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

YorksLass

@Green_hopeful - Good idea, next time I make such a pudding I'll try that - thanks for the suggestion.

YorksLass

This morning I've cleaned the inside of the kitchen unit where the teacups and saucers were and have minimised some of the contents to the CS pile - x 3 oval dinner plates (not used nowadays), x 3 side plates (oddments, not matching) and x 6 small bowls (again, not really used that much and won't be missed).  I'm now eyeing up another unit that needs to be cleaned/cleared that has baking bowls, casserole dishes and other assorted items in it and will do that later in the week.  Not looking forward to it as it's a corner unit that has a deep and hard to reach bit - who knows what I'll find!  

YorksLass

Make Do #1 - I'd run out of my usual cream cleaner so had a rummage in the cleaning stores cupboard and found a bottle of another brand that came from my late DF's house several years ago.  The price tag on it was 59p, today's price roughly £1.50.  And yes, it's still fit for purpose.

Make do #2 - No longer being a spring chicken and finding bending and stretching more difficult, I was contemplating buying a long handled cleaning thingy with interchangeable scrubber and micro fibre cloth heads for the bath, shower, windows etc.  Customer reviews were rather mixed so I had a re-think.  I already have a long handled squeegee that I use for the bath and shower and wondered if the decorating extension pole would fit to make it longer still so I don't have to use the step ladder when I'm cleaning the windows - not a good idea at my age.  Alas, the extension pole didn't fit, but I have a snooker cue that belonged to DH that fits perfectly inside the hollow handle of the squeegee!  All I need to do is fasten a sponge onto the squeegee and Bob's your uncle.  Problem solved and a few quid saved into the bargain.      

Minimise: Decorating supplies delivered and resulting packaging (lots of it) recycled - good job the recycling bins were emptied this morning.

Mrs_Salad_Dodger

Minimise: contents of freezer
Mend: DH’s jeans by adding another patch

Esmeralda2662

@YorksLass - I love your story of the snooker cue squeegy cleaner! Great thinking!

Make do: Took leftover curry to work for lunch. I must have driven erratically as it leaked a bit on the floor mat of the car. Cling film is definitely not 100% curry proof!

Work gave me some little plastic containers that parts arrived in otherwise they'd have been thrown away. They are perfect storage for buttons, screws, etc.

Mend: Glued a sequin flower back onto a little applique dolphin patch.

Minimise: Delivered 25 empty shoeboxes (from shoe shop, not a shoe addiction!) and small toys to the appeal. The house looks much tidier and they've gone to a good cause.

X

Green_hopeful

Minimise My home email is chockablock with emails. Gmail said i was running out of room. I deleted 3000 of 30000.  I was doing it for ages. Trying to search for categories of things I could delete without worrying that i was going to delete something useful. I did that until the laptop ran out of battery. Should have brought the charger with me. 

I have also been reducing the size of my photos on my phone and ipad. I can’t believe there isn’t an easy way to do it. Some of them were 10mb. I can’t see the difference between 150 kb and 10 mb so what is the point other than to sell me more storage. I found a macro that reduced the pictures down to a reasonable size but I was only able to do one at a time and then had to delete the original. I wonder about emailing batches to reduce the size and then deleting the original and the emails. Obviously I have tried to delete the ones I don’t need. 

Green_hopeful

Minimise this morning I tried harder and found a short cut to compress more photos and delete the old ones. It seems to be able to manage 40 at a time I am doing screen shots and have got my storage down to under 5GB. 

Mrs_Salad_Dodger

Mend: I spent the afternoon mending clothes - 2 pairs of my knickers, reattached a belt loop on a pair of DH’s jeans, darned the heels of a pair of DH’s socks & finally repaired an 18” tear in the attached petticoat of one of my skirts. 

YorksLass

When DS came at the weekend we loaded his car up with all the boxes and bags of unwanted/no longer needed stuff that's been languishing under the stairs for far too long and finally took it all to the CS.  You would think I've now got a clear space there, but no - it's been filled with decorating supplies!     At least they're temporary residents and will be used up soon.

I'm now waiting for the gas engineer to arrive to do the annual boiler service and am surrounded by all the clutter that's come out of the pantry where the boiler is.  I've checked BB dates on tins and packets (a few added to the Use Up list) and have sorted through the empty jars, storage boxes and their lids - for once, there are no odd ones!     A bit more paper shredding done too.

On the Mend front, I'm now going to shorten a net curtain that's too long and am debating whether to hand sew a new channel at the top or drag the machine out.  The hand sewing is winning as it will give me something to do since I don't have any knitting on the go - a first for a long time but that will soon be rectified.     

Green_hopeful

Minimise. I had a recipe that needed pine nuts. I had a look and the pack I had was ages out of date and open. I thought I wouldn’t risk it. I also found some pumpkin seeds and flax seed. Both ages out of date. I figured if i hadn’t used them in the intervening years I probably wouldn’t. I ate a few to test whether they were good enough before feeding them to the pigeons.