Becoming Domestic

It must be human nature to want to acquire things. I used to love shopping and spending. These days I’m always trying to think of more ways to keep spending to a minimum.

A number of beautiful looking catalogues regularly come through the post addressed to me. I usually open them, flick through and then throw them in the recycling bin. I used to keep them and pour over them and use them to buy presents for Christmas or birthdays so I had improved. Today I decided to put a stop to temptation and to ask the companies wasting their catalogues on me by phoning up to ask to be removed from their mailing list. It is so much easier to not spend money on things you don’t actually need if you don’t see them.

Admitedly the Lakeland catalogue does look extremely enticing with its pretty spotted bowl full of salad on the front and I know it does have lovely things in it but I already have a huge number of nice things. I can live without whatever they are trying to sell me. They are trying to make money and that’s why they’ve produced a catalogue and sent it my way.

Here’s a fantastic list of easy ways to save money from The Times Online. Some really good ideas.

http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2008/02/the-thrifty-fif.html

I’m already doing some of them (cooking in bulk, using leftovers, magazine swapping with a friend each month, using a piggy bank for all my loose little bits of change, reusing pots and bread bags for storing sandwiches and leftovers in, using pan lids to keep in extra heat and turning off the hob a few minutes before the food is eaten) but was unaware of several choice gems including:

When taking your car for an MOT use a local council test centre rather than a private garage. The council centres do not offer repairs and therefore have no vested interest in failing your motor. Contact your local council for details of your nearest centre.

Check whether it’s cheaper to buy medicine over the counter rather than putting in a prescription. Many commonly prescribed medications, including painkillers, allergy tablets and dermatology creams, are also available over the counter without prescription. Often it’s much cheaper just to buy them this way, rather than paying the £6.85 flat prescription charge.

If you do buy fresh herbs and find it hard to get through a whole bunch, instead of throwing what’s left away make frozen stock cubes. Finely chop the herbs, put them in an ice cube tray and cover with oil. Put the tray in the freezer. When frozen, pop out the cubes and place them in a freezer bag for easier storage. Next time you need herbs for soups; pastas, etc. add a cube to your recipe and warm.

Being thrifty and frugal is definitely becoming strangely fashionable. Everyone’s talking about it, only a few are doing it…

Its a new long term project that has just emerged for this family but since Bealers has been Head of Veg Gardening and really enjoying it (having never planted or grown anything before he’s now growing chillis, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, peas, pumpkins, all manner of herbs and salad items, raspberries, strawberries and LOADS of potatoes!), since all the recent talk of predicted economic doom and gloom, soaring fuel prices/import costs as well as the UK’s ageing population, increased violence have lead us to believe that there may be some really tough times ahead for those not well equipped to look after their own. We have started to think seriously about becoming more self sufficient as a family and less reliant on others for food and energy requirements.

At present we’re not doing much more than a bit of idle internet research and have found a load of good sites (added to the blogroll here) but have also started to collect books on the subject of self sufficiency, allotment gardening and keeping chickens and livestock.

Bealers is now happily enrolled on a 10 week Beginners Carpentry evening course at the local college from September and I’m really keen to do the NVQ in hairdressing (but at the moment the small baby at home means I’m unable to leave the house without her). Other interests we’ve identified as being useful for those who aim to be more self sufficient are fishing, shooting, first aid, general building skills, plumbing, teaching and counselling, dressmaking, knitting, crocheting. About a lifetime ago I trained to be a primary school teacher and although I never actually got paid for doing it I do still sometimes have an urge to home educate our kids.

At the moment we are fairly close to being a typical modern family but perhaps where we differ is in our new attitude to doing things for ourselves. We are raising our children (twins aged five and a new baby) to know about food (cost, growing, preparation, nutrition), how to enjoy their free time without classes or clubs where people tell them what to do, to spend plenty of time in the fresh air and to understand that money is a finite resource which for most people is hard to come by and too easily spent. We teach them how to sweep, how to make their beds, how to hang clothes up, how to load/unload the washing machine, how to donate old things no longer required to the charity shop, how to borrow books from the library. We holiday in a twelve year old five berth touring caravan and we write letters to friends and family members. All this is fairly new to us as only two years ago we wer, like so many others, enjoying the luxuries that a two salary household could enjoy.

