Chop Wood, Carry Water.

Helen and Scott Nearing in their famous book ‘The Good Life’, talk about the meaning of life being ‘chop wood, carry water’.

I know exactly what they mean.  The things that give life meaning are things that make us feel real.  It does not literally have to be chopping wood and carrying water – they can get a bit irksome if you have to do them all the time.

I have been listening to a rather amusing series on Radio 4 about a care worker from abroad called Beauty.  She commented yesterday that we Europeans seem intent on doing away with all our modern comforts and conveniences and living like someone in the third world – ie back to nature, camping, doing without electricity etc.  She has a point, actually.  It is all very well doing without these things if you already have them and can go back to them at any time.  If you really have to depend on chopping wood and carrying water and growing all your own food for your survival it is very hard, especially if you are ill, or old, or pregnant…

However, somewhere in there is a compromise.  There is no need to exhaust ourselves trying to do it all, but maybe it makes sense to make mashed potato rather than buy a plastic tray of it in the supermarket for £1/$1.50.  It will be more enjoyable not just because it tastes a whole lot better, but because you made it and because it only cost 20p/30c.

I love to chop wood and I love to rescue wood from the dump and use it on our woodstove.  This week I learned to use metal splitting wedges to split huge logs.  I phoned up a company that sold such things and asked what a five foot tall and not very strong woman could use to split logs.  So now I am the proud owner of two wedges.  With a sledge hammer, a bit of practise and the help of a You Tube video I found I can split some quite large logs that I was given and it feels great.  But thank goodness it is not my only form of heating in minus 20c. 

I guess it is all about balance.  I like to make do and mend rather than have to work full time.  But too much make do and mend and I feel deprived and am likely to go and spend money to make myself feel better.  A bit like the binge and diet syndrome. 

We all have deep human needs to be 1. Understood,  and   2.  Useful and valued. Doing no work at all is quite depressing actually.  

I do not mean only paid work here, having children or relatives to care for, volunteering, growing food, chopping wood and carrying water all qualify.

Even Scott and Helen Nearing left their ‘Good Life’ when they got older.  Actually, the whole point of communities is to not have to do it all yourself.  And we simplify and aim to live in one place and have a locally based life of meaning and community, then realise that is just what people living in small towns and villages all over the world have done for generations.  It just does not seem sexy when it is the kind of life you grew up with.  Peasant life in rural France seems romantic if you grew up in a mining village in the UK and probably vice versa.

So here I am living the life that my Grandparents did, in a geographically different but otherwise very similar part of the country.  They had allotments, so did I.  They grew veg and kept chickens, so have I.  They chopped wood for the fire and so do I.  My grandmother saved bits of string and plastic bags and so do I.  I can even still taste the tinned ham that was fast food if she ever got unexpected guests.  (It makes a great sandwich with a spot of mustard - yum).

In fact today I bought a new(er) copy  of the Good Housekeeping Cook Book. In our local charity shop.   

 My mother gave me a copy when I left home and it has everything in it that I have ever needed to know, even down to party menus and quantities for larger scale catering.  Her mother had bought her a copy of it when she got married.  And it is still in print today.  And I chopped wood, but drew the line at carrying water and used the hosepipe and automatic sprinkler to water the poly tunnel and strawberry bed.

A Cheap Valentine (and other gifts)

I am often told I am a cheap date.  It’s kind of a standing joke but also true.  I was always the woman saying ‘let’s go for a picnic and keep the money towards the deposit on a house.’

Consequently, Valentine’s Day is on the 15^th of February or later in our house.  The reason will be obvious to you frugal folk out there. 

If you go out for dinner, buy flowers or do pretty much anything else on the 14^th of Feb, or for that matter the weekend just before it (sometimes just after it too if the 15^th is on the Saturday night) you can bet your bottom dollar that you will pay up to twice the price for the same thing.

