A Thrifty Cup of Tea

My lovely little teapot

I love my cuppa and I certainly conform to the British stereotype of being obsessed by a good brew.

This week I have been making my tea obsession just that little bit more affordable, by using a one-cup tea pot and re-using the same tea-bag throughout the day. 

My mother-in-law gave me this sweet little teapot (pictured), as she was having a clear out and it needed a home.  Thanks to her generosity, I can now put a tea-bag in the pot in the morning, brew my morning tea and leave the tea-bag in the pot.  When I am ready for my next cup, I simply pour more hot water into the teapot.  Easy as.

I can get two cups of tea out of the same tea-bag (my usual tea allowance for a day) and it will stretch to three cups at a push, if need be.  Each tea-bag costs me .04p, so by using an average of one per day instead of two, I calculate that I am saving myself .28p a week.  Which isn't a lot, but it soon adds up, to £14.56 a year extra in my pocket.  Nice one; I'll drink to that!

That Pesky Shopping Budget

In order to try and get back into the black and pay off our credit card debt, we have set ourselves a very tight grocery budget, of only £338 per month for the three of us (plus three guinea pigs!)  Which works out at a weekly spend of about £80. 

In September we went £101.00 over the grocery budget.  In October we were back on track at £103.00 under, which compensated for September's overspend.  But in November we were back over budget again, with a £83.07 overspend; sigh.

When I look at what we buy each month, I try and get as much of the main-stay items as I can from Costco, (we also have a quarterly Costco, bulk-buy budget of £200).  So, we were back there again today buying up loo roll, chopped tomatoes, sacks of potatoes and the like.  But one very expensive item, which we can't get in Costco, is Quorn.

Number One Son is very fussy and only really eats four things (Bacon, Sausage Rolls, Potatoes and Southern Fried Quorn Burgers; tricky and unhealthy I know!)  The Quorn burgers are £1.99 a packet and he eats almost one pack per day, costing about £60 of the month's shopping budget.

I had a look online and couldn't find any way to bulk buy Quorn (if anyone knows, then I would love to hear from you).  But I did find that Farmfoods had a deal on where they were selling two packs for £2.50, a saving of .74p a pack. 

So this morning we set off for the local store.  I haven't been to a Farmfoods for years and we found it in a very run down part of town, about one mile away from home.  Number One Son was with me and made an ironic commented about being stabbed as we got out of the car.  We got parked right outside the store and went inside.  The shop had quite a depressing feel to it, there was no music playing and there was a definite fushty smell about.  But, we gloried on and found the Quorn burgers and loaded them into our basket, making a healthy saving of £13.32.

I have to say that I didn't enjoy the experience, but with a saving of nearly a third of the price it was definitely worth making the effort!

Thrifty Cleaning

Today is Thursday, which in my house is loo cleaning day; "how exciting", I hear you say!  Well indeed. 

I have long been a supporter of environmentally friendly cleaning products, but find them very expensive compared to your usual household-cleaner brand names. In an effort to reduce the grocery bill, I have taken the step of swapping my usual eco toilet cleaner, which costs about £2 for 750ml, to plain old White Vinegar, which cost about the same price for 5litres at my local Costco warehouse.

Apparently vinegar is just as effective at killing germs and I have to say that it is more effective at cleaning the toilet.  Squirting it under the rim of my loo took away a whole host of horrible brown limescale scum, that I couldn't see, and that I would normally attack with an old toothbrush every couple of months.  So, I was very impressed! 

Using a plastic funnel I have filled up all my empty bottles of loo cleaner with vinegar and just because I have loads of it around, I added in some thyme essential oil, which is also extremely anti-bacterial and helps to make the vinegar smell, well, less vinegary.  Now, before you say it, essential oils aren't cheap, I know, but I have loads and loads of them left over from when I did an Aromatherapy Diploma.  If I didn't have them lying around the house, I wouldn't use them, as the vinegar doesn't actually need it to be effective and the acidic smell really quickly dissipates.  Although, I do clean when the rest of the family aren't around as No. 1 Son hates the smell.  I hate cleaning the loos, so we are even there!

If you would like to learn more, I found a nice, simple little website which tells you all about the cleaning power of vinegar, called Vinegar Works Wonders. 

I have to note, as an addendum, that I have just finished listening to Woman's Hour on Radio 4, where they had two feminist speakers on, Professor Mary Beard and campaigner Beatrix Campbell.  Both women were inspirational and make me wonder about the sensibility of blogging about cleaning toilets.  But, then again, as much as I hate cleaning them, I hate having a dirty loo more, don't you?

