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NST February frugality and frolics

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  • mothernerd
    mothernerd Posts: 4,858 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Debt-free and Proud!
    cuddlymarm excellent plans for decluttering and using up clothes until they are worn out.

    I take your point on Brexit food stores. One rule I did not include, in the end, was Kat's insistence on No Bulk Buying of Food. I am currently building a little stockpile mainly due to ill health (hate snow, have fallen on ice several times, compromised immune system and arthritis in my shoulder making it difficult to use SM trolleys) but for several years I have been doing a big SM shop every now and then and would bulk buy tinned food and bulky items and get a taxi home .

    If food prices rise post Brexit (as seems likely) and the value of our currency plummets (using Greece as an example) then it seems sensible to hold some of our savings in the form of food stores.

    thriftylass so glad that all your hard work is finally paying off.

    f0xh0les I know it's good for children to learn survival skills but squirrel catching? I was also very saddened to hear about Jeremy Hardy.
    My mission in life is not only to survive,but to thrive and to do so with some Passion, some Compassion, some Humour and some Style.
    NST SEP No 1 No Debt No mortgage
  • mothernerd
    mothernerd Posts: 4,858 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Debt-free and Proud!
    So many of you, like XSpender and Speky, have really taken to the frog diet.

    Robi90 hiding away when you slip up doesn't work. Confess all, you will feel much better, then get back on to it (see today's quotes).

    Shrewbie hope the move goes well.
    My mission in life is not only to survive,but to thrive and to do so with some Passion, some Compassion, some Humour and some Style.
    NST SEP No 1 No Debt No mortgage
  • mothernerd
    mothernerd Posts: 4,858 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Debt-free and Proud!
    GlendaSugarbean keep us updated on the garden progress.

    dolly84 good decision on the run.

    All done in batches as I've been caught too often with the massive post when something (laptop/ website/ internet/ power) breaks down.
    My mission in life is not only to survive,but to thrive and to do so with some Passion, some Compassion, some Humour and some Style.
    NST SEP No 1 No Debt No mortgage
  • laurenh1
    laurenh1 Posts: 988 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary 500 Posts Photogenic Name Dropper
    Ccl thanks for last months thread. MotherNerd thank you for this one.


    Food- I am budgeting 160 pounds , because I usually spend around 200 for the 4 of us. Hub ia away quite a bit so its doable.

    Excursions- I have made a list of free or cheap things to do with the boys, today was baby group(free) sledging & snow ball fights. Tomorrow is much of the same but my friend has invited us over for cake too in the afternoon. I got a lot of great ideas for things to do from the woodland trust, such as colour bingo (for when its a bit warmer) making bird feeders etc.
    Budgets- set.
    Useful leftovers- I will be keeping the frog thing as it makes me more proactive.
    Aim to take your lunch- always do :A:A
    Remind yourself - greatful for - good friends who bless my life in so many ways,for our wonderful play group which runs every week day & is completely free for all, its a real lifeline in our area & for having a warm home.
    You should pay debts & savings- over paid car by 60 this morning, not a lot but it all helps :o & house savings at 12k.
    Spend free days- 1/18 today.
    Use it up- will certainly do my best! I hate waste.
    Regular check ins- here.
    Valentine's- might do a nice tea but that's all.
    Indoor/outdoor- sledging & yoga today.
    Vending machines- nope. Might have a take away at the end of the month if done ok.

    Advance planning- meal plan done today



    Good luck lovely turtles :D
  • Hello :hello:
    I'm peeping my head out from under a stack of marking to take an evening off and to catch up on here. Sorry to have missed the end of my own January challenge but I am thrilled that everyone had so much fun along the way. I confess I was also pleased myself with how much money I managed to save over the month, which allowed me to deal with a couple of unplanned expenses.
    Thought that the first of the month was a good time to take stock and get back on with things again. I need some proper sorting out but this is a start

    mothernerd wrote: »
    F
    Food Expenditure.
    I need to maintain what I did in January, which is more budget brands and less frivolity. I have downshifted most of my shopping but now need to work harder on the kids.

    E Excursions and Entertainment
    I have my holiday this month - 5 days away in the Canaries - booked when my marriage ended last year. It's all paid for and the Euros have been sorted. Other than that I have 1 day out planned with my sister towards the end of the month - but nothing else unless it's free. I'm already pretty much a hermit anyway.

