Why are you frugal? A quick poll

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 1 December 2010 in frugal, meta | 7 comments

I follow a lot of frugal, green, simple living and growing blogs – some of my favourites are listed in the sidebar but I read many, many more. Amongst all the great advice and ideas, I’ve noticed that just about everyone has their own reason for being frugal or growing their own – and that’s made me wonder what drives me/us too. What drives you?

I’ve listed what I think are a dozen reasonably common reasons for frugality here – but I’m sure there are many, many more reasons for it — and for many people, it won’t be just one thing, it’ll be a combination of a few – so feel free to tick as many as applicable.

For me, it’s a certainly a combination of more than a few! I’ve always looked after the pennies and I think I’d still look for offers/bargains even if I had a million pounds, I think it’s an unchangeable trait now.

Living cheaply allowed us the freedom to quit the shackles of our full time jobs and start working for ourselves – and it still allows us to do what interests us rather than needing earn a fortune to pay the bills.

I am a greeny and I abhor easily avoidable waste, and related to that, I also strongly dislike excessive consumerism – so I guess that’s part of my drive too. There are elements of frugality I find fun – cooking, growing, making etc – and I like having hobbies that help me save money and live well. I’m also definitely be ticking the “thrill of a good deal” box! Frugality isn’t all doom and gloom as far as I’m concerned.

So what about you? What drives you to be frugal? Is there something I’ve missed off the poll list?

Feeding the birds through the winter – how do you do it?

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 30 November 2010 in frugal, growing | 1 comment

I don’t mean feeding the girls, they get more than enough. No, I mean feeding wild birds. Last winter, we had bird feeder on the balcony stocked with wild bird seed and nuts from our local miscellanea store – I think the squirrels raided it more than the birds but we regularly saw feathered ones at it too. We went through quite a lot of feed during the six weeks of snow.

Back in September, Colette at the Permaculture Cottage wrote about how wasteful it is to spend money – and all the carbon cost – of importing peanuts & seeds to feed to wild birds, when there are other alternatives. I had a bit of a smack-my-forehead moment when I read that – I’m doing all I can to minimise our food miles but importing food for them.

Colette has noted a number of trees & plants that are good for providing winter food – those suggestions alone are a good starting point for me. I try to maximise the good growing ground in our garden for food for us but further down the garden, in the shade of the trees, there might be some space for bird-friendly bushes. Perhaps my living fence shouldn’t be all focused around our wants & needs…

Alternately, Kate from Living the Frugal Life grows sunflowers in the summer for their nectar and cheer – and for the free-bird-feed seeds to use over winter. I’m tempted to use some of our under-utilised front garden to grow sunflowers next year – although I suspect I’d be tempted to offer at least some of the seeds to our chickens…

Do you feed the wild birds in your garden over winter? Do you buy in feed or do you grow your own? If so, what do you grow? I’d love to hear your comments/suggestions.

(Photo by PsychoPxL – I tried to take my own version but every time I went outside all the birds disappeared, the little pesks!)

Bad buys: nearly all the clothes I’ve ever bought off eBay

Posted by louisa on Friday 26 November 2010 in bad buys | 4 comments

Another in my occasional series of laments about bad buys I’ve made.

I love eBay. We call our house “the house that eBay built” because we bought so much stuff – appliances, furniture, accessories – off eBay in the first few months after we moved in. I use it as a find-anything bazaar and a virtual charity shop. But I’ve had failure after failure when it comes to buying clothes off there.

From seeing just one or two deliberately flattering pictures of the item, I create a best-possible-case 3D animation in my head: me wearing the item, it fitting perfectly and looking great. Surely that’s worth £1.50 plus p&p! Unless it’s something that really excites me, I won’t get caught up in eBay drama or bidding wars – my bids stay charity-shop-price low and if I get outbid then nevermind. But often enough, I do win and my “fits perfectly, looks great” fantasy continues for a few days until it arrives.

It’s happened with the weirdly (deliberately) patchwork leather jacket, the far too boxy polyester Hawaiian shirt, the strappy tops which were apparently made for someone with a half-sized torso, the “I could fit three of us in there and we’d all look like weird scientists” dressing gown, the shoes in the picture are nice but super narrow (and clearly very cheap quality to start with)… I could go on and on. None of these items have cost more than a few quid all in, but those few quids do add up.

