Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

@EssexHebridean - Yes, you are right that they will have to pay for waste disposal so I will leave any future knicker hangers at the store. I still intend to write though. I think my last letter on the subject was well over 10 years ago, so with all the greatly increased concern about plastic waste, I find it unacceptable that they obviously still haven't found a solution.

You are early with your courgettes, though you are a long way south of me. I don't sow mine until mid-April as it is usually too cold to plant them out here much before the end of May.
It must be lovely having a new garden. So much promise!
F x

Moorviews

Although I don’t buy the knickers on hangers I would have assumed that the staff in the store were putting them onto the hangers. If so, they could save and reuse the hangers. That’s what I thought was happening when I left bra or clothes hangers behind. Very naive of me obviously as now I realise that they must all be going onto them at the factory, which means extra transport costs too. 
My thoughts are exactly as yours are regarding water rates and the higher charges for those paying them. We don’t have a pond but my family have daily baths and long showers, wash cars at home and I use some in the garden and greenhouse. We still saved a considerable amount of money, going from over £90 a month down to £50 to £60. We have some of the highest water charges in the country down here unfortunately. It still sickens me to think of how much we were overpaying for years just for the ‘peace of mind’. 

I like the sound of the big batch bolognese and will print out the recipe for Mr MV as I encourage him to prepare the pasta bolognese here and he likes to have instructions to follow. He will be a bit horrified that he needs to also prepare carrots and celery as he is rather minimal on including vegetables in things, however, I always include them myself. I think having to open a bottle of red wine will mollify him though 😄

foxgloves

@Moorviews - It is a lovely bolognese. There's no wine in my recipe book though, it uses red wine vinegar instead, which I sometimes substitute for my home made blackberry vinegar. By the time the carrot, onion & garlic, celery & mushrooms have been prepped, there is a whole big bowlful of veg, so I always think it balances out the red meat element, as lots of tomatoes in there too.
Yes, I think we are right to be cynical about water charges. We are definitely intending to investigate further once the imminent bill arrives.
I think I got angrier about the knicker hangers still being festooned all over the shop because I originally wrote to complain about them when the corporate green plan ("Plan A....because there is no Plan B") had launched & I felt it was hypocritical still to be selling so much stock on single-use plastic hangers. At least coat hangers can be reused at home, whereas nobody is going to be displaying the contents of their knicker drawer on those silly wasteful hangers.
F x

foxgloves

Morning Campers!
Just a quick check-in today, as I have made myself a sort of schedule so as to get two garden sessions in. A dry day today. Windy but not that cold. As I've been wielding the garden fork & moving around, I have been ok out in just my dress & big cardi. Right, just a few things on the budget-helping front today:
*Made dough for a focaccia-type bread tonight to serve with dinner. Will top with rosemary & sliced onion when it has finished proving.
*Nothing else to do for tonight's nosebag as have defrosted the two leftover portions of smoky beans & sausages which I made last week.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.
*Checked for surveys but nothing doing.....just 6 points for being kicked out of a smoking products survey. I don't know why these organisations don't check our profile info as I have never been a smoker, so a waste of both my time & theirs. Another payment received from PA though which takes my March earnings so far to a nice round £26.
*Free bending & stretching session clearing the most overgrown bed in our garden. I am having to do it gradually but have made good inroads & made access for Mr F to get to the back for Big Bad Weed removal at the weekend. 3 very full trugs added to the council garden waste wheelie which means we will be getting our money's worth when they empty it tomorrow.
*This afternoon's garden session will be greenhouse based. I intend to start potting up some of my baby veggie seedlings. Will need to bring them back indoors, but it will feel like a start. Very much a necessary job as my little propagator is rammed. Am using little 'saucers' to stand the pots in which I made from cutting off the base of large yoghurt pots & they will each have a plastic bottle cloche or one of the transparent plastic beer glasses which I bought from a cheapo shop for much less than purpose-made cloches would cost at a garden centre.
Then it will be a lovely hot bubble bath & hair wash for your muddy frugal friend!
Off to find some lunch now, then I can crack on.
Love F x

EssexHebridean

A further thought on the water meter point - some water authorities allow you to switch back from a meter within two years of getting one installed if you have pro-actively asked for the meter in the first place - that could be worth looking in to as that would then be a "belt and braces" in case it did prove less cost effective than you had hoped?  

