Making It Up

as we go along

money saving

#Ad Getting #FoodSavvy with HubbubUK.

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I hate waste, of any kind. Food waste is particularly galling. It’s money and resources down the drain, and given the current state of the planet, feels very wrong.

I was recently approached by HubbubUK, a charity creating environmental campaigns and working with my local council. They invited me, along with a number of other East Anglian bloggers/ social media folk to take part in a Food Savvy challenge to look at what we waste in terms of food and see what we could do to cut down. As part of this I’ll be testing out some products from a number of different companies, and keeping you all up to date with what I’m getting up to on social media. (I’ll be receiving the products for free, but the campaign isn’t otherwise compensated.)

Where do we start then? We’re a family of 6, two eldest children at college 2 or 2 1/2 days a week. I work part time in a charity shop, Tim works from home and the two youngest are home educated.

We try to sit down for a family meal in the evenings most days, although sometimes evening activities make that impossible. We’ve no particular dietary issues or preferences, although eldest has to keep her salt and fluids up (POTS) while Tim was briefly on blood pressure meds but succeeded in bringing that under control with lifestyle changes.

Several of the children are very picky, obviously in completely different directions, we’re on a very tight budget, and I cook from scratch where possible. (I’m particularly proud of my home made pizza, I even make my own dough. It’s also the only meal where no one turns their nose up!)

In terms of food storage, we’re tight on space. We’ve only a little freezer section under a fridge, and while I do meal plan and do a main shop weekly at Lidl, I end up topping up with frequent trips to the Coop and Tesco, both within walking distance.

(Note, this is not my family. It’s a Hubbub image 🙂 )

Hopefully that gives you some idea of our baseline, and this week I’m measuring our waste, so that we can see how much is actually being thrown out (granted usually into the compost bin but it’s still waste).

My thought is that my biggest risk areas seem to be bread, veg/fruit (carrots! How come carrots go off so quickly and meal leftovers. The problem with leftovers is that there’s rarely more than a portion, and then how do you spread that out between 6? I do a thing we refer to as eating the fridge, or fridge bottom feast every now and then, but we do end up with things that just don’t seem to fit in. Frustrating.

I’m hoping to cut down on waste, get a bit more inventive, and if at all possible cut my food budget. I currently spend around £70 a week on our main shop, and then probably 10-15 on top ups. (I’ll have a look at my receipts this week as well.)

What do you reckon to food waste – how does it all work in your home?

food waste infographic from Hubbub

In case you’re wondering how the others are getting on with the challenge, I found a couple of their posts, so here’s CassieFairy explaining why she’s getting involved, and Catherine talking about some of the products she will be using.

Making money for old phones with CEX

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Before anyone gets excited, this isn’t a sponsored post. (I’m very open to working with phone brands or recycling /decluttering folks if anyone is offering mind.)

A little while before Christmas I won a new Huawei P20 Pro mobile phone, I may have enthused about it at the time. Which meant that my trusty Samsung S4 was surplus to requirements. Tim had made noises about stashing it as a backup phone, but when I was in CEX with the kids a couple days ago I noticed they were selling phones off that age for a fair bit of money. Sure enough when I checked online, it looked like they might offer me around 50, or more in vouchers and *that* could go towards the camera lens I want for taking gig pictures. (Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 thank you for asking and no, I’ve no idea what that means. Yet.)

I factory reset the phone after checking everything was backed up and retrieving the SD card and trotted down to CEX. The process is fairly straightforward – you do need id if it’s the first time you’ve done it, but I have a membership card from when we streamlined the DVDs a couple of years ago. They give you a preliminary offer and it takes around 40 minutes to test the phone. I used my time wisely with a trip to the library where I paid off my library fines and got them to reset my email address so that I should get reminders and not fines from now on.

Back to CEX and I got a voucher for £69. Would have got slightly more if I’d thought to find the charger and cable too, but as the lens I want is £88 online for the STM version I’m quite happy. Particularly when you think I bought the phone on ebay for £115 vs have had several years use out of it.

