stupid prices.When I do one it is to get rid and a bit of money is a bonus.

Doing a bit of relief work at school this afternoon so better get a wriggle on if I want to do another wardrobe coat before I go.

Vx

[Deleted User]

what I really really like about this thread is the overall positivity and optimism and that it isn`t a minnie moan moan thread,( sorry to say this), like several other threads. Everyone on here has their reasons for doing what is done here but people are facing things head on and instead of moaning are doing something to improve whatever their circumstance and I mean not just economising and saving but being able to pass things on to others. This thread and the konmarie thread, that I haven`t joined but I like reading.

We went to the cs two days ago and took a lot of nice things, the shop was full of buyers and goods, in the shop, were nice and well priced but not giveaway. This is a hospice shop for the hospices that serve the county so well and they are dear to people`s hearts, as is the air ambulance

Dh and I received our amazon payments and gift vouchers, so thank you ever so much for the heads up. I spent some already, on a balancing board and hand weights, well I do love the sod seventy book and will be following her ways.

I did a little stash reorganisation yesterday. I have two buckwheat pillows and used one to top up the one I use and I had buckwheat left, amazing stuff btw just light gentle hulls in bulk. The arms on my comfy recliner are just a bit too high for comfort when knitting, so I used fabric stash and made a seat topper with a zip for the buckwheat, then I made a corduroy removable cover for that and it is fab, makes the chair much more user friendly and the buckwheat goes to wherever it is needed

I made two large sourdough loaves the other day, they take a good 48 hours from scratch, then I leave the baked loaves for 24 to 36 hours to mature. Omg the crusts were heavenly this morning and the rest is now evenly sliced and in lots of bags in the freezer, probably enough for two weeks. I use my andrew james trusty slicer as doing the job is impossible on my hands otherwise

Today is just a bit of a cupboard turnaround in the kitchen, maybe two cupboards but nothing excessive. My shoulder is getting better only due to strenuous muscle massage by me and doing (painful at first) arm and shoulder stretches. Really big strong muscles around that joint and spasm feels like old age arthritis so can be depressive but I took the bull by the horns and it is definitely working, two days on.

edwink

GreyQueen wrote: »

I suppose the difficulty with any shop, charity or otherwise, is that you cannot predict exactly what Joe Public is going to want to buy on any given week. Unless a shop is part of a complicated just-in-time delivery chain, they will have to have a stockroom/ warehouse backing up the shop.

So, I don't personally find it shocking that a charity shop selling very large items like furniture. We have a BHF here and a BHF in the hometown which are dedicated furniture/ appliance stores, and I have to say that they are very good value for money, and the stuff is excellent quality, have shopped there and would do so again if necessary.

Hi GreyQueen

Maybe I should of said that the charity shop I mentioned in my post with the 5 garages is a small village charity shop that sells clothes and very small furniture items. Items like small coffee tables that sort of furniture not beds and sofas. So having 5 garages I feel is a waste of money. That was the point I was making about this particular charity shop and not charity shops in general.

In our town we have 2 BHF shops. One for clothes and one for furniture. The furniture shop has their storage facility above the shop. I agree that their rates/rental costs would be higher for such a large shop but their turnover is huge which in turn pays for this. I agree that BHF furniture prices are really reasonable. We purchased 2 recliner arm chairs and matching 2 seater sofa in their sale for £60. I really think this was under priced but the sale of it made room for another item of furniture from their store room upstairs and the charity gained another £60.

Edwink x

suki1964

Still freezing out, although no more snow has fallen we still have plenty and also thick fog. Not nice out there at all

Huge savings made this week. Brake pads needed for the car, the dealership quoted us £470:eek: The parts dept quoted us £80 a set plus another £16 for the sensor. Local parts place charged us £70 for the lot :j. Pays to shop around

Cement being delivered today for the new shed so that's keeping hubby busy giving me time to head around to a friend for coffee. Been a long time since we met up so looking forward to it

Still using up from the stores and introducing new recipes. Butternut squash risotto last night which used up a bag of sage, some streaky bacon and chestnuts from Christmas. Only the squash was bought and at 39p it was a very cheap, filling and tasty meal for three hungry adults with leftovers for my lunch today. Whilst the oven was on to roast that squash, I roasted another with peppers and tomatoes from the fridge and now have a lovely soup in the fridge for whoever and whenever. Mum had said to hubby that she hated squash, but she scoffed her dinner and doesn't know there is squash in the soup lol

Been very good at not spending on "stuff" still. There was a fella on the Steve wright show on Tuesday saying how we are all drowning in a sea of stuff and how so many of us are now turning our backs. I kept him in mind when I became very tempted to upgrade my phone yesterday. There's nothing wrong with my phone. I love my phone, there's nothing the "new" phone will do that mine doesn't do other then the screen is a tad bigger. So my phone stays until it dies!!!

We have a whole walk in wardrobe full of stuff needing sold. Waiting for the good weather to car boot it as it really is all lovely new stuff that I would like to get something for. Just been looking at a few fb selling pages and might sort a few bits out to list on them see how they go. Amazon didn't want my books ( piles of crime and thriller paperbacks) and seeing as they are charity shop buys in the first place I will re donate them. But I do love to see my bookshelves full so will no doubt donate a bag and come home with a bag :rotfl:

Right off for that coffee and a natter. Take care all xx

vodkawitch1

Morning shipmates

Everyone seems to be doing so well I have a large pan of sweet potato and red pepper soup on and in the sc is a beef and mushroom cass. Picking sister up from train station later so we will be well fed for a few days. Might try and make a soda bread later to go with the soup. I have been buying some of the Waitrose meat while its half price so freezer is still quite full.
I live alone so its much easier to stretch the food budget. When my three kids were younger it was so hard, two lads had hollow legs
Seen The Theory of Everything last night which I thought was really brilliant. DD paid for me as I had driven her to a few appointments over the past weeks. Bonus!
Happy fugal sailing everyone.

Liliyanna

Heeelllllooooo.....

We donated our last sofa to the BHF, it was in very good condition but didn't suit the room after redecoration. We filled in their gift aid slip, a few weeks later we received a short note telling us it had sold for £180, I was quite pleased to think I'd helped donate that much to the charity. It surely is a way of positively reinforcing donating to them.

VodkaWitch1 - I'm sooo jealous, there's so much I want to see at the cinema at the moment but always stop myself at the last minute, each visit would be about £20 with parking etc. I have to keep reminding myself that I have chosen to keep Sky so have to forfeit the cinema

It's not all bad news though, this years main aim is to put a house deposit together by next january. This will mean saving more this year than we did each year of our debt busting journey. I've taken out savings plans every year through work and kept them running whilst we were paying off our debt. I opened a Santander 123 account on Monday and have shifted all the savings plans into this account, already were 25% of the way towards our target....I'm a happy bunny right now :D:D

Hope you're all having a fab day


Lily x x