Windy havoc

Are you as fed up with this wind and rain as I am? Every day the wind has been howling and the rain lashing down, and it's causing all sorts of mischief. 

On Sunday Todd the horse was in the paddock for the last day of his spring visit, and got spooked by wind. He barged the paddock gate and the whole thing snapped under his weight, taking out a huge fence post with it. I was in the house and heard the almighty crack then spotted something in my back garden that shouldn't be there...

I've been stuck in the house for long periods of time over the last couple of weeks and I think I've got a bit of cabin fever. I won't drive when it is very windy as I dislike the way the car snakes around the road. I also won't walk around in it, as it makes me unsteady on my feet and one nasty fall and hospital visit is enough (did I blog about that??). So I haven't even been out in the garden to tidy up, meaning I've completely failed on one of my 20 for 2020 goals for February, which was to get out in the garden for 20 minutes a day. I was hopeful of being able to clean up the patio beds today though; when I went out to do the chickens this morning it was windless and sunny. It's now just gone 9am and the sun has gone, the rain clouds have moved in and the wind had picked up again. Arrrggghhhhh.....

Missy doesn't care a jot. She has turned from a timid cat that wouldn't go far from the back door before Christmas to a confident roamer of the property. The wind and rain do not bother her at all, there's too much exciting stuff to explore, and getting her in proves difficult sometimes. Previously she used to prowl the house in the evening, creating mischief and annoying Georgie because of her pent up energy. Now she's tuckered out of an evening, and likes nothing better than to sit on her chair by the fire. Glad someone is enjoying themselves in this weather.

It's a cat's life isn't it 😁

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Steel Kitten

Thank goodness for yellow stickers

Yellow sticker food bargains have played a significant role in our efforts to save more and retire early. Week in, week out I’ve snuffled the aisles of every shop with food I go into, even though pickings have been pretty slim lately due to my schedule, looking for things that are reduced. 

My lunch yesterday was a huge cheese salad with shredded spiced mushrooms, all yellow sticker. My breakfast banana came from a pack of eight reduced from £1.35 to 50p, and my GF bagel was from a four-pack reduced from £2.00 to £1.00. My dinner this evening was lemon and herb marinated hake (which I bought at Tesco the other day and forgot about when doing Wednesday's post), a big salad and the rest of the shredded spiced mushrooms. Even the lemon and herb marinade was from a bottle reduced from £2.00 to 2op. I paid full price for the mayo though...well, I bought two 800g jars on a 2for1 at Christmas and decanted one into a squeezy bottle. 😀 

Oh yes, there's no doubt that yellow stickers are a big help with the food budget. I have a pretty simple yellow sticker pricing strategy; I buy things that are reduced by 40% off or more. For example, if something is £3.00 reduced to £2.50 I’m not interested. Once it goes to £2 I start to maybe consider it. If it is £1.70 or less I’ll get it. I don’t buy pork or lamb (for obvious reasons) and don’t do exotic fruit and veg. I try and stick with things I know we all will eat. 

I also look at sections in a specific order. I look in the discounted sections of the meat and fish aisles (as they are generally the most expensive part of a shop), general refrigerated goods, the deli, fruit and veg, bread, ambient and frozen then homewares and flowered/plants. Then I loop back and pick up the rest of the stuff on my list, making adjustments as I go depending on what I managed to pick up reduced. 

I very rarely buy anything in homewares but occasionally snuffles have turned up printer paper, stationary and the odd packs of seasonal goods that I tuck away for the following year. Plants and flowers can sometimes yield interesting stuff; I once found a mini spruce tree in a tin for a £1 reduced from £4. That lives outside and every year gets potted on in spring and decorated at Christmas.

This approach has allowed us to consistently pay a vast amount less for our groceries shopping every week, which I combine with bulk buying items when on offer, finding the non-reduced bargains regardless of which shop they are in, and checking all the supermarkets weekly for offers through mysupermarket.com. 

We're lucky in that we have quite a few food shops in close proximity in our town, including Iceland, M&S foods, Lidl, Aldi, B&M, Sainsbury's, Poundstretchers, and Morrisons. Tesco is well out of town, about 15 minutes away, and so is ASDA and Co-op, at about 30 minutes each. Waitrose is about an hour. Those get occasionally snuffled when passing. I love having so much choice, although it can make for a bit of work keeping up with them all.

It can be worth it though. For example, Martin likes a box of proper Jaffa cakes every now and then (not found a generic version he likes), and Sainsbury's has a box of 10 for £1 or 20 for £1.60. However, in Iceland you can get a bulk box of 10 packs of 10 for £4. No contest, although I have to keep them hidden otherwise he eats the lot!

