Giving Approved Foods a try

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 19 April 2011 in frugal | 2 comments

My first order from Approved Foods arrived yesterday.

I first heard about Approved Foods back in 2008 when I was sent an email about it through Recycle This – they help reduce food waste by selling items close-to or just-passed their best before dates — the online equivalent of those cheap food stalls at markets or car boot sales. I remember looking at the site but not being too impressed – the range was limited and tended to be cheaper processed stuff I wouldn’t buy, plus there was a hefty p&p cost pretty much wiped out any savings I’d make on the few things I might buy. Fast forward a year maybe, and I’m reminded of it again but still the same feeling. Then over the last few months, the Frugal Queen has repeatedly spoken of its greatness (and cheapness) so I thought it was worth another look.

The range still doesn’t excite me that much but these are what persuaded me to give it a go in the end:

Deidentified (*cough Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference cough*) mixed Provencal olives and Nouvelle toilet tissue. Two things I buy in the normal course of things, especially when they’re on offer – those olives are just about my favourite supermarket olives. Both were about half their usual RRP. I bought 10 jars of the olives – I like them a lot and they’ve got a long date on them. In fact everything I bought had a decent date on them – the only things after their best before date were two bags of crisps (and their date was only a week ago so they’ll be fine).

The p&p is still pretty hefty – £5.25 for normal UK mainland delivery but it’s for up to 25kg worth of goods so it would be possible to split the cost with a friend and still both be able to buy a decent amount of stuff. I tried to persuade Strowger with the lure of the olives but their stones were their downfall so ended up doing it solo instead. Still, even with having to pay the p&p all by myself, my total was £27.13 for a basket of stuff with an RRP of £46.58 – an overall discount of 42%.

Of course, the RRP stuff is slightly meaningless if you usually buy stuff when it’s on offer (as I do with a lot of stuff and almost always do with [recycled] toilet rolls, for example). I also bought some stuff that I probably wouldn’t buy in the normal case of events – for example, some shortcrust pastry mix. The mix will get used so it’s not a waste of money but it doesn’t feel like I’ll be saving any money because I won’t have to buy them next time I go to the supermarket. I did also buy some Jules Destrooper butter waffle biscuits as an impulse buy because they were cheap – and that’s going to cost me a lot in the future because, my God, they’re fantastically moreish.

I can’t see myself buying stuff from there that regularly – I will keep a closer eye on it from now on in case any more of my favourites come up but the p&p still makes it prohibitive for small orders. I did also get a lots of plastic-based packaging – I appreciate that they wanted to keep my precious olives safe with bubble wrap but the big bag of foam nuggets in with my flour (to, presumably, stop it knocking about) made me much less happy from a green point of view.

Have you used/do you use Approved Foods or any other services like that? Any recommendations/things to avoid advice?

Shopping my wardrobe for shirts

Posted by louisa on Friday 15 April 2011 in frugal, less than 12 clothes challenge | 8 comments

Last night, I decided to go shopping in my wardrobe for shirts.

It’s about five months since I bought (or acquired by any means) any items of clothing or related apparel. The less than 12 in 11 challenge has been easier than I thought in many ways and my tally for the year is still zero – but recently I’ve been getting a bit more tempted towards breaking that embargo. After the long winter, I’m a little bored of my warm woollie options (or rather warm cotton hoodie options) and lately I’ve been getting a bit meh about my selection of my Spring-suitable tops too. A couple of weeks ago, I sorted out my chest-of-drawers drawers, which was great for refreshing my memory about my t-shirts and last night it was the shirts in the wardrobe’s turn.

I had 29 shirts & blouses in my wardrobe and another one in the wash. How many of those 30 shirts have I worn in the last month or, hell, the last three months? One. The one that’s in the wash (I’ve worn that all of twice). Admittedly it’s not really been light-cotton-shirt season of late and I don’t have anywhere that requires me to be smartly dressed but still – that’s a lot of shirts for someone who doesn’t wear shirts much. Ten – one-third – of the shirts were solid black from the days when I wore solid black shirts as a work uniform and standard going out wear. No one needs ten black shirts. Last night, I dragged them all down into the living room and tried them all on in turn (giving John a free boob flashing floor show at each iteration).

Of those 30 shirts, 14 straight up didn’t fit. They were either too short (especially as I wear my jeans low) or didn’t come close to closing around the boobs (I’ve got somewhat large sweater cows), or both. I think I’d kept at least half a dozen out of wishful thinking – because I love the patterns so much and won’t be able to replace them. The one at the back of the picture above with green stars on it hasn’t ever been worn because not only was it a little snug upfront, the arm holes were blood-pressure-band tight on me. (Having said that, it’s a lovely, lovely shirt – if anyone wants it, let me know and I’ll post it out. It’s a size 14 and there is a bigger picture here.) Those shirts will go to charity shops or into my crafty fabric stash depending on re-wearability/pattern.

Out of the remaining 16 shirts, two need repairing (button replacements) and five need to be worn over a vest top or under a jumper. Nine – less than a third of my shirt collection – were fine — they fit and I still like them.

