Sort of debt-free but hope to be a super-scrimper in 2019

Suffolk_lass

Ooh! I have got loads of office clothes in large sizes - across 5 sizes in fact. 3 stone weightless and a reluctance to get rid of "good" pieces. I wonder if size 8 shoes are in demand too...

Lifeisforliving19

Hi CBC, I have had to change my username...( I was Ploppy), my old password played up and site wouldn't let me re set it, so here I am again. I have even had to start a new diary with my new name...not a bad thing though.


Can't believe 3500 books :eek:, think my OH would have gone mad if I'd got that many....lol
Selling books has become very hard these days. We used to always be able to sell them at the boot sales years ago, but not any more. Even kiddies books are hard to get rid of.
Don't know if its possible to donate books to care homes or hospitals, or if H&S and all that these days wouldn't allow it....contamination on the books and all that. I admit I do take mine to CS, but they always seem to have too many.

[Deleted User]

juliejim wrote: »

Morning CBC

I'm late to the party as usual - happy not so new now diary!

Jue

Thank you and welcome:beer:. I hope you'll drop in again soon:)

[Deleted User]

Lifeisforliving19 wrote: »

Hi CBC, I have had to change my username...( I was Ploppy), my old password played up and site wouldn't let me re set it, so here I am again. I have even had to start a new diary with my new name...not a bad thing though.


Can't believe 3500 books :eek:, think my OH would have gone mad if I'd got that many....lol
Selling books has become very hard these days. We used to always be able to sell them at the boot sales years ago, but not any more. Even kiddies books are hard to get rid of.
Don't know if its possible to donate books to care homes or hospitals, or if H&S and all that these days wouldn't allow it....contamination on the books and all that. I admit I do take mine to CS, but they always seem to have too many.

Sorry you had all the hassle of re-registering. Thanks for dropping by in your new persona:T. Have you started your new diary yet? I'll look out for it as soon as I get a minute:)


OH didn't stress too much about the book mountain as I have a shed of my own:j. He grumbled a bit about helping me to move the books in but 'out of sight out of mind' is fine by him. Having a shed of my own (and it's a whopper:eek:) is a mixed blessing though. Gives me carte blanche to hoard stuff:o


I've taken lots to charity shops, nice books not unsaleable rubbish, and they refused them. I don't ever take masses at once either as I know storage can be a problem especially for the very small charity shop premises in our local small town.


I'm not sure about donating to care homes or hospitals. Must make enquiries as some of the books I could let them have look almost new. Thanks for the idea:T


There's a big table in my nearest Tesco which is always piled up with donated books. They are for a local dog charity and there's a collection box fastened to the side of the table. I never go to Tesco but OH buys his petrol there as he has to pass by it a lot and went inside the store and spotted the table. He's taken lots of my books there, no one from the store asks questions or vets them. You just plonk them on the table and people buy them and put a donation of whatever they feel like into the tin. OH thinks it's used more like a library though as he's seen people dump a few books on the table, pick out a few already on there and walk out without paying anything for them:eek:. He also saw a really well-dressed woman just walk by and help herself to a free book. If enough people abuse the system and the charity makes nothing Tesco may get rid of the table:(. It's been a good place for me to offload some books (nice ones not rubbish) via OH every couple of weeks:j

mark55man

Its so hard emotionally, and actually, to get rid of books. I have a big section of my garage and I need to be rid but can't ever quite get round to it!!

You are doing well to get rid of any at all

[Deleted User]

Right, a quick update on my grocery/buy no food challenge. Never one to do anything by halves (a personality fault rather than an asset:eek:) I've challenged myself to do it for the whole of January rather than the one/two weeks that sensible people usually opt for.


We grow most of our own veg and I bulk-cook meals so have plenty of food frozen. The problem is that most of it is in a chest freezer which is pretty iced-up. I never seem to get round to emptying it enough to transfer what's left into the small freezer above my fridge so I can defrost before the next crop of veg is ready to freeze. There's also the fact that I'm only 5ft 1'' and hate leaning over the freezer to mop up all the melted ice etc. I practically fall in:rotfl: and it takes ages:eek:. It doesn't take a lot to make me leave it for another day. Or month:o. An eating up challenge seemed like a good idea and I might actually get the freezer ice-free reasonably soon. There still looks a heck of a lot in there though, and tomorrow will be the end of week 2:eek:. Good job we love eating veg.