So when you get around to upgrading your phone, do think carefully about what you do with the old handset, it could be worth more than you think. Particularly if you’ve looked after it with a decent case and a screen protector too ?

Would you like to live on #BritainsBrightestStreet?

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sun and clouds

Looking up at the sky every afternoon makes me think about all that free energy flowing down from the sun daily. And I rather wish that we had solar panels, like Tim’s brother. Our house is pretty well situated for it, with a good south facing roof, but it’s that initial outlay that’s offputting. That and the fact that we’d quite like to extend the house, which might involve lifting the roof off!

Sun Edison are running a campaign at the moment which does rather interest me. They’re looking for people who can answer yes to any of the following questions:

Do you and your neighbours want free solar energy for 10 years?

Do you want to make immediate savings of approximately 45% on your energy bills?

Do you know of a local school or community project that would benefit from free solar panels?

I’m guessing most of us would be saying yes to free solar energy and savings of 45% on energy bills. The bit that is different with this campaign though is that Sun Edison aren’t looking for one off households. They want to create #BritainsBrightestStreet, with between 5 and 20 households getting together to get their solar energy as described.

There are some criteria that apply, obviously. The households have to be owners, rather than renters. The houses have to have a pitched roof that faces due South, South East or South West, and the street has to nominate one contact that submits the street entry. All the details are on the Sun Edison website, and I strongly recommend that if you’re interested you take a look and soon, as the submissions close on 6th of July, 2015, and that might *sound* as if it’s a long way off, but it’s really not if you’re going to coordinate a whole bunch of your neighbours to join in.

So what do you reckon? Could this be a great, environmentally friendly way to build community in your street *and* save money? Seems like a good way to me.

Disclosure:

I’m working with BritMums and SunEdison talking about the #BritainsBrightestStreet search campaign. I have been compensated for my time. All editorial and opinions are my own. Visit http://bit.ly/1ID0enl for more information about #BritainsBrightestStreet search.

MyFamilyClub's free MyFamilyPack – sponsored review.

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MyFamilyPack - Sep 2013

I follow MyFamilyClub on twitter (often try to join in the #thriftyThursday quiz), and am subscribed to the website. It’s a goldmine of budget tips and competitions, and when they approached me to do a sponsored post about their latest campaign, the free MyFamilyPack, it didn’t take me long to say yes, as I can easily see that it’s a useful thing to share.

They’ve got 10,000 to give away and you need to have signed up by the 24th of September. There’s an assortment of possible contents as listed on the website. When it says letterbox friendly pack, it really does mean that – it easily came through our letter box, and for a moment I was rather disappointed, as I couldn’t imagine how such a slim box could possibly contain anything worth having.

I was wrong.

As you can see here, there were all sorts of goodies. (Click to see larger)

myfamilypack free from myfamilyclub

I got some extra large post its, a trolley token (no more scrabbling around looking for a £1 that *someone* has taken out of the coin compartment in the car), and a cloth shopping bag, and let’s face it, you can never have too many reusable bags! There were a few leaflets with offer codes on them (I saw Smallest drooling over the Beano subscription, rather tempted by that for Christmas for him actually. The sample pack of Jelly Beans didn’t last long, though I hid the Gin Gin ginger sweets as they’re mine, all mine. And the anti bacterial spray in the shape of a pen got slotted into the day/changing bag as the number of times I’ve gone into a bathroom while out and about and wanted to clean it before I put a baby bottom anywhere near it is far too many.

A relaxing fruit tea bag that you could enjoy as you perused the leaflets – bonus. All that was missing was a chocolate biscuit to go with the cuppa 😉

Just like the rest of us, I’m always very happy with a good freebie, and this *is* a good one. So why don’t you get yourself over to MyFamilyClub and sign up, you won’t regret it. Remember, sign up before 24th September.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got my free ebook of top 50 Money Saving tips to download and read.

Saving the pennies and saving the pounds.

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Thrift is a big part of our day to day life here. Partly because I don’t like waste, partly because with six of us at home every pound has to be persuaded to go that little bit further. So reading on Tattooed Mummy that Money Supermarket are looking for £30 ways to save a pound, and they’ll pay for tips meant I was reaching for my keyboard.

