A Simpler Life...

Drawingaline

Hi jenberry, I am a wannabe minimalist who lives with a hoarder :rotfl: I also have four kids who like there stuff, so most days it feels like a losing battle. But I am trying! I recently minimalised the kids clothes and they now have capsule wardrobes, but I can't seem to be able to do the same with mine!

Good luck and I look forward to following your journey.

JoJoC

Sounds like you've got a fair bit of saving to do if you're aiming for £10 in six months! Go for it!

It's a small world - Hamilton suits me just fine because it's a mid sized town with amenities that are pretty convenient, but I'm also 23 minutes on the train from Glasgow and five minutes from the nearest countryside to go for a wander with the kids. It's a nice balance for me. It also helps that my whole immediate family live within two miles of me, and that suits me fine.

Interesting that you say that about dropping your expensive shampoo - about three years ago I decided enough was enough with toiletry spending and decided to get 99p shampoo from Home Bargains to try it out. It's great and i still use it now and there was no difference whatsoever to my hair. I have tried Aldis own shampoo (a few years ago) and thought it was rotten. I'm also a convert on female hygeine products. £4 for a box of Tampax that costs 89p for the exact same non-branded box and there's more in the cheaper one! Anyway, sounds like I've got a basic grip on the non-consumerist concept, I just need to develop it.

jenberry

Drawingaline: As someone who used to live with a hoarder, I feel your pain!! It's amazing you've managed to downsize your kid's wardrobes. I think it's a valuable lesson for kids to have limited 'stuff' as well. It makes me cringe when my friends kids demand 'I WANT THAT!' and their parents give in almost instantly. I think you're doing a great job. Maybe instead of downsizing your own wardrobe, you could just aim not to buy anymore things unless you manage to get rid of others. For example, if you see a new pair of shoes, don't buy them unless you can get rid of two existing pairs. Or try just to get rid of one item a week, every little helps! I used to go to the post office and charity shop getting rid of things on a daily basis, now I'm down to once a week since I have so few things to get rid of now. It's a really nice feeling to have next to nothing!

JoJo: Ah, £10k is my overall savings goal to buy a flat, I think in the next six months I'd be aiming for half of that! I'd like to be back in Glasgow within that time and maybe rent for another 6 months. It's probably best to be settled in Glasgow while looking to buy a flat than a 6 hour train journey away! It would be lovely to have my whole family closeby. At the moment, I am quite isolated. I have my boyfriend here and a handful of friends, but it's not quite the same as being able to drive round the corner to my mum's house.

I couldn't agree more with you regarding toiletries. I also think Aldi's own brand shampoo is rotten, but I quite like Superdrug's own range. I was buying toothpaste yesterday and one box of Colgate was £1.99 (on sale!) whereas 6 boxes of Superdrug's own brand was £3! I think it's all about shopping around and not being enticed by advertising or branding. I still have my £17 Mac concealer and haven't found a decent high street alternative anywhere, but most toiletries can easily be substituted I think.

vintagegal

Interesting that you mention toiletries. I recently tried an Avon eyeliner as my friend became a rep. At £3 it stays put so much better than the £14 Mac one I was using daily and had been buying for more than 15 years! I don't even want to think about how much I could have saved...
Thanks for your comments Jenberry. You are right about not keeping all the too small clothes, they make me feel depressed on a daily basis. At the very least they shouldn't be hanging up in the wardrobe, taunting me!
I'm going to use up the shampoo I have and then switch to a supermarket own brand. Will report back if I find a good one to recommend.

jenberry

vintagegal wrote: »

Interesting that you mention toiletries. I recently tried an Avon eyeliner as my friend became a rep. At £3 it stays put so much better than the £14 Mac one I was using daily and had been buying for more than 15 years! I don't even want to think about how much I could have saved...
Thanks for your comments Jenberry. You are right about not keeping all the too small clothes, they make me feel depressed on a daily basis. At the very least they shouldn't be hanging up in the wardrobe, taunting me!
I'm going to use up the shampoo I have and then switch to a supermarket own brand. Will report back if I find a good one to recommend.

Oh I'll need to look into the Avon eyeliner. The one I use at the moment is £16 a pop and hard to get hold of! Makeup is a rare area where I don't mind splashing out, but if I can find a cheaper alternative, even better! Do you still need to get the catalogue through in order to get Avon products?

