One of the first steps to saving money is to have absolutely no waste.
To use everything up of everything that you buy, whether that be eating all the leftovers and composting all the vegetable bits that are inedible, or making good use out of every last drop of something in a tube for instance.
I have spent years now cutting the ends of tubes to get out all the hand-cream, face cream or as in this case toothpaste.
It's surprising what is still left in there after you have already spent a week squeezing, shaking and scraping down the tube for all your worth to get the product out.
Of course I don't want the product to go hard or go off with the tube cut into pieces, so I always cut out a middle section then use the bottom as a top. It works a treat.
My little nail pencil, which was once the length of a normal pencil, is now just over an inch long, it's hard to sharpen it these days, but I will persevere. While it is still there, I am still using it.
All I ask of life at the moment is to live simply, to have enough of what I need, to make the best of what I have ... and to be grateful for each and every day.
What is one money saving tip that you would add in the comments to help others that might not have heard of it?
It's hard to date some photos isn't it, I tend to look at what I'm wearing, how old my brother looks as he's four years younger than me and then where we are. This was taken at Pontins, the Middleton Towers camp I think, we only ever went to two of their camps, but this was my parents favourite one.
I went down a rabbit hole of thinking about the past yesterday after watching the YouTube channel British Nostalgia while I ate my breakfast. They are good videos if you can get over the AI voiceover that occasionally gets his words wrong and puts emphasis in the wrong places, and if you just laugh at the photos not always matching the commentary.
It was very true of a lot of the meals we ate back in the 60s and 70s in Manchester, England.
It's funny, as children we never thought of ourselves as poor, although we lived in just three rooms. They were the downstairs rooms of my Nana's house. We shared the bathroom that was upstairs and had to be quiet so as not to disturb her whenever we used it, but I never minded that. When I was thirteen in 1973 we got a brand new council house and moved out ... much to my Mum's relief.
We ate simply and cheaply, and I could cope with most foods, although even then I hated meat. But I was forced to eat it, we always had to clear our plates ... 'or the starving children in Africa would be upset'. Even as a child I thought that Mum's statement was ridiculous. Mum was not a good cook, which was slightly ironic as she was a school dinner lady! We ate the most basic foods, overcooked to within an inch of their lives, hence my hatred of Brussels sprouts to this day ... and my brother's pea phobia .
So watching this YouTube video brought back a lot of memories, good ones and bad ones ... liver and onions when overcooked would be useful for a cobbler, he would be able to resole leather shoes with the liver glued on with the gloopy onions. Well my Mum's version anyway. 😖
But one thing we never had, but my ex-husband did, was Connie Onnie butties, or sandwiches if you from the posh end of the street.
It was simply condensed milk spread on white bread and topped with another slice, and eaten over a plate or at the very least away from your clothes as they dripped. My ex also regularly lived on 'sugar butties' as a child, just as it sounds they were simply buttered white bread with a spoonful of sugar sprinkled over the butter, then the two slices pressed together, usually taken outside to be eaten while you played or just sat on the front doorstep. No wonder he had so many missing teeth even when we first met! My cheap sandwich of choice was a salad cream butty, just that bread and salad cream, they were very tasty, but Mum didn't really approve.
Of course it was the days of corner shops and very small 'supermarkets' when they first arrived. Our local corner shop had illusions of grandeur when it purchased two shopping trollies. With only two narrow aisles and the meat and cheese counter at the end of the shop, if someone had a trolley in use anyone else shopping with the more usual wire basket, had to follow the trolley pusher around until they finally reached the till, or else try and squeeze past if the person stopped at the meat counter. Luckily I think we were a lot more patient back in the day. 😄
What 'poor food' did you have as a child, or were you 'proper posh'?
This is the post I was going to do on Monday, but I simply did not have the energy and needed to decompress after Sunday ... and then I needed to get it all out of my system yesterday.
We called to Aldi on the way home from visiting Mum, and I think you can tell that I needed some treats as well as a few necessary bits. Two bottles of wine, chocolate, two packs of cheese and pasta, two of so many of the items in my trolley. I think I just get in the habit of picking up twos when I am running out of something, which is no bad thing really.