A similar rip off happens with weddings.  Tell the florist the button-hole posies are for a wedding and the price can double.  I know someone who was best man and contacted a hotel to ask the price for a reception.  He then asked the price for the same facilities for a birthday party and it was a lot less.  He booked a birthday party and they brought the flowers from the church to decorate the tables.  No one missed the extra bits of razzmatazz and the happy couple started married life with a bit more cash in their pockets.

On the 15^th  of February, you can get dinner for the normal price, (or go out early as we usually do and get a 2 for 1 deal at 6pm on a weekday), and oysters, red roses and valentine’s cards are all reduced in the supermarket and cost next to nothing.  Especially the oysters as they won’t keep! 

One year I came home with a large bunch of red roses from Tesco for 50p and I could have had any amount of them.  I also netted a cashmere jumper for my beloved for £2 in the sale, and a huge quantity of fresh king prawns going begging at a silly price at the fish counter that had to be eaten that day.  There were so many that we could not eat them all.  They had already been frozen, so with a flash of ingenuity I boiled them briskly in a pot and then froze them.

The thing is, it sounds mean, doesn’t it?  Do I still love him as much if we celebrate Valentine’s Day on the 15^th, or if we book the birthday party instead of the wedding?  Or have we just seen too many advertisements saying things like ‘because she’s worth it?’…

My take on it is this:  the ‘mean message’ comes from subtle marketing to get us to part with money.  It happens because someone wants to make money out of us, not because it is truly mean to spend less on things like that. 

The original intention of Valentine’s Day was to let someone know you fancied them when you were too scared to say.  Just like the original intention of Christmas was to celebrate the birth of Jesus and the exchange of gifts was meant to be symbolic, not a massive spending spree to be regretted when the credit card bill comes in, in January.  The original meaning has been hi-jacked by shopping.

Speaking of flowers, In an office where I once worked, we were having a whip round and each contributing £5 for flowers for someone who was in hospital.  When we contacted the florist, the £35 we had amassed was only enough to get a small bunch of flowers delivered. 

I suggested we went to the supermarket across the road and got £35 worth of flowers and took them to the hospital ourselves.  Face it, in many supermarkets you get a lot of flowers for £35.  I had florist’s cellophane and ribbon at home and could have made them up into a large bouquet.  This was not about saving money, you understand, it was about the person getting something nicer for the same money.  However the organiser of the gift thought that was ‘mean’ (I am still trying to work that one out too) and arranged for a small bunch of flowers to be delivered, then drove up to the hospital to visit empty handed.   

It used to be nice to take flowers from your garden to give to people but no doubt that is considered mean in some circles too.  It is actually nicer, and chances are the flowers will be unique and will not have been treated with pesticides or used up precious water in parts of the world where people do not have enough to drink.I once picked a selection of February flowers from my garden and gave them to my beloved on valentine's day.  how proud was I of having a wee bunch of flowers to pick in  my garden in February!  - Since you ask, snow drops, pussy willow, christmas roses and sprigs of contoneaster covered in red berries.

I still remember the lovely bunch of hand-picked flowers carefully arranged in a margarine tub with oasis in it, which someone who was totally broke took to the crematorium for me when we suffered a loss some years ago. They were the most special thing there and a lot of thought and love had gone into those flowers, as well as the courage to bring them and not to mind what others might think. 

When a close friend was getting married and I saw the florist’s price list with button holes listed at £5 each I was appalled.  That is £5 for one carnation and a bit of greenery!

I offered to make the buton holes and the bride was delighted.  She an I did it together and bought florist’s tape and two bunches of carnations for a total of £5 and added ferns and foliage from the garden.  We made all 10 button holes for £5, or 50p each and they were lovely.  There is lots of florist’s tape left to lend to someone else, too. 

The fact that it was us potential recipients of the button holes who made the suggestion gave the happy couple permission to do it without seeming mean.

