diary of a downshifter

The £11 Christmas dinner - plan now for 2012.

2012-01-24T09:39:00.000-08:00

I know Christmas is past but in order to have a relaxed, organised and cheap Christmas now is the time to plan it.

We watched a programme on iplayer (as we very occasionally do) about how to make a Christmas dinner for eight people for ‘only’ £50. To us, that seemed like an awful lot of money for just one meal. But then we don’t want to work full time to pay for all that stuff. so I decided to cost our Christmas dinner. It is always more than you think, once the extras are added in.

Admittedly the family concerned had been spending £1200 on just that one meal. It was big shift for them and very well done. It got me thinking though because £50 for one meal seemed so extravagant and there are people in the world who are starving.

The same meal can be done for a lot less and no one would even notice the difference. Just take out the impulse buys that you thought would make it perfect they will probably only sit in the cupboard anyway.

You would be hard pressed to know which meal was the £50 one and which was our £11 one. Yes, really.

Judging by the amount left on people’s plates after their £50 meal on that TV programme there was still way too much food. There was lots left in the serving dishes too. I hope they had a cook in and made lots more dishes out of it. By that I mean the veg, stuffing and everything else not just the turkey. It would provide meals for weeks to come.

Actually our £11 Christmas dinner is providing meals for weeks to come too.

With a food budget of £50 we could easily provide open house and feel whoever came along for a week. And feed them well.

Before Christmas some of us are groaning ‘let’s just get this over with’ and others are saying ‘I love Christmas’.

My First question is this: Are you religious and if not, what do you love about it? Shopping? Cooking? All the family in one place? Turkey? Those things are all fine but only the first one needs to cost a lot of money. Analyse what you really love and focus the spending there rather than trying to do it all.

My second question is: Do you still love it in January when the credit card bill comes in?

There is certainly lots of marketing and advertising to make us think that presents, decorations, too much food and the ideal family is what Christmas is about. Without spending money, the story goes you cannot have a good Christmas.

The family in the mythical ad we have all seen has:

· A large enough living room for that jumbo sized Dobbies pre-decorated £500 (now reduced to £250) Christmas tree without having to sit round it.

· The ideal gift every time – not for them the gift that results from no one knowing what to buy each other.

· The perfect family who all want to do the same thing at Christmas and never get bored or stuck in an airport.

· Lots of money and a large house. Money is no object here they just buy what they like.

the main course

The £11 Christmas dinner

It is different year, but it is always cheap, always good and always opportunistic.

Christmas dinner cost us around £11 this year for four people. Last year it was a bit more and the year before it was a lot less. The amount of food we had would have easily fed 8 people so the aforementioned £50 Christmas dinner on the TV programme would have cost much the same as our 4 person dinner did.

The large bags of veg were such good value that I bought them anyway and froze the surplus. There was enough turkey left over for several more meals.

In those years when it has cost us more – say £20 because of buying a full sized turkey – that turkey and any other associated leftovers will make many, many meals for months to come. In fact we just had the last 2 slices of turkey breast from last year’s turkey the week before Christmas. Sometimes we have kept half of the turkey in the freezer for the following Christmas.

How I did the costings

In the costings below I have included the full purchase cost even if there was quite a bit of the item left. If I just costed what we actually used the true cost would be about £5 I reckon.
If something came out of the cupboard and was half eaten (eg the oatcakes and Bombay mix) I have still included the whole cost (with the exception of the custard.) even if we already had it and did not use it all.
Using what you have saves a lot of money for a meal like this of course but costing it anyway means I know I am not cheating.

It’s all in the planning

The trick is to think ahead. Think of Christmas (or any other ‘big meal’ event such as a wedding or birthday) all year. Just keep it in mind and keep your eyes open.

Make sure it has your favourite foods in it.

Adapt any suggestions to encompass everyone’s favourite foods and the meal will be a hit. We love veg and smoked salmon and like to eat healthily – hence the simple starter below.

Think over all cost

It is the overall cost of your weekly food budget that is important not just the cost of this one meal. So if for instance you get a turkey the size of a house reduced to £10, that may be better value than a small one for £5. The ‘cost’ of Christmas dinner may seem more on the face of it but you are actually saving money.

My daughter got an absolutely huge turkey reduced to £7 last year. We reckon it was just too big for most people – and most ovens. Just cut it in half and cook it in two pieces.

If you cook both halves, keep onehalf for next Christmas. Or slice it up and freeze the slices in bags (put just a few slices in each bag) to use for other meals or sandwiches.

The Turkey

We bought this year’s turkey on Boxing Day last year. It was a fresh, humanely reared turkey crown and suddenly was not worth very much. The frozen ones did not go down in price but the fresh ones sure did and we got it for £2/$3. The thing is, the planning takes very little time – just pause to think once in a while, and keep your eyes open when out shopping throughout the year.

The nibbles and starter.

Smoked salmon at £2.50/$3.75 a packet along with oatcakes at 79p/$1.20. Served with the remaining carrot sticks and raw broccoli florets. Very tasty, healthy and got a big thumbs up. You can pay a lot more for very special smoked salmon but this was on offer and tasted fine.

To nibble on before dinner there was half a packet of Bombay Mix (1.20 a packet) and crudités - chopped up raw carrot and broccoli florets with a few chopped raw brussel sprouts because I am partial to them like that even if no one else was!

There were lots of oatcakes left and the veg is costed in the main meal. No Bombay Mix left because I ate it all – that’ll teach me.

Total starter and nibbles cost £4.49


the veg was good gravy on this one too

The veg

The parsnips and leeks were grown in the garden. We dug them up in advance just in case the ground was frozen at Christmas. There is lots of other veg in the freezer. We would normally eat what we have so it might be broad beans and cabbage instead of brussel sprouts. The potatoes cost £1 for a bag and we used about half of them.

We had roasted and boiled potatoes. the gravy was made from the stock in the turkey tray.

This year we were taking dinner to my daughter’s house so I decided to buy brussel sprouts and be traditional. They cost £1/$1.50 for a very large packet on special offer.
Guess what - they don’t like brussel sprouts and we don’t eat them often (nice shredded in salads though) so I needn’t have bothered. The carrots were 40p/60c a kilo and we used about a quarter of them. The quantity of veg could have have easily fed 10 people so lots left for the freezer. (And we eat a lot of veg.) The broccoli was also £1/$1.50.

There seemed to be some really good last minute offers on veg this year for Christmas.

Total veg cost £3.40/$5.10 with lots left over, both cooked and uncooked.

A bargain Christmas pud

The 20p/30c Christmas puddings

In July we bought ten Christmas puddings for 20p each and gave quite a few away. They were ‘extra special’ ones with a best before date of Nov 2012. Not that it would have mattered if the date was past, a ‘best before’ just means it might not taste quite so good and we could have kept them in the freezer. We added custard made from a tin at about 40p cost including the milk.

Total pudding cost 40p/60c

And the cake?

We usually start it on Boxing Day as there is more than enough food on Christmas Day without it. A friend gave us a lovely dumpling when we had a recent get together. Hardly any was eaten but she generously gave us the rest as a gift. A Scottish dumpling is a wonderful moist fruit cake rather than something you eat with stew and hers are legendary.

I had some marzipan in the freezer that was also bought last year at a reduced price. I think it was 50p but cannot quite remember. I looked at icing sugar and it was twice the price of ordinary sugar for half as much.

So I made my own with granulated sugar which is very simple.

How to make icing sugar

Put the sugar in a blender or food processor and process until it turns into a powder. Takes about 2 minutes. Cost about 30p. lots left over.

The cake was delicious and no one could tell the difference. In fact it was voted better than ‘normal’ Christmas cake.

Total cost for cake 80p/$1.20

Christmascrackers on the table

Christmas crackers

We bought a box of 12 last year but not everyone wanted one and only four got used. This year there were only four of us anyway so another four got used. There are now four left for next year.

A couple of tips here:
1. I put a note in my diary in November and another in December saying ‘do not buy crackers there are some in the loft.’ Do the same with anything else you buy as a bargain and you will not forget and end up buying more.

2. Get the crackers out of the loft a couple of weeks early and keep them in a warm room to make sure they are not damp – or no bang when you pull them!

3. Make your own crackers or just give little party bags – do they really need to go bang anyway?

Total cost Zero – these were costed in last year’s dinner.

What was left over

There was masses of food left over. We gave my daughter and her boyfriend lots of turkey slices to keep them going and put a load in our own freezer too. There was half a bag of brussel sprouts and another of carrots left. There were also cooked carrots, sprouts and broccoli which were made into soup (carrots) and bubble and squeak (sprouts, potatoes and broccoli). Most of the box of oatcakes was also left but we ate all the smoked salmon. (mostly me actually)

And as usual the cake kept going for another week even though it had not seemed very large to start with. And I only used half of it. I just got the other half out of the freezer today. We could have had a larger Christmas cake but the small one felt nice and was loads.

Its different every year

Now its easy to think ‘But I didn’t get given a dumpling/find a bargain turkey etc so I can’t do it for the same price.’

It is different every year but keep an eye out and be creative and something will come up.

Here are some ideas:

·        Buy a turkey and keep half in the freezer for next year.
·         Freeze any left over veg so that it is not wasted. Remember it is the overall cost of eating that is important not just the cost of that one meal.
·         Get a chicken or other meat instead of a turkey
·         If you are vegetarian ignore the Christmas dinner conventions altogether and just have a nice meal. Do not feel honour bound to replicate what is actually a rather simple meat and two veg meal anyway.
·         If you are a meat eater, ignore the Christmas dinner convention and just cook a nice meal too!
·         Use what you have. We had a pheasant one year because we got given one. Another year we had trout. We were given some fish by a friend and one was huge. So we kept if for Christmas dinner.
·         Keep a look out in the shops all year round.

Something for nothing and the art of giving

2011-12-15T05:00:00.000-08:00

This is a time of year when a lot of thought goes into giving and receiving. I find the whole spending thing depressing.

Thinking about shopping in general and the waste of stuff and money got me to thinking about how easy it is to get many things without money if you are prepared to wait and to share what you have with others.

Frugal living is not sponging

That said, frugality is not about being a sponger, cheating or using others. It does not mean going to the pub and letting someone else pay for the drinks and the golden rule is always give something back somehow, in some way to somebody. Simplicity is about is building a sense of community in which people feel okay about borrowing things, sharing and passing on good fortune.

gift carpet spare room

A good example is the past ‘foraging for clothes’ article on this blog. I rescued a bag of clothes dumped beside a re-cycling bin. It was raining heavily; a bank holiday and they would have been ruined long before being collected by the charity.

I took them home and kept some of the clothes.

We gave the rest in to a charity shop and I donated £10 to the charity who owned the bin. They got more than the value of the clothes had they been re-cycled, another charity benefitted by being able to sell the clothes and we got some good clothes for only £10. They did not end up in landfill so the Planet benefitted too.

I call that a win-win though am not strictly clear about the legality of it! I was honest and did not rip anyone off though and my conscience is clear.

Accept things graciously.

Most people enjoy helping others by passing things on. The bit we all find harder is accepting things when they are offered to us. By saying no you deprive that person of the satisfaction of helping another and re-homing things that are no longer needed.

So if you say no do it gently and thank the person for thinking of you. It takes courage to offer things to others which is the main reason it does not happen more often. If you don't want something but know someone else who could use it, offer to pass it on. It will encourage that person to offer things to others again and it may have been the first time they plucked up the courage to ask.

Deal with your ‘gratitude feelings’ about being given things by entering into the spirit and sharing or passing on the surplus.

gift carpet 2

How long can you keep it going?

The best fun ever is seeing how long you can keep it going. For example, Jude gives me 6lbs/3kg of rhubarb from her garden. She has more than she can use and does not want it to be wasted. I say thanks and make some rhubarb jam and chutney with some of it and put the rest in the freezer - which is easy as you just chop it up and bung it in a plastic bag. If you make wine (but only if it is good wine) you could do that too. Never, ever inflict battery-acid style home made wine on your friends.

I give some jam to Eric as a thank you for the wood he gave me for the stove. (His old garden furniture and it saved him paying the Council to take it away).
I give some chutney to Joanne because I know she likes it and doesn’t make her own. I would like to get to know her better and it breaks the ice.
I leave another jar on Clive’s doorstep and hope he has fun guessing who it is from.
I invite Jude, Eric, Joanne and Clive round for a Christmas Eve drink and nibbles 6 months later and tell everyone the jam in the tarts is made from Betty’s rhubarb which chuffs her no end.
Everyone brought some baking with them (unasked) and I now have a freezer full as no one wants to take it home with them. I decide to stop buying Kettle Chips and eat pancakes from the freezer saving me £3 a week. I give some of the baking to the Church for their forthcoming coffee morning although I do not attend that Church. I find out about their shoe box campaign for Romania as a result and resolve to fill a shoe box next year.
There is lots of milk left over from the get together. I put some in the freezer in small jugs or sterilised plastic milk cartons, as we don’t use much and it is handy for visitors.
I make some yoghurt with the rest and give half to a friend.
We have an almost-free pudding of stewed rhubarb, yoghurt and left over macaroons that someone brought to the get together. Yum.
Everyone gets to know one another a bit better and Clive and Betty realise they could give each other lifts to work. Jude decides to help at the Church coffee mornings now she knows that Betty goes.

This is how you build community. Everyone used to do it before going to the shops and going out for dinner (aka spending money) took over as forms of entertainment. Many people still do it of course (and if that is you well done).

Those of us who commute by car tend to get the shopping from the supermarket near work on the way home. This means you are not out and about on foot near home, will not see the notice about the church coffee morning and won't even know it is on.


this phone just needed a new battery

How to give something back

We have great fun thinking how express appreciation. Sometimes it is just a thank you card. The fact you have thought to say thanks can build bridges and friendships in surprising ways.

It does not always have to be something given back to the person concerned. The general concept of generosity, passing on good fortune and not being stingy is the overriding principle here.

Giving and not getting caught is one of our best forms of entertainment.

Here are some other ideas.

The no hoarding principle. If you don’t need all of it, keep some and pass the rest on. That generosity will come back in surprising ways.

Each time you get something for nothing, give something back to someone somehow, somewhere.

Offer to re-home things you cannot use if you know someone else who would appreciate them. Always ask if that is okay with the person giving it to you.

If something is re-homed make a point of telling the giver where it ended up as it will give them great satisfaction. Feedback encourages people to re-home or re-cycle in the future.

Think who would like things before offering and do not burden others with your old junk. Some things really do need to be re-cycled or thrown away.

Some of the things we have been given. Most were destined for landfill.

Our son’s 3 piece suite and cooker due to be picked up by the Council one hour later!

Floor covering for the garage

Clothes

A washing up bowl brand new, rescued from a skip

A chest of drawers

A carpet for the spare bedroom

A carpet for our bedroom

The living room carpet in our last house

Towels that did not match someone’s new decor


woodshed from re-claimed timber.

Timber for building a wood shed

Firewood

Buckets

Herbal and fruit teas that no one wanted

A cordless phone that needed a new battery

Children’s clothes

Tea bags being dumped when a wooden holiday chalet was cleared out

Some of the things we have given to others.

A disabled hand rail given to us by someone for re-homing

Jam, chutney, home-made wine

All manner of garden produce including apples rhubarb strawberries potatoes leeks herbs garlic and salad

Plants for gardens including herbs, blackcurrant bushes, raspberry canes, strawberry plants

Children’s clothes

Books

Home cured bacon made from pork we got on special offer ( A future blog topic this)

Kitchen units we inherited in the garage

Seeds for the garden

Hand knitted hats and baby things

don't get scared

2011-11-23T11:27:00.000-08:00

kale pesto is cheap and surprisingly good

I have been listening to the news in order to learn about the recession. I am blessed because it has had some impact on me, (I will not get my pension until I am a lot older than I would have) but overall life is okay.

