Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

EssexHebridean

Had we not been in a ground floor flat we would also have needed to inform the insurance co when we were in the flat and were scaffolded - I double checked with the insurers on the first occasion this happened, and they assured me that it was purely to do with changing accessibility to windows etc, and so being ground floor meant it wasn't relevant to us. It's a good point because as and when we are in the same position as you where we are now - ie being scaffolded for the roof to be done - I must remember that we will have to notify whoever we are insured with at the time! 

foxgloves

@Humdinger1 - Probably, because he IS one!
@Makingabobor2 - Thankfully, we were able to boost our EF considerably from my inheritance from my parents. I am so glad now that I didn't allow myself to get tempted by spending it on buying myself a car. We went down to one shared car when I took VR & it definitely saved on running costs for two, though we do need to do a bit of planning as to who defo requires it when.
F

foxgloves

Hello Readers,
Further decluttering & sorting has been the theme of today. I tried a pile of yesterday's decluttered items on W*b & was astonished to find that they accepted £17's worth! Box now labelled ready for collection. I think this shows that one can never tell what will be accepted as quite a few of these items were guidebooks to places like castles, stately homes, etc. In fact, a guide to a cathedral  came up as an 'in demand item'. I have bagged up the unwanted titles for our local charity bookshop although I may just try them through W*b a 2nd time if Mr F declutters anything I could add to another potential trade. I have found in the past that a 2nd bite is sometimes successful.
And on with more sorting......I brought a huge amount of needlepoint yarn skeins back with me when we were sorting & clearing out my Mum's vast craft stash. I used to do needlepoint ages ago & thought I might do some further projects. Went through all of those & have relegated all the little oddments to the shed for tying in plants - pure wool so will be biodegradable. Everything else sorted into colours in a storage unit which has small, suitable drawers, so I can see what I have. While doing this, I also found 2 pictures I stitched back in the late 1990s which I think would be nice enough to stretch, frame & give as gifts (well.....if I had time!).
Also sorted though my general craft supplies & transferred to a more suitable container, freeing up a useful box for Mr F - one less he will need to purchase.
Apart from that, it's mostly what @PennysIntoPounds would doubtless call 'usuals', including making a batch of dough for tonight's pizza & a few rolls. Decluttered a Christmas tablecloth to the charity shop bag while sorting clean laundry. The chief roofer called this afternoon to affix his business sign & to have a closer look at the roof. I asked him to take out our dormer window while they are up there doing the roof as I can't imagine why anyone put it in, with its sole purpose being a magnet for the contents of the local woodpigeon population's bowels! Could tell they are concerned about the weather. The problem is that nobody really seems to have a definitive answer as to whether our area is going to fall under the 'Snow dump chaos' thing tonight & into tomorrow morning. For every forecast I have seen saying that we will probably just have sleet & rain here (we are on the eastern side of the county), there's been another local one telling everyone to stay at home, not to drive, etc, etc, so we can only wait & see. It looks as though start date for the work will be bumped to Tuesday, but he said that if it turns out to be reasonably dry on Monday, they might still come & get started. I heard him tell another roofer that the job is going to be 'a palaver' because of the foam gunk having stuck the tiles down so firmly. He did tell me clearly at the time of the quote that our new roof would have cost £1k less, had the wretched stuff never been applied, because removing it costs time. Of course, we inherited the problem from the previous owner, but hopefully people nowadays will be much more aware of the problems caused by this stuff, which do involve financial decisions. 
OK, that is today's efforts from Foxgloves Manor,
Onwards tomorrow & drawing the curtains to see what weather did in fact arrive.
Stay safe,
F x
P.S Soot & Ash did well today as a lovely neighbour brought them a stash of posh pouches which her cat didn't like, so I am sure they will tuck into those.

PennysIntoPounds

What a productive day. Usuals are the backbone of success imo! 
Glad the roofer isn't panicking too much, about the weather or the work- a palaver one can deal with!
I've had a few WoB rejects accepted by Sell It Back (all one word if you search for the app)

foxgloves

I agree, PiP. The everyday 'usuals'/small routine activities absolutely ARE the bedrock of financial stability.

