Frugal, thrifty, make do, mend! Let this debt come to an end!

beanielou

Not a fan of T3mu.

scandimore

Sounds so very peaceful where you are, lovely.

Makingabobor2

Sounds gorgeous there & very good for the soul. 

Florafauna

I flexed my frugal make do muscles today by filling an online shopping cart with lots of lovely knitting wool. Then thought 'Hang and and check through the chest at home', I did this and have found plenty of very nice wool and needles I had forgotten about.
I'm working on deferring spends - one day at a time

themadvix

beanielou said:

Not a fan of T3mu.

Nor me Beanie. I’ve read that there’s a high likelihood the items are made by Uighur slaves 😢😡 

Moorviews

It’s -3 but feels like -7 here this morning. Just 13 degrees in the bedroom so getting up to make a cup of tea was a bracing experience! I turned the electric over blanket on a bit earlier and I have now put the electric heater on too. We don’t have central heating over night as it is fuelled by the wood burning stove at the moment. I need to order more oil but have been trying to stretch out what we have by only using it for the kitchen range. 

Your home sounds to be in an idyllic location and ex council houses in villages are a very popular buy. We greatly enjoyed the one that we used to live in. 
I am a big fan of the green bleach and like you, found that it wasn’t necessary to boil things. Although I do use liquid soap flakes in the washing machine sometimes, I prefer to use an eco friendly laundry detergent for the cold washes. When hand washing in cool water I thought the soap flakes were a bit congealing and didn’t rinse out well. Now I use 20mls of detergent in a cup on top of clothes in the drum and 1 tablespoon of washing soda in the drawer. I am planning on having a go with the ivy leaves as I unfortunately have loads of it trying to engulf the house. Generally, I have found Nancy’s recipes to be really good. Also, I don’t have headaches or excessive sneezing like I have with commercial products. 

It’s fantastic that you won’t have to make the long trek this Friday after all. 

MeandO

Your house sounds like it's in an idyllic location Elisheba. The dawn chorus used to wake me up at a house we had a few years ago (as it did when I was a child) and I used to feel so lucky to hear that. Unfortunately we don't hear that many birds hear as we're quite close to a road, although we do see a lot of swifts and housemartins swooping about in the summer months.

foxgloves

It does sound as though you've moved to a lovely scenic place, @Elisheba, even though there are downsides like that commute to work. Our village has quite a lot of ex-council houses - 1950s/60s, I think, & they are quite sought after. They often tend to have larger rooms than new builds & are usually sturdily built with proper gardens. Ours is fairly similar in style, though 1930s red-brick, so  a little earlier, but I would have been happy to move into one of the ex-council ones. I think they are popular with buyers because they usually don't cost as much as the older 'character'-type village houses, so can facilitate access into village life without the impossibly high price tag which comes with a period property.
I am enjoying reading about you setting up your new life there, particularly that, like myself, you are motivated by having a more sustainable lifestyle. We can often forget that the greenest purchase is the one we decide not to make at all, because we can either make-do & mend or repurpose something else. I always find it satisfying to be able to work out a no-spend solution. 
F x

Elisheba

Evening, Friday frugaleers,

Ah yes, T£mu. Not sure I'll be using them again in a hurry. The socks I got are lovely and just as expected, but as I mentioned the essential oil is rubbish. Regarding slave labour @themadvix, yeah that is a worry. But it is a worry for all the products I buy, unless I pay a lot of money for clearly sourced products. One of the pairs of socks I got from T£mu in a pack of 5 for about £5 are identical to a single pair my friend bought me for Xmas a couple of years ago. I'm sure she would have paid about a tenner for them. While I'm in debt I'm choosing not to focus on provenance too much. Where I can I'll buy second hand, but obviously that's not always possible.

Oh well done @Florafauna. Deferring spending is soo hard, but can really be useful in the old frugal fight. I'm very much an emotional spender, so I try and combat it by adding things to Am@zon lists, or going through my library's online catalogue and borrowing books 🤣.

