Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Suffolk_lass

I have been considering adding a flat water butt to the outside of the kitchen wall to take the grey sink waste. Now the new Solar system has been reinstalled the ideal wall for the bathroom waste has the battery and inverter mounted on it. I think the kitchen height might be an issue unless I have a solar pump, which is putting me off.

foxgloves

@Suffolk_lass - I think we will be much more low-tech than that with our bucket, but I do think there is useful, sufficiently 'clean' grey water to be collected from the kitchen. I handwashed a velvet dress this week & was able to water a large potted tree with the final rinsing water. I'm getting more used to it now. I am telling myself, 'You've already paid for this bowl of water so what secondary use can it have, rather than paying to run some more, when this water would do the job?'

When we have had hosepipe bans in the past, I have had a watering can by the kitchen door for collecting odds & ends of water to target driest looking plants. I think with the combination of climate change & p*ss-taking privatised water companies, the majority of us will end up on compulsory water metering in the next few years. And it IS compulsory...there's no swapping back to non-metered if it ends up costing more. I'm in agreement with it because we all need to be wiser around water use but I do need to keep reminding myself to re-use wherever possible.

F

joedenise

We had compulsory meters put in whilst we were on holiday a few years ago. The first we knew of it was when we returned home to find a card had been put through the door to tell us that we were now on a water meter! No mention of it before it happened! I really thought that was out of order.

I don't have a problem per se about having a water meter as it in fact saves us money but I don't think it was right doing it and then telling us it had been done.

foxgloves

That was a poor show from your water company, @joedenise. We received a letter giving us just under a month's notice, but until then, we didn't know compulsory metering was even 'a thing'. Reason given was that we are in a 'water-stressed area'.....this will have raised more than a few eyebrows as our locality floods badly on at least an annual basis & sometimes, when driving out of town on the bye-pass, it's just floodwater as far as the eye can see. If only these great excesses of water could somehow be channelled into reserve supplies for the summer months. Our letter explained that we 'may be surprised to hear we have a water meter'.....yes we were as their technicians had obviously fitted these surreptitiously at some point, with not needing access to our property. It also said that this meter shows them we were paying more via the old system than if we were metered so we were refunded £460. What we are currently paying monthly works out at £200 less per year than the old system but I don't think we are paying enough & when the next bill arrives & I have 3 to compare, I may increase it.

I do think it was very bad that you found out via a card through the door after the event though.

F

2Scratters

@foxgloves if you are already saving £200 pa then you implement being wise and using water more than once you will save more. Our meter gets read twice a year and we don't do it. Then is paid via DD, which I don't like yet it's a fiver off the bill. In the past year we have increased our usage as my eye is off the ball and some changes happening within the house did add to it a bit. Last 12 months bill was up to £275. DH has got a bit lazy with not using bucket for the loo. I am going to treat myself to a trugg bucket for having a shower collection. It also keeps me time and money smart if it gets too full meaning I've been in there too long. Not had a bath for years. The changes in the taps as and when they happen I want to make sure they have the spray heads in them as that slows down the water usage too.

2 Scratters xx

foxgloves

@2Scratters - We are getting into the required mindset now. We don't have a shower….well, we have over-bath shower taps for hair washing but we had all the other fitments removed as we both prefer baths. However we are good at all over strip washes too so it's not as though we are running baths every day & when we do, we get 2 baths out of 1 fill of hot water, as that was already built in as part of the energy-saving audit I did years ago. We have quite a big garden, which includes a greenhouse & veg plot plus a wildlife pond so I will be interested to see how the summer goes, especially if it is hot & droughty again.

foxgloves

Hello Diary Friends,

I haven't updated for a few days so thought I'd do a sort of cover-all post. I have spent a lot of time in the greenhouse trying to get things how I need them to be before our mini-break, so a lot of this post will be garden-based & you are, as usual, free to ignore it if it is not your thing. I thought it might be useful to do a sort of run-through of how the food growing is going atm:

*Lettuce - Over-wintered trough coming to an end. Have potted seedlings up into modules ready to be planted out when they are a little bigger.

*Rocket, 1st lot of spring onions & container carrots have germinated (outside).

*Mr F has planted the first earlies.

*Our end-of-Oct sown garlic & shallots look nice & sturdy - growing well.

*Rhubarb - Oh flippin' heck….huge already! Shall soon be making this year's batch of rhubarb & date chutney.

*Tomatoes. 4 varieties. Outdoor ones are now ready for bigger pots as won't go outside until the end of May. The greenhouse ones can go in their bottomless pots as soon as I can get all the big agapanthus pots outside to make space.

