De-cluttering - Charity Bags

I often get charity bags through my letter box and have occasionally filled them, leaving them out to be collected by the charity workers. I am usually selective about which charity I give them to and make sure that they are genuine charities. 

I have decided that I really need to be ruthless with some items in our home and get rid of them to help me de-clutter and help the charities. There seems to be more and more collections of junk hanging around the house and usually on the kitchen table, bedside tables and in the spare bedroom. I have a fear of turning into one of those people who hordes so much stuff that they cannot move in their own homes and they end up living in one small space in the corner of a room. 

I have now set a goal of trying to find 5 items a week to give away to charity. This last two weeks I have found the following:

Week 1

• Brown plastic sink drainer - never used it and don't think I will ever use it
• Make-up bag which was a free gift with purchase from Boots No7
• Metal tin which came filled with ginger creams from Thorntons
• Two Breo watches which I bought for my nephew and niece but are too small

Week 2

• Happy Birthday wrist band given to me by the staff at our hotel in New York
• Small picture frame which came in a Christmas cracker
• Black Nails Inc bag which had nail varnishes inside in a gift set
• Two books - one hardback & one paperback & both read

I'll keep you posted on future items each week. I expect that some of you will have some clutter in your homes that charities will benefit from. Do you like the prettY tablecloth under the charity items? It was hand crocheted by my paternal grandma. I think it is just beautiful. I had to do a few repairs to get it back to like-new but am so pleased with the results. I just love it because she made it.

Living Frugally

Both of us have been brought up in families where we have been careful with our spending on a day to day basis. This has meant that we have money to spend on the big stuff when the need comes along. I had not really thought about how often each week that we make small savings and how these add up to a big saving overall. Here are some of the everyday small things we do that make a big difference.

I do not buy bin liners as I use shopping bags from supermarkets or shops that provide bags for free. I use a different bag every day for the waste from every room in our house. All rubbish is taken to the kitchen and put in the carrier bag. I sometimes use two bags instead of one at the till at the supermarket to help with my stock of 'bin liners'.

We squeeze the last drop out of every container that we use from toothpaste to face cream to ketchup. I will cut open plastic tubes to get the last few drops out and make sure nothing goes to waste. I buy large bottles or jars of items to decant into smaller bottles as this is more economic. I shop at Costco and will buy large bottles of ketchup or sauces and then decant them into smaller bottles that we use on a day to day basis.

I buy items in bulk when I see them on offer or reduced to very cheap prices, so instead of buying one box I will buy say six and then store the remainder in the garage, the loft or in cupboards at home. This goes for just about everything that we use on a regular basis from food, toiletries to Christmas wrapping paper etc. My grandfather worked for a company that make washing up liquid, washing powder/tablets and cleaning products etc. He could visit the factory shop once a month and buy a set limited number of items of each product at vastly reduced prices. We would buy the maximum number we could of each item as we were saving huge amounts of money particularly on laundry items. I have not been able to buy cleaning products from the factory shop for 3 years as my grandfather died in 2011. I have been using the stocks we had and which are stored in my garage and I still have enough to last me another 3 years or so. We must have saved £100s.

We use things until they are worn out and this happened at the weekend when I noticed that the fitted sheet on our bed had two tears in it on both sides of the bed. When I had a closer look I realised it really was threadbare but we had slept on it for the last 5 nights no problem. I usually have two sets of sheets and pillowcases and alternate them each week. So this meant that I had just one fitted sheet left for me to use....or so I thought. 

Before I go to buy anything I look to see if I already have it at home - I am simply shopping at home. I had started to look on the Internet for the best prices for fitted sheets as we have a superking size bed and they can be expensive when I had a thought. I have a bedding chest on our landing and I had not looked in it for a while, so could there be some fitted sheets in there already? Yes there were and more than one.

