Giving every £ a job

Blackcats

Rebecca and SH - yes food is so easy to get carried away with.  My freezer is still full even though I've been trying to eat from it, loads of tins and jars, lots of rice, pasta, cereals, baking ingredients etc but I still fill my trolley when I go to the supermarket.  

I've been buying s m o l laundry products - they are delivered and are environmentally responsible.  They come in a child proof box - well it's fairly adult proof too.  I used to be lured into the fancy sounding washing powders, pods and liquids and fabric conditioner.  I chose by how pretty the packet looked and how lovely the scent was supposed to be rather than by price or value for money.  At least I can walk straight past that aisle now. 

savingholmes

Great progress on the shopping. I am trying to do one big shop a month delivered and send DD in most of the time for the others so I am less tempted

Blackcats

Good plan SH. 
Very crisp and cold here today.  I managed a bracing walk at lunchtime - glad I made the effort to get out of the house.
I really MUST do a budget update tomorrow.  I've been doing all my shopping including Christmas presents on my cash back card and I need to work out how much to transfer over from the presents pot.  At the moment the balance on the card looks scary.  I think I'll feel calmer when I've balanced the books. 

QueenJess

Interestingly ethical consumer doesn’t rate Smol. However, I do think doing something is better than nothing and if you look into everything too much you’d never do anything! Smol is definitely going to be better than some of the usual brands.

This is what they say in case you are interested:
“ However, on our ratings system it scored relatively badly and we are not recommending it. No information was found on its website about workers’ rights in its supply chain, nor about its approach to toxic chemicals, palm oil or liquid polymers. It has just secured a $34 million investment from Google Ventures, Jam Jar and other investors to expand its range and launch in new markets.”

QueenJess

I’m going to look into that blog link now… sounds interesting!

Blackcats

Thank you queen Jess - seems that I still fall for the marketing blurb for laundry products - albeit differently to the previous marketing rubbish of laundry tabs in pretty colours smelling of "unicorn breath and stardust" or "tropical waterfalls with diamond sparkle".

made a delicious spicy bean chilli tonight - perfect for a cold evening and very inexpensive as meat free.  However, didn't do my budget update - again!!!

I'm due to finish the epic black cats v council tax battle next month but I know I need to start another saving challenge straight away or I will just leak money.  It would be sensible but not inspirational to just start getting ahead with a pot for next year's inevitably even larger council tax bill.  Could I pay it all by July when I plan to retire ????? Now that would be a BIG challenge. 

QueenJess

Blackcats said:

Thank you queen Jess - seems that I still fall for the marketing blurb for laundry products - albeit differently to the previous marketing rubbish of laundry tabs in pretty colours smelling of "unicorn breath and stardust" or "tropical waterfalls with diamond sparkle".

It is a total nightmare though.  I subscribed to ethical consumer so they look into it for me (although to be fair you don't have to subscribe to get most the information anyway).  There has been many a time that I end up doing nothing at all as I am paralysed with so much information and nothing really works for me.

Doing something is always better than doing nothing.  Their rating is still 14 and that's the first acceptable level for ethical consumer.  Many of the big brands have a rating below 5, so it's still much better than the alternatives.  They all make it a difficult as possible to do the "right" thing in my opinion and greenwashing is rife.

Plus ethical issues is difficult and each person will judge them differently in terms of what you are actually concerned about.  Personally I would be a little concerned about the palm oil and the polymers relates to microplastics from an environment perspective, but depends on pov. Plus lots of this stuff comes at a higher cost.

savingholmes

Personally I would be more tempted to overpay the energy bill than CT as the way those are going up is scary. 

Good luck with ethical consuming. It's all a journey.

Blackcats

queen jess - yes indeed it is tricky trying to navigate through marketing blurb and I think manufacturers are ruthless and cynical when they are attempting to extract the money from our coffers into their profit line.  As you say we can all try to make little changes though.   Any tips for some small changes I could make?

SH - all costs are rising and for years I never noticed this - I consumed gas/electricity/water without any attempt to economise.  When my bills went up I just had a moan, carried on and paid the extra.  I'm trying to be a bit more careful now, turning off lights, pulling curtains, using my slow cooker, blankets on the sofa in the evening and I so like my hot water bottle.  

I nearly fell off the MSE wagon today.  I'd spent £80/£100 of this month's personal spends budget (didn't take long this month 😁) then I decided I wanted a new bottle of perfume .... this would have taken me way over budget and actually I've got 1/3rd of a bottle of my favourite and about 1/3rd bottle of a fresh summery perfume left so I stopped myself just in time.  I was justifying the proposed spend to myself with the usual "it's not much money", "I work hard, I deserve a treat", "it will make me feel so happy".  If I drop enough hints I might get some as a Christmas gift .....

QueenJess

Blackcats said:

queen jess - yes indeed it is tricky trying to navigate through marketing blurb and I think manufacturers are ruthless and cynical when they are attempting to extract the money from our coffers into their profit line.  As you say we can all try to make little changes though.   Any tips for some small changes I could make?

I've been trying for a while to research things before I'm about to use it up (e.g. shampoo, handwash, laundry detergent etc etc), do some extra reading on ethicalconsumer if/when I ever have time and sometimes concentrate on exactly what I'm putting in the bin and try to eliminate the biggest waste item.  It is a very slow progress and I would be a lot quicker but obviously I'm using up what I have first, I have other people in the house to convince and I have little time to look into stuff.

I think I originally came at it from a general environment perspective heavily weighted to zero waste, but have widened it to general "ethical" stuff (from my perspective of ethical of course!).

Consumables are usually the easiest things to target and trying not to be wasteful.  I sell or go out of my way to try and make sure the things I get rid of are going to be used rather than binned, try not to buy loads of stuff I don't need or won't use many, many times and of course buy second hand whenever I can.  These are usually money saving anyway!  I'm still working through some consumables now and am targeting other things in a completely random way when I have had time to think.  E.g. I swapped my milk to vegan milk as I find normal milk too sugary anyway, but only was half successful as I didn't like the taste for everything (I usually have porridge for breakfast and find you can't really taste the milk anyway).  Just found one I do like though, so will eject cows milk as it's something I really am not bothered with anyway.  I do still eat meat though...  As I say, I am approaching it quite randomly!