Our financial house is in reasonable order, we have no debt and the mortgage is paid so we could survive for a while if we had to. Yet despite all this I have been feeling anxious about the recession.
So I asked myself this: if I did not listen to the news, how would I feel? the answer is fine. I am still doing the same things, still in good health, have a roof over my head and enough to eat. We never did have a lavish lifestyle anyway as you will have guessed if you read this blog regularly - that is the whole point.

I came to the conclusion a long time ago that listening to the news or reading the papers (or watching it on TV) does not give you a balanced view of world events, or even of those in your local area. It only reports the bad things and it is easy to think that things are worse than they are. Some people who live in gated communities get an impression that the world outside the gate is a dangerous place, and this is bit the same.

So despite the fact that I don't personally know anyone whose life is in ruins I feel like all of our lives are. That is not to minimise the impact on some of us, and it is important to work together as a community and family to help those who are not doing so well.
I have therefore made the following decisions:
1. to stop listening to the news
2. to give more money to charities that help those in difficut circumstances
3. to continue blogging about saving money, living on less and all those great things that anyone can do whether they really need to because they are broke or because they just want to live a better life and live less.
4. to harvest all the veg in my garden that is still out there. we grew such a lot this year and the freezer is nearly full.
5. to don my frugal black belt and do all I can to save, economise and otherwise be a good example to my kids.
Frugal recipe kale Pesto
ingredients
A good handful of young soft kale leaves. this is important. it is tasty with young leaves and strong and tough with old ones.
the young leaves are sweet and delicious. Cook the leaves until just tender in pan, the base of which is covered with a little water. drain.
tablespoon of pine nuts or cashews
1 table spoon of olive oil.
blend until smooth and serve with pasta. It is very good. a raw version can be made if the kale is not cooked first.

Is it worth growing your own food?

2011-09-13T09:42:00.000-07:00

A lot more people are growing a bit of fruit and veg now and it seems to be one of the good things to come out of this recession. Yes, there are some good things, though not so much if you have lost your job and are really struggling.
If you are struggling it may be even more worthwhile to grow some food.
the equation works like this:
There is the actual value of the food if you were to buy it. Now on this basis, the gains are small for the work and hours you put in. However if your produce is organic you may find you are eating healthier food than you could afford to buy as well as saving a bit of money compared to the cost of buying the non organic alternative. If you compare the price of the organic food directly the savings are greater. the food is or course very fresh so its nutritional value will be better than even the shop bought organic produce.
Our strawberry bed is only 10 feet x 4 feet (3mx 1.5) and we get a kilo/2.4lbs of strawberries a day for a month from it. It is in the front garden and does not even look out of place.
All for the price of a compost bin of our own kitchen waste each year. perennial crops like strawberries, raspberries blackcurrants and apples give a lot of food for relatively little work and expense.

You get free exercise Cancel that gym membership for the summer - it probably exercises your wallet more than it exercises you anyway. Put the £20-40/$10-20 a month it saves you (even assuming you did not drive the car to the gym and use fuel to get there) in a savings account. It can pay for next year's load of manure in one month and the seeds in another. All the rest is a saving.

Substitute your own produce for what you would normally buy. This means that a home grown potato is the equivalent of not only shop bought organic potatoes but also can replace rice or pasta. It does more than that, because there are a whole host of meals actually based on potatoes, such as potato and spinach curry, baked potatoes, potatoes au gratin etc. Add four different varieties of veg and salad (eg stir fried chard, mange tout & shallots with a lettuce & rocket salad made with four kinds of lettuce) and who would not feel it is a meal. If you want to add meat, fish eggs or cheese go for it but they do not need to be the centre of the meal unless you want them to be. But don't worry too much about the protein. It is actually hard for someone in the Western world to ed up with a protein deficiency. The amount an adult needs per day is only 00g/4oz which is smaller than almost any protein serving we have at one meal these days. A child needs a little more if they are growing but only about 6ozs/150g. One glass of milk and a small piece of meat, an egg or a small amount of cheese in other words.

Added value.
Added value means making things with your produce that you would pay more for, such as chutney and jam, dried fruit, pies etc. Then the produce replaces something more expensive to buy. Another idea is to dry things like apple rings and strawberries to add to muesli. We dried strawberries ad blackcurrants this year and I wish we had done more.

How to make chutney.

Plum chutney

I have just made four jars of plum, apple and carrot chutney. I added curry spices, chilli and ginger and it will replace expensive lime pickle to go with curries. Delicious. Just pick any chutney recipe and substitute any other fruit or veg for the one specified. Change the spices and seasoning. I miss out the raisins and sultanas too.

Swap produce with friends.
It is good to grow a smaller amount of more different things and eat them as they go rather than waiting until they are 'ready' especially with potatoes. Another idea is to swap with friends so that you get more variety. I just swapped some of our grapes and celery for some plums to make the chutney with. Makes a change.

Instead of freezing it all as veg, make soup and stews and freeze those.
That means you have a freezer full of healthy, organic ready meals. the main thing that stops people using all the veg they grow is that they get home from work hungry. It is raining and they do not want to dig up veg, wash and cook it before they can eat. Pick and wash salad in advance and keep it in plastic boxes in the fridge. Then is is just as handy as bought, bagged salad.

It takes practise to get the best yields
Bear in mind that in your first year the yields will not be as high because it will probably take a couple of years to build up the soil fertility - annual veg crops in particular need a lot of nutrients. In the beginning, more things will not succeed due to learning and after two or three seasons you will have a better idea what is likely to do well in your locality.

Get gardening - not shopping!
The buying habit can simply transfer itself to gardening and then there will be little financial benefit for quite a while. Buying expensive plastic raised beds, bags of compost and fertiliser (hopefully organic fertiliser at least), exotic seeds and expensive seed varieties that promise all sorts of things will soon break the bank. The garden products and seeds that promise all those miracles are a bit like hair and beauty products.
Eventually you learn to be selective after ten different products do not make your hair shinier or give bigger yields of extra fast growing crops, but in the meantime it costs a lot!
And fertiliser is of course good old fashioned manure. Horse or cow manure will do fine. There is no need to worry about E Coli contamination - composting the manure for a year takes care of it and it is apparently only present in cow manure not in horse manure as it does not survive the gut of the horse. If you are worried, compost it for two years and pretty much all experts agree it is safe.

Network or join a gardening club
lots of things on sale at the garden centre are being chucked out by gardeners all over the country. eventually mature plants need thinning out and the surplus just goes on the compost heap. Many gardeners hate the waste and will be delighted to give you cuttings and root stocks. For instance, blackcurrants must be pruned each year. Just shove some of the prunings in the ground and they grow new bushes. Or you can buy them for £8/$14 each of course. Raspberries throw up suckers. These are what the garden centres pot up and sell to us as new plants, but many gardeners have to throw them away. The garden centre would say theirs are better and disease free, but every time I have had a disease it came from a garden centre, not from a friend, who would tell you if there was a problem after all.

Garden companies tell us it is too risky to use supermarket potatoes as seed because of the risk of disease. But you can see disease on potatoes and I have often seen it on seed potatoes, which lets face it are grown in a field just like any other potato is.

Blight is the biggest threat to potatoes in temperate zones with high rain fall. It caused the Irish potato famine. Sarpo varieties of potatoes are very blight resistant - they just don't get blight - and therefore you can save a few for next year once you have some. You can also just leave a few in the ground. common wisdom is that this spreads disease - but most gardeners will have noticed that the once that got left in the ground are usually the only ones that don't get blight!

Keep it simple to start with.
Grow a few potatoes, some broad beans, leeks onions and salad crops such as rocket and lettuce. If you live somewhere with a reasonable climate, try some runner beans and courgettes. Buy standard seed varieties. the tried and tested ones are often the cheapest and the newer more expensive varieties not always worth the extra cash.
And do the sums, do not waste money on expensive promises and buy good basic seeds.

What did we grow this year?
Well it is not over yet. We have a small polytunnel and there will be produce in it until Christmas.
Our best producers this year (in common with most gardeners) are:
Rhubarb 10kg

One day's strawberry pickings. about 3kg. They semi ripe ones will be ripe by morning.

Strawberries 30kg
Blackcurrants 30kg
Apples 25kg (small cordon trees along a fence then they fit in a small garden)
Potatoes about 20kg
Broad beans 10kg
Courgettes about 10kg so far
Tomatoes 3kg so far and lots more to come
Lettuce and rocket as much as we could eat since April (got to the lettuce soup stage!)
Onions, shallots & leeks. more still to come but about 5kg in total
lots of tasty but less productive things such as grapes, mange tout and purple podded peas 10kg in total.
20kg of celery.

that's 173 kg of fruit and veg at a conservative estimate. That is a lot of food. It is probably nearer 200 kg in actual fact and we grow veg all winter too. Although the returns are less in January and Febtruary, the cost of fresh produce is more in winter so the savings on salad in October to December are significant. At a cost to buy of £2/$4 a kilo that is £346 $692 approx. We spent about £100 on the garden - £40/$80 for a load of manure, £40/$80 on seeds and £20/$40 on books and other things.

We had a load of fun and the food tasted better than anything we could buy. Actually keeping accounts of the financial costs and benefits has been great fun too.

2011-08-16T12:44:00.000-07:00

How recession-proof are you?

Some of us are of course really struggling in this recession. When that happens, it is all about survival paying the mortgage or rent and buying food. If there is no money for anything else you do not get anything else.

The trouble is, many people have actually been in that position for years without realising it. In other words, they had less than nothing to start with because they have borrowed more than they earned and were not paying off the debt as a priority, but spending their income on other non-essential things. Then when someone in the household loses a job it is a disaster, even if there is someone still working. So this is about how to assess your situation and recession-proof insofar as that is possible, because this affects everyone.

We have been reviewing our position given the changes and these are the questions we are asking ourselves.

1. How inflation proof are we?

2. Are we living on income or capital?

3. Are we putting some money into savings each month – even if it is a very small amount?

4. How would we manage if one or both of us lost our work?

5. How will the proposed changes in our occupational and state pensions affect us in the future? This is relevant no matter how young you are.

1. How inflation proof are you?

We are fortunate to have a relatively inflation proof lifestyle. Not having a large income, we also do not spend much money. That means spending time doing things instead of paying others to do them, which is more inflation proof.

As the price of goods and services goes up and the risk of unemployment gets higher, the value of doing things yourself also goes up.

So for example economising to reduce expenditure rather than just earning more money makes sense. The job can disappear in a moment and when no money is coming in, the time spent growing food is worthwhile even if the hourly rate is low. The lower the expenses the better you survive unemployment and wage cuts.

There are other hidden benefits to things like growing vegetables such as meeting the neighbours whilst out in the garden and being able to cancel the gym membership.

2. Are you living off income or capital?

Spending everything you earn in wages actually means you are living off capital! There is nothing there for unexpected expenses so when those occur you need to borrow money.

This is not a time to deplete savings but to increase them whenever possible. The interest earned on savings has gone down in many cases (unless you have inflation linked savings) which means you need to save harder to gain the same ground.

Here are some useful questions:

Are you saving 20% - or at the very least 10% of everything you earn? If not you are actually living beyond your means and have no financial cushion if circumstances change or for roof repairs, a new car or other larger expenses.

· Do you have debt? If you are working in a well paid job but have debt get rid of it as fast as possible. Put every spare penny/cent into paying it off. If the debt agreement does not allow you to pay if off early, put the money into a separate savings account to pay for it later. Get rid of the most expensive debt first. Transfer any credit card debt to a 0% deal. Do NOT use that card for purchases and aim to pay it off before the 0% deal is finished.

Remember – debt can be a disaster if you become unemployed.

· Insure what you cannot afford to lose – but no more.

In other words, insure your house and your car. Your health if you live in a country without a National Health Service. If you have dependents and no income other than your job, look into insuring against you becoming ill or dying so that they will survive without you.

· If you lose your job, make sure you will not lose your home. If there are two people in jobs within a household, mortgage protection insurance may only pay up if both people lose their jobs. Or it may pay for half the cost of the mortgage but not all of it. Check that the cover has the right balance, so that if the main wage earner is made redundant there will be enough to pay the mortgage and remember there is usually no payment for the first three months. In other words, the very least there should ever be in the bank is enough to cover three months, mortgage, council/property tax and bills. Remember you are unlikely to get any state benefits if the other person is still working, mortgage or not, and it is very difficult to borrow money if you do not have a job.

· Put your savings into tax free cash savings. This is not the time for individuals to play the stock market. Remember financial advisers do not make commission out of cash savings such as National Savings and Investments so are unlikely to recommend them or be abreast of them in the same way they are with other investments.

Use up all the tax free cash savings options available. In the UK National Savings and Investments Index Linked Savings Certificates are tax free and earn the equivalent to the Retail Price Index in interest, plus a small amount. That means they are inflation proof. Check the inflation rate and if it is high (as it is at the time of writing) they are very worthwhile. You are not paying any commission off what they earn either.

· Check that your personal pension is in the safest investments possible whilst the stock market is volatile. You will have to ask the question, it will not happen automatically. Keep an eye on how the pension is doing and it will do much better.

· Remember - no one will look after your money as well as you will. Keep on top of it, move it when interest rates go down and keep putting a little bit into savings each month.

· Consider all the ways you can reduce out goings and inflation proof your lifestyle for the future. We installed solar panels which have inflation linked payments for the electricity generated, grow some of our own food, have a wood burning stove and have paid off the mortgage early. Your house is a liability rather than an investment in most cases, because you cannot sell it and live off the money without becoming homeless. Make the house as low a liability as possible by moving to a smaller house if you have a large mortgage, doing Bed and Breakfast, getting a lodger or anything else you can think of.

In other words this is a time to be resourceful, reduce unnecessary spending and put more money into savings. Develop good habits now and if things do go wrong, it will be much easier to cope.

Chop Wood, Carry Water.

2011-04-28T12:40:00.000-07:00

Helen and Scott Nearing in their famous book ‘The Good Life’, talk about the meaning of life being ‘chop wood, carry water’.

I know exactly what they mean. The things that give life meaning are things that make us feel real. It does not literally have to be chopping wood and carrying water – they can get a bit irksome if you have to do them all the time.

I have been listening to a rather amusing series on Radio 4 about a care worker from abroad called Beauty. She commented yesterday that we Europeans seem intent on doing away with all our modern comforts and conveniences and living like someone in the third world – ie back to nature, camping, doing without electricity etc. She has a point, actually. It is all very well doing without these things if you already have them and can go back to them at any time. If you really have to depend on chopping wood and carrying water and growing all your own food for your survival it is very hard, especially if you are ill, or old, or pregnant…

However, somewhere in there is a compromise. There is no need to exhaust ourselves trying to do it all, but maybe it makes sense to make mashed potato rather than buy a plastic tray of it in the supermarket for £1/$1.50. It will be more enjoyable not just because it tastes a whole lot better, but because you made it and because it only cost 20p/30c.

I love to chop wood and I love to rescue wood from the dump and use it on our woodstove. This week I learned to use metal splitting wedges to split huge logs. I phoned up a company that sold such things and asked what a five foot tall and not very strong woman could use to split logs. So now I am the proud owner of two wedges. With a sledge hammer, a bit of practise and the help of a You Tube video I found I can split some quite large logs that I was given and it feels great. But thank goodness it is not my only form of heating in minus 20c.

