I usually look at a blog from the USA by The Prudent Homemaker. An incredible lady who home schools her children, does lots of craft things, gardens and cooks. Most weeks she has a blog called "Last weeks frugal accomplishments". That blog always makes me wonder what frugal things we have done in the last week, then I thought I would make a list for the whole month.
Used a pheasant given to us for a meal
Made own bread every week
Sewed hem on bath towel to repair it
Shortened legs and re-hemmed a pair of overalls
Read library books
Stayed at home and spent nothing on 21/31 days
Used leeks, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, parsnips,parsley, swede from the garden.Onions from store.
Made celery soup using the outside stalks of a head of celery.
Used the Rayburn/woodburner for heating kettle as much as possible.
Used the Rayburn for cooking as much as possible.
Ate our own stored eating and cooking apples
Used free wood for heating house/ water all month
Personal spend =25p
Looked at two craft magazines but decided against buying
Put off doing the washing each week until a dryish day therefore avoiding using tumble dryer
The trouble is, these seem just ordinary normal things to me, and perhaps we should do even more.
Thinking about that reminded me of something that's in one of those books in the picture at the top of my blog.
The book by Patrick Rivers called Living Better on Less has a list of choices which he calls " The Marmalade factor". He says you can apply this principle to anything you do to see how low/simple you want to be. This is how it goes-
Choice one: Buy favourite brand, regardless of cost
Choice two: Buy a cheaper brand or special offer
Choice three: Buy cans of prepared pulp and make your own
Choice four: Buy Seville oranges and make proper home-made
Choice five: Do without marmalade
Choice six: Do without breakfast
So, looking at my list of frugal things perhaps I shouldn't have bought that celery as we have things of our own that I could make soup with. Perhaps we shouldn't have gone to that jumble sale where I spent that 25p on a little jug. Perhaps we should eat food raw to save cooking in the electric oven when the Rayburn isn't hot enough!
Now I'm just being silly...........we will just carry on as before, being frugal our way.
Back Tomorrow, 1st February, so it's review of the month time.
