And now we go again...

EssexHebridean

Interesting water chat all round! Funnily enough in spite of the hardness of our water I have no objections to drinking it - although at home I mostly drink from the water dispenser on the fridge (yeah, get us, right!) which nominally comes through a filter although in fairness that has the “change me” light flashing on it - no idea whether our predecessors ever did or if it’s the one that’s always been fitted! Water for the kettle always comes from the filter jug though and that does keep the inside relatively scale free. Good tip about avoiding Dun31m brand though Milann - thank you. I’m guessing my lack of problems with the taste of the tap water is to do with having grown up in London though - as a child you just drank it if you were thirsty as that’s all there was on offer! 😂 LaPlan - we have a Br1ta branded filter but last time I came to buy cartridges for it the cheapest way of doing it was to buy a jug and years supply of the filters - so we are well stocked up AND already have the next jug when the current one gets manky! 

Pippi thanks for the info on the panels - Your roof is a bit bigger than ours I think but I’m hoping we will have space for more than the 6 (😳🙄) panels on 🐙’s quote anyway - we’re south facing on the front aspect too which is handy. I think I need to track down another decent company to get a quote from, but also probably to book for a survey from 🐙- apparently if we decide not to go ahead the £500 booking fee is fully refundable. The quote we have would currently have a £1000 discount applied to it, but I’d defo want to get at least a second quote too, for comparison.

So I spotted on MrEH’s rugby chat group (I’m on there because of having been their photographer for a while - nobody has ever remembered to remove me) that someone had mentioned that another local-ish side were looking for players for their away match down in East London today - he made contact with someone and that was him sorted for a game - he disappeared off at about 11.30 looking very pleased with himself, and apparently played the full game for them too, so he’s a happy bunny this evening. Once he’d gone I went out for the run I had promised myself - and did my first 5k for a fair while - very much run/walk but that’s fine, and averaged a faster pace than the last time I was out on Boxing Day in spite of my breathing feeling rubbish from the cold which I still haven’t quite shaken off. I think my plan for running right now is to simply do one run a week. If I want to do more then great, and if I don’t even manage the one any week, that is fine too, but generally just one a week feels like I should be able to manage that without setting myself wildly optimistic goals which I then just get overwhelmed by.

Other than that it’s been a delightfully lazy day. 

MSE Stuff:
- No Spend Day - I went into one shop but that was to get MrEH’s paper for him and was using his subscription voucher anyway. That was on the way back from my run and I haven’t been anywhere else all day! 

- tasty but frugal lunch - that portion of curried parsnip soup with a couple of slices of YS’d bread from the freezer, toasted.
- because MrEH was out his portion of soup has been labelled and frozen
- banks checked - all good
- heating turned off this evening as the fire is lit - the front room is toasty and the heat is gently distributing through the rest of the house.
- tomorrow’s lunch is loaded into the multi-cooker on the slow cooker setting, with a delay start set meaning it should switch itself on just after 8am tomorrow, all being well. A small amount of stewing mutton on the bone from the freezer, with some 15p swede, parsnip, carrot and tatties, plus a few handfuls of pearl barley and some herbs. Oh and a vegetable stockpot - which reminds me, I will need more of those at some stage. Very economical though! Even the herbs were from the packet we got with the Christmas Turkey - a nice thick sprig of rosemary and the parsley stalks. 

- discussion about the need for an additional savings pot for garden requirements - which will probably in the first instance be manually funded at £40 a month, I will open that shortly, but will check where is offering the best rate for a standard savings account at the moment. 

In less MSE news our washing machine is sounding increasingly sick - it’s making a fairly awful noise on the spin, so we’ll need to factor in a probable replacement for that in the not too distant future I suspect. We’ve agreed we will go for another washer dryer though - we only very rarely use it for drying so it makes more sense to get another combined machine than a separate TD. 

Plans for tomorrow:
- intending to get Mum’s shelf sorted
- need to get to T’s for the remaining shopping
- also want to go to the big orange DIY place as they have a 4 for 3 offer on storage - we want a couple of plastic boxes for Christmas decorations, and also want to look at various storage options for the loft too - there appear to be a few options so we may be able to get that sorted.
- I’d like to weed the slate on the front garden, and also potentially clear the slate from the bit we plan to turn into a flower bed onto the other section which in turn may help the weeks not reappear quite as fast! 

- ideally squeeze a walk in somewhere as well - we’ll see if there’s time! 

lucielle

You’re as busy as ever!  I think the first thing on my list is to get out of bed. 

L

redofromstart

We went for storage boxes at the big orange place earlier in the week, plenty of choice. Liked the ones we got so much that we went back the next day for another four as the voucher issued after day 1 made it even better value. They then emailed two more vouchers which will be useful shortly

pippilongstocking123

Hiya  love sorry slow reply - we phoned these guys and set up an appointment although it was a while back..


www.mygov.scot/energy-saving-grants

How to apply

You apply through Home Energy Scotland. They’re funded by the Scottish Government.

