Put away your purse & become debt-averse

DawnW

I've seen those expensive bins EH, they are very stylish, but on the whole our 4 quid swing bin from Poundstr*tcher is ok, and looks quite cheery, being bright red, and is easy to wipe clean.  I didn't realise you could get £100 shower curtains though - we have a nice cream fabric one in the spare room ensuite, which has been there for about 11 years, since we did the house up. This shower isn't used often (we have another bathroom I hasten to add!!), so it is still in good condition. I remember being shocked at it costing about £22 when I bought it, but paid it as I hate the plastic ones, which always stick to your b*m when cold   I dare say it would cost more now, but I can't imagine it would be anything like £100!

Suffolk_lass

We re-fitted the bathroom in our motorhome a couple of years ago and did away with the damaged plastic shower enclosure, retaining only the tap/shower and shower tray. We shower-boarded with 3mm think board and a 2mm sheet for the ceiling (curved) and I modified one and used two shower curtains.

I put a channel through the waist of the inner curtain (a pleat) and fed one of those wire curtain poles through. I kept it slightly longer than the curtain was wide and made little pockets for the wire loops to fit into. This stops that nasty sticking to your body thing. Then I replaced the weights in the bottom with slightly heavier ones(they come ready-inserted in a fabric sleeve so they are easy to feed through, I ties a reef knot to the one I was pulling out and just pulled one out, one in), so it never billows outside the shower tray. Then I hung the more expensive, smarter curtain outside this one so it always looks pretty and is protected from most of the water. The inner one is a simple white with a navy rectangular check that made sewing in straight lines very easy. That inner curtain was £4-5 from Dunelm. I figured it was worth a try and I have to say, it worked brilliantly. I just liberate the ends of the curtain wire when I want to pull it back and use them as a sort of tie round the curtain. 

Anyway, it was easy, and you could use any fabric for a decorative outer curtain while using a cheap and easily replaced one inside. The other modifications we undertook were because it was a shower tray, and we hate the thing clinging as you wash

foxgloves

@EssexHebridean - We used to have one of those half & half bins for rubbish & recycling and in the past, I've also tried a sort of bin-frame thingy onto which plastic carrier bags are fitted to re-use them. Shouldn't think they are even made now, as plastic carrier bags are thankfully in much shorter supply. Actually, we no longer have a kitchen bin, which I know is probably unusual. Despite emptying it frequently & scrubbing it out weekly with hot water & disinfectant, it always seemed to smell bad, especially in hot weather. When our last one needed replacing, I suggested we try doing without one. It's a very short walk to the door & from thence to the wheelie bins so we didn't replace it & have been getting on fine without one over a year later. We do have a lidded compost caddy for scraps waiting to go down to the compost bin, but that's it & I can't really see us returning to kitchen bin filling & cleaning atm.  

@DawnW - Yes, £100! I was so shocked a sheet of polyester could conceivably cost so much! The most expensive one on my shortlist was £62.99 & as you can imagine, I've crossed it off! I can get a new customer discount of £15 but even so, I'd want to be paying less than that.

@Suffolk_lass - I love the ingenuity of your shower solution. That's similar to how I'm thinking, in that I want to buy a shower curtain in a design that I like, then re-fashion the fabric to make it do what I need it to. But I'm still torn between that as a solution & buying some cotton fabric & making a proper curtain (as whatever I buy will be for a window primarily) & just accepting that I will have to take it down & wash it more frequently. Still thinking, as don't want to waste money & time on one solution then wish I'd gone for the other one.

F

foxgloves

Hello Sunbeams.....& yes, despite the cruddy forecast, we have had more sunshine here today than the promised rain. A rather mundane morning getting jobs done, followed by an afternoon working hard on getting a project finished & typed up. Just the appendices left to do & I can print it all out. On the Wednesday Pence-Wrangling Front, I have sorted this week's clean laundry & ironed only what needs it, switching off to press the last item, which despite being quite a long tunic top was perfectly ironed using just the residual heat. I've baked bread rolls & got a pizza base rising, done next week's meal plans & planned this weekend's activities with Mr F. I've pulled 1 kg of rhubarb & stewed it as was getting a bit low on fresh fruit supplies & shopping day isn't until Saturday this week - I had some for lunch topped with some thick yoghurt & it was yum. I have sat & corrected an error in my knitting (hiking sock for presents bag still not finished), finished the last chapter of my library book & started a bag of stuff to return. 
Dinner very undemanding tonight - homemade pizza & salad will include all the use-it-ups Mr F forgot to use yesterday when he got home from his course early & volunteered to cook dinner. I think I will do a veggie pizza - peppers, red onion, sweetcorn, chilli, tomato & cheese and will spread the base with home made BBQ sauce for a bit of ooomph. 
Not a no-spend day as I paid the piano tuner's invoice first thing, but that was included in June's budget. The Tentacled Ones emailed to thank me for sending photos of our smart meter & says they will look at those & try to diagnose what has gone wrong. I must say that it's been helpful to deal with the same named individual right from the beginning, as it avoids having to start explaining things from scratch again. Anyway, I replied to the email to say that with everyone worrying about these very big tariff increases, it is more important than ever that meters are working correctly & I look forward to hearing asap that the problem has been diagnosed & fixed. 
But that, is the extent of my productivity today.
F x
Came downstairs to an eye-wateringly p*ssy smell from cat litter tray - won't be buying that supermarket brand of cat littler again despite the ultra-absorbent claims printed across the bag - it wasn't the cheapest either. I think the wood pellet ones are arguably the least smelly, but they do break down into sawdust quickly which then gets danced around the house on eight paws. The price of the wood pellet one we usually buy has increased too. 

