The Frugal Hearth: Stories of Simple Living and Living Well

Elisheba

Slowdown said:

Still following. Im not so good at keeping up with my own comments on your progress but read. whenever you update. Feel like I live next door these days!

I feel like that with the diaries I read as well!  This is such a lovely community, and has always been so helpful to me 

Elisheba

Afternoon, frugal friends!

Welcome to my new diary, old and new .

This morning I have been somewhat vexed by my new car.  For those who haven't read my old diary I only got it last week and it is a downshift from my old one, to free up some money.  Anyway the audio control panel has a button that says Aux on it, but it turns out my car has no aux jack!  Having read the manual and watched some YT videos, if it had it would be on the arm rest area or in the glove compartment, but some models just don't have one despite the control panel having a button for one!

So instead of a £2 aux jack cable to connect my phone, I now need to buy a bluetooth FM transmitter which range in price from £15-20. I think I'll take it from my car maintenance annuals pot. I actually still have the one from my car before last, but that one isn't bluetooth and needs an aux jack on my phone and newer phone models like mine don't have that.  So I guess I'll be freecycling the old FM transmitter, and need to buy a new one if I want to listen to Spotify and podcasts and the like when I am driving. Until I have decided what one to purchase I can listen to CDs and the radio (not DAB - car doesn't have it), but radio signal is a bit spotty around me.  Its just very annoying that it doesn't have an aux jack in the car, despite the button.  Google investigations suggest they just used a standard audio control panel for all cars but not all the functions were available to all cars.  Grr!

Other than that, oh my goodness, isn't it hot!  I have the windows and curtains closed at the moment to try and keep out the heat, which seems to be working although it's a little dark.  My spare room office seems stable at between 26-27 degrees.  I'm in shorts and T-shirt so that is  manageable for working as long as I don't do anything vaguely strenuous.  What with global warming and the like, I am definitely thinking that my next house move should be somewhere higher and therefore cooler for when we get these types of very hot weather.  The place I might eventually move to in SW Scotland is currently 23 degrees which sounds much more civilised.  

Tomorrow is going to be busy.  I'll need to walk silly dog early again so he doesn't overheat, then I need to go to my nearest big town for some food shopping.  I also need to cut the grass and do quite a bit of weeding, which isn't ideal in hot weather.  Then I have a WI event in the latter half of the afternoon.  Its £6 including an afternoon tea (which I doubt will have anything I can eat, so need to eat beforehand), and should have some entertainment and might be quite good fun.  On Sunday I think I only have church and any house bits and bobs that need doing, so I should be able to relax and read in the afternoon which will be nice.

Dinner tonight is going to be the second portion of a mushroom and veg stroganoff type thing I made last night.  Cauliflower pizza tomorrow night I think, and I haven't made a meal plan for the rest of the week yet.  There is only £16 left of my £100 food budget this month so I suspect I will be going over budget a bit when I get shopping tomorrow as I have quite a few things I need  It really does seem very hard to keep to a £100 budget these days, especially when I can't fill up on homemade brown bread, porridge oats and wholewheat pasta. My only real extravagance now is 85% cocoa chocolate. Its seems crazy I could get all my shopping for about £40 for the month when I started the old diary in 2020.

Not much else to report.  I put the fan on for a bit last night just so I was cool enough to sleep.  Windows are open overnight to get some cool air in, and that works well. I'm just sleeping in underwear with a sheet over me to stay cool.  I remember from previous hot spells that lying on a damp towel can help cool you down as well, so if it becomes too bad I can always do that as well. 

Oh and silly dog has decided he is a sun dog, and likes to lie out in the garden.  He's not very happy doing it alone though so woos until I put a blanket down for him and sit out with him. He's also not very good at understanding when he's too hot, so he just starts wooing until I get him somewhere cooler.  And he has a pink nose and tummy, so I worry he will burn and put some sun lotion on him yesterday.  He then spent the next half an hour rolling around on his blanket until all sun lotion was removed from him!  He really is ridiculous!

Right time for me to be off and do some real work. Hope you are all having a lovely Friday and have exciting plans for the weekend!

KajiKita

Your love for Silly dog just radiates through your posts 😊❤️

I actually slept with the fan on for the past two nights - made a huge difference. 

