Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Hello Diary Friends,
Samhain blessings to you all on this fine autumn evening. If only the weather had been as bonny earlier in the day. We had planned a woodland walk this morning, but having awoken to the sound of 2 sets of naughty claws being stropped on the landing carpet, I realised that the other sound I could hear was rain on the windows, so we decided to postpone our excursion until a better day. Never mind, it has been a useful day & I have also enjoyed a seasonal activity, as have baked a batch of traditional soul cakes (recipe courtesy of Sains*'s mag online). They were very easy, involved nothing I hadn't got in stock & they are very nice with a coffee - the mixed spice gives a lovely autumnal vibe, enhanced by a little freshly grated nutmeg. They remind me of Easter biscuits, which I also like to bake. Anyway, they were no sooner out of the oven than Mr F was enquiring whether he might take some to assist him through his late shift tomorrow, lol!
A few little bits of budget-assisting activity today:
*Baked a loaf as we were running short & kitchen was nice & warm from soul cake-baking.
*Made a home made porridge pot for tomorrow's packed breakfast. Lunch is apparently to be the microwaveable mug of roast pork dinner leftovers so is effort-free.
*Collaborated on a master meal plan for November. We need to be hot on adherence to grocery budget over the coming month, so have based the master plan around a roast chicken (which we will need to buy) & a decent variety of other meals, pretty much sourced from our freezer/pantry stores.
*Discussed grocery budget over afternoon coffee & decided that as Mr F is working an extra late shift on normal shopping night & we'd rather be doing something else on Friday & Saturday, we would benefit from an online order, which we have now done. Was really tight with target spend - worked out that we needed to keep about £8 for fresh veg from the local farm stall on Friday, which left us a few spare quid. We used this to buy a couple of items from my embryonic Christmas pantry list. Every £ has definitely had its purpose on this shop, that's for sure!
*Did a survey & cashed out my October PA earnings at £51-29, leaving a couple of small outstanding payments which will start off my November earnings. Mr F cashed out his at £36-39 & was delighted that this more than covers his big pile of bargainaceous King Crimson CDs he made that offer for at the charity bookshop last week.
*Did a bit of minor fund-shuffling to enable payment of a couple of items off my credit card.

@EssexHebridean - I have also been thinking ahead to Christmas food. I have been buying the odd ingredient here & there for the Christmas cake, so only now need dried apricots & brazil nuts for that. We treat our annual nectar & C**p dividend points as our Christmas Club money. Not so many nectar this year from shopping as we haven't used that supermarket much (we have to travel to city centre or other towns to go there), but I was paid £50 in their vouchers earlier this year for taking part in an academic study which involved me keeping a food diary for 3 days & I have saved it towards our Christmas shop. We currently have about £37 in dividend, which will probably be boosted to at least £50 when we get our annual bonus added, so we will certainly aim to get as much stuff from the list as possible from these sources. You are right that a turkey is expensive. Again, I am working to decrease the price by saving loyalty vouchers from my CC (currently at £35) which will help. We are not hosting this year, so have not ordered such a big one.
@Blackcats - Yes, re keeping ON IT where November grocery budget is concerned, let's do it! I don't think I do as much batch cooking as I used to back when I took VR & we were working hard on remaining debt-free. I was only saying as much to Mr F earlier today. I do enjoy a good batch cooking session with a good, engaging audiobook playing, so I must get back to making it a more regular thing.

Mr F's cooking night, so I shall be relaxing & looking forward to GBBO.
Oh.......NOT money saving. The bloody iron! Tbf, it is ancient & due to my utter lack of interest in the act of ironing or the tools therof, had never once in its entire life ever been descaled. Mr F attempted descaling today & managed to get absolutely oodles of gunk out of it, but the problem was that the gunk wouldn't stop. It just kept on coming a bit like that old folk tale about the magic porridge pot or unlocking the gates to Hades. Each time, he thought 'this will be the time the water starts to run clear.....' before being confronted with yet more production of assorted ucky chunks & gravy. After a LOT of time, neither of us could see that it would ever be worth risking using it anywhere near clean laundry again, so it went on a little trippette to the wheelie bin. Two lessons learned here: 1. How to descale an iron  2. The necessity of iron-descaling. The House & Garden Pot will therefore be raided for the price of a new iron on Friday. In the meantime, I am unable to do any ironing this week.........every cloud, as they say.....
F x

Sun_Addict

Any excuse not to iron 😆

EssexHebridean

ROFL at the never ending stream of gunk from the iron! I'm not sure ours has been degunked in a good while  either - but then again it really very rarely gets used these days as MrEH doesn't often need to wear a shirt for work any more, and that is as a rule it's sole purpose! (In fact, due to this, we maintain a "spare iron" too - a very basic one that was picked up in a charity shop some years ago for literally a couple of £ - and will serve to get him out of trouble if he is in the middle of doing a necessary shirt-iron and the proper one goes kaput!)

