Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers,
Thanks for your comments, which I've found interesting to read. Yes, I think there IS a lot of worry around at the moment, I know this is the case with some of the folk we know, plus myself. I enjoyed reading about people's different techniques for getting out of the insomniac catastrophisation loop. I like the idea of specific worry time. This would quite probably work for me in day time, when I'm usually pretty good at firmly telling myself "I'll worry about this when & IF it happens", but it's a different matter at night. I've tried several different methods & ridiculous as it sounds, the least frustrating one seems to be to acknowledge that I'm wide awake, probably unlikely to go back to sleep & also to acknowledge the anxiety. I tell myself the feeling will pass, especially as I can plan tomorrow, & try to relax rather than getting into a worry about missing sleep. I was awake again at just past 4 this morning.....stressing about tomorrow's dentist appointment & that this is the part of the treatment plan I probably understand the least. I am getting the paperwork out this afternoon so I can refresh my memory about it - I'm much better when I can take action & plan around stressful events, rather than lie in bed in the dark letting stuff fester through the realms of my over-active imagination.
I do like this quotation from Corrie Ten Boom about anxiety:
"Worrying is carrying tomorrow's load with today's strength - carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn't empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength".
Agree with @EssexHebridean that we need to acknowledge that we HAVE all been living through very weird & unsettling times & we still are. I don't think there can be anyone apart from the extremely wealthy, who are not worried about how the economic situation is affecting them, & will continue to do so without a pretty significant change of system - one which realises that 'Levelling up" (that stupid phrase again) needs to be about fair wages which can sustain a family in decent accommodation, not giving a socio-economically deprived town a new bowling alley, relocated council offices or an extra bus. So I'm not at all surprised that lurking around in the backs of most of our minds is the hope that we will manage to ride it out without too much damage to our pre-recession financial plans (& hopes & dreams).
I need to sign out in a minute, so quickly onto today's small money saving wins:
*Free fitness  - went for a brisk walk around the village.
*Did a few surveys - PA total for January is looking more healthy now & still a few days to go.
*Mr F did indeed have an online shopping code, so we placed our weekly grocery order last night for 20% off. Everything seemed to be in stock (we'll see what actually arrives!) except a pack of the little biscuit we like so........
*Baked a batch of Crank's country biscuits. I like these as they are good with cheese as well as on their own with a coffee.
*Sorted out pantry to make room for this year's marmalade. Found a couple of jars of stuff we'd forgotten about.
*Updated my diary with Mr F's annual leave & days off, as this helps with planning.
*Quick easy meal tonight - pasta with some of the batch-cooked roasted tomato sauce I made from last summer's tomato glut.
*Wrote a reading wishlist to take with me on my next library visit.
*Will be knitting more hiking sock later. I'm sick of seeing it....but mostly because the cats are so interested in all the little oddments of stash yarn I'm using. 
Right, I must crack on.
Your Insomniac Frugal Friend,
F x

angela110660

Just popping into the worry convo as I was watching Frugal Jo earlier on Youtube spring cleaning her radiators. Thought I could do mine and have discovered the lounge radiator has a large rust patch near the bottom which could become a leak so will have to get it sorted out. We have a radiator cover on this one so have not been aware of the rust. Thanks FJ for her cleaning prompt.

Makingabobor2

I love that you sorted out your pantry FG, I'd love an old house with a proper pantry. Always remember my granny's, it was just outside the kitchen, in the hall and went under the stairs. Was massive and you could walk in it. She used to have so much stuff stored in there and never seemed to run out of anything. And because it was so cold in there, she would put her jellies in there to set....lol.....The weird things we remember. 

Baileys_Babe

Thanks, everyone for your contributions about worrying, catastrophising and lack of sleep, it is interesting to hear of the different techniques used.

walkers60

I also remember the original pantries in older houses.  I wish I had one now.  It was taken out of this house many years ago but I would have found it so useful.  My childhood home had one which was a small walk-in one but that was taken out to enlarge the kitchen.  The same with another house I lived in and my MIL house in Worthing.  In hindsight........ less need for fridges!  