I guess it is all about balance. I like to make do and mend rather than have to work full time. But too much make do and mend and I feel deprived and am likely to go and spend money to make myself feel better. A bit like the binge and diet syndrome.

We all have deep human needs to be 1. Understood, and 2. Useful and valued. Doing no work at all is quite depressing actually.

I do not mean only paid work here, having children or relatives to care for, volunteering, growing food, chopping wood and carrying water all qualify.

Even Scott and Helen Nearing left their ‘Good Life’ when they got older. Actually, the whole point of communities is to not have to do it all yourself. And we simplify and aim to live in one place and have a locally based life of meaning and community, then realise that is just what people living in small towns and villages all over the world have done for generations. It just does not seem sexy when it is the kind of life you grew up with. Peasant life in rural France seems romantic if you grew up in a mining village in the UK and probably vice versa.

So here I am living the life that my Grandparents did, in a geographically different but otherwise very similar part of the country. They had allotments, so did I. They grew veg and kept chickens, so have I. They chopped wood for the fire and so do I. My grandmother saved bits of string and plastic bags and so do I. I can even still taste the tinned ham that was fast food if she ever got unexpected guests. (It makes a great sandwich with a spot of mustard - yum).

In fact today I bought a new(er) copy of the Good Housekeeping Cook Book. In our local charity shop.

My mother gave me a copy when I left home and it has everything in it that I have ever needed to know, even down to party menus and quantities for larger scale catering. Her mother had bought her a copy of it when she got married. And it is still in print today. And I chopped wood, but drew the line at carrying water and used the hosepipe and automatic sprinkler to water the poly tunnel and strawberry bed.

A Cheap Valentine (and other gifts)

2011-02-15T05:57:00.000-08:00

I am often told I am a cheap date. It’s kind of a standing joke but also true. I was always the woman saying ‘let’s go for a picnic and keep the money towards the deposit on a house.’

Consequently, Valentine’s Day is on the 15^thof February or later in our house. The reason will be obvious to you frugal folk out there.

If you go out for dinner, buy flowers or do pretty much anything else on the 14^th of Feb, or for that matter the weekend just before it (sometimes just after it too if the 15^th is on the Saturday night) you can bet your bottom dollar that you will pay up to twice the price for the same thing.

A similar rip off happens with weddings. Tell the florist the button-hole posies are for a wedding and the price can double. I know someone who was best man and contacted a hotel to ask the price for a reception. He then asked the price for the same facilities for a birthday party and it was a lot less. He booked a birthday party and they brought the flowers from the church to decorate the tables. No one missed the extra bits of razzmatazz and the happy couple started married life with a bit more cash in their pockets.

On the 15^thof February, you can get dinner for the normal price, (or go out early as we usually do and get a 2 for 1 deal at 6pm on a weekday), and oysters, red roses and valentine’s cards are all reduced in the supermarket and cost next to nothing. Especially the oysters as they won’t keep!

One year I came home with a large bunch of red roses from Tesco for 50p and I could have had any amount of them. I also netted a cashmere jumper for my beloved for £2 in the sale, and a huge quantity of fresh king prawns going begging at a silly price at the fish counter that had to be eaten that day. There were so many that we could not eat them all. They had already been frozen, so with a flash of ingenuity I boiled them briskly in a pot and then froze them.

The thing is, it sounds mean, doesn’t it? Do I still love him as much if we celebrate Valentine’s Day on the 15^th, or if we book the birthday party instead of the wedding? Or have we just seen too many advertisements saying things like ‘because she’s worth it?’…

My take on it is this: the ‘mean message’ comes from subtle marketing to get us to part with money. It happens because someone wants to make money out of us, not because it is truly mean to spend less on things like that.

The original intention of Valentine’s Day was to let someone know you fancied them when you were too scared to say. Just like the original intention of Christmas was to celebrate the birth of Jesus and the exchange of gifts was meant to be symbolic, not a massive spending spree to be regretted when the credit card bill comes in, in January. The original meaning has been hi-jacked by shopping.

Speaking of flowers, In an office where I once worked, we were having a whip round and each contributing £5 for flowers for someone who was in hospital. When we contacted the florist, the £35 we had amassed was only enough to get a small bunch of flowers delivered.

I suggested we went to the supermarket across the road and got £35 worth of flowers and took them to the hospital ourselves. Face it, in many supermarkets you get a lot of flowers for £35. I had florist’s cellophane and ribbon at home and could have made them up into a large bouquet. This was not about saving money, you understand, it was about the person getting something nicer for the same money. However the organiser of the gift thought that was ‘mean’ (I am still trying to work that one out too) and arranged for a small bunch of flowers to be delivered, then drove up to the hospital to visit empty handed.

It used to be nice to take flowers from your garden to give to people but no doubt that is considered mean in some circles too. It is actually nicer, and chances are the flowers will be unique and will not have been treated with pesticides or used up precious water in parts of the world where people do not have enough to drink.I once picked a selection of February flowers from my garden and gave them to my beloved on valentine's day. how proud was I of having a wee bunch of flowers to pick in my garden in February! - Since you ask, snow drops, pussy willow, christmas roses and sprigs of contoneaster covered in red berries.

I still remember the lovely bunch of hand-picked flowers carefully arranged in a margarine tub with oasis in it, which someone who was totally broke took to the crematorium for me when we suffered a loss some years ago. They were the most special thing there and a lot of thought and love had gone into those flowers, as well as the courage to bring them and not to mind what others might think.

When a close friend was getting married and I saw the florist’s price list with button holes listed at £5 each I was appalled. That is £5 for one carnation and a bit of greenery!

I offered to make the buton holes and the bride was delighted. She an I did it together and bought florist’s tape and two bunches of carnations for a total of £5 and added ferns and foliage from the garden. We made all 10 button holes for £5, or 50p each and they were lovely. There is lots of florist’s tape left to lend to someone else, too.

The fact that it was us potential recipients of the button holes who made the suggestion gave the happy couple permission to do it without seeming mean.

I spent my money contributing to the reception as a wedding gift (I bought the champagne), which saved them a bit more money. Like I said, it is not about being mean but getting best value and spending money on the things that matter.

I love to get gifts that help someone get ahead, or contribute toexpenses of an event like a wedding as a gift. this is especially handy with young people who need some money mentoring as it gives them the idea of being thrifty with money and helps them out at the same time.

In a similar vein, I bought a year’s supply of mail order nappies as a gift for a young couple who had a baby, knowing that babies get too many clothes anyway and there can never be enough nappies. they were not the sort to have re-usable nappies or that would have been an even better present.

I also got them some other almost-new b baby things, such as a wicker crib for virtually nothing at the car boot sale. When the couple concerned had finished with the crib, we gave it to someone else. I got my £2($1.50) worth of pleasure out of that one!

I now get the child concerned birthday and Christmas gifts of properly fitted leather shoes along with car boot sale toys. This saves the parents money as well as being a nice gift, which I think is the optimum combination.

As a house-warming gift, consider things like curtain rails, blinds or linoleum, or even phone or electricity vouchers. People are unlikely to get them from anyone else and it will save the reipient money.

So think about the person concerned and what will be useful rather than what you can find in the shops.

where did all the money go?

2011-02-13T10:43:00.000-08:00

In the recent and painful economic downturn what I have been wondering is this: If everybody is harder up, where has all the money gone?

Did it just disappear? You do hear that a lot of money just moves electronically from one place to another but does not come into existence because it is not taken out of the bank. In other words, if we all want our actual money at once, we are in trouble because there is not enough to go around. That is what happens when bank get into difficulties I believe, and also when everyone sells shares on the stock exchange at once.

However, this crisis was apparently all started by companies selling on mortgage debt and that money did presumably exist because someone, somewhere bought a house with it.

It seems that the number of new millionaires is still increasing, so someone is making money out of all of this. It is just not the average person on the street.

It hasn’t burned us much as yet and for this we are very very thankful. A friend of a friend has just come back from Ireland and says that people are going hungry because the cuts in benefits are so severe that benefits are only available for a limited period of time.

Their homes have been re-possessed and they have nowhere to go and no money at all.

If anyone out there knows anything about this, please post it on the comments section of this blog. We are not hearing much about it, but the media did report that people were going hungry in Iceland last year. How are they doing now? What about people in the USA? I noticed a book on Amazon.co.uk (Although it is American I could not find it on Amazon.com) about how to survive whilst living out of your car, if you cannot afford to pay rent and feed yourself. It was written in the 1990's - the last recession. But how great is that, to survive it and write a book about it.

Car living by Jane Archer

It raises two questions:

1. What can we all do to help each other when times are tough?

2. How can we best protect ourselves from future hardship?

A sense of community and getting to know your neighbours is the very best safety valve there is in hard times. That is how many countries have survived in the past, and it is a win-win situation. That way we can share skills and resources rather than fight each other.

Getting to know the neighbours is not always easy and someone has to make the first move. I had fun leaving tubs of strawberries on our neighbours’ doorsteps and it broke the ice.

We put a bench in our front garden too because in summer people are outside more. Getting involved or just starting something locally works too. It doesn’t need a committee if it doesn’t hold any money, so just do it.

Living frugally (but that doesn’t mean depriving yourself, being mean or doing it at other peoples’ expense) has been the secret of our wellbeing for many years.

When I first started on the simplicity path – on my own at the very start, but hubby quickly got the plot when the credit card debt disappeared – I came across a book called ‘How To Feed Your Family on £4 a Day’ by Bernadine Lawrence.

An Inspiration!

I had it out of the library and renewed it many times. I took it back briefly as I could only renew it a certain number of times but when I went to get it back a few weeks later it had been got rid of!

I had been unable to get hold of it again until last week when I found a second hand copy on Amazon.co.uk. (it is not available on Amazon.com) It has been re-printed twice and became ‘How to Feed Your Family on £5 a Day’ in the second edition.

The food is all costed out and amazingly little has gone up in price since the 1990’s except the water cress.

The recipes are good basic healthy food but the reason I love this book is because it is inspirational. Bernadine went from having a good job, to being in a high rise flat with four children and on benefits. Her strategy enabled them to live well despite having little money.

She fed 2 adults and 4 children very well for £5 a day.

I actually hadn’t thought it until now but we fed ourselves for that much quite easily when we were paying off the mortgage and were highly motivated – admittedly we had 3 children rather than 4.

In recent years I have found the bills creeping up again and am now back on focus with the grocery bill, and have challenged myself to reduce spending whilst not compromising on quality, so watch this space.

It is not the amount we spend each week that we focus on but the overall average over the course of a year. This is because if we find something cheap we tend to stock up on it. In some months we have a lot more garden produce than others. So far I have spent more and not less but watch this space.

We do not have a big garden and it is vertically challenged (the main part of the garden is almost as high as the roof of the house.) It was mostly subsoil when we moved in because the top layer had been removed to reduce the height of the hill behind the house.

The front garden now has some vegetables in it as well as the small poly tunnel and veg beds we have at the back. For the front we choose food plants that look pleasing such as runner beans with their nice flowers, rhubarb and strawberries placed in amongst the other plants. Think of a lawn as a green desert, and increase the size of the borders to grow salad crops.

This is a place to share your own inspiration about saving money and managing on less, so feel free to add your own ideas.

We will be starting our courses on ‘simple living in an urban setting this year' so watch this space. They aim to help people get ahead whether or not they are in debt and - well - it certainly changed our lives for the better so why not learn from someone who has done it?
If you have enough savings to last for a year and no mortgage you can sleep at night without fear. It can be done!

dare you do an inventory?

2011-01-30T13:18:00.001-08:00

DARE YOU DO AN INVENTORY?

Following our original de-cluttering efforts a few years ago, I got into the habit of doing an inventory at New Year.

I would spend a happy day making a list of every single thing we owned.

It was amazing.

The first thing I realised was that we could see exactly where all the money went.

There was this pile of stuff that had all been bought and seemed worth the money at the time. But it was now worth very little. I came to thinking about why something is worth so much less second hand.

The only difference is often that it does not have a nice box or any of the marketing hype, sales talk or advertising. In other words the second hand value is actually the real value of the thing.

That’s why it often seems like something great in the shop (or online store) and rather ho-hum when you get it home.

In other words, you slave at a job you don’t really like in order to spend the money on something you don’t really want.

The second thing that I realised is that we had more than one of some things because we couldn’t find the first one or had forgotten we had it. For instance I had bought a ruler thinking the original one had disappeared forever – yet there it was when I did the inventory.

Never happened to you? Yeah, I believe you…maybe.

The same thing was in a different room or in the garage and we never even knew it was there. Only one or two things but WOW what a revelation. We had so much stuff we didn’t know we had it.

Books in waiting - these are listed on Amazon and will hopefully sell, clear my shelves and earn a bit of the money back. listing is a lot easier than E Bay and you don't need a Paypal account.

The third thing I realised is that I really didn’t know what we owned until I did this. Post-inventory I now had a mental picture of my belongings. And how awesome is it that you could put in an insurance claim and say casually ‘oh, here’s an inventory of everything we own, we update it every year.’

I have an ex work colleague who was burgled once. At least she thought she had been – it took her a couple of days to notice, because the thieves had only rifled a few drawers and left them in a state of disarray. One of the drawers was where she kept her purse, but all her old purses were in there too, and she couldn’t really be sure it had been there and not been mislaid somewhere else.

When she finally realised a window had been forced (they had carefully shut it behind them on the way out so it wasn’t immediately obvious) and the Police asked her what had been taken she couldn’t tell them for sure. Sounds incredible? Could you tell exactly what had been taken if you were burgled? I doubt many of us could actually.

After the first inventory it is much easier to do subsequent ones as you are updating an existing list.
I have been lazy about it for the last couple of years and probably should update it. Here is an easier way to do it: inventory one drawer at a time. Do one drawer a day or week. Start by just noticing the contents of the drawers each time you open them. It is quite likely you will see things you had forgotten or that you no longer need. They can be weeded out and by the time you do the inventory there will be less to go on the list anyway.

Keep a box or basket in a handy place – ours is in the porch – and put anything you no longer need into it. Then when you next go out it can be picked up and taken to the charity shop.

If you don’t do this it becomes increasingly difficult to clear out because each clear out leaves a pile of homeless stuff kicking about. By the time you have decided what to do with it half of it will be back in the cupboards as you/family members will have seen it and ‘rescued’ it in case it comes in handy after all.

Our charity box in the porch. visitors often find things they want in it and go home with a freebie!

Whose birthday is it anyway?

2010-12-09T05:35:00.000-08:00

There was an interesting statistic in hubby’s Sunday paper the other day.

Apparently, the first Monday in December is the peak of online shopping for Christmas. This year, due to the timing of the calendar it was predicted to peak on Monday the 29^th November.

This time of year is not, actually the joy and cosy family time that is marketed at us. Frankly, do you know even one person for whom it is that? Well, maybe one…

In other words, we are buying the promise of a better Christmas when we go Christmas shopping and buy too much. We always buy too much when we go Christmas shopping.

Well get this – it is not your fault and not due to lack of will power. But many of us cannot afford it and that is hard.

There is a sophisticated marketing tool out there designed to part you from your money and make you want stuff and feel that you are buying a better Christmas.

Last year I wrote about the car boot sale at this time of year.

My mantra is this: ‘everything you buy new can be got down the car boot sale’ and it can. In other words, the promise of a better life wears off very quickly and all that is left is the credit card bill.

