Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Greetings Wednesday Pence Wranglers,
What a peculiar day. I've stopped doing things now. I shall go out & water the greenhouse plant babies & make dinner, but apart from that, I intend to do nothing else of practical value until tomorrow.
Started the day with a particularly yucky hairball gifted by Soot, thankfully on the hall tiles & not the carpet. Spotted by Mr F first, which meant he dealt with it, so that was a small result. Then my morning went down the pan. Our main freezer has been acting up the last few days  - an intermittent fault, the worst kind because one kind of hopes these things will settle & then realise that is unicorn land because they never do. This morning, it was clear that the bloody thing was carking it as there were a couple of items near the front which had almost defrosted. Mr F supplied me with coffee & toast, but then had to get off for work, so I spent the morning on Operation Food Salvage. We do have another freezer but very small. I divided everything from both freezers into 'Expensive so definitely keep', 'Useful so keep if possible', 'Keep but will have to be cooked today or tomorrow for fairly immediate consumption' & 'Sorry, no room at the inn so bin bag'. Agggghhhhh! You know how much I hate throwing away food. Well, I somehow managed to get all that fish from our last Grimsby fish box into the small freezer, plus a pork joint, two bags of home grown chillies & a few home cooked portions of things & that has absolutely rammed it. In fact, I've told Mr F not to even open it unless he definitely needs something because I think we'd struggle to get stuff back in. I've defrosted salmon for tonight's stir-fry which I intend serving with a portion of wokked savoy cabbage with soy sauce, as that wouldn't fit, I've had defrosted apple compote for today's lunch fruit, ditto rhubarb compote for tomorrow & Friday and lunches for the rest of the week will involve spicy chickpea burgers, garlic flatbreads & the individual frozen pastry cases I filled & baked today. Despite all this food saving activity, I still had to throw so much away that I struggled to lift the bin bag high enough to get it into the wheelie bin. All those portions of nice home made soup & refried beans binned, lots of other stuff too. Nothing I could do about it. And then began the washing up marathon as there were so many empty freezer containers by then.
Thankfully, there was sufficient in our Appliances Replacement Pot to buy a new freezer, so I have ordered one today & was surprised to find out that despite the Easter break, it is arriving a week today. I am kind of over that feeling of massive annoyance that I've had to use the money & it has mostly been replaced by gratitude that there was enough to cover it. 
So that was my rubbish morning. Not done much else since then - next week's meal plans, a few surveys.....quite a few PA ones around atm - my April earnings are up to £27+ so far. I've deferred my planned greenhouse jobs until tomorrow, so shall look forward to those. 
Could have been worse.......could have been the first person on the scene of the hairball.......
A moany day. Will do better tomorrow.
F x

Deni_debt-free_dreamer

oh dear, i share your feelings about wasting food, nevermind the related wasted money on food that had to be binned That is good that the replacement can be delivered next week.
I have done quite a few PA surveys this morning and even a UGov one.  
love Deni x

Crazycatlady2

Oh no that’s not good @foxgloves

Sun_Addict

What a blooming nuisance 🤬Happened to me a couple of times and it’s so annoying. 

ladyholly

Without wishing to tempt fate I keep waiting for our freezer to break down. It is coming up to 20 years old. I could do without it going at the moment until I can replenish the emergency fund a bit.

DawnW

What a nightmare! I dread this happening, as both my large and small freezers are absolutely rammed

We did have a similar issue a couple of years ago when OH inadvertently turned the freezer off, and everything had completely defrosted before I noticed the puddle on the floor. I too had to throw loads of stuff away, mainly home grown veg, which could at least be composted. As the freezer had been turned off at the mains, and hadn't broken, I was able to wipe it out and turn it on again, but I remember spending a whole day and late into the evening cooking as much as possible so that it could be refrozen to avoid wasting meat, fish and fruit, and as much veg as possible (couldn't do much with soggy beans, cabbage etc)

Hope your new freezer arrives on time, and problem free.

marionmgcars

oh Foxgloves, what a nightmare.  Glad you have funds to replace the freezer.  We once moved an older freezer into garage (as spare) when we bought we fridge freezer before a Christmas family gathering.  The old one then stopped working, so we had to dump it - later to find out modern day freezers don't work well in cold garages.  something to do with the oil in the motor chilling to much to work properly.  I could have wept to think we had dumped a perfectly good, but old, freezer.  I live and learn. 

foxgloves

Thanks for your sympathy re freezer, everyone. Yes, infuriating. Can't recall exactly when we bought it without looking in my trusty Money Book but it can't be more than 5 or 6 years old. Our first thought, in terms of sustainability, was to book an engineer to come & look at it (well known brand) but it costs £149 call-out charge & that's without labour, possible return visit & parts. Also possible that having paid the £149 & however long it takes to look at it, that the thing is declared unrepairable. Past attempts to get a local electrician to look at appliances have been useless.....for instance, nice freestanding electric stove (good brand). Response from electrician went thus?
"Well how much did it cost you?"
I told him a rough figure.
"Well just buy a new one then".
Grrr, bloody appliances!
F

foxgloves

Pondy greetings diary readers,
I'm having a sit down & have been looking at all the tadpoles. We definitely do our bit for frog conservation here!
A much better day today. Got tonight's meal into the slow cooker this morning (trying a new recipe - spicy sausage & red lentil casserole) & baked bread.. While the dough was proving, I sat in the kitchen (so as to be in earshot of builder) & did my mid-month budget check-in. Was pleased only to be £12 out on my original April budget figures ,& I'm pretty sure this is to do with having had a new mobile phone & contract. I thought I understood it when Mr F explained it to be, but I obviously don't. It doesn't help that I can actually hear my brain cells dying when somebody is telling me the finer points of mobile contracts. Anyway, pretty much on track budget wise.
Mr F breaks up for Easter today & announced that if I pinged him a list, he'd get the 'boring shopping' on his way home so that we can do 'nice shopping' in town tomorrow. As we also plan to visit somewhere-to-be-decided for a walk over the weekend plus I have my Easter baking to do, that suits me fine, so I wrote the list sitting outside with my favourite baking book.
Have also chatted to greenhouse plant babies & sown squash, courgettes & more larkspur.
Builders not back till Tues so looking forward to getting the house cleaned as we keep walking sand in. The cat litter spreaders are also active so the vacuum needs to come out big-time.
Right, off to have another look for my box of Easter decorations. I just cannot find it anywhere & usually have a little display up by now.
Love F x

BlueJ94

Afternoon @foxgloves just catching up, sorry about your freezer issues! Funny enough, out fridge leaks now idea where from or how but ever so often we get a puddle of water at the bottom of the fridge. Also, our cooker stopped working one day and OH took the plug apart as it's built into the wall and the electric where fried, how it didn't catch fire I don't know

In other news, I'm on track to be debt free in August still, even better now a part settlement has been accepted!

I'm still working at Sainsburys and I'm really enjoying it, off this Sunday due to Easter so changed my shift to today instead.