Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

badmemory

After once standing in the supermarket with my handwritten shopping list wondering what on earth that item was I now print my shopping lists.  It is amazing how much stuff comes through the door with a lovely blank sheet of paper on the back.  I use them not just for shopping lists, I can get 2 to a page now so getting really clever, but also for those paper free bank accounts.  You know the 4 pages of stuff of which 3 pages are total rubbish.  It is interesting about handwriting though.  My mother had beautiful handwriting, beautiful but illegible.  I used to have ugly looking handwriting but totally legible.  That was before arthritic fingers got involved.  Now it is just ugly & illegible.

Baileys_Babe

I write my shopping list on my phone using a notepad app. I have it separated by shops. 

Suffolk_lass

I write my shopping list in the SM online order basket and just remove things as I walk round and pick them up, also using it for shopping in other shops.

One Two of the reasons there used to be a whole lot of birthdays in February and March (still are for a certain generation) was that you would get tax relief for the tax year of birth. The other reason was that people went on holiday nine months before this...

FacelessNumber

Hi, just thought I'd drop in and comment, I got back into reading on here over the last few weeks and have read your diary, I love the shopping from home concept, have used it a couple of times now so thank you!

Also enjoy reading about the gardening, I'm terrible in the garden, I have good intentions but just kind of lose interest / forget about what I'm supposed to do and when!

badmemory

Suffolk_lass said:

One Two of the reasons there used to be a whole lot of birthdays in February and March (still are for a certain generation) was that you would get tax relief for the tax year of birth. The other reason was that people went on holiday nine months before this...

My mother told me that if I had a child born in March she wasn't speaking to me again.  March already had 5 major birthdays in it, with the whole rest of the year only having 3 including hers.

foxgloves

@Moorviews - The problem is that too many people DO fall for it though. Here in ToryTown, people complain endlessly about declining public services - I don't think I have ever lived anywhere so moany - but how do they expect local councils to maintain or improve services when their grants from central government have been cut by c.40%. We all know what sort of effect that would have on our own household budgets, don't we? So then people fume about the council because their council tax is going up, rather than aim their outrage at the government for their underfunding. Costs & social need have both increased, which just adds to the problem. It also makes me mad when I hear, "Oh if only we didn't give £x to other countries & looked after our own first" & the many variants of this moan, which are all over social media. On the rare occasion such a comment has appeared on my own FB feed, I have replied that it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference, as they wouldn't get to see a single penny of the £x as it would end up in the hands of the wealthiest 1%, just like everything else! I shall be making a placard in a minute!
@FacelessNumber - Hello & welcome! Do feel free to comment, we like contributions & discussion on here.
@badmemory - I love hand writing. I do have arthritis in my hands but it isn't so bad that I can't write, knit, play the piano, etc, I just have to make sure I don't do any one activity for too long, & am actually better if I keep my hands mobile. I am a member of "The Handwritten Letter Appreciation Society". I think writing with fountain pen feels easier on my hands, but I am still trying to decide whether I am possibly imagining it.
F

