Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Onebrokelady

foxgloves wrote: »

Glad you've rediscovered your gardening mojo, OBL. I have always loved growing things, but I must say I'm finding that being outside tending our garden is tremendous therapy after the two years I've just had. You'll probably remember I lost my Mum last Autumn... well, the year before that, I lost my Dad & also a dear friend who I'd known since my first week at university aged 18. It's been a proper sad old time & although there have been nice things too, all the stuff that's needed doing following both parents dying so close together has seemed neverending - though the end should be in sight soon as I accepted full asking price on their house last week. Fingers crossed it all goes through. So... my time spent out in the garden this year, sowing & planting, clearing & planning, and just pottering around & enjoying the flowers & wildlife, it's all doing me lots of good.
I did have to go to the garden centre today. I went to get my packet of sweetcorn seed out to check the sowing time & couldn't find it. Most unusual, as I sort everything I intend to sow over the coming year into my seed box which is arranged month by month. Checked my main stock box of seeds - not in there either. It wouldn't be anywhere else, so I obviously hadn't bought any after all. I now have a pack ready to go. Things I didn't buy while there: Coffee & scone in the cafe, bedding plants (they looked gorgeous, but honestly, why was I even looking?? My greenhouse is rammed with homegrown plants), large ceramic pot. I shall need one soon to pot up a very big conservatory plant, but I didn't want to spend the money today.
And I'm eeking out bagged compost like mad by mixing it with our own home made stuff. I've looked at those root-trainer modules in the past for sowing beans, but have never succumbed as I like to re-use big yoghurt pots/takeaway coffee cups, as I've been doing today.
Must get up & walk around in a minute as I can stiffen up after a day's gardening when it's still early in the season - the joys of being a woman of a certain age, lol!
F x

You certainly have had a tough couple of years I do find it quite therapeutic to be out in the garden,I couldn't do anything out there yesterday or today and I felt quite down this morning, was also raining and quite dark so a big change from the weekend so that didn't help
On the bright side I noticed the rain that spills out of the gutter in my front garden lands in the square pallet I'm using to grow stuff,i think I need to rig something up the catch some of the water or it will be water logged but at the moment I'm looking at it as a free water supply right by my growing area:j:rotfl:

Onebrokelady

Oops meant also to say well done on dodging the scone and coffee,you are a stronger willed woman than me and good luck with the house sale

Blackcats

Dear Foxgloves, you have mentioned that you hope that your diary helps others so I wanted to share some recent wins for me based on your wise words. Firstly I had a family "do" at the weekend and in my head decided I had nothing to wear. However, a look through my summer clothes revealed a maxi skirt that I had bought a couple of years ago. I bought it on the basis that I was going to an evening party where there might be midges in the garden and so I obviously needed a new maxi skirt to protect me from midges. I had another maxi skirt but during spendy years that was an irrelevance. Anyway I had worn this skirt just once to the party. So I washed and ironed the skirt and teamed it with a favourite top and voila - a fresh outfit. Oh yes - even better - I'd also bought a pair of sandals and handbag to match the skirt - spendy years were full on spendy!
And tomorrow I have a friend popping round for elevenses. Normally I would go to the shops and buy numerous cakes, biscuits etc. Tomorrow I am making a loaf of bread and getting some yummy sausages from the freezer for sausage sandwiches and I've got biscuits left over from Easter. So a nice (but not necessarily nutritious) lunch concocted by shopping from stores already at home.
Thanks Foxgloves and contributors!

crazy_cat_lady

I have a massive recycled notebook at work (unused worksheets cut in half and held together with a bulldog clip) and I write down literally everything I need to do. Some days this is big stuff like 'write Y10 reports' and others it's 'get your stuff from the printer'. It really helps me get through the day in a productive way. I keep attempting it with the finances but have not been successful so far. Must keep trying, and do something a bit different.

joedenise

I too am going to have to take a leaf out of your book foxgloves as out for dinner on Friday and again Saturday next week. Two meals out and definitely can't afford 2 new outfits! I'm sure I must be able to concoct a couple of outfits from what's in the wardrobe!