Getting rid of nearly half my shirts might not sound like “shopping” but it was really useful to go through them all and remind myself what I have (I’d straight up forgotten about at least three of the keepers), and what they look like/how they can be worn. I think I’d stopped even thinking about wearing shirts because it was depressing to look in my wardrobe and see so many that didn’t fit or couldn’t be worn as they are for whatever reason. Looking at it one way, I’m losing near half my shirt collection; looking at it another way, I just gained nine new shirts ;)

March – end of month review

Posted by louisa on Thursday 31 March 2011 in growing, less than 12 clothes challenge, personal finance | 15 comments

March has been a rather expensive and stressful month as we’ve been having our bathroom fitted and a ridiculous amount of things went wrong. But at the same time, we’ve also learnt some new skills and had some lovely Spring days – just how fantastic is it that the world is turning green again?

Goals in 2011 progress

As in February, I’m working towards a few goals if not anywhere near completing them yet. I’ve sown a lot of seeds for veg – unfortunately lost a lot of baby seedlings to damping off and other bad propagator management but I’m learning all the time. We should have our first fully homegrown 2011 salad in the next few weeks.

I’ve not been baking that much but the four loaves we made each on our baking course at the weekend keep up my average ;) They were sourdough loaves and we also now have starters from them – not quite growing one from scratch but I’ll be satisfied if I can keep that alive and bake from it.

We’ve also been on a screenprinting course – which isn’t one of the simple living goals mentioned here but is on my personal goals list – and enjoyed it a lot. We’re booked in for another session the week after next and I’ve already got a few things worked out that I’d like to print.

Buy less than 12 items of clothing in 2011

Even though I thought I’d cave this month, my tally is still at zero. I have been looking at things online but nothing has wowed me enough for me to get out my credit card. I did add some things to basket a couple of weeks ago but deliberately left it overnight to see how I felt about them in the morning – and in the morning, I was indifferent. I quite like that.

I think a Spring jacket may break my embargo – my short woolly swing coat is a little too warm at the moment but my hoodie is at the dog-walking stage of its lifecycle. We’ll see.

One other thing: one day, while putting away laundry, I sorted through all the t-shirts/tops I have in my chest of drawers. I didn’t get rid of anything, just tidied into related piles and refolded – I rediscovered a few tops which got looked over in the usual heap format of my drawers. Shopping your own wardrobe/drawers rules!

Growing stuff and the chickens

As I mentioned above, the growing stuff thing is going well-ish. I might live to regret it if there is a cold spell in the next few weeks but I planted out my broad bean seedlings yesterday. I’ve got two lots of potatoes sown in “bags”. My tomato seedlings – the ones that survived the Great Damping Off Crisis of 2011 – are beautifully leafy. My cucumbers and pumpkins look green and luscious. The chillis & peppers are growing slowly but looking good. The radish seedlings numerous, the cauliflowers hanging in there and various lettuce & salad leaves at varying stages of sprouting but looking very promising. On the fruit front, John B gave us some jostaberry canes so they’re in the ground too now. All our other berry bushes & fruit trees are budding/leafing well (the photo above is one of the apple trees), and the two strawberry runners that I thought had died have proved me wrong. Basically, it’s all go in the garden, greenhouse & propagator!

The chickens are doing well – they’ve met our nephew on a couple of occasions (our 4 year old niece comes to visit sometimes too, and John’s young cousins, but at 13 months old, the ‘phew is their youngest visitor to date) and got an new layer of woodchips to scratch around in. In return, they’ve given us a magnificent 200 eggs exactly (well, exact at this point – if I go down later, there may be another one). That’s an average of 6.45 a day, at a rough average of 8p per egg in consumables (£12 ish of food, and about £4 for straw, shavings, seed treats & powders).

Adventures in frugal vertical gardening – ideas for planters?

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 29 March 2011 in frugal, growing, making, wood stuff | 9 comments

Got a dull flat wall I’d like to “vertical garden” up – need to make/acquire/modify some planters. Any suggestions? Need to be cheap/free :)

I asked that grammatically horrific question on Twitter last Thursday but I thought I’d bring it over here as well to catch non-Twitterers but also to put together some of my ideas/questions.

I’ve actually got two flat walls that would be perfect for wall planters and the like but I’m going to focus on the bigger one first. It’s on the greenhouse level of our garden and has a super narrow (about a foot wide) bed at the bottom of it. I intended to grow beans and peas in the bed last year – trained up the wall – but the slugs put an end to that. Courgettes grew quite happily in it after all the peas got eaten but I think from this year onwards, it’ll work better as shrubby-herb bed (especially as it means I don’t have to put those elsewhere now). Since they won’t climb up, there will be a lot of vertical height going spare. More of an issue for when I reach the planting stage but if anyone’s interest, the wall is east facing, receiving sun until about 1-2pm.

