Simple living in the country - back to basics

themadvix

Feel your pain about the Ebay bidding, but I'd have done the same as Mr Cheery, so I can't say much! Great about the hayboxes though and the HW for August!

beanielou

That’s a great result. 

SusieT

Great result on the happy wheel I think I need to find one, it will even pay fir the washing machine  

Cheery_Daff

Thanks all

Happy Wheel winnings withdrawn from HW bank account, and allocated mostly to the new car fund, which is now full. Rest allocated to the vets fund, which was empty... 

So, some pots to tackle in Frugal September. Don't think I'm going to set myself any specific targets, just to be more mindful and see what we end up with. 

Food & household
This covers food and all household sundries - eg light bulbs, cleaning stuff, a new clothes airer we bought the other day. 

Spent in August - £357 (what?! I suspect some of this may be hangovers from July)
Average monthly spend this year - £239 (more reasonable)

My spends
This covers my clothes, slimming world, swimming etc, and cafe trips that don't involve Mr Cheery

Spent in August - £113
Average this year - £107

Diesel
Spent in August - £298
Average this year - £296

Joint treats
Cafes, pub trips, meals out together etc

Spent in August - £117
Average this year - £140 (this is lower than I thought!!)

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We can certainly cut food - I've got about £70 worth of vouchers to use up for a start, and plenty in the storecupboard. Freezer is almost empty, apart from fruit from the garden and 2kg of cheese Need to make jam, and start filling it with batch cooked meals. 

Also going to have a look at electricity consumption. According to our most recent statement (with my actual meter readings) we used 170kWh in July, which worked out at around 6kWh per day, or £2.17 a day. Can't compare to the year before - it says we used 9kWh per day, but I wasn't reading the meter regularly so they were all estimates (mostly over-estimates with an occasional very low month when I read the meter and recalibrated everything!)

Going to submit a reading in the morning so the September one will have exact readings, but also going to keep a record each day myself (we can't have a smart meter so no automatic readings) 

£167 ish in credit apparently - although it's still recommending we put the DD up £10 a month, which I'm not going to do yet. 

Anyway, enough for now I think!

Cheery_Daff

Evening MSE chums.

Funny old day today. Work started with a 4 hour Zoom meeting 😱 Not really a 'meeting' as such, just a colleague and I continuing something we were doing yesterday in a room, but didn't have time to finish. Still, it involved a lot of decision making, and quite discombobulated me for the rest of the day.

NOT helpful was a large commotion created outside my window by three of the chickens, who had seemingly gone on a murderous rampage and killed a mouse outside the back door, but then didn't know what to do with the poor thing, so we're just standing around shouting about it 🙄 Mr Cheery disposed of it, but their murderous rampage continued and they did the same thing again later on! (And no, it wasn't the same mouse as there were two bodies) Now I know why the mice are taking refuge in our attic 😱😂😂

Nipped to the supermarket after work for milk etc - also bought a few tins of chick peas etc, some bits for weekend visitors, fruit etc. Somehow it was £30 🙄

Anyway, some MSE things:

* made £1.43 on the Happy Wheel

* did a couple of Prolific surveys - now standing at 88p with £3.72 pending, not bad for this early in the month

* remembered to note down the meter reading for the electric - trying to keep track of what we use each day this month

And some less MSE things...

* Mr Cheery remembered the electric fence 🙄 can't unplug that of course else the cows will eat my trees. The farmer did offer to pay way back, and we said no - Mr Cheery has suggested we revise that. They'll be gone in early November so I think I might be inclined to say leave it for now, and broach it again when they come back in May next year. Can't imagine it costs much but who knows?

* think we're going to have to have a bit of work done on the side of the house. There's water coming down the inside of some render, and getting into the music room 🙄 Not sure if it just needs sealing, or if the render needs to come off, but it'll need doing before we can replace that window, and there's a possibility we'll need a new lintel 🙄 Not even sure what type of person you ring for that kind of a job 🙄

Anyway. I was going to start adding to the windows pot from now on, but this will need to happen first, and probably before the winter if we can find someone 🙄

Hey ho. Agent Million didn't ring today sadly but maybe we'll have won a few quid on the premium bonds tomorrow!

LadyWithAPlan

Cheery_Daff said:

Ooh, that's very exciting LadyWithAPlan! I've never had one of those loads-of-wagering offers end up with anything 😂

The trick with large wagering of a bonus only (not your own cash ))  is to up your spin size from the start  of bonus wagering so you bust out quickly OR you win big which helps you get through the full wagering even if then you bring spin size down

You hay box sounds fun and v successful.

Cheery_Daff

I'm delighted with the hay box, although we might need to make a more picturesque version at some point - it's literally a red plastic tub filled with hay, and with a hay pillow topped with an old bit of board and a giant stone from the garden 😂

Going to attempt some brown rice in it today for the freezer.