I spent my money contributing to the reception as a wedding gift (I bought the champagne), which saved them a bit more money.  Like I said, it is not about being mean but getting best value and spending money on the things that matter. 

I love to get gifts that help someone get ahead, or contribute toexpenses of an event like a wedding as a gift.  this is especially handy with young people who need some money mentoring as it gives them the idea of being thrifty with money and helps them out at the same time.

In a similar vein, I bought a year’s supply of mail order nappies as a gift for a young couple who had a baby, knowing that babies get too many clothes anyway and there can never be enough nappies. they were not the sort to have re-usable nappies or that would have been an even better present. 

 I also got them some other almost-new b baby things, such as a wicker crib for virtually nothing at the car boot sale. When the couple concerned had finished with the crib, we gave it to someone else.  I got my £2($1.50) worth of pleasure out of that one! 

I now get the child concerned birthday and Christmas gifts of properly fitted leather shoes along with car boot sale toys.   This saves the parents money as well as being a nice gift, which I think is the optimum combination.

As a house-warming gift, consider things like curtain rails, blinds or linoleum, or even phone or electricity vouchers.   People are unlikely to get them from anyone else and it will save the reipient money.

So think about the person concerned and what will be useful rather than what you can find in the shops.

where did all the money go?

In the recent and painful economic downturn what I have been wondering is this:  If everybody is harder up, where has all the money gone?

Did it just disappear?  You do hear that a lot of money just moves electronically from one place to another but does not come into existence because it is not taken out of the bank.  In other words, if we all want our actual money at once, we are in trouble because there is not enough to go around.  That is what happens when bank get into difficulties I believe, and also when everyone sells shares on the stock exchange at once.

However, this crisis was apparently all started by companies selling on mortgage debt and that money did presumably exist because someone, somewhere bought a house with it. 

It seems that the number of new millionaires is still increasing, so someone is making money out of all of this.  It is just not the average person on the street.

It hasn’t burned us much as yet and for this we are very very thankful.  A friend of a friend has just come back from Ireland and says that people are going hungry because the cuts in benefits are so severe that benefits are only available for a limited period of time. 

Their homes have been re-possessed and they have nowhere to go and no money at all.

 If anyone out there knows anything about this, please post it on the comments section of this blog.  We are not hearing much about it, but the media did report that people were going hungry in Iceland last year.  How are they doing now?  What about people in the USA?  I noticed a book on Amazon.co.uk (Although it is American I could not find it on Amazon.com) about how to survive whilst living out of your car, if you cannot afford to pay rent and feed yourself.  It was written in the 1990's - the last recession. But how great is that, to survive it and write a book about it.

Car living by Jane Archer

It raises two questions:

1.       What can we all do to help each other when times are tough?

2.      How can we best protect ourselves from future hardship?

A sense of community and getting to know your neighbours is the very best safety valve there is in hard times.  That is how many countries have survived in the past, and it is a win-win situation.  That way we can share skills and resources rather than fight each other.  

Getting to know the neighbours is not always easy and someone has to make the first move.  I had fun leaving tubs of strawberries on our neighbours’ doorsteps and it broke the ice. 

We put a bench in our front garden too because in summer people are outside more.  Getting involved or just starting something locally works too.  It doesn’t need a committee if it doesn’t hold any money, so just do it.

Living frugally (but that doesn’t mean depriving yourself, being mean or doing it at other peoples’ expense) has been the secret of our wellbeing for many years.   

When I first started on the simplicity path – on my own at the very start, but hubby quickly got the plot when the credit card debt disappeared – I came across a book called ‘How To Feed Your Family on £4 a Day’ by Bernadine Lawrence.  

An Inspiration!

I had it out of the library and renewed it many times.   I took it back briefly as I could only renew it a certain number of times but when I went to get it back a few weeks later it had been got rid of!

I had been unable to get hold of it again until last week when I found a second hand copy on Amazon.co.uk. (it is not available on Amazon.com) It has been re-printed twice and became ‘How to Feed Your Family on £5 a Day’ in the second edition.

