Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Good morning! And thanks to everyone who has contributed to the discussion on energy saving measures. It's been interesting reading your comments.
@DawnW - I read your post about outdoor solar sensor lights to Mr F & he is now very keen to replace our broken one with something similar. He seems quite confident that he can fit it himself, so I will remind him to go & have a look at what's available (including the fitting instructions!) & will look to fund it from the House & Garden Pot as the tail-end of our home improvement project.

@BalanceBy50 - You're welcome! Yes, ditto here for conservatory use. I also find that if it is a showery day but not the sort of horizontal rain that blows in, I can have the french doors open with the airer just inside so that they still get some air & a bit of a blow. I did have the heated airer on for 1 hr yesterday morning.....switching the button to 'on' felt like a ridiculously massive decision so I suppose that demonstrates that energy saving is very much getting re-established in my head atm.

@amber03 - Yes, I'm definitely also a planner. I always think of all my preserving, whether it's freezing stuff we've grown or stashing tasty jars away in the pantry, as laying stuff down for winter, but we can defo plan for it in other ways too. I know my Nana used to get in a good stack of coal to spread the cost & go 'wooding' for fallen sticks, etc, to use on their fires before they had a property with central heating. I've added 'Buy hot water bottles' to my planning list, as we only have one & last time I used it, it felt a bit thin & peculiar. They are still my 'go to' for a cosy winter night under a blanket on the sofa with a good book.

@Four_Seasons - You're welcome! Yes, a lot of these are things we all know, but it is always good to refresh our memories. I certainly did more of these measures when we were debt-busting & paying a mortgage than I do now. Several are being re-introduced here.

@EssexHebridean - A rolled up bath mat. Excellent! I can see that would be nice & thick & also the right size. My last draught sausage was made from a recycled patchwork door curtain & stuffed with a variety of old crud. It did the jobs though. I do plan to make another. 

@QueenJess - Yes, our hob steamer is going to be getting even more use. Do you remember those old energy saving pans which our Grandmas had (well, mine did, you're younger than me). They looked like a normal saucepan on the hob, but were actually in 2 separate halves & I think you could even get them in thirds. They came with a single handle which fitted all of the individual pan sections & meant that 3 different items could be cooked on just one hob ring. You make a good point about tackling other areas of budgeting/planning to offset hideous winter energy costs. Presents, esp Christmas (in fact Christmas generally) is the no-brainer one, isn't it? We are currently saving nectar & C*-*p dividend points to offset our December groceries & I am planning Christmas presents slightly differently this year, as well as reducing the amount we spend.

@CRANKY40 - Oh my......a panini press. I've looked at these, but must never ever own one as I would be stuffing myself with paninis on a daily basis! 

@Onebrokelady & @Tescodealqueen - Yes, I am with you on the subject of over-heated bedrooms. We stayed in a lovely B&B before the pandemic. It was early March so the heating was on. I woke up early with the absolute headache from hell because the room was so hot - even having the window open hadn't helped. We are defo going to try switching off at night. It should be quite a good saving. We have plenty of blankets & Mr F is like a central heating boiler in human form. We both think we will sleep better.

@Whatlifeis - Interesting to read about your solar panels decision. We don't have any plans to install them atm but when we buy our next home, we'd be up for prioritising houses where there are decent solar systems installed. Actually, we ALMOST had them back in our Spendy Era.. It would have been under the last Labour gov't when there were lots of grants sculling around to encourage householders to install solar panels. We got as far as getting a rep in to discuss the various options. He said our property would be ideal as it's south facing & would take a reasonable amount of panels. We discussed the various payment schemes & as we didn't have any savings back then (& a fair amount of debt), we opted for the scheme where we'd have paid £500 (low amount due to a govt subsidy), the company would have paid the rest because the scheme was that they then get their share of the earnings which were available at the time on electricity fed back into the National Grid. We'd have had a share too, commensurate with the £500 we'd kicked in & the fact that the company were sort of renting our roof, as well as lower bills, of course. We decided to go ahead (£500 all set to go on a CC of course, as we never had any money**) & tried to arrange another visit from the rep to arrange the work. But we couldn't get hold of him. Absolutely incommunicado. Gave up & decided not to bother. Shortly after that, the amount of earnings from selling back to the grid was significantly reduced (change of Gov't, if I recall correctly) & so many of the new domestic solar firms packed up or went bust (including the one we'd planned to buy from) as they could no longer make it pay. Two positives for us were that it was £500 less of CC debt, as we already owed plenty at the time & also, that we hadn't already paid that money to the company concerned, as I suspect we wouldn't have got it back.
I definitely like the idea of solar panels though & there are quite a lot of houses in the village with them.