At present we rent a fairly big Victorian house with a good sized garden on a busy main road in rural Worcestershire but aim to one day live somewhere with enough land, outbuildings etc to grow vegetables, raise some animals for food (chickens, ducks, pigs?), to have access to somewhere to fish. We don’t know where this will be. We sold our house in London last year and now are settled and happy enough for the time being where we are taking the small steps towards a totally different lifestyle to our old city ways.

The only conundrum for me is how we will have enough time and energy to manage such a lifestyle. At present we watch very little television, have not much time for sitting and reading, I get up with the three kids early in the morning and I am just finishing cleaning, washing, drying, feeding etc by the time it is our bedtime. My hope is that as they grow older they will be more independent on us and will have their own role to play, Bealers will presumably work away from the home less as theoretically we will need less cash to pay for things and will therefore have more time to spend on managing our home environment.

http://www.selfsufficientish.com/forum/

http://www.goselfsufficient.co.uk/

http://www.simpleliving.net

http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/

As we were fortunate enough to be given LOADS of second hand washable nappies I am really enjoying not having to use disposable nappies which I’m glad about as disposables cost a fortune (about £10 for a week’s worth of botty changes) and they also are super stinky in the household refuse bin (even when bagged in a nappy sack). The washable nappies are collected throughout the day in a lidded pail with a mesh drawstring bag as a liner and few drops of tea tree oil to keep fresh and they are washed with a load of laundry at 40 degrees each evening or every other evening if I’m feeling slack (we have so many I don’t ever run out of nappies).

Before our baby arrived three months ago I wasn’t aware that people who use washable nappies also tend to use washable wipes and I had stocked up on a box of ‘environmentally friendly’ disposable wipes. These went fairly quickly and it was just by chance that I came across a woman on eBay selling brand new washable wipes made from fleece in a huge range of cheery patterns. I bought one pack of 10 from her (£1.50) then another and now we just use lovely pure warm water to clean the baby. The fleecey squares are kept in a little basket near to the babe’s changing station.

They are so soft and really big that the task of cleaning a really nasty nappy is far less trouble with these cloths than with any thin shop-bought tissuey wet wipe which must be full of chemicals. They get popped into the nappy pail along with the nappy and being fleece they don’t colour run in the wash.

I always have a few in my baby’s changing bag and get lovely comments about how pretty, soft, thick and useful they are. When the bub starts to eat solid food I’m sure I will get through plenty as little face cloths. I shudder to think how much I spent on disposable nappies + wipes with the twins before they were toilet trained it must have been close to £2,000 during the two years of their lives.

I was fed up of watching steel ‘TP’ climbing frames go for more than I wanted to pay on eBay. I’d decided a while ago that a climbing frame would be a great investment in my kids health and had some money given to them for Christmas by their Aunty and Grandma in the giant piggy bank in my bedroom. I was prepared to spend £126.79 I decided but all the TP Challenger Frames near enough to us to collect were being sold for £170. Very occasionally some kind soul would offer a metal climbing frame on Freecycle but was overwhelmed by responses.

I lamented to Bealers that there should be something ‘between local Freecycle groups and eBay’ to which he suggested I try the Malvern FlogIt/SwapIt group. I’m thrilled to have signed up as its is similar to Freecycle in the way that messages are distributed to subscribers but people are able sell things second hand via an email description and can put out ‘Wanted’ adverts too which is exactly what I did. After posting that we were after a climbing frame a local family got in touch saying they would be happy to sell us their frame + slide for slightly less than my top price would have been on eBay.

Both parties are happy as they did not need to go to the bother of photographing and description writing for an eBay sale, they made money from something that had been gathering dust in their garage since they moved and we did not have the stress of bidding against others and watching the price rise. My kids are beyond thrilled and so are we to have such a fine piece of equipment for such a brilliant price. Admittedly I do now owe my blessed husband a day of his time…

The new climbing frame - halfway assembled (it now has a slide & scramble net too)

Mmm-mm. Whilst sorting out my cupboard I found 3 full bags of red lentils which is a lot for someone who only knows one recipe calling for red lentils. As we are keen to use up store cupboard supplies in light of my recent thoughts on food prices increasing but me being determined not to let any more of our income go on the weekly food shop thought I’d better increase my lentil repetoire.