You can either:

• phone: 0808 808 2282 - Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm. Saturday 9am to 5pm

pippilongstocking123

Lady with a plan thank you well reminded I have one at work which I must reclaim.......

foxgloves

You do well with your monthly grocery spend, @EssexHebridean. We budget quite lot more - £350, which covers our food, household stuff, basic shared toiletries & foodstuffs for the cats. This month, we had good stores & encouraging amounts of leftovers, so I have budgeted £50 less, which will be fine, as I do monitor grocery spending as the month progresses. We don't feel we really need to pull in our horns on grocery shopping at the moment, but if we did need to free up extra money, I know we would have a decent amount of leeway for cutting back & I might even decide to add a couple of additional months of reduced target spend this year. Mind you, as soon as I'd allocated £50 less this month, I made sure to ping it over to the savings pots pretty damn quick before I thought up some other not-so-helpful use for it!
F

EssexHebridean

Afternoon lovelies - is it as chilly in your respective areas as it is here today? The car thermometer said 4°C earlier but I confess it felt like it was lying! 

We seem to have achieved moderately well today - although never did get out for our intended walk, although partly because of the 🥶 factor it must be said. We did sort Mum’s shelf out though which she is delighted with, I’ve already seen a photo of it all loaded up with stuff and it looks great! 

The planned very low spend T’s shop ended up at £25.17 - yes, I KNOW, but bear with me, hopefully you will agree that actually, it wasn’t too bad…
Firstly I realised that if I just bought loo rolls in there this week, plus a packet of tissues to bump up the spend a little, I could use the “£1.75 off a £9 spend” on this category and have done with it. Then we spotted the post-Christmas reduced bits - the big tubs of J@cobs crackers for £3 for a start…so a quick bit of maths was done and we agreed that was extremely good value for 900g of crackers plus a handy reuseable tub. 2 of those then. Also jars of spiced rum “F1nest” mincemeat - technically they will be out of date by next Christmas but in reality it’s in a jar, it will be fine - £1.07 a jar is an absolute win so I nabbed two of those as well. The tomatoes, bananas, yogurt, a bottle of squash and vegetable Stockpots were on the list anyway. MrEH checked out the YS’d chilled and found a couple of well priced packs of pate so those got added - that will add some nice variation to weekday lunch rolls! We did a quick tot up of the spending, and realised that it would now be fairly easy to push the spend up to the £30 threshold for the £4 off spend coupon I’d been sent, and sneakily pushed ourselves over that value by adding 3 bags of frozen veg - using another coupon, this time 75p off a £3 spend there.  All in all, I’m fairly pleased with that - although it was more than I’d planned (and the checkout team had a devil of a job making all the coupons work together - they got there in the end though) we definitely got value, and this now means I can do my main shop in Lil’s next week too which should save a few pennies. 

Grocery spend this week = £38.19 total - but including a pack of loo rolls and some other storecupboard items. 

Other spendiness:
 - MrEH’s car got fed - £43 
- The visit to the big Orange DIY place was successful - 2 shelving units for the loft, a pack of 3 of the plastic storage boxes we like (bought individually these would have been substantially more, and the multipack was included in the 4 for the price of 3 offer too) plus a “Bauble Box” which is something I never knew I needed but my goodness it makes packing up Christmas decorations a game changer!  All of those were in the storage offer. Also a large flexible trug ready for MrEH to soak the paper and card to make bricks for burning (yes, he got bought his press for Christmas!), a string of Christmas lights for £2 and an over-door wreath hanger, also £2. Total spend was a shade over £75 but needed, planned and budgeted. 

This afternoon we have:
- weeded the front garden
- sorted out various bits to go into the loft (and built the shelving units!) - which has included getting shot of two more moving boxes - the one with all the Christmas decs in it (now neatly packed away into 3 plastic boxes which will all be easily manageable in and out of the loft) and one of beer festival stuff - now on one of the shelving units
- really made an impact on tidying the spare room. Unsurprisingly it has been used as a bit of a dumping ground since the move and we were keen to start turning it into an actual spare bedroom!
- tidied one of the cupboards in the dressing room, we now have more space for jigsaws which is always handy! 

- made a decision to bin a set of curtains which are too short for the windows here, and which sadly having been hung for a lot of years in the very damp spare room at the flat, are not fit for giving to the charity shop. They’ve done well - the people who sold Mum and Dad their house back in 1998 left them behind. Mum and Dad redecorated the room they were in a few years later and as we had just moved into the flat they passed the then unused curtains our way…I shortened them them and they did nearly 20 years for us too! 

Now we are in front of the fire and set for a nice relaxing evening - and cheese…got to eat some of that accumulation of crackers, no?! 😂

PennysIntoPounds

Yes to brrrr

Well done on making spare room and shelving progress, and the bargainous shopping expeditions, definitely need to make sure those crackers don't go to waste

Lovely you could get your mum's shelf sorted

Did I mention brrrr

beanielou

Very cold here today too. 

Not even worth putting the towels out on the line 🥶

Sun_Addict

Very cold here too but on the plus side I noticed it’s started staying light until later.