I am also loving how many of us on here want to keep grocery spending tightly under control this month - with this amount of will in play, how can we fail?! 

rtandon27

Ooo - a tight-fisted grocery challenge - I'm in ladies - in our house this means keeping OH on the straight and narrow when he does not want to stick to the mealplan - usually due to laziness and naught else! We have a freezer full of food and a stack of interesting recipes so I may have to set him some sort of challenge to get a home-cooked frugal meal every night!

PennysIntoPounds

Samhain blessings to you foxgloves, the soul cakes sound lovely.

If you have enough spare nectar points you can deduct from Christmas savings, could you maybe use some for a reduced spend on an iron from Arg*s as they have linked nect*r doings with Sainsers?

weenancyinAmerica

I sold my iron when I realized I only used it for quilt squares and to iron pictures to a backing sheet. Gave the ironing board away to a family that was ironing on the floor - with a one-year old in the house. Haven't missed it. Most of my clothes are of the knit variety now. Anything that needs ironing - gets given away as fast as possible.

foxgloves

@PennysIntoPounds - That's a viable idea, thanks. I will have a look in town on Friday to assess cost & decide. We are heading past a Sains*s on Sat on our way into city centre, if we did decide to use nectar, but it will depend on how much irons are priced at locally.

I do envy all the non-ironers amongst our number. I am not one of these people who insists on ironing underwear, tea-towels, etc, but I do have clothes which require it. Most non-iron clothes seem to be of the 'ath-leisure' variety & this is not a style that suits me. I quite envy those who look good in it, but I am not one of them & would sadly look like an old sofa that had been put out for council collection. Having said that, I iron as little as I can get away with. I like crisp cotton bedding though, so that is all ironed. Very tedious, but worth it when I get into a lovely fresh crisp bed.
F

foxgloves

Hello Friendly Frugalistas,
I must make this a speedy post as it is already looking rather crepuscular outside & I want to trog down to the shed to fetch the litter tray in (overnight wazz-down by the looks of it, plus fireworks over the next few days as we have noticed that the bangs are worrying Soot) & if I don't do this soon, I will need a torch.
Today's priority has been to tackle the big heap that has built up in my little HQ room - mostly Christmas presents - so I have had the radio on & spent a good stretch of time up here sorting & wrapping. Today's budegt-helping postivies as follows:
*Sorted out the festive bags I saved from last year & assigned one per person.
*Made really good inroads into wrapping presents - I did buy a few rolls of wrapping paper in the sale in January, but have only had to use it so far for larger items. For smaller things, I am prioritising the pieces of decent paper I saved from last Christmas, plus saved ribbons & homemade gift tags. 
* Have been sorting outer packaging, folding & storing in my wrappings box as I've gone along. No need to be buying envelopes & paddibag type materials - always plenty finding its way here, just needs saving.
*Easy meal tonight - sweet & sour using some of the roast pork I divvied up on Monday. 
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast - Mr F requested a portion of the courgette, cheddar & potato soup I batch-cooked back when we had the courgette glut, so that was an easy win as just needed defrosting.
*Knitted a bit more Christmas present sock over my lunch hour.
That's all for today, as I have spent most of it being Father Christmas's plumptious elf! All this festive stuff has been very useful though & I intend to continue with it tomorrow.
Cheers for now,
F x

kayannie

Regarding unnecessary ironing, I once worked with someone who ironed her tights!
A few years ago, I decided to wrap Christmas presents in reusable materials so bought some Christmas themed cotton material in a few different patterns. I didn't pay much for it & I usually get some of it back the following year wrapped around a present to me! KA

2Scratters

@kayannie that's the way to do adult Christmas 

@foxgloves good prompt for those of us who already have some bits in ready for Christmas

I need to be a lot more resourceful with my time just now as procrastination is creeping in too many times. Time for a head wobble and do my small lists of jobs that can be done quite quickly. Like 20 seconds to remove the meat from the freezer to start defrosting. Book in some reading time to finish a book that is sat here to my left with the book mark sticking out.
 Little jobs that can be done when the TV adds are on. Perhaps that should be a target. Put the TV on all day (I'm not an avid fan don't panic) and do it all in the ad breaks. I'll save electric and time the adverts I'm estimating 4 minutes every 15 mins instead. I'll report back to let you know how I get on.
Got my 2nd budget monies to sort tomorrow when it lands in my account. I also need to revisit last Fridays funds too, they need some more stashing away. 
Time for another list.

Stay safe all

2 Scratters xx