The food is all costed out and amazingly little has gone up in price since the 1990’s except the water cress. 

The recipes are good basic healthy food but the reason I love this book is because it is inspirational.  Bernadine went from having a good job, to being in a high rise flat with four children and on benefits.  Her strategy enabled them to live well despite having little money.

She fed 2 adults and 4 children very well for £5 a day. 

I actually hadn’t thought it until now but we fed ourselves for that much quite easily when we were paying off the mortgage and were highly motivated – admittedly we had 3 children rather than 4. 

In recent years I have found the bills creeping up again and am now back on focus with the grocery bill, and have challenged myself to reduce spending whilst not compromising on quality, so watch this space.

It is not the amount we spend each week that we focus on but the overall average over the course of a year.  This is because if we find something cheap we tend to stock up on it.  In some months we have  a lot more garden produce than others.  So far I have spent more and not less but watch this space.

We do not have a big garden and it is vertically challenged (the main part of the garden is almost as high as the roof of the house.)  It was mostly subsoil when we moved in because the top layer had been removed to reduce the height of the hill behind the house. 

The front garden now has some vegetables in it as well as the small poly tunnel and veg beds we have at the back.   For the front we choose food plants that look pleasing such as runner beans with their nice flowers, rhubarb and strawberries placed in amongst the other plants.  Think of a lawn as a green desert, and increase the size of the borders to grow salad crops.

This is a place to share your own inspiration about saving money and managing on less, so feel free to add your own ideas. 

We will be starting our courses on ‘simple living in an urban setting this year' so watch this space. They aim to help people get ahead whether or not they are in debt and - well - it certainly changed our lives for the better so why not learn from someone who has done it?
If you have enough savings to last for a year and no mortgage you can sleep at night without fear.   It can be done!

dare you do an inventory?

DARE YOU DO AN INVENTORY?

Following our original de-cluttering efforts a few years ago, I got into the habit of doing an inventory at New Year.

I would spend a happy day making a list of every single thing we owned.

It was amazing. 

The first thing I realised was that we could see exactly where all the money went. 

There was this pile of stuff that had all been bought and seemed worth the money at the time.  But it was now worth very little.  I came to thinking about why something is worth so much less second hand. 

The only difference is often that it does not have a nice box or any of the marketing hype, sales talk or advertising.  In other words the second hand value is actually the real value of the thing.

That’s why it often seems like something great in the shop (or online store) and rather ho-hum when you get it home.

In other words, you slave at a job you don’t really like in order to spend the money on something you don’t really want.

 The second thing that I realised is that we had more than one of some things because we couldn’t find the first one or had forgotten we had it.  For instance I had bought a ruler thinking the original one had disappeared forever – yet there it was when I did the inventory.

Never happened to you?  Yeah, I believe you…maybe.

The same thing was in a different room or in the garage and we never even knew it was there.  Only one or two things but WOW what a revelation.  We had so much stuff we didn’t know we had it.

Books in waiting - these are listed on Amazon and will hopefully sell, clear my shelves and earn a bit of the money back.  listing is a lot easier than E Bay and you don't need  a Paypal account.

The third thing I realised is that I really didn’t know what we owned until I did this.  Post-inventory I now had a mental picture of my belongings.  And how awesome is it that you could put in an insurance claim and say casually ‘oh, here’s an inventory of everything we own, we update it every year.’ 

I have an ex work colleague who was burgled once.  At least she thought she had been – it took her a couple of days to notice, because the thieves had only rifled a few drawers and left them in a state of disarray.  One of the drawers was where she kept her purse, but all her old purses were in there too, and she couldn’t really be sure it had been there and not been mislaid somewhere else. 

When she finally realised a window had been forced (they had carefully shut it behind them on the way out so it wasn’t immediately obvious) and the Police asked her what had been taken she couldn’t tell them for sure.  Sounds incredible?  Could you tell exactly what had been taken if you were burgled?  I doubt many of us could actually.

