Making Good Use

Two Purchases That Didn't Fit!

I managed to dodge the furious showers and gale-force winds this morning (obviously the Great British Summer is alive and well!) to get to the High Street for a haircut.  The haircut was fine, if 10 per cent more expensive than eight weeks ago, but the two purchases I made were both useless.

The first purchase was an energy saving lightbulb to go in the standard lamp in the living room.  This lamp is on all evening and when the bulb blew the other evening I thought it was high time it was replaced with an energy saving one.  I perused the large selection in our local Woolworths and was certain I'd bought the correct type.  It had a bayonet fitting - check, would give a 60 watt light - check, was the right shape - check.  Sorted, I thought, and eco friendly too!  I should have known better as I've had problems with getting the right style of energy saving bulbs before.  This one looks like it should be the correct size but only fits in the lamp with the shade removed - not really the ambiance I'm looking for in the evening!!  So fingers crossed, Woollies will exchange it for a different bulb if I pop back in the next day or two.  Otherwise that's £3.95 up the swannee.

Second purchase was spotted in the charity shop, and was a rather nice three-quarter sleeve sequinned T-shirt in my size which was a soft peachy shade so would have gone very well with the brown linen trousers I got for 20p at the car boot on Sunday.  I got it home and thought I'd just try it on before I put it in the washing basket.  Whaaat!!  It was like a skinned rabbit on me!!  I seriously wonder if the size label was sewn in wrongly when the T-shirt was manufactured.  At least I know why such a little worn T-shirt had been given away.  B*ggeration!

Sticker Shock

I think sometimes I'm on autopilot when I do my weekly shop.  I don't always buy the same things but I do seem to be a bit blinkered when it comes to buying 'staples' and it gave me quite a shock yesterday when I reaslised the prices of some of the mundane items I was buying.

I went in to the local branch of 'Savers' (a bit of a downmarket version of Superdrug) to get some more of their budget version of Brillo Pads.  It's not something I buy very often as I usually get in two 20-pad packs at a time.  Yesterday, I went straight to the section where I knew they were and suddenly noticed that they now cost 69p for a pack of 20.  I swear the last time I bought them they were 29p or 39p.  This time I only bought one pack, and came out of the shop berating myself for not having thought to buy soap-filled scouring pads in Wilkinsons last week.  They were definitely 29p per pack in there the last time I bought them, although I have no idea how much they are these days.

The same thing happened in Aldi when I noticed that the 1kg packs of Penne pasta and dried spaghetti were not actually 39p or 49p per pack as I had thought they were.  No, they now cost £1.09 each!!  Whaaat!!  I know pasta has got more expensive lately, but really that is one heck of an increase.  Again, these are not items I buy every week and it is probably a couple of months since I last bought dried pasta, but I swear they didn't cost this much then.  I'm sure Aldi's prices are still excellent, it's just that even they have had to increase their prices dramatically. 

Now might be a sensible time to start a price-list notebook, just to see exactly what things do cost.  Especially as the 'official' rate of inflation has today been announced at 4.4 per cent.  Yesterday's Daily Mail (so take all information with a bucket of salt) claims inflation is at 25 per cent!!  I'm not sure it is quite that high, but am also pretty certain it is a good deal higher than the 'spin doctored, massaged, on-message' government figure of 4.4 per cent.  Even the BBC News had to say that food inflation is 13 per cent above prices this time last year, utilities are 16 per cent higher, and fuel is 26 per cent higher.  This time next year will these figures be even worse?  Goodness knows.

Anyway, sort of on the same subject, if anyone would like this booklet I found at the back of the bookcase yesterday, please leave me a comment.  It's a 46 page booklet from the 1980s by Global Village Crafts.  The aim of the recipes is to provide a 'minute gesture towards the issue of world hunger'. There are some useful recipes in there, predominantly, but not exclusively, vegetarian - and heavy on chickpeas, lentils and brown rice.  First one to comment gets the booklet.

Updates

I had a request to show a photo of my shopping trolley, which I'm very happy to do.

Here it is in all it's eight-year-old glory fully stuffed with groceries after my large shop this morning.  I'd bought so much this week that I'd also hd to carry a very heavy carrier bag back from the High Street too.  The main problems was that I'd bought seven pretty heavy books in the charity shop as well as all my groceries, and they really bulked out what I had to carry.