    B Budgets should be set before the start of the month.
    As always

    R Reduce your planned food expenditure in accordance with the table below
    I reduced by £60 in January, and am aiming for a further £40 this month. Max spend of £65 a week for me, kids and cats.

    U Useful leftovers. If there is anything from last month or a previous challenge which you found useful, keep on doing it.
    The frog list rumbles on, and my penny savings continue.

    A Aim to take your lunch to work every day

    R Remind yourself of what you have and be grateful.
    Always grateful for good friends and my family (including the cats). I have a home, heat and food so that is good for me.

    Y You should pay to your debt or savings first and live on what is left. Ideally pay it on the first of the month/ payday.
    Already done - hence a spendy day today.

    S Spend Free Days (SFDs). You will aim for 18. That leaves 10 for spending.
    I will try my best here but it seems a tough target to me.


    U Use it up.
    Working my way through mountains of frozen and cupboard food - and also making things with my wool stash (no more buying for me at the moment).

    R Regular check ins are recommended, daily if possible.

    V Turtles generally avoid the consumer fest of bad taste on the 14th of the month.
    Very happily single this year!:T

    I Indoors/outdoors. Regular exercise is important.

    Indoors - I mentioned being a hermit. I would like you to see this as a positive step.
    This is the best rule I have seen in ages and speaks volumes to me.

    V Vending machines, coffee shops, takeaways (everything from an Indian banquet to a pastie or a bag of chips) are forbidden
    OK - except my day out with my sister.

    A Advance planning.

    L Let the challenge commence at midnight on 1st February 2019
    Right
    Plans for tonight are an early night after catching up on here ready for more marking and a fresh start tomorrow.
  • mothernerd
    mothernerd Posts: 4,858 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Debt-free and Proud!
    edited 1 February 2019 at 10:55PM
    I've had SFD as the only items I bought were for mum (couple of late additions that did not make the delivery order and one outstanding item - cotton wool on a roll. Finally tracked it down but it's only a quarter of the size I'm used to.

    The main pathways seemed fairly ice free (my bins are still by the end house as I'm not going down the back) so i took a bag of stuff to the cs bin in the library - added a fitted sheet to the things already collected as DS3 and Beloved now have the larger bed and I hate fitted sheets. I also took 2 x 4 pack of soap (was in the half price SM offers) for the food bank bin - put a lot of tins in last month.

    Carried on to the hospice shop with a cupcake maker as they take electrical items. On the way back cut across to soupadrug for cotton wool and denture tablets and nipped in the Red Cross shop for a handful of donation sacks.

    Whilst waiting for my food delivery I sat on the spare bed sorting through stuff on the little couch, neatly folded separate piles for DS3's clothes, beloved's clothes and their bedding, reduced the pile by about a foot and Beloved came downstairs and took them all away.

    Mum had phoned whilst I was out so returned the call. She has a bad cold and cough and didn't want me to go and catch it. She hasn't got dressed for the past two days which is unheard of. I had ordered a food delivery for her, so we compromised on my going in time for the delivery and to bring the bins in.

    I stayed a few hours but we mostly stayed in separate rooms. I finished off the jigsaw and took the multiple items through to the storage cupboard. I had been asked to buy bleach for the cleaner. Opened the cupboard and there were several containers of both the thick and thin bleach.

    Ended up getting down on the floor (bit of a struggle) taking everything out, putting it all back with the new items behind the older ones and ended up with an extra cube of storage (cube box is approx 15" cube). Slight rejig of the food store and refilled the kitchen cupboard with soup tins. Cut up the watermelon I included in the last order - mum hasn't been eating much so i keep getting things to tempt her. I have re-salted the path, pavement and bins area in case it freezes again.

    Gave an update on the follow up home visit by the Occupational therapist. Told mum I was intending to donate the sewing machine she passed on to me and my own as well. Explained who would benefit from them, she agreed that she had probably held onto things for 10 to 20 years after she had stopped using them and that I need to get rid of things now so that I can move safely round my own house.

    I think I have persuaded her to part with the other sewing machine so will need to get that out of the cupboard, check it over and bring it back to my house in the next two weeks. I also told her I intended to get rid of most of my cotton reels and use embroidery thread if I need to do the odd repair. Not pushing it but hope she will also agree to further reduce her cotton store and maybe parting with one or two other things.