A quick search on ‘red lentil recipe’ came up trumps as one of the first recipes I found (on the BBC Recipe website) was for a quick, easy and tasty sounding dish, was gluten-free and I just so happened to have all the ingredients for (apart from the cream so I just omitted it). I added a bit more cayenne than it called for too (2 teaspoons instead of 1/2). It was delicious and what’s more the Meat Lovin’ Husband thought it was tasty too. We had it with a green salad with a lemon juice, olive oil, sun dried tomato paste dressing.

Ingredients
175g/6oz red lentils
350ml/12fl oz water
110g/4oz cheddar cheese, grated
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
½ tsp cayenne pepper
a little lemon juice
1 large egg
3 tbsp single cream
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp butter

Method
1. preheat the oven 190C/375F/Gas 5.
2. Pick over the lentils for any sticks and stones. Rinse thoroughly and cook in a tightly covered pan with the water for 10-15 minutes. Check after 10 minutes in case you need to add more water. The mixture should cook to a stiff purée.
3. Remove the pan from the heat and mix in the grated cheese, chopped onion, parsley, cayenne pepper and lemon juice. Season to taste.
4. In a separate bowl lightly beat the egg, stir in the cream and pour this mixture over the lentils.
5. Grease a 450g/1lb loaf tin with the tsp of butter and press in the mixture.
6. Bake for 45-50 minutes until the top is golden brown and the mixture feels firm to the touch.
7. If you are serving this loaf hot, let it stand for 10 minutes in the tin before turning it out. Alternatively, serve cold with a salad.

I was a bit shocked to see that we had overspent by £175 on our Housekeeping account but it is not yet the end of the month. My initial reaction was to be cross with myself for not keeping on top of the spending, for not sticking to the budget and for not doing things like menu planning. I also assumed that the overspend was due in part to the fact we have had lots of friends and family come to stay recently and on these occasions we tend to cook some special meals and have more beer and wine than we do when are at home alone and had eaten out several times.

I chatted to Bealers about our overspend expecting him to be annoyed but in fact he wasn’t and instead he mentioned the fact that a friend of ours had written about rising food costs

When I read her blog post & comments from others where recent increases in food prices had been noticed by individuals but downplayed by the media I realised that our overspend was not a one off as I scanned our grocery receipts and looked for where the obvious luxuries had increased the food bill but couldn’t actually find any.

If food and other household essentials are to take a bigger part of our monthly income we decided to take the following action steps to ensure that we are still able to live within our means and not nibble away at our savings.

1. Be stricter with our weekly food shop and prepare meal plans in advance
2. Cook simple, low cost meals (shepherd’s pie, vegetable pasta sauces, risotto, omlettes, soups) instead of fancy meals with exotic ingredients (Thai vegetable green curry, pizzas with pepperoni & mozerella)
3. Use online grocery shopping as less tempted by ‘off list’ things and can also tally up the total before getting to the checkout
4. Eat less meat (especially as we buy organic meat which is more expensive than tasteless factory farmed meat) and buy fewer gluten-free cakey treats
5. Buy zero pre-prepared food. Hard as we buy very little but do usually have veggie sausages etc in the freezer
6. Use the food in the freezer, cupboards at the end of the month instead of buying more food (eg. use the bread machine to use the packets of bread flour instead of buying loaves costing £1.10)
7. Have an emptier fridge so we can see at a glance what it contains rather than having things going off at the back
8. Buy fewer convenience foods for the children (don’t buy many anyway but had got into the habit of buying small juice cartons for lunch boxes but the kids take a bottle of water to school anyway)
9. Buy in bulk for things we use a lot of where possible (eg. potatoes, carrots, beer, meat) at the beginning of the month having worked out approximatly how much we’ll need and try to use no more (just like people used to do in days gone by according to Mrs Beeton’s book of household management)
10. Plant and grow plenty of vegetables we use a lot of or ones that can be used for lots of different recipes (eg. tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, parsnips)
11. Explore the ‘Value’ range at the supermarket - already buy Value butter and this week discovered that the kids don’t care about the Value bourbons in the biscuit tin or the Value fromage frais in the packed lunches.

Luckily for my purse and our bank balance we don’t live near to any shops apart from the butcher, the bakery, a small grocery shop and a few charity shops (full of old ladies’ things mainly). When we lived in East London and I worked in the City I found that the majority of my spare time was spent idly wandering around the shops with no real purpose.