I can definitely manage to get through to the end of the month on the veg, meat, fish, pre-cooked HM meals etc. that's already in there, plus what's in tins. What I'll have to buy though are a few essentials (needs not just wants) so I won't be able to complete the challenge 100%. On the plus side I have £35 in Morrisons vouchers so what I have to buy won't be spending 'real' money after all;)


I went to Morrisons this morning and bought what I needed, namely salt (I can't live without it), rapeseed oil, bread and milk. The milk has a long use-by date and should see us through until the end of the month. The bread was reduced so I bought 3 loaves and have frozen 2. I know the plan is to make freezer-space but these will be gone by the end of the challenge. We have toast for breakfast some days and if we don't use bread then and have cereal or porridge instead I make sandwiches for lunch. We drained the last of the 4 pint milk bottle this morning for our tea. OH was a bit grumpy that he couldn't have any cereal but brightened up when I made him tomatoes on toast instead. Used up the last bit of bread and the tomatoes left in the fridge since my last shop on New Year's Eve:j.


The result was I spent £5.02 at Morrisons and by using a voucher it only really cost me 2p. I wanted to make it a round £5 but the items I needed couldn't be made to fit:(.



I've so far learned some valuable lessons on this challenge. The most glaring one is to label and date everything I freeze. It's not so much a new lesson learned, rather a stern reminder. I always kid myself I'll remember what it is but with cooked meals like casseroles etc they all tend to look the same once the container they're in gets iced over and boxes and bags get rearranged. On Friday I took out what I thought was a pork and paprika casserole and thawed it out overnight. When I came to reheat it I discovered it was a chunky vegetable soup:eek:. OH loves soup but for a main meal he likes his meat. I added half a can of butter beans (which for some strange reason I have in massive quantities:rotfl:) a couple of cooked and sliced up Cumberland sausages (for OH), did broccoli and runner beans, a jacket potato each and it turned out fine in the end. I've lots of other containers of casseroles and soups in there and it would be nice to know what's what! It's not the first time I've been caught out like this, you'd think I'd have learned my lesson over the years.

[Deleted User]

mark88man wrote: »

Its so hard emotionally, and actually, to get rid of books. I have a big section of my garage and I need to be rid but can't ever quite get round to it!!

You are doing well to get rid of any at all

Glad it's not just me then;). And I agree that there's an emotional element to getting rid of books.

Karmacat

I love your post about the freezer and using it up - its sounding more and more sensible - frozen foods need rotation too, after all and they also need labelling :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:
And your note about Morrisons reminds me, I saw an article this week somewhere that said M is the cheapest of all online grocers - Asda are only marginally more expensive, but M is definitely best! Yay!

[Deleted User]

Karmacat wrote: »

I love your post about the freezer and using it up - its sounding more and more sensible - frozen foods need rotation too, after all and they also need labelling :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:
And your note about Morrisons reminds me, I saw an article this week somewhere that said M is the cheapest of all online grocers - Asda are only marginally more expensive, but M is definitely best! Yay!

I love Morrisons:j. It's a good job as there's only them, a Co-op and a new Aldi in reasonable distance for me, although I'm now a big fan of Morrisons home delivery too. My Mum was a Morrisons shopper, her branch was huge. I always drove her to do her shopping whenever I visited her so she could stock up and I also bought things for myself to bring home. I always wished we had a Morrisons near here and then planning permission was finally granted by our stick-in-the-mud council for a new supermarket in the town. It was rumoured that it was to be a Tesco (boo) but when it turned out to be Morrisons I was overjoyed.


I know what you mean about rotating frozen foods but I'm very bad at doing it:o. I once read of tins of food abandoned at one of the poles on an ill-feted expedition many decades ago still being edible. I know canning preserves food, although maybe not that long, but I concluded that it must have frozen too, given its location. I always obey 'use by' dates on fresh foods but allow plenty of leeway when things are frozen. We've never had upset tums so far, touch wood, and I've done this for as long as I've owned a freezer. I think it's more of a quality issue after a long period of being frozen rather than a definite danger to health but maybe I'm just kidding myself:eek:.

Karmacat

You're not kidding yourself, because you've never been ill - there you go