    I have to round up any spare wool (only have little bits). Cleaner's grandchild has been introduced to pompom making (had been given a fancy kit one but we've demonstrated the proper way using circles cut out of a cornflakes packet).

    Mum was thinking of teaching some of her partner's great-grandchildren to knit (she enjoys the thinking but the practice is often beyond her). Cleaner said she could knit so mum has handed over the remaining small balls of wool and children's needles. I am going to take some card and other things to 'make things'.

    This is a familiar process by now, I had to redo parts of a birthday card which she couldn't get to do what she wanted and I was volunteered to help two small children decorate biscuits with icing and lots of sprinkles.

    The woman I'm passing the sewing machines and sewing supplies on to has messaged me to say her sister the nursery teacher will be happy to have the card, plastic easter eggs and fur fabric and any other items I send along.

    Came home early. Ate two baked potatoes and a wedge of gammon (the cooking bacon pack consisted of two large lumps of gammon).

    Today I am grateful for seeing small snowmen in mum's street (small child height), that mum is learning to listen to her body and rest when she needs to, for places to send the things I can no longer use, where I know they will make a difference.

    Sorted my socks and knickers, discarded the tatty ones, made about a shoebox of space in my top drawer, cleared about a laundry basket worth of stuff off the landing (was getting out of hand), half filled a new paper sack, ripped up 3 more cardboard boxes, various other bits. just going to keep going, doing whatever I can until I start to make visible improvements.
    My mission in life is not only to survive,but to thrive and to do so with some Passion, some Compassion, some Humour and some Style.
    NST SEP No 1 No Debt No mortgage
  • misstara
    misstara Posts: 3,987 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper I've been Money Tipped!
    NSD 1/18 today. Absolutely knackered so off to bed, will post my goals for February tomorrow.
    Mortgage 26.4.25 - £108,500  1.7.25 - £106,653.66
    Mortgage overpayment savings - £33.53/£50
    Mortgage overpayments so far - £612.99
  • System
    System Posts: 178,348 Community Admin
    10,000 Posts Photogenic Name Dropper
    Arghhhhh my hair cut ended up costing me £20 (realised notbeen cut for over a year) feel better for it but feeling guilty.
    This is a system account and does not represent a real person. To contact the Forum Team email forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com
  • mothernerd
    mothernerd Posts: 4,858 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Debt-free and Proud!
    I wish you pavement pennies on bad days and the unfailing sense that things are just going to work out.

    TODAY I"LL PRESS PAUSE
    Today I'll eat breakfast outside
    I'll pick up the book I keep meaning to read
    Today I'll set down my worries for a while
    I'll double the amount of eye contact I share with family and friends
    Today I'll notice the golden glow the sun casts on my kids when I call them in from playing
    I'll smile at someone I pass on the street
    Today I'll press pause


    When I was setting up this thread I started to write a post on change, specifically some of the changes I've made over the past year, mainly in response to the arthritis in my right shoulder. (Thought at first I had just overdone things when painting mum's garden fences).

    I deleted the post because it didn't sound right, it felt self-pitying and that wasn't how I meant it to be. I was going for an exploration of the many different ways we can change in response to the challenges that life throws at us (no difficulties or problems, just challenges).

    I thought maybe it would work better if I talked about one thing at a time. So today I'll talk about sewing.

    I can't remember a time when sewing wasn't a part of my life. My mother was endlessly inventive in finding ways to feed and clothe us. I had some much admired dresses which were made from my father's old shirts (top half, back used as front) with a skirt and trimmings made from coloured material (green gingham, red with white polka dots, sky blue with tiny ducks all over) donated from my aunt's stash.

    My grandma would help out with walking day dresses, a fancy dress outfit - a chrysanthemum with a skirt of large white petals and dark green bodice made from crepe paper. Mum breaking countless needles whilst making us duffle coats from some heavy duty material and shorts for my brothers cut out of grandad's old trousers (other grandma chipping in as well as knitting jumpers with repurposed wool. The miniature versions of grandma's outfits (made from the remnants) were a bit of a double edged sword - in particular a beige suit with a dark brown blouse dotted with mustard flowers

    I played with the button box (excellent rainy day activity), made dresses for my Sindy doll and clothes for my brother's teddy, embroidered a snoopy onto the blanket my brother was taking to scout camp.