Cutting the Cost of the Weekly Shop

After a completely disasterous start to cutting our grocery bill in September, where we overspent on our shopping budget by more than £100.  Month two of the Challenge has proven to be more successful.  In October we managed to save £50 on our monthly shopping budget of £338.  We were away for a week visiting my parents, so that definitely helped; but I did take quite a bit of veggie food supplies with me, stuffed into every nook and crannie of our suitcases.

We are well on track for November, having spent only £30 quid at the supermarket last week, (despite throwing a fireworks party on Sat night).  We are managing by having a blitz of stuff that has been hanging around at the back of the store cupboard for ages.  Finishing off the packets of dried splits peas and lentils, the stock of lasagne sheets etc.  But I have to admit that I feel we are really missing out on fresh fruit and veg and I am now craving a fresh green salad with grilled halloumi...

We are being forced to be extra frugal at the moment as JW hasn't been paid properly this month; the joys of owning your own business!  Which has meant that we are seriously counting our pennies.  So in an effort to cut costs further I have been experimenting with the supermarket Basics range, 18p for a jar of pasta sauce anyone?  No. 1 Son is not very impressed!

Anyway, I am off to buy some broccolli now, as there is no point saving money if we all get rickets!

A good buy is not to be sniffed at!

I am trying my hardest to be frugal at the supermarket and have set a really tight budget of £10 per day, which needs to get food and supplies for the three of us (myself, husband and 16-year-old son) and our three guinea pigs!

This is no easy Challenge and I have to admit last month I failed!  We were almost exactly £100 over budget.  I was so disappointed, as I had worked really hard.  But being away on holiday in the Highlands of Scotland for two weeks meant we had to buy top-up groceries in the very expensive (but very friendly) local corner shop.  I have picked myself up, dusted myself down and am determined that we will make up ground in October.

One thing that I have been doing is buying cheaper version of my staple buys.  So instead of £1.50 on a box of tissues, I have been buying the supermarkets 'Basics' range at 45p per box.  They still have the FSC (forestry stewardship certificate) logo, so my environmental credentials are okay.  But the box is hideous and not something you want on display at your front door or coffee table.

A rather unattractive tissue box

Rather than buying expensive tissue box covers, (I saw one in a shop recently for £14), I got out my scissors, glue and stack of magazine clippings and set to work decoupaging a couple of Sainsbury's basics tissue boxes.

A Selections of the Magazine Clippings I Collect

I now have two refillable tissue boxes that I am not embarrassed to have on display, meaning that I can enjoy cheap tissues without compromising my style.  It doesn't take very long to do, in fact I completed each tissue box in about 30 minutes, while watching a couple of episodes of Celebrity Masterchef!

And just in case you are wondering, the refill section works by opening up one end of the box and then securing the flaps back in place with removable paperclips.

Do give it a go, it is really easy and enjoyable!

Tiffin Treat

I have been really enjoying having my morning coffee at home, in order to save money by not visiting coffee shops.  The target save for the next twelve months from making my own coffee is over £500!  As you know I am also trying to save money on my grocery bill, so my latest idea was to stop buying my usual fruit and nut cereal snack bar and to make my own snacks instead.  At 75p per bar my usual cereal bars may be yummy, but they are also costly. 

Afternoon Tea and Tiffin - Yum!

So, I have made delicious tiffin bars using up a load of ingredients that I already had in my cupboard!  The recipe was one that I adapted from BBC Good Food (which is a fantastic website, where you can find hundreds of great recipes which have been tried and tested by lots of other cooks, if you haven't visited it yet, I really recommend you have a look).  The best thing about this recipe was that I could use up all the little packets of almost finished biscuits that my son likes to leave in the cupboard to become a little bit soft!

Chocolate Tiffin

250g Assorted bisuits (I used ginger nuts, plain digestives and chocolate digestives)

250g of mixed nuts and dried fruit (I used a mix of all the little leftover bits of nuts, almonds and mixed nuts I had and dried currants)

150g Nutella (I have half a jar in the cupboard for ages, which my son left...)

150g Milk chocolate (I used some fancy flaked chocolate designed for hot chocolate, that I was given for Christmas)

100g Butter

140g Honey

 1. Line a 20cm square baking tin with greaseproof paper

 2. Melt butter, chocolate and honey in a pyrex bowl placed over a pan of simmering water

3. While chocolate mix is melting, crush nuts in a large bowl with the end of a wooden rolling pin (or however you like to crush your nuts)

4. Add bisuits to the bowl and crush them up too 
5. Add dried fruit to the biscuits and nuts

6. Mix all ingredients together, getting all the bisuits and nuts nicely coated in the chocolate mix

7. Press the mixture into the tin and pop into the fridge to chill for 2 hours

8. Cut into chunk sized pieces

9. Enjoy!

Jam

This afternoon I finally got around to making some jam, after many months of dithering around about it, imagining that it would take hours and hours.

