Make do, Mend and Minimise in 2017

mrs-moneypenny

Morning all
Full day art work yesterday do not that much free time but did get sone blanket knitted, and gave the mouse ears away.
Used up some more ys mozzarella cheese on a hm veggie lasagna when I got in.
Hoping to finish blanket over the weekend so I can gift that.
Need to write a couple of birthday cards out as well so will sort through the card stash.

Hugs to all who need them and hope the poorlies get better soon.

CAZBEAR

Feeling inspired today...minimised some paperwork and bills and then minimised renewal cost on breakdown membership with a quick phonecall saying it seemed very expensive ..they took 15% off straight away:j. going to research fixing the gas tariff now..
Working my way through the bendy carrots making veggy lasagne 4 tomorrow and using up some freezer stash boulanger poatoes for an easy tea tonight...leftover quorn roast from that should be lunch for me and dd tomorrow with some pasta salad.
Need to minimise the washing and ironing now...may have to use the tumble dryer sadly !!:(
Keep on keeping on folks :)

chirpycheap

Minimised 140 items this week (I'm aiming to clear my home of 1000 items this year) and guess what? you can hardly tell that anything has changed about the place! Never mind I'm loving decluttering. I feel lighter already!

Made do- forgot to buy risotto rice for tonight's dinner but Mr Google says that sushi rice is a perfectly fine substitute and I appear to have three boxes of that. Let's hope it's true!

I'm not great at remembering to post but I really do appreciate everyone's inspiring posts!:T

YorksLass

Despite being in a CBA mood all this week ( I need some warmer weather and sunshine please), I’ve done something in all of the MMM categories.

Minimising
Last weekend I played freezer tetris and checked out the inventory at the same time (yes! - it was up to date) and I can see the contents are going down nicely. There are one or two things I could do with getting, but I’m holding out until I’ve used up some more frozen stuff.

The mountain of wool stash is going down too. I’m using the oddments to knit a throw - so far I’ve knitted 13 large squares (no particular finished size in mind); it will be really colourful once it’s finished, a bit like Joseph’s Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. I’m also parting with some yarn I know I definitely won’t use and have put that on one side for the CS for someone else to be creative with. The remainder has been matched up to specific patterns and each type put into a bag with the relevant pattern; I’m sure that will keep me going for quite a while without having to buy any more.

Last night I ate the last two chocolates of Box no.1 from Xmas (well, someone has to do it ). Two more boxes and two bars to go - I might finish them by the end of the year.

Make Do
1) After cleaning the oven the other week I was toying with the idea of buying some oven liners for the bottom but, when I saw the price, decided that was an extravagance I could do without. Instead, I’ve used an old square baking tray (I think it came from my previous cooker) covered in foil. It fits perfectly; any spills, just replace the dirty foil with clean and hey presto a clean oven bottom.
2) Used dried milk for a sauce for fish pie instead of using fresh as I didn’t fancy going to the shop in the rain/cold.
3) Didn’t have any wrapping paper for a birthday present but instead cut up a red envelope (you know, the kind you get at Xmas); it looked really good tied up with a gold ribbon (from stash).

Mend
1)The handle on a pan; it keeps coming loose and I usually tighten up the screw with a (very) small screwdriver that’s kept in the bits & bats drawer but I don’t think it’s big enough to get the right leverage. So I dragged out DH’s toolbox and found a longer-handled screwdriver – hopefully that will fix it better – or at least for longer.
2) Sewed the seam on a nylon fold-up shopping bag (the kind that folds into its own pocket). I’ve had it for years, long before the carrier bag charge came in, and would hate to be without it as it fits easily into a coat pocket.

Friday brought the first grocery shop of March. Glory be, Sainsbobs have finally finished the store refurb so it’s no longer like trying to navigate an obstacle course. That said, of course nothing is in the same place as it was before – yes, I know why they do it – so it did take longer than usual but I didn’t deviate away from the list too much, despite walking up and down every aisle. Does that minimise me, I wonder?


Anyhoo, spent £32.63 on F&V, salad, meat and one YS item. That included a carton of fresh chilled chicken & root veg soup: retails at £2 / was on promotion at £1 / used a £1 off coupon, so it was a freebie. I wouldn’t have bought it otherwise.

The YS item was a pack of 4 large cornish pasties for £1.35, now in freezer.

The biggest expense was a joint of Irish beef, a tad over £11. When DD & DS were at home we always bought a joint for the weekend and used it up during the week, but now it’s just the two of us we only get one every few weeks, depending what’s on offer. I think it should do us for at least 6 meals in some form or other, with some slices frozen in gravy to use on the weeks when we don’t buy a joint.

Right, off to do this week’s meal plan now followed by chill out time (TV, knitting more squares). Bye for now. :wave:

Winchelsea

Have made do without any food shopping for a couple of days. Bought milk on Thursday - got plenty of everything else.

Mended a pair of my trousers - well, sewed a button on. They have seen better days - bought for a song at the M&ess outlet store about ten years ago - but enough life in them to warrant a few stitches. I actually wore them when I went out. Would normally have changed, but CBA, so brazened it out. I'm sure no-one noticed.

Minimised - I'm doing the item a day for Lent. Today's candidate for the black sack was an odd drinking glass that I haven't used for ages,

RainbowHippie

Well done everyone on keeping up the MMMing! I have been too busy to post or even read much but have been MMMing as much as i can in what little spare time i've had. Work and life in general looking calmer over the next couple of weeks so hopefully will be able to do more. Just catching up with the thread this morning in between some admin tasks.

