Making Good Use

Trying Housework as an Alternative to Central Heating

We recently had the gas bill for the end of July to end of October quarter - it was £70 or thereabouts.  Now, this would be a very reasonable gas bill if it was for a winter quarter but, bearing in mind we'd only had the central heating switched on for a few evenings in October, this bill was a bit of a shock.

We never switch the hot water or heating on at all during the summer and we know for a fact that the heating / hot water was off most of June and all of July, August and September and only on for maybe half a dozen evenings in October.  So if a total of perhaps 12 - 15 hours of switching on the heating gives a bill of £70, the next question is what on earth is the bill for the quarter end of October to end of January going to be?  Especially as we'd become rather cavalier about switching the heating on whenever either of us felt a tad chilly.

Oddly enough, I didn't feel the need to put the heating on until early evening at all yesterday - which was good.  Then today I read Ilona's post about not putting on the heating and I thought I'll really have to make a start at cutting down on our usage of the central heating too.  With that in mind, I've been doing bits and bobs of ironing all day today - warming up after ironing a couple of P's shirts and then switching off the iron and going off to do something else that won't keep me so warm.   After half an hour or so, when I'm feeling chilly again, I've gone back to the ironing and warmed myself up again.   This has been useful on several counts - keeping me just warm enough to do without switching on the heating and finally getting me to tackle the pile-of-ironing-that-was-probably-big-enough-to-be-seen-from-space.

I've also done a bit of Christmas present sewing - I always get rather heated using the sewing machine, I think it's tension in case I make a horrible mistake, some scrubbing of the carpet with a damp cloth and warm water - heaven knows how I manage to get black marks on pale carpets, but I always do, and some general tidying and housework which has warmed me up quite nicely too.

It's only about another hour before the heating will kick in on the timer and I shan't be sorry but I do feel pleased that I've managed to get through another day without having to burn gas just to keep myself warm.

For anyone wondering what a Tunis cake is (see yesterday's post) it is described on Wikipedia as 'A Tunis cake is a Madeira cake topped with a thick layer of chocolate and decorated with marzipan fruits. It is traditionally eaten at Christmas.'  And very tasty it is too.

Savings from the Saturday Telegraph

P and I only buy one newspaper a week - the Saturday Telegraph - and, if we're totally honest, that is mainly for the TV guide.  You know how you get used to the layout of certain TV guides and then you're lost without them - well, that's happened for us with the Telegraph.  Granted, the rest of the paper is a bonus read too - although it can seriously take me the rest of the week to get through it all - and these past couple of weeks there have been some really good money-saving offers as well.

The first one was a £10 off voucher for Waitrose if you spent £60 - valid for a week.  So on Saturday afternoon (the day the voucher expired) P kindly drove me over to Billericay to our nearest Waitrose shop.  I'd primarily gone to get a Tunis Cake for Christmas (I bought one last year and it was del-i-cious), only to find that this year they weren't stocking them!!  Oh b*ggerations!  But I did want to get other nice food-related items as presents for Christmas and also to stock up on mundane things like organic bread flour which I can't get in Wickford. 

I'd gone armed with a calculator to make sure I'd hit the £60 target for the £10-off voucher.  Really, I don't know why I bothered as spending £60 in Waitrose is not that difficult.  In the end I managed to find all the foodie presents with no problem (except the blasted Tunis Cake), and also managed to stock up with lots of useful store cupboard items too.  One particular treat for us though was a Charlie Bigham Moroccan Lamb meal.  OMG, that stuff was gorgeous served with plain boiled quinoa.  It did cost £6.99 but was seriously as nice as restaurant food and super easy to cook.  I'll be buying that again I can tell you. 

Whilst in Waitrose I'd fortuitously picked up this week's Saturday Telegraph too - which had an offer for a free box of Waitrose truffle chocolates - good for that day only.  We managed to get hold of one of the last boxes of those left in Billericay - luckily for us the white chocolate ones didn't seem that popular - so that was another £3.59-worth of useful offer.

Finally, yesterday evening I was reading through the 'Weekend' section, when I saw they had a large feature about the chess player Magnus Carlsen and a 20% discount for tickets to the London Chess Classic Masters which is on all this week at Olympia.  P is VERY KEEN on chess and was, literally, just about to buy his tickets for this event over the internet - the 20% discount saved him £10. 

So, all in all, two weeks Saturday Telegraph papers have saved us £23.59 - a good result methinks.

In Which Quite A Lot Of Money Was Spent, But Most Of It Was For My Boy - So That's No Problem

Yup, I managed to spend quite a considerable amount of money (well, for me anyway) at this morning's Christmas Bazaar.  That's fine on two counts - one the money all goes to a good cause, and two, most of the spend was for a certain young nephew.