For all the hundreds of miles this trolley must have been wheeled in the past eight years, it's still holding up pretty well.  It was a fairly expensive item when we bought it (somewhere around £30 if I remember correctly), but I think shopping trolleys are probably one of those items where you get what you pay for.  I know you can buy much cheaper ones, and I've had those in the past, but they don't seem to last anywhere near as well.

My trolley is kept out in the shed and I think the metal parts are beginning to suffer a bit because of that.  The shed is basically water-tight but is, without doubt, a tad damp, and I noticed last week that some parts of the metal frame are begining to look a little rusty.  Still there's not a lot I can do about that as there just isn't room in the house to keep it inside.  If it fell apart tomorrow I'd be very sad but couldn't really complain after all the sterling work its done.  A true work horse.

I tried out some of the stick-on insulating tape over the weekend - just to see if it was any good.  We've got a small fanlight window in the kitchen which is never really opened but which was very poorly fitting and it was the ideal window to do a test run on.  I undid the window lock and finally forced the window open, taking a chunk out of my finger in the process, so that I could clean all round the frame and attach the tape. 

There was a variety of insulating tape for sale in Wilkinsons - 'S' shaped, 'P' shaped and 'E' shaped.  I looked at the instructions on all the packets and they seemed to all be good for the same things so I went for the 'E' shape - just because it is my initial.  I stuck the tape around both frames of the window - the bit that opens and the bit that doesn't, and then jammed the window shut again.  The tape was incredibly neat and hardly noticeable when the window was shut - a big improvement on the bits of paper kitchen towel I'd jammed in the cracks before!!  And over the weekend, when a howling gale was blowing, it was obvious that the tape really does seem to do the trick.  The window is right next to the back door - through which a hefty breeze was gusting - yet the window let in no air at all.  I was impressed and will certainly be using the tape on the back door, and the french windows fairly soon.

We were lucky with the weather yesterday morning, so me and the next door neighbours were able to enjoy the delights of the local car boot sale again.  I came back well pleased with a couple of 'new to me' items of clothing for 20p each, and a small bottle of Body Shop Mandarin body wash for 10p.  By the middle of the afternoon the heavens had opened again, it was very lucky for us that the rain held off as long as it did.  Huh, and they call this summer!!

An Eclectic Mix

I popped down to Basildon this morning for the first time in what seems like ages and came home with an extremely eclectic mix of things.

Pickings were slim in the charity shops but I did manage to find a new rotary cutter.  I've seen a lot of people talking about these on various craft blogs so for 75p I thought I'd give it a go.  The blade looks a bit vicious to me and I'm not sure how I'll get on with it but other people seem to swear by them for cutting good straight lines - we'll see.  At the 'Bargain Box' I found a humungous piece of houndstooth material which is rather pleasing to the eye.  I bought it thinking it would be good for winter-weight bags but I'm also wondering about cushion covers with a felt embellishment.  Again, we'll see!!

I also went into Wilkinson's and purchased some stick-on insulating tape for the back door and the french windows.  I'm not sure I've bought quite enough but at least it will be a start.  I also bought a pack of foam pipe insulators.  These are really light and long and I'm hoping to be able to use them at the bottom of the french windows to cut down on the howling gale that blows along there.  They're not exactly pretty, being a very boring dark grey colour, but come the winter I hope they'll be draft-effective.

The lure of a Hoi-Sin Duck Wrap from Marks and Spencers was just too strong, so I called into the food hall where I found they had 'buy one get one free' on their bottled sauces - all with a really good use-by date - which made them quite a bargain.  I bought two jars of korma sauce and two of cheese sauce.  I know the cheese sauce is a bit lazy but it's the type of store cupboard item that is really useful to have about.

Good job I had ye olde shopping trolley with me, I don't usually bother with it when I go to Basildon, but today it really was useful.

Hopefully, This Lot Will Be Enough to Finish It

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the HUGE 400g ball of wool (and a couple of oddments) that I picked up in a charity shop in Billericay this morning - £1.50 the lot - will be enough yarn for me to finish off the knitted patchwork blanket. Both colours are totally innocuous, and slightly tweedy, so should fit in with the overall tone of the blanket, although I'm not fussy by any means and anything that gives me enough yarn in a thick enough ply is fine by me.