Winter preparations now it’s winter – things still to do

Posted by louisa on Thursday 25 November 2010 in frugal, green | 2 comments

We’ve had our first snow of the winter today – quite heavy flurries but not sustained. There are few snowy patches around the garden but the sun, which is shining brightly in between the showers, is quickly turning the snow to transparent ice or melting it all together.

Or at least that looks like what’s happening from up here. Even before I knew it was going to snow today, I’d decided to do the frugal thing and stay in bed for as long as possible. I’m still there now. I’ve got up for a few dashes around the house – feeding the animals & myself, a wee run, a delivery arriving – but other than that, I’ve stayed under the duvet and not had to use any form of heating for five hours and counting. (John’s out at his office today, I’ve got all the cats & dog as mobile heaters up here with me.) I will have to get up soon to take the dog for a walk and probably won’t return to bed again after that but until now, *warm*. My view has been of tree tops not trunks today:

This weekend is supposed to be a very cold one. Around here (Yorkshire), it’s not supposed to get above freezing at all on Saturday – and that’ll be positively tropical compared to other parts of the country. It’s the first time I remember it being this cold in November – the colder weather has usually waited until late December (as happened last year) or well into January or February (as is more typical). It’s made me realise how far behind I am on my “things to do for winter” list… I’ve done some of the stuff on it – some important stuff like curtains for our office, which makes a considerable difference down there – but not other bits.

Five frugal ways I’ll be staying warm this winter

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 23 November 2010 in frugal | 6 comments

This winter looks like it’s set to be a cold one – and that means that heating bills can easily go through the roof. But there are plenty of frugal ways to keep warm without resorting to hugging a radiator – here are five things we’ll be doing this winter to stay warm on the cheap.

1. Staying in bed

Mmm, bed. I love it when it’s frugal to be lazy…

I was chatting to my mum & dad on instant messenger the other day and they commented that even though it was 11:30am or so, they’d only just got up and “saved on three hours of heating”. My dad is retired and my mum only works part time so they spend a lot of time at home – but instead of getting up & relocating to their needs-heating living room, they had breakfast & read in bed until they had to get up to do other things.

Here, we work from home and use laptops so it’s easy for us to start the day up there. Working at desks helps us concentrate later on but the start of the day stuff – checking email, websites, writing to-do lists – that can be done from bed with our animals around us for extra warmth.

We’ve put in hours of hard work building up a cocoon of warmth overnight – we should make the most of it!

2. Getting our blood flowing

Frugal, cooking, growing and making link love

Posted by louisa on Friday 19 November 2010 in chickens, cooking, frugal, growing, meta, wood stuff | 2 comments

It’s super foggy here this morning so I need some ace inspiration to get going – and I thought you might need some too. Here are some of my favourite reads from the last few weeks…

• Ana White makes things that always excite me – demystifying woodwork and creating fab bits of furniture cheaply and easily. I think her old Knock Off Wood blog was the site that most inspired me to pick up a saw and screwdriver – and I just love her most recent side-table – and her “paint it bright” philosophy!
• One thing I was missing when I made my meal from just things I’d grown/caught/foraged was salt – now thanks to ManUpATree, I’m inspired to try making some myself – just got to find some clean enough sea water…
• Gillian of My Tiny Plot neatly summarised Which? Gardening’s heritage versus hybrid veg article – very useful info, thanks Gillian!
• Damn the Broccoli gave us some useful tips on staying warm but keeping the heating bills low…
• Compostwoman of The Compost Bin has been writing about… composting. Specifically, how she does it – and a very seasonal post on how to make leaf mould.
• And finally, Little House in the Suburbs recently ran a seven part series asking their community about lots of aspects of chicken keeping. I’ve contributed a number of times and loved reading what other people had to say – lots of very good advice and suggestions.

(For anyone who cares, the first is from the top of our garden, looking into the woods next door/at the bottom of the garden – and our chicken coop is in the bottom right; the second is the bandy trees at the bottom of our garden, just behind the chicken run; and the third is over our wood pile to the north, we can’t see our neighbour in that direction in the summer – or when it’s foggy!)