I worked in a school kitchen when I was younger and they had a lovely walk-in larder.

foxgloves

@angela110660 - Good job you spotted that dodgy bit of radiator. Better to know about these things. One of ours had a slow leak from a tiny hole, but it was enough to cause the boiler to need regular re-pressurising so we were glad to spot it & get it sorted.
F

foxgloves

@Makingabobor2 & @walkers60 - We do live in a 1930s house, but our walk-in pantry is not original. I did have an original one in my last little house, which was older (1902). I really wanted a pantry here in our current house & as part of our big refurb project (2020 to 2022), our builders converted a really very dank unpromising understairs cupboard into exactly what I wanted. This cupboard would originally have been in a narrow corridor on the way out to the back door, but at some point, a previous owner knocked out a kitchen wall to incorporate the corridor into a bigger kitchen. This meant that the yucky cupboard to lovely pantry conversion is in the right place, in the kitchen. The builders dry-lined & plastered it, quarry-tiled the floor to match existing kitchen tiles & put shelves in to my specifications. They even measured my tallest storage jars to get the shelves the correct height. Then they made double doors themselves because the doorway was not a standard size. I love having it as it means I can store more but also keep things cold, which helps when the fridge is full.
Wish I had a photo of that awful cupboard to show you that it's possible to make a pantry out of a very grotty space.
F x

foxgloves

And I'd better get today's post on. Another shocking night's sleep. Surpassed myself with the worst wake-up time this week - 2.37am. I did drop off for about an hour & a half at around 5am.....how do I know? Because I had a bizarre dream in which I was on a girls' night out to London to see a musical & ended up missing the special pink decorated double-decker bus arranged to take us there because somebody had stolen my leggings while I was in a shop!!! Honestly, the state of my brain coming up with that nonsense!
Despite the stressing, dentist appointment was absolutely fine (just a fancy scan) & city centre traffic was kind. Nothing to pay today, but there will defo be some bills next month as I need to pay for a radiographic gizmo to wear for my conebeam scan. I have the money saved though. My first foray into private dentistry & the cost is making me even more grateful for the NHS.
Got back earlier than expected (stopped for coffee & emergency scones on way home as I still had the wibbly-wobblies. Then I spent the afternoon on my Big Budget Day procedures. I can't quite finish it because I intend to book a workman early in Feb & the amount available to pay into various savings pots will not be known until I have a quote for the work. I did pay our holiday pot as this is on a fixed schedule of £90 per month atm in order to cover the balance on this year's holiday, next year's (which is a treat cottage for a big birthday) & related cattery stays. So I will defo be revisiting February's budget again before too long. I also intend to do some number-crunching regarding energy costs & the rate at which these are chomping through our carefully cultivated credit balance. I want to look at the possible benefits of temporarily reducing what we currently pay into a regular saver account to divert elsewhere i.e Savings Pots & possibly our energy account. Lots of sums & options to work through on paper first though.
It's been nice chatting to you all. Mr F busy cooking dinner & cats both ignoring me because they've just had their flea treatment. 
F x

Makingabobor2

foxgloves said:

@Makingabobor2 & @walkers60 - We do live in a 1930s house, but our walk-in pantry is not original. I did have an original one in my last little house, which was older (1902). I really wanted a pantry here in our current house & as part of our big refurb project (2020 to 2022), our builders converted a really very dank unpromising understairs cupboard into exactly what I wanted. This cupboard would originally have been in a narrow corridor on the way out to the back door, but at some point, a previous owner knocked out a kitchen wall to incorporate the corridor into a bigger kitchen. This meant that the yucky cupboard to lovely pantry conversion is in the right place, in the kitchen. The builders dry-lined & plastered it, quarry-tiled the floor to match existing kitchen tiles & put shelves in to my specifications. They even measured my tallest storage jars to get the shelves the correct height. Then they made double doors themselves because the doorway was not a standard size. I love having it as it means I can store more but also keep things cold, which helps when the fridge is full.
Wish I had a photo of that awful cupboard to show you that it's possible to make a pantry out of a very grotty space.
F x

Sounds amazing. There is a lot to be said for older houses. We always say, we would never move to a new build house, they are like boxes. We want to downsize in the future (our house is 1979), but I would love something old and quirky. Not sure how practical that is when you're getting old though. 

DawnW

Our house was built in about 1905, so would probably have had an original pantry at one time. However, all the houses in our terrace have been added onto / had rooms knocked into one and all sorts of other alterations, and the pantry was sadly long gone. A few years ago, OH decided to build one in the grotty area under the stairs. Because of the size and shape of the staircase (ie, steep and narrow; our house was a workmans cottage as opposed to the kind of grand Edwardian house with sweeping staircases that you see in the magazines) he actually made 2 cupboards in the space, the taller one is the pantry, and the small one, which is very low and sloping, is just right for the hoover, airer, and other cleaning items.

The pantry cupboard isn't big enough to walk into, because of the nature of the space, and it is in the hallway rather than the kitchen, but it works very well, as it is for some reason the coolest space in the house. I was so pleased with it. He lined the shelves with vintage sticky plastic stuff in different designs, so I have a floral shelf, a spotty one, and the topmost, narrow one in a checked design. I spent ages sourcing old, brightly coloured Tupperware containers from boot fairs and charity shops to store my ingredients, average price about 50p