Well done LizzieR on getting lots of your chair cover done, bet it will be gorgeous when it's done. Panda i don't envy you having a storage unit to empty. Our most recent move was from a bungalow with a HUGE attic which had helpfully swallowed all our junk with no complaints. Was a bit of a shock to have to find places for everything in a house with a more 'normal' amount of storage! Still sorting through stuff a year later! Well done giving yourself a set time limit, hope it has gone well for you!

YorksLass, hope you are feeling much better now (i'm still catching up from last week!), take good care of yourself. I'm sure you know this already but cranberry juice is meant to be amazing for a water infection - something in it stops the little nasties 'hanging on to the sides' as it were when you go to the loo - apparently it's that that causes the horrible sting!

Make do - OH and i went away for the weekend as he was attending a conference in Devon, i made packed lunches for the train on Friday and made do with a tub of nuts and several pieces of fruit for my lunch on Saturday (he got fed at the conference) and the free entertainment of wandering around the lovely nearby town. We'd planned to go out in town for dinner but he decided the time would be well spent 'networking' with his new conference buddies, so i went up to the university campus to join them and we ate at the student restaurant - less than £10 for us both and we were given a bottle of leftover wine from the conference reception. Added to the good company of his new friends it didn't feel at all like making do.

Mend - i managed to do lots of crafting on the long train journey, and fortunately had needle and thread with me for said crafting, as my bag handle broke as we were rushing for the train! It was easy to fix on the journey and hopefully will now last a while longer, it's a great bag and fits so much in! I also need to have a look at our fencing - Doris took out a couple of panels last week, and having looked at them they are completely rotten, so i suspect several others will be on their way out. We've only been in this house a year and planning to focus on the garden this spring/summer, so sorting out the fencing will be a good start. Hope nobody was too badly affected by the high winds.

Minimise - my list of crafty things to make, and need to Eb*y a few things this week. Plumber is hopefully coming next week to fit a new loo and sink in the downstairs cloakroom, so that will minimise the 'new' things (both second hand from eb*y) from taking up space in the garage. There is currently one of those annoyingly tiny sinks in the cloakroom, which i have never understood because it's not a tiny room and there will be plenty of space for the new normal-size sink unit complete with large cupboard underneath.

Off to finish catching up with the last week or so of the thread! Have fun all and keep up the good work

[Deleted User]

Good afternoon chums I minimised one of my dried packet mixes from the stash and had a tomato and garlic pasta lunch with enought left over to have cold with some salad tonight.

I counted up and have 28(now 27) packets of dried pasta, rice cous cous, and casserole mixes that I found scattered around my cupboards on Saturday !!! They are going to be used up asap

Making do: with as much as possible to ensure my Love Food,Hate Waste will probably carry on after the end of Lent :):)I have far too much stuff in stock ,problem is, more cupboards, mean you tend to fill them up without thinking.

Mending: ,well I didn't mend today but I did another couple of squares for one of my charity blankets .Day six and still not been anywhere near a food shop

YorksLass

Thanks RainbowHippie, much better now thanks to the magic bullets aka antib’s. No, I didn’t know about cranberry juice being good for water infections so I’ll bear that in mind if it happens again – not had one before and can’t say I was impressed!

Yesterday’s dinner of roast beef, York puds, onion gravy, mash, sprouts and carrots was scrummy. Tonight we’ve had cold cuts, hm herby oven chips + side salad. I also used up the last two gingerbread squares – a short blast in the mw, add custard = quick pud.

That leaves the cake tin empty so tomorrow I’m going to try out the recipe posted at the beginning of Jan for mincemeat flapjacks; that will minimise the last of the oats on the “use up tray” and some/all (not sure which?) of a jar of mincemeat from the cupboard.

It’s been a bit on the chilly side here today but glorious sunshine; wouldn’t you know it, no laundry to do . Instead I did the ironing, so all the laundry baskets are empty again.

The postman arrived this morning with the usual weekly junk mail – instantly minimised to recycling bin – and the first of the bills for 2017/2018 (rent). Happily, only a few coppers more each week from April.

Now the food stocks are under control, I’m going to move on to minimising the rest of the house. Not really sure which approach to take on this i.e. room by room, categories (e.g. books, clothes, fabric stash etc etc) or items per day. I’ve looked on the KonMari thread and it seems everyone has their own way so it could be trial and error until I find what suits me!

Bye for now.

Siebrie

I have 'mended' a pair of girl's thermal tights by cutting off the feet, so that they can be worn as leggings. They were getting a bit too small and had a whole in the toe (those two are probably connected), and I was not planning on mending and then donating!
I have minimised some stuff in the freezer: gingerbread from last year, that I froze in 4-slice packets when I had a glut; redcurrants from 2012 - my very first harvest here, all other harvests are gobbled up straight from the plant ; cooked chickpeas that I am defrosting and need to put in a recipe tomorrow.

misstara

Hello all

Haven't managed to post for a while but as always loving reading what everyone else is getting up to.

I finally bought some screws for the doors so they're now all up and the flat is warm and cosy again. Will buy my friend a wee bottle of something to say thank you for giving us a loan of all the stuff we needed, saved us a fortune from having to buy it.

Next thing to go up is net curtains, plan to do this tomorrow or Thursday. We bought a lot of bits and bobs for the flat on Sunday so also have a clothing rail to screw together.

I'm off on holiday this week so have mostly been pottering about the flat doing little jobs. Cleaned all of the inside of windows on Sat, if the weather is nice tomorrow I'll do the outsides.

Also being doing lots of baking and trying new recipes which has been lovely . Met a friend for lunch today and then went for a walk, a cold but beautiful day here.