There were two Christy sheets that I had originally used when we had first bought our bed but when I bought two new sets of sheets I had put them away (freshly laundered of course). As I dug further down to the bottom of the chest there were two brand new fitted sheets still in their wrappers. I remembered buying these off ebay at a silly price given that they were superking but in addition they are Lulu Guinness aswell. What a result! Four fitted sheets that I had forgotten I had as I had bought them about 6 years ago. Do you like my shoe horn on my bedding chest in the picture below? It is a Manolo Blahnik one designed for Habitat. I love the seductive shape and have three of them all bought from car boot sales. They cost me between £2 and £15 and are currently for sale on eBay at around £40.

We have a clear out of storage areas on a regular basis to remind ourselves what we have and what we no longer use, want or need. I cleared out and cleaned my pantry two weeks ago and found some items at the back of the cupboard that I had forgotten I had. This made me think about new recipes to try and how to use up some of items. I made a number of lasagnes because I found tins of tomatoes, pasta sauces and boxes of lasagne sheets. I made fish pie because I had found parsley sauce mix and when I next went shopping I found half price fish. I also found some Mexican food sauces and spices and realised that we tend not to eat Mexican food these days so I put them to one side to give to my sister. I know that she in turn will give me bargains she has found or things she no longer needs. When she visited at Christmas along with presents for us and champagne to drink with our meal she brought a ready cooked chicken and four panettone which she had bought reduced. Which leads me on to my next point.

As a family before we give anything away to charity we always see if anyone else in our family wants it. When my sister visited last weekend I had four bags of items for her to take away. One bag of items from the pantry that I no longer wanted as I did not think I will use the items any more.  Another bag had three tops that I was no longer loving and we're a little too tight for me and several scarves and set of gloves that I no longer loved. There was a bag of magazines that I have read and wanted her and my niece to have before passing on to their friends. Finally there was a bag with two vanity cases which were once full of toiletries but were empty as I have been using up my stock of toiletries to try to reduce the amount of space they were taking up in my bedroom.

If you visit a hotel make sure you bring any spare toiletries home with you that they provide in the bathroom and anything else that they provide for free such as individually wrapped teabags and sachets of coffee, hot chocolate, sugar and biscuits. Shoe shine pads and sewing kits have come in very handy when brought home too as have those little flimsy slippers. I have used many of these items on our weekends away when we gone self catering. I would certainly not take anything that is not provided as a free item.

Supermarket Clearance & Reductions

Do you ever have a look at the clearance or reduction shelves of the dry goods at supermarkets?

I have a look at these on a regular basis and come home with a real mixture of oddities that I have found sometimes at silly prices. In the last week I have visited the Tesco store in Carnforth while we were away and one in Old Trafford on my way home from work. I also went to Marks & Spencer in Lancaster and finally Waitrose on Saturday morning to get a few staples such as bread and milk.

I found the following items on the clearance shelves:

• The Valentine Day cushions reduced from £6 each to £1.50 which I have written about in another post here.

• Magnifying glasses which I like to have around the house and in handbags for reading or close up work. These were just 70p so I bought 3 pairs and now have a pair in the kitchen for reading cookery books and cooking instructions; a pair in the bathroom for plucking my eyebrows and checking my make-up is where it should be on my face! and finally a pair in my work handbag as I forgot my glasses once and had to come home as I could not work as I simply could not see to read or use the computer.

• Olay eye cream with concealer reduced from £7.49 to £1.12. This eye cream helps reduce the appearance of lines and hides dark circles. Any eye cream that does that cannot be a bad thing as I have both in abundance.

 

• Pack of four 3 blade Bic disposable razors which are great for David to pop in his weekend away/holiday toiletries bag. These were 55p reduced from £1.10

• White Flower scented tealights in boxes of 16 for 75p. There were four boxes of these so I bought them all. They have a beautiful soft floral scent and will be great for using in my lounge in the evenings. I have no idea how much these were reduced from but I am guessing the £3 mark judging by prices on-line for similar candles.