'Unplug the Christmas Machine' is a book about this stuff - makes me realise I am not alone! Give it to like-minded friends for Christmas.

What we know is, there is no such thing as a ‘wander round the shops’. You end up buying something.

The shops you go to -and the online shops you frequent - are where you will spend your money.

Now my big question is am I offending my relatives and friends and do they think I’m mean?

And will they mind getting the same Christmas card for the third year in a row?

I bought 2 boxes of mixed cards 3 years back, only to find that they were ALL Christmas Fairies. The thing is I don’t want to waste them – I don’t mind buying new ones, and am hoping to make some this year if the fairies run out but what with the Christmas card list being much reduced and money given to charity instead, they are lasting well.

I try very hard to give back as much as I get and more but to be creative in how I do it.

Our Christmas strategy – but make up your own there is no one right answer to this:

· Cut down the present and card list by simply suggesting that as we all have enough stuff, we could donate to charity instead.

· Only send cards to people you don’t see. If you see them say ‘happy Christmas’ and explain your card strategy. Most people heave a sigh of relief and express the wish to do something similar. Before we did this we had a list of 200 cards to send (and growing). It caused arguments about getting them written!

· Think about what you want to achieve with Christmas shopping before you set out.
. Only venture to the shops where you want to spend your money – and take a list.

· Decide your take on it before you go shopping - eg buy from organisations whose aims you support, make your own gifts, send money to charity and otherwise use it as a conscious time to make the world a better place.

· We used to go out with our children doing some kind of free fun or good work as part of Christmas. I don’t even know if they remember it now, but we even did an anonymous beach clean up one year (great fun!)

· One year a pile of us grownups had a wee fire on the beach and cooked bacon sandwiches. We cleared up well of course and no one would have known we were there.

· Make the Christmas cake on Boxing Day when you are bored and the shops are shut. No one has room for it on Christmas day anyway. Ice it straight away. I’ll swear no one will even know the difference.

· Get your icing and marzipan in January and put them in the freezer for next year.
. read 'unplug the Christmas Machine on the 1st December every year!

Once I let go of trying to be what I think I ought, this Christmas thing really is fun.

I have to remind myself of that and let go all over again every year!

The trick to this is, if anything makes you feel ‘oh no not another task’ DON’T DO IT. if you go whoopee that sounds fun then DO IT.

If you push yourself this time of year, we all know what happens – you get ill for Christmas or New Year. Your body gets you the respite you need in other words.

HAND MADE PRESENT AND CARD (etc) STRATEGIES

· If you have kids, cut out a potato print of a Christmas tree. Use kiddie paint to make printed cards. Even tiny kids can do this. Write the address on the back of the card. Tape the open edge of the card together and you don’t need an envelope.

· Last year I had a fire in the back garden and it was great. (Yeah I have a thing about fire…) We were snowed in so had to abandon plans to go away. It was great and we saw my sister in March instead.

· See article on this blog re buying presents at the car boot sale and donating the rest to charity (or buying the person more presents for the money!)

· Get useful things for people such as a delivery of everyday groceries from Tesco for 20-something son…

· Make presents – it doesn’t take any longer than all that shopping.

· Think about the ‘whose birthday is it anyway?’ mantra. It’s not mine, I think I got it from the New Road Map Foundation website last year. I use it a lot and it clarifies my thinking.

here is a felted 'loopa knit' scarf - potential Christmas present?? though the photo makes it look rather strange...

WHAT A BARGAIN!

2010-11-19T00:21:00.000-08:00

If you like to shop, this may be for you. I have just received £50 worth of Marks & Spencer gift vouchers but I am not going to spend them without doing some forward planning...

Bargain hunting can be great fun.

It puts a whole new slant on shopping, and in fact on recreation. We would rather spend time on something that is fun but will make us money or save us money, than on something that is also fun but will cost us money. Because it is soooo satisfying when you uncover a real bargain.

Seven years ago in January, a friend e mailed me to say that Marks & Spencer had underwear reduced in their sale and her daughter had just got £96 worth of undies for £16.

If you beome a committed bargain hunter, you will want to plan ahead, and keep a note of what your needs are likely to be for the coming year.

I did this rigorously when our 3 kids were small and it meant they got to have a lot more than they otherwise would have, on our limited budget.

They were all the same size so we had no hand me downs within the family although we did have a bit of a system with friends of passing on clothes to each others' children.

I kept a book of what things I had been given that were too big for them, such as next year's size school uniforms, and then knew what we needed to buy at a glance and could snap up that bargain with confidence.

Our clothing needs are actually very predictable.

Our kids would need a minimun of 12 pairs of new socks and underwear each a year, 5 school shirts, 2 school jumpers 2 pairs of school trousers, a school bag and so on. Add to that another 5 play tee shirts, 2 pairs of play trousers, 2 smart pairs etc. Once I sat down to think I realised it was really very easy. The system also meant that everyone always had a smart outfit in their wardrobe that fitted if we got an unexpected invitation.

Once you have the list and you know what you are going to need, just wait and stock up when you see a bargain or until the end of the January or Midusmmer sales. There is no need to bother queueing for the expensive bargains on day one of the sales.

By the time the sales are on, you may have found most of it in the charity shops anyway but there is always something that has to be bought new, socks and undies being a good example.

Fashion

Fashion may change but there are a surprising number of things that are fashion proof even if you are a fashionable person. Socks, underwear and nightwear are good examples. Other relatively fashion proof things are school uniforms and tee shirts. And actually those are all of the things that we will definitely have to replace regularly anyway.

Tee shirts and school stuff do change a bit fashion-wise - for example over the last few years Tee shirts went from longer length to waist length and are now back at longer length again. Skirt lengths have done the same in reverse and trouser legs have gone wider and then narrower.

However it didn't change every year and if you buy a certain number of plainer shirts, skirts or trousers for everyday wear you can always buy a few more fashionable items with all that money you have saved! The plainer ones are more fashion proof - it is this year's must have item that is totally out next year, your plain black tee shirt will still be okay.

As you get better at planning and buying in advance when things are cheap, there are fewer urgent needs, because you have stocked up at a knock down price.

What's more, because you know what you are likely to need for the future, when you do see a bargain you can buy with confidence.

This principle applies to all things, not just to clothes. for instance, cans of tomatoes, ink cartridges, copier paper, spare oil filters for the car,,,

And then you begin to find you are getting better off. This is one of the things that can give you real leverage.

You don't notice the difference at first, and I can remember wondering if it really did work when we started out15 yearsago.

Then one day I found myself thinking 'how come we always seem to have so much money?!!' Our income had not changed and we were not big earners but we had savings - money in the bank. In other words we had an emergency fund and that meant the next time there was an unexpected bill we did not have to borrow money.

This is called 'The Snowball Effect' by Amy Dacyzyn who wrote The Tightwad Gazzette. this book has been in print for probably 20 years. It is phenomenol and quite literally saved our bacon. If you buy two books about simplicity and getting ahead with money, get this one, and Your Money or Your Life

by Joe Domnguez and Vikki Robbins.

The snowball effect works like this:

you predicted your needs and bought cheap.
you therefore spend less money and accumulate savings.
you don't need to borrow next time there is an unexpected bill.
you therefore save on loan interest payments and accumulate more savings
you are able to buy something that enables you to save even more money, such as a wood burning stove to burn free wood or a second hand sewing machine to make your own curtains.

You make a new friend when you get the free wood from their dead tree. They get their garden cleared free and don't need to pay for a skip. You give them some vegetables from your garden to say thanks for the wood.

Next time they go fishing they leave you a fish on the door step. It turns out they don't eat fish anyway so from now on you have a regular supply of fish-for-vegetables thus saving you and them money on the grocery bill.

In the present climate when we are all worried about money to varying extents, a plan like this can give you that emergency fund, or can help keep your head above water if things are bad. It also gives you a morale boost because when you have no money you have things put by and can 'shop at home' and choose things out of your stock to treat yourself or the kids with.

The 'mummy shop'

I used to keep a 'mummy shop' of bargains or things I had made. If the kids did something that was thrifty or helped with a special job (they all helped a bit in the house in an age appropriate way as a matter of course), I would reward them with something from the mummy shop. They totally loved it and I had fun finding things to put in it.

If you are a tax payer, money saved is worth more than money earned, because you don't pay tax on it.

So anyway, when my friend e mailed about that Marks & Spencer underwear sale, I was already poised with a list of our needs for the year. By the time I actually got to Marks & Spencer the undies had gone down in price even more – everything was £1!

I e mailed her back and let her know. By the time SHE got back there, everything was 50p. Top quality, lovely stuff that had started out way over our budget. So when it was 50p we bought a second lot for when the first lot wore out. A bit of planning has saved a lot of money. And I actually got a five year supply of undies for about £50.

So you can bet I won't be spending those M&S vouchers before Christmas.

Our kids got really good at spending any vouchers they got too. They used to ask us if they could keep their Christmas money or vouchers until January. Then they went shopping in the sales and got a lot more for their money. Not a bad idea for anyone who gets a voucher this Christmas...

THE OFF BUTTON

2010-11-09T13:45:00.000-08:00

We do not have TV. When we had it, the set ended up being on a lot. If someone felt like watching TV, on it went. Almost invariably there was nothing on worth watching. Then the channel flicking started and finally everybody would settle for something they did not really want to see instead of switching it off again. The off button was hard to find, it seems.

The most striking thing was the way that the TV seemed to suck in energy. In the evenings, the longer I watched it for, the more tired I became. Finally there simply was not enough energy to contemplate doing something else.

When I do see TV in someone else’s house, I am appalled at some of the stuff that is on. My job used to involve visiting people in their homes, so I got to see a fair cross section of daytime television.

Talk shows parading peoples’ problems would be on in the background and although no one was really watching it (except me, not having been exposed to much of that stuff I was transfixed!) it still creates a negative atmosphere and affects you view of the world.

Friends who have TV do not seem to know what I am on about. They ask me what I do in the evenings, if we do not have a TV set. Before branding me as an extremist though, try going without TV for a month and then see how you react to it when it’s switched on again. See later for tips about how to experiment with your TV use…

One study has researched the problem of us becoming desensitised to distress because we see it on TV a lot, and suggests that this can actually desensitise us to distress in real life and make us less likely to help someone out.

If this is true, TV could be destroying our compassion.

I do notice that TV-watching friends do not react as strongly as I do to these things, and feel that I react more strongly than I did in the days when I had a TV.

When we began to spend more time looking after our grand daughter we got some videos for her to watch. (Our old fashioned videos are all the same to her!)
One was never enough though and she got bored and fractious. The video has never been on again and she doesn't ask for it. if she is ever unwell, it might be useful.
One day it was torrential rain. I thought maybe we would watch a video and then on impulse stopped on the way home and bought a child's umbrella for £1. She played outside for ages with the umbrella and a cat litter tray full of water as a 'puddle' to stand in. We do baking, play with home made play dough or with water in a bowl, dig the garden - all the things we did with our own kids in fact.

TV seems to be everywhere.

It is common in doctors and dentists waiting rooms, and even the post office and the changing room at one local gym has it. I have rarely seen anyone watching properly although they do glance at it. In fact people filter it out.

When the kids were small we went to the movies instead of watching TV. It was a real family treat and good value. (take your own popcorn and drinks or the cost can double).

We also had a TV/video combination unit, with the receiver removed. This enabled us to legally watch rented videos. We took the unit to a TV repair shop and they gave us a letter to send to TV licensing confirming that its reception capabilities had been disabled. Now it is virtually obsolete due to the advent of the DVD but we did well for a while with videos purchased at the car boot sale for 10p/15c each as people got rid of them.

We can still watch DVDs on the computer legally so long as it does not have a receiver in it and we occasionally use the internet based ‘watch again’ websites of the different TV companies. Only about once a month though. There usually seems to be something more interesting to do.

TV licensing paid us a visit about 5 years ago. (They do check up on you eventually if you have told them you don’t have a TV.) Years ago they used to send us lots of letters but not any more.

We told them about the TV video combo and they naturally asked to see it. And we couldn’t find it.

They of course found this hilarious and said we were the first people they had seen that day who really didn’t have a TV.

It eventually turned out to be in our daughter’s wardrobe and they went away happy but still chuckling.

If you want to experiment with your TV use:

Try covering it with a nice cloth or put it in a TV cabinet. Not having visual contact with it improves the feel of the room and means you don't get triggered to switch it on just because it is there rather than because there is something you really want to watch.
Decide not to watch TV first thing in the morning. News programmes especially have a lot of negative stuff in them. Is that really how you want to start the day?
Have one TV free night at home a week and see how it feels. If you are not used to it plan how you are going to spend the time.
Watch out that you don’t end up surfing the internet as a TV substitute.
Here are some of the things we do at home in the evenings:
Talk to each other, play board games, knit, read, make things, write, cook stuff for the freezer, spin, dye yarn, do stuff to support voluntary groups such as contribute to a newsletter, talk to friends on the phone, write this blog.

A PUMPKIN

2010-10-31T00:29:00.000-07:00

I just, finally earned a £5/$8 voucher for buying petrol at Morrison ‘s supermarket. It has taken a year to earn enough points. I don’t often shop at Morrison’s, except for petrol (gas if you are American) but every so often they have a good value bargain, like the 5p\8c sausages I got late one night…

I decided to spend the voucher immediately and to get some things we would use anyway such as eggs and bananas, which are much the same price in all of our local supermarkets. I also decided, in true frugal tradition that I would get a small treat with part of the voucher. It is always a good idea to treat yourself when you earn something extra, as it makes it seem worthwhile.

It being Halloween in a few days’ time, there were lots of pumpkins. Now in my childhood here in Scotland you hollowed out a large turnip or swede, not a pumpkin to make a Halloween lantern. We were tough it those days no doubt, but I have to say that hollowing out a pumpkin does not result in a bent spoon and stigmata on the palms of the hands in quite the same way that hollowing out a turnip does.

My vote therefore goes to the pumpkin every time though I am sure it has more air miles here in Scotland. We can grow them, it is just that there are not many commercial pumpkin growers here…

The advantage of it being Halloween was that the pumpkins were being sold at £2/$3.00 per pumpkin rather than by weight, so a small one was just as expensive as a large one. I therefore netted a large mis-shapen one for my £2, and got a great deal of pumpkin for my trouble.

This is a great indulgence, as not having children in the house, I usually buy pumpkin on the 1^st or 2^nd of November when it can be had very cheap indeed or even picked up in the street a little charred but otherwise none the worse for wear - and I do hate waste as you have probably gathered.

We celebrate Valentine’s Day on the 15^th of February for the same reason – Last yearI got an enormous bunch of red roses for 50p/80c on the 15th of February in Tesco and was only sorry I didn’t need 50 bunches and a load of pot plants because they were all there for the taking. Oysters are also worth looking out for on the 15th of Feb.

Anyway, on the way home from the pumpkin trip I just happened to call in at a local shop.

I netted 2 cartons of Convent Garden fresh pumpkin and bean soup for 25p/40c each, reduced from £2.25/$3.50 each. It was to be used that day, so I brought it home and boiled it up vigorously before putting it in the fridge. We ate it for our dinner last night with a bit of chicken chopped up in it. The total cost of the dinner was about 40p/60c each and very tasty it was too.

The chicken had been a bargain earlier in the week. It had so far done 3 meals and we still had some left.
(See below!)

Meanwhile, back to the pumpkin. It is a variety called Crown Prince and a beautiful grey-blue colour, rather like a duck egg.

