Beating Lifestyle Inflation and Staying Mortgage Free!

earthgirl2

Yes the lodger is great we are really happy with him. I hope he stays on...

hmm the weather isn't looking great for the caravan trip but it will be nice to go away for a few days. 

First day of Easter break, boys at football camp organised by council, it's £50 each for the week.I could have amused them for free but  Both sets of friends were going. We have shared lifts though. 

I've been doing some jobs myself whilst they have been away- using up gifted vegetables in soup, doing things that I could have paid a beautician to do, cancelled a couple of subscriptions that were free but about to become chargeable - saved £20/month. 

I'm not sure how my seeds will fare as oh has just told me about an accident with the roof of my mini greenhouse. Hopefully I can patch it up and the seeds will be ok. 

My new weekly menu seems to be going down quite well. I tried to add in more meat free days but I've had to settle to just reducing meat overall, and bulking out the meat with lentils and vegetables. It's averaging about £80 per week grocery shopping for a family of 4. But the kids are definitely hungrier and hungrier - they are just so active!

Other things to do on my Easter break:

finish work for work - if I do this tomorrow I can relax for the rest of the holidays. 

Swap library books and get some for DS2

pot on 72 plants for borders

successional veg seed planting

Cheery_Daff

Fingers crossed for your greenhouse! Glad the lodger is working out well 😊

EssexHebridean

Fingers crossed from here for the mini greenhouse too - hope all is well!

£50 each for a week long activity that the kids can share with friends AND will thoroughly enjoy sounds extremely reasonable to me. Plus it's freed up some "you time" that you are already using to save back some of the cost, so even better value. 

Great to hear the lodger is fitting in well too! 

Karmacat

It's all sounding really good, earthie, I'm glad you've got some time booked away.

earthgirl2

Urgh weather was so awful that I didn't look in the greenhouse. I did get my marking started, and made a list of more marking that needs to be completed. I say every year that I just need to mark as I go, but I always leave it to the end, but normally I do get time. With things with ds1 at school, and starting a new project at work, I've really fallen behind. So I've got Wednesday, thursday and Friday where my kids are at football camp, so I'll try to do 2 hours of marking each day and then do my other more enjoyable 'spring jobs'.

I've got the boys to declutter their wardrobes and DS2 had a handwriting lesson today. I'd say he's about 80% legible now - maybe 90% if he tries really hard.

I did the library book swap over today and got him some good books for the holidays.

To do:

2 hours of marking x 3

pot on 72 plants for borders
Sort green house
successional veg seed planting
Read books about spring

earthgirl2

I managed to pot on my perennial plants- about 85 in total! I patched up my greenhouse and I'm hoping I can more then from the conservatory to there when the temp goes up a bit. 

I've been experimenting with thermal cooking and it's great! I decided not to make a wonderbag but use a insulated cool bag, put layers of cardboard fleece and cotton around my pan, and it carries on cooking. It's even warm if I leave it overnight! 

So far I've just been doing really basic things. Boiled eggs, Mac n cheese. I am going to try a veg curry and bolognaise sauce next. 

I've collected about four olio delivers in the last four days, my olio lady was covering others so messaged me to say please request as much as you can. I've got one more to get today with some fruit in it which will be great. 

Small grocery shop this week. 

DS has a party today that he really wants to go to. I was going to let him get a later ferry over to our holiday but apparently the wind is getting up so I'd better stay on the mainland today in case he gets stranded, and go on holiday tomorrow. 

So today I'm hoping go to get loads of tidying, organising and annoying jobs out of the way. Ms ones would be-
car insurance
return products to mr t
plan to use contents of the fridge
cook veg curry using thermal bag

earthgirl2

Wow, what a few days!
I wanted to use the time by myself whilst the others were away to 'get things done'. I've ended up changing/trying a lot of new things and it's going really well. I've also had a good break at my SILs caravan.
One of the things I used to do was to write a list of pain points, things that were just bugging me. I hadn't done it for a while, so when it was quiet I managed to write a list of 15 things that had been bothering me - it's not normally this long  so I got to work on them straight away.

Some of them involve spending, and I always find it difficult to decide if I should do it or not. I try to source things cheaply or free if I can.

So some of the things I've introduced :
-Joined a zumba class £4 per week  I only pay if I go, but the idea is to see friends regularly and build up my fitness and stamina, along with my walks.
- introduced more fruit for the kids and us, and found that if I soak apple in soda water it doesn't go brown.
- I've started a 7 day lovely diet for a quick start to getting back to healthy eating. I've prepped the meals in advance and they are delicious so I will get myself back into the habit of eating healthy. It cost me about £20.

Had a lovely holiday and didn't spend much - I took all of our meals apart from one lovely lunch we had out on the last day. We did free things when there like walking and also used the sports facilities at the caravan site

Alchemilla

Self therapy sounds fascinating.

savingholmes

Glad you got some time to yourself it can really make a difference. 

Good that the lodger is working out too and school settled back down.

earthgirl2

Alchemilla said:

Self therapy sounds fascinating.

You beat me to it, I deleted that comment because I'm conscious that if people need therapy then it's much better to go to a doctor or get professional help. I'm enjoying it though  - it's like guided journaling really!