*Aubergines planted into their growbag but like the tomatoes, etc, still covered at night, as even the greenhouse isn't reliably 10 degrees min at nights yet.

*Broccoli - Nice plants moved to the coldframe to harden up - need to go out as soon as Mr F has cleared the bed.

*Cavolo nero - Big seedlings - ready to pot up., hopefully tomorrow.

*Peppers - RUBBISH!!

*Chillies - In their final greenhouse pots.

*Squashes (courgettes, tromboncino, Guatemalan blue) sowed today as I always do this on my Dad's birthday. I also go out for a warm cheese scone & raise a cappuccino to him as that's what he & Mum loved to do on a daily basis at their favourite local cafe.

*French beans - too early atm, will sow around my birthday to time them with being a decent size by the time it is warm enough to plant them out (end of May ro 1st week of June).

On top of this, I have also been progressing with flower seedlings - the October sweetpeas (as of yesterday) are planted out around their obelisk thingies, cosmos potted up, LOADS more to do….lupins, more cosmos & verbascum next going on size & readiness. All are free, donated or saved seeds this year. My garden kneeler stool needs repairing so to keep my balance on it yesterday while planting out sweetpeas & digging out bindweed, I was adopting all sorts of strange pilates-type positions & oh my life, don't my muscles know about it this morning?!

Other stuff:

*Ash had to go to the vet again on Friday. He was limping quite badly on one of his front legs & was really miserable, poor little sausage. The vet gave him a really good examination & couldn't find anything untoward so we think he must have pulled a muscle (maybe jumping down from a tree or something like that, or even fighting with another cat) Not sure when it happened because he was still on painkillers for his tooth extraction & so they were masking the sore leg. However, he didn't eat one of his daily doses & that's when we spotted how badly he was limping. Painkillers run out tomorrow, I think, so we are monitoring it. He is eating well & purring so that's hopefully a good sign. £37-50 from the Meow Fund, but worth it to help with the worry.

*Remember I submitted a complaint about leaky cat food pouches? It was dealt with very swiftly & I was refunded £6.00 to 'cover the food that we lost'. As the pouches worked out at about 42p each & there were 3 inedible ones, we consider ourselves up on the deal.

*Have done my Mid-Month Budget Check-In today. I had £54-71 more than expected & despite going through everything twice, including my original budget, I can only account for £2-26 of it. I am leaving it in situe & will have a brief check-in next week, just in case anything decides to rear its head.

*Not a No-Spend day today as have ordered a bra - I unpacked my Spring/Summer clothes at the weekend & went through everything. I thought I'd be short of footless tights as I like these with dresses & chunky sandals in the summer, but I found some new unworn pairs. Donated a sexy bra to the charity shop bag as I doubt very much the rogue Foxgloves boobs are going to behave in THAT again! Then decided another bra was frankly only fit for the bin - hence ordering a nice new one. Clothes Pot is in good shape (unlike the bra-buyer) so no problems there.

*Selected next week's meals from our April master meal plan, prioritising stuff we already have in. Wrote grocery shopping list plus useful town list as I am going in first thing to have my hair cut. have put building society books in my handbag to remind me to call in to have the interest added for savings motivation.

And I think that's it for my catch-up. Mr F & I did manage to pop out for breakfast together at the village farm shop cafe (Personal Spends, so budget-neutral, I hasten to add) but he is on one of his occasional very late shifts today & won't be home until about 11pm. So it will just be me & the cats & I shall be Queen of the Remote Control so will settle down with a nice cosy hot water bottle up behind my back & watch TV & read. I might try to get a few more clues solved on this hideous crossword we started, I'll see. Our house hasn't got above 16 degrees today, from 15.5 when we first got up. I can light the living room stove if I am really cold but looking ahead to Autumn/Winter bills if this hideously misjudged situation in the Middle East isn't sorted out, we are minded to get as much credit stashed on our energy account as possible.

OK, off to the greenhouse to bubblewrap the vegelets, have had to de-ice the car 2 days this week.

Love F x

Makingabobor2

Is it ok to have tomatoes in an unheated greenhouse yet? Mine are still indoors, as I couldn't decide if its still too cold.

PennysIntoPounds

What a list of achievements!

Poor Ash, glad he's feeling better. Money well spent and thankfully not too costly

Great result on the cat food refund

Do let us know if the bra is satisfactory, I really need to buy new ones but it is one of my least favourite jobs in the whole world ever

rtandon27

Annual armour shopping is the bane of my existance - so far 5 ordered and 4 returned - the one that fits well is very utilitarian and is very much not of the feel good pretty variety! It does however hold everything in place and works under t-shirts so my hunt for pretty and practical continues!