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

Katiehound

YorksLass said:

 

Currently patiently waiting for the gas engineer to come back.  Yes, he's finally been to do the service (third attempt) but 15 minutes after he left I found I have no hot water!  Aarrgh!  I don't know what he's done, it was working perfectly before he came.  And breathe.

This made me snigger because straightaway I thought about the "Gas man Cometh" song
Enjoy it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1dvAxA9ib0

YorksLass

@Katiehound - Yes, it made me chuckle!  It wasn't quite as bad as that but I could feel my blood pressure going up by the hour.  Anyway, we're all sorted now - it turns out the dozy engineer hadn't turned the boiler back on.  Now why didn't I think of that?  Tbf, I know very little about boilers, gas or electrics and wouldn't dream of tinkering in those areas - that's what the "experts" are for.     

Not much in the Make Do stakes today other than using h/m salmon fishcakes for tea and making a batch of tomato & red pepper soup.

Minimised the cost of a small top up shop by 67p of Co-op membership savings that's gone in my savings pot (£9.17 in total since April).  Only pennies, but it all adds up and will come in handy when there's more week left than money.

Gas/electricity statement for April/May arrived this morning.  Cost slightly more than the same period last year but, given how chilly it's been, it didn't come as a surprise.  Fingers crossed the warmer weather is here for a good while.

suzeesu2000

Make do - dinner from freezer

Mend - nothing

Minimise- stack of DHs old shirts, pyjama tops, several large pieces of fabric all bagged for charity shop. Also minimising my knitting yarn by knitting big squares for blankets for RSPCA, using oddments and little bits of leftovers.

annieb64

Minimised books by taking two more bags to charity shop.

I'm also trying to minimise yarn stash by knitting blankets but my charity knitting group is still getting lots of donations of yarn so I keep bringing more home !

Using up left over lamb from freezer for a curry tonight.

Cherryfudge

I'm not doing very well on minimising, as I brought 2 scarves, 2 books and 3 pieces of jewellery home from a car boot sale! I discovered that one of the scarves has some marks that I didn't notice when I bought it, but I've washed it twice and they have faded a lot. Now I'm trying to decide whether to keep washing it or hope that the marks are as invisible to everyone else as they were to me when I bought it.

I've been cutting back overgrowth in the garden and filled the green bin so that's minimising.  I also kept a chunky bit of tree to dry for the log burner, and a few straight sticks for use in the garden.

I've also chopped more citrus peel for 'Miser's marmalade' (I think I read about that here so thank you whoever first mentioned it): there's a growing bag of it in the freezer as DH gets through lots of fruit (and marmalade).

Lunch included oddments of veg fried together with a small amount of pepperoni that's been in the freezer for ages: it went very well so I'll remember it for another time - making do with what was in store and needed to be used.  

No actual mending though there are a few items I ought to tackle.

YorksLass

I've had a bit of a lazy weekend sitting out and enjoying the sun while it's around but have managed a few MMMs.

Making do with existing food stocks continues and I've made a half & half loaf, hard boiled some eggs, cooked a batch of savoury minced beef and taken a beef jalfrezi out of the freezer for tomorrow.  Tonight we're having a salad with pilchards and fruit/yogurt for afters.

On the Minimising front, I'm parting with 3 cookery books - two will go to the Little Free Library but the other one is too big/heavy to go in their box so I've started another CS bag off with that.

I've changed my gas/electricity fixed plan to a different one (same supplier) that should save around £280 over the year, providing of course we don't use more energy than we have over the last 12 months.  Shame about the standing charges though - they're eye-watering.     

Mend - nothing at the moment but I'm thinking about altering some curtains that have a pencil pleat header to an eyelet top header as I find them easier to hang - no fiddly gathering to do.  Much as I like pencil pleats, my advancing years tell me simplicity is the way to go!    

Before that though, I have a (very wide) net curtain that needs shortening by about 12".  It has a pattern at the bottom that I don't want to lose, so I'll have to cut off the excess fabric from the top and sew a new slot.  I do have a sewing machine but will probably hand sew it unless I can find anything else to sew at the same time to make it worth while dragging the machine out.

Cherryfudge

A few bits of making do have happened, mostly in terms of using foods up. Curry sauce did two days (it was delicious and I'll make that recipe again), which also used some frozen cooked chicken. Today I found a pint of milk was about to go out of date so I added another pint from the yellow-sticker section of the supermarket (reduced to 30p) and they are turning into yogurt right now.

I've saved some prunings from the red currant and gooseberry buses and put them in water to root, and in another jar I have a bunch of basil which I'm hoping to turn into a pot full of plants. I suspect the fruit bushes aren't normally pruned right now, but these were good shoots in the wrong place.

Talking of plant pots, our local garden centre now has a plastic plant pot recycling station, with a note on that we can take from or add to it. This is preferable to binning damaged and excess pots to me. I'm three pots better off as they had some middling-sized ones that are nice and wide for some of my houseplants.

My favourite bit of making do/minimising waste has been to soak the remains of two salt deodorants out of their plastic cases and get about another cm out of each (they last months so this is worth doing). The two stubs were small and fiddly, so, nothing ventured... I glued them either side of a chubby lolly stick and they now have a handle! 

Wraithlady

Not actually done anything on the MMM front for ages.

Make do - had my old lap tray kicking about but don't use it as the integral light thing was broken - the light stuck up from the base and was always in the way (it was on one of those articulated metal 'necks' IYSWIM). Asked OH to see if he could grind it off so at least it was a level surface, but apparently it just pulled out with a little BFAI (brute force and ignorance). Stuck a piece of hessian behind the hole and filled it with glue then stuck down the edges which had come away. Now have a perfectly usable laptray without the annoying sticky-up thing and don't have to buy a new one!

Mending - socks. It's nearly always socks.

Minimise - presently crocheting a shawl from some mohair-mix yarn from my stash (passed to me from a friend who's allergic to mohair) so that will be 6 balls 'minimised' into a warm but airy shawl - perfect for the 1920's do I'm going to at the end of the year.

Really ought to use my sewing machine more, but we're waiting for a move to a bigger house so I don't have to clear it away all the time - but whoever said the wheels of God grind exceeding slow obviously never had to deal with the British legal process.....

suzeesu2000

Make do - usual meal from freezer ingredients

Mend - nothing

Minimise - knitted a blanket for animal sanctuary and started second one using up odd bits of leftover yarn. Hope to make four.

Green_hopeful

Make do. Found some frozen banana slices in the freezer. Defrosted them and sautéed in a bit of butter. Made a pudding for one with some ice cream and double cream. 

Mend. Fixed (hopefully) two garden parasols. One the pulley rope had broken. I saw some rope for camping in the Range. Easy to thread it through and burn the ends a little. I also glued a strut and the middle bit on the other. 

I have really got into ‘darning’ my jumpers since watching a blog. Managed to fix four holes in my favourite cashmere cardigan. It’s old but still looks reasonably smart until I started finding holes. I hope the holes are from my badly behaved cats and not badly behaved moths. 

Minimise. Left over chilli from the freezer for lunch and dinner.