After the first inventory it is much easier to do subsequent ones as you are updating an existing list. 
I have been lazy about it for the last couple of years and probably should update it.  Here is an easier way to do it:  inventory one drawer at a time.  Do one drawer a day or week.  Start by just noticing the contents of the drawers each time you open them.  It is quite likely you will see things you had forgotten or that you no longer need.  They can be weeded out and by the time you do the inventory there will be less to go on the list anyway.

Keep a box or basket in a handy place – ours is in the porch – and put anything you no longer need into it.  Then when you next go out it can be picked up and taken to the charity shop.

If you don’t do this it becomes increasingly difficult to clear out because each clear out leaves a pile of homeless stuff kicking about.  By the time you have decided what to do with it half of it will be back in the cupboards as you/family members will have seen it and ‘rescued’ it in case it comes in handy after all.

Our charity box in the porch.  visitors often find things they want in it and go home with a freebie!

Whose birthday is it anyway?

There was an interesting statistic in hubby’s Sunday paper the other day.

Apparently, the first Monday in December is the peak of online shopping for Christmas.  This year, due to the timing of the calendar it was predicted to peak on Monday the 29^th November.

This time of year is not, actually the joy and cosy family time that is marketed at us.  Frankly, do you know even one person for whom it is that?  Well, maybe one…

In other words, we are buying the promise of a better Christmas when we go Christmas shopping and buy too much.  We always buy too much when we go Christmas shopping.

Well get this – it is not your fault and not due to lack of will power.  But many of us cannot afford it and that is hard. 

There is a sophisticated marketing tool out there designed to part you from your money and make you want stuff and feel that you are buying a better Christmas. 

Last year I wrote about the car boot sale at this time of year. 

My mantra is this: ‘everything you buy new can be got down the car boot sale’ and it can.  In other words, the promise of a better life wears off very quickly and all that is left is the credit card bill.

'Unplug the Christmas Machine' is a book about this stuff - makes me realise I am not alone!  Give it to like-minded friends for Christmas.

What we know is, there is no such thing as a ‘wander round the shops’.  You end up buying something.

The shops you go to -and the online shops you frequent - are where you will spend your money. 

Now my big question is am I offending my relatives and friends and do they think I’m mean?

And will they mind getting the same Christmas card for the third year in a row? 

I bought 2 boxes of mixed cards 3 years back, only to find that they were ALL Christmas Fairies.  The thing is I don’t want to waste them – I don’t mind buying new ones, and am hoping to make some this year if the fairies run out but what with the Christmas card list being much reduced and money given to charity instead, they are lasting well. 

I try very hard to give back as much as I get and more but to be creative in how I do it. 

Our Christmas strategy  – but make up your own there is no one right answer to this:

·         Cut down the present and card list by simply suggesting that as we all have enough stuff, we could donate to charity instead. 

·         Only send cards to people you don’t see.  If you see them say ‘happy Christmas’ and explain your card strategy.  Most people heave a sigh of relief and express the wish to do something similar.  Before we did this we had a list of 200 cards to send (and growing).  It caused arguments about getting them written!

·         Think about what you want to achieve with Christmas shopping before you set out.
.     Only venture to the shops where you want to spend your money – and take a list.   

·         Decide your take on it before you go shopping - eg buy from organisations whose aims you support, make your own gifts, send money to charity and otherwise use it as a conscious time to make the world a better place. 

·         We used to go out with our children doing some kind of free fun or good work as part of Christmas.  I don’t even know if they remember it now, but we even did an anonymous beach clean up one year (great fun!)

·         One year a pile of us grownups had a wee fire on the beach and cooked bacon sandwiches.  We cleared up well of course and no one would have known we were there.