No premium bonds win today sadly. And so far the Happy Wheel is down £9 today, oh dear! Not counting that as today's total, usually a couple of other things appear on a Friday so I'll wait for those.

So, a day off! And, unsurprisingly, a list. We have friends coming tomorrow, and another friend coming on Wednesday to stay for a few days, so trying to tidy the place up a bit. Mr Cheery is on the case with the music room - some of his family are coming in a couple of weeks and we may need two working spare rooms, which we currently don't have. Anyway, my plan for the day

* washing on (still no new machine so just washing stuff whenever there's a chance of getting it mostly dry outside - my chances aren't looking good after today!)

* run the strimmer round the garden

* get some brown rice into the hay box

* hang the washing up

* pop to the village for a bit of a go on the well dressing 😊

* at least an hour of scything, if not 2 or 3 by the end of the day

* clothes out of bathroom

* dining table cleared

* bins emptied

* general clean round done

We might be going out for tea tonight so want to leave myself enough energy for that, we'll see.

Right, best get started - said I'd be in the village by 11 so need to get the strimming and washing done first!

Cheery_Daff

Morning chums 😊

Misty day up here on the hillside, but the sun is starting to peek through.

Had a nice day yesterday although unsurprisingly my list wasn't finished. I did strim the grass though so the garden at least looks presentable. Ended up spending almost 4 hours at the well dressing 😮 But it was the only day I could go, and there was still a lot to do! I spent the whole time working with a particular type of grass and by the end it was getting rather tiresome 😂

Anyway, did some pottering at home, and then we went out for tea - not exactly frugal 🙄 But we'd said we would go as a celebration of the first day in my new job. New to us restaurant - food was passable but not exciting, but it was a nice place to sit so we may go again. Oddly enough bumped into our neighbours coming in as we were going out - they'd never been there either 😂

Didn't sleep particularly well last night though, so struggled to get going this morning. Still, I've had breakfast, and a shower - set the timer for 5 mins when I put it on, and was out again by 4.5 which is super speedy for me - included washing my hair. Trying to be very mindful of electricity use this month see where it gets us - I used to be VERY frugal with it for environmental reasons anyway but got rather slack over the years...

Anyway. Going out to do an hour of scything, then need to get on the case with the last of the tidying and some lunch prep. Got some bread out of the freezer, and this is a first outing for the experimental TGTG cheese 😂

Hoping the rain stays off and we can have a bit of a walk round the fields even if we eat indoors.

Down £4 on the Happy Wheel today, I think I'm down overall about £13 for September so far! 

Prolific standing at £1.61 with £3.69 pending - did another 30p survey this morning.

Right - hay!

Cheery_Daff

An hour of hay done, a couple of hours of frantic tidying - and our visitors just cancelled. I'm not surprised, given their circumstances, although I thought they might have done it earlier than this as they were coming for lunch. Fortunately we haven't even started making lunch yet (I told them to let us know when they left - giving us an hour's notice). And we have another visitor on Wednesday who's staying for a few days so at least we won't have to tidy up again 😂

Not sure what to do with the afternoon now - might as well finish the tidying I guess. And I suppose we now need to eat this posh cheese I took out of the freezer! Could get back down to the well dressing... or, more likely, back in the hay field...

Cheery_Daff

Well I did neither of those things in the end 🙄 Mr Cheery gets very disappointed when people cancel last minute, so we went on a little excursion to cheer ourselves up. We did have a small cafe trip (in a different cafe, spent £7.50) and I bought 3 pairs of (new) socks in a charity shop for £2.

Found another washing machine on 3bay yesterday - they said they were open to offers so we sent one with a message saying when we could pick it up but 24 hours later still haven't had a response 🙄 Will put a bid in towards the end (not right at the end this time!!) and hopefully get it for less than we offered, but we'll see. No other bidders yet. 

What else? Oh, thanks to whoever mentioned it on here, I've embarked on the mammoth task of reading Tilly's diary 😱 I'm about a third of the way through. It's funny reading back in 2013 and seeing people worrying about diesel being £1.32 🙄 And someone speculating that in 10 years time everyone on the forum would be talking about Tilly Tidies without even necessarily knowing where it came from 😂😂

Inspired me to do a little TT of my own. I've never really done them - I keep track through YNAB so not sure about just ending up with loads of extra transactions to reconcile, or whether to just do one budget fiddle at the end of the month when it doesn't add up. Hmm. Anyway, I've emptied a small amount from an unused bank account into the MB float account, and have done my first TT into that empty account - 2p 😂😂 I'll see how I get on for September and decide if I'm going to continue.

Nowt much else to report. Mr Cheery is soaking black eyed beans in the hay box, so if that works we can get some in the freezer and cut down on buying tins.