Denise

Honeysucklelou2

I have a finance notebook, a work notebook and home notebook. It sounds onerous but it doesn't feel that way, but helps ,e to keep each area of life managed and in the same way factor in spends as they are coming up.

foxgloves

Ooooh, yes get that water saved, OBL, especially if you're on a water metre. mind you, I had a similar idea here a while back. When our neighbours had their extension built, we started getting a water spout effect off the corner of their roof every time we had big rain.....I'm talking really big rain here, as in those stormy deluges......I ran outside to put a large container right where the water cascade wass landing & the power of it knocked it over all over my feet, so I haven't pursued that idea since!
Everywhere is so dry in our garden atm. Was looking forward to rain yesterday but we had a couple of showers for no more than a few minutes & the borders are still as dry as anything. Hopefully well get more of a downpour today. Hope so.

foxgloves

Blackcats - Great thinking on the outfit. It takes ages to get out of that spendy mindset of 'I'm having a night out, therefore I automatically have nothing whatsoever to wear, my wardrobe is an empty husk & I must hie me away to the city centre at speed to buy a new outfit or I will look like a tramp"........
I would also like a new maxi-skirt, but thankfully can't find anything I like. I have a nice maxi-dress as one of my coming birthday presents from mr f, so I don't really need a skirt too. I'm still intending to dye an old one dark purple, as there isn't really anything wrong with it that a change of colour wouldn't fix. Must remember to add machine dye to my Saturday list for town & get this project progressed.When I did my wardrobe overhaul a few weeks back - I think I did pop on here & bore everyone about that - I identified the garments that would be most useful for my wardrobe & they were a dress (I know I have two for my birthday this weekend as I chose them & supplied the discount code, lol!), a denim skirt, as mine is much worn & starting to look not-in-a-cool-way-tatty, and a black tunic top which will go with all my jeans/trousers plus a multi-colour jacket which its difficult to pair things with. Note that 'new maxi-skirt' did not appear anywhere on this list, so I am determined not to buy one unless an item of such utterly bargainaceous loveliness hoves into view that to leave it in the shop would be an act of foolishness beyond compare!
Go me! I'm so over the Spendy Decades these days!
F x

foxgloves

Joedenise - Yes, time to look at that wardrobe creatively & see what new outfits you can come up with. I've recently discovered how nice a black dress I swapped with my sister looks with some vividly patterned green leggings. It's quite a short dress & the leggings are footless, so it makes a nice outfit with black sandals, whether flat ones or my high heeled pair of wedges, which I had forgotten about until I did my big wardrobe overhaul. Sometimes things you don't think will work at all turn out to look quite good.

foxgloves

CCL & Honeysuckle - Yes, I'm all for notebooks. I've got my everyday diary, so all my daily job lists, etc, go in there, then there's my food tracking diary, as I am usually calorie counting (not quite back onto that yet following Easter & more celebrations this weekend, but it will be coming out again on Monday for sure!) Then I've got a little notebook which comes out & about with me in my handbag for jotting down things I see & want to remember, books I want to read, films I want to see, a mish mash of things.
Great use of old worksheets, CCL. I also use bulldog clips in a similar way - I use a paper knife to divide recycled A4 paper into quarters, then put a wodge together with a nice shiny bulldog clip (why do bulldog clips somehow make one feel extra-efficient?) & I use them for telephone message pad, pad on the kitchen dresser in case I'm struck by an awesome meal plan idea or need to work out how long a cake needs to be in the oven or what time i need to set the slow cooker, etc.
I used to work with someone who kept a notebook by her bed. She had a tendency, as I did when I was working, to lie awake thinking about things she needed to do at work the next day, so she tackled the lack of sleep this was causing by briefly jotting these things down on her bedside pad as she thought of them. Then she could go to sleep safe in the knowledge that she needn't worry as she wouldn't forget any of these tasks. It didn't really work that well for me. My insomnia while I was working was just too entrenched.