No snow here. Heavy non-stop rain from last night, a little of which has seeped under our front door frame, so I have added that to today's notional list. The other side of the county has has a lot of overnight snow, so I am very glad I no longer need to drive over there for work, which was my daily commute for many years. 
Busy but very routine day planned here as I want to get nicely on top of jobs early with having roofing disruption next week.
Right....I've had my caffeine, so off I go to make a start.
Hope everyone ok after the storm. The TV news pictures from Cornwall & the Channel Islands looked dreadful.
Stay safe all,
F x

Sun_Addict

We had some snow on this side overnight but as it had rained so much last night it wasn't really sticking. It's raining again now so is clearing up but very slushy. There's no snow at all in the city centre.

foxgloves

@Sun_Addict - There seems to have been a diagonal snow-line across our county, as we have not had any at all & Mr F completed his 26 mile drive to work in the North of the county first thing without seeing any either. However, my bestie, who lives over on the other side pinged me some photos of her garden under a good 10cms of snow, so we really have been a county of 2 halves, which I think I expected really. The heavy rain, which began here last night at around 8pm finally stopped about an hour & a half ago. It felt very chilly last night so I succumbed to lighting the stove as well as having the CH on. Cats glued to the radiator, of course.
F

Crazycatlady2

Thank you for your kind comment, my op date is 5th Feb. I haven't had a hospital stay for 20 years so I'm freaking out a bit. 

I hope all goes well with your roof wort x 

rtandon27

We had rain of biblical proportions, but live on the high-side of the road so were not affected.  However there is still a lot of surface water which is starting to freeze as the temperature drops.  There is snow to the West/South & North of us but the valley we live in was oddly spared the worst!  Trains were a disaster this morning, so glad it was already a scheduled WFH day.

foxgloves

Hello Monday Readers,
Thank-you for your comments & contributions, which I always enjoy reading.
Odd sort of day today as the roofing work, scheduled to begin today or tomorrow is obviously going to be tomorrow. The scaffolding is all in place, two sad whiskered little faces went off to the cattery yesterday, the funds are in place & everything else I can think of. I am thinking that the big rain at the end of last week probably means they were finishing off a job today. Anyway, fingers crossed for tomorrow morning bright & early.
To shut off overthinking, I have planned all sorts of tasks to be getting on with this week - most of them on the sorting, decluttering, make-do & mend, shopping from home variety. Today's efforts:
*A No-spend day.
*Wrote list (see above) of stuff to tackle during roofing week.
*An item I had to return (received the wrong one) was successfully exchanged & the correct item arrived in the post today. The refund for the return postage has also landed in my CC account this morning.
*Baked bread.
*Dinner in slow cooker - a recipe from the "I heart my SC" book - Curried mince & peas. It doesn't sound very exciting but is actually quite cheffy with lots of different spices & ingredients. It's one of Mr F's favourites & he was well pleased to see it appear on this month's master meal plan. There'll be 2 portions to freeze too, so we can pay that forward to next month's plan. Beef mince was in our local butcher's weekend deals so we stocked up.
*Made tomorrow's packed breakfast for the worker. He's already made his lunch by boxing up some leftovers yesterday.
*Did my regular Monday morning budget updates.
*Gathered together some library returns.
*Did a couple of surveys.
This afternoon's planned sorting/decluttering task was going through some forgotten-about old photos which turned out to be the last pre-digital camera ones from around 2009! We enjoyed the nostalgia of them yesterday, kept the best ones & by lucky hap, I had come across a nice partially-filled photo album when I was decluttering & moving our albums to a better storage space last week. I've arranged them in the that, labelled them & as we mostly don't print out our digital photos now, unless for a specific purpose, I decided we only need to keep one empty album just in case. That meant I could declutter a nice, but unwanted one to the charity shop bag. I do scan & print out vintage family photos for my genealogy research - I have lots of those but they are mounted in special albums, using those old-fashioned 'corners' so I wouldn't use a plastic wallets-type album for those. 
Our 2026 sorting/decluttering project is going well. Mr F is well 'in the zone' & has even used some of his Personal Spends on buying some old annuals so that he can get rid of some of the large stacks of magazines which have been breeding over the last few years. He made another trip to the tip yesterday with an old TV which has been stored in our loft "in case it came in useful" (it didn't!) & I may decide to leave our carpet cleaning machine outside on our drive in case anyone wants it as I find it way too much faff to set up & not as effective as I'd anticipated either when we bought it. I expect they have improved hugely so it's maybe something we will replace when we have had time to think about it properly. 
Right, I think that is all I have to share today. I hope to be telling you some actual roof progress news by this time tomorrow, but for now, I think it's time to choose my next book. I've just finished Ian McEwan's "What we can know" which I found interesting - a clever idea, I thought.
F x