KK

Cheery_Daff

Happy shiny new diary!  

foxgloves

Yes, night time fan here too, as I'm not great in the heat & Mr F is worse.
Your grocery budget is quite a challenging amount now that food prices have risen so much so I think you do pretty well with it. 
F

Elisheba

Good Morning, campers,

@KajiKita @foxgloves Yes, had the fan on a while for two nights but thankfully didn't need it last night. Today seems more manageable temperature wise.

@Cheery_Daff Thanks, Cheery. It feels very fresh and new 😁

@foxgloves Yeah, I have to admit, the £100 a month food budget is more of an aim, as I haven't been able to stick to it for a while now. I want to have a few months of genuinely seeing how low I can get though, before I make a decision on how much it should be raised.

Greetings from my bed, everyone. Currently sitting here with a coffee, rather than doing anything particularly constructive. 

Yesterday I got the food plan for the week done, and did the food shopping. Only indulgences were £3 worth of vegan, sugar free jelly sweets which I felt obliged to try to see if they would be good for the occasional picnic etc. Very unhealthy and UPF, so I won't be buying them very often.

I haven't put the food shopping figures into my s/s yet so not sure how much over budget I am for the month. I bought enough frozen berries and mixed nuts to last for a few weeks though, so it should reduce next month's food spending quite a bit as they (and the greek yogurt to go with them) are one of my big food expenses each month.

Previously I had been buying bags of mixed nuts, but I realised they had cashews in them. Cashews are one of the few nuts I shouldn't be eating with the low carb diet. They don't seem to raise my blood sugar much, but better safe than sorry. So I bought bags of different types of nuts instead this time - walnuts, brazil and almonds I think.

With 3 different nuts, 5 different seeds, and 4 different berries, my brunches will have at least 12 different plant based foods each morning, so that gets me well on my way to the 30 different plant based foods we should be aiming for each week, and yogurt is fermented so that's good for the gut biome.

I finally got around to making up some of Nancy Birtwhistle dishwasher powder, and her rinse aid. I had everything in I needed so that was cost neutral, although I did need to buy dishwasher salt which thankfully isn't expensive. First load of dishes last night looked fine, so fingers crossed it does the job. 

It does mean I have run out of green bleach (sodium percarbonate) though. Looking online I can buy 1kg for about £9, or 25kg for about £60. I'm not sure what to do as obviously the 25kg works out far more economical in the long run, but 25kg of green bleach will literally take me years and years to use and I would need to find somewhere to store it as well. I also don't have an extra £60 sitting around in the household budget so I would need to borrow from the future, which can get complicated. It's not urgent so I have a bit of time to think about it.

I got a cheque through the post for the refund on my car tax on the old car. About £15, so that basically pays for the car tax on the new car which was only £20.

I remembered I was one of the hostesses for the WI meeting this week (annoyingly after I had left the cheap supermarket) which means I have to provide snacks and raffle prizes, so I spent about £8 on them out of my personal allowance at a small M0rr!sons. The raffle prizes are fancy coffee sachets which were half price due to being out of date, so a little bargain there. I also have a bird feeder I won in a raffle that I don't need and haven't used, so can take that along as well.  I'll need to take some nuts along with cakes so there is something I can eat as well.

I didn't get as much done yesterday as I had initially planned, as just couldn't face gardening in the heat. So I'll need to cut the grass today, and work on some weeding throughout the week. I did go to a WI event in the afternoon, which was £7 in total including the ticket and raffle (personal allowance). As predicted there was a lovely afternoon buffet tea, but nothing there I could eat. I took a tip from @KajiKita and picked some fillings out the sandwiches to nibble on, but it felt like a horrible waste of the bread.

Today is a quiet day. Church this morning, then I'll take silly dog a walk, have some lunch and cut the grass. Then I'll just potter about for whatever time is left in the day and likely read for a bit. Next weekend is going to be an absolute mission in terms of busyness, so I'm enjoying a buy if relaxation while I can.

Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend ☺️.

Makingabobor2

Can't remember if this was mentioned before on your other diary. But do you have a Zero waste Eco refil shop near you.  If so you could get all your nuts, green bleach and all sorts from there and just buy any amount you want. Also you are saving on all the packaging.  My nearest one is 11 miles away, but I go every so often for a big stock up and its so worth it. 

Elisheba

Good afternoon, chickadees :-)

(Reposting this here, as I posted it on my old diary yesterday by accident 😳)

Just a quick pop on here for a mid week MSE rundown.  