• Twinings tea bags which were in boxes of 160 and were reduced from £5.99 to £2.99 a box. These are best before December 2016 so I do not know why they were reduced. I even checked the normal shelves and found the same boxes there at £5.99 so was puzzled as to why they were half price. There were two boxes so I bought them both. 

You will be suprised when you have a look at the shelves tucked away in the back of the supermarkets at the reductions you can find.

Shopping at Costco

I am fortunate enough to have a Costco store about 5 miles away from where I live and we go through fits and starts in shopping there. We visited two weeks ago and realised that our card had expired in November last year so clearly we had not been for some months. Having visited two weeks ago we went again last week because we could see what savings could be had if you shopped wisely and know the prices of items at other supermarkets and shops to compare prices. 

We went for cat food as we have one fussy pussy in our house. She was a stray who was eating stale bread that we had thrown out for the birds. Several years later and she will only eat the best of the best. She has recently decided that she likes Sheba and this is a reasonable price at Costco costing £2.74 for a box of 12 sachets. They only come in packs of 4X12 so we bought several packs which will last her some time. I give her a pack or two of the Sheba each day along with a cheaper brand which she tolerates.

I was delighted to find some reduced mini chocolate brownie bites at just 97p for a large tub. There were eight of these available but I thought to buy them all was overkill so bought four. They should have been £4.49 a box but they were clearly reducing stock and this was the end of line. As we were going away for 5 days last Saturday with my sister and her family we took a couple of boxes as we knew they would soon disappear especially with my 16 year old nephew around. Sure enough he would grab handfuls and disappear with them. They are delicious and just the right size for popping in lunch boxes as a cheeky snack.

We buy a lot of the items that are on their two week offers as they can work out significantly cheaper than supermarkets but you have to be careful in that sometimes the supermarkets have some great offers on and they can work out cheaper than Costco. You really do need to know your prices and only buy when you know you are not going to get stung. PG Tips is my preferred tea brand for everyday tea. I prefer this over other brands such as Tetley although Twinings are my favourite but just too expensive for everyday tea. I bought this large bag as they were on offer at £5.49 instead of £6.99 for 460 bags, and this will last us for some time. I have a tea-caddy and will decant the teabags into this as this is much more user friendly and more attractive than getting your tea from a massive catering pack each day.

I do a fair amount of decanting from large packs from Costco. I buy small bottles or jars to use on a regular basis but fill these up with food etc from large catering packs. I bought this huge jar of mango chutney from Morecambe Festival Market while we were away for £1. It tastes delicious and I will decant it into glass jars that I have stored after I have finished eating the original content. I always give them a good wash, sometimes peeling off the labels if they look tatty. I sometimes buy pate, jams or chutneys in kilner jars and then I always re-use them. I find these so useful for storing just about everything in my kitchen.

Lancashire Weekend Break

We have just spent a few days away on the Lancashire Cumbria border staying at Pine Lake Resort just above Carnforth. My sister and her family had booked a log cabin for the week and David and I stayed with them for a long weekend. The weather was lovely with plenty of sunshine but there was a chill in air so you needed to be wrapped up.

The cabin looked out over the lake with the hills just visible in the distance. It was lovely sitting out on the veranda with a cup of tea and the papers first thing in the morning although it was a little chilly so a coat was needed but it was great to be out in the fresh air.

There a cute leisure complex with small swimming pool, jacuzzi, steam room and sauna. We spent one evening having a leisurely swim and I sat in the jacuzzi for some time resting my aching bones after all the walking.

We visited Morecambe which in it's heyday had been a must-go-to holiday destination for the workers of the North West. It is a little sad now but I have a fondness for the place as we used to visit when I was a little girl and we were staying at Grange-over-Sands on the opposite side of Morecambe bay. We also went to Lancaster and Grange-over-Sands for a few hours and wandered around looking in some of the shops. 