I have a great pumpkin recipe, the original version of which comes from the ‘Boxing Clever Cook Book’ by Jacqui Jones and Joan Wilmot.

They are involved in a CSA scheme, or Community Supported Agriculture. CSA involves a group of people who pay a ‘share’ to a grower in advance and are promised a share of the produce when it is ready. People usually help out at the farm or nursery for a day or so, making it a social thing too.

The book is about how to use all the vegetables that CSA members get, especially when there is a glut of something (usually cabbage no doubt). It is therefore a great book for vegetable gardeners, those of us who bulk buys when things are cheap, or for anyone who has too much cabbage.

I took the parsnips out of the recipe because they are not popular with our kids and added a few other things, including gravy, so here is my version of it.

Cut the top off the pumpkin and scoop out the seeds. Prick the skin in several places, sprinkle it with salt and olive oil and put some garlic inside it.

Put the pumpkin and the lid in a baking dish and bake until just tender but still holding its shape. Or prick it all over, put it on a plate and microwave on medium for as long as it takes.

(NB if you are going to chop up a pumpkin for a different recipe, microwave it for a bit first and it will be much easier.)

Meanwhile, cook some potatoes, carrots and swede – or whatever other root vegetabes you have and mash them up with some olive oil and chopped chives. Cook a handful of brown rice separately and mix it into the mash if desired. Mix in other left overs as you desire eg baked beans, peas, chopped meat or cheese.

Stuff the pumpkin with this mixture and bake until it is hot and tender.

Mix some gravy by your usual method, or dissolve some miso, Marmite, Bovril or a stock cube in a mug of hot water, with some chopped parsley and chives in it if you have some. Pour this over the potato mixture in the pumpkin before serving. Serve with grated cheese on top or with a side serving of home-made tomato sauce.

For a Halloween dinner it can be brought to the table with a candle stuck in the top of it, and you can hollow out a face before stuffing the pumpkin.

The recipe can be used with any squash, pumpkin, courgette or marrow and the ingredients adapted to suit what you have in the fridge.

This pumpkin was destined to become other things though, because a whole stuffed pumpkin is a lot for the two of us.
So half of it became pumpkin, pak choi and left over chicken curry and pumkin soup.

The other half was cubed and frozen. NB you can freeze most vegetables for a month or so without having to blanche them, (ie scald in hot water for 2-3 minutes to destroy the enzymes). for longer storage you will need to. You can easily tell if frozen vegetables have started to deteriorate as they go tough and lose their structure.

Another option for home freezing is to cheat and part-cook the pumpkin (or other vegetables) in the microwave in a covered dish with a little water until hot. Or just cook it and freeze ready to use.

High acid things like apples and rhubarb can be stored without blanching anyway and will keep for a long time.
Having cooked the pumpkin then, the seeds were saved. I looked in my gardening catalogue and seeds for this particular pumkin were £2.76 for ten. I had about a hundred. So I saved 20 or so for myself and a friend to plant next year, by rinsing them and putting them on paper towel to dry for 2-3 weeks.

I rinsed the rest and then baked them in the oven to eat. Don't try this at home I have just had to change this entry - I think being able to bake and eat the pumpkin seeds is a bit like the poodle in the microwave adult fairy story, or the recipe for meadowsweet wine. (The Poodle didn't happen, the meadowsweet wine doesn't work). I have cookery books that tell you the pumpkin seeds work - and for that matter that the meadowsweet wine does. My pumpkin seeds stayed firmly stuck to the husk, half on each side when I split them open and were just not worth the bother.

So here is the story about the wine, just to make up for it. I used to be a keen home wine maker and made many kinds of wine. it was popular in the 1990's and seems to be making something of a comeback.
I have just sold my wine making equipment on Cheapcycle (a free site to sell things) and could have sold it 6 times over. I tried a couple of years ago and no one wanted it.

In the times when I was a keen winemaker,( I may blog about this soon so keep watching) a friend who was equally keen (if not more so) and myself experimented with many different kinds. Several books had a recipe for wine made from a hedgerow flower called meadowsweet.
It smells divine when you first make the wine, which is a lovely golden shade. Then it goes dark brown and tastes vile. We covered it in paper and used dark demi johns and it made no difference. I thought it was me and my friend thought it was her until we compared notes and found we had both tried everything! Sometimes one could even suspect that people put recipes in books or, er on blogs without trying them out properly...

PS If you want the Poodle story I'm sure someone will tell you, or try the Internet, but then you probably know it anyway, I think everyone does!
PPS here's a link to the article I just did for Permaculture Magazine about growing winter veg. Pick those pumpkins though, they're not frost proof!

The true cost of decorating.

2010-10-19T13:39:00.000-07:00

While we were away on holiday a month or so ago, I watched a 'house makeover' programme on TV.

I was intrigued to hear the makever guru describe how the new dining room table and chairs she was advising people to purchase was an 'investment piece'. it cost £2,000/$3,000 and was white. The chairs were covered in white leather, which, we were assured, would wipe clean.
Now this house belonged to a young couple with small children, and their kitchen was too small for a table, so presumably their kids will be eating at the white dining room table and the parents will now be getting tense about them dropping food on the new and expensive dining room carpet.

I remember how my kids used to sit at the table and play. They used felt tip pens, paints, water and so on and it was great for them to be able to do that without worrying about our table, which was permanently covered in a heavy pvc coated table cloth. So with a cloth on top of it, an expensive table would have looked just the same as a cheap one, and we bought a second hand good solid Ercol dining room table set for £35 from a local charity (thrift) shop.

In what sense, exactly is a dining room table an 'investment'? An investment is something that increases the value of your money and can be sold (quickly and easily - ie when you need the money) for more than it cost. A Chippendale chair may be an investment, but not one you would make unless you already had money in easily-accessed tax free, safe savings. But a white table will get stained. And the chairs may be wipe clean but the leather will soon look used and the white will rub off in places. The minute it leaves the shop the value becomes less than half of what you paid for it - and how on earth would you sell it anyway? No investment this, then.

An investment has to be a realisable asset. For most of us, even our house is not an investment.
We need to live in it and cannot therefore easily sell it if we need some money, even if it has gone up in value. It costs money for maintenance and to pay the mortgage, especially if we spend money on things that give no return like furniture, and is therefore actually a liability in financial terms. It becomes an asset only if it can earn us money is some way.
That could mean taking in a lodger so at least some of the costs are off-set. It may mean using it to earn money such as by working from home as a child minder or moving your office to the house and therefore saving on rent for business premises if you are self-employed. It may even mean selling it, buying a cheaper one and investing the money.

We recently got a grant and interest free loan to install solar panels. These give an electricity generating feed-in tariff in many European countries, so we get paid to generate electricity. We used Renewable Resources and were very happy with them. give this blog a mention if you get in touch! www.rr-ltd.com
The panels should be paid for by this tariff in ten years (using calculations of the average amount we should expect to generate). The tariff is guaranteed for 25 years and is index linked. Those are the magic words. Anything that is index linked keeps up with inflation of course and that is very important. For us it means the tariff will go up every year when there is any inflation, which will quite possibly make the payback time shorter.

So how else can you make your house an asset?
By spending money in a way that helps it to earn its keep. That doesn't usually mean an expensive kitchen, bathroom or conservatory which are depreciating and unrealisable assets.
It does mean doing the sums regarding any money you spend on it. For example, if you add insulation or double glazing what is the pay back time? If the payback time is long, are there other benefits, such as wanting to go out less or just getting a lot of pleasure from it?

We recently installed a wood burning stove. It cost us quite a lot of money but is worth every penny. We are spending more time at home, and both ourselves and our friends enjoy spending time here more.
We are enjoying getting our exercise collecting and chopping free wood.
We had had a stove at our last house so knew we would enjoy wood gathering, and I have always preferred to get exercise in ways that are useful.
Once we have done something that saves us money and adds to the quality of life at the same time, I love to find yet more ways that it can save us money. So the wood stove has a kettle on it right now, boiling water for tea. The kettle cost me 50p/80c at a car boot sale. It also has a saucepan on it cooking potatoes for tomorrow's dinner. We have managed so far to resist spending money on trailers, wood sheds, chain saws and other things that tempt new wood stove owners!

So I am sitting here toasting nicely whilst not spending a penny keeping warm and cooking a meal at no extra cost. In other words, our money is earning its keep.
Our stove cost about the same as the white dining table and chairs in that make over programme by the way.

FOOD STOCKPILE UP DATE

2010-08-01T07:30:00.000-07:00

In February I wrote about my food stockpile. The pile had a theme – all those so called health foods that you hear about. I say ‘so called’ because they don’t make you any healthier lurking in the cupboard, and in fact make your wallet a lot less healthier.

Blueberries are a great example.

Yes they are healthy but not so great when they have travelled half way round the world and are 3 weeks old by the time we eat them out of their plastic punnet for £2.99 a go.

And ironically, here in Scotland you can grow blackcurrants very easily for nothing. You simply get a bit of branch off someone else who has blackcurrants and stick it in the ground. Hey presto, only a year later you will have your first abundant crop. They have just as many anti oxidants in them and are good in porridge, wine, jam, juice and so on.

Who has ever managed to grow enough blueberries to make wine, jam and juice and still have enough left to put on their porridge? We grow both, and the birds either don’t bother with the blackcurrants or there are so many that we don’t notice the difference. (NB the trick with blackcurrants is to prune back to the ground everything that has fruited right after you pick the fruit. It leaves hardly anything, but don‘t let that worry you. I treasure my handful of blueberries per bush, whilst struggling to pick about 20 kilos of blackcurrants off our 6 bushes...

Simply add some black currants to your porridge from the freezer. Put the £2-£3 you would have spent on the blueberries each week in a pot and treat yourself to a weekend away instead at the end of the year. And watch out for the marketing hype with any food, with the likely associated price hike.

some of our blackcurrant crop...

Anyway, back to the food stockpile.

I have had some successes using things up. The mung bean stew has been great. I have only four tubs left, and have been getting a tub or even half a tub out of the freezer and adding different flavourings, tins of tomatoes, curry powder, vegetables etc to give us a range of almost free meals. I have even tried it out on a number of visitors with very positive results, and even requests for the recipe.

NB I did, honestly, tell them the story of the wee black things (see Feb 10 blog entry!) and offer a menu choice. Not one person was bothered, and it led to some interesting conversations about food waste.

The Cajun powder goes well with the mung bean stew and it, too is diminished.

The dried onions, glutinous rice and dried shitake mushrooms have all gone.

The brown chick peas have almost gone. I thought they had gone but hubby re-organised the freezer after the door got left open and frosted it up. Behold! Another bag of pre-cooked brown chick peas. He thoughtfully thawed them out and they will no doubt go in the bin once no one eats them and they go off in the fridge.

I like the ordinary ones but not these. A friend suggested sprouting them, and guess what – they are yummy sprouted. So the dried ones have all been sprouted and eaten, and the ones from the freezer went to said friend who likes them fine.

I am ashamed to say that almost all of the rest is still there. I have remembered to take the glucosamine a few times, but not enough to use up a whole one. I am quite stuck with the pollen granules, red quinoa, almond butter and the miso. I ought to use them up but keep not doing so. I hereby resolve to do one thing a week to use something up…

I HAVE FOUND ANOTHER STOCK PILE!This one is art materials for children. I used to do one to one art work with kids who had problems and have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of poster paint, bubbles (about a litre of it but you dilute it with 80% water - HELP) PVA glue (500mls) and several of those glue sticks.

I have a grandchild who is working hard at using all this stuff up but reckon it could take her the rest of her life to get through all that paint despite her best efforts.

There is a wonderful book called ‘Material World A Global Family Portrait’, by P Menzel. He went to different parts of the world and got people to put all their belongings outside their home. These were catalogued and photographed and the photos are in the book. The book also details the food the family eats. It was striking how many of the families only get to eat once a day, or who just eat beans and rice all the time whatever time of day it is and are grateful to be able to eat at all.

The American family’s stuff took up half a block. There was a family in Ethiopia who had only the clothes they stood up in, some cooking pots and a pair of wellingtons.

That is why I cannot bear to just throw away all this food and stuff that I should never have bought and may still be able to use up.

Actual stuff such as furniture, books and clothes is much easier to let go of. The money is gone, and it is better to send it to the charity shop or sell it so that someone else can get the use of it.

But you cannot do that with old food, part used poster paints and glue sticks.

So my resolution is to not let these things into my life without careful consideration. That is where the problem lies.
But how to remember when I am at the shops and I want something???

Make do and Mend

2010-07-09T02:18:00.000-07:00

Handy hints re:
• Making ink from soot, barley bannocks and a washing up bowl ‘shower’ should you ever need them!

Here’s thought:

The real value of things has been lost because they are so cheap here in the West and we think it will be that way forever. The things of true value such as food, water, shelter and community are often cheap in money terms until they become scarce and then we realise you can't eat money.

These essential resources are likely to get more expensive as they become scarcer, which is already happening in many parts of the world. Historically we don’t notice something is running out until it is gone.

So the fact that many parts of the world (including the western world, such as Arizona) are running out of drinking water does not stop us (or even them) from using it to fill swimming pools and water lawns.

It is just hard for us to believe it until it's too late. And elected governments run for a term of about 4 years. What vested interest do they have in unpopular policies to conserve resources? It just means they don’t get re-elected.

Our value base has changed a lot over the last 40 years or so without us noticing. Things have come to seem like the Only Hygienic Way for instance, when we managed perfectly well before.

Many people now think it is unhygienic to shower less than once a day or not flush the toilet every time we use it.
Remember If it's brown flush it down, if it's yellow let it mellow?
NB if you have a toddler who plays with the toilet don't try to save on water this way! If your dog drinks the toilet water you may also want to think here - or shut the lid!

I have been following Mark Boyle’s blog on http://www.justfortheloveofit.org/ (he has just published a great book, the Moneyless Man).

He is quite a bit younger than me and I was struck by the things even he doesn’t know that his granny would have.
He also managed to do lots that I would never do of course. For example I am grateful to Mark for providing proper instructions on how to build a rocket stove.

Lots of people around the world rely on rocket stoves, made from old tin cans, to do their cooking on. They are efficient and use very little fuel. But many of us here would be appalled at the thought of having to use one.
Even if we in the UK (and I am sure many other Western countries) are on the dole (unemployment benefit) with hardly any money most of us would rather get into debt to pay the electricity bill than cook in the garden on a rocket stove in the better weather. Yeah I said most of us. I’m afraid this is where my family snigger and think to themselves ‘Not our Janet she would be out there under a borrowed Gazebo in the rain, actually’ and my Dad says ‘most people aren’t like you’ but actually he’s just the same. Well I would be out there in the rain under a gazebo if it meant I had enough money and did not get into debt.

Here’s an example of what Mark Boyle doesn’t know that his granny could have told him. (Sorry mark!!)
The thing about solar showers is that the water is gone before you get the soap off. Any good Girl Guide knows the best camping shower is a bowl of water.
Use a soap and flannel to soap yourself. Then stand in the basin and use a jug to pour the water over yourself and wash the soap off. The basin catches the water of course so you can keep re-using it. Or just use the flannel to wash off the soap. And lean over the bowl to rinse your hair before you use the soap.

World Vision actually gives families plastic bowls for the purpose. They are like an over-sized washing up bowl and large enough for an average person to sit or kneel down in which is even better.

Mark spent ages making ink from mushrooms.