·         Make the Christmas cake on Boxing Day when you are bored and the shops are shut.  No one has room for it on Christmas day anyway.  Ice it straight away.  I’ll swear no one will even know the difference. 

·         Get your icing and marzipan in January and put them in the freezer for next year. 
.      read 'unplug the Christmas Machine on the 1st December every year!

Once I let go of trying to be what I think I ought, this Christmas thing really is fun.  

I have to remind myself of that and let go all over again every year!

The trick to this is, if anything makes you feel ‘oh no not another task’ DON’T DO IT. if you go whoopee  that sounds fun then DO IT.

If you push yourself this time of year, we all know what happens – you get ill for Christmas or New Year.  Your body gets you the respite you need in other words.

HAND MADE PRESENT AND CARD (etc) STRATEGIES

·         If you have kids, cut out a potato print of a Christmas tree.  Use kiddie paint to make printed cards. Even tiny kids can do this.  Write the address on the back of the card.  Tape the open edge of the card together and you don’t need an envelope. 

·         Last year I had a fire in the back garden and it was great.  (Yeah I have a thing about fire…)  We were snowed in so had to abandon plans to go away.  It was great and we saw my sister in March instead.

·         See article on this blog re buying presents at the car boot sale and donating the rest to charity (or buying the person more presents for the money!)

·         Get useful things for people such as a delivery of everyday groceries from Tesco for 20-something son…

·         Make presents – it doesn’t take any longer than all that shopping.

·         Think about the ‘whose birthday is it anyway?’ mantra.  It’s not mine, I think I got it from the New Road Map Foundation website last year.  I use it a lot and it clarifies my thinking.

here is a felted 'loopa knit' scarf - potential Christmas present?? though the photo makes it look rather strange...

WHAT A BARGAIN!

If you like to shop, this may be for you.  I have just received £50 worth of Marks & Spencer gift vouchers but I am not going to spend them without doing some forward planning... 

Bargain hunting can be great fun.

It puts a whole new slant on shopping, and in fact on recreation.  We would rather spend time on something that is fun but will make us money or save us money, than on something that is also fun but will cost us money. Because it is soooo satisfying when you uncover a real bargain. 

Seven years ago in January, a friend e mailed me to say that Marks & Spencer had underwear reduced in their sale and her daughter had just got £96 worth of undies for £16. 

If you beome a committed bargain hunter, you will want to plan ahead, and keep a note of what your needs are likely to be for the coming year. 

I did this rigorously when our 3 kids were small and it meant they got to have a lot more than they otherwise would have, on our limited budget.

They were all the same size so we had no hand me downs within the family although we did have a bit of a system with friends of passing on clothes to each others' children.

I kept a book of what things I had been given that were too big for them, such as next year's size school uniforms, and then knew what we needed to buy at a glance and could snap up that bargain with confidence.

Our clothing needs are actually very predictable.  

Our kids would need a minimun of 12 pairs of new socks and underwear each a year, 5 school shirts, 2 school jumpers 2 pairs of school trousers, a school bag and so on.   Add to that another 5 play tee shirts, 2 pairs of play trousers, 2 smart pairs etc.  Once I sat down to think I realised it was really very easy.  The system also meant that everyone always had a smart outfit in their wardrobe that fitted if we got an unexpected invitation.

Once you have the list and you know what you are going to need, just wait and stock up when you see a bargain or until the end of the January or Midusmmer sales.  There is  no need to bother queueing for the expensive bargains on day one of the sales. 

By the time the sales are on, you may have found most of it in the charity shops anyway  but there is always something that has to be bought new, socks and undies being a good example.

Fashion

Fashion may change but there are a surprising number of things that are fashion proof even if you are a fashionable person.  Socks, underwear and nightwear are good examples. Other relatively fashion proof things are school uniforms and tee shirts.  And actually those are all of the things that we will definitely have to replace regularly anyway.

