How I popped my charity shop cherry

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 7 June 2011 in charity shopping | 8 comments

After reading this post on Homestead.org, I thought back to my first time – the first time I bought something from a charity shop I mean.

We didn’t have a lot of money when I was little – certainly compared to many of the people around us – but as far as I recall, we didn’t get any clothes from charity shops – maybe a couple of things from jumble sales when we were very little but not after that. My mum knitted so we had a lot of homemade jumpers when I was under 10 and for casual “playing out” clothes (which, aside from our school uniforms, were all we really wore), I got a lot of hand-me-downs from my older brother – which possibly inspires my not-exactly-feminine style to this day.

When I hit my teens, I started getting a little more interested in fashion – not much compared to most girls but more interested than I had been. That coincided with New Look and the like, cropping up with their cheap clothes and perpetual sales. But while those shops were perfect for little vest tops and minute skirts, they weren’t great for everything – particularly heavy winter coats – and at 16, I also started to like the idea of vintage clothes, so I decided to finally cross that threshold…

It really was a threshold – it felt … wrong. Not necessarily that very first time but over my first year of charity shopping, I remember being embarrassed about going into the shops – hoping no one saw me. I didn’t want anyone to know I went to charity shops. I guess I had embarrassingly inaccurate prejudices about charity shops myself – that they were for poor people, that they were dirty – and I assumed all my peers would have similar ideas, and I didn’t want to get tarred by those brushes. (How times change – I’m now really happy to tell all and everyone about my love for charity shops and the like!)

But despite my worries, skulking into the British Heart Foundation in Southport was worth it: on that first visit, I found a nearly new black woollen winter coat for £5. The coat was a bit too big for me but I didn’t care, I was delighted. A woollen coat would have cost me £60+ new, which at 16 I couldn’t really afford – so big schmig. I wore it every day that winter and when I was done with it – when I’d moved onto charity shop vintage velvet blazers or the fantastic swinging ’60s leather trench coat I found at Barnados for £12 the following year – it went back to a charity shop for someone else to use.

I do wonder if I’d have caught the charity shop bug if that first visit hadn’t been such a success. Over the years, I’ve probably had as many charity shop clothes failures as I’ve had successes – wasting money buying stuff without trying it on – but the successes have been worth it.

Do you remember the first time you went to a charity shop?

(Photo by ell r brown)

Ten things

Posted by louisa on Monday 6 June 2011 in chickens, cooking, DIY, frugal, growing, soap | 2 comments

1. Buff the chicken has been in isolation since last Wednesday since the others started really *viciously* bullying her (as I said on Twitter, it’s disturbing how vicious chickens can be). I think there have been pecking order issues over the last few weeks and it’s stopped her being able to eat properly. She feels very bony (even for a pure breed) and is weak as a result – looking back at old photos of her, the difference is stark. I’m hoping some time by herself and some special food will turn her around but I wouldn’t be surprised to go down one morning to find she’d died overnight. Sigh.
2. We painted the bathroom on Sunday – not the woodwork yet but the second coat of the walls, ahead of the cupboards being fitted tomorrow. One June mini goal down (nearly)!
3. In other housey news, last year we found a hidden coal hole at the front of our house and over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been having it damp-proofed and turned into a utility room. It’s not been cheap but now has a proper full height doorway and is a proper extra room for the house – it’ll free up room in the kitchen too. It should be finished this week, hurrah!
4. While that’s going on at great expense inside, John’s DIY-mad dad is fitting a fence for us outside — to help contain the dog and the chickens a bit more. The fence is going to be rather frugal for a new fence as the lumberyard John’s dad goes to was throwing away about 20 horizontal fencing beams and some posts, because they’d got slightly bleached in the sun so couldn’t be sold “as new” any more. Madness! But useful timing for us!
5. And speaking of freebies, someone was taking a seemingly brand new electric staple gun in its case at the tip last time John’s dad was visiting – they told him it was “broken” but he took it home and found they’d just inserted the staplers in the wrong place. We now have a brand new working electric staple gun for free ;)
6. I never used to use bar soap to wash anywhere other than my hands – it left a film and dried my skin, causing my face in particular to get greasier in compensation. But my olive oil soap leaves my skin clean and soft – and it stays feeling that way for 12+ hours unlike just about every other cleaning method I’ve tried. I very much like it.
7. I made the ugliest soda bread I’ve ever made today – I don’t know what went wrong but it grew really unevenly. Still tasted lovely with soup for lunch though :)
8. Some of my rapini has gone to seed – the heads weren’t big enough to warrant harvesting. Damn the hot spring!
9. Do you make your own quiches? I’m looking for (frugal) store-cupboard recipe quiche ingredient ideas for when we’ve not got much else in — Viksterbean on Twitter suggested antipasti such as olives and artichokes, and that made me think about adding a swirl of pesto too. Any other ideas?
10. Boron would like it to be known that I did not write this post alone. Apologies for the poor quality of my webcam – I only ever use it for these type of pics ;)



