Simple living in the country - back to basics

LadyWithAPlan

themadvix said:

@KajiKita, yup, totally get where you're coming from - if Sensible September works for you, then go for it. (Bizarrely, 'Sensible' makes me baulk and dig in against it, so I'm sticking with 'frugal (challenge) September!' I know it doesn't alliterate but it just gets me motivated!)

thats why I am going for Soaring September (soaring towards my dreams!) 

Karmacat

Ooh, Soaring!  

It comes down to individual choice, doesn't it    

Cheery - liking getting all the rugs out of storage, absolutely, thats kind of what I'm doing with all this window insulation made up of big pieces of fleece and big towels.  After that, when I've cleaned the vinyl on the living room floor a bit, I'm going to gather up the vinyl leftovers stashed upstairs, plus the commercial-type kilim from Ikea (got to get the corners flat on that, though) and lay them on the floor, helping insulate against the very windy underfloor in my house, I have a few too many airbricks for modern wind l think  

greenbee

Cheery - use the rugs wherever you can rather than keeping them in storage! Until the floors were finished here, I had various threadbare rugs, underlay and carpet offcuts that people donated to stop cold from the concrete floor. I still have a couple of threadbare rugs upstairs, as I like them!

Cheery_Daff

Yes, I'm definitely going to cover the study floor, and we may even end up with some in the dining room end of the kitchen, which is also usually cold. It's been nice and cool over the summer buy will just be plain old freezing in the winter 😂

Just had Jack Monroe's tinned spaghetti recipe for lunch. Goodness knows how we ended up with so many tins of value spaghetti 🙄 Mr Cheery doesn't like it, and I'll eat it on toast once in a blue moon but don't ever really WANT it, so it's all just sat there, about 13 tins of it 🙄

Anyway, sauce finned off, microwaved for 1.5 mins, grated cheese mixed through, and then I added a bit of salt and a grind of what I thought was pepper, but it turned out Mr Cheery had topped up the pepper grinder with dried cumin 😂 It was actually pretty tasty, and might be the way to go for using up the rest of the tins on working from home days. Had it with some slices of pepper for a bit of crunch.

Back to it I suppose, not feeling very motivated today!

Cheery_Daff

And I didn't get any more motivated through the afternoon, although I did get a few things done eventually - it was like pulling teeth 🙄

Lost £5.87 on the Happy Wheel, so down £28 for September now - always rather dispiriting when it does that! But it's early days yet.

Resisted the urge to eat the hay box curry, and instead put two portions in the freezer, and made a stir fry for tonight and lunch tomorrow. 

TVP chunks soaked up the stock nicely, but they definitely tasted about 5 years old... so I'm afraid they've all gone in the bin. Will look around for some though - I used to eat them all the time and haven't had them for years! 

Washing done this morning, and it actually spun relatively well - no idea why as there was a king size duvet cover in there and I did fill it pretty full since it's not bothering to spin properly anyway 🙄 Dried completely on the line despite the dire forecast - wish I'd done the sheet as well! 

Feeling quite drained this evening 🙄 I'd planned to get a few things done but after nipping out to slimming world and making a stir fry, I think that's it. Will need to pack my bag and decide what I'm wearing tomorrow, and I think I'm going to change the sheets, but then I'll be curling up in front of the TV i think.

Mr Cheery has been clearing out the downstairs loo, which has become somewhat of a shed. Finally found the tent that we were looking for a few weeks back! 😂😂

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, Mr Cheery has found us a potential washing machine on Freegle... One person has already replied, but it only went on a couple of hours ago and we've sent a nice friendly message being really flexible about when we can collect it...

So all fingers and toes crossed!

elantan

Fingers crossed cheery,  washing machines are one of those things we really miss when they ain't working 

Cheery_Daff

They are indeed El! Fortunately ours still washes, everything just comes out soggy - I'd be fine if I had a mangle 😂😂

Anyway, it seems there was a slightly ambiguous but positive message late last night, and he should be collecting it at lunchtime today. It does mean us coming into town separately, which is probably an extra about £7 of diesel, but I did miraculously manage to snag a free parking spot, despite not getting here til just before 9am.

Very pleased with myself this morning - when I got up about 7 I managed to get a butterbean and pepper thing into the haybox! Not the biggest fan of frying onions at 7am but I knew I was going to be back quite late, and want to get straight out into the hay field, so this should theoretically just need a last bit of warming in the microwave. We'll see.

Right, work!

LadyWithAPlan

I went back to college a few years ago and was often frying up a pork chop, onions and making stew at 6am
I had a fellow college student  stay with me a few nights each week (For free on my couch as he had no money) and he would think I was bonkers. 

However taking a hot flask of nutritious food to school and a thermos of fabulous coffee each day so helped my budget and my energy levels.
I can only drink decent ground coffee (I tried that downgrading brand exercise and cheap coffee makes me shudder)

Spicing up the JM spaghetti seems the only way forward ! 

themadvix

Fingers crossed for the washing machine!