In ‘The Garden Cottage Diaries, my year in the eighteenth century’ historian Fiona Houston describes how we used to make ink from soot here in Scotland. Much easier and available in abundance if living a subsistence lifestyle. Apparently it also lasts well on the page.

I think fiona just mixed soot with water but I have loaned the book to a friend! Soot lasts hundreds of years as ink and does not damage paper as it is basically carbon.

Mark agonises over whether to make bread, which he is fond of.

But it is a major hassle to make, due to the necessity for also making an outside cob oven and having to make sourdough as a starter.

In eighteenth century Britain they got around this by making flat bread, using whatever grains they had. It was unleavened and cooked on a flat iron griddle on top of the fire. They also made barley bannocks, delicious eaten hot . Barley was cheaper than wheat and was easier to grow in Scotland. http://bakingforbritain.blogspot.com/ has a bannock recipe.

Fiona Houston also has an authentic Scottish recipe for Bannocks and flatbread in her book. She is a food historian and her recipes are very good.

All this 'making do' led me to think about mending clothes. I tend to think it is a waste of time and I would be better doing something else, so the mending just sits there. Ultimately it means throwing the clothes in the bin though (or use them for rags/make a quilt - but how many of us bother?) Yet another example of how we undervalue what we have because it is cheap in money terms to buy.

So today I mended a tear in a skirt and remembered how good I am at it. I showed it to my daughter and it took us while to find the mend. I mended the strap on a bra and sewed a button on a cardigan. I tried to mend the sleeve on another cardigan only to find the whole sleeve had worn thin .
How great is that – I actually managed to wear something out! That cardigan was a favourite. It is cashmere and cost only £10 in a Tesco sale. I have had my money’s worth out of it.

It is a rare for us to wear clothes out . Or anything else for that matter. We get fed up with it and want new stuff. Or we buy the new stuff and it doesn’t all fit in the cupboard so then we get rid of the old stuff. And yet so many people in the world do not have enough.

One result of all this has been the growth of companies who do kerbside collections for our unwanted clothes and bric a brac. These are shipped out to other countries and sold to people who don’t have easy access to such things. Seems like a tidy solution but it has apparently led to the collapse of the textile industry in some countries, causing people to lose their jobs and the country to lose its self sufficiency in textile production.

So really the solution is to stop buying so much and wear out what we have.

What I have would probably last me the rest of my life though and I am bored with it already.

I am great at using what I have and not buying more until I go to the shops.

I am now trying not to buy anything brand new without first thinking whether I really need it and whether it could be got second hand. It has reduced our purchases and helped the finances into the bargain but is it still hard.
Sometimes you just want stuff because it seems like everyone else buys it. Buying knitting yarn and fibre for spinning seems to be my blind spot and I have so far not counted it as buying something new! I do have a lot already though – not counting the fibre and yarn that I sell as part of my business, this is just my personal stuff.

Mending the clothes made it feel like I had something new, because the things had been un-wearable for so long whilst waiting to be fixed. So it not only saved the cost of the item I repaired it saved the cost of a new one too.

And it was more satisfying to prevent these things from being thrown away than it would have been to go shopping.

I was going to bin the truly worn out cardigan. Then I realised I have been combing the charity shops for knitwear to make into felted knitting in the washing machine! So my cardigan is soon to be re-born as a felted knitted bag with beads on it. And if it doesn’t work, nothing is lost.

In the meantime I have had fun making a felted tea cosy from washing machine felt. (sadly not re-cycled, this was made from scratch.) I needed one and managed to design my own, with various buttons and handle holes in it. This means it fits two sizes of tea pot and the cafetiere. And making it kept me away from the shops…

IF NOT NOW, THEN WHEN?

2010-05-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

IF NOT NOW, THEN WHEN?

It is often said that if you have lost your way in life and don’t know what to do about it, look at what you loved to do as a child, and start there. As a child I loved to make things, especially food and textiles, to garden and ride my bike. It has not changed.

My part time business is textile based, and for most of my adult life I have had an argument going on inside my head about whether I should earn a more meagre living as a textile artist or a better off one doing something a lot heavier. Whenever I become too focused on the money instead of the love of the craft, it seems to let me know in some way and back I come to what I love.

If you follow your heart, your brain will tell you to be practical and remind you that there are bills to pay.

But continue to push yourself and to do things that challenge your integrity and your well-being could be at risk. It is quite simply bad for our health. And what if you didn’t make it to retirement, because the job you pushed yourself to keep doing had made you sick?

Simplicity offers a way out:

Eliminate the surplus spending that does not add to your quality of life. Save up a nest egg instead and then you can take a year off, take a risk, or use the money to do what you really want.

A job that is not in line with your integrity tends to lead to higher spending anyway, in the form of expensive holidays, treats to compensate for having to work and through having to pay for things that there is no time left do, such as cutting the grass and housework.

Now ask yourself these questions:

• What would make you really sad if you never got to do it?

• If you just went and did it, what is the worst thing that could happen?

• If that worst thing did happen, could you live with, or deal with the consequences?

My Dad was 80 in February this year. These are his questions, and my sister mentioned them when she gave a talk at his birthday party. I reckon they may have something to do with why he is still fit, active and happy at the age of 80.

Few of the things that keep us fit, active and happy actually cost a lot of money. STRESS may even cause more harm to our bodies than many of the more concrete health concerns we read about such as food additives etc.

Does it really make sense to work full time in a stressful job that you don’t love in order to pay for supermarket organic veg that has travelled half way round the world?

It may be better to work part time, have a simpler lifestyle, relax a lot more and eat local non organic veg...

Even better, grow some veg and don’t worry about the rest.

I just got hold of a ‘free’ green guide to my area. It is actually advertising for local ‘green’ businesses, which pay to be in there, and get priority for an article if they advertise. There is nothing wrong with that of course and I used to advertise in it myself.

However I am struck by how many different ways there are to spend money in order to deal with a malaise which is largely lifestyle based, or to do with stress and general discontent with our lot. Almost the whole magazine if filled with articles and advertisements about complementary health clinics, stress and relaxation treatments.

You need to work more in order to pay for all those treatments or therapies, but maybe working less and spending less could lead to the problem going away of its own accord?

Even if you do something you love, you still need time just to hang out and do nothing much.

Colin Bevan in his recent book ‘No Impact Man’ quotes Kurt Vonnegut: ‘The purpose of life is to futz around’. Yeah…

On foraging

2010-03-15T10:41:00.000-07:00

I wrote the initial foraging article, 'On Foraging For Gloves' for the Financial Interity website and it can be viewed there.

Here is a sequel.

As you will have guessed by now, I hate waste.

It is not about the money - you can buy many things so cheaply now that it is often hardly worth buying second hand or repairing things from a financial point of view.   Bear that in mind when you get scared about inflation - many things are cheaper now than they were 20 years ago, unless you really need the newest model.
It is worth it from the point of view of not wasting the resources of our planet, and from the point of view of our own integrity however. It makes you feel a lot better if you know you are doing what is right.

Yet in the great abundance we have here, it seems to take so much energy to re-use and value everything, and we already have so much that if we didn't waste anything, I feel I would never need to buy things again. Some of them would probably outlive me.
Face it - how long does it take to wear out a good coat, or a bicycle, or a sideboard, wardrobe, pair of wellingtons... for most adults these things last a very long time.
We get rid of them because we are tired of them, or want another colour, or someone just bought us a new one for Christmas.

I read somewhere (I think it was in the book 'Affluenza' - see link) that in the 1950's some great marketing conference looked at what they could get us to buy now that we had everything we needed. They set an aim of making shopping a leisure activity. People said it couldn't be done...

What has set me off this time is seeing a bag of perfectly good stuff spilling out of a bin bag where it had been dumped in a lane. First hubby came home with a pair of crutches (yes really!) out of the bag. They were in perfect condition and have now been re-homed at the physiotherapy department of a local hospital where they should have been returned in the first place.

So I had to go and have a look too and came home with a child's car booster seat - slightly muddy but otherwise fine. There is nothing that can really go wrong with a booster seat so it is perfectly safe and now also nice and clean. We will keep it for our grandchild.

That made me think about waste, as I had been about to go shopping (!) to buy a new jumper and a cardigan. I resolved to go round all the charity shops and came home with a 100% cotton heavy cardigan originally from Next , which looks brand new, and a silk and cotton jumper. Both are lovely. I also found a floaty layered skirt which will look nice with boots. Total cost £12 approx.
I wanted a new brown eyeshadow because THE OTHER ONE HAD RUN OUT. How great is that, I actually managed to finish something before I bought a new one. So long as you don't count the other five eyeshadows that I don't really use...

I went into the local branch of a well-known chain of chemist's shops and the assistant helped me to find one which was exactly what I wanted for £16 ($23) - ouch.
Luckily I overheard another assistant mention an alternative brand and spotted one for £5 ($7). It was not quite the right colour, and somehow I felt pressure to buy the first one. However, there was 3 times as much eyeshadow in the cheaper one, and I bought it. Presumably, being larger, it will last me the rest of my life...
When I got to the checkout, I realised I had enough points on my discount card to get it for nothing. It had taken me about 3 years to save up the points and I almost forgot to ask - great.

I stopped to do the re-cycling on the way home, and spotted a bin bag dumped by the clothes re-cycling bin. It was too big to go through the slot in the bin and the contents would be spoiled in the rain. I had a quick look and there was some good stuff in there, so I put it in the car and brought it home.

My haul has netted me 5 pairs of jeans, 5 t-shirts, some pyjamas, and a couple of other things. The rest will be taken back to be re-cycled, and I will make a donation to charity for the clothes I am keeping.

It is better than them being ruined in the weather, and if I make a donation then it is a win-win. Not sure what the ethics of that is, but if feels okay.

PS re the Amazon link. I am not an affiliate for Amazon and do not make any money out of you using that link.  I am neither for or against any particular book seller.
If there is a better way for you to get the book, please feel free.  I just couldn't get the picture of the book to come up without the link.
I borrowed my copy of Affluenza from a friend.  I have got many books by special request from my local library. (see previous blog entry about books and libraries).

listening to owls

2010-03-11T12:18:00.000-08:00

LISTENING TO OWLS

We were away on holiday last week. NOT AGAIN I hear you cry.

We go away for lots of short breaks and weekends within the United Kingdom where we live, and I often combine weekends away with teaching my spinning and weaving workshops.

I love the idea of work being blended in with the rest of life, rather than being something that ends at 5pm when the rest of your life (therefore) begins.

In order for this to be successful, the work has to be enjoyable and there must not be too much of it. I have read books about work becoming part of life that are basically about working all the time – ie taking your laptop on the beach etc and simply working there, whilst everyone else is having fun.

You are still working whether you are on the beach or not and if you are doing that it probably just means you are a workaholic.

What I am talking about here though, is working part time and in a non-structured, flexible way.

That may sound impossible but not only is it possible, we have done it for years.

It takes a bit of thought, planning and well, work to actually achieve this however.
It means working out how to maximise your income whilst at the same time minimising expenditure, without cutting out anything that adds to your quality of life.
Then you can work part time. There will be more about how to do that in future blogs. You could also visit http://www.financialintegrity.org/ to learn more about the Your Money Or Your Life nine step programme on how to get ahead with money. This is a charitable organisation which aims to help people, not someone who makes money out of it.

Well anyway, there we were, visiting my sister at a Camphill community called Botton village http://www.camphill.org/ in a beautiful Yorkshire Dale, miles up a single track road with no mobile phone reception (Yippee).

And I was woken up by the hooting of owls. I cannot resist getting up when I hear Things In The Night.

Owl no 1 was in a tree right outside the window, outlined against the dawn sky. I heard owl no 2 answer and they chatted for a while until they had located one another, then off they went. I stayed and watched the sun come up – wonderful.

At home, we have a little owl that comes and sits on the telegraph pole in our back garden. So now I am grateful for the telegraph pole, which I must admit until then was an irritation. Apparently little owls eat a lot of worms, beetles and that sort of thing. Hopefully I can tempt it to the odd slug too…

That figures, (them eating worms I mean) because the first time I heard it was when we got to grips with our fledgling vegetable garden a few years ago and got a load of manure. Our worm population doubled practically overnight, and our little owl population went up by 100% (ie from zero to one!).

At the time I just thought ‘what the heck is all that din?’ rather than oh great – a little owl. It was easy to figure out what it was though, even in the dark, because in silhouette they look rather like Garfield and are smaller than the average owl. Even I could spot it in the bird book.

On one of my night-time slug forays, armed with a pair of scissors, ( yes I know, yuck but at the time I was bagging 70 slugs a night) I heard a strange rustling noise next to a patch of garden where I had spread some manure.
The torch showed about a dozen worms literally munching on the bits of straw etc in the manure.
I didn’t even know they did that, but what an amazing sight. They have huge mouths that just open up out of nowhere. And they really do make quite a noise.

I heard on the radio that the wild life in your garden is likely to be your wildlife and not even shared with the garden next door. Ie it only exists because of what your garden is like. Gardens are mini habitats in their own right.

In our garden, there many different kinds of bumble bees, solitary bees and mason bees, including some little black ones which I think are quite rare. When I heard about it being 'our' wildlife it made sense, because when we first moved here, all we had was a square of scrubby grass and there were no bees - and no frogs, lizards, stoats or little owls either.

Those creatures are there because of plants we have, like the cotoneaster, which flowers for a long time. I was going to dig it up until I realised how many bees were on it. And they are probably nesting somewhere in the garden. It is a good idea to find out where and make sure you don’t destroy their habitat by mistake.

That is the great thing about simplicity – having time to watch the worms, and the energy to get up and listen to the owls.

it all began with a jar of beans...

2010-02-21T12:15:00.000-08:00

I am challenging myself to have zero food waste. We have been doing this for a while, and really don't waste much OR SO I THOUGHT.
well, it includes what is in the cupboard and does not get eaten too, and I have only been counting what actually goes in the bin.

Today, I decided to cook some of the large jar of mung beans that have been looking at me reproachfully from beside the cooker. I have a really good recipe for mung bean casserole. We try to eat beans once a week. Any more seems to interfere with my digestion and I get well, er, bunged up.
The lid of the large (10 litre/4pint) jar was stuck. We both tried to no avail and I resorted to pouring boiling water over the lid in the hope it would loosen. It loosened so much that water got inside before I realised.

MUNG BEAN COOKING MARATHON...This meant that some of the beans inside got wet so I decided to cook them all, and freeze the remaining bean casserole. (Goodness only knows when I will eat all that but never mind.)
I put the beans into 2 large pots and poured boiling water over them. WHAT WERE THE WEE BLACK THINGS???
I thought they were rougue seeds but closer inspection revealed they were some kind of insect. Very dead ones, but once I had given the pot a stir there were about 12 in all. Not weavils, but something insectivorous.

DECISION TIME
So now the question was this:
Do I chuck all the beans in the bin or not?
I decided not to, as the insects were well and truly dead and there were not that many (is that actually possible with insects, or were the rest just lurking...)

HOW MUCH OTHER STUFF IS HIDING IN THE CUPBOARDS?
I decided (in between cooking mung bean stew) to do a stock take - how much other food in there was too old, or was simply not being used?

Now we are veteran de-junkers and thought we were good at using things up, not buying things we don't need and so on. Not the case. Clutter, including the kitchen and bathroom kind, creeps back in the night, I swear it does, even when you have a 'one in one out' policy. Except that our one in one out policy has somehow managed to by-pass the kitchen.

So I spent the afternoon doing a stock take and made a list of all the things in the cupboards that have not been getting used up. See if you can spot a theme here...

