Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

PennysIntoPounds

When we've done car boot sales the random wires and cables have been a big success, quid each for a thingamijig and men of a 'random wires and cables' disposition flock to them, including, and I quote:
Man: does this work?
Me: can't guarantee it
Man: what's it for?
Me: haven't a scooby luv
Man: I'll take it 

ladyholly

I wouldnt mind betting we (Mr LH) can beat you all on the number of random cables in the house. We have have had boxes of them given to us and never sorted. There is a whole towel rail of them in his work room, a huge number in a cupboad and a load more just sitting in various places around the house. I am trying to encourage him to get rid but not having much luck so far. I darent chuck them because I can guarantee the one I chucked would be the one that is vital for some reason.

I do agree that car  boot are a good way of getting rid of them as we have done in the past but we dont do them any more for various reasons/

slm6002

My son of 17 is quite techy and already has a box full.  Whenever we need a cable at home or at work, he generally has something that will work in his box

badmemory

I think its a man thing.  My DS in his 40s & a couple of weeks ago managed to find a charger for a friend of mine whose phone was going flat.  Take it he said I've got another one.  I asked him later about it & he said he had nothing that it fitted anyway but wouldn't dispose of it.

rtandon27

...is it now when I admit to having a box of assorted cables?...

...also a container of elastics from fruit and veg, another of large ones from the post, another of bread tags, another of twist ties...

...you get my drift...

🤣🤣🤣

Suffolk_lass

Err, I bought a box of labels - brown card with strings and they get tied to cables now so the mystery thing is only if they get pulled off. The pre-label mystery ones are still there, but all coiled and cable tied and just occasionally, a kettle cable gets deployed. Less so the chargers.

badmemory

I need to make my house full of boxes that have bits of appliances inside.  You know the kind of things other than charges which seem in their hundreds.  The leads that have "funny" ends etc.  It is great having a spare, but not a lot of use having a spare that neither end fits anything.  I am TRYING to declutter honest!  Yesterdays find - at least 20 bulldog clips from 6 inches to 1 inch.

Moorviews

I think there are certain men who love nothing more than being able to produce just the right cable/tech bit from their stash. Just the occasional success justifies keeping them! I can understand as I am a bit like that for things like buttons, zips and threads. It’s tricky, in a world where so much is disposable and moves on fast; to hold onto that possibility of being able to repair items can be a natural impulse for the thrifty and environmentally conscious. It’s a fine line between that and hoarding though. The difference can be as you were doing, going through and evaluating whether the cafetière spares actually had any potential use. This is a process we are going through alongside our decluttering mission. I do try to be mindful about this as I don’t want to just dump things in landfill. 

For me it is all part of the reduce, reuse and recycle process. My first aim is to bring less of everything in so if we can repair then we will. We could have bought a new (cheaper) washing machine for the cost of a recent repair but decided it was too new to take that disposal route. My very efficient vacuum cleaner is 12 years old and with access to the filters and spare parts I hope it will go on for another 10 years. I don’t care whether it looks modern or not as it lives in a cupboard. My food mixer is 30 years old and lives on the counter. When we buy new we try to go for brands that do spares. 

Unfortunately, I did use disposable nappies for my DC, although luckily they were easy to toilet train so out of them at two and a bit. I just didn’t get on with terries and the modern reusable ones weren’t easily available. Even then I could never have filled the general waste bin. I really don’t understand how people ever manage to do that every week. We now usually have just the one lightly filled kitchen bin bag a fortnight in our general waste bin and our council recycling options are very good. We do have a small compost caddy of food waste each week but I am planning on buying a worm bin this year to deal with those. There are a lot of things that annoy me regarding how food is packaged though and I would love to see manufacturers make improvements here. 

foxgloves

Hi Diary Readers,
Thanks for all your comments, which I've enjoyed reading. I do try not to take a gendered approach to behaviours, but may have to make an exception for the hoarding of cables & unidentified bits of techy gizmo. 
@Moorviews - I think you make a good point about where one draws the line between keeping the necessary materials to effect a repair & hoarding. Yes, probably our cafetiere was a good example of that. If I'd asked Mr F if he definitely required all those spare parts, he'd almost certainly have said 'yes', but given the task of actually checking, he soon concluded none of them would fit our cafetiere even if it did need repairing so that tips over from 'useful repair resources' to 'useless clutter'. Turning out that cupboard also revealed 9 coffee scoops. He'd have said they were too useful to get rid of, but once everything was lined up on the worktop, he could see that 1 for the coffee tin, 1 for the decaff, 1 spare plus a rather stylish one still in its wrapper is plenty, allowing the other 5 to be added to a bag of kitchen stuff for the charity bag. We like to repair things if we can, & I too have a good stash of threads, pins, fastenings, odds & ends of fabric, glues, etc, for make do & mend. Buying cheap can often be unsustainable as well as false economy....i.e the ice-lolly moulds (a long ago moan) which I bought from a £ shop....& turned out to be a useless heap of plastic which will be in landfill forever. What it felt like = Great bargain. What it turned out to be = Complete Sh 1 te!! I barely go in £ shops these days or bargain warehousey types of establishment as just so full of plastic tat from the other side of the planet - cheap yes, but not longlasting & just more bloody plastic! I think the most moneysaving option is a paying a fair price for items which will last.
Anyway, I'd better get onto today's budget-helping activity. Not a lot to be honest but not spendy either.
*A no-spend day. Well, we did have a newspaper but we have a weekend subscription to that, so it's covered via monthly bills.
*Had a lovely couple of hours playing in my seedbox. Everything I intend growing this year now sorted into recycled envelopes labelled with their sowing month. Also made an envelope for 'repeat sowing' & one for direct sprinklers. February's envelope is chunkier than expected, so I shall enjoy cracking on with those next week, but March is always the busiest month for sowing, then all the courgettes, squashes, beans in April.
*Mr F roasting a chicken so I am already eyeing that for further meals, stock & a sandwich.
Right, I've chatted for long enough. Am heading off for a bubble bath & sorting out the witchy tresses.
Have a lovely evening all,
F x

Makingabobor2

Totally agree about £shops and the like. Everything is plastic tatt. My DMIL is always telling me what bargains can be found in there and she fills her garden with plastic garden ornaments that fall to bits before the end of the first summer, or stupid little nodding solar ornaments that sit on her window sill, or even worse, the stupid little plastic storage things for the kitchen that again fall to bits before the end of a year!   Maybe they are of a generation that can't understand how to save the planet. I suppose plastic was a novelty when they were young.  There was a time she was gifting us stuff from there for Christmas etc, ornaments, cheap rubbish bed socks...lol,  until I told her exactly how I felt about things like that and now we just get money, which is much more acceptable, and also saves her having to think about things and waste wrapping paper as well.