In a MSE fail, it turns out the Nancy Birtwhistle recipe for dishwasher powder and rinse aid was absolutely rubbish.  I tried it twice and everything was still dirty.  It is the first recipe of hers that I've tried that just hasn't worked, and its a bit annoying as I now have a tub of mixed up ingredients with no particular purpose.  I might use it clean the bath, as the enamel there stains super easily and the dishwasher mix has green bleach in it.  I honestly don't know what Nancy was thinking putting the recipe in her book, there is no way that would have worked for her.  I measured everything exactly, and if you'll recall I mentioned a while back that I had seen reviews of it on her FB page that said it didn't work as well.

Anyway, I have bought a box of 70 eco tablets for about £12, and as I cut them in half they should last for 140 washes, normally use DW very two days, so 280 days.

As I consistently have been spending over £100 on food/toiletries/cleaning products a month, I have now increased the budget to £150 a month, and any left over can go into savings.

Other than that, I have been watching some Diane in Denmark YouTube videos (recommended on one of the other diaries) about routines and being organised.  She mainly uses Flylady, so I have adapted some of that and set up some routines for myself.  Currently a bit knackered as I have been doing a bit more than my routines say I should, but there is just so much I want to get sorted in the house!

I went through the big pile of clothes I had made for either selling or charity yesterday, and sorted out what was for charity and dropped two huge black bags off at a charity shop at lunchtime. So that's lots of stuff gone, and now just need to get the rest listed and sold. 

I have also been doing a fair bit of decluttering around the house so my dressing table and the boxes I had on it are now nice and organised, my summer scarves have been pruned, the spare bedroom/office is a lot more organised, and some of my kitchen has been organised (but there is still a huge amount to do there). 

Oh, and as I hadn't really gotten my head around the zone system yet, I cleaned the bathroom from top to bottom this morning before work, so that's my zone done for the week even if it was a bit over kill doing it at once! It really did need doing though, so I feel much better now its shiny.  I have added cleaning the loo, sink and shower to my evening and morning routines, as well as giving the bathroom a once over as part of the weekly home blessing.  So that'll keep on top of things until the bathroom zone comes around again.

So yes, feeling on top of things in the house just now. The weeds are taking over in the garden so I'll need to get out there this week and get some weeding done.  I has an email from my energy company about free electricity last Sunday between 2 and 3pm, so I got out and cut the front and back gardens then.  Also put on a hot wash and charged the hoover!  Anything to save a few pence  .

I'm in the office this Friday, then out all day Saturday for a friend's birthday, and out a lot of Sunday as well with a church thing, and possibly a Beaver's planning meeting in the evening if I am not wiped out, so this weekend is going to be horrendously busy.  I'm not sure if its the HRT calming me down a bit or something else, but I am not feeling the burning need to be around people anymore.  When I was younger it was 24/7 and I was almost a complete extrovert, but as I have gotten older it has faded, but now I hardly feel it at all and so all these commitments just feel annoying.   Still, most of my evening activities will be off over the summer holidays so I might feel a bit better about things then. 

Right, that's all my news for now.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to catch up on some diaries soon, and the last day of the financial month for me is going to be Friday, so I'll need to find some time to reconcile all my figures and make sure everything adds up for June.

Moorviews

I had a look at Nancy’s recipe for the DW powder. It looks like it would be good for toilet cleaning, if nothing else. I would also use it on my Belfast sink. It is disappointing that it wasn’t a success for the intended purpose though. Fortunately, all the base ingredients will still be useful! Whilst I am eco friendly on all my laundry and cleaning I confess to using the DW pods from the brand with wings. The DW goes on only every 2 to 3 days and everything is spotless and shiny. No doubt there is an environmental impact though which I am not comfortable about. I must explore the kind that comes in the post. I like Diane too and she does give me a much needed boost of motivation on occasion. 

Hopefully, after a break you will feel better about the social activities. It does sound like you are feeling content in yourself and with your own company which does lessen the need for always being ‘out there’. 

fionaandphil

I am also with the brand with wings and pick them up at HB or B + M whenever they are on offer, I haven't found a good alternative and as you say Moorviews they always come out sparkling every time.  I try to be eco with as much as possible but this is one that we haven't found an alternative for.  It does save water as it gets it clean every time and we are usually every other day as well.

Hope your work day goes well Elisheba and that you're not too exhausted by your busy weekend.  A busy time of year here for everything with lots of clubs, school events and fun things to do in the sun but I am looking forward to a break over school holidays - or am I kidding myself!  Have a great weekend