Make do, Mend and Minimise in 2016

nursemaggie

Welcomepeony40. the best way to start is get all your bills down as much as you can by switching and use MSE to do all your switching as you get money back.

Keep a spending diary and write everything down, keep all your receipts and add everything up every month. It shows you were you are wasting money. If you have an Ald! or L!dl near you try them and try everything you use. You will find some things better than top brands and some just as good. We decide by thinking is the brand worth the extra. It rarely is.

If you don't have those shops near you try switching to own brands the same way.

Making do should really be "do I really need to buy that? Will something I already have do the job. I personally do not think leftovers is making do because if you only cook what you need you will not have any leftovers. I never think of the remains of a roast as leftovers I have always used every scrap.

I think my biggest saving is I am lucky enough to have a local indoor market. It has a huge food section. I buy 5kg of chicken breasts which are usually so big there is plenty for two. I trim them, put them in little plastic bags and freeze them I go to one butcher and by everything else I need for the next two months and then barter with him for the chicken. I end up with enough to last 8 to ten weeks for usually less than £30.

It can be well worth is to do the same with a local butcher.

We also have a frozen food place in our market. A lot of the stuff is big brands seconds which just means the crumbs have come off a bit on some fish or the pastry is slightly broken on a quiche. They are usually about half the price of the brand.

You cant go far wrong with following Jackie O though don't think you are not succeeding if you can't get it down as low as her as she goes to her DDs for her Sunday dinner and brings back leftovers. I manage to feed us very well on £50 a week.

I have a 22 year old son with a good appetite. We do eat a lot of chicken but then I do have plenty of recipes so we don't repeat much in a month only our favourites like Chicken Korma and sausage egg and chips. The sausages are not the same ones every week. The £50 includes toiletries and cleaning materials. I buy all of those at Ald!. Their cleaning materials are all as good as the top brands but around half the price. Spread out over the whole year my grocery bill does include Christmas food.

peony40

Thank you very much NurseMaggie, I have taken note of all you have written and it is very helpful.

A spending diary is key for me, I have set one up today. Also, I have closed my facebook pages of crochet crafts as when I see all the lovely wools I am tempted.

We do have a Lidl in our high street, so I will ask hubby to drop me off so I can investigate it. At the moment I do home delivery for groceries as I don't drive and I find it easier to manage.

[Deleted User]

Indeed peony 40 I usually only have around 4-5 dinners to make per week as Sunday I go to DDs and often bring back odds and ends to use on Monday if there is not enough left overs to feed her tribe of three hungry lads and Tuesday evenings I go to a local pub for a quiz and we are given a supper of sorts included in the price of the quiz
Great value at £2.00 as the cash comes from my entertainment stash..

Tonight I am having an early dinner as my friend bought me a place on a charity quiz and I am providing the nibbles.

When delving into the freezer last night I found what I hope will turn out to be a small piece of steak which I will have tonight with salad and I also found some Y/S Somerset blue cheese which I had forgotten about so that will do me for lunch with crackers and grapes.

I am definitely trying to use up whats in my freezer as apart from saving me some cash I want to defrost the blessed thing as its in dire need of it.I bought some new drawers for it several months ago and I don't want to put them in until I have defrosted it ,then I can bin the old broken ones.

I used to have an Electrolux fridge freezer which was so much better as it had wire baskets which were ever lasting these new f/freezers have blooming plastic drawers which break far too easily and the replacement drawers cost a fortune.I think its called built-in obsolescence !!! two new drawers cost me over £90.00.

menu planning and only buying whats on your shopping list of stuff you have run out of is essential to making your cash streetch a bit further, I have only been food shopping three times since I came home from my holidays on 26th August and then it was for fresh fruit and veg and bits I had literally nothing of, and needed indoors. I try to replace or slightly change the menu if I have run out of something rather than go to buy it in the shops It doesn't help that I only live 5 minutes from a small shopping precinct but I do steer away from it as much as I can. I have a list by my kettle in the kitchen and if I am running short of something it will go on my list with a a question mark by it

At the moment I have on there fruit squash & tinfoil, both of which I will probably need, but not essential just yet, as I have cling film for wrapping stuff, and OJ in the fridge, unopened just yet.

trying to adapt what I have instead of just nipping to the shops is great for using stuff up and not spending more than I have to unnecessarily :)

Good luck with your spending diary it really does help to see where the cash is vanishing to :)

JackieO xx

iamsalt

Hello

I definitely think it's worth working out what works for you and the life you live. I work full time, support my mum, sometimes work at my second job, and am active in the local community with am dram and the hall. This means I have to be careful about my time, but remember what I enjoy and plan ahead. For me this means I do have a cleaner - it's my most disliked thing to do, and takes me forever or I avoid it ! but I do spend time making home made ready meals and batch cooking for the freezer for weeks when I am barely in (like this week - 2 rehearsals, 2 performances and a late train back from London) so I don't buy takeaways or snacks which cost more.