Tee shirts and school stuff do change a bit fashion-wise - for example over the last few years Tee shirts went from longer length to waist length and are now back at longer length again.  Skirt lengths have done the same in reverse and trouser legs have gone wider and then narrower.

However it didn't change every year and if you buy a certain number of plainer shirts, skirts or trousers for everyday wear you can always buy a few more fashionable items with all that money you have saved!  The plainer ones are more fashion proof - it is this year's must have item that is totally out next year, your plain black tee shirt will still be okay.

As you get better at planning and buying in advance when things are cheap,  there are fewer urgent needs, because you have stocked up at a knock down price.

What's more, because you know what you are likely to need for the future, when you do see a bargain you can buy with confidence.   

This principle applies to all things, not just to clothes.  for instance, cans of tomatoes, ink cartridges, copier paper, spare oil filters for the car,,,

And then you begin to find you are getting better off.  This is one of the things that can give you real leverage.

You don't notice the difference at first, and I can remember wondering if it really did work when we started out15 yearsago.  

Then one day I found myself thinking 'how come we always seem to have so much money?!!'  Our income had not changed and we were not big earners but we had savings - money in the bank. In other words we had an emergency fund and that meant the next time there was an unexpected bill we did not have to borrow money. 

This is called 'The Snowball Effect' by Amy Dacyzyn who wrote The Tightwad Gazzette.   this book has been in print for probably 20 years.  It is phenomenol and quite literally saved our bacon.  If you buy two books about simplicity and getting ahead with money, get this one, and Your Money or Your Life 

by Joe Domnguez and Vikki Robbins.

 

The snowball effect works like this: 

• you predicted your needs and bought cheap.
• you therefore spend less money and accumulate savings.
• you don't need to borrow next time there is an unexpected bill.
• you therefore save on loan interest payments and accumulate more savings
• you are able to buy something that enables you to save even more money, such as a wood burning stove to burn free wood or a second hand sewing machine to make your own curtains.

• You make a new friend when you get the free wood from their dead tree.  They get their garden cleared free and don't need to pay for a skip.  You give them some vegetables from your garden to say thanks for the wood.  

• Next time they go fishing they leave you a fish on the door step. It turns out they don't eat fish anyway so from now on you have a regular supply of fish-for-vegetables thus saving you and them money on the grocery bill. 

In the present climate when we are all worried about money to varying extents, a plan like this can give you that emergency fund, or can help keep your head above water if things are bad.  It also gives you a morale boost because when you have no money you have things put by and can 'shop at home' and choose things out of your stock to treat yourself or the kids with.  

The 'mummy shop'

I used to keep a 'mummy shop' of bargains or things I had made.  If the kids did something that was thrifty or helped with a special job (they all helped a bit in the house in an age appropriate way as a matter of course), I would reward them with something from the mummy shop.    They totally loved it and I had fun finding things to put in it.

If you are a tax payer, money saved is worth more than money earned, because you don't pay tax on it.

 

So anyway, when my friend e mailed about that Marks & Spencer underwear sale, I was already poised with a list of our needs for the year.  By the time I actually got to Marks & Spencer the undies had gone down in price even more  – everything was £1! 

I e mailed her back and let her know.  By the time SHE got back there, everything was 50p.  Top quality, lovely stuff that had started out way over our budget.  So when it was 50p we bought a second lot for when the first lot wore out.  A bit of planning has saved a lot of money.  And I actually got a five year supply of undies for about £50.

So you can bet I won't be spending those M&S vouchers before Christmas.

Our kids got really good at spending any vouchers they got too.  They used to ask us if they could keep their Christmas money or vouchers until January.  Then they went shopping in the sales and got a lot more for their money.  Not a bad idea for anyone who gets a voucher this Christmas...

THE OFF BUTTON

We do not have TV.  When we had it,  the set ended up being on a lot.  If someone felt like watching TV, on it went.  Almost invariably there was nothing on worth watching.  Then the channel flicking started and finally everybody would settle for something they did not really want to see instead of switching it off again.  The off button was hard to find, it seems. 

