Make Do, Mend & Minimise in 2025 (and 2024)

suzeesu2000

Make do - eaten from freezer…..still not seeing any spaces though. Wonder if someone is shoving stuff in from the back😁
                  DH has put raised beds together for yard. Will be outside most of today then!

Mend - made a pillow sham to match newly recovered comforter, one to go.

Minimise - used some of fabric stash on Pillow sham. 

YorksLass

Have just been finalising my grocery budget for January and am really pleased to find I have almost £50 left in the kitty.      I'm putting that down to shopping carefully, eating from stocks and cooking from scratch, home baking etc.  I've always done this but I seem to be doing more and more of it of late.  Good job I have the time (and inclination) and quite enjoy it.  I'll use some of the £50 to replace things I've used and the rest will go into my Rainy Day fund.

No CT or water rates to pay for the next two months either.  We pay the annual bills for these over 10 months rather than 12, but I don't look on Feb or Mar as being "free" months - more like a better looking bank balance for a short while!

This weekend I'll be drawing up my spreadsheets ready to populate the required expenditure for 2024/25 once the bills start dropping through the letter box.  I think any disposable income will be looking pretty slim this coming financial year as I have a funny feeling I'll be paying tax on my final salary pension, thanks to fiscal drag.  I foresee yet more juggling and belt tightening on the horizon.  

Tea tonight is h/m fishcakes from the freezer, sliced and fried LO potatoes with side salad.  I've also dug out some cooked pork chunks from the freezer and have used them to make a pork & apple casserole in the SC for tomorrow.

suzeesu2000

Make do - DH made up two raised beds that have been in the boxes in my sitting room since last September!! Started putting compost in one with some good rabbit poop. My friend has a rabbit rescue and donates me rabbit poop which is a fab fertiliser, in exchange I give her all my shredded paperwork and DHs newspapers.

Mend - nothing mended but a broken salt & pepper mill returned as are faulty and still under guarantee

Minimise - nothing today. 

gemmajenkins0208

-taff said:

gemmajenkins0208 said: There is actually a pouch of salsa in there too but I'm not as keen on that as I am the Soured cream stuff, so trying to find a use for it before admitting defeat and binning it.

Put it in the fajita wraps, you won't taste it so much and it's extra veg. I like my fajitas a bit sloppier so I put  a spoon of greek yoghurt on the base and spread it out, then the chicken or whatever with the tomatoes and onons.and cheese, then I'd just stick the salsa on top of all that and roll. I admit I lick the juice that comes out off the plate and I can because I'm an adult and it's my plate.

oops, I meant peppers and onions....

Yeah I think I will! We did used to use everything that came in the kits, then OH said he doesn't like the salsa and to not put any in his, then for some reason I stopped using it... then I stopped using the topping mix(the powder you mix with sour cream) as I kept forgetting to buy sour cream!


We only have one of each in the cupboard now so will buy the parts of the kit we need individually and get them used up.


Something to report - I have come into possession of a whole load of long life shelf foods - tins/packets/jars etc, and we have not long got back from our first big food shop of 2024 so we are now in abundance of food.


Up until now I've still been making do food wise with things we had in. I pretty much cleared the top shelf in the freezer bar half a loaf of bread, but there are a few Tubs of leftovers in there again now.


Minimising - I used an old sauce sachet on my fried egg sandwich I had for tea tonight. Had 5 vinted sales since Friday but one was a bundle of 6 items, so 10 items gone altogether. Finally gave OHs mum her bag back with the jumper for her in a tub she sent us home with once and 2 tins of chopped tomatoes

plumduff55

Make do - I ran out of bread and had 2 tortilla wraps left so I used one and filled with cheese and sweet chilli sauce. It was ok  but I will buy bread this morning.

Mend - Nothing mended 

Minimise - I had nearly finished knitting a cardigan for myself in Aran yarn from my stash. The more I knitted the less I liked the random wool effect. So I ripped it back and took it to a charity shop. First time I've ever done this but I really didn't like it 😳

Cherryfudge

Hello, please may I join in? I've been reading along and resisting because I talk a lot but making do and mending is very much my vibe, while minimising is a skill I've yet to learn. However, it occurred to me earlier that minimising isn't necessarily about having empty surfaces everywhere (though it can be). It's also about using things up (minimising waste), reusing (minimising consumption) and leaving a minimal footprint on the world. I can relate to all of those.

Admittedly, I also have far too much stuff: things I 'rescued' when the children were growing up and clearing out, things of mine from way back, things I've bought because I fell for them (I'm an avid car booter) and far too many things rescued from clearing out my parents' house some years ago. The rate I'm sorting these, I may need to live to ninety, so my minimising needs to include working through the backlog.

I left a long-term job that was too stressful and my pay has dropped, so that's an added incentive to make things go further.

The following isn't original to me, but it's something I relate to: 'Take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints, kill nothing but time'.