So what can I use for planters? There are lots of different planters available to buy – in all sorts of materials – but they seem to fall into a few general categories:

• shelves – from basic wood to fancy wrought iron curves & cages. Even the flatter, plainer shelves, usually have a rim or lip around the sides so pots don’t get blown out or down. For use with separate pots.
• window boxes – wall mounted troughs which, unlike the shelves, are planted into directly.
• half moon wall planters – semi-circular troughs a cross between window boxes and hanging baskets.
• hanging baskets – suspended away from the wall on a strong bracket or a hook. A few levels can be hung together like rainchains.
• “floating” pots – either like this lead one from Gardeners World, this integrated hooks/trellis arrangement or just pots on hooks. Some, like the lead one, have pots fixed in position, whereas others can be moved around – for example, pots with individual hooks attached can be put anywhere on a trellis.
• bags – suspended bags filled with soil, with holes cut into the (randomly) bag for the plants. Felt pocket hangers are a cross between the floating pots and these bags. Some bags (like better feather duvets) are divided into different compartments so the soil doesn’t all slump to the bottom – but this does restrict root growth.
• complex living wall systems – patented growing secrets! Lots of different designs/methods – some of them seem to be grid structures filled with compost, others structured bags behind trellis type things, others still who knows? possibly pure magic.

I certainly can’t afford a fancy living wall system but even filling the space with purpose-built troughs/window boxes, wall planters and hanging baskets would cost more than I’d like. (I do have some that I can repurpose from elsewhere in the garden but I’ll have to replace those containers somehow or I won’t be adding to my overall growing space. Some are also self-watering which would be beneficial). As always, I’ll keep an eye out on eBay/Freegle for giveaways but in the meantime, I guess I need to get making…

Supplementing our chickens’ feed with free greens?

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 8 March 2011 in chickens, frugal, growing, wild food | 11 comments

We popped to the feed store in Shipley on Saturday to buy another couple of bags of layers pellets for our girls – a sack last them about three weeks these days.

As we were paying, the owner noted that they’d gone up in price “again” – to £8.45 a 25kg bag. It’s still considerably cheaper per kg than when we were getting pellets from a different store (albeit one that delivered) but thanks to my chicken keeping spreadsheets, I know they’ve gone up twice within six months – they were £7.80 a bag when we first bought that brand in September, then £8.00, now £8.45.

Split over price per kilogram or per day of consumption, it’s not that much of a leap – about 2p extra a day, split between 7 of them, averaging just under 6 eggs a day. But it is a worrying trend — part of the general increase of prices and food costs in particular — and it’s got me thinking again about how to supplement their diet for free/very cheap. It’s not just about the money, it’s about food security – if we can find food for them, they’ll provide food for us.

Last summer, they loved the borage I grew and I also foraged random bits for them – plenty of dandelion leaves & wilted nettles as well as bits of fruit (including the dry pulp left after cider or wine making). Over winter, I’d planned to grow lots of kale and spring cabbage to keep them stocked up on greens in this scarce period – but I think I started them too late and then lost most of them to slugs anyway. I also intended to collect acorns (like Kate from Living the Frugal Life) but didn’t get around to it (I just couldn’t work out how to collect them in bulk in the (public but rarely used) areas where they fell, without having to pick them all up individually, then I saw someone had collected them with a rake. Genius.) As a result, their own free “treats” recently have just been occasional kitchen scraps and bundles of nettles that I dried last summer. (They do have handfuls of mixed seeds/corn too – but that’s not free and will be subject to the same price rises as the layers pellets.)

Now it’s the start of the growing & foraging season again and I’m thinking about what I can try this year.

Saving as much as I spend

Posted by louisa on Thursday 3 March 2011 in frugal, low spend 11, personal finance | 0 comments

Following the 20 Financial Milestones for your 20s(ish) list I worked through at the start of February, I’ve started a new separate savings account for “saving-as-much-as-you-spend” thing.

I ummed and aahed about adding it to my normal savings account but I like the idea of starting its own dedicated account so I can really see it add up.

I’ve decided not to include all of my spending in the “to-save” pile – just the stuff that feels optional or a treat/luxury: books but not bus fare, meals eaten out but not food for meals cooked at home, pretty craft stuff but not pet supplies. My very own VAT ;)

From the whopping £242.52 which I spent in February, £137.16 was myVAT-able so that’s the opening amount for the new savings account.

I’m doing this for two reasons: firstly, I need to get back in the habit of saving money regularly again as during my lean-wage/self-employment over the last five years, my saving has been adhoc at best but more frequently, for long stretches, not at all – the savings I do have now date almost entirely from when I was employed. To start saving though, I’m going to have to free up some money from somewhere and that’s where the second reason comes in: I’m hoping it’ll help me reduce my consumption and make me more mindful about what I do spend. Those myVAT-able things now cost twice as much as far as my current account is concerned – I won’t (I WON’T) go into debt or start putting things on credit cards so they only way to live within my means will be to cut back. Of course, the theory only works because I know there is plenty of slack that I could cut back on without it particularly affecting my life for the worst – it will be interesting to see how it is in practise though.