I often came home with plenty of so-called bargains as we lived near to cheap shops like Primark, Matalan, Woolworths, Superdrug, Tesco and Poundland and for about five minutes I would feel great. Over time the house became full of stuff. I had several gift drawers stuffed full of things that could be given away as presents, every cupboard was full and so were all the shelves and the loft and cellar too. The things I bought cost little per item but over time the amount spent was almost certainly huge (especially as the idle purchasing had started when I was a young teenager with pocket money frittering tendancies). Buying everything cheap and new ensured that somewhere in the world factories manufacturing these good were profiting from my spending and that the goods had been shipped around the planet using unnecessary energy. More often than not the new things were broken and therefore discarded shortly after they arrived in our lives and so filled up a tiny bit more of the world’s landfill with non-biodegradable junk.

Recently (about 18 months ago) I’ve been consciously de-junking our lives a little at a time (and still the house is very far from being stark or empty). I’ve taken loads of boxes of books to our local library where they either add them to their collection or sell them for cash, loads of clothes and linens to my favourite charity shop (worth noting that I only found out last week that they will happily take bags of unsellable clothes (ripped, stained, old underwear, threadbare towels, unfashionable things) if they are in a bag marked ‘Rags’. They can sell these for money to another purchaser. We’ve freecycled larger items and sold just a few on eBay and I’ve used most of the things in the gifts stash as gifts for people.

The fantastic feeling each time I get rid of further unwanted things from our lives is very similar to the buzz of previous years after another shopping spree. It feels fantastic to be liberated of things that are neither useful nor give any pleasure due to their aesthetics. For items I have a irrational reluctance to part with I stash them away into a trunk and then several months later I am able to prove to myself that I have lived happily without it and had actually forgotten that it existed at all.

Read the rest of this entry »

Having read a leaflet entitled ‘Real Nappies’ about informal drop in sessions being held locally for people wishing to find out more about using washable nappies I went along to a ‘Nappacino’ event and saw a very knowledgeable woman who knows all about using disposable nappies as a cheaper, more environmentally friendly and altogether less stinky alternative to using costly disposables which are well documented to be an expensive, highly processed, chemical containing, non-degradable yet time saving modern phenomenon. She bought along samples of the range available to parents and took the time to explain in great detail why cloth nappies are so wonderful.

I’ve been exceedingly lucky to have been given nearly 20 brand new OneLife ‘birth-to-potty’ cloth shaped nappies by my very good friend Jane to use for our newest child when it is here. I’ve also collected another 15+ of various other brands from generous Freecyclers in response to an advert I placed several months ago.

I went along to the ‘Nappacino’ event held by the local council in conjunction with Mandie who sells reusable washable nappies at her baby shop (www.honeybees-store.co.uk). I went because I wasn’t sure whether I had enough nappies, whether they were the right size or whether I needed any extra equipment.

My friend who also came along and I were both astounded to learn that there is still A LOT of awareness building to be done as so many parents-to-be just don’t know how lovely and how cheap washable nappies can be in comparison to nasty old disposables.

When my kids were in nappies (2003-2005) there were always some evil smelling nappy sacks containing foul nappies waiting to be taken outside to the bin, in the summer the wheelie bin would reek with a weeks worth of nappies being roasted inside. We added at least £10 extra to each weekly shop to cover a packet of nappies and calculated that we probably spent getting on for £1000 on disposables before they were potty trained. It was only when they were nearly 2 that I learned that had disposable nappies been around in King Henry VIII’s time we would still be surrounded by his generation’s festering nappies today a good 500 years later as they are not biodegradable. Yuck! Read the rest of this entry »

This week I realised I have managed to gather everything I will need for the expected new addition to our family due sometime in January.

The icing on the cake was being the winning bidder on eBay for a fantastic Graco travel system/pram/pushchair/car seat (*with* senior & junior cupholders!) which is a bit of a dream come true for me as I was limited to chunky, basic twin pushchairs when expecting the twins five years ago - all my friends with solo babies were choosing lovely prams with extra added sophistication. The purchase was especially gratifying as I ‘won’ it for £17 instead of the r.r.p of £180. Definitely my kind of pram.

As I have mentioned before we have been aiming to spend as little as possible on this newbie given that so much of the kit needed to make life comfortable with a pregnant bump or a new baby is required for such a short amount of time it makes little sense spend loads buying it all brand new from the many shops selling expensive baby gear.