    I don't remember 'learning' these skills more 'absorbing' them and assuming that I could do things. I can remember sitting on the floor beside my bed with a doll and a scrap of fabric, thinking how it should be cut and molded and then doing it.

    At fifteen, after a couple of very embarrassing purchases, I insisted that my mother did not make me any more clothes. At seventeen I started to make my own. My first choice, a blouse to wear at my cousin's wedding had a square neckline, proper buttonholes all down the front, long sleeves which gathered at the wrist and a casing around the waist with elastic and ties to bring it in and give it shape. Mum said I couldn't have picked a more complicated pattern.

    From then on I made all my own clothes. The five men at my civil service interview nearly fell over because of all the girls they had interviewed who claimed dressmaking as a hobby, I was the first to answer yes to the follow up question of having made the dress I was wearing. Goodness only knows what they would have said if they had known I spent the morning reattaching a buckle to mend my only pair of good shoes.

    Sewing my own clothes helped with the years of saving and paying for a house (this house was paid for by the time I was 25, it was a wreck and I've probably rebuilt it twice since) and when my children were small. My first house purchases were three bolts of curtain material, all of which did many years service.

    When my husband was made redundant every window in the house had four curtains with linings to cut heating bills and when we were running out of sheets I used some heavy duty linen to replace them - it was only 36" (90cm) wide so i used offcuts from curtains which had moved from downstairs to upstairs to trim each side, giving me enough fabric to tuck them in on the children's beds.

    With the advent of 'fast fashion' and the plethora of charity shops in our town, I learned other ways to dress well for less. Unless you want something special (silk or linen) or have access to free materials, ready made is often cheaper (though there may be ethical costs but then expensive 'designer' clothes and trainers are often made in sweatshops or by children).

    My old machine became harder and harder to use. I had to put a candle under the tension wheel to warm the machine oil to make it turn for another five minutes. Even then I kept the cabinet for many years as it was solid and the right height for wallpapering. I papered the children's ceiling for the first time using a ladder, a sideboard and the sewing machine cabinet across the width of the room.

    After borrowing my mother's a few times I bought a new machine but never really got along with it. I could thread the old one with my eyes closed, I struggled with the new one. I hate the phut phut noise they make as the trudge along , being used to the throaty roar of a real engine.

    Most of my recent sewing has been done by hand. It takes a little longer but you have far more control and can sit and watch an old film at the same time or take part in conversations.

    So I'm going to give up sewing by machine. Offer my existing stash of fabric to someone who will use it wisely, cull the cotton reels and notions.

    I can thread a hand needle, the machine makes it mission impossible. Fans of Marie Kondo will recognise the phrase 'Anything you keep should be for the person you are becoming, not who you used to be.' So I'm letting it go.

    I shall keep my good shears (cost me a week's wages when I was 27), a single tape measure and seam ripper, a few reels of cotton and some decorative buttons, confident that I have everything I need to make a garment, put tape on a length of curtain reel and make any necessary repairs.

    i have a coppery gold heart shaped tin and will keep them all together. I won't feel guilty when I come across a piece of material I was going to make something with and I will benefit from the extra space. I still sew, just appropriately. I am happy and content with my decision.
    My mission in life is not only to survive,but to thrive and to do so with some Passion, some Compassion, some Humour and some Style.
    NST SEP No 1 No Debt No mortgage
  • mothernerd
    mothernerd Posts: 4,858 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Debt-free and Proud!
    ccl just keep tunnelling through the marking. thank you for the comment on hermit-ing. I think there are times for striding forth and times for huddling and recuperating. Both have benefits and joys.

    laurenh1 excellent free fun ideas

    hugs misstara

    Moneybutterfly I'm sure it was worth it, don't spoil it by feeling guilty.

    I'm not sure what I've done. I had my pills, thinking it was time, fell asleep and it was only 6am when I woke up again. I did take the pills, I've not dreamt it. The back is nearly clear so I've ventured to put some rubbish in the bins by the back gate and brought back the two that were emptied this week.

    Just completed that ginormous post. i was trying to keep quotes brief this month. Now I'm ready to go back to sleep. See you later turtles.
    My mission in life is not only to survive,but to thrive and to do so with some Passion, some Compassion, some Humour and some Style.
    NST SEP No 1 No Debt No mortgage
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