Many thanks to everyone who left a comment on yesterday's post. There are some really useful suggestions there and I hope I'll be able to put them into practice come the colder weather.

If anybody is interested in a really inspirational and interesting read about a twenty-something's downshifting journey pop over and have a look at www.notesfromthefrugaltrenches.com? I wish I'd had her attitude to money when I was in my twenties.

One in the Eye for British Gas

The quarterly gas bill arrived this morning, covering the months May, June and July, and it is pretty much only a tenth of the cost of the previous quarter.  £34.44 as opposed to £302.31.  Obviously, this is the easiest quarter of the year to achieve a low gas bill.  Although the central heating certainly did go on for a few evenings in May, and possibly a couple in June too.  Apart from that there has really been very little gas usage at all.  Because the hot water can't be heated up without having the central heating on as well - dont' ask, rental property, cr*p back boiler! - it means that there is no hot water in the taps.  That is by no means as spartan as it sounds as we have an electric power shower for showering and the new long-length hose on it means that it is easy to fill the wash basin with hot water for hand and face washing.  The washing up only requires two boiled kettles of water and the water is scalding hot.  I do have a gas hob but that has not been used overly much lately as a lot of the meals have been salads.

What worries me more is how to keep the gas usage down during the autumn and winter, especially since British Gas raised its prices by 35 per cent!!  I've got a few ideas for conserving as much heat as possible, including cutting down on drafts by fitting some stick-on insulation tape around the back door and the french windows (both old, drafty and single glazed.  Luckily the rest of the house is snugly double glazed).  I might also have a go at trying to 'double-glaze' these items with cling film.  I'm not quite sure how this works, but remember seeing it done some years ago.  I'm sure a Google search will give me some ideas. I also plan to fit tin foil behind the radiators to reflect the heat back into the rooms, especially as most of the radiators are on outside walls, and I certainly don't intend to start heating the brickwork if I can help it! 

Anybody have any other ideas for cheap and easy ways to cut down on heating costs?  Sadly, I fear it will be a loooooong time before we have a gas bill as cheap as this one again, no matter how hard we try to cut corners.

Thank You, Gods of Thrifting

The weather forecast for Sunday morning was a bit dubious for the Essex area and, indeed, the sky did look like threatening rain all morning.  Undeterred my lovely next door neighbours and I set off for the local car boot sale.  Next door have kindly been giving me a lift to the car boot these last few weeks and it makes it so much easier to get there.  It's also nice to share the thrill of what's been bought with people who also love a good bargain.  Although there weren't that many sellers there this week (probably put off by the threat of rain and also a lot of people are on holiday at the moment), I managed to find some really good things.

Two Morny soaps - lavender and gardenia - 40p each (I'm always a sucker for nice soaps and have a carrier bag full of them in the wardrobe.  I figure you always need soap), Molton Brown Make-up Cleanser (love Molton Brown products) - 50p, Chloe Narcisse Shower Gel - 20p, a rather nice Bourjois nail varnish (I adore the wonderfully vibrant colours of the Bourjois range) - 20p, a little wooden Matryoshka doll - 30p.  All sitting on top of a great piece of tweed material which cost 80p, including a load of upholstery trimmings (not sure what I'll do with those but the material is destined for a few winter-weight bags). 

For 50p was this rather spiffy cushion and cover from Ikea.  I'm quite fond of that vibrant yellowy-green these days (is this what is meant by'chartreuse'?) and it goes quite nicely with the new cushion covers I made a few weeks ago.

To top all this off I found a pair of jeans in the charity shop this morning for £2.75.  I'm far from a standard size so was thrilled to find that not only did the jeans fit around but they were also a really good long length. I really needed some more jeans so this was a lucky find indeed.

Everything's Coming Up Roses

I used some of the Rowan purelife Naturally Dyed Organic Cotton yarn, which I was given for my birthday, to knit a rose patterned facecloth.  The pattern came from www.knittingpatterncentral.com/directory/dishcloths.php where there is a lovely selection of free patterns for knitting dishcloths / facecloths, and many other items too if you go to their homepage.  The pattern was designed by Amy-lynne Mitchell who has a blog www.lilknitofthisandthat.blogspot.com   The pattern was super easy to follow and I'm so pleased with how it has turned out.  I've got a few ideas for more knitted facecloths in the near future and have already downloaded a few more patterns.