I have a love of the author M.C.Beaton who has written a series of books about a character called Agatha Raisin. I managed to find three of them in a charity shop in Grange and was delighted that they were as new and that shop had an offer of 3 books for the price of 2. As they were 50p each it meant that I pad £1 for the 3 books. I also found an as-new dressing gown for £2.50 in the same shop. It is made from a lovely soft fluffy material so great for the cold mornings we have been having.

I also found various DVDs for £1 each or less so I bought Dragnet, the series Black Adder goes Forth, the series The West Wing, Changeling, SuckerPunch, Cliff Hanger, Penelope and a box set of three DVDs which included Braveheart, The Thomas Crown Affair and Man on Fire. I found several magazines at 20p each for having a flick through.

There is one stall on Morecambe market where they have a system of fill a carrier bag for £1 with anything they have available. It is mainly second hand books and bric a brac and the owners say that they are saving the items from going into landfill. They are doing their bit for the planet and making a small amount of money in the process. My sister and I shared a bag and filled it mainly with books. I got two hard back books, one was a Gary Rhodes cook book and the other a Gok Wan book. Not bad at 25p each. The Gok Wan book will be flicked through and then put in the charity bag I think but the cook book has some really good recipes in it which are simple to make. There were also three paperback books including Toast written by Nigel Slater who is one of my favourite cooks.

We are going to Tenerife for a week in April with extended family. The boys all think it is great fun to wear Hawaiian shirts although this is not something that David possesses so I was luck to find a fairly muted one for £1.99 in the Barnardos shop in Morecambe. I don't think David will win the competition for the loudest shirt with this but it is reasonably wearable for in the evening. It is 100% cotton and looks fairly new so a good purchase.

We had a lovely stay and it was great to see my sister and her family but it was equally nice to come home. As we get older we are finding that we are becoming real homebodies who love being in our home. It is not the best house in the world but it is our home and we love it.

Valentine's Day Bargains

I bought 4 gorgeous dark grey raw silk cushion covers from the Marks & Spencer Outlet some time ago. I could not believe the price at £2.50 each as they are covered with elegant silver bugle beads. I had bought them for on our bed to pick out the colour of the grey suede rag rug that we have at the end of the bed.

The problem I had was trying to find four cushion pads for putting inside them. You would think that this would be easy but I was struggling to find some at a price that I was happy paying. So I was delighted when I called into Tesco on my way home from work last night, to find a shelf of Valentine's Day cushions reduced to £1.50 each. They had been reduced from £6 each and they have zipped removable covers so I bought 5 of them at £7.50 in total. Four of them are for putting inside my silk cushion covers and one is for next Valentine's Day as they are lovely cushions in their own right. I thought I would have one of these on the bed next February 14th as a Valentine theme.

We have also been planning on finishing decorating our bedroom which has been around 75% complete for as long as I can remember. The issue has been finding the right shade of grey for the wall behind our bed. After some searching we have settled on a Farrow and Ball colour called Pavilion Gray. We think this not too dark, matches our rug and has that chalky finish that we wanted.

Again I was unhappy paying £38+ for a tin and last weekend I got a flyer through the post for Homebase who had a 15% off event. I went early last Saturday morning and bought a tin saving myself around £5 and using a voucher I had received through the post I got triple Nectar points for my card. It looks like we may very well now be on track to finishing our bedroom.

M&S Final Clearance

Happy Valentine's Day to you all.

I hope you have bought a "dine in for £20" deal at one of the supermarkets. I have bought two, one from Marks & Spencer and one from Waitrose. I saved £10 or so on each deal and we will be eating the M&S one today and saving the Waitrose one for later in the week.

I had to visit Nottingham for the day yesterday as part of my job and had decided some time ago that I was not going to drive but go by train. I live about half a mile away from the Manchester tram network so I took the tram into Manchester City centre to catch the train to Nottingham. On my return I thought I would call into Marks & Spencer before getting the tram back home. 