So today:

Make do - I'm slowly working my way through a  freezer stash of humous for lunches, though I fancied cooking some sausages today!

I have a big catering tin of cappuccino and tipped in the rest of a jar of instant coffee - more coffee flavour, slower consumption of the (more expensive) cappuccino. The big, empty coffee jar will be used for storage.

I also realised I could wear a very old but comfy pair of trainers for my cleaning job, along with an old pair of jeans that I don't really like. It doesn't matter if either gets bleach on, which is good use of the clothes as they wear out, and saves better clothes for other days. And then again, I was going to buy a bum bag so I don't have to carry phone, pen, tissues in pockets at work - and I found an old one that has a bit of wear left in it after similar use in a previous job. Doesn't matter what it looks like as I work on my own.

Lastly, while looking for something else I found three cushions that I'd put aside to go to recycling, and I've put all into one cover. Individually, they're wrecked, but layered up, they warm my computer chair. Does anyone know if it's possible to resurrect the artificial fibre used in cheap cushions or pillows? It looks like the sort of thing that stays in landfill forever, or gets transported to Africa to create a problem for them, which is why I hadn't got as far as taking it to recycling.

Mend - I haven't done this yet but I've just washed some fabric trainers and noticed the back is wearing into holes long before the soles do the same. When they dry, I'll check through the embroidery thread for a matching colour (or buy it there isn't one) and see if I can repair them.

Minimise - I've reused some jars for marmalade, and making it myself I can get the tartness we like, and save a few pennies.

P.S. Today was unusual, I don't tend to get this much done!

London_1

Make Do: dinner from freezer again tonight

Mend: Stuck a bit of the edging down on my work top It has been sitting on the window ledge waiting to be stuck back down for around 6 months one of those quick daft jobs you think "Oh I'll do that tomorrow " and never get round to doing it It snapped off and just needed a little dab of super strong glue to stick it back on I even had the small tube sitting next to it  ! ! ! 

Minimised:   A bill for the EPC & Floor plan that was done this morning on my house as its up for sale next week.
The chap came and he was very nice and took all the details he needed, and I said if you give me your bank details I send it to you now !
I think he was a bit shocked at such a prompt payment but I have a thing about money, if I have had something done I like to pay asap.I wouldn't go into a shop and expect them to wait until I had an invoice before I paid for food shopping it has to be paid eventually, and at least I know its paid and out of the way. So I'm happy its done and dusted and out of the way

  JackieO xx

suzeesu2000

Evening all.

Make do - dinner and tea from fridge

Mend - nothing

Minimise - passed a blanket mum knitted onto our new kittyCat Frankie as the little weirdo loves knitted and crocheted blankies.

Have a brilliant Friday everyone. x

Moorviews

Welcome @Cherryfudge 😊 I do similar with expensive flavoured hot chocolate as you have done with the coffee. I find it far too sweet so mix it with plain cocoa and use fewer spoonfuls of the expensive stuff. 

Make do - home made pizzas. I made the tomato sauce earlier in the week so that it was less effort to put them together. The goats cheese and the chorizo were bought before Christmas so it felt like they were virtually free. I had a wrinkled pepper to use too. Used existing gift wrapping to wrap presents instead of being tempted by new paper. 

Mend - some electrical work on the camper van which DH did. 

Minimise - some bulky fleeces into the clothing bank. Bringing less in and keeping the costs down by carefully planning the grocery shopping. Minimising fuel use by combining several errands into one trip. 

Cherryfudge

No making do yet today, unless you count the second week of supermarket fish and chips instead of going to the chippie. Our chippie is great, but we discovered they use beef fat to fry, which we think can't be doing us much good. We haven't given it up entirely, but it will be more of a treat when we do have it, and what we had today is half the price of the chippie.

DH has been out sawing logs from a branch we took off a tree in the autumn. It will have to dry till at least next year but it can be used for the log burner. He's now helping a neighbour take a branch down that's grown from ours into his, so there may be more wood to come.

Mend: I'm proud of this. I did the repair on my trainers! It turned out I had embroidery thread that's a very close match to the damaged trim. You can see it's mended if you look carefully, but how many people are going to examine my footwear at close quarters? I also darned inside the back of the heel which was also going ragged. I remember using a piece of self-adhesive fabric wound dressing inside the back of canvas shoes, and it gave them more life, so I might eventually do that with these. They cost £50 last September, so you'd think they should last more than five months.

DH went up the ladders and cleared a gutter block, which is sort of like mending, in the sense it's making something work properly again. It's also minimising as it would cost to get someone to do it. We spent out on a big ladder which has probably nearly paid for itself in a few uses.

Minimise: We have a shrub hedge and I suddenly realised this mild weather, with no leaves on some bushes, is perfect for drastic pruning. I've minimised some of the bits that were taking a couple of feet out of the width of the garden. It was really useful to be able to see exactly what lead to which main branch. I hope the new growth will take advantage of the spring when it comes and create a fresh edge, but still with more garden accessible beneath.