I did limit myself to one block of chocolate ... but only because I already had some at home. 😁
The receipt for posterity.
The wine and fish definitely bumped the cost of this shopping up, but I was still happily surprised that this was all I spent, I was expecting it to be more.
When I got home I realised that I had taken the photo of the shopping in the trolley before I had added the eggs to it. So I laid it all out again for your perusal.
I really could have gotten way with not shopping this week, but sometimes your sanity tells you that it needs some wine and chocolate.
I did sort of need more pasta though, as I had tipped the last of my smaller sized bags of penne into my large pasta jar on Friday. It used to come in 500g bags, now it seems to be only available in 1kg size. I seem to have lots of spaghetti in my store cupboard but I was down to no replacements of penne, which is obviously my favourite.
So, that's the rice jar and the pasta jar freshly filled, and the shelf is looking very healthy at the moment.
Mum was rushed into hospital once again, in the early hours of Sunday morning this time with breathing difficulties. We were literally ten minutes away from visiting her at her care home on Sunday morning, at the more respectable time of 10am, luckily we were still on the motorway when my brother phoned to say that a voicemail message had just come through on his phone, it had been left in the middle of the night but he has his phone off then. My phone is always on, but for some reason this time they didn't call me. 😕
Anyway a quick re-programme of the Satnav and we were headed for the hospital where after a lot of chasing round departments and wards, as she had only just left the A&E department, we finally found Mum looking very frail and very confused.
We are quite confused too, as there is nothing they can do for her except make her comfortable and give her oxygen, something they could very easily have done at her care home, especially since she has instructions on her paperwork not to send her to hospital except in a real health emergency. Which happened a few weeks ago when she had yet another bowel blockage. They are a nursing and hospice type care home as well as residential, so they have a lot of very qualified staff.
We were most concerned that the hospital seemed to know nothing about her. Luckily we arrived just as the cutlery was being delivered to the beds ready for lunch, she was about to be given a 'normal meal', something she cannot eat now as she is on a NHS Level Five diet. They also didn't realise that she is completely bedbound, doubly incontinent and has dementia, so is unreliable to ask any medical questions of, hence them being told by her that yes she can have any sort of food.
I had a good chat with her nurse and then we had to come away as you can't visit during lunch time. You wouldn't think that this was that stressful really, well I wouldn't have years ago, but when it's been going on in one form or another for over two and half years on a very regular basis it's starting to have a real build up effect.
I sent an email to the care home when I got home, not complaining as such but asking why I wasn't phoned this time, and also suggesting they had some sort of Patient Passport type document, just a photocopy from their file, that could travel to hospital with residents when necessary to give the nursing staff at least a head start. It would save a lot of stress. It turns out they have this in place already, although the system keeps letting them down and the document goes missing somewhere between the paramedics and the A&E staff and then never makes it to the ward. They are now going to be raising this matter urgently.
I needed to get all this down in writing so that I have it for future reference, and my blog seemed as good a place as any.
Alan hit the tomato ketchup jackpot today when we went to Booths for breakfast.
The guys that are rendering the outside of our bungalow couldn't come and do anymore today due to the heavy rain that we currently have. So Alan said he fancied a later more leisurely start to the day, and a bacon butty and a coffee in Booths while we had a catch up on all things renovation related, before he headed to the bungalow to continue stripping the wallpaper off the ceilings.
He ordered his usual bacon bun and was given two tomato ketchup sachets without asking, and as I have him so well trained he just accepted them without question.
They were added to my little stash as soon as I got home. I haven't had to buy ketchup for a long time now.
Yes, they are all lined up in date order ... I am that organised. 😁
On the way out of Booths we have to pass the charity book table, and after weeks and weeks of me being very good and not buying anything, suddenly there were four books that looked well worth a read. So they came home with me too. It was only when I got home that I remembered I was being so good so that we would have less books to move house with.
Oh well, at least I have my reading mojo back at the moment, so I will continue to donate all the books that I read that are deemed not really worth keeping.