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This week’s meal plan

Posted by louisa on Monday 6 June 2011 in weekly meal plans | 0 comments

This one feels less varied than normal – but should be quite efficient as a result and not need too much extra shopping, which I like. :) The shepherd’s pie was originally going to be cottage pie but I found some lamb mince in the freezer. Another win :)

Sunday lunch – Saturday night takeout leftovers
Sunday dinner – … Saturday night takeout leftovers (eyes seriously bigger than our bellies!)

Monday lunch – tomato soup with soda bread
Monday dinner – courgette & bacon risotto

Tuesday lunch – leftover risotto & bread (or if we’re lured into naughtiness by Strowger, fish butties)
Tuesday dinner – shepherd’s pie and veg

Wednesday lunch – curried egg mayo sandwiches
Wednesday dinner – pizza

Thursday lunch – samosas and salad
Thursday dinner – leftover shepherd’s pie and veg

Friday lunch – bread, meat & pickles
Friday dinner – spaghetti carbonara

Adventures in frugal vertical gardening: salvaged planters

Posted by louisa on Friday 3 June 2011 in growing, making, wood stuff | 7 comments

A few weeks ago, our next door neighbour with the gorgeous show house revamped his garden for summer. His deck is decorated like a room of the house (including an old vintage dresser, which looks fab with bedding plants draped out of the drawers and is currently topped with a birdcage and some matching framed photos) and he prefers to have just a few pots around the seating area rather than our overgrown scruffy (albeit veg-tastic) garden. As much as I like growing our own food, I do look at his garden wistfully sometimes – so lovely, so little upkeep! ;)

Anyway, so the guy with the great taste was tidying up his garden and at some point in his tidying mission, he decided he no longer wanted four wooden trough planters – he’d had them for a couple of years and they were looking past their best, so he dumped them on the (communal) bonfire heap at the bottom of our garden. I spotted the next time I was passing on the way into the woods with Lily-dog and mentally bagsied them – sure, they were a little past their prime but i) aren’t we all? and ii) they’re nothing a bit of TLC couldn’t fix.

I didn’t actually collect them until yesterday – but on closer inspection confirmed what I’d thought — a couple of bangs with a hammer (to reinsert some nails), a couple of supporting screws and a lick of paint and they’d be fine.

They’d got a bit damp in the recent rain so I let them dry in the sun for a while then wielding my hammer & screwdriver, did my minor fixes. The smaller trough was still in good condition so I just gave the wood a bit of a polish to freshen it up a bit. It’s not perfect but it’ll do as a small herb pot.

The three bigger ones, I cleaned up then slapped on a couple of coats of white acrylic primer. I didn’t want to paint all the way inside, just to roughly where I imagine the soil level will be.

I’d wanted some nice troughs for the balcony for a while – for salad and herbs right next to the kitchen door – and to maximise space, I decided to build another tiered planter stand thing. (The first one of those is proving very useful by the way – it’s currently filled with pots of different salad leaves.) I wanted it to be as simple as possible but the sides of the troughs were too angled to attach uprights to them – I could have attached them directly to the wall with brackets but prefer the flexibility of freestanding stuff where possible, so ended up building another shelved planter stand.