Yes, please get rid of the too-small clothes!! They're not doing you any good. I think focusing on how you are right now is more important. Good luck on the search for a decent supermarket shampoo, there are so many to choose from!

vintagegal

I'm sure you can just order online now. I used the glimmerstick in Saturn grey and in blackest black, they're soft but I just find they don't bleed. Very impressed! They just twist up which I prefer as I used to waste a lot sharpening on the mac one.
Going to try some sparkly ones they have too.

Will think about ebaying some too small clothes this weekend!

jenberry

Hi everyone,

I hope your weekends are going well! Today I realised how far I'd come in terms of living frugally. OH and I decided to take a trip to the massive Next Home centre that has just opened up near us. Not really sure why other than it looked impressive and I was curious about all the shiny things...I was genuinely bored. I walked around looking at the prices (£200 for a goose down duvet!!) and noticed how many unnecessary items there are in such shops and how many I would previously have bought.

I am now addicted to the feeling of getting rid of things: today I gave another bag of goodies to Barnardos and it felt great! I have had two NSDs so far this week and contemplating setting a budget for non-essential items of £333 per month (food, petrol and things that exclude rent and bills). Frugal living really is addictive!

Jen xxx

JoJoC

Wow - there's no chance I'd have survived in Next Home without feeling complete injustice at not being able to buy everything in sight! Walking through there is pretty much exactly how I want my house to be like and because we're not at a point of being able to afford to do up our house that'd just kill me.

I'm SO impressed at your attitude.

Well, I started watching Minimalism last night and managed 20 minutes in before I fell asleep... I was genuinely finding it interesting, but I was just done in! So I'll try again tomorrow night, I think. I find the whole concept so interesting and appealing, so I feel I need to educate myself about it a bit before being able to go for it.

Although, I did go mad the other night and throw out 15 of 20 pairs of jammies I had in a drawer because I lost the plot after not being able to fit my freshly washed pair in there. The drawer is lovely and spacious now and, tbh, I can't remember which ones I even threw out now!

angelpye

JoJo, thats impressive on the pjs!

If you don't want to spend or can't borrow the book on Kon Marie method of tidying up then perhaps take a look at youtube reviews of it - her folding method really helps with drawer space. Before I did her complete clothing overhaul chapter (basically put everything in a pile, every single piece of clothing you own and go through one by one asking yourself 'do you spark joy?' or practical for work) I believed I didn't have enough underwear and it turned out I owned almost 30 pairs of knickers! Ha! I thought I didn't have enough to get me through the week but because of how I stored them (in a big jumble of a mess in a drawer) I couldn't see all the nice hardly ever worn ones. I got rid of 75% of my wardrobe and to this day don't remember one thing I got rid of. I still have a full wardrobe and chest of drawers but its all stuff I love to wear. No more clothes that make me feel frumpy getting in the way of clothes I like and much less 'noise' in my head in the morning when choosing what to wear.

Once you catch the bug of minimalism the whole retail therapy thing just melts away and somewhere like Next Home just somehow seems irrelevant.

I still need to watch the Minimalists doc but might wait for when I am in the need for inspiration

jenberry

Haha! Thank you JoJo! Normally, I would have loved being there. When I went to Ikea towards the end of last year, I was in my element, searching for things to buy and disappointed in myself when I only bought a laptop stand (which I never used) and a packet of Dime bars (which I ate on the way home, ha!) Today, I was frustrated by the four sales people who approached me asking if I needed help, and just generally annoyed by the prices (£16 for a glass!) This consumerist society is becoming quite transparent to me.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the Minimalism documentary. I particularly enjoyed the part about Tiny Houses, but not sure I could go that far in my own minimalism journey! I've added another one called 'Consumed' to my wishlist, but I've yet to justify the £2.49 it costs to rent on Amazon video (what a stinge I am!)

Wow, 15-20 pairs of jammies! That's impressive! PJs seem to be something that is easy to accumulate: I threw out probably about 6 pairs last year. Most of them were Primark thermals with silly prints on them, which I never wore. Now I rotate two pairs and that does me just fine! It's a weirdly nice feeling having the 'bare minimum' of everything.