Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

ziggy2407

foxgloves said:

Hi Ziggy, I don't own Nancy B's books but I did read the cleaning one a while back when I borrowed it from the library. I think I will get on well with 'green bleach' as long as I buy myself some rubber gloves, then I shall test its efficacy on various different things. Like most people (except Nancy!), I'm not a great lover of cleaning, but I'm thinking of having a big declutter & deep clean in September to get the house looking nice for Autumn (my favourite month). The weather's usually still good enough for line-drying any big household stuff that hasn't been done over the summer too, so I think I'll pick a week (or morw likely a fortnight) & go for it.
Anyway, enjoy your Sunday,
F x

Me neither regarding the cleaning.  I love September for a fresh start and often make more of an effort with cleaning and decluttering then - think its a throw back to school and starting a new school year.

Makingabobor2

Another vote for green bleach & Nancy B. Its not cheap at the refill shop, but does seem to be lasting a while. Love my refill shop, visited on Thursday & got shower gel, cleaning spray, himalayan salt, tomato ketchup and her latest addition....nests of noodles! Feel good reusing bottles & jars. 

foxgloves

@ziggy2407 - Yes, that's exactly how I see September too! I love Autumn - absolutely my favourite month & always has been since I was a child. You're right about it being about new starts. It was always new school term, then of course uni courses & 3 new jobs all started around then too. Mr F & I got together in the Autumn, got betrothed a year later & married a year after that, & we bought our house in Autumn too, so I expect that is why I do see it as a good time for new beginnings. One of them this year will HAVE to be deep-cleaning this dusty house & another will need to be me getting a bit fitter. I am going to remind Mr F to give my bike a service & see if I can rebuild my confidence on it.
Take care now,
F x

foxgloves

@Makingabobor2 - Yes, I enjoy visiting our local eco-refill shop too. We refilled our big washing-up liquid bottles, liquid hand soap, loo cleaner & I tried a small amount of the green bleach as previously mentioned. Also bought some couscous (will take my actual couscous jar next time & get it fully filled), mixed nuts for making more pesto & some figs, which I love & can eat like flipping sweets if I don't keep a brake on it!
F x

foxgloves

Hello Sunbeams,
What a hot muggy day! Thankfully, however, the headache with which I woke up yesterday & still had at 4.30am, had disappeared by the time I got up so I've been much more productive. Here are today's money saving bits & bobs:
*Watered all the veg.
*Assessed the shallots Mr F lifted 3 weeks or so ago & decided they are now sufficiently dry so added them to our veg basket.
*Garden pickings: 1st small handful of french beans. Flowering pretty well, so hopefully they are going to be productive. Normally more advanced with cropping but I sowed them late this year.
*Divvied up roast pork from yesterday's roast. Enough for hot pork cobs with apple sauce & garlicky wokked hispi cabbage & courgettes tonight, a stir-fry tomorrow & have frozen the rest ready for the next Epic Man Stew,
*Did 3 loads of laundry to make use of such fabulous free line-drying weather. Changed bed linen & also washed a couple of items of guest linen as I thought they looked a bit dusty for our weekend guests.
*Put a colour on my yukky roots. It's ages since I had my colour done at a salon, but I do remember how expensive it used to be compared with doing it at home from a box kit. Am booked in for a cut on Friday so shall feel I've had the works.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.
*Did my usual Monday morning budget updates. Week 1's grocery shopping was a lot higher than I'd like, as we made use of those butcher deals as well as filling up our bottles & tubs for the month from the Eco-Refill shop, but we do have a LOT of food in & the garden is entering its most productive weeks, so we should be fine with some creative meal planning. 
*Did a few surveys. Struck lucky with £14-50's worth on PA, which if paid in time for July 31st cash-out, will help my total no end. 
Well, I had better go & fetch the laundry in. I do like to be able to peg out bed linen. The sun is a very good natural whitener. Poor Soot is so hot, he hasn't even asked for his afternoon treats. Haven't seen Ash since this morning. He ate his breakfast then took exception to me waving sheets around & took himself off. He'll probably turn up to meet Mr F later. 
Hope everyone's got off to a decent start to the new week. I need to write myself some lists tomorrow, just to make sure I have thought of everything I need to do to get ready for our guests coming & I shall also need to do triage of the tomatoes as I have a lot in the fridge & can see there will be more for picking tomorrow.
Right, onwards,
F x

Makingabobor2

foxgloves said:

@Makingabobor2 - Yes, I enjoy visiting our local eco-refill shop too. We refilled our big washing-up liquid bottles, liquid hand soap, loo cleaner & I tried a small amount of the green bleach as previously mentioned. Also bought some couscous (will take my actual couscous jar next time & get it fully filled), mixed nuts for making more pesto & some figs, which I love & can eat like flipping sweets if I don't keep a brake on it!
F x

I go through phases with figs, eat loads and then get sick of them for ages...lol.  I do buy walnuts and almonds from refill shop to snack on though.  She also does lovely chocolate covered brazils...bit of a treat some times, as you don't get many for 100grms...lol

Makingabobor2

Sounds like you may have had the same 2 studies as me on P/fc totalling £14.50. Although I luckily just had another one as well

foxgloves

Hello Sunbeams,
Too hot a day for me, but have still managed to be quite productive. Got the ironing out of the way first thing in front of an open window with the fan trained on me, so that felt like a decent start (better then Mr F's day, anyway, which began with dealing with a huge furball helpfully coughed up on the conservatory floor) & the rest of my day has involved rather a lot of tomatoes.
Today's budget helping stuff:
- Watered the veg garden.
- Labelled a freezer container for blackberries as I can see we are going to start picking some soon. 
- Baked a sourdough.
- Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.
- Today's garden pickings: Basil, 5 courgettes & 1.8kg tomatoes.
- Tomato processing! Added what I picked this morning to the ones already in the fridge from previous pick. Prepped the 600g required for tomorrow's planned meal, which is smoky chipotle black bean chilli. Skinned, de-seeded & chopped 3kg & made our usual pasta sauce from the Carluccio 'Vegetables' book. Blitzed, portioned, labelled & cooling ready for freezing. To put this in context from a meal planning/budgeting perspective, those tomatoes will go into a total of 18 meals - 8 portions of pasta sauce, 6 small portions of the same sauce frozen in little tubs for using on home made pizza bases & 4 portions of the black bean chilli. The basil has grown back significantly since my last pesto-making session, so I shall have to get on top of that tomorrow too.
Told you it had been a bit of a tomatoey old day. Mr F working a bit later tonight, so I am going to have a couple of hours on the shady courtyard coffee bench with my book.
Love F x

PennysIntoPounds

That is a productive and tomatoey day!
Hope the cats are coping okay in this heat

Sun_Addict

My tomatoes still haven’t turned red although I was late planting this year. 

I meant to respond to the Aldi lack of stock comment a few days ago then forgot - I also noticed our local Aldi was poorly stocked, lots of things missing. I’m finding Lidl far better at the moment stock wise, shelves always pretty full. I always thought they shared suppliers with their products being so similar but maybe not 🤔