**(Because we used to spend it all.......)
F x

foxgloves

And I'll kick today's post on while I'm at it......
Felling a bit less 'So what' today, despite waking up with a headache from sleeping with my head hanging over the edge of the bed! Not the first time this has happened. Ridiculous. I need cot bars!
Today's money saving activities have so far been to finish the meal plans for next week - as we will be buying a little extra for the BH weekend, I've filled in Tues - Fri's meals with stuff we already have in stock. Shopping list written. Neither of us are monarchists so we're not doing anything jubilee-based, just plan to enjoy the time together, but I do want to bake something retro, so I pinged Mr F a list of cakes & told him to choose. He picked Bakewell slices, but then I received 3 more pings to say he likes all the other stuff too, so I reckon this could change! 
The energy bill (lack of) issue with the Tentacled Ones is now a saga. It's clear that communication between our smart meter & their systems stopped working sometime between the date of our last bill in April & when we should have received the next one - May 20th. The advisor dealing with it asked us for meter readings which we duly sent but has now replied saying that while she can use those figures to sort out the gas side of our bill, the electricity figure we supplied isn't the one they need. Back up the ladder......to find there is only that figure, no others. We took photos of the meter & sent them. Also a reminder that their meter reader visited us last Thursday too. The technical problem can take 'up to a few weeks' to sort out but the lack of bill part can be sorted by temporary manual meter readings.......as soon as whatever the problem with the one figure (instead of the two they were expecting) can be resolved. So what I hoped would just be an oversight by them or maybe they were looking at our account in view of informing us of a DD increase, has now turned into a SAGA. Marvellous.
Still to do today - sow some lettuce seed, progress 2nd hiking sock as am still knitting the leg & I'd like to have had it finished by now as want to schedule in knitting my 2 big winter cardis & a pair of scandi-style mittens (for a present), plant out half a dozen bedding plants (free - grown from seed from friend) & get a free bit of bending & stretching by going around the garden dead-heading & cutting back stuff that's already flowered so that all the colourful newbies get their chance in the spotlight. The rubber chicken leftovers I divvied up will feed us tonight - stir-fry & noodles & I shall do a quick triage of the fridge & fruit basket to see if anything could used up in my lunch.
Love to all,
F x
P.S - This might raise a smile. Had to email Mr F this morning to ask him to phone my mobile. Somewhere between having breakfast first thing & putting a colour on my yucky roots afterwards, I managed to lose it. Re-traced my steps 3 times, looked in all the usual places it would be or might have fallen, etc. No sign of it. So he rang it & it was in the linen cupboard!! I'd gone in there to fetch the old towel I use for hair colouring & just popped it down on a shelf because I needed both hands to move a pile of big bath towels off the one I wanted. Reckon I need more fish oils!

DawnW

@Foxgloves hubby assures me that the solar sensor outside lights are very easy to fit, no wiring or anything like that required, and instructions provided.

foxgloves

@DawnW - Excellent! Thanks for that. He's putting it on his new job list.
F x

cbsexec

I’ll second solar sensor lights.  We have had them for ages and they work brilliantly.  Very easy to put up.  

foxgloves

Thanks, @cbsexec, we will defo be getting some. Mr F raring to go, says he might even go & look at some in town tomorrow.
F

foxgloves

Hello Sunbeams,
Well we've cleaned the house, done a few jobs & we're looking forward to the long weekend, though Mr F will be working on Sunday to cover his staffing crisis.
It'll be a bunting-free weekend here as we're not monarchists but we aim to have some nice peaceful downtime together. An upbeat start to the day as we called at our local cal C**p to spend those vouchers I won recently from filling in one of those quick customer feedback surveys. £50 of vouchers so we decided to stock up on wine with those, & in addition we had a few grocery items in our basket - 3 bottles of BH beer & 3 grocery items. When we got to the till, we discovered Mr F's wine maths had malfunctioned as our entire shopping only came to £48. I duly dispatched him to choose another bottle. I made sure we chose a good red to put away in the presents stash for Mr F's B-in-L as I am aiming to have all 3 of the 'hard to buy for' men in our life done & dusted for presents by the end of September. I've already got things stashed away for all 3 of them.
We're shopping around for groceries this week. We called at Waitr*se to use some good loyalty vouchers on their app & will do the rest of our shop in town tomorrow, including market butcher. We had a voucher for £4.50 off cat food again, but we didn't use it because while Soot still likes it (& from an economics point of view, is less able to separate off the jelly & leave the chunks!), Ash says he'd rather eat nothing than ever see that brand again so he's now having something different. Frankly, I don't care what they have as long as they eat it & play their part in our household's zero food waste mission!
Other money saving today.....not a lot, but haven't been spendy either. Have entered a competition, sown some seeds, watered the veg garden, planted out a tray of free cosmos from my friend & am about to take myself off to my favourite pondside bench with my book. Am reading my way through the Icelandic crime series featuring Freya & Huldar by Yrsa Sigurdardottir. It may not be entirely peaceful though, as Soot has embarked on a sustained & vocal campaign to secure his dinner several hours early.
F x

QueenJess

foxgloves said:

It'll be a bunting-free weekend here as we're not monarchists

Why do I keep reading that as anarchists? I had to go back and re-read it to check what I had read!

foxgloves

Lol, I've been quite politically active in various phases of my life @QueenJess, but have never been tempted to hitch my ideological wagon to the anarchists' cause. The Revolutionary Socialists did their best to sign me up back in the 1980s, as did the local Communists but I didn't succumb as had studied too much George Orwell.
F

Suffolk_lass

Late to the energy discussions, I just want to say number 11 (page 670) - ooh, not heard that before.

Our campervan (moho) has an 800w solar panel on top and we manage with that when away, using chargers and lighting mainly - as we are thatched, solar roof panels are not an option but I'm looking into our white meter overnight tariff feeding a battery overnight.

My tip that isn't mentioned is a decent hot water bottle - I received a John Lewis one in an animal print washable fleece sleeve (like this but £5 cheaper) and it is wonderful - on a cold evening and following the "heat the person, not the room" principle, I put one on top of my ankles under a fleece rug with my feet on a footstool (avoiding ground-level draughts) and a cat appears really quickly to warm up my legs. I then top it with a little more hot water at bed-time and tuck it in the small of my back, allowing no heating in the bedroom. I will carry on reading now...