I am so glad that I called in as I got some great bargains as they had the final clearance rails in some sections.  I got a fabulous underwear set for £4 - £3 for the bra and £1 for the briefs but my favourites are the men's Christmas pyjamas reduced from £29.50 to £3 a set. I had looked at these back in January when I was looking for gifts in the sales to put away for next Christmas. At the time they were half price so around the £15 mark and I was too mean to pay that price. I found two sets left in the right sizes for the men in our family and at £5.99 thought this was a good price. It was not until I got to the till that I found they had been reduced even further to £3 a set. Woohoo!.

When David saw them he claimed a set for himself so I have one set left and think these will be put away for next Christmas and will make a great present for my brother in law. There is something delightful and child-like about having Christmas pyjamas. I have some really cute red ones with a white lace trim and wear these at Christmas time. Whenever I put them on it always brings a smile to David's face and he never fails to declare "here's Santa".

What bargains did you find this week? Click on the word "link" below and leave a comment as I would love to hear from you.

Me Time Treats

I have been having a few tough weeks at work since the Christmas and New Year break and have also been feeling a little under the weather. I realised that I had no me time in my busy schedule and all my efforts were being spent on my home, my family and work. It was time to spend some time on me and which one of us ladies feels so guilty when we do this?

So first of all I had my hair done and my colours done at my local salon on Saturday. I spent some time on Sunday going through my make-up to make sure it fitted in with my new colours and I also made an appointment to get my nails done at my nearest Nails Inc studio. I have been going to them for around 3 years now on a fairly regular basis and always get a 3 week manicure. The staff are just lovely and always look after me making sure that I get any offers and freebies that they have. I went for a muted Jermyn Street which is described as a perfect taupe.  It is the third colour from the left in the photo below. I buy the matching nail polish to the gel they use on my nails for the 3 week manicure. I then paint my own toe nails to match unless they have an offer on for a free or reduced price shape and polish for my toes in which case I have them done at the same time as my finger nails. 

The Nails Inc studio is in Selfridges in the Trafford Centre so I thought I would make use of my time there and get some other items that I wanted. My sister had sent me a link for a freebie at the L'Occitane shop, so I called in with my phone to show them the link and was given a gorgeous tin containing two cute sized tubes of hand cream. They are 20% Shea butter and are two different scents - Vanilla Bouquet and Delightful Rose. They are the perfect size for popping in your hand bag or taking away when I go on holiday. The link had come via Facebook if you liked the L'Occitane page. As well as getting these for free the assistant gave me four samples of repairing shampoo, divine face cream and precious eye balm all tucked up in a lovely paper bag with scented tissue. I love the fact that these were all free.

My next port of call was the Nars counter in Selfridges to buy two particular products. The first is the Pro Prime Smudge Proof Eyeshadow Base which costs £19.50 (Ouch!) but which had been recommended in an article that I had found in the free Waitrose magazine. This can be used on the eye lids, under the eye for underneath eye liner and also on the eye brow for underneath an eye pencil. I have been using a cream eyeshadow base from Boots No7 for the last 3 years but found that my eyeshadow was still creasing by the end of the working day. This article written by Jo Fairley said that the Nars base was one of the best she had found so I thought I would have a change and give this a try.

The second item I bought was a blush in the naughty name of Orgasm. This shade matches my new make-up colours and again I had read that this is a cult classics colour which just about everyone can wear. It has a slight shimmer to it that made me wonder whether it was suitable for day wear but when the assistant put some on my cheeks it just gave them a light lift and glow. I was sold on it and bought it there and then. Another shock to my purse at £23 but as I scrimp so much on so many other things I thought it was time to treat myself to a few luxuries.

Well I think that is my blow out on myself for some time and back to being frugal but life sometimes life becomes dull when we cannot spend a little time and money on ourselves.