The book I am currently reading, which also came from the book table a while ago.
This weeks shopping was from Aldi at the weekend, again I was just buying the things that I either really needed or really wanted. I'm just keeping it simple while I slowly eat my way through the things in the freezer, buying just the few fresh things that I need to compliment what I already have.
The receipt for posterity.
I wonder if one day I will look back on this and marvel at how cheap everything was. 😄
6th - Booths £6.65
While we were in Booths having some breakfast I bought a couple of things that I needed. I bought two cartons of milk as it was on special offer again. One carton lasts me about ten days as I only have it on my Weetabix.
9th Booths - £6.65
That confused me briefly looking at the photos, as the total for these two small shops was exactly the same.
I called into Booths yesterday as Alan asked me to get him some bread, and also a sandwich and drink for his lunch while he was at the bungalow. He takes a flask of coffee and a banana every day, but as he was staying longer he wanted something else.
The new front door had been installed the day before so this was the first time I was seeing it.
Sadly although it is the right front door, it has all the wrong door furniture on it. It was supposed to be in black so that it ties in with the anthracite grey window frames a bit better. It looked relatively okay on the photos Alan had shown me the day before, but in person the chrome was a bit insipid.
The French doors in the main room look fantastic though.
The room is now flooded with light, which is exactly what you what you need when it's the main living area in such a small property. These door handles are right as they need to match the chrome and steel elements of the kitchen.
The main jobs of this week are having the outside of the bungalow rendered in brilliant white, and Alan is indoors stripping off remnants of wallpaper from the walls and the ceilings, ready for the plasterers to come in later this month.
I never thought I would say this but already I am missing the warmer weather.
I usually find sunny days far too hot, I like being cool. But here in the north of England the last couple of weeks have been cold ...and I mean cold. The central heating has clicked on a few times and it is set to only do that when temperature falls below 15 degrees. I even added another thin quilt onto my bed last night to keep me a bit cosier.
I love this meme, but in my head I sort of adapted it as I read it to suit our current weather conditions. Today for instance is the first day for two weeks that I have been able to get the washing out of the line to dry. I haven't been able to do much in the garden other than remove the decimated lupins from their pots. I fear there was no way to rescue them, the greenfly have won for the second year running.
The poem that Joy mentions in the comment section. I Googled it.
But I am revelling in slowness, and the light lingers longer and longer as we head towards the 21st and the longest day of the year. I lay in bed last night watching the light slowly fade from below and above the curtains, remembering that as a child I hated being sent to bed when it was still 'daytime'.
I rescued the crusts from my toast, along with half a slice of toast that Alan couldn't finish when we went out for breakfast last weekend and I am currently turning them into some oniony, garlicky croutons to have with my homemade soup for tea.
It will be a nice simple, frugal and tasty evening meal on a day that is already turning just a little bit chiller.
Time to go and get the now dry washing in now I think.
I find something really satisfying about using up the last of the things that I have in my big jars. Yesterday I used the last of the rice, so the jar was washed and I refilled it after leaving it to thoroughly dry overnight. It holds two kilos of rice so a full jar lasts me quite a long time.
There were just two cups of rice left in the jar before it was washed out, so I cooked it all up at once and then I had some for my tea with a portion of chickpea and potato curry from the freezer and left the rest to cool down in my freezer blocks.
So if two cups of rice does me five meals, that refilled jar is going to last me quite a while. 😁
I took Alan's lunch round to him at the bungalow yesterday and discovered him just finishing off doing this in my bedroom ... I think he is making me a padded cell. I know I can be a bit wacky at times, but am I really that bad? 😄
This weekend we are out to choose the floor tiles for the bungalow, yes we go to all the exciting places!!
We have been deliberating for a long time on which ones we want as they are covering the main room, the hallway, my bedroom and both bathroom floors, and as is usually the way with me I have come full circle and we are going for the ones that I chose way back at the start of the kitchen design process. Sometimes you have to trust your gut instinct and just go with it.
