Good lord, where have I been?

[radegund]

Where did the time go?

We're still pretty whacked out after the extension. Snag list is outstanding, but it's essentially done. We live here now, and every day it feels less and less likely that the real owners are going to come back and evict us. Most of the boxes are even unpacked.

Our main object at the moment is to juggle the cashflow so that we squeak unscathed from payday to billpay, slaloming between our creditors like an Olympic athlete. Fun times. [We'll be fine. But it's a little hairy this month and next.]

To that end, we're penny-pinching. (Or cent-cinching, which is the same but in euros.) Problem is, we trimmed out a lot of the fat a few years ago, and it's tough enough to see where we can trim any further.

Things I'm perfectly happy to do, off the very top of my head:

• Go back to washing my hair in bicarb and vinegar (reasonably effective, as I recall from 2006).


• Shop more often in Lidl.


• Find out which of our staple meals are actually cheapest and dearest, and plan accordingly.


• Keep a hawklike eye on expenditure, and stop spending on non-essentials when the allotted budgets are exhausted.


• Work for pay every spare minute I get (which is not very many minutes, admittedly, but I have been doing a bit of paid work).

Things I'd strongly prefer to avoid:

• Stop buying organic food.


• Cut out paid childcare and house cleaning (they're such a relief).

I dunno. What are your favourite money-saving strategies? I'd really love some inspiration.

Comments

[jinxremoving.livejournal.com]

Kind of yeah, but this is also from the perspective of someone living alone. Trying to remember that if I've run out of pasta I can probably cobble some other sort of dinner together with stuff in the back of the cupboard, that sort of thing.

I suspect my tips are rubbish. They're not really tips, they're just what I'm noting more myself these days.

[jinxremoving.livejournal.com]

Although, sod it, for the sake of rambling on, other stuff I do includes freecycle (now freegle, in Edinburgh!) and bookmooch. Bookmooch.com is particularly super for getting hold of books I want for free (other than postage), and if what I want isn't available right away I can add it to my wishlist and the site will automatically tell me when it becomes available.

For one-off things, I might check ebay to see if I can find a good deal, and I use rechargeable batteries (having gotten a recharger from freecycle). My neighbour and I leave perishables for each other when we go travelling.

I used to be a member of a LETS scheme, though since the advent of freecycle I found it too much of a faff to figure out credits and stuff. However, freecycle/freegle doesn't allow for services, only goods. I've found a friend who's up for helping me make a (non-)hot press in my bathroom cupboard, so, hooray.