Sun_Addict

I prefer the wood cat litter too but the sawdust thing is a downside. I read somewhere that cats prefer a fine grained litter but imagine the mess that would make. My older cat doesn’t use the litter tray and I’m trying to get the young one to do her business outside too, I’m getting there gradually but she still uses the litter tray during the night. 

foxgloves

@Sun_Addict - All our previous rescue cats have had a litter tray simply until they were allowed free access outside via the cat flap, so just 2 or 3 months. We'd assumed Soot & Ash would be the same but Soot, who is 7, had been solely an indoor cat before his owner surrendered him to the Rescue & although he loves going outside now, he has no concept of using anything other than a litter tray! I am now putting it under a hedge not far from the house & he'll use that, but not the garden. I think this is a work in progress (eyeroll.....)
F

foxgloves

Morning Budget Warriors,
Glorious blue sky here atm but not set to last, so my aim.is to get outside early & put some work into the veggie garden. I do like to keep the flower borders looking pretty during summer too, but budget-wise, food growing needs to be the priority atm. 
Priority tasks this morning will be to feed the veg plants which have started fruiting (chillies, some of the tomatoes & cuke), make some bird scarers to hang up over the beans (old CDs & string) & weed the beetroot. I also need to pick strawberries & feed them too. There'll doubtless be other little maintenance jobs too, as I go along, tying in tomatoes again, etc. I am making a slow cooker dhal recipe for tonight (& freezer) so tonight's nosebag will look after itself.
Am expecting my credit card bill today. I used utterly to dread these arriving back in the Spendy Era, but now I actually look forward to it because I know every item on it has been budgeted for. I just need to transfer funds from the appropriate pots & pay it & mark in my trusty Money Book that I have done so.
Well m'dears, I shall wish you all a nice day & head off down the veggie garden.
F x

marionmgcars

I had a win yesterday as decided to brighten up gloss paint in bathroom.  I had two tins in garage & opened smaller one to find there was a very small amount.  However when I poured it into an old takeaway box there was enough to do most of the painting.  My DH would have jumped into car & off to local hardware supermarket bought new tin.  Now I’ve retired I feel I can enjoy taking my time to do little jobs, rather than rushing through them.  

foxgloves

That was a shopping from home success, then @marionmgcars. Although I do sometimes go hell for leather at jobs that need doing, I often find that I achieve a lot by simply starting something which needs doing & seeing where it takes me in terms of getting other tasks tackled. One job completed very often leads to several others following, as there's that sense of satisfaction which comes with productivity & really feeling I've earned my half an hour on the coffee bench with my favourite summer mug & a chapter of my book.
F x

foxgloves

I've just lost my post & I don't have the will to type it out again......not very exciting, an historic soviet-era exploding vacuum cleaner & a similar fate looking imminent with our current one, nothing exciting. I shall leave it.
Hello Frugal Friends,
Did anyone see the BBC News this morning? I'm referring to the piece about scary & seemingly unstoppable petrol prices. There was a driver speaking who said it is costing £1000 a day to fill his HGV. I know they put in some seriously long mileage but that is horrendous. I can see this adding to other pressures on food prices, well everything really, as it all needs transporting & the transport companies won't be able to absorb all of that extra fuel cost. People are understandably worried about the cost of driving to work & so we had a little run through our own expenses for Mr F getting to work. His commute (round trip) is 52 miles a day & he works 5 days a week mostly, although it can be 4 days when he does longer shifts to make the time back. The cheapest unleaded in our town is around £1.80 per litre, soon tipped to reach £2.00, which is already the case in some of the rip-off motorway service stations. Taking our current mpg, which is 53.4 (Thank goodness we bought that little hybrid....it's only an entry level 'mild hybrid' - electric cars are out of our price range - but it is doing a lot more mpg than our previous cars), we calculated that a fairly standard working week for Mr F currently incurs petrol costs of £162 per month & this will obviously rise as the £2.00 per litre creeps closer. He would like to work from home one day a week, which would help, but he is considered 'frontline staff' so this was not encouraged when he mentioned it a while back (though his reasoning then was not based on insane fuel costs). On top of petrol costs, there is no parking at his place of work so the cheapest parking is £4 per day. He can sometimes get street parking on the town outskirts & walk in the final mile (he likes walking so that's not really an issue) but it's not an area where he really wants to leave the car all day. At the moment, he is paying daily but if a particular month or longer period looks to work out cheaper to buy a parking permit, he does that. Bizarrely, there is no incentive to buy a 6-monthly or annual pass, it just works out the same as a shorter one. So there we were number crunching bloody petrol over our coffee & toast & I turned to him & said, "You know I bet there are heaps of people who are working on their own commute to work petrol costs right now, having seen that". But the scary thing was when this expert chappy came on & said it'd be another 2 years before we see prices starting to come down again. That was really sobering to hear & has made me determined to be very careful with unnecessary spends. I also feel for those people who have a similar income & commute but are also having to pay rising accommodation costs on top of everything else. Really difficult times for people. Hope I haven't depressed everyone today......I'm going to go & put the bread in the oven now & take my book down the garden to get negative things out of my head.
Take care m'dears......it's Friday again, at least. Looking forward to a nice walk this weekend  - a bit of greenery, leg-stretch & hopefully some cute goslings.
F x