When we had our twins 5 years ago we spent an aboslute fortune on kitting out a nursery, a double pram, two single buggies, huge packs of disposable nappies each week, toys etc etc. I was working in the City and Bealers had a successful software business so we didn’t even flinch at the fact that within a year over £10k had been squandered on two very small beings. Yikes! It would take a long time to save that kind of money and surely there are much more fun things to buy than baby related paraphenalia?

At the begining of this pregnancy I made a list of all the things I thought we would need this time round for a baby. This was obviously much easier having gained the knowledge of what baby things we found useful last time with both kids.

I also sent a slightly grovelly message round to friends with children asking them to think of us if they were passing on any baby things to charity as we’d gladly take them off their hands. So many people have been so kind with huge bags of lovely barely used baby booty now neatly stacked up ready for action in the spare room.

Despite the desire to keep things frugal and thrifty I have still totted up a grand total of £550.

Admitedly, we did decide to buy fewthings new which I hadn’t anticipated which made the total higher than it needed to be. For example I bought a brand new Amby Nature Nest baby hammock (£180) for the young ‘un to sleep despite being given a lovely moses basket. The hammock will hopefully double up as a travel cot too when we travel to see friends & relatives. I also spent what seemed like a lot of money on six new nursing tops + two bras (about £100) as I couldn’t find the ones I wanted on eBay - I figured the amount of use/washing they get subjected to over the course of the year or so they are in action it would be wise to buy new, well fitting, well made garments.

Here is the master list of things we wanted to get prior to Junior’s arrival, where we got it from and how much money things would have been had we bought it all new from a mid-range shop (e.g Mothercare)

• GIVEN: Moses basket (Thanks Kurt & Mandy! would have been £60)
  
• GIVEN: Changing table (thanks Sam! would have been £50)
• GIVEN: [Many thanks to Nat, Jonesy, Katie and Beki! ] Cardies, jackets, socks, hats, mittens, bibs, vests & baby grow, nursing pads,boob soothers, cream x 2, blankets (would have been £100)
• GIVEN: (Many thanks to Katie) Luxury nursing pillow (’My Brest Friend’ would have been £50)
• GIVEN: (Many thanks to Katie & Beki): 2 x Pumps (would have been £50)
• GIVEN: Tommy Tippee steriliser + bottles (huge thanks to Natalie would have been £50)
• GIVEN: Monitor (thank you Jules would have been £20)
• Given via Freecycle: Reusable, washable nappies x 20 (would have been £200)
• Bought 2nd Hand: Baby swing chair [£5 NCT nearly new sale would have been £40 new]
• Bought 2nd Hand: Baby play mats [£7 NCT nearly new sale] would have been £20 new
  
• Bought 2nd Hand: Nappy soak bucket (£3 NCT nearly new sale would have been £10 new]
• Bought 2nd Hand: Bump wedge [£3 NCT nearly new sale would have been £10]
• Bought 2nd Hand: Pram [eBay £17 Graco travel system incl. infant car seat/carrier would have been £180]
• Bought 2nd Hand: Bundle of maternity clothes (eBay £9 would have been £100)

• HIRED: TENS machine (£25 hire from www.expressyourselfmums.co.uk)
• Bought new: Nursing shawl wrap (£30 from www.expressyourselfmums.co.uk)
• Bought new: reast milk freezing bags (£10 from www.expressyourselfmums.co.uk)
• Bought new: : Nursing long sleeved and t-shirt tops (6 x tops £69 from Jojomamanbebe)
• Bought new: : Pack of two fitted moses basket/pram sheets (Matalan £3)
• Bought new: : Nappy change mat (£7 Matalan)
• Bought new: Gym/birth ball (birth-ease eBay £14.99)

• Bought new: Wrap around sling (http://www.closebabycarrier.com [£49.50]

• Bought new: Nursing bras x 2 [£50]
• Bought new: Amby nature nest hammock + pack of 2 x fitted sheets [£180]
• Bought new: Maternity sweaters x 2 + black leggings, jeans etc Mothercare and Next clearance warehouse [£60]

£545 = Total Spend

Of which were unnecessary brand new luxuries: £267= £180 Amby nature Nest + sling £50 + changing mat £7 + Shawl £30

£278 = Actual cost of thrift pregnancy/newborn babe

£1500 = Estimated spend if everything on the above list had been bought from new

The next step will be to ensure that everything we have gathered for our little chick is either passed back to its previous owners if they have further use for it, advertised on Freecycle or, in the case of the expensive things we bought brand new, sold as 2nd hand on eBay.