Make do, Mend and Minimise in 2017

Siebrie

Working late today, now eating my dinner of ood peanut soup and 2 pieces of toasted stale bread with cheese. Leftover pancake for dessert. Will continue work in about 15 mins until about 22.00 But at least I will be on my own, and can put yootoob on

[Deleted User]

Just got back from a mini-meet of MSE'ers and a great afternoon was had by all I think.
Dinner tonight will be making do with left over gammon and new potatoes & salad.
Nothing to mend today,but tomorrow I shall be getting my hammer out as I have a list of things that need putting up on the wall and I delved into the odds and s8ds box and found some good hooks,nails and picture hooks
Minimised some more paperwork in my study , I will get to the bottom of the accumulated junk in there if it kills me :):)

Winchelsea

I forgot to report yesterday that I MENDED a pair of bed socks. Had what my mum used to say were potatoes in the heels. So I MADE DO with using some odd bits of wool that were sitting by my darning mushroom, which of course MINIMISED my stash of sewing bits.
So, I now have a pair of hole-less socks - one with a red heel,,one blue! They are for bed after all, so I am very happy with that!

Prinzessilein

Morning all!

My shopping bill has been minimised nicely...I had a voucher for £5 off a £30 spend at M&S....and by carefully choosing the special offers, and using my Sparks card too (with 20%off various items I often buy) as well as the voucher...then I managed to buy a little over £35 worth of goods for just over £20!...So I now have a well-stocked kitchen and no more shopping for a while!

Making Do for dinner tonight...another stirfry.....When I was putting the new veg into the veg-drawer I gathered up all the remaining stuff (one carrot...half an onion...et.c) and will pop them through the chopper tonight and add a couple of prawns, and serve with cauliflower 'rice' instead of noodles.

No mending planned for today....but I WAS looking at my socks (to see if any needed darning)before putting them in the drawer...and saw one 'odd' sock so put it on the pile for cleaning rags (first I need to check the laundry to see if someone has somehow grabbed it with their washing!) ...and I noticed I have FOUR odd socks on the pile....no knickers or vests...it is just socks that seem to vanish in the washing machine!...Why is this?...and why does the machine only ever steal ONE of the pair?

misstara

Afternoon all

It's been a full on week at work so haven't been doing much except coming home and crashing on the sofa.

On a late shift today so had a lovely lie in, went to the gym, minimised the washing basket and cleaned the flat. Hopefully I'll be as productive at work :rotfl:

[Deleted User]

Good afternoon all, well its been a good week so far I have had a voucher from Dobbies for a pot of tea for tea with two cream scones, Plus a voucher from Beefeater's for a free main meal, and another voucher from Brewers Fayre for a free main meal so at some point in the next 12 days I shall be taking my self off for a freebie lunch or dinner at the two pubs and an afternoon tea at Dobbies. That will minimise my cooking and help keep my food budget down .

I also had a dozen large fresh free range eggs given to me by a neighbour as a present for keeping an eye on her place whilse she was away in January when she went to visit her new grandchild in Wales I told her I didn't want them as it wasn't a problem,but she insisted and had brought them back for me from her DiL's smallholding, so no eggs to buy for a couple of weeks . Often where I live we will do something like that and I'm lucky that my neighbours are like this.

If my young neighbour helps me out (I sometimes borrow her OH to change a lightbulb for me as I have 8'6" high ceilings) I will bake her a cake of a plate of HM biscuits for her two little girls. great community spirit around here. One reason why I would find it hard to move I think.

Left over bits and pieces for dinner tonight so not much in the way of cooking, mainly making do.

Banged a few nails and picture hooks in this morning which I gues could be mending, I had a small list of to-do jobs which I to-done :):)

winchelsea well done on your darning I remember as well my brothers having potato's in the heel of their socks and Mum getting her old wooden mushroom out and teaching me how to darn with it.When the socks got too bad they were carefully unravelled and re-knitted, grey wool was hard to get hold of at times back in the early 1950s, with a blue stripe at the top and a bit of elastic threade through they were recycled until she couldn't recycle much more .Things really were make do and mend back then.I like the idea of fancy heels in different colours :):)
Right time to get the kettle on as the DGS will soon be home from school


JackieO xx

silvasava

Afternoon all.
Osbornebiscuit - we must be on the same wavelength! The weather dried up enough yesterday afternoon for me to get out in the garden and prune my roses - and use the prunings to lay across my flower bed in the front garden to stop someone's cat using it as their own private toilet! Whereas my prima donna insists on using a litter tray - grrrr.
Ive been looking out the window and itching to get some more done but today is pants.
Havn't mended but made do with freezer stock for last night's dinner (Liver & Onions - yum) does that count as a minimise too??
Found a microwave plate that I'd kept as a spare but it doesn't fit my current one so I've put it on Freecycle - hopefully minimising Baby steps at the moment but all in the right direction.