JANET'S KITCHEN CUPBOARDS NOT-BEING-USED-UP LIST.

1. Sprouted broccoli powder - unopened packet use by Nov 08

2. Pollen tablets use by Mar 08
3. Kelp powder - slowly going down but elderly - Date unknown
4. Cardamoms - very old.  Why do these come in such large quantities I
     use about 12 pods a year, and do like them - but the famiy don't.
5. Cajun powder Bought in a large quantity but we don't use enough of it.
6. Fenugreek seeds smelled off, age unknown and don't like the way I
    smell of them the next day! These went in the bin. The only thing to do
    so so far.
7. Wine yeast. Oh dear. I chucked this out and then bought bread yeast.
8. Bread yeast - managed to use it up but the bread was a bit solid. Was
past its best.
I HAVE JUST FOUND THE ECHINACEA. I nearly bought more, but there it was under all the stuff I don't use.
9. Brown chick peas, large quantity. YUCK. I really do like most things,
incuding ordinary chick peas. These still have their coats on and I find them indigestible and the coats just won't come off. I have some in the
freezer all cooked and ready to use, too. Maybe I will make chick pea flour,
in my state of the art grinder/processor, or try sprouting them.

10. Xanthan gum. Apparently good for making non-gluten flour stick
together to make better cakes and bread. I don' eat cakes and bread often.
When I did try this it had a dramatic effect in the wind department...
11. Dried onions. Rescued from a holiday cottage. Now I know why they were
there. How can they taste so different to ordinary onions?
12. Carob powder. Why do I keep buying this? The last packet went in the
bin, and it is highly likely this one will too, but not today.
13. Cocoa. Probably bought when I made a birthday cake but nobody uses it
for anything else.
14. Shitaki mushrooms, dried. Best before Mar 2009
15. Pollen granules. Was going to use these on cereal but they make it go
all yellow and too sweet for me.
16. Almond butter, 3 jars. Best before 2004 (ouch) still fine, actually and
very tasty but also very fattening and I am never sure what to do with it.
17. Glutinous rice. (see later!)
18. Rice noodles half packet (got forgotten) Half a packet is not enough for 2 of us.
We used to use these a lot but somehow we forgot about them.
19. Sesame seeds. I used to put these in seed mixes as a snack but they are
impossible to eat without shoveling them directly into your mouth and always
end up at the bottom of the jar. I have ground some and added to a flour mix
for baking (except that I don't often bake)
20. Powdered Wasabi use best before 2003. (where does the time go?)
21. Aduki beans. Same story as the other beans, only these are even older.
22. Poppy seeds. What exactly are you supposed to do with these? You buy
half a pound (450g), sprinkle them on 2 loaves of bread and are stuck with them
for the rest of your life. My mother had some and I bet you've got some too...
23. Popping corn.
24. Red Quinoa. Never used this. Same as the white stuff with its skins on.
25. White quinoa. I do try and like this. Each time I cook some it
goes off in the fridge because no one else will eat it. And no, it doesn't make
a good alternative to porridge.
26. Various sprouting seeds. Actually I do sprout a lot, so I get to feel a
tiny bit smug here. These jumbo packets were a bit over-ambitious though.
27. Hatcha miso. Good intentions but packet never opened.
28. Brown rice miso in fridge, opened. forgot I had it when I bought the
above. Not sure how long its been there. Never seem to have the chives and
parsley cut to go with it.
29. Buckwheat. Must make this into flour too...I bought it to sprout but it
is a challenge. You have to soak it in water and rinse every half an hour for
4 hours before sprouting or it goes stinky. And no, it doesn't make a good
alternative to porridge either, even with cinammon.
30. Ground mixed seeds for porridge. Keep forgetting and, well it is nicer
without it. I prefer whole sunflower and pumpkin seeds, and DO use them.
31. Several half packets of rye bread in the freezer.
32. TEA: Green tea (wrong make) 4 packets, Blackcurrant tea bags 3 packets,
choco tea, lemon verbena tea Pau D'Arco tea (hunted long and hard for this).
All need using up.
33. 2 packets and half a jar of linseeds in the freezer.

DID YOU SPOT THE THEME?Yes, I have been reading those healthy eating books. All of these things are supposed to change our lives and make us healthier.
Well they don't make your wallet any healthier.
Here is my take on it:
Keep the money and you won't need to work so hard to pay for all those expensive promises. Then you can relax more and be less stressed. That is better for your health than anything else.

JANET'S HEALTH PLAN.
We all know how to eat healthily. Your mother tells you, you learn it at school, on TV, in books and newspapers. That doesn't make you do it, any more than buying expensive supplements and super foods does.
If you want to be healthier:
* Eat 5-9 fruit and veg a day. (not all fruit some green stuff too)
* Exercise half an hour 3 times a week
* Take time to relax.
* Simplicity leads to less stress, as we get out of debt and begin to exercise choices in spending and lifestyle.

Nothing new there then, huh? Bet your mum could have told you that.

JANET'S USE-UP-THE-FOOD PLAN
So now I have 2 vats of mung bean casserole (amazing how those beans swell up) with shitaki mushrooms and dulse. (Forgot about the dulse and several other kinds of seaweed I have.)

I have also cooked the glutinous rice.
Neglected to tell hubby what it was and he spent a while trying to rescue it and make it non-sticky by rinsing it through the sieve. The sieve may never recover, and we now have a large quantity of cooked glutinous rice. Amazing how that swells up too.
It was great when we had it in that Thai restaurant but what to do with it at home? Glutinous rice and mung bean casserole for a week could lead to plumbing problems...

Have also managed to:
Use up one blackcurrant tea bag.
Start lots of seeds sprouting.
Make a variation of peanut butter cookies (sugar free peanut and almond butter with gluten free flour that needs using up cookies). These have had a lukewarm reception.

PS: I also forgot about the 2 large jars of apricot kernals, one in the fridge and one in the freezer. I have doggedly eaten 2 seeds a week (ish) for the last 3 years and the jar is NOT going down...These may well end up in the bin. I feel guilty every time I open the fridge.

It's January and there's food in the garden

2010-02-05T10:58:00.000-08:00

It's January and there's food in the garden. That is in spite of all the snow over the last few weeks.
Our journey to simple living and frugality has always invovled a flirtation with the idea of self sufficiency.
A part of me is wistful about living in a culture where that was still possible. Where you could just build a house and the local Council would not make you come and take it down again because it did not have plumbing and wiring and meet building control standards.
In one of the World Vision charity newsletters, there was lad living in an 8foot by 6 foot square brick shelter with no windows.
He had built his house with money provided by World Vision for people who had no where to live. He was 18 years old and by himself. When asked why he did not build a bigger house he simply said that as it was the first one he had built, he thought it best to build a small one! To him it was a palace. I wonder whether he would rather have my bungalow with plumbing and electricity? It means a constant drain on the finances that he will not have.
When you have to pay Council Tax (the UK's property tax paid each year based on the value of you house) and electricity and gas it can seem like there really is little chance of cutting down those bills to the point when you don't need so much money.

It is more possible than it seems though and we are a case in point. We put our efforts into making sure there is no waste. the idea is to spend no money unless it adds to our quality of life and enjoyment.

Earning a living growing vegetables in the garden may not be sustainable in Western culture. What they can do is to supplement our income somewhat. I have heard it said that growing vegetables does not pay because they are cheap and do not save much money. NOT TRUE. Admittedly if you work it out purely on the basis of how much a carrot costs it does not save much money. But here is our sum.
1. Substitute buying more expensive groceres and eat what you have in the garden. Plan meals based on what is ready and change your diet to suit. it will end up being more delicious and healthier once you can bring yourself to make the change.
2. Plan what you plant based on what you eat a lot of.
3. Plant things that are expensive to buy. For example rocket and watercress are expensive to buy. Rocket and land cress are very easy to grow and will self seed.
4. Grow small amounts of many different things rather a lot of any one thing. Then you won't get sick of it. NB no one is likely to eat more than 12 large cabbages in a year...
5. Any thing that says on the packet it is an 'early' can also be planted at the tail end of the year with the exception of parsnips. If you have any cover at all, even a bit of plastic and some old bricks, you can plant something under it to provide winter salad. (when it is most expensive to buy). You can extend the season a lot even by planting outside in August and September in Scotland so if you live farther south it is even more worthwhile. We have a 20 foot long polytunnel and get greens all winter.

6. The following are hardy winter salad crops in order of hardiness, with the hardiest first.

* Kale. This is yummy in salads as well as cooked. The trick is to pick it often and then you get lots of young tender leaves. These are sweet and not at all like the tough bitter old leaves we often think of when the word 'kale'is mentioned. And it has all those winter vitamins in it.

* Leeks. Will stand outside all winter no problem just like the kale. If I had a tiny plot I would put a kale plant and 2 dozen leeks in it for the winter.

* Winter cabbage. Great for cole slaw.

* Mooli, or White Radish. A long huge radish. The variety long White Icicle is very hardy. Grate it in the cole slaw along with the carrot, put it grated in stews, curries and soups. I once had Mooli Parathas in an Indian Cafe and it was great, so try stuffing savoury pancakes with it too.

* Early carrots planted in september - will survive well outside till December. Will survive all winter in a polytunnel or frame. If they are small, leave them and they will start to grow in February and be a good size by April.

* Lambs lettuce. will survive almost any weather even without a cover. put something over it and it continues growing all winter. Ours has an old plastic caravan window over it and has survived -13c.

* Claytonia. Will last all winter in a poly tunnel. Does quite well in a cold frame with a layer of bubble wrap inside it in Scotland. If you live south of Scotland the world is your oyster. I used to live in London and could grow winter lettuce outside till November. Claytonia is much hardier than winter lettuce.

Right now we are eating the following straight from the garden: All of the above except the carrots and mooli which are all eaten. PLUS spinach, pak choi, endives, lettuce, beetroot, parsley and a number of different herbs. A lot of this was planted in July, August and September and that is the trick. And do bear in mind we had 12 inches of snow for 2 weeks and have had temperatures of minus 13c several times this winter.

So dinner starts with 'what's in the garden', and mostly includes a salad. We use leeks instead of onions until they run out.

GROW SALAD SPROUTS
We are sprouting most of the time. Any green salad looks better for some sprouts. We have two of those stacking salad sprouters and keep them in one huge stack to save space. I don't keep the sprouts in the dark to start with like some books suggest. I do keep the trays tilted all the time as they drain better. Irun them under a brisk tap twice a dy.

At the moment we have a mixture of soya beans, chick peas, 2 kinds of lentils and aduki beans in one tray and alfalfa in the other. It looks really good in a salad and the first kind is ready in a couple of days. Chick peas are the quickest of all so in an emergency just do a tray of them. Red Cabbage sprouts are really tasty and colourful.

I soak all the seeds overnight in water before putting them in the trays as it speeds them up by a day or so. NOTE: next time you are in a supermarket check out the price of salad sprouts. If they have them at all they are not cheap. Grow them yourself and they cost pennies.
I take them when we visit friends for dinner as a gift and they are always appreciated.
I put the word out that I wanted the seeds for sprouting as many people have them but don't use them. In return I gave the donors some sprouted seeds.
Another tip: they also grow well in the garden and work out a lot cheaper than buying seeds that are intended for the garden. You never know what variety they are but they grow well.
The same goes for seeds sold for culinary use, such as celery or coriander. Just plant some in the garden and they will grow. I have grown all my celery like that for years.

YOu don't need to move to the country to do this. In fact please don't - it is a lot more expensive.
We used to live in the country and we know.
You will spend more on extra fuel for the car than you will save growing vegetables and it is a lot worse for the planet.

If you are not a gardener and want to do a little bit, here is a suggestion.
If you have a 1 metre plot of land, plant one potato, a few cloves of garlic from the supermarket and some rocket or a few lettuce plants this spring. Then in July put some lambs lettuce and some more garlic in and it will be ready in spring.
Next year put in a kale plant, a dozen leeks and some salad.
The year after, some mange tout on tall canes and a courgette plant.
In year 4 go back to the beginning.
It will taste like nothing else. If you don't have a garden plant a few herbs in pots on a windowsill. Try basil if you have a sunny window sill. If you have a patio or path or anything outside at all, plant one potato in a bucket.
If you don't want to grow from seed buy a pot of herbs from the supermarket. split them and put them in several pots and they will last a lot longer. The more you pick them the longer they will last, so long as you always leave some leaves on the plant. Basil and parsley work well.

Books, Libraries and clutter

2010-01-14T13:30:00.000-08:00

Books are special. We are brought up to respect them, not scribble on them and to never, ever damage them or throw them away.
That is why those of us who are old enough to know better often have bulging bookcases full things like a 1969 tax guide, with the pages stuck together because it got a bit damp when we spilled that cup of tea ten years ago...
The worst thing about book clutter is that it can actually stop us from reading and fully enjoying books. You don't want to buy a new book, or even get one out of the library until you've read the ones on the shelves. After all they cost good money...
Face it - if you haven't yet read Ulysses it is destined to be unread for ever. And do you know anyone who actually has? I never got past the first chapter.

Having begun to log our income and outgoings some years ago, we realised (or rather I did) that books were a major expenditure.
At the same time, we were shedding excess belongings in The Great De-Junk, and the books took up a lot of space. So some of them were sold or passed on in order to make room for new ones.
'How could you do that?' friends cried. Well eventually, either you need a bigger house or have to stop buying new books. We had definitely got to the 'bigger house' stage. There were books in every room except the loo.

The money earned from selling books meant more money for new ones, although some of it went towards paying off the mortgage early, (our Big Project at the time).
Here is how we did it:
1. Checked the library. If a book had been on the shelves for some time and the library had a copy, it was re-homed. If we wanted to read it again it was in the library. The same went for books that had been on the shelf for a long time and had never been read.

2. If a book made us feel bad, or had guilt associated with it,out it went. Several books our children had failed to return actually went back to the school. I had to face up to never being able to take my 25 year old mathamatical log tables book back to school. It was simply too late and out it went.

3. The money raised by selling books was extra pocket money to be spent however we wanted. Quite a bit of it went on new books.

The fatal flaw may now be obvious. Why buy books if you do not intend to keep them? WHAT ARE LIBRARIES FOR??? We had got out of the habit of using the library. (duh)

So now, after browsing in book shops or online, I write a book wish list, then go to the library and ask if they have them. Most are available, if not through the local library then through the inter library loans scheme.
(This means that if any library in your area has the book it can be requested.)
Here are some other advantages of getting to know the library.

*I am now a member of knitting groups (my passion) and a book circle in two different libraries so have a free social life through the library too.

*No one rushes you to leave a library.

*Some have talks, lectures and exhibitions - yet more free or cheap entertainment. But I am sure you know all this and I am preaching to the converted...do remember, though next time you are tempted in the book shop that the library probably has a copy.

Snow, sense and nonsense

2010-01-07T11:55:00.000-08:00

Like many of you out there, we have a lot of snow right now.
About 12 inches actually.
Living in a village we have shops, buses and can walk to the library, swimming pool, cafe and other amenities. Actually for the size of the place (population about 3,500) we have a lot.

Having all that snow has reminded me just how great it is here. For 10 days I went hardly anywhere else at all, although most of the time we could get out if we really needed to - it just wasn't worth the hassle.
I couldn't get the car out at all actually, due to the water board digging a whacking great hole at the bottom of the drive then going away and leaving it. I could have got the bus to the local town, but could not go anywhere else.
Admittedly it has been a lot better since the library, cafe and swimming pool/gym opened up again after Christmas break.

