Old style house sharing

caffeinehit

I’ve been looking at the posts on this board for a while and have been very impressed by some of the tips.

Trouble is, a lot of them are impossible to follow for people like me who live in shared, rented accommodation. The landlady makes us have a cleaner (and we can’t really force her to use vinegar, bless her) and we’re not allowed to dig up the garden. With only one kitchen cupboard, one shelf of the fridge and one drawer of the freezer there’s not much room for storing BOGOFs or home cooked meals, and there isn’t enough space on the worktops for breadmakers or slow cookers. Housemates and I have very different tastes in food so sharing isn’t really possible. Like a lot of twentysomethings I move around quite a lot so getting an allotment sadly isn’t an option either.

I cook from scratch every day, I’m trying to grow vegetables in pots and to buy fruit and veg from the local market, but does anyone have any other suggestions for money saving in a limited space?

Galtizz

I'd suggest working a 2 week meal plan (but it might be a bit boring) Cook double of everything and freeze the other portion then have the frozen portion on the following week. You should have enough room in 1 draw to keep 1 weeks worth of food and you'll eat it all up in a week so it won't keep filling up. To vary it a bit you can alter what you serve it with, for example:

Mon - Sausage casserole with mash
Tues - Spag bol with pasta

Mon - Sausage casserole in a giant yorkshire
Tues - Spag bol on jacket potato

Or utilise the rubber chicken (you can do it with other meats as well as chicken) If you buy a big chicken you should get at least 4 meals out of it. If you don't fancy chicken for 4 meals on the trot freeze it and mix and match with next weeks rubber pork.

Don't forget veggie meals or cheap meat meals. We have at least one veggie or cheap meat meal a week. For example omlette with cheese and tomatos or add a bit of ham. One of the most expensive things to buy is meat.

Bargain_Rzl

Hi caffeinehit - I sympathise! I've been in shared accommodation for the past 9 years and you're right, it does take a bit of ingenuity.

For the last 3 years I have been lodging with a friend who is the owner-occupier of the house; I have a decent-sized bedroom but I have limited storage space and the kitchen is small.

Here are some space- and money-saving tips.

Buy pots of growing herbs from the supermarket (basil, coriander, parsley) and keep them on the windowsill. Water them whenever they start to wilt and they should sprout enough new leaves to last for ages. I think I'm going to start growing rosemary and bay in pots outside the back door.

As long as you don't have TOO many large gadgets, you will probably find you do have room for them. I have a slow cooker and a sandwich toaster which live in the back of a cupboard when not in use - admittedly it's a bit of a hassle getting them in and out, but better than not having them at all.

Get together with your housemates and make an inventory of useful items each of you owns. If you realise you need something, you may not need to buy it for yourself if you can share somebody else's. In our house we have one set of luggage (housemate's), one blender (housemate's), one slow cooker (mine), one sandwich toaster (mine), one wok (mine), one internet subscription (mine - he pays for the phone line) etc etc. If there's something a lot of people use and it needs replacing, let the owner pay the majority (so they can keep it when somebody moves out) but all those who use it should contribute. For example, our (his) tumble dryer went bust recently. He paid two-thirds of the replacement cost and I paid one-third.

And to reiterate what Galtizz said, it really is useful to plan your menu a week or two at a time. Then you never have to keep much in your storecupboard or fridge - as long as there's space for a few 1 litre (i.e. single-meal) plastic containers in your freezer you will be reducing wastage as well as use of space. Every so often you will find that despite the limited space, you have enough ingredients to make meals for a week, using everything up and spending no money. I'm going to my mum's next week so I'm trying to use stuff up - I have so many eggs and assorted bits of meat and veg that all I have had to buy this week is one packet of four bread rolls (so I can have bacon sarnies for breakfast and use up my bacon) and one tin of sweetcorn (so I can mix it with a tin of tuna I already have, and use up the remains of a jar of mayo).

apprentice_tycoon

I see what you mean about your limted storage space - it's a bit tight! can you be creative such as using the space under your bed for storing all your bogof tins etc? my mother used to have tins of fruit in the wardrobe...