The most striking thing was the way that the TV seemed to suck in energy.  In the evenings, the longer I watched it for, the more tired I became.  Finally there simply was not enough energy to contemplate doing something else.

When I do see TV in someone else’s house, I am appalled at some of the stuff that is on.  My job used to involve visiting people in their homes, so I got to see a fair cross section of daytime television.

Talk shows parading peoples’ problems would be on in the background and although no one was really watching it (except me, not having been exposed to much of that stuff I was transfixed!) it still creates a negative atmosphere and affects you view of the world.

Friends who have TV do not seem to know what I am on about. They ask me what I do in the evenings, if we do not have a TV set.  Before branding me as an extremist though, try going without TV for a month and then see how you react to it when it’s switched on again.  See later for tips about how to experiment with your TV use…

One study has researched the problem of us becoming desensitised to distress because we see it on TV a lot, and suggests that this can actually desensitise us to distress in real life and make us less likely to help someone out. 

If this is true, TV could be destroying our compassion. 

I do notice that TV-watching friends do not react as strongly as I do to these things, and feel that I react more strongly than I did in the days when I had a TV.


When we began to spend more time looking after our grand daughter we got some videos for her to watch. (Our old fashioned videos are all the same to her!)
One was never enough though and she got bored and fractious.  The video has never been on again and she doesn't ask for it.  if she is ever unwell, it might be useful.
One day it was torrential rain.  I thought maybe we would watch a video and then on impulse stopped on the way home and bought a child's umbrella for £1.  She played outside for ages with the umbrella and a cat litter tray full of water as a 'puddle' to stand in.  We do baking, play with home made play dough or with water in a bowl, dig the garden - all the things we did with our own kids in fact. 

TV seems to be everywhere.

It is common in doctors and dentists waiting rooms, and even the post office and the changing room at one local gym has it.  I have rarely seen anyone watching properly although they do glance at it. In fact people filter it out.

When the kids were small we went to the movies instead of watching TV.  It was a real family treat and good value.  (take your own popcorn and drinks or the cost can double).

We also had a TV/video combination unit, with the receiver removed.  This enabled us to legally watch rented videos.  We took the unit to a TV repair shop and they gave us a letter to send to TV licensing confirming that its reception capabilities had been disabled.   Now it is virtually obsolete due to the advent of the DVD but we did well for a while with videos purchased at the car boot sale for 10p/15c each as people got rid of them. 

We can still watch DVDs on the computer legally so long as it does not have a receiver in it and we occasionally use the internet based ‘watch again’ websites of the different TV companies.  Only about once a month though.  There usually seems to be something more interesting to do.

TV licensing paid us a visit about 5 years ago.  (They do check up on you eventually if you have told them you don’t have a TV.)  Years ago they used to send us lots of letters but not any more. 

We told them about the TV video combo and they naturally asked to see it.  And we couldn’t find it. 

They of course found this hilarious and said we were the first people they had seen that day who really didn’t have a TV.

It eventually turned out to be in our daughter’s wardrobe and they went away happy but still chuckling.

If you want to experiment with your TV use:

• Try covering it with a nice cloth or put it in a TV cabinet.  Not having visual contact with it improves the feel of the room and means you don't get triggered to switch it on just because it is there rather than because there is something you really want to watch.
• Decide not to watch TV first thing in the morning.  News programmes especially have a lot of negative stuff in them.  Is that really how you want to start the day?  
• Have one TV free night at home a week and see how it feels.  If you are not used to it plan how you are going to spend the time.
• Watch out that you don’t end up surfing the internet as a TV substitute.
• Here are some of the things we do at home in the evenings: 
  Talk to each other, play board games, knit, read, make things, write, cook stuff for the freezer, spin, dye yarn, do stuff to support voluntary groups such as contribute to a newsletter, talk to friends on the phone, write this blog.