It's day 17 of living more frugally and it's been a revelation, I never thought we were lavish spenders (we've never had any money!) But I knew as a family we were quite wasteful, chucking food away, always going for a coffee if we were out for the day, buying a newspaper despite having watched the news and read it all online...
Towards the end of 2016 I started to read a blog call zero waste home, I wouldn't class myself as particularly environmentally conscious but I started to look at all the packaging, piles of clothes and mountains of food we were accumulating and it didn't sit well with me.
The first thing we did was to start batch cooking, you'd think with two young kids and two parents working full time this should have been something we already did but it's amazing how many dinners consisted of baked beans or hummus because we'd run out of food or didn't have time to cook. It's pretty impressive how many meals mince beef can make, a bolgenese sauce can then be turned into a chilli with the addition of cumin, kidney beans and peppers, which can then be turned into burritos, tacos or nachos. We've halved out shopping bills but have a freezer full of food and the kids no longer have beans 4 times a week.
The second thing we did was find all the loose change scattered around the house, under the sofa, in random jars and under kids beds, and put it all in a big glass jar, then every week we set ourselves a cash budget, withdraw the cash and put our bank cards away. Each Friday whatever was left of the cash goes into the big jar to be saved for holidays, , day trips and treats.
The third (and last) things we did was to start ebaying all the clothes we didn't want, didn't fit into or didn't like (99% consisted of my 1950's phase of swing dresses apparently) uploading 10 items a week and watching as a £50-£100 a week turned up in our paypal account, again this money was transferred to our bank account, withdrawn and put into our big saving jar, there's something about physically seeing your money increase that makes me want to add more, and knowing it's not going on 'things' but experiences makes it even more satisfying.
This might be a New Years resolution I can stick with.
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