I did start with wider shelves, with room for extra pots on either side, but decided to make it narrower and neater so it would fit better on the balcony and be stronger. I have also added supports onto the bottom of each trough so they can be screwed onto the shelves to make them more stable/less likely to tip over – I just haven’t done that yet because I want to paint everything first. The narrower stand itself is stable but the individual troughs will be a bit top heavy.

The uprights are made from salvaged decking and the shelves from salvaged (due to being warped in parts) battens (both courtesy of John’s dad) – so structurally, it was completely free. I’m not sure where the primer came from (I suspect John’s dad brought that around too, it just appeared in our house) and it will need painting again — I have some leftover gloss paint in fun colours but I think I need exterior paint or an acrylic based paint for outside stuff (don’t I?) so I, gasp, might have to buy a little pot for that bit, unless I can scrounge some off someone else this weekend. Any colour suggestions by the way? (For context, the metalwork of the balcony it’ll stand on is painted black, the walls at that level are exposed Yorkshire stone and the window sills will be black when we get around to painting them.)

Still though, even if I have to buy a little paint, I’ll still be happy with the final cost and the finished item – it’ll more than pay for itself if it grows the herbs and salad I have planned. :)

Mini goals for June

Posted by louisa on Friday 3 June 2011 in goals | 7 comments

Frugal/money

1. Transfer Cash ISA to new provider
Been meaning to do this for a little while. I love my current bank’s ethical policy but their interest rate is appalling. I’m going to try to find somewhere still reasonably hippy-friendly but a little more generous.

2. Transfer to new energy company
Our cheap offer tariff has come to an end so we’re being shifted onto standard – time to move! I’ve used a comparison site and every single option will cost us more – so I’m going to explore cashback options to offset the hike.

House

3. “Clean slate” tidy the bedroom
The bedroom has been an utter tip – even by my generally untidy standards – since we started refitting the bathroom in February. We still don’t have any cupboard space in the bathroom yet so all the things that usually live in there are strewn throughout the bedroom, on the landing and in the spare room. The bedroom stuff is the worst – not only is it cluttering it up, it’s stopping other stuff going where it should go and encouraging further clutter. The cupboards *should* be built in the next few days so once all that’s out, I think the bedroom needs some love.

4. Finish painting the bathroom
Like Laura, we keep putting this off – but when the cupboards are in, we’ll really have no excuse not to finish it all off! Once it’s painted, we can “finish” it off completely – refit the radiator, seal everywhere, put up mirrors/artwork — can’t wait!

Growing, eating, making and chickening

5. Fill all my planters with soil – and plants!
I’ve got a lot of empty planters at the moment – waiting until stuff is ready to be planted out. But frankly, if it doesn’t happen in June, it’s not going to happen. I think there will be more than enough plants to go around – but if there are any empties, more quick salad leaves are always useful.

6. Learn how to poach an egg
I have never done this successfully. I would like to be able to do this successfully. If only I had a steady supply of really fresh eggs… oh wait!

Have you got any mini goals for this month? Do you have a foolproof poached egg method? ;)

Using our 100% vegetable oil soap

Posted by louisa on Thursday 2 June 2011 in making, soap | 2 comments

You may remember a few months ago I spent a bajillion hours waiting for some 100% olive oil soap to reach trace then, as a glutton for punishment, I decided to make a second batch of another 100% vegetable oil soap the same day.

We started using the 100% olive oil soap and have got through a few small bars of it – John likes it a lot. He likes that it doesn’t lather much (as it, conversely, encourages him to use less of it) and it doesn’t smell perfumed either (he hates perfumed things).

In a “why change what’s working?” way, we hadn’t tried the other set of soap – the 100% veg oils one – but I decided that should change this week!