YorksLass

Evening all,

Osbornbiscuit: beginning to feel twitchy about getting out and doing the garden

Me too. Over the last two years I’ve been able to salvage plants out of my hanging baskets as the winters were fairly mild but I’ll need to start again this year as everything’s been “got at” by the frost. Not sure where I’ll get the plants from though. I usually use my loyalty points at H’base but, since they were taken over, they don’t give/redeem the points anymore.

I haven’t used gel kneepads so can’t comment on them; instead I use a garden kneeler/seat + an old cushion. It’s also handy for other kneeling down jobs around the house.

Winchelsea / Prinzessilein: Maybe you could start a new fashion trend for non-matching socks with different coloured heels?:rotfl:

JackieO – Sounds like you live in a lovely place with lovely neighbours.

silvasava – Mmm, liver & onions. I’ll be adding that to next week’s meal plan.

Today I gave the inside of the fridge a thorough clean as there’s virtually nothing in it, thanks to all the food minimising of late. All we have left in the way of fresh veg/fruit is a Little Gem lettuce, 1 onion, 4 small apples and 1 banana (will use that as banana custard for pudding tonight) so will have to do a shop tomorrow. I must NOT get anything for the freezer though – it’s still rammed full.

I got some Sainsbobs vouchers in the post the other day, two for £6 off and two for £8 off (one per week over the next 4 weeks) but you have to spend £40 each time so I can’t see me using them. I might use one of the £8 ones later this month when I do an online delivery order for the heavy/bulky stuff. Sorry Sainsbobs, you’re not getting me to open Percy Purse!

One of my Xmas presents was a gift voucher for an online yarn store; since I’m supposed to be using up the wool stash before I buy any more, I’ve been looking at what else I could use it for. I was thinking about a yarn bowl (to stop the ball running around the floor) but no need. Instead I’ve re-purposed a redundant biscuit barrel (no lid) so that make-do means I can hang on to the voucher.

On the mend front, I’ve sewn up 2 of the 3 knitted hooded jackets for DGSs (if I can do the other one this weekend I’ll be happy) and I can add the buttons while I watch TV.

RainbowHippie

Evening all

Siebrie, i agree with Floss it sounds like you are guiding your DH well on the path to sensible frugality! I love 'upcycling' (really just a fancy term for making do i think!) bits of furniture, have recently papered what was originally a plain and cheap-looking ikea bookcase we got given free with some vintage maps i got cheap on ebay, for my OH's 'study' room. It turned out even better than i'd hoped and he loves it. Only downside is it took ages and he now wants more! i'll have to teach him how to do it! Does your DH get involved with projects like your bookcase?

Yorkslass well done it sounds like you've had a super productive day!

I've had one of those frustrating days where i had a nice plan for all the stuff i was going to get done but then some unexpected and urgent work came in and scuppered most of my plans. Hence being up late trying to recoup a bit of time, will no doubt suffer for it tomorrow though! Still managed to get a few bits done, sorted out car insurance, did some tidying in preparation for having guests this weekend, and now off to bed with some crochet.

Made do with a baking-soda-and-salt paste to clean the oven (i hope - am leaving it on overnight as recommended on a few websites so fingers crossed it will do the trick!). OH recently mended the plug on our slow cooker as the plastic thread for the screw holding the front and back together had worn and the back came off :eek: not very safe! but it is now well-wrapped with electrical tape and is very securely held together. If at any point it looks like coming apart we'll get a new plug, but it doesn't feel like it will. We've also acquired a new-to-us large slow cooker from some friends who were getting a new one - she came for a massage (one of my many jobs) a couple of days ago and offered their old slow cooker as 'payment' if i was willing. I was more than happy as our other one is great but a bit on the small side for some recipes. The opposite of minimising but it will be useful for us. So had two slow cookers bubbling away yesterday making a veggie shepherd's pie filling and HM baked beans, smelled lovely and made me hungry all day!

Osbornbiscuit - Hope your freezer sort-out went well! On my to-do list is a fresh inventory of ours, did one a few months ago but have neglected to keep it up to date since the hectic run-up to christmas.

I'll probably be off looking after our guests for a few days so have a nice weekend everyone

CAZBEAR

Not much to report after a busy week but did fix neighbours light bulb for her with a 2nd hand one of ours, so a bit of mending.. and making do...then found 3 of the 4 others in the drawer were duds so minimized them to the recycling centre !!

Been using up the freezer stuff all week so will hopefully will replenish a bit this weekend.

Hope no-one needs to mend anything due to stormy weather we've been having !!