Make do, Mend and Minimise in 2017

Caterina

No Mending today.

Making Do with the food I had indoors, made a chickpea and rice soup with the water from yesterday's vegetables and had leaves from the allotment, stir fried in garlic and chilli.

Big Minimise, almost all the stuff I have cleared from the bedroom has gone, part to the jumble sale yesterday, a lot was picked up by my OS friend who can use or dispose of it, but the best bit is that she has agreed to sell the best bits on fleabay (which I would not know where to start doing) and we will share whatever she can get. Also, her DD might be happy to have my old treadle machine which I was going to give away on gum tree but decided not to, it is too lovely to go for scrap and her DD would probably use it. Win win!

silvasava

Hester - how selfless of you - someone had to do it

RainbowHippie

Caterina - glad your treadle machine is going to a good home, i agree it would be a shame for it to go for scrap/spares if it still works. I'd love a treadle machine but don't have space and i do have an electric one, just love the idea of being able to craft 'off grid' without using power. daft i know!

Making do - used up squishy bananas in pancakes for breakfast, no fresh berries to put in the mix so i soaked some dried goji berries in hot water until they plumped up and used them. I do this quite a lot as i find them too chewy while still dried!

Mend - was naughty and stayed up late last night working on a blanket for a friend - she's knitted hundreds (it seems like!!) of rectangles in all different colours, and i'm joining them into a blanket for her with a crochet border. It's absolutely massive and will easily cover a superking bed when it's done, handy since that's what she has. It's taken me almost a year (!!!) to get just over halfway, feeling guilty now that i've had it so long so i'm working on it at every opportunity at the moment. I've kept getting distracted by other crochet projects during the last year (our friends very inconsiderately keep having birthdays and babies lol :rotfl:) and because it's so big i can't take it on the train/bus as i normally do with my crochet. I'm determined to get it done by the end of january. Hopefully this counts as mending, and once it's done it will be minimised back to her!
I have various clothes and other WIPs waiting to be 'mended' but they will have to wait their turn!

Minimise - nothing today, in fact quite the opposite as we've acquired a new household member as of yesterday, one of OH's friends will be staying in our spare room for a while while he looks for work (he's just moved back from living abroad). He's a lovely chap and very considerate so looking forward to having him as a house guest.

It's nice to be prompted to reflect on MMMing, i think like a lot of you much of it is automatic for me (especially with food, using up leftovers etc) so it's nice to be reminded sometimes that it's not necessarily 'normal' and remind myself to keep going as it does benefit. Also love hearing about other people's MMMing!

Love to all xx

[Deleted User]

savingpennies I think your CS find is a bargain and it the true spirit of making do and minimising.Fantastic find well done .I always have a problem finding a winter coat because my right arm has lymphodema and most coats don't allow for one normal sized arm and one thats twice the size, so I have to buy a coat thats often two sizes too big to be able to wear it.This year I managed to find one with a flared raglan type sleeve, wasn't keen on the colour but it was needs must as I had donated my previous two coats to a CS a couple of months before as I had lost weight.

I think I shall have to do a bit of scouring of some CS to see what I can find that will go over my bad arm.

Minimised some wrinkly apples into a crumble for DDs dinner tonight I always go there on a sunday for dinner and like to bring pudding with me as my contribution

Made do with some home mad soup for lunch with some left over stilton and crackers

Caterina

RainbowHippie I would love to craft off-grid too, but I could never work that machine then I lent it to someone who, after using it, left it in the garden!!! The wooden top got ruined and her son put another piece of wood on it, but the mechanism was really never the same after it, even after I spent a lot of money having it serviced. The people who are having it are very technically minded and very OS so I am sure that if there is anyone who can make that machine work well it's them.

Make do: I did a shopping in the Farmers Market and instead of buying lots of stuff I just got enough for the week, fruits, greens and roots. Will make do with this and the spent was very reasonable.

Mend nothing

Minimise nothing, but un-minimised a woollen jumper, too good to let go of, will serve me well during cold spells, and a waterproof top, which will live in the car (both on advice of my OS prepper friend). Feeling ok with it, but also realising how important it is to declutter then let go of the stuff very quickly, as it is really easy to revisit it and pick stuff out again!