The jam was far easier to make than the chutney, requiring equal amounts of fruit (rhubarb) and jam sugar, along with a lemon (juice and rind), a piece of ginger and half a jar of stem ginger.  Chop/grate everything up, stick it all in a big ceramic bowl, leave for 2 hours, then put it in a pan and basically boil it for 15 mins.  What a piece of cake, and it tastes quite good.  I got four big jars and one small out of the batch, which cost me about 20p per 100g to make.  Ideal!  And far cheaper than the supermarket equivalent.  It was quite fun to make, but only because it was my choice to make it.  If I had to do it each year, it would probably quickly lose it's appeal as a pleasurable past-time.

Chutney

While I was at Costco, stocking up on bulk buys, I thought I would buy a big tub of plums and try making Spicy Plum Chutney.

As you can see my store cupboard is well stocked up and it only needed a quick trip to the supermarket for some red wine vinegar, dried cranberries and ginger, before I could get on with chopping everything up and cooking it down for an hour, in order to turn this:

Into this:

I have to say that I had hoped for more than three jars!  But at least I will have a better idea of quantities for next time.  I also calculated that this particular chutney cost me about 60p per 100g to make (including gas).  Which is actually not that much better than the usual brand I buy in the supermarket, which cost 66p per 100g.  I shall have to look at even more economical ingredients for my next batch.  On the upside, I can use one of the jars for an upcoming birthday present!

Challenge Four: Reduce the Grocery Bill

Operation Goodbye Magpie is well underway now and so far it is going really well!  The next challenge is to reduce our annual shopping bill.  In the previous 12 months we spent £6,937.18 on groceries and in the next year we want to reduce that figure down by over £2,000 to £4,856 or less. 

The first move we have made is to commit to using our local bulk buy warehouse more.  So today we renewed our Costco membership and set off to make some savings.

The membership renewal cost £20.00 and for that we get access to thousands of products at discounted prices.  We made a big list before we left the house and then piled our trolley up with all of the everyday items that we use all the time, such as baked beans, loo roll, washing liquid, shampoo, razor blades, toothpaste, dishwasher tabs, cans of soup etc.  We really loaded up:

We spent a total of £270 (including membership), and when I got home I whipped out the calculator to see how much we were saving on all that shopping!

I double checked everything that we bought against the same item I would buy in the supermarket.  Everything was cheaper, ranging from .24p saving per pack of loo roll, .17p per tin of tomato soup, a .42p saving per roll-on deodorant, through to more substantial savings.  The basmati sack of rice was a whopping £2.56 cheaper per 100g than it's supermarket equivalent, the laundry liquid was a massive £4.72 cheaper per litre than the same brand in store and the dishwasher tabs an eye-watering £10 cheaper than the equivalent supermarket buy.  Every day items such as the baked beans were also .25p cheaper per tin, which soon adds up to a good saving, (a pound on every weekly pack of four).

We also bought some fresh vegetables for the guinea pigs and calculated that we saved £3 on their week's supply of spinach and cucumber, which over the course of a year would add up to a tidy total saving of £156.00.  So, we have agreed that my husband will swing in past Costco on his way back from work each week to pick up fresh goodies for the piggies.

The key to making the trip worthwhile is to take a list and stick to it.  Don't get distracted by all the other items on offer such as the golf clubs, fancy electricals, super skincare gift packs and the like, have fun browsing but don't splash the cash unless you actually need to.  Watch the fresh goods, as they come in such large packs you need to be sure you will get through them before they go off.  And only buy what you actually use regularly, keep a note of what you are always buying at the supermarket (loo roll and cans of soup for example) and when you do get your bulk buys home, don't use more of it than you usually would simply because it is near at hand.

The only downside for me is that they don't have more of the vegetarian staples that we eat regularly, such as quorn products, kidney beans and pulses and more tinned fruit (I am not too sure why).  It is also tricky to get organic produce, but there is some starting to appear (tinned tomatoes being one).  A huge upside is that I now won't have to hand carry heavy items back from the supermarket each week!  So my wallet is heavier and my weekly shopping bag lighter, what a bonus!