The non-lye ingredients of the 100% olive oil one are pretty obvious – the 100% veg oil one a little more complicated — but still, everything bought from the supermarket. I used Frugal Queen’s recipe and method – olive oil, sunflower oil and Cookeen (solid veg shortening) – just leaving out the scent. It traced faster than the olive oil one thankfully!

The resulting soap is softer than the 100% olive oil one (apparently that’s down to the veg shortening) and not quite as pale – a soft lemon-ish colour. (It had some soap ash on it when I first picked it out of its drying place, which I’ve mostly scrapped off – hence the not-perfectly-smooth edges and slight colour variation on the before use picture above). It lathers quite a bit more than the olive oil soap – not crazy commercial soap levels but noticeably more. It did feel more like shop bought soap though – leaving my skin feeling a little “squeaky”. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, just a thing.

I spent £5.27 on the ingredients (£1.89 on the olive oil [on offer at Netto at the time], £1.06 on the sunflower oil, £1.43 on the shortener and £0.89 for the caustic soda needed for this recipe – based on a 500g bottle from Wilkinsons; and I used tap water and no scent) – which I think out frugals the Frugal Queen ;) I ended up with 2850g of finished soap – the bars were randomly sized but if they were normal 100g-ish bars, that would be about 19p a bar (or about 24p a bar if they’re 125g, which was the weight I used to work out the per-bar cost of the 100% olive oil ones [35p]).

As I said regarding the 100% olive oil ones, I’m not sure I enjoyed the process enough to do it often but I like the idea of making a big batch every six months/year as necessary. Before the next batch though, I’m going to try handmilling some of the ones from this batch to try out different (frugal, supermarket-sourced) scents – and might try turning a bar into liquid soap too as that’s handy when my hands are filthy from gardening.

Has anyone else made the Frugal Queen’s 100% veg oil soap? What did you think of it? Or do you have any 100% supermarket-sourced veg oil soaps? Or suggestions for frugal scents and any handmilling/liquid-soap-from-bar making advice?

May – end of month review

Posted by louisa on Thursday 2 June 2011 in goals, meta | 5 comments

Another month that seems to have lasted ages but in a good way. Lots of long weekends too – but enough stuff going on to fill them with. I meant to write this post yesterday but was in the garden ’til past 10pm — so much to do!

Goals in 2011 progress

Things are still progressing in the garden – but slower than I thought in some areas. I only had my first fully homegrown salad last week – compared to regular salad from the garden in April last year. (I’m saying “fully homegrown” because we got two tubs of living salad from Lidl at the end of April and have cut-and-come-again from them several times – really been good value for money but not the same as growing from seed.) I’ve successfully taken cuttings from two perennial herbs too, so that’s another step – and I realised I should make that goal more measurable by coming up with a list of applicable plants/shrubs.

We’ve baked a good few times so are probably almost on track for the “once a week” goal, I’ve been making more stuff from wood so again improving those skills, and we went on a “learn to fly-fish” course while we were in the Lakes the weekend before last, which obviously isn’t the same as fishing in the North Sea but again, steps in the right direction. I like the idea of trying out the various different styles of fishing – see which one suits us/me best.

Not great goal progress but not bad :)

Mini goals

I set myself a few mini-goals this month – just a to-do list for myself really. Out of the five goals, I managed to complete one of them (pressure cleaning the coop) and half do two others (spent a lot of time looking at phone options and have decided I have to go see some in the flesh now; and, also I’ve sorted through nearly all of our kitchen cupboards). The other two things have been, um, forgotten. Will have to add them to my next to-do list…

Buy less than 12 items of clothing in 2011

I actually bought something this month! I bought three second-hand but BNWT bras on eBay – they are pretty but the focus is on functional, and they’re all replacements: I ripped one bra at the start of the month (not sure how), which spurred on my purchases, but earlier in the year had mentally retired two others because they were old and uncomfortable — so they’re on my exemption list.

Perhaps that purchase sated my previous “want new clothes” desires as I haven’t really been bothered about looking/thinking about buying anything else. Still no new clothes for six months now!