Today I am making curried parsnip soup (4 bags at 20p) for the freezer, and I have been picking apples ( a big plastic trug full) which I will share with friends and colleagues, as they would be going to waste otherwise. I will dry some apples too, and a friend has offered me a big bag of pears, some of which I will freeze and some I will dehydrate and give back to them.

I am still minimising weeds from the patch of the garden I want to create a seating area in, although I will stop and paint the end of the shed while it is still nice, there seems to be enough paint left for one coat which will get another tin out of there.
S X

savingpennies

My new oven arrived on Wednesday it almost looks too nice to use. The kitchen is over 18 years old and everything is going - dishwasher cannot be repaired anymore, extractor fan given up the ghost, oven now replaced and now the tap on the hot water has gone. If I turn it on I can't turn it off- I think the thread has gone. :eek: I can't get a new kitchen until next year so, in true make do and mend mode I will have to get someone in to see if I can get it repaired or replaced.
Rant over.
I've gathered all of the baking apples from my tree and I've stewed them this morning and made the crumble topping. We'll eat one tonight and I'll freeze the rest. One of my brother's dropped by with a jar full of chillis so I'll be busy making chilli oil tomorrow.
I got my warmer duvet out this week as the nights are getting cooler, which means I will be off to the laundrette with the summer quilt this week sometime. I've also found all the hot water bottles and spent some time going through some old knitting magazines for hot water bottle cover patterns.

charlies-aunt

If you need new taps - check out the ones at Screwfix before buying elsewhere as they are usually quite a bit cheaper. Hopefully it will just be a washer that has split which will be much cheaper

Ballymackeonan

I rescued a Mulberry handbag (originally from a CS!) yesterday. One of the handles had split, and I had an orphan glove in the same colour of leather - the pair has vanished. So I found my leather needles, which I thought I'd lost, and covered the split section on the handle, with a matching patch on the other handle. It should now last another few years!

sambamamba

Love love this thread but can never normally face signing in on mobile phone:mad::mad:

Reading Jackie O's post above I think I have a mend worth sharing enough to spend 10mins signing in :eek:

I am always dropping full freezer drawers on the floor & got a huge flappy broken bit iyswim - used a version of clear waterproof duct tape (wilkinsons do have a version but was cheaper in indie diy shop) - £5 & loads left for the next breakage. Apparently also works in headlights, greenhouses etc.

Creeping back into the shadows ....

[Deleted User]

sambamamba Cheers for that my freezer drawers already look like an a-z road map as they have been patched so many times I think its such a waste these blasted plastic freezer drawers, and the wire ones were so much better and easier to see what you had in them as well. Still I suppose its progress, but to me its just more plastic junk to go eventually to landfill.
for example when I was a little girl we had wooden rulers in school which lasted (well mine did for years ).Mine even had an embedded metal strip on one side of it.Now my DD usually has to buy at least one or two every few months as her sons 'shatterproof' rulers just break in their school bags into nasty sharp shards (one of the boys actually cut his hand quite nastily on opening his school backpack and putting his hand in to get something out).
I have a great aversion to anything plastic, although I do like my lock'n'lock boxes which I have had for a long time that I bought over the years in John Lewis.Even that has changed and they now sell different ones Grrr. I am turning into a bit of a grumpy old woman :):)

kangamama

Can I join in please? I've reading this thread for weeks, trying to catch up and have realised that I never will!


I'm definitely an OldStyler, my family take after me too - the kids never want to throw anything out, they always have an idea for reusing things!


Today I aim to:
Make do - tea is leftovers from yesterday's pasta, padded out with more veg to make a pasta bake
Mend - One of my daughter's school cardigans that has split under the arm.
Minimise - I will be going through our DVD collection tonight, we moved 8 months ago and it's still boxed up in the garage so I doubt we need to keep them all. In my defence, it was waiting for me to get hold of some shelving which I did finally find this weekend at a price I could afford.


I'll get organised soon! Work just gets in the way (currently on a quick tea and MSE break)