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Use cash. When you carry just the cash that you actually have to spend, it’s much easier to keep within a budget. Credit cards are just far too tempting
  2. Check the reduced shelves in shops. Our coop plays a game and moves these around, but they are always worth tracking down. And our local greengrocers is fabulous – I got 5 bananas, a huge head of broccoli and a pepper for 80p the other day.
  3. Make lunches from scratch. That broccoli from point 2? added a £1 worth of stilton and got four days worth of high quality, healthy soup.
  4. On a similar theme, I use this fabulous recipe from utterly scrummy for home made muesli bars now. They taste way better and cost less.
  5. When you’re going out and about, take the home made snack bars, and a reusable drink bottle of tap water with you. Much cheaper than buying while you’re out and about.
  6. If you’ve got to buy big things, use cashback sites where possible. I particularly like Top Cashback. And if you sign up through my link I make £10, and then you can get your own link to get people to sign up through 🙂
  7. An alternative is daily deal type sites like Groupon. Though don’t let those tempt you into spending money on things you don’t actually need. That’s not saving money.
  8. Need new clothes? Charity shops. Fabulous places. Pair of jeans round here usually around £3. Maybe £4 if you want a brand.
  9. Freshen up old clothes? Dye them. Tim bought a bunch of linen shirts reduced at Sainsbury’s a couple of years ago. When he’d worn them for a while they started to look a bit faded. We chucked them in the washing machine with a pack of Dylon, and they look good as new.
  10. Kids’ clothes got a few tears in them? Clothes plasters. You iron them on and they look like decorative patches, and they hide the holes.
  11. Learn about local networks for recycling – freecycle, freegle or local facebook pages. People are often giving away the stuff you want, and you might be able to get rid of clutter that way too. Win win.
  12. Saving money with babies – use cloth nappies. You can often get them very cheap or free via freegle. (see point above). And then each usage saves you money that instead you’d be throwing away.
  13. Disposable baby wipes will actually survive being washed several times, and thus cut down on cost and waste.
  14. For women, reusable san pro will also save you money. Look up mooncup or divacup.
  15. Hand me downs for kids are fabulous – cultivate friends with slightly bigger children 😉
  16. Want to make some money out of your clutter? Use Gumtree to sell things on.
  17. Instead of buying sensory toys for babies, recycle fabrics you are fond of but don’t need any more into a memory based texture book.
  18. Walk to local attractions where possible. It’s good for you and the environment and saves both fuel and parking money.
  19. If things are too far for walking, consider a bike. Again with the good for you, and again with the savings.
  20. Instead of going on costly foreign holidays, consider camping.
  21. Or house swap with a friend 🙂
  22. Save money on books by using Read It Swap it to send your old titles on to someone else, and get different things for yourself.
  23. Reuse fabric items around the house. Teatowels with holes in become dusters. And so on.
  24. Don’t buy expensive dry shampoo for perking your hair up between washes. Use ordinary bicarb. It’s much the same apart from being lots cheaper.
  25. For things that you do often, look into membership schemes. So if you often visit stately homes, join the national trust as members get in cheaper.
  26. Consider direct debit payment schemes – they often offer better rates than paying when bills are due. But make sure there’s always enough money in your account, if one bounces it will cost you.
  27. Check whether your bank will text or message you if your account is getting low – avoiding overdraft fees is definitely a money saver.
  28. Sign up to newsletters from local cheap supermarkets so that you can take advantage of deals that are best suited to you.
  29. If you drink regularly in cafes or so on, check whether they have loyalty cards to give you free drinks every so often. Our leisure centre gives you a free drink after every six you’ve had.
  30. Set off five minutes earlier for appointments to see if there’s somewhere nearby you can park without having to pay for parking. So here, instead of parking in the leisure centre carpark, there are a couple of roads just an extra two minutes walk away that are free to park on. Every little helps after all.

I hope those tips have been useful to you. And if you join in the competition and put together your own tip list, do let me know in the comments – I’d love to pick up a few more tips too.