That's one of the plus points of the Gold Rush courgettes as I recall - that they do seem to be happy with earlier sowing. The three which have already sprouted with such enthusiasm are now in proper pots, and out of the propagator although still on the warm windowsill. Once they are a bit bigger they will get transferred to the mini-greenhouse with a keen eye being kept on overnight temperatures in case they need moving indoors again. We'll see - we might yet lose the lot!  Annoyingly none of the Hungarian Black chillies have appeared yet - we've not grown those before though so don't have any real idea how long they might take to germinate. 

foxgloves

@EssexHebridean - Thanks, yes, it appears that our water company does facilitate a swap back to the old system if having a water meter proves more costly. You see, I think of us as pretty high users because of our garden (which is quite large), veg growing & pond, but we have been pondering this & there are other factors which balance this out:
No children so only the two of us
Car usually goes to car wash 
We are quite hot on a more sustainable lifestyle so usually get 2 baths from 1 fill of water (we don't have a shower as made our bathroom damp).I never leave the tap running for teeth cleaning or soaping hands.
Trying to save on heating water obviously has an effect on amount of water used so we do quite well on this.
We have 2 water butts & Mr F is going to fit an extension butt to one of them.
During summer dry spells, I collect grey water in a watering can by the back door for watering plants. In a drought, I have even bailed out the bath to water the whole front courtyard. 
We don't have paddling pools, hot tubs or any of that kind of thing to fill.
I think we really are coming round to a year's trial of being on a meter.

Re chillies. I potted up most of our Rokita chillies yesterday but only one Hotscotch. The others were too small. Growth has stalled on those ones so I've popped them back in the propagator for a bit of heat. I haven't grown Hungarian black before though did try a black variety one year, which I think wss 'Pot black'. We need some decent sunshine now for our seeds & plant babies.
F x

marionmgcars

I’m busy this week doing “the big plastic count”.  I always recycle plastic and don’t buy any ready meals, but it’s surprising how it all adds up.  Most of mine comes from a TGTG box or Olio collections.  

foxgloves

@marionmgcars - It is certainly an interesting exercise. We are not the world's worst offenders by any means - we have been making a conscious effort to cut our plastic waste for a few years now, removing a few more items each year. The eco-refill shop helps with this, also swapping out throw-away products for more sustainable ones i.e hand soap, deodorant, toothbrushes, etc. Our efforts do seem to be reflected in our general waste wheelie bin (plastic recycling is v limited in our council collection), which is usually only about a quarter full, sometimes less.
One big source of plastic waste from us is cat food pouches. They went into the landfill wheelie until our local C**p started collecting them in their stretchy plastic recycling bin. Local Waitbl00m now also accepts them. I am going to try & find out what they do with them. After the recent plastic knicker hanger revelations, I am hoping that they do have an outlet for a genuine recycling of these pouches, as there is definitely a difference between 'collecting' & 'recycling'. A while back, a cat rescue charity operational in a neighbouring county collected pet food pouches at their charity shop & were able to sell them in bulk to raise funds. This stopped when the buyer no longer required them. Have thought about tins, which are better on the recycling front but can result in more food waste because there is now very little choice available in this format.
Anyway....I'm just finishing my coffee, then I will be updating the Plastic Count Week's tally sheet.
F x

Four_Seasons

Noticed Tesco have a coat hanger collection box at checkout with a notice that says they reuse them x

foxgloves

Good Morning Campers! (or it would be, were it not for my just noticing that it is already afternoon)
Today's money saving positives:
*Transferred next week's chosen meals onto my March diary planner & wrote grocery shopping list. Mr F is picking it up on his way home from work & has 2 vouchers for items on the list, inc £3 off cat food. Crossed off bread rolls as that was just pure laziness on my part so have got dough proving for a batch to go in the oven later.
*The pantry items I've been unable to get from the eco-refill shop arrived so have been unpacked & put into jars. Bought one item in bulk as it was a better price.
*Did March's mid-month budget check-in & was pleased to find that despite a lot of funds moving around this month for some quite large payments, I was only 88p out on my original budget. And that was 88p in our favour! I mustn't rush to spend it all at once!
*Did a few surveys on 3 sites inc a couple of decent payers from PA which will have boosted my March earnings to mid-£30s. 
*Checked all the seedlings I potted up yesterday afternoon & they all look ok atm. It can be such a shock to the system for these planty tinies, so it's a key time for at least a few to decide they are chucking in the towel of life. OK so far.
*Try to get to 2nd armhole shaping on my endless cardi-knitting. It's seems so long since I bought the yarn, it will feel like a free garment once I've finished it.
*Cheapo no-effort nosebag tonight as it's jacket potato night. I am having one of my regular favourites - tuna melt with tomatoes - & Mr F, having run through all the various possibilities (one of the 'rules' of jacket potato night when it goes on the meal plan is that the topping has to be something we already have in stock) decided that what he most fancied on his was baked beans & cheese.
This afternoon, I'd thought to have some leisure, but I could persuade myself to clean the bathroom so as to reduce tomorrow's regular Friday house cleaning. I could maybe also talk myself into doing an Annoying Job, I'll see.
Time to find some lunch & distribute cat biscuits.
F x