Thanks for the washing tips @Moorviews. I'm going to wait to try the ivy detergent when my last bottle of liquid soap is finished. 

@MeandO Yes, I'm going to have to get a bit better at my bird identification. So many of them here. I'm so glad I don't have the sound of traffic anymore, although I'm quite close to an A road. Ever since I've been a child and my parents moved to the city it has grated on my nerves a lot. It was the best part of the first lockdown for me, everywhere being as quiet as a Sunday morning.

@foxgloves Yes, I am now a big fan of ex council houses as mine is so warm and cosy. And yes, being more sustainable is really important to me as well. At the moment my focus has to be on frugal rather than eco, but in large part they coincide. Once my financial situation is less precarious I can consider buying more organic products. I would really like to move to grass fed milk now, but it doesn't seem to be a milk category. I'm okay with cows being inside for winter as I appreciate they are heavy beasts and destroy the fields in wet weather, but some poor cows are indoors all the time and that doesn't sit well with me. Feels like factory farming. Closest I can see to grass fed is freerange which W@itrose sell, but there isn't one near me.

In MSE news thought I would try my nearest shop which is a couple of miles from me and part of a garage. At £2.30 for 4 bread rolls, and £7.99 for a bottle of bog standard plonk I probably won't be using it much though. 

My payslip for January came out today. I'm not sure exactly how much the NI increase has given me, because I only got my backdated pay award last month, so don't have a baseline. It is more than I was expecting though so that's lovely. I've popped it into my budget, and been able to increase the amount budgeted for a few annual things again, after decreasing them to cover the expected car insurance increase.

I remembered to call the council tax people and in money saving news my house is only a band B. Yet another thing to love about ex council houses 😁. On the estate agents blurb when I was looking at the house it definitely said band C, so it's an unexpected little moneysaver. The lady couldn't tell me exactly how much my council tax was going to rise as the community councils haven't submitted their precept yet, but she advised me to put a 10% increase in my budget and then any less will be a saving. I have gotten the impression when speaking to council tax people throughout this house move that they normally have to deal with very difficult situations, so when I call you wanting to pay things they all seem very happy and helpful 🤣.

I thought I'd found a lovely new dog walk yesterday, but then ended up on a busy road with no verge at one part, so unless I just go to the road and turn back the way I came it's not one I'll be doing again. I really am struggling with suitable lunchtime walks, which isn't what you'd expect in such a beautiful area. But slidey, steep hills  or narrow ridges along steep hills frighten me to go down or along so aren't any use at this time of year, and most of the fairly safe, flat walks I've found have some issue or other. Stiles that aren't dog friendly, sections that just aren't available for use (I've been reporting them online to the rights of way team - they are going to love me 😳), boring road sections or just something. It's quite annoying.

Oh, and I saw a smaller dining table on FBMP that I'm collecting Monday night for a tenner. My current table is too big for the space I have and  can only be used from one side. The new one needs a bit of paint and will only comfortably sit two, but will look much better in the space. I've heard you can get outdoor paint for tables, so I might paint my old one with that and then I can have a nice big table outside for the summer (which I could potentially bring back in if/when I need more dining space, and it's not sunny out so we couldn't just eat outside).

Not many plans this weekend. I'm meeting friends from my old town on Sunday for breakfast, but that's the only hard and fast thing. It's quite nice actually - this is the first weekend since I moved in that I haven't had a list as long as my arm of things to do. I might investigate my pictures more and see what I can hang where, and what I really would like frames for (or new frames as quite a few seem to have been broken in the move).

Hope everyone stays warm and dry this weekend for the next storm 🙄. It's like living at sea, the way we are being battered by them this year!

Florafauna

Still doing my best to make do with items I have, the new swimming costume is still calling but I'm telling it to shut up as my existing one is fine!
Meeting a friend tomorrow for coffee but have vouchers which is nice. 
Loving knitting up a new scarf, the pattern is more ambitious than I'm used to so I'm going slow. It's looking really pretty so far and I'm going to put it to one side as an Xmas present.
Also planning to make a fleece neck warmer from scraps rather than buying one for £25