I was fine over Christmas. Then I got stressed about the weather and not being able to get the car out. The snow's just gone on so long hasn't it - we are used to it coming up here in Scotland but it doesn't usually hang about for this long. And the seasonal break meant hardly any gritters or snow ploughs out.
The buses kept running most of the time though (and yesterday I finally got the car out of the street safely and parked it at the bottom of the hill.)

After a couple of post-Christmas days of Being Fed Up and according to my hubby a Pain In the Neck, I went out on foot to get a change of scene and found that I immediately got de-stressed and started having fun.
Due to the weather I have:
*spoken to people I had never met before.

*Got a lot of exercise shovelling snow, developed muscles and lost 4lbs in weight over Christmas instead of putting it on.

*Been more environmentally friendly and realised I don't need the car as much as I thought and can have an even better social life without leaving the village (I already do do quite a lot of things here).

*Used local shops more than usual and not found it that much more expensive.

*Got out in daylight every day for the half hour required in winter to combat Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Apparently this is many times effective than a whole daylight bulb light box.

*And yes I also got frustrated with not being able to get out, but it was okay, actually and I am learning not to get het up about things I can do nothing about.

Just so's you know, as well as being snowed in, the access to our street was closed for 2 days earlier this week due to a burst water main turning it to ice. Before that there were two other bursts in our street. Unfortunately the Water Board dug a hole at the bottom of our drive and went away for a week, leaving my car trapped in the garage.

We have had our share of trials. Not nearly as bad as some though and nothing like the (now famous) Scottish Islander who went to get a turkey 2 weeks ago and still hadn't got home by yesterday!
How stressed we get about the perfect Christmas - would it have been so bad not to have a turkey, given the weather forecast?

I remember hearing on the radio about someone who went back out at the last minute on Christmas eve because they had forgotten the stuffing. They had been unloading the car when they remembered and drove off in a hurry, managing to reverse over the CD player they had just bought for their son in the process.
Then the car broke down in the dark on a bend on an unlit road and they spent the next 2 hours with torches trying to stop it from causing an accident while waiting for the breakdown company. I often say that simplicity is about more thinking than doing... illustrates the point huh?
The New Road Map Foundation website put it well about Christmas - whose birthday is it anyway?

Today a digger came up the street, followed by a gritter. We felt like cheering and waving. Thanks guys. I wonder when they will get their tea tonight and whether they got a lunch break?

Thanks to those residents and shop keepers who cleared their bit of snow too - it has made life a lot easier over the last few days.

The hidden cost of clutter

2010-01-03T10:53:00.000-08:00

Once up on a time,we lived in a bigger house and paid a mortgage. We had been working hard to pay off that mortgage for 4 years when we downshifted from the countryside to the lovely bungalow we now live in, which is in a village with shops and buses and friends.

Then my sister, who ironically still had two of everything at the time, lent me a book called 'Clutter's Last Stand' by Don Aslett.

Not that we had an unreasonable amount of stuff - at least I tell myself that. The cupboards were getting fuller all the time and we had bought more cupboards. There were five of us and you know how kids accumulate stuff...We had come to accept that really the house was just too small. It was smaller than those of many of our friends after all.

Don's book is very funny, not at all preachy and is the 'original' clutter book, having been re-printed many times since it was first published 1984 by a guy who is actually a professional cleaner.
I laughed until I cried when I read that book, which is full of witty clutter cartoons and amusing stories, then lent it to a friend who did the same. Actually I left it in her front porch to see if she would guess who it was from. She did, of course.

Clutter is of course anything that you no longer need, even if it is not broken and is still useful.
So here is a wee clutter quiz - how many of these do you have?*those nifty little film cannisters
*empty margerine tubs
*used jiffy bags (unless you have a mail order business like me - when you find them you can send me yours.)
*spare parts for a car you no longer own
*paint in a colour you don't have on the walls any more
*old plant pots or margerine tubs that you don't use
*Oh - and what exactly is in your loft?

Well we had fun getting stuck in to what I now call Stage One Clutter.
Stage One is getting rid of rubbish such as old paperwork, cuddly toys, old jam jars and those margerine tubs. We still had every bank statement and pay slip we had ever got and lots more besides. it was all filed neatly, but lots of things got filed in that filing cabinet and not much ever made its way back out again. I got rid of 3 bin bags full of paperwork and had a bonfire. We were then also able to get rid of one of our 3 filing cabinets and put an easy chair in the office instead.

Stage two is stuff that still has some life in it but is not worth much, such as clothes past their best, plastic containers surplus to requirements, ornaments and old holiday souvenirs that are no longer fashionable and crockery that doesn't match. I see people down the car boot sale with this and it doesn't sell. Picture yourself looking at your junk as if it was someone else's and you will soon know.
I know it cost a lot in the first place, but face it - the money's gone and you are better spending the time on something else than trying to sell this stuff. donate it to charity and move on. A big clue here: if you are selling stuff down the boot sale and go home with most of your junk again and not much money you are at Stage One or Two.

Stage Three
Stage three is awesome! Finally this is where we realise that although the various types of coffee makers (etc) are all still perfectly good, we just don't need more than one and the space in the cupboards will make it a lot easier to get things in and out. It is stuff that is still good and worth some money. If you struggle to part with it, picture paying that money off the credit card debt or mortgage, using it to go on holiday or to help your daughter pay for college.

And - remember - almost evcerything you bought new can be got down the car boot sale. So if you do regret getting rid of anything, you can buy another for just what you sold yours for or even less. Here is a story to illustrate that point. Some years ago, I bought a £70 mini trampoline bouncer to keep fit. Once we had the kids there was no room for it any more so I sold it to a neighbour for £25.
The kids grew up and left home and I bought another one, new, for £25 because by then they had gone down in price. Net profit £45 and I had the space I needed in between times. Then I developed a minor medical condition that means I am not supposed to bounce. I sold that second trampoline and bought a step machine, reduced in price, for the same amount. This all took place over a period of some years but mini trampolines are still cheap should I ever want another.

So with all that in mind, we made over £1,000 selling stuff we no longer needed. We used some of it to buy new things we all really wanted, and made a point of getting the children something new with some of the money to encourage their efforts. Then went out for dinner as a family and paid the rest of it towards the mortgage.
These days stuff still accumulates and we still make buying mistakes. We try to just say 'the money's gone and sell it for what we can instead of having it clutter up our lives. I would be lying if I said we always managed it.
So once a year we try to have a clear out, as I swear the stuff comes in during the night of its own accord. Even with a 'one in one out' policy the stuff still accumulates, and we find reasons not to let something go.

We do keep a box in the porch for unwanted things though and that definitely helps. Anything one of us no longer wants can be put in the box. Having somwhere to instantly put the unwanted stuff makes a big difference, and visitors often have a rummage when they come to see us and make off with something. When those charity bags come round the doors all we have to do is take the stuff out of our box, dump it in the bag and its gone.

Anyway, the net result of our early dejunking efforts was that we realised that we didn't need a bigger house after all. In fact, we moved to a slightly smaller one.
We paid a chunk off the mortgage by doing it and although we had been paying extra off the mortgage for a while, getting rid of clutter actually helped us to pay the whole thing off significantly sooner than would otherwise have been possible.

Clutter tips:
1. Clothes don't seem to sell well at car boot sales, but good quality ones - eg Marks & Spencer, Next or other names often do sell well on Ebay.

2. Start with one drawer and dont try to do it all at once.

3. Think of the benefits when it is hard to let go of something - more space in cupboards, it is easier to find things when there is less stuff, you can do something else with any money raised...

4. How often do you use it? We got rid of unread books if the library had them. We never did get them out of the library to read and it was a relief not to feel guilt everytime we looked at the bookshelves. We bought some other books that we wanted to read instead.

5. If you only use something occasionally, such as extra glasses for parties, can you borrow or hire instead of owning?

6. Cleaning is much easier when you have less stuff.

Who Got a Foot Spa for Christmas?

2010-01-02T00:36:00.000-08:00

I did a survey down the local car boot sale just before Christmas.
Here's what I found:
7 foot spas (there was also one on freebleayr one on Cheapcycle and one in a nearby charity shop.)
5 slow cookers (NB Tesco, across the car park was selling these on special for a lot more money...) There was also one on Cheapcycle.
3 vegetable steamers .
...And a partridge in a pear tree?? Please note - this is no reflection on the actual foot spas, slow cookers etc. I have a slow cooker (got second hand) and I love it.
But get this: I have checked AND IT IS TRUE. Practically everything I had have bought new could have been got down the car boot sale. Felt a bit sick when I realised it.

Why are we spending money on new foot spas and slow cookers when you can get a perfectly good one for £5? Could it be partly because it is not seen as 'proper' to give a second hand one for Christmas?

Do we also feel is it not good enough to make a gift, give something we no longer need ourselves, or give a gift of time, as it may make us seem mean?
We don't want to be mean, so we buy the new one. We are less well off as a result and the poor old foot spa goes into land fill.
Here's another take on it. Imagine the new one costs £20 and the second hand one £5. Get the second hand one. Then either:

donate the £15 to a charity and get one of those nice cards for the recipient to say what you did (chicken in 3rd world etc)
get your dear friend, lover ect a second gift for £15 and enclose a note saying why you were so generous.
Get this second gift down the car boot sale for £5 and get them three additional gifts with the remaining money...we could go on forever here and your friend is now embarassed because you are being over generous!
Agree with your friend that you will both buy only second hand gifts and put a limit on it of £5. This is a great idea if your friend is hard up as it takes the pressure off them. If they are the hard up one, they will never be the one to suggest it - it has to come from you.

The most fun we had with a group of friends one year was when we all agreed we would not spend more than £1 on each other. We got the most amazing gifts. It was almost as if because it was just £1 we didn't care as much and it made us Creative and Daring. The hit of the day was a pair of psychedelic orange and pink long johns bought (still in packet) in a charity shop for a gardening friend. they were meant to be a joke actually but he thought they were great!

Then there was the Bird Bower Year. We had bought these fetching little birdie resting places from the RSPB. To make it more fun, we took them out of the packs of 3 and wrapped them individually. I got a bit carried away and in the end there were 9 little packets for my folks. On Chrismas day, Dad opened a gift from my Aunt and there was...a bird bower. Then another And another. Turned out she had done the same thing. We were all opening bird bowers for simply ages.

We ended up hysterical with laughter and it gets talked about yet. In fact you only have to mention the words Bird Bower in our family to cause helpless giggling, completely incomprehensible to outsiders and, presumably, the RSPB who produced this laudable product. My Dad had one on every fence post for many a year and each time I sat in the conservatory and looked out it made me smile.

The last Bird Bower fell from our eaves a few weeks ago (sob). And I realised it must have been at least 6 years since that Christmas. (built to last these bird bowers but I don't think a bird ever went in).

so be daring and remember it's the people who make money out of Christmas who want us to spend money at Christmas.

What is Downshifting?

2009-12-31T10:25:00.000-08:00

How it All Began..

my name is Janet and I have been meaning to do this for a while.

'Downshifting' is what we call it when you learn how to live on less money without having less fun.
It means getting out of debt, having a more meaningful way of life and living outside the groove.
In other words, thinking what you really want out of life and then setting about getting it.
To us it does not mean moving to a house in the country - bad move this financially speaking. It does not mean depriving ourselves yet it does not mean earning lots of money at the expense of our freedom.
It does mean thinking what we really do want and focusing on how to get it. Not in a frantic dream-and-it-will-happen life coachy sense, though. I am talking about working with what you already have here, to make it work for you instead of the other way around.

Sometimes it is hard, just because being your real self makes you stand out. It makes others curious and they ask you questions. They want some of what you have. (That may, however be mainly because I just cannot resist talking about it - hence this blog... )

So here is some of our story.
We have been downshifting for 15 years now. It has become a way of life, entertainment, making friends and most of all a passion for a life style we would not change.

Downshifting is about choice and getting what you want out of life.
15 years ago we had an average income, a mortgage and some credit card debt. We worked full time yet there was never quite enough money left at the end of the month although we would not have said we were extravagant.

Today we have no mortgage, no debt and work part time. We have just worked it out that we could retire and live off our savings if we really wanted to.

All of that was done on an average or less than average middle class income. We are not in the 'executive' class, and have not had any kind of promoted posts except for long enough to discover we didn't like it. That is not to boast, rather to illustrate that changing what you do and how you think can make a difference.

The most obvious solution if you don't have enough money is to earn more. And yet it seems that if people do earn more, somehow their expenses go up and they still don't have quite enough. Whatever their income level research shows that they still think life would get better if they had about 15-30% more money. Research also shows that once we have about £15,000 (or the equivalent in your currency if you live elsewhere) per person per year to live on, more money does not make us happier. In other words it is enough. Interestingly this figure does not go up in line with inflation. That is because inflation figures include consumer goods, buying a bigger house etc.

As downshifters here is what inflation means to us: We already have a house and do not need a bigger one. (In fact as you will see on this blog in the future, once we had de-cluttered we got a smaller house because we didn't need to store all that stuff) . Therefore rising house prices don't concern us.
We paid our mortgage off 12 years early so rising interest rates do not increase our outgoings, only our savings.
Rising prices of goods do not generally affect us. the price of good plain food that you cook yourself has actually gone down over the years. When Bernadine Lawrence wrote her book 'How to Feed Your Family on £5 a day' in 1978,(whilst living on State benefits with 4 kids) bread, milk, most vegetables, fruit, pulses and meat were more expensive than they are today. Watercress was cheaper because you could buy in by the bunch instead of ready washed in a supermarket bag.
Almost everything else costs less.
As we buy almost all consumer goods second hand, the increase in the price of new ones does not affect us. the second hand price has not changed much over the years. Even the price of new ones does not change much if you stick to the plain one rather than the new-with-extra-features one. We bought what was effectively the same washing machine twice at 10 year intervals and it cost £10 less for the replacement.
Many consumer goods such as TV's fridges etc can actually be got down the car boot sale or for free on 'freeble' which has online groups around the UK to re-distribute unwanted goods. If people buy the newest model or get one that matches their new kitchen they often just get rid of the old one.
Inflation does put the Council Tax up. Income Tax or your equivalent Tax on earned income is a percentage. Council Tax which we pay on our property for local services is not and just goes up as much as the Council thinks it should so far as I can see. the council tax we pay today (£141 per month) is more than I earned per month in 1978 (£132).
Fuel bills, household and for vehicles affect us. You can combat that to some extent by energy saving measures but not completely.
If inflation goes down our cash savings earn less interest. However as our lifestyle is mainly inflation proof, this does not matter as much as it seems, and looking after money to get the best rates available makes a big difference.

The real secret of getting ahead with money is not how much you earn but how you spend it. We now earn a lot less than we used to but have a lot more money to spare!

So how much did our Christmas dinner cost? about 50p. but get this: we had pheasant that was a gift from a friend and sat outside round a roaring fire, surrounded by 6 inches of snow. (That had not been the plan, but being snowed in we could not visit my sister as intended.) And of course the pheasant went on to be pheasant and butternut squash curry the following day and then stock for soup.

That fire was so warm I sat out there for hours knitting...(hot water bottle covers seeing as you ask.)

And how much did our new year's eve dinner cost? about 70p for 4 of us. We had king prawn and chicken paella. Thanks, Asda for 5 packets of king prawns and one packet of chicken reduced to 5p each.

So read on and see how we got out of debt and ended up with savings, no mortgage, a great social life and able to work part time.

And this blog will not all be about money.

If you are broke and cannot see a way out, there is hope but you have to put the work in.