Yesterday morning I was watching WearyWolf's latest YouTube video about eating for 50p a day and of course it immediately brought back memories of me doing exactly the same thing back in April 2023 on my Challenge blog.
I just had to go back and have a look to see what I bought with my £3.50, I really couldn't remember at all. We did it so differently, and to be honest I think he did it so much better. I doubt he could have managed the week on my tiny portions compared to the really good ones that he made for himself.
I wonder how I would do it if I had to do it again. I briefly thought of having another go at the challenge ... and then talked myself out of it almost immediately. 😄
To read my version of the challenge just click HERE, and then as you get to the bottom of each post click on 'Newer Post' and you will go straight to the next days blog post.
Between them and the greenfly that have decimated my Lupins, this is a very insect heavy garden this year. Last nights torrential rain washed a lot of the greenfly off, but this morning they were all climbing up the plant pot like teeny tiny mountaineers to get back to their free feast. There seems to be a real dearth of ladybirds this year, but then the weather is very random isn't it.
Someone shared their photo of our main High Street in the late evening, on the local Facebook group last week. It's very atmospheric with the moody blue sky isn't it. The bunting goes up every year the week before the Children's Festival, which is the main event here in Spring and remains for quite a while so all the holiday makers can enjoy the atmosphere.
Alan asked me to do another updated walk through of the bungalow now that the first fix electrics have been completed, so here it is for posterity. It's coming along nicely. This week Alan is doing lots of little jobs as we have no builders or trades in. He's enjoying having a bit of a lie in each day with no pressure to get there early to let everyone in. It's been a bit like being back at work for him just recently, having lots of 8am starts while he works alongside the tradesmen.
Next week things will move forward again as the outside of the bungalow and the garage is being rendered in brilliant white,. It's going to look fantastic with our new anthracite grey window frames and the green 'front' door, which along with the French doors in the main room, will also be installed.
This weekend's little shopping trip included a twin pack of kitchen paper.
My roll finally ran out on Friday and as I had just one napkin picked up from a café left, so I thought it was time to make an extravagant purchase. I last bought kitchen paper in November or December of 2024, so picking up all the leftover napkins from cafés etc has really worked out well for saving me money and stopping wastage.
This photo appeared on my blog in May 2025, and shows the roll still looking very healthy then. I can understand why I ended up running out in May, we just haven't really eaten out as much and even our coffee stops on the motorway have not given me as many napkins to bring home, Alan spilt some of his coffee on two occasions and we had to mop it up.
Out of interest here are my May freebies ...
Two sachets of sugar from breakfast in Morecambe.
Brown sauce and two napkins from Booths.
Alan now admits to always fancying some brown sauce when he's ordering his bacon bun, but once he sees the bacon in front of him he can't bear to slather it on.
Napkins from the service station.
Alan said there was a wad of napkins on top of the dispenser and the lady handed them to him. I was over at Subway and just picked up two.
Free coffee from the Greggs app.
These are representing the two monthly free coffees we get from Dobbie's. I forgot to take a photo, we actually get a latte for Alan and a black Americano for me.
Sauce and a sugar from Booths.
From Burger King at the services, I fancied chips and they do the best ones, I did pick up two ketchups but one was more than enough, so the other came home with as well as the salt. I didn't realise that the chips come already salted.
A free steak bake for Alan from Greggs at the services.
Our two free coffees from Burnside garden centre.
Also a leftover Flora spread pot from my breakfast.
And then finally, a few napkins from the services yesterday ... so maybe I could have held out on buying the kitchen roll. 😄
Looking very full ...what's the betting this has to move house with us.
So I can keep tabs on it I have written the date on the inside ... a bit like when I 'dated a toilet roll'.
So my first shopping for June from Aldi looked like this and cost me £11.22.
The receipt for posterity.
I am now officially a UK pensioner as I received a pro-rate pension payment last Friday. My next payment will be in four weeks. It's so nice to have some money coming into my bank account again, but I'll still be watching the pennies as avidly, and collecting as many freebies as possible when we are out and about, you can count on that.