YorksLass

My, you’ve all been so busy this week but I love reading all your posts, they keep me on track.

Still making do with contents of freezer, fridge and cupboards for meals, so no spends this week on groceries. Apart from a couple of onions and some chillies, I haven’t got any fresh veg left but will use frozen/canned for now. It’s been perishing here in Yorkshire this week with some snow on Friday (thankfully gone now) so I’ve been glad of the food stocks.

Minimised cookery books (most came from cs and will be going back there) and have kept just 3: a Mrs B’s (a 21st birthday present and I’m now 67), a baking book by a well-known flour producer (given to me many years ago by my mum) and a very tatty one that’s my “go to” when funds are low. It’s lost the front and back covers along with some of the first and last pages and what remain are very flimsy and yellow-looking. The weights and measures are all imperial and the products advertised are pre-decimal; one of them is for a Yorkshire newspaper that ceased publication pre-WW2, so I’m guessing it dates to around the 1930s and probably belonged to my grandma. All the recipes came from ladies in West Yorkshire (mainly Bradford and the surrounding area) and some of them have quite fanciful names e.g. Paradise Souffle, Verona Custard, and Wine Biscuits, but they’re all pretty economical.

Also minimised toothpaste this morning - a travel-size tube bought for hols last year and found in a handbag that I hadn’t used since then – but I don’t need to buy any more just yet as I have some in my toiletries box. Does anyone else get satisfaction from knowing you’ve used up the very last scrap of something?

No mending over last couple of days but there will be when I get out the machine. I like to do a session every so often to make it worthwhile getting it out/threading up/clearing away.

Have finished knitting cable sweater for DGS (just needs sewing up) and started one for DGS2.

Next week’s MMMing plan is to empty/clean food cupboards and sort out contents.

osbornbiscuit

Make .... That will be another 4 preemies hats and gowns. Oh and actually making a Hairy Bikers prawn curry from scratch.
Mend.... Nothing that I can think of
Minimise.... Started to go through my wardrobe and look to see what I actually need. As I no longer work do I really need all those trousers and skirts? There is a pile to go to charity shops and the hardly used to go on Ebay. Northern_Star I couldn't bear to minimise my wool stash without actually using it. I can remember giving away 2 bin bags of wool about 15 years ago and I wished I had never done it. I am exercising self control no more buying wool until one bag has gone. Unfortunately friends who know I knit for charity often pass on wool so it seems a never ending task. I have actually started to minimise my book pile. I tend to buy from charity shops and return them. It seems ages since I found the time to sit and read. Managed to make it to the swimming pool today so hopefully that is minimising.
Hope everyone had a good weekend and that the weather wasn't too bad

MMF007

Made do with leftovers from mil's 80th party!
Mended trousers. Well I put the hem back up (whispers * using wundaweb*). Added lace shoulder straps to a strapless dress and am about to add same (in different coloured lace) to a long skirt that will look good as a dress!
Minimised a lot of recycling.

[Deleted User]

Will definitely be making do for dinner tomorrow night, just got home from DDs with a dish of left over cooked broccoli,carrots and roast potato's with some sliced roast beef.

Not enough left overs to feed her family of five so its come to my house for tomorrow nights dinner, she also gave me a couple of bananas that were just starting to get brown spots on them .

She is the only one who eats banans in their house and will only eat them if they are yellow or slightly green, I am quite happy as one will go on my breakfast bran flakes sliced up, and the other one will make a banana custard for tomorrow nights pudding to go with my make do roast dinner.

No shopping for me this week Tuesday nights dinner will be at my pub quiz as usual and the rest of the week I shall be eating from my freezer

Bless her she knows that I will happily eat any left overs and I am happy that they don't end up being binned :):)

ValentinoRossi46

Hello I've not posted since New Year's Day I've been busy helping out an unwell relative, who I'm pleased to say is now on the road to recovery. But I've been reading through all your posts.
I've made do today by cutting the end off the toothpaste tube and starting to use what's left inside - it always astounds me how much is still in there that would otherwise be thrown away.
I've mended DS school shoe by glueing the Velcro strap back together .
Minimised some left over cheese nibbles and creme fraiche by adding some melted cheese and salsa to make nachos ! DS and DD both teens always starving really enjoyed them.
I will endeavour to post as often as possible now.