Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

badmemory

Will none of the neighbours help with the garden waste thing or do you have to pay extra.  We don't & both my neighbours have helped out in exchange.  They seem to understand here that if you charge then people will just put everyting in the general waste bin.  They also send out a leaflet each year with the bin dates & explaining how much cheaper the other bins are than the general waste.

foxgloves

@badmemory - Most of the people on our street with whom we are on speaking terms do subscribe to the brown garden wheelie service & it did briefly occur to me to ask one of them if they possibly had any room in their bin. I declined though partly as most of them are gardeners with a similar-sized garden to us, but also because I didn't feel I'd ever be in a position to repay the favour, seeing as we pretty much make use of the collection service every time with a full bin. Those residents who don't wish to pay for a garden waste collection can just put their green waste in their normal bin & those who have a subscription service such as us can also do this when our garden bin is full. I am more comfortable with doing this than Mr F (probably because I used to be a Councillor & have read the fine print of the rules & he hasn't). I do prefer for anything recyclable to be used where it can though, including the garden waste I don't want to home-compost. It's also possible to pay for an additional bin but I don't want to do that, not just the money aspect, but because we already have 4 wheelie bins on our front courtyard & I don't want another one! The glass collection one is smaller, but it's still a wheelie bin & takes up a space.
The garden waste lorry is in our village tomorrow morning so I shall have a nice clear bin for the weekend & from next month, we will be back to fortnightly collections, so a big yay to that from local gardeners!
F

foxgloves

Hello Wednesday Pence-Wranglers,
Another very grey, dark old day, but no rain, so the cats have been outside more.....probably partly because there is a new cat in the locality - a large black & white. We call him 'Nubes' because he's a newbie. I'm afraid that Soot & Ash are taking a particularly dim view of him making free with their catnip. At the moment, things are just at the 'deeply suspicious' stage, regular reconnoitre to see where he's been going, a lot of sniffing around their cat flap this morning, which makes me think Nubes has been up closer on a spying mission of his own.......NOT that you need to know about cat machinations at Foxgloves Manor, of course, so I shall get on with today's budget-friendly stuff:
*Laundry finally dry so sorted & ironed only what needed it. Thankfully the pile of Mr F's t-shirts turned out to be old tatty ones he uses for gardening, painting, etc, so no need to show them the iron & not a lot of electricity used on this chore.
*Wrote next week's meal plans based on roasting a chicken on Sunday, knock-on meals using the rest of the roast meat & filling in the remaining days with stuff from the freezer.
*Wrote grocery shopping list. 
*This morning's home care hour was emptying the cat cupboard, washing it out & decluttering their stuff before putting it back. Got rid of out of date medical stuff, a toy they have no interest in (it's one of those plastic mice which rocks like one of those old Weeble toys, which you fill with cat biscuits & they are supposed to have fun figuring out how to get them out i.e it's supposed to be a challenge. Well not in this house! Soot can empty the blimming thing in about 3 minutes, has no interest in the 'toy' element whatsoever & I'm sick of treading on it. Decluttering is so satisfying, is it not? Took the opportunity to do a quick audit of their supplies - quite a lot of pouches so will only need a 12-box this week, 2 unopened bags of biscuits as Mr F got a good '2 for' deal & plenty of treats. A packet of something stuck at the back of the cupboard turned out to be a couple of lamb sticks so they will enjoy those, I'm sure.
* Designed a Valentine's card for the Beloved. Nothing very arty as I can't draw, but I am crafty & having printed off a free printable I found online of a black cat in a box, I used various bits of nice paper & card from my stash to make a card I think he will really like. I've managed to get the heart-shaped balloons on it 3-D so shall have to take care not to squash it too much in the recycled envelope I shall be repurposing. What an MSE day it will be, as I am doing a home made gift too. 
*Nothing doing with surveys today - 3 points for being evicted due to being the wrong demographic has been my lot today. I must endeavour not to spend it all at once!
*Fed sourdough jar.
*Very low effort nosebag tonight. Have defrosted a couple of portions of the turkey chilli from my post-Christmas batch-cook, so shall only need to cook some rice.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast - I got a freezer mug out to defrost for lunch - contents as yet unidentified but it looks like Man-stew to me. Mr F doesn't label things he freezes for work lunches. I am not sure if he just cba or he enjoys the surprise element!
*Oh, & our first teensy tiny chilli seedling is through! Intended to sort all my seeds into their sowing months this afternoon but it turned into a bit of a Blue Peter session making that card instead. Never mind, there's always tomorrow. That's the thing with jobs, they're not going anywhere. 
It's so dull & grey, I'm going to go round closing all the curtains now, then I shall have a bit of time with my book. I'm so enjoying it, I am going to have to be patient & wait for the last one in the trilogy as I don't think it is published until midsummer. 
Keep the frugal faith, m'dears. It can't jump out of your purse on its own.
F x

themadvix

foxgloves said:

Hello Wednesday Pence-Wranglers,
Another very grey, dark old day, but no rain, so the cats have been outside more.....probably partly because there is a new cat in the locality - a large black & white. We call him 'Nubes' because he's a newbie. I'm afraid that Soot & Ash are taking a particularly dim view of him making free with their catnip. At the moment, things are just at the 'deeply suspicious' stage, regular reconnoitre to see where he's been going, a lot of sniffing around their cat flap this morning, which makes me think Nubes has been up closer on a spying mission of his own.......NOT that you need to know about cat machinations at Foxgloves Manor, of course, so I shall get on with today's budget-friendly stuff:

We absolutely do need to know about the cats' antics! 😻

Re the 'weeble mouse' thing. We have one of those and also not worth the effort here - far too easy. However, we have a maze (charity shop purchase) for Ginger cat's kibble and B&W cat (how I wish I'd thought of giving them proper stage names!) has a kong cone-shaped thing with a tail (gifted) that he knocks about to get his kibble out of - at least it slows them down a bit and keeps them entertained. And avoids the awful noise of Ginger cat's teeth smashing against the china bowl as he inhales his food!

DawnW

I have teeny chilli seedlings too @foxgloves

Makes me think that spring is on the way despite the dreary, cold weather!

Makingabobor2

Like the idea of the home made card. We have just kept a few of the old ones from our past, and pick one to recycle every year, just adding the date before a new message.  Its lovely to see how long ago they were first used.  Although TBH, we do sometimes forget about Valentines day. I always say we don't need a special day, but I will try and remember this year, as if it wasn't for DH and his small pension pot, we wouldn't have cleared the mortgage so early. I may even think of a small homemade/recycled/environmentally friendly present for him

badmemory

We are lucky here as we don't have to pay any extra for any of our 4 bins.  I was at a party years ago when they first set up the current system.  You should have heard them "I'm not separating my rubbish into different bins".  They hadn't been bothered to read the info that came at the same time explaining the difference in costs.  It was obvious that doing the right thing by recycling would not make any impression.  I just commented that I was glad I didn't live in their council tax area as they were going to have to pay more for their rubbish disposal than I was.  Sometimes people make me wonder.

Makingabobor2

badmemory said:

We are lucky here as we don't have to pay any extra for any of our 4 bins.  I was at a party years ago when they first set up the current system.  You should have heard them "I'm not separating my rubbish into different bins".  They hadn't been bothered to read the info that came at the same time explaining the difference in costs.  It was obvious that doing the right thing by recycling would not make any impression.  I just commented that I was glad I didn't live in their council tax area as they were going to have to pay more for their rubbish disposal than I was.  Sometimes people make me wonder.

I agree. Some people make me cross with their unwillingness to recycle, it is just pure selfishness.  Sometimes I want to dive into people bins and sort it out.  the other day we were walking back home and someone up the road had the recycling bin out the front, with a large vacuum cleaner box sticking out the top so the lid wouldn't close. Was it so difficult to break it down and squash it in. The rule here is that if the lid isn't closed, they won't empty it!  So why don't people read the rules.  The other thing that makes me cross is when the black general waste bin is overflowing and you can quite clearly see that lots of it should have gone in the recycling bin anyway!  It really winds me up

Baileys_Babe

In this area, you need to pay for garden waste collection and it is not supposed to go in any of the other bins. No doorstep glass collection that ceased circa 15 years ago.

We make a big effort to recycle as much as possible. Taking batteries and soft plastics to the supermarket. Dropping off foil and tetra packs with family when we visit, only a couple of miles away - their authority collects these. Take the glass to the bottle bank. 

We are fortunate enough to have space to store things until we can take them for recycling.

We put very little in our general waste bin. I get very frustrated at our local authority for making it hard for people to recycle things easily.

ladyholly

We have collection for paper, card, batteries, glass, tins, textiles, shoes & small electricals. The last three are only if they have roo. Garden waste is £65 for the next 12 months.  From the website they are changing  things after May so I dont know what is happeneing after that. I know there was talk of general waste going to every 3 weeks but not sure what else.