There were two large Lego kits - £5.00 each.  My nephew loves Lego, as I did as a child, and I never mind spending goodly sums on something so long-lasting (DN is still playing with Lego we had as children,) so educational and so much fun.

Also for my boy is this rather nice Science Museum Vibrating Metal Detector.  I've always fancied having a go at metal detecting myself - I think it's the idea of finding hidden treasure that appeals so much to my inner-child.  Hopefully DN will enjoy himself with this, it was £3.50.

I bought a couple of items for selling on ebay.  This 'Glow in the Dark' Magnetix set - £2.00.

And for £1.50 this Crabtree and Evelyn travel gift set.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed these will do well as they'll be my last items listed before Christmas.

By special request, I got the only jar of blackcurrant jam they had for sale for my Mum (sure enough, after the bumper plum harvest this year, there was masses of plum jam for sale.)

And, for myself, a Country Living liquid soap and hand cream set - £1.00 and some Bourjois eye shadow - 15p. 

I was well pleased with what I managed to buy and I do hope they'll hold the bazaar again next year.  It was certainly doing a roaring trade and I gave up even trying to get near the china stall (lots of dealers in a rugby scrum-type huddle meaning no one else could get near,) and the toiletries stall was also doing a very brisk trade - but as that was mainly women trying to get a look the behaviour was a lot more decorous.

One of the Highlights of My Year

Tomorrow is one of the highlights of my thrifting year - the local Grand Christmas Bazaar - held at the same church where they have the weekly 'Coffee and Jumble.'  It's a two-day event but I only ever go on the Friday as I think the best stuff is already snapped up then (too lazy to get out of bed early on a Saturday is more the truth of the matter.) 

Anyway, this grand event is a bit late in the calendar this year - it's usually held in mid-November - and apparently there was some debate as to whether they'd bother holding it at all.  They do put in an enormous effort and the event is very well attended but as most of the helpers are pretty elderly they find it an awful lot of work. I'm not really surprised as it is very well laid out and there must be a heck of a lot of lifting and shifting of things involved.

So I've got a purse-full of small change at the ready, my shopping trolley has been fetched in from the shed and I'm fair raring to go.  I've had some great finds there in the past (blogged about here and here) and I'm keeping my paws crossed for more good stuff tomorrow.  

Stuff

After almost a year of being dark and shuttered, at long last our redundant Woolworth's store has been taken over by another retailer.  It's lovely to see the huge store-front open and alive once again and it adds a real buzz to the high street (which, with it's plethora of empty shops - including the Oxfam shop, it really needed.) 

The new shop is a 99p shop - everything is priced 99p or less.  It opened last Friday and, when I went past on the bus, it was absolutely heaving with people.  P had a quick look in there on Saturday afternoon but said it was so busy he had a job seeing what they had for sale.  I too went in, just to have a look-see, on Monday.  There were a few foodstuffs I might have bought if the queues had not been half way up the (very large) shop and I'm sure it might well prove to be a useful shop in the future.  Not as useful as Woolworths was - I never knew I'd miss good ol' Woolies as much as I have - but a reasonable alternative nonetheless.  However, what struck me when I was looking round was that most of the 'stuff' they sell (and I'm excepting the foodstuffs and toiletries here) was total tat - plastic rubbish imported by the container-load from some sweat-shop in China (probably), and yet people had such over-flowing baskets they could hardly hold them.  And I've seen people absolutely laden with 99p shop carrier bags in the high street.  Do they really need all this extra 'stuff,' or is it just destined for landfill in the new year?

Maybe I'm just getting to be a grumpy old woman, or maybe I've been reading too much about Freegans on the internet lately, but somehow this 99p shop, and the voracious appetite the public of Wickford seem to have for their tatty wares, makes me feel rather uneasy. 

Recently, I've been making a big effort to rid myself of a lot of my 'stuff' that's been cluttering up the house.  Every place I look in or every drawer I sort through, I find yet more 'stuff' that I really don't need or, even more worryingly, that I've forgotten I even had.  And as for the loft - please, don't even go there (I haven't for a few years!) goodness alone knows what's lurking up there - I sure as heck don't any more.  When did I manage to accumulate SO MUCH 'STUFF', and how big are other people's houses that they have the space to fill it with Chinese-made plastic crap?

But, do I practice what I preach?, absolutely not.  I may not be buying 'stuff' in the 99p shop but I can't resist the lure of a good bargain in a charity shop.  Today I came back from the high street clutching a Jeff Banks wool and cashmere blend gents tweed winter coat, which I hope will be suitable for P to wear to work.  It cost me, gulp, £7.00 - a bargain, I know for a good winter coat - and I've been assured that I can take it back if it's not suitable - which is really nice of them, but I don't know as I'd have the nerve to.  And, for myself, a totally unnecessary pair of chav-tastic star-shaped earrings, just because I really liked them.