foxgloves

Well, another day, another post of small budget-assisting bits & bobs. 
Hello m'dears,
The wind is getting up here. When I saw the ice on our car this morning & how crispy white the garden was looking, I honestly didn't think I'd be getting my planned outdoor session, but by the time I'd had my breakfast & bucket of coffee at 10, it had thawed, so on went the boots & warm coat. Anyway, not a lot to report today:
*Last night's dhal made 2 spare portions, now frozen for a 'free' meal at some point.
*Found a suitable box for posting my friend's birthday presents. The wrapping paper, bubblewrap & box were all from my wrappings stash & the gift tag was a home made one from some coloured foil card I was given when someone was clearing out. Apart from paper sticky tape, I never buy any boxes or envelopes for posting. When I read posts about people starting selling on ebay by going out & purchasing supplies of this sort of stuff, I nearly start hyperventilating. Steady supplies of it come into most households, it's just a case of spotting the stuff that's worth saving & stowing it away neatly where it doesn't fall on one's head with regular monotony.
*Took a basket of salvaged stuff down to the shed for Spring gardening season - plastic fish box from our last order, these split into base & lid so 2 free seed trays, a handful of wooden cutlery saved from cafe visits (for plant labels), some big yoghurt pots, as they are excellent for sowing beans & sweet-peas & some string. Also added 4 large lidded jars to my stash of jars for tomato bottling.
*Started decluttering my half of the shed. Not money-saving in itself (apart from making use of old compost bags instead of buying rubbish sacks) but useful for seeing exactly what we have in stock - 2 bottles of seaweed solution, so shan't need to buy any of that for a while & a whole container of organic fertiliser pellets which my friend with the allotment gave me & I had forgotten about.
*Sowed the first seeds of the year - chillies. Yay, we're off the blocks! I always sow my chillies on the last day of January. They are now in the little yellow-stickered heated propagator which I bought years ago in a sale for £15.
*Tapped a jug of free liquid plant food off the worm composter. They usually go dormant over the winter, but a quick peek inside revealed that they have been chomping everything in sight, so I am saving kitchen scraps for them over the next couple of weeks.
*Paid the balance of my eye-watering dentist bill off the credit card used to pay on the day. At least that means we will get a decent wodge of loyalty points towards our next vouchers.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.
*Jacket potato night tonight, so virtually effort-free. I like tuna melt on jackets, so just some tuna mayo to make up for me & some cheese to grate & Mr F is having a box of leftover roast dinner on his! On jacket potato nights, we can have whatever we fancy that we have in stock, as long as it hasn't already been earmarked for a meal already.
*Did a UGov survey & cashed out my January PA earnings at £40-75. I am awaiting an additional £4-07, but that can start off February's earnings. I noticed on my submissions page, it says that I have earned £1192-32 since I have been a member of PA. I can't remember when I joined but it was several years ago. I aim to check in every day, even if it is just to do a couple of littlies, but I don't always manage this, as I have often already spent a fair amount of time on my laptop & don't want to be looking at more screens.
*Picked a week's worth of meals from our February master meal plan, prioritising what we already have in stock or at least some of the components in stock.
*Wrote grocery shopping list.
*Did reach armhole-dividing point on my cardi yesterday, so will work on the first half of the divided stitches tonight. I have to keep reminding myself that the body of this garment is knitted in one piece from edge to edge, so the siting of the armholes doesn't feel that intuitive.
Well, that's it for today's frugalities.
Stay cosy - it's felt quite chilly today after such a big frost.
F x

Sun_Addict

That's a good amount from PA for January. 

I've noticed a huge drop in temperature since Monday. When I was walking to work on Monday morning first the gloves came off, then the scarf shortly afterwards followed by unzipping my coat as I approached the city centre. Today it was back to gloves, scarf and the coat firmly zipped up - and I was still cold. 

foxgloves

Yes, it's the same here, @Sun_Addict - well, it would be, wouldn't it, with me only probably about 20 miles away tops, as the crow flies. I am not usually a chilly mortal, but I really did feel cold when I was out in the shed & greenhouse earlier, & was glad of my gardening gloves. I must admit that I do prefer distinctive seasons, rather than sort of grey samey nothingness all year round, but mild winter weeks do lull one into a false sense of security. I keep reading these overblown snow predictions in the media. I am not sure whether I believe them or not - the 'exact day' keeps changing by a fair but, but mostly it seems to hover around Feb 9th. Hmmm. I wonder! It will have to be a whole massive dump of snow to keep me from my hair cut that day, but it could be complete guff because the older generations who mostly buy newspapers enjoy "Snow chaos"-type stories about the weather.
F

Makingabobor2

Definitely colder here as well. Think I'm about 25 -30 miles south of you, from where I think you are.  Its also noticeably darker tonight at 3.45 than it has been the last week. Some really dark snowy looking clouds on the horizon TBH....they can stay there!  Looks like sunshine tomorrow though, although only about 8c. If it doesn't look too bad I'd like to make a start tidying front garden, but we'll see how it feels. 

Great that you have started sowing seeds. No good me starting chillies off....we wouldn't eat them...lol  Although i could do some for my DD & family.