On the smaller end of the scale, I like having a cappuccino once a day and I have a Dolce Gusto machine. I can sometimes find bulk deals online for the pods, which is especially good if I can find a discount voucher to combine them with. The lowest I've ever bought a pack of 16 pods was for £2.85 a box and that was with a store discount coupon. Most of the time Poundstretcher has a box of pods for £3.50 compared to £3.69 in Sainsbury's (although at the moment they are £3.50). Unfortunately, neither Aldi nor Lidl in my area do their own branded-compatible cappuccino pods otherwise I'd have those instead. A 19p saving each time I buy may not sound a lot but if you made the same saving on every item you buy you can start to see how that would build up over the months and years. 

Saying that, for a while now I've been drinking Kenco Duos, as they've been on offer for £2.00 in many places but they've now gone up to £3.50 everywhere but Asda (£2.00). That's too much for six coffee pods so I'm back on the Dolce Gusto until I can find them cheap again or pass by an ASDA.

Yes, I know I'm getting a bit anally retentive about prices, but apart from the love of a bargain there is another, more personal reason for doing this. Martin has been up at the crack of dawn for 25 years. Come rain, shine, snow, dogs, nasty shouty people and broken bottles of ink in parcels (the curse of the dyed hand) he has delivered the mail conscientiously. 

I want him retired. I want him to enjoy waking up every morning and sinking back under the covers, knowing he doesn't have to go anywhere. 

To do that I need to stretch his salary. It's very hard-earned. 

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Steel Kitten

Getting back into the serious frugal groove

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Before I start this post, Brisbane Susan has mentioned that she cannot see any comments (is that right Susan?), although she can leave them. I'm not sure why this would be, as all the correct settings are turned on from my end. It may be something to do with your browser compatibility - perhaps Internet Explorer or Firefox have issues recognising the code - or maybe you have an older version of a browser that needs updating. Those are the only two options I can think of right now.

Anyone else having issues?

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So, I sat down and worked out the year's normal and additional expenses last week and I was not happy with what I saw. I won't go into detail in the post - I'll save it for next time - but suffice to say we have A LOT of things that need fixing and repairing this year.

I realise that DH and I are going to have to get a bit frugal to meet these expenses. I no longer do any freelance work for extra cash, as it is too much for me to cope with on top of this place, a full time job and my hobbies (hobbies are now a priority for me, as I had let them fall by the wayside and suffered for it). I still maintain a lot of frugal actions and tasks that I've always done but one big thing that has been greatly reduced is yellow sticker shopping. Travelling to the office every day used to provide me with ample opportunities to nip in to local food shops for a quick snuffle as I went past. Now I work from home, I am restricted to when I go out - usually the middle of the day - and there isn't necessarily much on offer at those times.

So, I've realised I need to go back to doing it. Somehow. The idea of an additional trip out in the evenings doesn't fill me with joy, as there is the expense of the petrol, but then again if I end up with the amount of food I used to I would save much more than the petrol costs.

To give you some idea, yesterday afternoon I dropped into two Tesco's on the way back from visiting my parents. The time was about 7:30-8pm, and this is what I got.

The salmon was cut up into six then cooked, three frozen and three put in the fridge. The salad produce and fancy shredded mushrooms will see me through lunches for the next seven days - I just need to add some protein to it, say, salmon 😋. The whole mushrooms are going to go into a soup, perhaps with a dash of the smoked bacon, while the sliced mushrooms will be sprinkled into various dinners over the week. The unsmoked bacon will be teamed with our hen's eggs for breakfast while the veggie mash will go with sausages one night for dinner. The two mangoes are destined for fruit smoothies. Finally, the teacakes will be eaten by Martin as an after work snack while the scones will be in Martin's lunches and as puddings after dinner.

The sum total of this lot was £9.45. It would have been £37.54 full price so I paid 25%. I already have enough meat and other bits to use for dinners so apart from a few little bits like tea bags, milk, bananas, apples and gluten-free bread, that one shop has topped the fridge and freezer up so I don't need to do a weekly shop.

Result!

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Steel Kitten

My newest friend

Everyone, meet Todd. Todd, meet everyone.

No, don't worry, I've not gone and bought a horse, I've borrowed one from my neighbour across the road. He's eaten all the grass in his paddock over there and I offered to let him graze our paddock down for a few weeks.

Anything to get out of cutting the grass. 😂

Doesn't he look handsome - he's 25 years old this year, which makes him a very senior horse. You wouldn't think it to see him frisking around.

However, some areas he's really rucking up, notably the area near the gate. At the moment, Todd is only grazed in the morning to restrict his grass intake and prevent colic, so around 1pm he goes over to the gate and pads around waiting for his owner to come and get him.

After he's gone, I've decided it is time to get someone in to harrow, overseed and roll the paddock. A combination of molehills, thatch and settlement has meant it is turning into rolling hills and valleys but first the grass needs taking right back. The ride-on lawnmower won't be able to cope with the lumps and bumps but Todd has no such issue.

I didn't have too much grass after all. I just had a horse deficiency 😁

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Steel Kitten