Eliza252

Re: Plants
Get an allotment (thats what I did, in the fact of eviction by flat mate over pot plant take over!)

bugs

You can sprout beans, chick peas etc without any light at all...I haven't done a lot of this but the last lot of mung beans I sprouted I did in the wardrobe (you change the water daily so they don't smell or anything!)

You can also grow mushrooms indoors but I'm not sure this is really cost effective!

Outdoors, condsider layering your pots (especially things like herbs) on a stand (a bit of inventiveness...old tables etc) to make more use of the space you do have.

When you say you move around a lot, is it within the same town? You could grow long term plants on an allotment that wouldn't require you to turn up every two days. Or could you share one with friends and have a rota...two or three people could mean one visit a week if you organise it neatly.

Pizza dough is very quick to make and you can mix and prove (if you want to) in the one mixing bowl/tub. It's also convenient to freeze if you roll it out flat, it will probably fit on top of your other foods in the freezer.

Finally, and easiest of all, get in to foraging for wild foods...mushrooms, vegetables, fruits, herbs (snails?!) could be harvested on your journey home or on a Sunday afternoon walk. My current favourite (in my garden admittedly) is nettles as a spinach substitute - they're lovely, healthy, free, and what you don't eat isn't going to waste.

Galtizz

Just another thought on freezing. Freeze as much as possible esspecially sloppy stuff (chilli, spag bol, casserole ect.) in 2 (double) freezer bags. When you go to put the away and they are still fresh they will cram into the smallest of spaces freeing up a bit more room for everything else.

crana999

I don't have much room in the kitchen at all so I only keep salt, wooden spoon etc. in the cupboard in there. I keep all my tins & packets etc. in my room. Some are in a cupboard and the rest are in boxes under my bed. I keep onions and potatoes in there too. I keep fruit in a fruit bowl which is also in my room.

One thing that's very useful is to have those small plastic baskets as you can put lots of small things in them (packets, spices, utensils) and then pull them out of the cupboard or under the bed a bit like drawers so it's easy to see what you have and it takes up less room.

I also only have one shelf of a small fridge & a bit of the door space. First off don't keep anything in there you don't have to (like bread and fruit)!

I can usually fit a couple of meals (in tupperware or bowls with plates on top) piled on the shelf, plus a pint of milk and a couple of veggies etc. Then I put my soya milk, marge and cheese in the door. You can get a surprising amount on one shelf if you really pile it up. and i don't have a freezer so you beat me there

You could probly move the slow cooker into your room just while it cooks if you needed to. Same with breadmakers. There's no real reason they *have* to be in the kitchen, as long as you don't mind cooking smells too much and you're careful about spills.

Iona_Penny

Get some cheap plastic crates snd buy some gro bags and tip this into the crates; now you can grow tomatoes and lettuce(around the bottom) in them and runner beans in the larger ones as there is room for the cane supports. This is much better than gro bags as they are deeper and are easy to move/turn around and I found very successful.

Last year I also grew potatoes in an old plastic dustbin. Put three sprouting pots. near bottom and just covered with soil every time the leaves came through until the bin was full ( you must water loads ) had a great crop of potatoes some of which grew quite large.

This is not necessarily a huge money saving tip but gives a great sense of achievement when you harvest your own foodstuffs.

AussieLass

If you can't use a lot of the tips from the forum just now why not start a book and collate them for when you do move out of shared accomodation. That's what I'm doing now, just jotting down stuff for when I arrive. Hopefully I will understand it all by then.

caffeinehit

Thanks very much for all the tips - this will give me a good kick up the backside to clear the six-month-old chips out of my freezer and make sure I use the space productively. I'll definitely have a go with the gardening and storage suggestions as well...and keep watching the pennies mount up until I have enough to buy a nice house with a little garden.

Off to buy some plastic tubs after work...