2020 Frugal Living Challenge

willow_loulou

The eglu range is hugely over priced and the run a fox will get through very easily. I’d recommend a steel run with a box inside. You’ll need to ensure feeders and water are well covered to protect against avian flu - feeding of meal worms not British raised is also prohibited. Look on eBay oh and wilkos had a reasonable set up last year. 

Spendy 24 hrs for me. Payday. Paid bills and ordered lots of dogs treats. I’ve also ordered under stairs shelving part 1 ( getting 2/3 over the next few months)  and a better kitchen organiser. I’m wanting to move the back door storage under the stairs so i can use the space for growing indoor veg. Investment for hopefully longer term productivity 

willow_loulou

Like this one - then put a wooden box inside 

ldee2111

Weekly grocery delivery arrived this morning - £48.84. Our weekly budget is £80 but I’d like to get below £60 including top-up shops. Will try limiting to 1 top-up this week and aim for 6 NSDs. 

OH is not frugal at all, so when he announced he’d chopped the chicken for tonight’s dinner my first thought was ‘oh no, there will be so much waste.’ Thankfully he’s picked up on my new mission to make food go further and he set aside all the bits he'd cut off for the food waste bin for me to inspect. Result! Haha! 

Aside from the weekly shop, spent 65p on a stamp for DS to post his first ever letter to Santa! 

mumtoomany

I agree about the runs, @willow_loulou. Ours have almost fallen apart. Our chicken world is surrounded by Haras fencing, seems to keep everything out, foxes, dog, grandchildren. mumtoomany

willow_loulou

@mumtoomany when we are in the position to have chickens again (when my Mr moves in and takes over the garden) I’m absolutely investing in haras fencing around the run we have and the end of the garden. It’s definitely longer lasting than the wooden ones I seem to replace every 3rd year! 

Bluegreen143

My husband made the most enormous chicken run for our garden with wooden posts and chicken wire (digging it well into the ground). We do laugh that they are in a chicken palace as the most we have ever had at a time is four (currently 3). A bog standard cheap wooden house off eBay. And we let them out to free range in our garden, but not every day or else they wreck it, that’s why the run is deliberately big.

Bluegreen143

Oh and he put like rigid plastic sheeting over the top (like what they make greenhouses from but can’t remember the name). So it doesn’t get too wet in there.

[Deleted User]

Thanks so much everyone for your input re. Chickens. Lots to think about and research. 

We've had a no spend weekend, tomorrow I need to pay DS football subs which are £25 for the rest of the year. This means I have £20ish left for the week which is absolutely fine, we only need £8 worth of F&V. 

This will make you smile. On the local FB page it showed queues over 100 people long to get into our local garden centre (one of those places where plants are almost secondary to all the gifts, clothing, homewares etc it sells). They were in the pouring rain, with no shelter, waiting to go in there. For what? Is anything in there really necessary that it's worth standing with young children on the rain on a Sunday for? The mind boggles. We have had a big, muddy walk and are now all showered and in PJs ready to watch a movie. Have lovely evenings all x

willow_loulou

Anyone follow Jack Monroe on Twitter? I’m loving her shopping and food posting £20 a week budget for 3. 

Bluegreen143

Keep going over the budget again as I feel really torn about making it much more ambitious!

I am proud of how far I’ve come. One thing I found really tricky a couple of years ago was that most of my “mum” friends from my NCT group have a very different lifestyle. I’m much younger than most of them and the only one who left work to be a SAHM - plus they all have one or both of them being higher rate taxpayers while my husband is a meter fitter. It was an adjustment when I left work and for too long I tried hard to fit in by doing activities/outings we couldn’t afford or wasted time feeling guilty that I’ve never taken the kids abroad and they don’t do any regular paid activities/classes (I mean things like gymnastics, music classes, I’ve even got friends whose 4yos do skiing each week which just isn’t affordable for us!). 

But I’ve done a lot of soul searching and had so many deep conversations with my husband and realised I don’t want that lifestyle anyway (but would never judge my friends for doing what they like of course!). 

Take expensive kid activities. I’ve got friends who (pre Covid) spend all Saturday taking 2yos to toddler classes, spending £10 a pop and spending all day in the car too. For me, while I love the children dearly, this just isn’t how I want to spend my weekends at this stage (they aren’t quite 5 and 2 yet) and I don’t think it serves the kids to watch us bend over backwards to keep them entertained. 

I want my kids to learn how to be adults by watching and learning from us (surely even mundane stuff like cleaning or doing the supermarket shop is as educational as anything else they could be doing!), I want them to really be able to play deeply and imaginatively, I want them to read and be read to, and I want them to spend lots of time outdoors. None of those things needs to cost a lot of money. 

When I think of how we might spend a Saturday - a walk in a park or trip to a (free) museum followed by an afternoon spent playing, reading, baking and gardening, why should I feel bad that I haven’t spent £20-30 taking them to activities and lunch? As long as we live in accordance to our own family values we can’t go wrong I think. 

As a side note, during spring lockdown we obviously couldn’t do outings or play dates, and I also heavily decluttered and put away many of their toys. I kept out classics - Duplo, the wooden train set, dolls, cars, dressing up stuff, plus books/paint/playdough (homemade). The kids THRIVED. We went for a walk each day and I read to them and baked with them and they spent the rest of the time running wild in the garden with bare feet. Maybe 20% of the time choosing to play with the toys I’d left out, but whether they were playing with Duplo or just making endless forts out of sofa cushions they used their imaginations and they entertained themselves, even the little one who was only 1. I think this tells me everything I need to know about how much young children need extra curricular activities and lots of expensive playthings! So I think that even with little kids I can really be more ambitious with the budgeting - in fact I think it’s us adults who are stuck in our ways, not them.